#of course there are those who tag the guys in shippy posts so avoiding such content must be difficult i guess

[theflyingfeeling]

I was wondering what the other boys (or Olli and Aleksi themselves) think about the whole Olli/Aleksi thing (I mean people shipping them) 🤔 as I’m sure they know about it and I was going through a tiktok account who makes edits about them and according to the owner Joel has liked s lot of them 😄

sorry for such a boring answer but tbh I don't think they think much of it 😄 as in it's not something they often acknowledge/think about 🤷‍♀️ if they do, they might think it's funny, and any of them liking edits and such might just be them wanting to be supportive of the fans creating harmless but well-made content :')

but of course we can also imagine a headcanon of the others teasing Olli and Aleksi about it, not really understanding that the reason they always blush is not because it's embarrassing and annoying, but because they actually do (secretly) like each other! 😭

[dekusheroacademia]

Merchandise.... what is the BNHA merch and which characters are mostly together?

This is sort of a big analysis on BNHA merch, but also my answer to a guy that kept insisting that there was so much Izuocha merch around, so much Todomomo merch, they are always together!

Well, they are not.

To count the merch I used Myfigurecollection. I only counted the general Boku no hero academia, in total 14259 merch entries, the dat 05 July, so everything added after today has not been counted. I only counted the "goods" that are general merch like plushies, badges, pens, acrylic stands, calendars etc.

Figures (nendoroids, for example) are not in this analysis, but I made a separate analysis on them here.

How I counted:

I simply checked which merch had 2 or 3 characters. Merch with 1 character or groups of 4 or more was not considered

I checked all 14259 entries, and avoided the "doujinshi goods", so what is considered is only official merch

I did not check merch for the three movies, as they were only about 300 in total

I noted down the pairs or the 3 characters together, independently from ships (ex. Eri and Deku), but the main figures exclude those ones and are only between characters who are in ships together

If you want to spoil yourself.... watch the tags

The characters in this post are: Uraraka, Deku, Bakugou, Todoroki, Momo and Kaminari. I will probably add more in the future, just because I like graphs

IN GENERAL

As you can see Bakugou and Deku had the highest amount of merch, more than double the second place (Deku and All Might). They were followed by Bakugou and Kirishima, and then Tsuyu and Uraraka.

Now, if we only consider characters who are shippable, to see what "shippy" merch is out there, I will present some graphs for some of the characters. In the graphs you will see characters who were together and had more than 2 items of merch.

WHO IS URARAKA MAINLY IN MERCHANDISE WITH?

When I just check Uraraka and her merchandise and goods, we can see that she is mainly associated with Tsuyu (19 merchandise items), followed by Deku (14) and Iida (12). She was then mainly with other two characters.

WHO WAS DEKU MAINLY IN MERCHANDISE WITH?

Deku was by far associated with Bakugou. Literally the highest numbers, as seen in the summary graph up above. It was so high that it was three times the number of the second place, which was Bakugou and Todoroki with Deku. Following, in third place, we have Todoroki and Deku at the same number as Uraraka and Deku. The rest were mainly three characters together.

WHO WAS BAKUGOU MAINLY IN MERCHANDISE WITH?

As seen up above, Bakugou is, of course, mainly seen with Deku. As before, it was a little more than double the numbers of the second place, which was Kirishima. Following, we have Bakugou Todoroki and Deku, and then Todoroki and Bakugou.

(Please, ignore the scribble, I accidentally did not delete All Might and Bakugou and Deku)

WHO WAS TODOROKI MAINLY IN MERCHANDISE WITH?

Todoroki was, surprisingly, not mainly seen with Momo, but with Deku and Bakugou (at first place), followed, with just a few less merch items, with Deku. Iida and Todoroki were also pretty close.

nWHO WAS MOMO MAINLY IN MERCHANDISE WITH?. Then

Now that I saw that Todoroki was not mainly with Momo, I had to check for her too. As you can see, Momo was mainly seen with Jirou. The number was not too different than Todoroki and Momo.

Surprisingly, the rest was a bit of a mess, mainly girls randomly thrown together.

WHO WAS KAMINARI MAINLY IN MERCHANDISE WITH?

