#romantic; we are equal

[inkskinned]

in internet posts it is easy to cut them out of your life. they are hurting you! they aren't listening to you!

they held your hair back. they lent you lipstick. they held your hand at the train station and got you home safe. they rounded on your bully, got loud, said get fucked, spitting-mad in your defense.

they also cut the hair off again. told you that you should really think twice before wearing something like that. took you for granted. took your insecurities and threw them in your face again.

you know logically it should be easy. all the internet advice comments always read it will feel better. like an equation - if a person is rotten, you just remove them. you pull the tooth that's hurting.

but it was never a big flare-up moment. you don't live in a sitcom. they never tried to take your boyfriend or steal from your apartment. they showed up to birthdays and they wrote songs about you and bring you water without you asking. once you found out they carry an emergency inhaler for you, even though you haven't had an asthma attack in years - just in case.

where is the line? people fuck up. sometimes they fuck up badly. sometimes people have raw personalities, like a powerline, and being around them is dangerous. addicting. sometimes they can't help themselves, but you know they're trying. sometimes they are just rough-around-the-edges. sometimes they don't even realize how they sounded when they said that. sometimes it's just - you've both loved each other for so long now, the way this thing hurts goes back to the root.

and that's the fucked up part. you have pushed your fingers against the sweetheart of memory. things these days are electric, tense, harrowing. they didn't used to be. there were a lot of good days in there. sometimes you want to just close your eyes and say can this be over yet? do we still need to be fighting?

doing that would give up any chance you get of getting an apology, but you don't always know that you need an apology, you love them. once they flaked on your birthday party. once they told you to get over it, people are always dying. they also let you crash on their couch for a week after the breakup, handfeeding you when you were so sad you couldn't eat. they are also judgmental about everything, occasionally react to banal statements with an attitude that is weird and fiery. they also love you like a lighthouse sometimes, so strong they cut the storm like lightning.

but the problem is that you might be storm. you might be the thing that needs breaking. what if you are two forces who are desperately, horribly drawn to each other, shaped by the other person's passions, and both good for each other and bad in equal measure.

what if you're both just people, and you're no saint neither.

just cut them off! swallowing the saltwater, you catch yourself in the mirror. you've been shaking more than usual. there's an ache in you that is oblique, loud, impossible to soothe. is this what it looks like? when life is "easier"?

your mouth will always have a hole, is the thing, if you remove the tooth.

[clownsuu]

The fact that you depict characters as both aroace and in relationships makes me actually so happy because everyone always thinks that shipping is off the table for those characters and forgets sex/romance stances exist, you filled me with so much joy ;w;

It’s a weird stereotype indeed smhh (harmful even) making it sound like individuals who are aro/ace are incapable of being/falling in love- or just being able to feel love in general

[aprilblossomgirl]

"I’m happy to have you all as my friends."

We Are (2024) | Ep.16 FINAL

[junotter]

All the jokes about Ken and horses are good but I just wanna say it's such a good parallel to how actual young men get swept into misogyny and the patriarchy.

Like they're told to believe it means men get to be cool and manly and have this power but with that comes extremely rigid commands of what they can be as a man and a cycle of self hatred for never matching those gender roles perfectly. Patriarchy tells men that if they just do exactly what is expected of them, then they get all the "cool stuff" that comes with. That doesn't work though when there's only a small group that actually gets that power, but men will keep trying to fit into those roles in hopes that they can.

In the end there are no horses or the myth men are told, it's just endless cycles of self hatred and ingroup fighting.

[jojotichakorn]

the interesting thing about we are is that i believe it's the first bl i've ever seen that truly has one main character. there is a reason why phuwin is the most overworked of them all and why he jokingly complained about the fact that pond wasn't suffering nearly as much as he was, even though he is his on-screen partner. and there is a reason why phuwin said that peem is also the audience in a way because he kind of gets to witness and react to almost everything that happens in the series.

the world of we are is built around peem: it's him and his boyfriend and his best friend and his best friend's boyfriend and the rest of his friends and also his boyfriend's friends. even the things that are seemingly not connected to peem in a particularly direct way are still somehow influenced by him or perceived by him, e.g. tanfang happens because phum agrees to help tan hit on fang in return for meeting up with peem, and then when tan spills the beans about them dating, peem's reaction is centered slightly more than anyone else's, even though there are people who are closer to fang and similarly close to tan in that scene. and though we get insight into phum's life too, for instance, that still somehow circles back to peem, e.g. most phumfang scenes are them literally discussing peem or talking about their parents, which still comes back to phumpeem, as phum's family problems have a huge effect on the boys' relationship.

peem is the sun of the show, and the rest are planets revolving around him or moons of the planets revolving around him in one way or another.

