#it's much easier for me to say 'do i sexually ship these characters'

[veliseraptor]

Thoughts on chengxian as a romantic ship? I ship it and was wondering on your opinion.

I am not personally a chengxian shipper inasmuch as I don't tend to read fic where they are plainly, explicitly, romantically or sexually into each other.

however I think I would say I am a chengxian shipper in the sense that it's an incredibly intense relationship for both of them, highly charged, complicated and messy and extremely important in how they relate to each other and (in at least some ways) to the rest of the world. jiang cheng doesn't make sense as a character if he doesn't care about wei wuxian in an incredibly deep and intense way. wei wuxian doesn't make sense as a character if he doesn't - or at the very least didn't - care about jiang cheng in the same intense, almost consuming way. it's a massively significant relationship in both their lives and it's one I find very interesting and compelling to explore.

so like. I guess I'm a chengxian shipper in the same way that I was ever a thorki shipper, in that I wasn't, but also I kind of was, because for me at a certain threshold of relationship intensity the sex or romance or lack thereof starts to become almost incidental. for instance the point where you undergo experimental surgery to have a piece of yourself removed and placed in another person?

so like. while I guess I would say in the strictest sense that my feelings on chengxian as a romantic ship are sort of "eh, not my personal bag, at least not in the traditional sense" but that really doesn't feel like the most accurate answer to the question.

[courfee]

just went through all my ao3 fics and edited all the tags because i feel like i overtag a lot and it always bothered me. tbf the most overtagging happens in my relationship/character tags but i find it super difficult to judge who/which relationship is important. like friendships are So Important in my fics i dont feel like i cant tag less there? especially my longer fics. amtc james&sirius and black brothers are in my mind at least if not more important than literally amtc jegulus. i know its a jegulus fic but also jegulus is just the catalyst for other relationship dynamics. how do you tag that stuff

[spitdrunken]

man. still have NOT managed to get my hands on the book of bill because it's sold out literally everywhere over here, but have any of you seen the new 'how not to draw' vid on the disney youtube channel that features bill? it really got me thinking.

notes: fourth wall breaking, obsessive behaviour, unhealthy relationships, implied sexual content, implied mind control

it's heavily implied that the video takes place in a world where gravity falls is supposedly fictional, like our own. bill literally says he's going to break the fourth wall! because i'm a sucker for fourth wall breaks and characters being aware of their own fandom (to an extent), i simply just HAD to run with this scenario.

i just like the idea of 'you' being just a person, some totally, in the large scheme of things, insignificant human walking the earth. you have a tendency for escapism, perhaps. you have always been drawn to stories. you like gravity falls. maybe it was something you watched while you were younger and recently rewatched, or an interest that had never waned. regardless, bill cipher, charismatic and unapologetically evil villain that he is, is one of your favourites.

you doodle him on the edges of paper when you're supposed to be doing anything else. (regardless of anyone's artistic skills, it's not difficult to draw a triangle with a top hat and an eye, is it?) and in this world, you are hardly the only one who likes him, who, perhaps, ships himself with him, who thinks about him a lot. who makes drawings and writes or reads fic. you don't think it's all that unusual.

in a stroke of luck or, depending on how you look at it, the exact opposite, the universe's idea of a cosmic joke, you are the one to catch bill's eye. (it's, after all, much easier to infiltrate the dreams of someone who already has you on their mind. makes sense, doesn't it? a tentative, wavering link had been formed already.) there, in your dreams, he tells you what to say--triangulum, entangulum. meteforis dominus ventium. meteforis venetisarium--and the next morning, you remember it clear as a memory.

you do it. for funsies. why wouldn't you? you don't expect it to actually work. he's a fictional interdimensional demon. why would it work? but much to your surprise, and horror, because surely a screw must've gotten loose for this to be happening, one of your little doodles has life blown to it. as a response to your summon, a tiny little bill cipher darts across your paper, alive but still confined.

(you've given him an in. now, he only has to take the crack you've opened for him, dig his fingers in, and tear it open.)

oh, he'll be funny! he'll be exactly what you thought of him. perhaps he even voices a line of dialogue you swore you wrote down somewhere days prior. yes, he's read whatever you wrote or read, whatever you looked at. he's keeping it himself for now. it's not easy to inflate his ego further, but you might have succeeded. rather than a meatbag, bill first looks upon you with the eye of someone presented with a puppy. fundamentally lesser, but capable of being something with the right training.

he urges you to make a deal with him and the promise he'll act out whatever fantasy you've been cooking up in that brain of yours, even if it's gross and weird and physically impossible!

he'll warp your dimension to make all of it possible!!! it's great!!! don't worry about it!!!!!!

…you don't do it. you don't touch the paper. you've seen the show, and you aren't stupid. bill nearly balks. he'd expected you to be the easiest mark of all time, but he suppose he forgot that even puppies have teeth. that's fine. he can work with this. because even though you have not let him in yet, and you refuse to shake his hand through the paper, you don't seperate yourself from him just yet.

you could oh so easily take the piece of paper he's on and throw it in the nearest shredder. or set him on fire. in you, he recognises lingering curiosity, and the excitement at having stood out, at being chosen, in one way or another. it's not hopeless yet.

he can play a bit of a longer game, then. he's been at this for a long, long time. he'll tolerate the paper he's on being folded into a little square and tucked into your breast pocket, granting him a view of your life and the world you're living in. (all the time, his hunger grows.) your decision not to throw him away ends up being your downfall. spending so much time with bill, letting him joke around with you, complaining about your problems… it takes a while for you to realise that, for a while now, he has not been speaking out loud anymore, but instead through your mind.

a connection that cannot be cut has been formed in between two of you.

on bill's part, he had thorougly expected to be bored. but perhaps it's your genuine interest in him, not the things he's offering, which he does not often see. (he's been down this road before. won't end well. but...) the sheer mundanity of your life that makes him wish he could twist and turn it all around. or just a random alignment of the stars. the heart doesn't always follow logic. in this scenario, at some point, bill realises that he has become genuinely invested in you, too. and at that point, you'll never manage to slip away. he's already dug in his heels in your mind far enough. you had no adequate protection.

he still wants to take over your world. he still wants to escape the discomforting flatness of the paper you've summoned him in. but, perhaps, you two could share that meatsack of a body of yours, before things get that far.

[alastors-antlers]

Being someone who sees a lot of talk about shipping Alastor (sexually, romantically) in fanworks, I just want to take some time to talk about both sides of the issue. It's long, I know - please, please bear with me until the end, and I hope you'll understand what I mean in a bit.

I hope this helps someone, but as an aroace person who understands the frustration and hurt, this is often how it feels to me:

Alastor, being one of the limited cases of aspec rep that I've seen and one of even fewer which I actually enjoyed, means a lot to me.

That being said, his canon rep establishes that he's aroace but not much about how this factors into his life or relationships at all -- and when there's a gap in canon, I turn to fanfiction, which tends to spotlight characters' queerness even when the source material doesn't or can't. Don't we all want to see ourselves in the media we engage with?