Sadly, Kaminari did not have a lot of shippy merch. Still, he was mainly sold with Kirishima, or Kirishima and Bakugou. Just a little few items less we have Kaminari and Jirou.

OTHER RANDOM CONSIDERATIONS

There is a lot of Hawks and Endeavor merch. A lot. I will probably post it in part 2

Most of this couples/pairs/3characters merch is acrylic stands or clear/plastic pages, followed by badges and then keychains

There were... a lot of towels??

Shouji and Koda were the only characters in class A that had no pair/three characters merch. Shoji had some solo merch, but I literally do not remember seeing anything about Koda

[personas-against-antis]

My experience with anti-ism and back

Inspired by @huntypastellance's interviews with ex-antis, I decided to post my own story of how I became an anti and how I got out.

My inbox and messages are open in case anyone has any questions or wants to say anything.

Apologies for any typos, my typing is not the greatest.

Names have been changed to protect my friends’ privacy and to prevent certain antis mentioned from coming after me again.

Where It All Started

So back in middle school I fell in love with an anime called Hetalia, about the interactions between anthropomorphized versions of various countries. I had been in fandom for a while (my first big fandom was Sonic, but that was before antis went mainstream), and I was a pretty big follower of "don't like, don't read/look". When I joined, I immediately latched on to the ship AmeCan, or America/Canada.

They were cute and it was my OTP for a long time. The only problem with AmeCan is that, by a large majority of the fandom, America and Canada were considered brothers. I personally didn't see them that way, I saw them as adopted brothers at most, and I was always pretty squicked out by shippy fanfics that depicted them as biological brothers. The ship itself was still pretty big in that fandom, so I ignored the haters and immersed myself in fanart and fanfic.

I met a girl at my school (let's call her Duchess) who also liked Hetalia and we quickly hit it off. We soon asked what each other's OTPs were.

Me: Oh, I ship AmeCan.

Duchess: ...

Me: What is it?

Duchess: You realize they're brothers, right?

Me: Oh, I don't see them that way because [insert reasoning that I don't want to have to explain to non-Hetalians, just know that I explained that I didn't see them as brothers.]

Duchess: But it's canon. They canonly see each other as brothers.

Me: Oh...

In hindsight, I probably should have asked what she meant by “it’s canon”. Either way, I began to drift away from AmeCan due to lack of interest, and towards other ships (Romerica and AmeBela), and then to other fandoms. She still remained one of my closest friends.

Down The Rabbit Hole

I began to get really into kawaii culture and browsed the tags pretty regularly. Over time, I came across CG/L content. It squicked me out at first, but due to some sort of bile fascination, I began browsing CG/L blogs and began learning about that subculture. I actually enjoyed it quite a lot, but I knew that it would be inappropriate for someone my age (around 13-14 years old) to participate in kink, so I kept my distance and admired it from afar.

Soon, Duchess brought it up at lunch.

Duchess: I really hate seeing DDGL stuff everywhere.

Me: Haha, yeah...

Duchess: I mean, It's practically pedophilia!

Me: Mhm...

That's what I had thought at first too, before researching it. But she kept talking about it.

Duchess: They're sexualizing children, and children's toys! It's so gross! I actually made a blog against it.

Me: Whoa, really?

Duchess showed me her anti-CGL blog and I quickly followed it because she was my friend, and slowly began to follow other anti-DDLG blogs as well, even making my own: rise-against-ddlg. I took it down due to lack of interest, but antis had already grown on tumblr, and I was torn between my "don't like, don't look" policy, and wanting to "help" survivors. So outwardly, I became an anti, while guiltily reading "problematic" fic and playing "problematic" games in secret.

One such problematic game was Yandere Simulator, and I began to browse those tags too, when I discovered another anti blog, this time against Yandere Simulator and Alex Mahan, a.k.a. Yandere Dev. I learned he was fairly homophobic, sexist, and transphobic, especially in his own private chatroom, and began to idolize that anti blog. Suddenly, they released an invitation to a Skype group chat. Eager to meet my heroes, I quickly applied and was approved.

