#none of their favorite ships are yuri shame on them

[voxmilia]

Who is your favorite headcanon ship (meaning they either have supports but not necessarily a romantic ending or they may have no supports at all)?

50 questions for FE3H

Buckle up, I feel like I'm gonna ramble

Supports but no ending (platonic):

I fully understand why Sylvain has so few romantic endings, I think it makes sense for him but his lack of endings is iin general is infuriating, because he has some delightful support chains that only go up to B that I would love to see explored. I want an ending for Sylvain and Bernadetta in the vein of Marianne and Ignatz's ending, where Bernadetta renounces her claim to Varley to become an author and her best friend Margrave Gautier is her biggest patron and supporter. I want Sylvain and Marianne as rulers of Gautier and Edmund to have a support about how their work building relationships with Sreng and Almyra respectively, how Marianne always smiled the widest when the two were together. Justice for Sylvain friendships!!! Give him more platonic endings!!! He literally just has Felix and it's SO "history will call us best friends" coded!!!!! He has five endings and none of them are just him having a buddy he's not in love with.

Supports but platonic ending:

I think, for a character that doesn't show up ever, the Ignatz and Maya Kirsten in his ending with Raphael makes sense! I think it's super sweet that the girl who inspired him to be an artist was inspired by him in turn and then they get married and are an artist couple???? Precious. However, the fact Ignatz and Raphael not being in love canonically is a tragedy. In fact, all of Raphael's endings I've gotten absolutely need an explicitly romantic remake. I haven't seen all of his endings but his endings with all of the Deer, as well as Flayn, Shamir, and Ingrid are platonic which is?? A shame, why can't the big lug get a kiss??? I'm hyped to have him marry Byleth purely because I want him to get kissed.

No supports:

There are no Hapi and Edelgard supports because they knew they'd be too powerful, as magical church hating sapphics. I stand by this.

Also Balthus has no supports with anyone outside of the wolves or the deer and that's a shame. Could you IMAGINE him and Caspar??? Him and Dorothea??? Him and Ingrid or Dimitri or Felix????

The reverse with all the Wolves and the Deer, though I know some of these are rectified in Hopes, from some screenshots I've seen. Lorenz and Constance would be hilarious. Hapi would kiss Raphael, if the rest of them are gonna be cowards. Yuri and Claude?????? Come the fuck on.

Felix and Hilda needed supports, based on this wonderful art by tinypaperstar lives rent free in my head

Probably more quite frankly but Hapi and Edelgard especially. In fact, have the fact support ending I made with this text generator

[komakitigerdrop]

Apparently I didn't express myself accurately. As you said indeed, certain scenes don't mean anything, so my question is, what scenes would actually mean something? (I'm being hypothetical, not trying to say existing scenes mean anything.) Or are you going to keep believing in YxF even after something big happened between MxF/TxF/YC/AxF? I'm the kind who buys whatever couple the author sells, but I'm curious about shippers loyal to one specific couple.

Ahh, thank you for sending another ask. I was not pleased with my previous answer either - I was pressed for time and didn’t articulate my ideas very well.

I think that the best way to answer your ask is to break it down into a few different parts, if you don’t mind. I will hide it under a cut so that I don’t clutter people’s dashboards.

1. About Shipping

I am not the kind that buys whatever couple the author sells, just because I am not naturally invested in most fictional couples (regardless of media type - I guess I am either too cynical, or just overly realistic). I read other mangas and in most of them, either only one couple draws my attention, or none. I find most of the tropes used in yaoi either dumb, childish or both. That is all to say that I hardly ever find myself emotionally invested in a fictional couple, but when I do… I do.

2. About Finder specifically

This part will merge with the next, “scenes that matter”. The reason why I can’t bring myself to find Mikhail and Fei a believable/interesting couple is because their relationship is not organic. By organic, I mean: something that was construed over time, something that followed a trail, that was built upon events that primarily existed to advance other parts of the story. Finder started in 2002. Fei Long and Mikhail were introduced in 2007. For twelve years, FxM interactions were limited and emotionless. Even their sex scene in Volume 9 was a transaction. Nothing was built to suggest any kind of emotional connection between these two individuals, nothing was said, on the page, about either of them being remotely interested in starting a romance.

Bear with me here.

Reason being, Fei Long was a character created to gravitate around Asami. The crux of his existence in the manga was always the relationship with this one man, the feelings for this one man. No one else. Not Mikhail, not Tao, not Yoh. Flash forward to 2018, and YA gives us that iconic scene in which Fei Long ships Akihito and Asami to a desert island, and I think that this is the gamechanger. Now Fei Long is in a position to move on.

Coincidentally, we readers are given back Yoh and a sex scene with Mikhail in the same damn chapter.