[chirpsythismorning]

Some of the evidence supporting Mike not being in love with El is brutal. No, but seriously.

In s3, when El's leg is injured, instead of Mike putting his arm around her waist, allowing him to take some of the weight off her injured leg, he puts his arm around her shoulder, basically having the exact opposite affect of taking the weight off of her, instead just adding more weight for her to have to carry.

Now, I’m not coming at Mike here, I’m actually coming at the writers, because this choice here has everything to do with them using this gesture to signal Mike’s lack of feelings for El, even at the expense of realism.

I say this bc any person with common sense, including Finn and everyone around him and Millie filming these shots, would've known it looked unnatural for Mike to be adding more weight onto El as opposed to taking some off of her.

This means that what Mike did here, Finn was directed to do, and therefore it was for a specific reason.

And we know they could have easily made the opposite choice, because they show us Max AND Lucas doing it.

See how putting an arm around El's waist looks so much more natural? Because homegirl is injured and clearly needs help taking weight off her leg to qualm some of the pain she's experiencing there, which is why Max and Lucas are shown here doing it the correct way.

And so, why can't Mike do the same? Why are the writers making a point to show Mike being incapable of simply taking some weight off of El, instead doing the exact opposite?

I don't think it's as deep as Mike not being able to do something intimate, and that's bc, again we see Max and Lucas doing it.

I honestly think what they're trying to convey with this choice here, is that Mike thinks he's helping El, when he is in fact doing the opposite despite his best efforts. The implications of that and how that sort of aligns with their romantic relationship and what it leads to at the end of s3, going into s4, is pretty spot on.

I do think Mike thinks he's doing the right thing by being with El instead of voicing any doubts at the end of s3, because he is under the assumption that she is in love with him. I do think he believes he is indebted to her and that this is the least he can do after everything they've been through together, which has mostly been riddled with romantic pressures and so continuing that instead of disputing it seems like the only option anyways. Not to mention, he does care for her deeply, so it's not hard to imagine that he's a teenage boy confusing deep care for love (he literally tells us this is his problem when he can only say care and not love to El's face... but that's a whole other conversation).

Still, when it's all said and done, Mike's not actually doing El any favors by being with her romantically, if that is not what he truly wants.

Because that's the sad truth about all of this, which is that you would never want someone to be with you just because you want them. If you knew that they truly couldn't have those feelings for you, you'd want to know, right? You don't deserve someone just because you have deep feelings for them. And I think there's so many layers to this idea, bc many people are capable of not giving Byler a chance bc they truly believe Mike could never return Will's feelings. Will also feels this way atp, so though it hurts, he rips the band aid off, because he would never want Mike to be with him just out of pity or something. No one would want that. And so it all really comes down to who Mike truly loves romantically and wants to be with. And the right thing to do, even if it hurts someone, is to be honest, because being with them just bc you think that will make them happy is never going to be enough if you aren't truly feeling it, or worse, feel it for someone else.

We see how Mike's inability to be honest with El at the end of s3, leads to a season of Mike feeling deeply insecure and undeserving of the love El has to offer him, and even though he does try, he always comes up short. Despite Mike putting up this front that they are the perfect couple, the details are telling us something is off. And it gives him away.

Another example that I think is very similar to this loaded gesture from Mike to El in s3, is the scene in s4 when they hug in the airport.

Common sense ppl, picture this: You're reuniting with your long distance girlfriend. Then suddenly, she runs up to you, with her arms wide open, and instead of opening your arms wide to embrace her properly, you take the bouquet of flowers you brought her as a gift, and shove them against your chest just as she approaches to hug you, effectively squishing the present you got for her (a pretty delicate present at that) for no reason other than to... what exactly?

Like?? El isn't even squishing the present Mike, she's trying to hug you, dude! Your gf is trying to hug you properly and you threw the gift you got for her in between you so you could throw in a careful! x3??

Again, this has less to do with Mike's thoughts and reasoning behind this gesture in a literal sense, and more to do with the simple fact that this is a narrative choice! Mike is not a real person! There are real people sitting down and writing this and actors are having to do multiple takes to act it out. What feels natural for a situation is going to be what is often chosen 9 times out of 10, because of realism and wanting the audience to see stuff happening that is believable. That 1 time though, when it's not being done the way it would usually be, is usually because there's a specific reason for it.!

So the question really is, not why is Mike doing this, but why are the writers having Mike do this, and what message are they trying to convey about Mike's feelings based on his behavior, in these moments where he's just not capable of committing to El genuinely, one way or another?