The Group Chat Incident

I loved that chat. It started with 15 people, but slowly trickled down to nine, including myself. I found myself isolating myself away from my real life friends and family, too focused on the group chat, as they made dropping out of high school and staying online all day sound cool. I kissed up to them, desperate to be seen as a good person. But, soon, I began to question myself and the group. The mods were very against "problematic" content, like Killing Stalking, and NSFW depictions of minors, but were also quick to draw NSFW of minors (specifically Budo and Senpai from YS). I introduced them tot he game Boyfriend To Death, and one of them quickly latched on to the character of Rire, who brutally rapes the protagonist in game, despite them being against rape. The main mod even introduced the group to a game called Artificial Academy 2, in which you can rape others and be raped.

...There was a lot of rape and NSFW in that chat.

But, there was also a hierachy. At the top were the two main mods of that YS blog, Mod H and Mod J. Joining them at the top was a very cool person and a good artist who acted very much like an older sibling to all of us, Member M. Then, there were three more people who tended to kiss Mod H, Mod J, and Member M's asses, and at the bottom was me, my friend Foam, and Member C. Mod H was the ruler of that chat. Anything they said, went, and if you disagreed, they'd suddenly play victim, manipulating and gaslighting you into apologizing. They loved Dragon Age, and now that game has been forever tainted for me, considering how much they shoved it down my throat. They would also tease me and my interest in Persona 5 (saying that the protagonist looked like The Onceler, subsequently calling me a "Onceler Fucker" for finding him attractive, along with making fun of when my tongue slipped and pronounced "Goro" as "Gort"), only stopping when I had Foam address the group to tell them to stop. There was a livestream that I was really excited for, talking about it since it was announced and they seemed hyped for me as well. Only when I placed a rabb.it link in the chat so we could all watch, only Member C showed up. When I returned to that chat, they were watching Yuri On Ice, and they wouldn't even let me talk about my livestream.

During that time period, I created a group chat for me, Foam, and another internet friend I will call Emilia. I though Foam and Emilia would get along really well, so i formed a Skype chat with them, and allowed them to talk. Slowly though, me and Foam began to use that chat to bitch about the group chat behind their backs, because we were terrified of the backlash if we tried to criticize them to their faces, due to Mod H's tactics of avoiding conflict. We soon added Member C to the chat as well, after they were constantly getting dogpiled by the rest of the chat.

That December, the Bode meme was in full swing and Foam mentioned in the group chat that he didn't get it. The group chat immediately began to make fun of him and I, sick of letting them control our lives, stood up for him. The group chat just continued to dogpile and we continued to try and fight until Mod H eventually left the chat, in one of their methods to get us to apologize to them. I was feeling overwhelmed and also left, and Foam tried to surrender and tell the chat to stop, but they wouldn't let up and he left too. Member C was the only member we remained on good terms with who was still in the group chat.

I made a post on my blog saying that i didn't want to interact with those people anymore and they got mad and began to try and message me. I eventually messaged an official statement, citing their abuse of me and Foam, and blocked all of them across social media.

They created a fake blog to get around the block, and I was dumb enough to fall for it.

Member C even turned on us, revealing me and Foam's messages with her and claiming we were abusing and bullying them. Suffice to say, I cut off all contact with Member C and changed my main blog's URL.

I was harassed and stalked and I carried that fear of them looking at my blog for a long time. I still worry about it sometimes.

The worst part, in my opinion, was that I changed my own name that I had chosen for myself because it had become a trigger for me hearing them say it so many times. And I really, really loved that name.

There was so much hypocrisy, so much fear in that chat. Now, looking back, I wished I had never joined, but in those months after I left...I felt empty inside. Aimless.

Out of curiosity, I looked up cult behaviors, and that chat hit nearly every single one. It's scary looking back on it. Even writing this, over a year after I left, my heart hurts.

But even leaving a cultish group chat didn't knock me out of anti-ism.

Villain Ships and Past Revelations

Remember how I mentioned that I love Persona 5? Well, I ship a ship called ShuAke, which a very loud subset of people claim is abusive.

Spoilers for Persona 5 up ahead.