Two suitors with feelings for him.

On one hand, Yoh, whose feelings he admitted to Fei Long in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Of course he was not reciprocated. Then, there was Finder no Rakuin, in which their affection was mutual. Had its plot not been written by Yamane Ayano herself, dialogues reviewed and all,  I would happily cast it aside as “non-canon”. But it was, so I won’t. If one accepts Finder no Souen as canon to explain Kuroda and Asami, then one needs to accept Finder no Rakuin as canon to explain the feelings Fei Long and Yoh have for each other. I won’t label those feelings because in all honesty, I wouldn’t know how to. Fei Long’s heart was not within reach, and yet Yoh still managed to touch it. There is a connection between those two men based on trust, on forgiving, and yes - on physical pleasure. It delivers in all fronts.

You ask, what would be necessary to convince me that Mikhail is the real deal? I’d say, I would need to see him deliver in those three fronts. I’m sorry, but a night of sex in exchange for a favor, and a moment of compassion after a session of torture won’t cut it for me. Mikhail going to see Yuri, as I mentioned before, was due to concern and a sense of duty - but in all honesty, he is not the first and won’t be the last to put his ass on the line for Fei Long. Akihito did it. Asami did it. Yoh did it. Do they all get a ticket to Fei’s heart? If they do, then what is the point?

It was the need to save Asami that ultimately brought Fei Long and Mikhail together. It was not mutual attraction, interest, or compatibility of values/goals/personalities. What happens when Asami is safe and sound? Has Mikhail made that much of an impression that his presence in Fei Long’s life will be justified long after their current shenagigans get sorted out?

Again: maybe yes. Maybe YA will find a way to make Mikhail relevant, maybe the road she chooses is a passionate romance. But will that convince me that she is “picking Mikhail over Yoh”? No. Because these two relationships do not compare. Mikhail is an open flame, Yoh is a slow burning amber. It’s just who they are, it’s what they have to offer. Their purposes and benefits as “love interests” are very, very different. And yes, I will even say that Fei Long might have a thing with Mikhail, but is Mikhail going for the marathon or just a sprint? As I said, things change. A moment of tenderness does not equal a love affair; a love affair does not equal a lifelong commitment. YA, smart woman she is, will probably leave both doors open until the very end, because with Fei Long, she can do whatever she wants with his love life. She can give us all or nothing, then have Tao reach age of 21 and join the race as well.

And I bet she will have a load of fun playing with our emotions.

(She does it so well, tho!)

Part 3: About scenes that matter

I will talk about the scenes that don’t matter: the ones that could easily be removed from the manga without any harm to the characters’ development or to the plot. My favorite example: the infamous Sakazakigate. I might come here later to post an apology but it does look like sensei completely abandoned that idea (she had Sakazaki record a video of the whole thing and never used it. Why? What was the point of it?)

In terms of Fei Long and Mikhail: I might be wrong about this one as well, but I think we never got confirmation that is was Mikhail who got the temple set on fire in exchange for Sudou’s info about the goods. Which is a shame, because this demonic deal could easily contribute to his hero journey if it was revealed that Mikhail himself sent Sakazaki to warn Akihito about the fire (hence double-crossing Sudou. Or triple-crossing - who knows at this point!)

I could backtrack and find more scenes that existed for apparently no reason but this is too long already. My point is: scenes that don’t matter are those that promise great waves and in the end, fall short. Time will tell how much of the current arc will have an impact in the future - do the scenes between Fei Long and Asami when they are saving each other’s lives really mean this new phase of their relationship or were they there just for the action? Does Fei Long’s moment of tenderness with Mikhail indicate that the doors are open for romance? If yes, will we see that romance now, later, two years from now?

All in all… the scenes that matter the most are those that change characters and the story in some kind of irrevocable way. I think certain scenes in Finder no Souen did that to Asami, same can be said to Fei Long in Finder no Rakuin. And those scenes cannot be invalidated by any other future scenes, because they happened, the people involved in them changed, the mark was made.

I will continue to celebrate Yoh and Fei Long simply because their past and everything they went through, their trust, their synergy, all of that deserves to be celebrated. If Fei Long ends up with Tao, then be it. With Mikhail, okay. If he ends up alone, okay too. There is more than one type of relationship between two people and that’s what I’m here for.