When I pull up AO3, there are already a good number of fics about him. Great! Some of them are definitely incredible; but as I read on, it starts to seem like a lot of fics I see acknowledge that he's asexual or aromantic in some way but don't really factor that into the story. It reads like you could have written the story without keeping his queer identity in mind, and it would've come out the same.

Even when representation that does resonate with me exists, it starts to be exhausting to pick through the slash tags to see which ones are written in an aspec-coded way, so I wonder if it would be easier to not read anything with slash at all. On the other hand, when you filter ships out completely, only a tiny fraction of the fanworks are left.

People often respond that aspec people can have relationships, and I think we tend to know that. They can have sex, some can experience sexual attraction in select situations, they can romance others beyond romantic attraction -- any combination of things. But some aroace people don't want either, and sometimes we're struggling to see ourselves in how Alastor is typically portrayed.

Out of all of the fics, sex-repulsed, totally aromantic Alastor isn't seen much. And when Alastor's limited canon seems to be pretty supportive of a reading where he is those things...

Sometimes, you start to feel lost. If fics were evenly distributed along the aroace spectrum of experiences, wouldn't you expect more fics of him being the "totally uninterested" brand of aroace? But there aren't. People seem to have a preference toward seeing him in relationships. Even if they mean well, it can make you think: what does that say about how we view asexuality/aromanticism as a whole?

Is there something less interesting about Alastor, when romance is taken out of the picture? Do others find him less appealing as a character if they can't see him dating, or in love, or having sex or wanting it? Why do we need romance, when romance is already everywhere else, when it doesn't even feel like he was originally really interested? It brings to mind a struggle to be societally accepted, even today.

Even when it's not technically wrong to write Alastor as you see him, being told that we should all be able to ship him however we want can feel like this:

It brings to mind people who try to swing in with misinformed good intentions, telling us "oh, you're aromantic? but you can still have romantic relationships, right? so you can still be normal." when all we want is to be okay outside of the normal.

Or trying to find a partner who can be with us, out of everyone who tells us "I know you don't enjoy sex, and that's okay, but I can't have a romantic relationship with you without it." and being so tired of hoping for someone who gets it.

Or talking with peers, and hearing them all commiserate and fawn over their experiences with love, then telling them about someone you like non-romantically and getting "aww, it sounds like somebody's got a crush!" but not being believed when you tell them it's not like that at all.

Alastor is not a big deal, not really, not in the grand scheme of things. But in an allonormative world, it can feel like a sudden splash of cold water when we were expecting a warm fire to sit around. Even within this ecosystem, we squint to see ourselves reflected.