ShuAke is a ship between the protagonist (shujinko in Japanese, which is where the "shu" comes from) and Goro Akechi. I shipped ShuAke since before Goro's name was announced, when all we knew was his design. Goro turned out to be a detective hunting the Phantom Thieves, the protagonist's group. The cat and mouse aesthetic really suited my fancy, with the protagonist's thief alter ego, Joker, seducing the naive Detective Prince. Swoon.

Of course, the ship shattered when the game was released in Japan and it turns out Goro tried to kill the protagonist, was working for the bad guy, and betrayed the whole group.

I was shocked and essentially went through the five stages of grief. I was torn between abandoning the "abusive" ship and evil character...or ignoring the haters and shipping it anyway. After way too much debate, I chose the latter and stuck with it.

The anti-ism died down quickly due to a lot of the fandom hibernating until the English release, and I happily shipped ShuAke and supported Goro Akechi with little objection. Even when the game was released in English, I stood my ground and even argued in support of Goro with anons.

And yet, I still considered myself an anti.

Late May of last year, some repressed memories came to light. I had been sexually abused by a close family member and a few girls at camp when I was younger, with other fragmented and questionable memories in my brain. It put my past into light, as I had also had a self destructive habit of attempting to seduce older men online, due to low self esteem. That was not a fun week for me, and I found myself diving into dark fic, particularly rape fic, in order to make sense of it all. I even wrote some in an effort to just get it out of my brain.

And it worked. It was really therapeutic for me.

And yet...

I still considered myself an anti. Every word I read or wrote was mixed with guilt over what I was doing, even though it worked. While I'm still a sexual abuse survivor, as I always will be, I'm much more well-adjusted by participating in those dark activities, rather than wallowing in self pity and slipping into a depression, like my old group chat would have expected me to do.

I dropped anti-ism later, with the help of one blog.

Back to "DL,DR"

The blog @anti-anti-survivor was recommended to me, and anti!me, looking for a laugh, clicked on it...and soon found that pretty much everything they said made sense to me. I saw Mod h in the people they argued with, Member C in the people they called out...and I realized that I had never been an anti, just hiding behind that label.

I sent an anonymous message to them (though I guess it isn't so anonymous anymore, ha), thanking them for opening my mind to it, and created my own anti-anti blog. I realize I'm not very active on here, but, well, I'm lazy and I'm more of a reader than anything else.

And of course, there was another problem.

Antis are fucking everywhere.

I'm terrified of posting pro-shipping stuff on my main, and I'm terrified of admitting I like problematic ships. I'm in a Discord server that keeps spouting anti-kink and anti-ship stuff, and I have to keep my mouth shut or risk being banned, just because most of the time they're really nice. Duchess even messaged me one day, absolutely shocked that I admitted to shipping Shidge.

I'm happy now that I don't have to feel that guilt but, reading what antis do and then finding out that people I hang out with are antis...it's horrifying. I'm not a confrontational person. I never have been. But I'm sick of rolling over and accepting what everyone else deems is problematic fiction.

I'm mentally ill, a sexual abuse survivor, and dark fic and dark shipping helps me cope.

Deal with it.

[pan-xichen]

Why I don't ship k/ance: revealed

(notice how I censored the ship name specifically to avoid people coming after me)

So it's no secret that k/ance is the most popular ship in this fandom. I don't see a ton of it because I mostly follow people who post other ships and non-shippy content but I know it's the biggest ship based on the ao3 tag size alone (I was curious one day okay). There's just this massive amount of people who love the ship and there's nothing wrong with that. I think it's great that people can make and enjoy content made by others about their ships. I just have never been interested in k/ance myself. It's not that I've been asked this or anything, I just felt like giving my reasons for not liking it. So here it is, my humble opinion on the ship and why I don't particularly like it (under a cut because this turned into a long ass post whoops):

(warning: this post is opinionated and analyzes the relationship between Keith and Lance from the perspective of someone who does not like the ship at all; please don’t take any of this as offensive if you do like k/ance, I don’t mean to anger anyone)

It just... doesn't make sense to me. It's also the... unsavoury crowd the ship attracts for some reason, but if I liked it or had reasons to like it chances are I'd probably ignore them. There are some cool people who ship k/ance and I love all of them, even if I'm not interested in their ship.