[seasaltmemories]

Pride month may be over, but I was thinking about a lot of f/f content and why sometimes I can be disappointed with the genre

Side note this will be a long and extremely personal conversation that will cast a wide net over multiple genres, so expect some generalizations as I probably won’t list many specifics

But it just feels like almost no matter what a lot of it ends up defined by men

There’s the obvious ways, when it is for titillation and the male gaze, the purpose is less to tell a love story between two women and more about selling a fantasy, I’d argue the fantasy doesn’t even have to be explicitly sexual, honestly with in yuri subtext-laden anime you have little girlfriends who play at it in very innocent and adorable ways, and honestly I think that sort half-in half-out without actually committing to actual queerness irritates me more than the former

But something that I feel gets less discussed is this idea that the presence of maleness itself is a threat to queer female sexuality, often f/f content will take place in settings where it doesn’t even feel as if men exist and even with canon queer characters sometimes I feel it comes with the underlining subtext “well of course they’re all lesbians, they don’t have any other option now do they?” which is frustrating on many levels, but hits especially personally as a bi woman, there’s that common stereotype that our attraction to other woman is just a means of drawing in men, of being just an experiment to turn them on

Going specifically into fandom, it can be frustrating for me to want more femslash, yet most of it is only there to serve as background fodder for m/m ships, even when dressed up in progressive language this often feels like old school “wah girls are annoying and boring so I’ll take them out of the picture so I can focus on the actually important guys” this is a dead horse in fandom so i don’t want to beat it too much, but from my experience sometimes f/f ships will get “popular” in that people will say they ship them but then content is rarely/never actually created for them, bc it is clear that people’s actual interest in them is shallow compared to other ships

And I don’t want to shame fans of m/m content, aside from being rude it just isn’t productive, but I rather ppl just be open about what they like and actually put forward content or consumption of f/f ships they’re genuinely interested in.  Again I don’t want f/f content to simply be used a shield to block against accusations of misogyny to then be thrown away once the attack has ended

This is where we get super personal, which means this isn’t me telling you not to do this, but why I don’t do something, but another component of this can be seeing female characters who canonically are attracted to men get reinterpreted as lesbians by fandom, again as a bi woman my first thought is again that feeling that “oh so she can only be interested in women if she has none in men?” Coercive heteronormativity is def a thing and I don’t want to discourage lesbians from exploring that through fandom, still what truly grinds my gears when it isn’t used to explore her love for another woman, or her simply coming to grips with her identity, but to bar her from being shipped with a man and simply crack one-liners all the time about how she can’t stand them, bc again it isn’t about her anymore, but about getting her out of the picture so we can focus on ppl who actually matter

Like a broken record, I think these feelings are a reason why rgu appealed to me so much, the cast is mixed with Utena specifically having both male and female love interests, her choosing Anthy is not the next best thing, and as their arcs develop together, it becomes clear that the love each other as individuals rather than idealized goals or dreams, it is a reason that lesbian!Utena bothers me on a personal level, bc as a bi woman I like seeing Utena’s attraction to men be very real and tempting, yet she still chooses a relationship that is more authentic and less manipulative than say what Akio would have given her

And what I complained about isn’t canceled forever. All female casts with f/f content can be done well without giving that second option vibe (a particular favorite of mine is the Steam game “Black Closet”) you can only care about m/m and f/f ships and include them together, you can hc whoever you so choose as a lesbian, regardless of if they’re married with 2.5 kids

I just want f/f content that focuses on why these two women love each other, I want my love to feel genuine and more than for the convenience of some man who either does or does not want to fuck me

[areallyyellowmango]

Three fandoms tag

I was tagged by @yeleleow! ♥ Thank you for the tag!

Rules: Choose any three fandoms (in random order) and answer the questions, then tag 10 people you want to know better.

My Three Fandoms:

1. Shingeki no Kyojin 2. Soul Eater 3. Yuri!!! on Ice

The first character you loved:

1. Armin Arlet 2. Death the Kid 3. Viktor Nikiforov

The character you never expected to love so much:

1. Porco Galliard 2. Giriko 3. JJ

The character you relate to the most:

1. Marco - I try to be friends with everyone, despite being such a socially awkward person, and sometimes my naiveness gets me into places and situations I’d rather not be. 2. Patty - I’m a goof just like her and I love it. 3. Yuuri - I’m soft hearted and sometimes failure brings me down really badly. But I always end up trying and trying again!