Society isn't built for us. It can be exhausting to be reminded of that.

~~~

I hope to support people writing Alastor as any variation of aspec, or not even aspec at all. At the end of the day, I think that fanon is really whatever you want it to be, and everyone has their own reasons for writing what they find enjoyable. They should be allowed to do so, and I want to believe that people do what they do with good intentions.

They want to imagine scenarios with the templates of characters they love, and that's okay; even beyond sexuality/queer identities/etc., fan interpretations of characters can be incredibly, wildly different from who they really are in the story anyway, and that's what I try to remind myself. But still, I also can't help feeling disappointed about the aroace representation we could have seen.

(Is Alastor canonically sex-repulsed? Uhh, maybe. If I had to guess, that'd be my top guess, but this might be a hot take: I wouldn't really say there's enough to go off of considering that this view is supported by Angel propositioning him both times, and it's not like Alastor is a particularly big fan of Angel at those points anyway lol)

To my fellow aroaces struggling with Alastor's fandom rep: if you need a break from it all; if you need to block the tags that you hate; if you need to talk to someone about how you're feeling; that's okay. It makes sense that you'd want more representation in a way that helps you feel seen and validated and less alone. I can't speak for everyone, but I think I get it.

I don't have any solutions for how you're feeling, because sometimes I'm feeling the same way. I understand that you want others to get your position and you have the right to express your feelings, but even if you're correct, often being angry or frustrated won't help change others' minds, so let's try to save our energy and take care of ourselves.

Something that helps me to think about is that even now, asexuality is gaining more visibility. We're gaining support. Real change is happening in the world that's helping incredible amounts of aspec people feel freer to be themselves. And maybe one day, we won't be reaching to protect our scraps of representation.

Let's fight until that day together <3

[crackedhrglass]

i got this ask on my strawpage and was gonna type it up in my notes app and post it to twitter, but i really couldn't figure out a way to say it concisely, so i'm answering it here bc it's prob gonna be long lol.

do i think stancest is actually canon? simply put, no. despite how often i'm like "STANCEST IS CANON!!" i truly don't think that AH and the writers intended stan & ford's relationship to be seen through an incestuous lens.

their relationship is def the heart of the show, second only to dipper & mabel's own bond. they are the center of each other's worlds, their story & character arcs revolve almost entirely around each other, and their happy ending is literally the two of them sailing off into the sunset to spend "the rest of their days" together (ford says this almost word-for-word in journal 3).

but i still don't think all of that was meant to be taken romantically.

in my opinion, where things start to get a little weird is, surprisingly enough, ford's relationship with bill.

the rest is under a cut bc HOLY SHIT this got longer than i expected.

there's no denying that bill was written to deliberately parallel stan in a number of ways, from his mannerisms, to his conman status, to the fact that he calls ford the same name stan did when they were kids.

he's written in a very intentional way that makes him serve as both stan's parallel and his foil, especially in their respective relationships to ford (bill feeds into ford's ego and encourages him to aspire for greatness alone, stan has always been a direct obstacle & challenge to ford's ego, accidentally ruining his chances at WCT & encouraging him to live out their childhood dream together; bill valued infinite power over his own family and destroyed his dimension as a result, stan valued his family over everything, and saved ford and his dimension as a result).

normally, this wouldn't be that big of a deal to a stancest shipper like myself. but as the book of bill & the accompanying website all but confirmed in big, flashing neon lights, ford & bill have a romantic history and are exes.

having the two people closest to ford be compared to one another is one thing. having ford be drawn to bill because of how similar he is to the brother he secretly misses is one thing.

having ford be romantically involved with said character is what makes me raise an eyebrow lol.

again, do i think ford is literally a brocon who's got repressed sexual/romantic feelings for stan?

no.

i do, however, think he has unresolved Brother Issues that led him to subconsciously find comfort in a romantic partner that reminded him of stan (right down to bill calling him stan's nickname for him) in much the same way a person with "daddy issues" may seek out affection & intimacy from someone who reminds them of their father (or is just "fatherly" in general).

that much, i believe, was actually intentional. it's just too blatant to not be lol. it'd be a completely different story if either

bill & stan were nothing alike (untrue) or

ford & bill's relationship was strictly platonic and didn't have any romantic implications (also untrue)

i've said this before, but this isn't just a case of "oh, ford fell in love with someone who just coincidentally reminds him of his brother." bill's use of the nickname "sixer" during their first encounter was a deliberate attempt at appealing to a part of ford that was repressed, vulnerable, and aching, in order to get ford's guard down and make it easier for ford to trust him, and it worked.

billford is a ship that, to put it bluntly, would not exist without ford's buried feelings for stan, even disregarding shipping/incest/etc. ford's desire to be close to stan even platonically is what allowed bill to needle his way into ford's heart in the first place.

and all of this wouldn't be that weird if, again, bill hadn't continued to feed into ford's longing for stan even after they'd established a romantic relationship, by still calling him "sixer" and trying to permanently sever the relationship he had with stan specifically, once he and ford broke up (the phone call he tried to make while in ford's body that was described in tbob).

to put it another way, imagine if wendy was basically an older, taller mabel, or if any of mabel's crushes were eerily similar to dipper. people in the fandom would def take notice and view it as a little strange. so i don't get how people can look at ford dating someone so blatantly and intentionally similar to stan and think to themselves "ah yes, this is normal. ford is completely Normal and definitely doesn't have any underlying issues whatsoever" lmao

to conclude: no, i don't think ford & stan's relationship is actually canonically romantic, nor do i think ford falling in love with bill was incestuous, necessarily.

but i do think that he had a desperate longing to reconcile with stan buried DEEEEEEP down, and it manifested itself in the form of being attracted to bill, which is probably why he never bothered correcting bill's use of the nickname "sixer" since their very first meeting, or ever expressed that it made him uncomfortable.

[tinykuroshitsujipics]

I've been a little absent recently due to life stuff but I just thought I'd make a little reminder because of the new and returning fanbase thanks to the show:

Ciel is 14 years old. Please do not sexualize him.

Ciel is 14 years old. Please do not ship him with adults. (You know exactly what I'm talking about)

Even though I haven't seen much about this, I thought it worth mentioning: Grelle is a woman

Yes, they are fictional characters, yes certain things you say or do about them online affect and harm real people, I know because it happened to me. (No I don't just mean I was "offended")

I realize that nothing I say or do can make people change their ways, however, there are certain things I can control, such as this blog.

So, if anything you do to interact with this blog breaks or contradicts these boundaries/rules, you will be immediately blocked. (This includes trying to argue with me on this post)

If you want to make things easier for me and unfollow because you disagree with me, go ahead. I will be none the wiser but all the happier.

Thank you all.

[yunhogosailing]

So…you want to know more about Korean shipping terminology (and how does this apply to Ateez?)

Luckily, I have spent the better part of six years of my life learning Korean! Which fortunately(?) means that I have learned plenty about the lingo Korean BL fans use re: shipping dynamics. Actually, this makes it SO MUCH easier to navigate websites like Twitter, where NSFW posting is censored for security reasonable. The difference is that English speakers do not have an organized method of referring to the members in their ships (for example, one user might write seongjoong as secngjccng where one might instead write sxxngjxxng, and where another one might even write sngjng, etc etc). But how do Korean speakers handle this situation? What is the context behind all of this? I will provide with you with a fun and easy chart at the end, but first….Let me explain:

Taking you back to the early 2000s