I've always been someone who prefers when two characters in a ship actually get along. I'm not saying Keith and Lance hate each other, because they definitely don't. I just don't see them being particularly close to each other yet. Maybe they'll get there, maybe not. I doubt even if they do end up being great friends later on that I'll start to ship them, though.

I've always found it weird that everyone latched onto the two characters who are consistently at each others' throats, (in most of the first season anyway), and deemed them suitable for a ship while simultaneously deciding that the two male characters in the show who have been canonically the closest since the first episode are related in some way. I just... don't get how people can look at Keith and Lance's dynamic, especially early on, and think they're romantically interested in each other. They have their moments where they do get along in the first two seasons but typically it's for the good of the mission and when they're done it's back to not liking each other. I think at most, Keith wants to be Lance's friend, not his rival, but Lance doesn't want to be friends with Keith at all. He prefers his own misconception of who Keith is to finding out the truth for himself, and Keith gets tired of trying to make friends with a brick wall and just accepts that this is his relationship with Lance. That's just how I see it.

When I look at Keith and Lance, I see Lance unnecessarily vilifying Keith out of jealousy. I read and reblogged a post about Lance causing Hunk to have the same misconception about Keith as a person that kinda spiked this one a bit, because... it's true. Keith doesn't even remember Lance's name in the first episode, which might have also sparked part of Lance's perception of him. Keith, however, was also very focused on rescuing Shiro, and had been struggling through mourning for the better part of a year while isolated from contact with others. Of course he's not going to remember Lance-- the only person he's been thinking of has very likely been Shiro.

What Lance is doing, essentially, is projecting his lack of skill as Keith, someone who is obviously more skilled as a pilot than him, "always trying to one-up him". If Keith really was always trying to be better than Lance, he would've remembered him. Hell, we don't even really see him trying to prove he's better than Lance at anything until their nonexistent rivalry gains merit. Lance doesn't want to accept that he wasn't a great pilot (yet) and also accept that Keith was better than him. That's where that comes from.

Part of why I think that is stems from his family. At a panel at a con (I don't know which one) he was "word of god" confirmed to have been from a wealthy family, and was given plenty of attention growing up. Whether that upholds or not remains to be seen but really when you look at the way he treats Keith, it makes sense. It might be more subconscious than conscious, but Keith was an orphan, probably coming from foster care (or just out of nowhere, maybe he was living on his own who knows) and somehow being an incredibly talented pilot, while Lance, someone with a stable, healthy upbringing was struggling and ultimately didn't make the class he wanted to. He blamed Keith, and thus was more than happy to know he'd taken his place after Keith had been expelled.

This is somewhat of an assumption/headcanon of mine, but I also think Lance may have been jealous of Keith's relationship with Shiro, and that it carried over to when Shiro returned after disappearing. We've had tons of hinting at Keith and Shiro being friends before the series too, and Lance states when they discover that Shiro was in the alien ship, "that guy's my hero". He idolizes Shiro, and especially taking his reaction into account when he sees Keith on his way to rescue him, he may have been jealous of Keith having a close relationship with him pre-series, in addition to envying Keith's talent as a pilot.

So we have Lance being envious of Keith, and painting him as this snobby, arrogant guy in his head (I assume Keith was probably rather selective in who he hung out with at the Garrison too which would add to that). That leads to Lance victimizing and convincing himself that Keith always wanted to be better than him, when in reality Keith is just a talented, intelligent and somewhat quiet person. He was probably focused mostly on his studies and not much else, whereas Lance is very extraverted and invested in his friends. Neither of those are bad things, but are certainly polar opposites.

Keith, in contrast, probably also had his own misinterpretation of Lance: someone who cares more about relationships and goofing off than his work. In reality, Lance really wanted to be a good pilot. Maybe he was a little distracted at the Garrison, as we do see him become a great pilot as a paladin, in which this assumption by Keith would make sense. Keith very much strikes me as someone who had to grow up too fast, and Lance as someone who had ample time to come into maturity. The difference between them with their misconceptions seems to be that Keith is a bit more willing to cast his aside, whereas Lance continues to cling to them.