The character you’d slap:

1. Eren (no no, bad boy, bad, sit, go back to the corner of shame and think about what you’ve done) 2. Justin Law...? (I heard he turned evil in the manga and I’m like ???????? N-NANI??????) 3. Christophe Giacometti (I’d slap that booty)

Three favorite characters (in order of preference):

1. Porco, Erwin, Jean (Okay I know this may sound strange, but I really like the two latter boys even though I barely talk about them. It became really difficult to choose who to fit into this list after Porco, but Erwin, Bertolt and Pieck share the second spot)  2. Giriko, Death the Kid, Justin Law 3. Viktor, JJ, Otabek

A character you liked at first but don’t anymore:

1. Sasha 2. Soul 3. Uhm... None, I guess. I think I still like all of them. :3 At least as far as I can remember,

Three otps:

1. Pokkopikku, Reibert, Eruri (I have a lot of sideships but if you ask me which ones I think are closest to canon I’ll say these and YumiKuri, which I respect a lot despite not being the biggest fan of.) 2. I think the only ship I’m invested on in SE is Giriko x Justin (eternally) 3. Otabek x Yurio, JJBek and JJ x Ota x Yurio (Jesus, three ships, three characters. I think I have a problem) For the tags, since I’m really late for this one, I’ll just tag @pieck-aboo cause Angie is bae (even though I’m not sure if you’ve done it yet, but even if you haven’t, no need to do it if you don’t want to ♥)

[sage-nebula]

I’m posting this as a screenshot because, while I have search turned off and so most of the time it’s not a problem, occasionally I’ll have it on for five seconds to find something on my blog, and I don’t want those five seconds to attract p-rn bots because of a certain word you decided to use in your message.

That said . . .

I disagree with your assertion here. I think you’re making a lot of broad generalizations, none of which had to do with the specific point I was lightly complaining about with my post.

To begin with, “yaoi” does not mean what I believe you think it means. “Yaoi” is a very specific genre within Japanese anime / manga, and said genre is defined by fetishized relationships between male characters, usually written by female artists. While there are many mlm relationships in various fandoms that are portrayed using yaoi stereotypes, not all m/m relationships are written / portrayed that way, and f/f relationships do not fall into that category at all. (Rather, if you wanted an equivalent, that would be yuri, but that comes with its own host of stereotypes and fetishizations and isn’t directly comparable with yaoi.)

Second, I disagree that “most of the time” LGBTQA ships in fandom are shipped for such purposes. I have plenty of non-straight ships myself. In fact, my favorite ship of all time is between two male characters (Jounouchi Katsuya and Mutou Yuugi from Yu-Gi-Oh!), and I certainly do not ship them because I wish to get off to them, particularly since I don’t engage in smut materials to begin with. (And if anyone wants to read up and decide for themselves whether or not I write ship these boys for fetishy purposes, they are more than welcome to read through my fics. They’re neatly organized on my fic page. Have at it.) When I ship characters, I ship them based on chemistry, as well as the relationship we’ve seen them develop. Sex doesn’t factor into it at all, and so the gender of the characters involved is something I really don’t think about, because if I ship a ship, then I would ship that ship regardless of the genders of the characters involved. For that reason, I have m/m ships, f/f ships, and m/f ships. For the record, I do ship Misty/Lana. I think it’s a cute ship with quite a bit of potential. The fact that they’re both girls doesn’t matter to me in the least bit. It doesn’t affect my choice to ship them one way or another. 

And while I’m only one person, I would say the same is true of plenty of others in fandom. Yes, there are some people who fetishize m/m and f/f relationships (particularly depending on the series / fandom), and yes, there are some who ship such relationships in order to get brownie or woke points. However, there are also a lot of LGBTQA people in fandom. There are tons of LGBTQA people in fandom who want to see themselves represented in media. Often times, the media does not do that for us; we have to create that representation ourselves. And so we do, using fanworks. I think it’s unjust to discount the sheer number of LGBTQA people in fandom, and accuse them of fetishizing or only shipping such ships for brownie points. I understand that might not have been your intention, and so I’m not trying to attack you, but that’s nonetheless how it comes across, and so---as someone who is queer myself---I feel the need to say something about it. LGBTQA people creating representation for themselves, or people who are exploring their romantic / sexual orientations using fandom, shouldn’t be shamed or looked down upon, nor should fandom as an avenue for creating representation / exploring one’s romantic or sexual orientation be discounted.

Lastly . . . are you American? I ask because I’m American, and I cringed hard when I saw you use the word “liberal” as if it’s a dirty word. I try to keep politics off my blog as much as possible because I’d rather use tumblr for fun fandom things, but when you use the word “liberal” as if it’s an insult when speaking to an American such as myself, you’re making this political when it really, really, really does not need to be. Over the past few years especially it feels like Americans cannot go anywhere on the internet without conservatives and/or liberals complaining about the other, regardless of the topic. I have literally seen frivolous news posts about cereal turned into liberal vs. conservative slap fights, and honestly, I’m so tired of it. It’s beyond ridiculous. So please, please don’t bring that nonsense to me. I want no part in it. (And once more, I understand if you’re not American and thus do not have that context, and as such you meant no harm. I totally get that and won’t hold it against you, but just please avoid bringing such things to me in the future. I’d appreciate it.)

As a final note, please DO NOT reblog this, because I don’t want Discourse™ of any kind. Thank you.