Our setting: the early Korean BL online forums. The terminology originating from these spaces were unsurprisingly heavily influenced by the original sources from which BL manga was derived: the Japanese language. Japanese has a system of Chinese characters used to simplify the writing process known as Kanji. Korean has a similar concept, known as Hanja. Where as Kanji is still heavily utilized to this day for a variety of reasons (my Japanese teacher would always say its main purpose is to minimize the amount of script needed to convey an idea), Hanja has largely fallen out of fashion—used primarily to clarify homophones in text, in literature such as novels and older writings, and as a stylistic choice to depict words such as Death and God, etc.

First, I’m going to give you some terms that are familiar to quite possibly all of you.

Seme (攻め) - the dominant figure in the relationship. Most often, this person will also be depicted as the top.

Uke (受け) - the submissive figure in the relationship. Most often, this person will also be depicted as the bottom.

Are you following so far? Great! In the most stereotypical depiction of homosexual relationships in Manhwa, these roles—the dom top and the sub bottom—reigned supreme so much so that eventually the community fell into the pitfall of believing these four terms to be interchangeable. While simplifying the process of understanding each person’s role in sexual intimacy, it also didn’t lend much of an allowance to explore ideas that defined this view of sexuality. This lack of nuance and flexibility has very little to do with why I’m writing today, but I do want to give some more context as to why these terms became such reliable shorthand.

Anyway…

In Korean BL spaces, these Kanji symbols (攻/受) were directly translated into 공 and 수, respectively. 공 literally means “Ball” but in the context of the Hanja, it means “attack” or “strong”, basically dominant top. 수—“Number”—“to submit” or “to receive”—submissive bottom. Don’t worry, this is the absolute last time I will be explaining these ideas.

How does this work in Korean BL spaces?

Now this may also be familiar to many of you: the placement of each figure in the ship name MATTERS! In SFW spaces, you can get away with referring to Yunho and Mingi as Yungi because….well….platonic friendships aren’t normally referred to by dominance dynamics. In NSFW spaces, specifically dealing with fictional depictions of gay sex, referring to Yunho and Mingi as YunGi will have most people assuming that you mean fanfictions in which Yunho is the top and Mingi is the bottom. Oh, you didn’t? Well, obviously you meant to say MinYun (or MingYun or MingHo, I’ve seen this written all kinds of ways tbh). See what I mean? Now this isn’t always the case—familiarity is everything, so it’s not uncommon to see Wooyoung and San referenced as WooSan, no matter who is intended to be the top.

In Korean, ship names are almost always written in order of placement. For example, 윤낫 (we will get into why the Hangul in San’s name is reversed later) would refer to a Yunho x San pairing where Yunho is the top and San is the bottom. Likewise, 낫윤 would imply the exact opposite. Anyone want to take a stab at what 밍웡 means? How about 섷쫑?

2010-2024, A minor shift in focus

As the spaces for these conversations grow and change with time, as did the terminology used to describe shipping dynamics and pairings.

If you are a fourth and fifth gen K-pop stan, you know what a coupling, or chemi, name is. Korean fans who did either did not want to discuss their idols in a romantic/sexual manner, or otherwise wanted some way to differentiate a typical shipping name from a platonic pairing name, developed the concept of using a chemi name instead. For Ateez, these would be:

E-Kang-Mo (에강모) / Yunho and Yeosang - the shortened version of 에이티즈 강아지 모임, literally translating into the Gathering of Ateez Puppies.

Matz (맏즈) / Seonghwa and Hongjoong - TWO MEN WE’RE ON FIRE 위험해‼️‼️‼️ Shortened version of 맏형 which literally translates into Oldest brothers. This quite obviously refers to our two oldest members within the group.

Elsewhere, you may come across 삼복즈, Jiwoong and Yujin from ZEROBASEONE. Or 채채즈, Chaewon and Eunchae from LE SSERAFIM. Usually this name is derived from some personality aspect or moment the two idols share, and can be given organically by fans or by the idols themselves. They are used strictly by both Korean and international fans as a means of referring to these idols and their friendships. It’s still possible that you find a fan who skips the whole “having to learn a completely different unit name” thing and just uses the traditional pairing name (I know, because I’m one of them), and in this case you can likely tell exactly when they first got into K-pop.

During this decade, shippers developed two more terms to further break down sexual dynamics, this time focusing on top/bottom. 왼 is the Korean directional word for “left”, and in the context of BL, means top. For bottom, Koreans use a shortened version of the directional word for “right”—른. I am not entirely sure whether the general consensus seems to be that these terms are still strictly tied to the idea of a dominant top and a submissive bottom, as most of the resources I used to search for these terms waffled on the subject.

In practice, 웡왼 will refer to shippings in which Wooyoung is a top (I searched for this on Twitter and came up unsurprisingly short….) and 쫑른 is in reference to shippings where Jongho is a bottom!

Enough Already!! Just give us the tags!!

Loud and clear, boss. However, I just need a bit more contextual information out there before I finally get into the list:

Variations - there are few variations that exist within the Korean shipping fandom, save for instances in which another pairing could possibly exist within a different group.

Censorship - Korean fans are also heavy on making sure these posts do not make it into the hands of Ateez themselves (see: the chaos that happened when San stumbled across self-insert fiction written by K-Atiny). Member names are not written properly, and will always be altered in some way as a means of masking it from normal search results. Please pay attention to this!

Pronunciation - some letters are altered in the pairing names as a means to aid with pronunciation. This is sort of an intuitive thing with Korean, so I’m not sure how to explain this in a better way.

And now…the list!

Here’s how to follow the chart:

Reading from the top down, you will find the 른—or pairings where the member is the bottom. For example, Seonghwa’s column reads:

홍섷 - Hongjoong x Seonghwa

윤섷 - Yunho x Seonghwa

솽섷 - Yeosang x Seonghwa

낫섷 - San x Seonghwa

밍섷 - Mingi x Seonghwa

웡섷 - Wooyoung x Seonghwa

쫑섷 - Jongho x Seonghwa

Likewise, reading the chart horizontally will provide you with the 왼—or pairings where the member is the top. For example, Mingi’s row reads:

밍섷 - Mingi x Seonghwa

솜몽 - Mingi x Hongjoong

밍윦 - Mingi x Yunho

솜여 - Mingi x Yeosang

밍낫 - Mingi x San

밍웡 - Mingi x Wooyoung

솜쫑 - Mingi x Jongho

Additionally, adding (Member name)른/왼 will provide you more general posts where Korean fans are discussing the idol as a top or a bottom in general without referring to a specific ship.

Hongjoong: 홍왼 + 홍른

Seonghwa: 섷왼 + 섷른

Yunho: 윦왼/윤왼 + 윦른/윤른

Yeosang: 솽왼 + 솽른

San: 낫왼 + 낫른

Mingi: 밍왼 + 밍른

Wooyoung: 웡왼 + 웡른

Jongho: 쫑왼 + 쫑른

Thank you for reading! I hope this was as useful for you as it was for me! Of course, I knew a lot of history regarding this topic due to the ample time I spent reading BL, but I will admit that I did not have much time to research this topic specifically. However, if you have any corrections to make, let me know!! This was so much fun for write, and maybe I can do something similar to this in the future as well.

Bye!

[verosikastrikerstellaexcuser]

Stella, her existence for the sole purpose of birthing an heir, and Octavia:

I could see Stella absolutely wanting nothing to do with a kid she was only tjere to produce, and feeling absolutely horrified at having to lay an egg that she (probably, based off how dismissive in s2(but was that rewriting to make her seem more bitchy?)) disconnects emotionally from Octavia for several years and made it harder for them to connect, especially in the beginning.

The creeping guilt of "i wanted nothing to do with this,b ut she's my daughter, so i have to care" and struggling to find the line between "i have been mentally scarred but i shouldn't take it out on A Literal Child" and either then turning the anger inward (why do i hate something that came from me) or outward (this is also partially Stolas's fault because he played a part) and struggling to hide it from Octavia as she grew up.

The balance of hating the pathway to how Octavia was born vs trying to remember thag the child herself is innocent.

She finally finds a balance between the two, just for Stolas to upend their life for someone he brought into their bed. They could have, if either of them really tried, discussed it ages ago and set up a 'we are married for x reason, but here is y, z, a options for pur sexuality clashes and how we want to portray our life to others' but you get flat, 1 dimensional characters who only exist to prop up male characters.

Maybe in the beginning, Stella would have been open to a discussion about Stolas being gay and figuring out how to work with it. But it's all just a game to stolas ("i thought love would be fun" is the line i think of when it comes to Stolas & Stella's marriage. Unsure if it's from when he's singing in his library in the beginning of s2 or from jlmw music video) and Stella is no longer playing the game.