[fluffypotatey]

To be honest I am a huge Nalu shipper. But the thing is I want to know the difference between the way Natsu cares about his guildmates and Lucy. Like what is the obvious difference since that boy sees every as Nakama so how can we say that the wag he cares about Lucy is different?

Like even when Erza passed away? (All the way back in first season there was a segment where the guild was gathered at her grave and all) Natsu was still very reactive. Plus he was also said to be depressed even when Lisanna passed.

What's the difference between all of them and Lucy?

the fact that he stayed. the fact that before he met Lucy, Natsu wasn't one to stay in a group or even want to work with anyone besides Happy at the start of the story. hell, he was ready to just file Lucy down as "New Guildmate" once they reached Fairy Tail

but then, Lucy doesn't leave. she follows him on his mission to save Macao despite her not needing to or even really understanding everything about it. she stays and then fights with him and saves him. it's no secret that Natsu is strong and can take care of himself really well. he's been going on solo missions for years now, and no one has really stopped him, but that means he's been in a lot of sticky situations where he and Happy are on their own and have no backup. and yet, without asking, Lucy offers it

and i think this is the moment when Natsu considers that maybe it's okay to have someone there to have his back (sans Happy)

"but Natsu only needed Lucy for the next quest because of the requirements," well, Natsu also wouldn't have taken or even considered that quest if it weren't for Lucy, yeah? he was not a team player (in the picking job's sense) or really wanted other people to help him on his quests sans Happy. and then he goes and picks a job that caters to their team whilst ensuring that Lucy can't say no

or maybe i'm reading too much into it 🤷🏻‍♀️

or maybe Natsu's got horrible abandonment issues that he will latch onto people so fast (Igneel & Lisanna) but also cause him to distance himself so far when left behind (his 1st time at the guild, Lisanna's death). Erza and Gray are Natsu's closet friends after Lisanna and yet they cannot reach him when he closes himself off. and then we have Lucy, who stuck by and had his back, so who is to say Natsu didn't make some contingencies to ensure whether or not she'd join him?

but maybe it's the rose, colored ship glasses i have on

because yeah, Natsu cares for all of his guildmates. the power of friendship is his biggest motivator. when we meet Natsu, our first introductions of him is defending his guild's reputation from Bora (who was using it as a guise for human trafficking) and saving Macao. and our 1st big arc (Galuna Island), where Natsu adamantly refuses to allow Gray to use Ice Shell and sacrifice himself despite how antagonistic they've been to each other. we get Natsu 100% at Erza's defense throughout the Tower of Heaven and he is even ready to defend Wendy though they only met hours ago

Natsu is a character with a bleeding heart and cannot help but wear it on his sleeve, but we don't really see him allow others to fight his battles or have his back until Lucy comes in. to be honest, i don't even think he had his heart on his sleeve until Lucy. he still has a bleeding heart (i don't think anything could stop that), but he was not ready to be open in receiving company because he was so used to it being ripped away from him

that being said: of all the characters he interacts with, he finds Lucy to be someone compatible enough for him to start going on team missions and inviting her on them (for example, his 1st S-class mission, which he stole, he went to her house to show it to her. the fact that part of the reward was a celestial key might be a coincidence, but i wouldn't doubt it as Natsu and Happy's trump card in case she refused)

but yeah, the difference is that he stayed and didn't push her away at the beginning, but instead continued to invite her along with him to the point that doing a mission without Lucy wasn't his regular anymore. compared to the rest of the guild, of whom he spent most of his childhood with, even if he spoke to no one, they would still be around and talk to him anyway. he might not invite them on job and only challenge them to fights, but the guild is his home and a constant in his life, a constant he needs (bc heavy abandonment issues).

"okay, but he still pushed her away after he watched Igneel die right in front of him. and he left the guild for a whole year, too. so what's the difference there?" you may ask.

so 1) Natsu never thought the guild would disband. he returns to Fiore after a year and is the last to know that they disbanded. he assumed, like all the other times before and while he and others were sealed for 7 years, that Fairy Tail would still be there when he returned. he assumed that his disappearance would not impact so hard because the guild would still be around and Lucy would have the others with her

which, did not happen :)

and like, so many guild members go off on jobs, quests, or even just leave for an indiscriminate amount of time (which i, personally, believe was his rationality for leaving), so him being gone for a year was nothing! right? no harm, eh? his plan was never to be gone forever :))))