I know a lot of shippers see the first episode of season three as having a k/ance moment, what with Lance putting his hand on Keith’s shoulder and accepting his leadership, but really... it’s not. I see this more as Lance putting his own wants and desires aside for the sake of the mission-- he wanted to be the black paladin, but the lion chose Keith, so he’s reluctantly accepting. That’s what’s happening there. In my opinion, to say that it’s exclusively a k/ance moment takes away from that bit of Lance’s development. Not to mention that honestly, Lance isn’t accepting Keith as his leader, either. He doesn’t respect Keith any more than he did before. What he respects, is the black lion. He respects her decision to choose Keith over him. He does grow to accept Keith as his leader eventually, but just two episodes later we see him actively jabbing at Keith’s (admittedly poor) decisions and leadership. Keith is in mourning, for fuck’s sake. I know Lance isn’t the only one who doesn’t take to Keith’s leadership well, but really, he’s the only one I can remember who actually went at him. Even after they start to kinda get used to Keith leading, when Shiro(?) returns, they naturally look to him for guidance instead. Lance then tells Keith that he’s worried about his own place on the team, and Keith tries to reassure him as best someone who doesn’t closely know the other person can. Again, as well, Lance is worried about himself (which is fine). 

If this was a shippy moment he probably would’ve been more concerned for Keith, as he’s the one who’s been unintentionally undermined by his closest friend and everyone has gone back to following Shiro instead. Keith pulls back from the team in season four as a direct result of what happened when Shiro returned; he’s putting everyone else above himself. In Keith’s mind, he sees himself as the extra. Allura is fantastic as a paladin. The red lion hasn’t shut Lance out because she wants Keith back, so he assumes she’s done with him. The team already would rather listen to Shiro than him, so he got the black lion to take Shiro back. The green and yellow lions were never involved in the swap. He can’t help Coran with the castle, so he goes off with the Blade of Marmora. He makes a series of decisions in the first episode of season four that separate him from the team, and then announces that he’s leaving. Lance does... nothing to stop this. (Admittedly Shiro also doesn’t try to stop him, to tell him he’s needed, which also makes me more suspicious as to whether or not this really is our Shiro but that’s not what this post is about.) He doesn’t pull Keith aside and ask if he’s okay, find him when he returns to talk to him (like Allura did). He’s vilified Keith again; sees him as selfish, only interested in what he seemingly wants to do, when in reality Keith truly wants to be reminded that the team needs him and probably to be a paladin again. The complete and total lack of intervention on Lance’s part when Keith is clearly Not Okay in the most recent season also signifies to me that they still have yet to be close enough for them to make sense being romantically involved. 

And that’s fine! I’m not saying I look down on the ship or shippers because of it. I just prefer my ships to at least make some canonical sense, and can’t see it happening with k/ance. Like I said at the beginning, maybe they will grow closer together before the series ends-- I’d actually really like to see that happening. I still doubt I’d be interested in shipping it, though. 

I do think it’s neat that shippers can make content for themselves and each other to enjoy, even if it isn’t quite canon compliant. The one thing I really hate to see though is edits of intimate scenes between Keith and other characters, or Lance and other characters, with captions of “this is how it happened right?” or “I fixed it”. Like... how much more fucking pretentious can you get? Edits are fine but when you claim they’re canon or that you “fixed” the actual scene, that’s just disrespectful to the creators of the show. The story they want to tell, is how it happened. You can’t “fix” that.

TL;DR - I don’t ship k/ance because when I look at their canon relationship it doesn’t make sense seeing it as romantic. I’m not judging anyone who does, but this is just a long-winded analysis of what I think of them and why I dislike the ship. I know there are some really cool people who ship k/ance and are more realistic about knowing it’s not logically going to be canon (not just based on my analysis but also the showrunners did explicitly state that it won’t) but enjoy their ship nonetheless, and props to them! For me it’s also kind of a combination of the way some people who ship k/ance treat other fans and the staff and their canon dynamic but I can mostly disregard them in terms of why exactly I don’t ship Keith and Lance.