She's bitter, she's never had fun, she was there for one reason & one reason alone.

And it's such wasted potential to talk about how people who have kids suffer post partum and absolutely have a hard time connecting w kids they want, let alone kids that are the product of abusive & r*pe.

Is Stella a bad mother? We don't know because we aren't shown. Is there potential for her to suffer from the marriage and it affect her relationship with Via and make it 1000 times harder to connect, vs Stolas, who didn't have to carry(???) an egg (it's so confusing on the dynamics of egg birthing in this show. Don't just drop a single "glad the egg fell out" like. Give us details, world building, background, please) and thus can connect with a child easier?

And they were maximum 18 when Via was born, which makes all of it so much harder to process & deal with when you become a parent so young.

YES YES YES YES YES OH MY GOD YES YOU GET IT YOU UNDERSTAND.

SERIOUSLY... seriously seriously Stella is such a wasted opportunity to explore what happens when you force someone who doesn't want to bear a child to bear a child. They could have explored amazing stuff like not making her the best mother at first that only bonds with her daughter later due to postnatal disorder, and showing her feelings changing overtime as she comes to terms with losing her autonomy in place of gaining a daughter who didn't ask for any of this either and that shes going to make the most of. Just as 1 example. So much could have been explored...

and I'll just say it. Representation is important. But honestly. This show could have benefited more from more and better focus on other stuff like addiction and not just so much shipping/relationship stuff (tbf I'm talking about the het ones too but I feel like I have to preface in case anyone thinks this is me being annoyed at the existence of any ships/any gay ships at all, its not. Its just a wish some other stuff could get more of a focus because often the content sitting right there for it would have been better).

[heyitspersephone]

Thinking about stranger things again now that the strikes are over and how, narratively, it would be way, WAY cooler to have Mike get Vecna’d instead of Will in s5

It’s just something about the way Mike’s trauma is never addressed or handled in any way?? Like, he hugs his mom twice and then when he was depressed in season 2 and 4 nobody did anything (his parents scolded him for his behavior in s2 ig but that’s not support). His best friend went missing leaving from his house, he watched his body get pulled from the quarry, watched El (in his eyes) kill herself stopping the demogorgon, watched Will be possessed, saw Bob die, was in Star Court when everything went down, saw Billy die, had his best friend move away, was SHOT AT (and really too few people talk about the shooting in Cali bc omg??), buried a body, and watched the apocalypse start. And that’s just off the top of my head.

(And yes I’m aware that the other characters (especially Will) are traumatized too but I will get to my point in a second just hold on)

The plot is geared towards this idea that Will and Henry have to have some big face off (and they should, in my opinion, but I don’t think it should be in a possession, or at least not the the Vecna kind of possession, yk?) but that makes it all the better, writing wise, to have mike be the one in danger. Will was helpless and hiding in s1, I think Will should get his big strong moments in s5 where he gets to be the hero of the story.

It would just be a lot more fun to work with Mike being Vecna’d than Will, because what are we going to bring up with Will’s visions? His dad? His sexuality? The events of s1 from his perspective? It would be cool to see, for sure, but we already know most of that. Mike, on the other hand, has a number of untapped things, like jumping off the quarry, why he’s so hesitant to tell El he loves her, how someone who was smart and kind enough to take El in in s1 and come up with the spy and sauna plans in s2 and s3 could turn into the oblivious asshole that he was in s3 and s4 (he needs therapy, ik, I still love his character but I want to explore the reasons he went from his s2 characterization to his s3 one)

It would be a very interesting parallel, I think, to explore Mike’s thought processes in this way, especially with all of Mike’s repression business (bc whether you ship byler or milkvan he is repressing his feelings HARD. Like, beyond his inability to say I love you there’s the fact that he doesn’t bring up the apparent many times he called pre-s4 during the Rink O Mania fight?? That literally would’ve absolved him of guilt in that argument since he WAS reaching out to Will the whole time? Hellooooo????).

Anyways, this all brings me to my main point: Vecna targets isolation as much as he targets trauma and guilt. The whole party was traumatized by the events in s1, s2, and s3, but Max was the one targeted. Plus, Henry went for Fred, Chrissy, and Patrick (I think his name was Patrick) instead of going for the perceivably easy targets that the mcs would make (ik narratively that would’ve made it more boring but shhh), so why Max and those three specifically? They were isolated. Lucas and Erica have each other, Dustin goes to Steve and Robin, Will and El have each other and Jonathan and Joyce, Nancy probably goes to Jonathan, and who does Mike go to?

No one. And don’t say Nancy because if those two have heart to hearts then I’m the next coming of Christ. Max separated herself from the Party in the aftermath of her grief and guilt over Billy, and it feels quite obvious that Mike was doing the same (like I said, he has repression issues). So Mike is traumatized, alone, and guilty (be it Will getting taken from Mike’s house, losing El in front of him multiple times, the many deaths he has witnessed, or the internalized homophobia angle), which makes him more of a target than Will, in my opinion (or at least an easier one, especially given his tendency to put himself on the line during fights (quarry, most of s2, s3 mindflayer fight), which would set him up on the suicidal ideation path)

Furthermore, as I’ve seen a few other people point out (and I can’t find the posts but one of them had eight screenshots of the various moments), Mike is always the one getting in the way, so it would be a strategic move for Henry to target him to get him out of the picture. Mike was the one that found El and got her involved in saving Will s1, he was the one who came up with the spy plan and called out the ambush in s2, he was the one to monologue Will out of his possession s2, he was the one with the sauna plan for Billy in s3, he was the one trying to help El get the strength to fight s4 (even if the monologue sucked ass it’s the intention that counts). As much as people like to hate on Mike, he is in the leader position most of the time when the party is grouped up (barring his mental health struggles slowing that down beginning of s3 and throughout s4, but he’s still capable of it). He’s the idea man, and he’s the one whose character’s foundations were built on the desire to keep his friends safe, so it would be a very fun plot line to watch him be the one targeted in s5. Like Will said, as lovestruck and cheesy as he was, Mike is the heart of the party when he’s on his A-game, so Henry should 100% be trying to keep him in the issues he’s been struggling with.

Obviously, Will and El are the Targets with a capital T for Henry since they’re the ones that got away or whatever, but I think Mike is a weakness of Will’s (and El’s tbh but also I think they need to have separate character arcs and I don’t exactly ship milkvan) that should be exploited.

TL;DR: Mike should get Vecna’d instead of Will in s5 because it would make sense in lore and be a very cool way to resolve his character arc

[katkafe]

i have to be so honest i don’t understand the xavier hate. i get why people don’t really like the love triangle, but i just cant help but appreciate it?

i personally wanted an aroace wednesday and i still feel like i got it. not all aspec people are completely anti-romance and sex repulsed; many, such as myself, do experience romantic/sexual attraction. it’s a spectrum for a reason.

can’t wenclair also be seen as part of a love triangle? i like the idea of wednesday and enid, and i like the idea of wednesday and xavier, (i won’t get into the whole tyler thing rn, but i don’t see them together at all, sorry) but why can’t it be one of those AND an aspec wednesday? truthfully there is nothing better to me than an aroace person in a love triangle.

i cant say fs which i would prefer she end up with but i would not really have a complaint either way! whether she’s with enid or xavier or no one, i will feel satisfied!! both characters are good matches for her, (and even so, a show with teenage characters that aren’t obsessed with dating would be so refreshing!! and if you found xavier kinda bland: remember the show is from wednesday’s pov: in her eyes, xavier is pretty boring, and enid is WAY too much. i think we probably missed out on a lot of their traits bc of wednesday’s black-and-white filter. based on the finale, season 2 probably won’t have this filter as much, as we can see wednesday’s views and ideas of her friends changing, we’ll hopefully get to see more of them under the surface. then it also might be easier for me to decide who i ship her with lmao)

fingers crossed for season 2!!

[askthisfishprince]

✨Official Disclaimer/FAQ Master Post✨

I'm going to be pinning this one, just in case anyone has questions or hopefully make some things easier to find! Will also add things as I need to.

Questions Regarding Timelines or “Canon”

I don't have an exact timeline in my head for this blog. In my imagination, Eridan and the other trolls are just alive again and in the present, and all the previous storylines still exist within it. The difference is that it takes place after the comic, so everyone is an adult just going along for the ride lol I guess that's what I'm going for 🤷‍♀️

I apologize if I stray away from the "canon"... I try to stay as true to the characters and their dynamics as I can. But sometimes it's just fun to be a bit silly and go off book for the sake of adding some humor. Also….it is an ask blog of a character that died pretty early on and did not get much in the “character development” department lol So again, I do my best to write him as “canon” to his true attitude and behavior as I can. But it can get very hard to give nuance to a guy who overall was pretty shitty, didn’t have much dialogue in the first place while also giving him a fake timeline that takes place a couple years down the line and allow him to have a crumb of self improvement without it coming off as too ooc. So if you see behavior that you don't think is accurate to him…..i promise I do my best…….i have google docs and PowerPoints on this guy lol so I promise the brain rot runs deep

Why I Haven’t Answered Your Question

If you notice that I have not answered your question there are multiple factors.

I couldn’t come up with decent enough dialogue that I felt was good enough to respond with. I am extremely stubborn

I work a full time job and just couldn’t find the time to :(

It was a very strange question and I have no idea what to say lol usually sexual, creepy, violent etc

I have gotten multiple of the same question and I am currently working on a reply.

I waited too long and I feel too bad to respond now ❤️

I can tell if you are spamming me with the same question even if you are anonymous lol And I'm sorry but I won't answer those lol

My inbox is actually insane at times and I genuinely can’t get to everyone :(

I promise I read every single question and I appreciate all of them!! Even the creepy ones.

But I am one person running this blog on my own time with a full time job with only so much time during the day 😔 I also have rampant adhd that can make it very hard to complete certain things

“Will I be making more content of Eridan and *insert character*”

I try to avoid having strict shipping content on here. I don't want this blog to become limited in my responses because I inadvertently turned it into a shipping blog. I do enjoy dropping hints, but for the most part, I prefer to keep things open so that I don't unintentionally limit myself. I also don't want fans who ship other things to feel like they can't ask questions about different characters or scenarios.

I do not have any “headcannons” that I am against or a ride or die for…but….please do not send me any Cronus and Eridan shipping questions. It is very yucky to me. I outright ignore the ministrife….i pretend to not see it 🥰

Am I An Eridan “Defender”?

No lmao

I’m not gonna write down my whole pathetic analysis on him. But I’m not gonna be here at my old age defending a fictional fish guy who boasted about the aspects of eugenics and harass people who disagree?? What is this?? 2013? lol

If you hate him and think he is awful. That is 100000% A-okay! You are allowed to! And I understand lmao

If you ever want to actually talk about Eridan openly, and discuss him as a character or anything. Just dm me! :)

Also just a reminder to clarify that my writing for Eridan does not necessarily reflect my personal feelings. If you ask “Eridan” about certain characters and my response seems mean or nasty, please note that it doesn't mean I dislike the ship or character. Eridan is not particularly friendly, even towards people he likes, so I try not to insert too much of my own feelings into his responses.

(Erisol, EriRox, eridan and literally everybody lmao….except maybe Karkat…..thats his bro…)

Tags

All of my Eridan responses will always be tagged under my url “askthisfishprince”

Any questions directed at me that I post responses for will be under

“NotEridanAsks”

How To View The Post Properly

Whenever I make a response, I try to keep things as clear as possible! Any text in the description or in the tags that does NOT have (()) around it, means thats Eridan talking.

Anything besides that is ✨me✨ lol

Always check the tags for extra dialogue! :) and also always check for “read more” because sometimes I add extra silly doodles lol

Also sometimes I give my two cents as to why I did something a certain way in the tags. So if you care to hear me Yap, check the tags.

Also if you ever want to send an ask to me, either state in the ask that its for op or just put (()) around it! :)

[king-midas-fortnite]

Hello. I assume there is little need for introduction, but I am Midas. I've recently returned from a brief..."sabbatical", shall we call it, in the Underworld.

My daughter, Jules thought it would be a good idea to keep a blog. Not sure why. Something about venting feelings, connecting with other people not in my crew, etc. Not exactly things I find very high priority, but I suppose it can't kill me. I'd know better than anyone what can, after all. And perhaps it'll make keeping tabs on people of interest easier...

Feel free to reach out, if you wish. Message me, tag me, whatever the case may be. I'll do my best to be active here. Whatever it takes to make my daughter happy. However, I am a busy man. Apologies if I miss anything.

((Keep reading for rules and notes!))

--------------------------------------------------

Rules and guidelines for interacting!

1. This blog is run by an adult. I am 26, my main is @snippydippy. Please keep this in mind when interacting with me. I ask that minors please consider a different Midas.

I will use (()) to indicate when I'm speaking out of character in any posts!

2. I don't mind NSFW content myself, but may not answer questions or reblog content pertaining to sexually explicit topics to keep things relatively appropriate.

3. This blog may contain ship content, it may not. I have ships I like, they may not be the ones you do. While my version of Midas is cis, he's not straight (bi king). If this bothers you, I don't know what to tell you.

4. My DMs and asks will always be open! Please don't be shy, Midas won't bite. I'm down to RP in the reblogs with anyone! However, DM roleplays for other adults only, please.

5. This blog will always be skewed towards a more serious vibe. I take my characterization of Midas very seriously (more so than I probably should for a FN character lol). You won't find much in the way of him being a silly guy. Even if I find it funny, if I don't think a situation would be in character for my version of him, it won't happen.

That's it as far as my rules go aside from the obvious "don't be a dick" sentiments that I feel I shouldn't have to say. Thank you for reading them! Next are just a couple notes on my headcanons for Midas.

-Midas has some control over his Golden Touch. I think of the curse in a way that is similar to chronic pains. Some days, it is manageable, and he can touch whatever he'd like without issue. Some days, it is bad. He has to avoid people, can't eat, and struggles getting through mundane tasks without frustration.

I believe his curse may also be in part tied to his emotions. Any intense anger, sadness, or other strong feelings will make it harder to control the Touch, and it does cause him some amount of pain when it's out of control. (Doing mental gymnastics to explain why Fortnite itself isn't consistent with his power.)

-Jules means everything to Midas. He will do absolutely anything in his power to keep his daughter safe and to keep his relationship with her in good standing. He's wronged her in the past, and is doing all he can to make up for those actions and lost time.

-His time in the underworld changed him a bit. He's less cold to the people close to him. He allows more feeling than pure calculation into his thought processes, but a stranger may not be able to tell. Midas is a relatively closed off man. He does not wear his emotions on his sleeve, and doesn't often make friends without some kind of benefit to be had from the relationship. Be it power or connections. However, the friendships he does have mean a great deal to him. He is quick to provide aid in any way he can to those he cares about.

Another thing about his imprisonment in Hell: Time in the underworld was experienced differently. While we may have waited four years for Midas to return, for him it was much, much longer. Now that he is back, he is determined to never be put in chains ever again.

-My version of him obviously has not left the island after returning from the underworld, instead opting to stay as his curiosity for how things have changed has gotten the better of him. He wants to keep up with the power struggles, and find a way to insert himself back into them.

This blog is semi-independent! Some lore is shared with @perseus-ihatemydad-fortnite in that he helped Midas escape from the Underworld. As well as most often being seen interacting with @kado-fortnite and @valeria-fortnite

Tags I'll use!

#Midas Answers -For asks answered in character

#Midas Posts -For interactions in character

#Gold Reserves -In-character reblogs of art, aesthetic posts, etc.

#Gold Encounter -For interactions between other characters that are meant to be read as happening in-person/privately

#Journal Entries - For uh. For Journal Entries lol. These are, in a meta sense, private to him. They are for interactions that happen on the Discord server rather than Tumblr for reader convenience.

- 👑 for anon messages

#Shut your trap snippy -For posts like these that include me talking OOC (I know, long tag. It's just what I've been using on my main blog for years to tag my own garbage lol)

Screenshot in this post and my header are from @corvidazed 💛

Thank you for getting all the way down here! I hope our interactions are fun!

[aloyxtilda]

I need to say something. The saltiness I have seen against Seyka. The negativity to Aloy and Seyka's relationship even. It's hurtful and sad. I am so sad to see this from such an amazing community that I love very much. A lot of us LOVE Seyka. Attacking her character, claiming she is written badly etc. Please stop. All that is a salty opinion that some people may agree with but doesn't mean it's true for the rest of us. And it's hurtful to see everyone attacking each other over it. You are allowed to be critical of the story. But attacking each other, lashing out, being mean is wrong. I love all the characters in Horizon. All of them! And it's fine if you don't. But be polite and respectful.

Aloy is confirmed bi/lesbian. Can't we all be happy for her at least? Your fantasy still continues on with whomever character you ship her with. It doesn't need to be canon. That's not what this story is about. It's not about your fantasy. It's about Aloy's growth and her learning about love. It was beautifully and respectfully told too. So relatable as a lesbian for me. Everything. And in my opinion, It wasn't rushed at all. It felt natural. Realistic. 🌹💞

Then you got the saltiest ones saying. "But Aloy has built up all these other characters who mean something to her and putting Seyka with her as her lover is like tossing the rest of the characters under the bus." 😒 Really? So That's like me saying. I got all these people who are into me sexually and friends in my life who I made deep connections with. That means I should and must date them?? 😬 Red flag alert! No!

Sorry kids but that's not how it works. Seyka just happens to be what Aloy wants and opens her heart at the right time. It's realistic, natural and her own decision. I feel like Tilda and Lis' tragic love story helped to make Aloy realize something deeper in herself. It's Guerrilla's story and they are telling it beautifully. Not some cheap dating sim. Look, I ship Tilda with Aloy. I get it. But I am not upset that Aloy never got with her. Specially since it was canon that Tilda was totally obsessively in love with Aloy and Lis. Then she went and died. (Left up to speculation of course. 😌) Spite whoever Aloy is with romantically, I just want Tilda to be in the 3rd game.

It's fiction and supposed to be fun. But people are legit shitting on Seyka and each other! I find Seyka is an amazingly well written character. People are more upset that Aloy didn't get forced into being with their favorite character. I understand we love our favorite characters but the negativity saltiness around it is toxic. Aloy can be with whoever she wants and Seyka is her girl she chose. Seyka also represents girls out there who look like her for once. Another plus. And if you chose for her not to be with Seyka...it doesn't change her sexuality or who Aloy is and what she likes. Sorry if that upsets you but not sorry. She's B/L and we should really be happy about this. Sometimes it's our own community that can stop more industries from making games for us. Since it's always easier to go the straight route. Then it's typical and the drama stays out of it. Is that what you want?

I am so happy for Aloy and her story. I am proud of Guerrilla for telling the story they want. (Spite all the backlash now from all sides.) And not listening to any particular group who think they deserve the favoritism. Instead they gave us something new and fresh. A new character who vibes with Aloy and gives her confidence who she feels equal to but also only knows her as the girl who fell to earth. Not the savior. Not the outcast and I prefer that. I just see it as the more the merrier. Seyka is just another beautiful character we can ship Aloy with in fanart/fics. But some people rather be angry about it all and cause drama, even use it to hate on other shippers. Like fine, do that if it makes you feel better. But it looks salty and really raised a red flag for me.

Also as a middle aged elder gay who works in the gaming industry and sees so much bigotry, this behavior doesn't help and looks bad on the lgbtq+. I've seen some amazing devs already be talked badly about because of their decision. We really need to be more supportive of each other and characters that represent us and companies who risk a lot to tell stories made for smaller minority groups. The game industry is still far from being a healthy environment for women, PoC and LGBTQ+. Let's not make it worse. ❤👏 Thank you.

[etirabys]

The first episode of The Americans is one of the most perfect episodes of TV I've ever watched from a my-kinks perspective. CW: rape, and brief sexual harassment of a minor.

Non spoilery burbling followed by spoilery burbling (again, just for the first episode, which is 40m long)

NON SPOILERY

The main characters are a married couple of KGB spies who have been in deep cover as normal Americans for almost two decades. They have two preteen kids who have no idea.

They are both phenomenally competent – a lot of my pleasure lies in just watching them work.

He's acclimated to his life and feels the pull of the life he's playacting – he's a goofball dad, more naturally affectionate with his kids, more drawn to American prosperity. A new mall opens up and he mentions to his wife, on the way there with his kids, that it has "fountains and skylights". I love that line – so unimportant, but she'd never say it.

She's the fanatic. She idealizes the Soviet way and despises Americans for their weakness in comparison, but it's also been decades since she was in the country. It seems that, even before she left, she was so immersed in her harsh training program during her formative years that she lost touch with what normal Soviets were like.

He's in love with her but not so much the other way around, and watching him try to love her is like watching someone trying to grab a knife by the sharp end.

They can only be mostly open with each other. A cult of two. And even then – because they were told not to share their pre-spy lives with each other, to make it easier to keep their cover stories straight – they don't even know each other's birth names until the end of episode 1.

SPOILERY

Oh my gosh. So. I'm really into how he's in love with her and how emotionally unsafe she is to love because of who she is.

He listens to a tape of her seducing a CIA guy and the unhappy microexpressions rippling on his face as he listens to it – amazing! You just know she's never been expressive with him during sex, because it wasn't necessary for the job.

At another point he comes home and starts kissing the back of her neck in the kitchen, and her expression tightens as he ignores her stop words, and she whirls on him with a knife. He says, "You're my wife." She replies, "Is that right," and her eyes say: that means nothing to me.

And of course –

The guy they're keeping in their trunk, a Soviet defector they kidnapped, is a colonel who raped her in her cadet days. She's cracking under her desire for revenge, arguing for killing him immediately (rather than waiting out the American scrutiny on every train station / port, and shipping him back to the motherland), and not saying a word about her personal reasons. When it comes out – because the colonel, tired and expressionless, apologizes after she beats the shit out of him – her husband veers on a dime from planning to return the colonel to American hands and defecting himself, to choking the colonel to death in the garage.

They dispose of the corpse together and fuck in the car. I find this unbearably romantic. Especially because... (1) the intimacy is genuine, her loyalties really do shift closer to him (she lies to her superior about his loyalty for the first time), but (2) sleeping with him at this junction is also the strategically optimal for her to be doing to manage him. She cares about him, unlike the other men she manages with sex, but he is in fact in that category for her.

There's no way he doesn't know that, but he loves her anyway, and maybe even admires her for it. He's so fucked.

[lullaebies]

What the differences between aegon&helaena in the book compare to what we got in the show, and why do you think that their show!portrayal isn't good? (Didn't read the books)

Let me start this ask by saying that I am a biased blog to ask this and while I try to be objective, I highly rec reading the book and forming your own opinion on the matter. I will list here what I think didn't work in the show, but this is only my opinion from my point of view. This will be a very long ask - apologies. warning as well for spoilers.

Let's start with Helaena because she's a lot easier to go over. The issues with Helaena imo is not that she's better written in the books, she isn't - she has little lines and moments there too, but the problems are as such: she is described as an entirely different person in the books, and while the show is supposed to elaborate on the characters they adapt because the books describes historical figure and hence doesn't have much characterization, the additions to Helaena's character are very shallow and aren't fleshed out at all.

Helaena is not a dreamer in the book, nor does she have some evident hyperfixation on bugs or any neurodivergent traits that we know of. Now these additions would be lovely in the right hands! They even are lovely now, but the neurodivergent rep is tropey (autism comes with superpower trope), and not well done because don't give her much personality beside it. The dreamer plot is nice but overtakes her entire character because practically 95% of her lines are prophecies. We do not see her reacting to any pivotal event in a way that remotely expresses an opinion except "I feel uncomfortable" or "I feel happy."

In the books, we are told she's an active mother, we are told she has had a seat on Aegon's war councils to advocate for peace, we are told she is liked by the smallfolk to some capacity and had a happy personality overall. We are also told she is a bit plumper which is worth mentioning in this section - because everything I just wrote are things that practically erased from the show. So, people are rightfully upset - the Helaena we were described, despite being ingrained in traditional feminine roles, was an active person with her own thoughts and life, and her relatable/more admirable characteristics were erased in favor the show!personality that isn't in accordance to the text and isn't fleshed out enough in order to have her matter to the wide audience. I went on rants before about how she has been made solely a victim and nothing more but I will not get into this here.

As for Aegon, the issue lies with framing, entirely reduced screentime and lack of exploration of young!Aegon in a sympathetic way, the way they actively did not write scenes for him that are positive and have seemingly taken out the cores of his arc and made them not matter.

Aegon II is not a good person in the books, either, do not mistake it. He is not any better of a husband or a person and for his part as a father we don't really know how he was with the kids. That being said, the show has decided to make his absolute worst caricature of him, while taking away any positive quality he could have had or any relatable point to him.

Sunfyre, his dragon, is a big thing for Aegon - he loves the dragon. His sigil is made after Sunfyre. We may not know how involved Aegon was in his children's lives, but we know he raged enough at their demise he wanted to burn Dragonstone to the ground. We also know that Aegon took up the crown in order to defend his family, which is something the show neglected to say. Sunfyre and Aegon's children are two things that in Ep9 appparently Aegon is willing to leave behind to go away on a ship to Essos. It's egregious how butchered he is.

In the books as a child, he didn't get along with the Strong boys - he certainly didn't bully Aemond even if there was rivalry there. In the books, he didn't start the fight at the last supper by sexually harrassing Baela, and in fact, he was the one who got into a fistfight with Jace over the dance with Helaena. This is not about a ship moment here - but the fact the choice was made to make him seem as the instigator in every turn is not only crazy but also extremely unempathetic to him. He has reasons to be angry, you can glean them off of the text - even if it's jealousy, that makes sense - but no, in the show he's just a cunt who is the manifestation of all evil. The fact that we consistently see him naked (as a child, too!!) to portray him as a deviant is unsubtle and has no decorum about it.

He is consistently shown to be the devil in his family despite also being very much a victim in his own circumstances and the hypocrisy does not jive with me. I will not comment on the choice to make him a full on rapist because frankly that is not beyond his character in the books, but for a show that wants people to be conflicted, it was a damn bad choice, especially as other horrible actions to the smallfolk are not nearly as demonized when other characters make them.

Basically, all empathy escaped the writers when they decided to write him, it seems. Most his empathetic lines seem to come from improv by Tom Glynn Carney. They simply chose the worst possible way to go with him, took away the parts of him that made him sort of likable (using this word generously) and left him with self-depreciation that makes him so passive that he has to have his ass dragged to the throne instead of Cole or Aemond convincing him. It's just very clear the writers do not like him, basically. He has his downfalls but he is still human - he still could've had a decent arc and understandable reasons to most of what he does in better hands.

So basically, these are my thoughts. Sorry for the length again, but you did get me on a day where I needed to vent LMAO. Thank you for the ask.

[ryuichirou]

I'm kinda starving for Kalijami content right now so I hope you'll indulge me

Got any headcannons for flirty!Kalim that's 100% Jamil sexual but with oblivious!Jamil. Like here is a version of Kalim that could probably charm anyone he wants into relationship or in bed but Jamil is just like "Yes, this is completely platonic" all the while acting like wife material. Kalim is suffering from thirst and its lowkey become everyone's problem cause they're suffering from secondhand tension.

I won't deny any spicier headcannons either too if you have them 🤭

Anon! I’m very happy you’re enjoying our headcanons, and I feel like your idea has potential, so I’ll give you some headcanons. Even though, like in my previous KaliJami post, they’re probably not as nicely aligned with your idea and wishes as you wanted to. So I’m sorry for that.

But I’ll be honest: it’s a bit difficult for me to write KaliJami posts these days. Not because we stopped liking them: we still love the ship very much and I would still love to draw them more often. But it’s been a while since we’ve read anything featuring these characters (we’re focusing on other stuff right now) and my “feel” of them is worse now + they are far from being our main ship, so we naturally don’t have as many ideas for them as for others.

So what I’m saying is that I hope you or any other person won’t get upset if I don’t reply to your KaliJami ask in the future. I don’t want to give you a half-assed reply, and a lot of time I just don’t have anything to say or add, so it wouldn’t be much of a reply anyway. That being said, we really appreciate the love our KaliJami posts are getting, so thank you again.

Alright, the headcanons.

Kalim is genuinely confused about their situation. Jamil doesn’t get or notice something? That never happens. He kind of thinks that Jamil is ignoring his advances on purpose sometimes, but he is conflicted about it… What if Jamil really just doesn’t know? I guess it means that Kalim should keep flirting with him. (People around them are 1000% sure that Jamil is avoiding Kalim’s obvious flirting on purpose. There is no way it isn’t intentional)

Kalim is going to confess his feelings to Jamil but in a bizarre turn of events that wouldn’t work either, because Jamil would still tell himself that it is either platonic or Kalim is lying to himself/confused about his own feelings. Simply because Jamil doesn’t want to deal with Kalim having romantic feelings towards him, so it’s easier to just think he’s goofing around.

Their main problem is that a lot of things that Kalim does as flirting is something that he also does to all of people in a friendly way, so it makes it easier for Jamil to either assume or assure himself that he is just being friendly. For example, magic carpet rides, dances, a lot of touches, long stares in Jamil’s eyes… One time Kalim would spontaneously take Jamil on a date, take him to some extremely beautiful place with nice smelling flowers and pretty lights and romantic/intimate atmosphere, hug him, touch him, get reeeeal clingy… and Jamil would STILL think that he is just goofing around and trying to avoid doing homework or something. Let’s get back already, Kalim. (at this point he’s just in denial)

Kalim would insist on sleeping in Jamil’s bed, Jamil’s first reaction would be annoyed “are you having nightmares?”. It’s almost like Kalim is mentally a toddler in his mind… But when Kalim makes his move and starts kissing and touching Jamil this time, I feel like he wouldn’t be able to lie to himself anymore. They would end up having sex, because despite Jamil being/acting oblivious, the tension between them is quite strong. So once Kalim takes Jamil’s clothes off, starts kissing his neck, his ears, touching his hips and spreading his legs, it’d be an “oh” moment.

…luckily for Jamil, he would tell himself a different lie this time: Kalim is a hormonal horny spoiled stubborn rich kid that always gets what he wants. So of course he would want to also have Jamil. Doesn’t mean any of it is romantic..right?