2) he just watched his father die and lose any chance of having some semblance of a long term reunion with Igneel. he literally lost one of his main driving motivations for getting stronger and taking jobs. before Fairy Tail, before anyone, it was Igneel. and to learn that a) Igneel was always with him to begin with and b) he only got to see him for less than a day after 14 years of nothing......i would feel lost too ngl

man's needed space from everybody. and he also needed comfort, but Natsu has been shown not to really be the character who asks to receive comfort (and when he does receive it, it's usually when he's already emotionally compromised). he is in the habit of shutting people out after being abandoned or losing someone close to him, with his next rationale being to "get stronger" in order to prevent what happened in the past to ever happen in the future.

anyway

what makes this different? well for one, he sent the letter only to Lucy (or it's implied since no one else is shown getting one) because of how the two spend most of their time together. even the line that goes with the panel makes it sound like Natsu is unsure on how the note will be received (maybe even hesitant? but that could be my own hopes)

and one of the 1st people he reunites with after a year is Lucy and we get such a similar parallel to the first chapter of Fairy Tail between the two as if the narrative itself is slotting them together to say "ah yes, now everything is back to normal and new journeys can begin"

but yeah, this is just a long way of saying, that Natsu does love his friends and guildmates but even when he is close to them, he kept to himself (and Happy) and sort of stayed in their orbit but always with some emotional distance because of his fear of abandonment. and then you have Lucy where he will stay for and allow her to orbit around him and he will invite to new adventures no questions asked

that's the difference

[moiraimyths]

Before we call anon rude because let’s see it from their perspective, imagine getting an entire feast to eat. That can be pretty hard to start with so much that’s going on, but if they start with one thing they know they’ll like (aka one character they like) that can be the start for them leaping to other characters to finish the story and the bigger story. I struggle the same way to start book series if I don’t have at least one character that drives me to read it, it’s all about what can be the hook to push them through. Sounds like the anon is neurodivergent (just a guess) so they might genuinely not see it as rude and see it as a solution to even play the game to start with.

Btw absolutely adore the game, the complex and rich characters making them all so unique is amazing. The art is so pleasing to the eyes I love it!! I’m waiting for it all to get out at once so I don’t get too impatient. Shae however interests me the most, which routes will have the most lore for them? Will there be routes that give more lore in general based on decisions you make or do they all share the same amount? (I mean general lore not just Shae lore)

Apologies; we are not trying to accuse any asker of being rude! We are simply explaining our perspective as the developers / are trying to broadly encourage folks to dip their toes into other areas of the story outside of the main route(s) they're interested in, especially considering some routes will be made available sooner than others, and these other routes will likely contain additional scenes/lore of everyone's fave(s) regardless! We want to give each main cast member an equal amount of love (and lore) regardless of their overall popularity, so our goal is not to tut-tut anyone for having strong preferences for one character over the others, but rather to explain that you may be surprised by how much *more* you learn about your preferred characters in the other routes. That's all!

For Shae... Well, they were a foot soldier for one of the worst periods of the War. Lore wise, any other story that touches on the War will likely have content relevant to them and their experiences. ^^

[raelyn-dreams]

Do you ever think about how the Ra*bits juniors were only desperate enough to beg Nazuna to join because they absolutely REFUSED to join a pre-existing unit that wouldn't have all three of them?

Tomoya and Hajime had decided on becoming idols together in middle school and stubbornly stuck with it, but they had known Mitsuru for like a few weeks at most and were already so attached to him that the thought of joining a unit without him or each other was utterly inconceivable to them.

They all loved each other so much from the beginning, and among all the manipulation, reluctance, and fear permeating the other units of early ! era, they still had the courage to say "You take all of us, or none of us". And it paid off with a loving nii-chan who found his place, songs full of hope and smiles to heal the broken, and one of the most genuine, heartwarming relationships in all of enstars.

[a-sketchy]

yosuke rank 10. not a word i can say that hasn’t been said before but damnnnnnnnn. god i like yosuke so much

[hualianisms]

i love how fanghua are so danmei coded. fang duobing as the protective nianxia ml whose life was so monumentally changed and shaped by a shifu he met only once when he was younger but whose small act of kindness moved him so deeply that he spent most of his life trying to get stronger, working hard to finally be able to catch up to and be worthy of that glorious shifu that he so admired.

except he finally meets that shifu again years later as an adult and he's finally caught up to him but now their positions are reversed - li lianhua is now the sickly one, and fallen from grace; fdb is now the (physically) stronger one, the young hero, and he becomes friends with and falls for llh who he now no. longer wants to be the disciple of. instead, he now wants to protect and care for li lianhua like one protects and cares for a lover.

[lycanr0t]

the thing about aplatonicism is that just like aromanticism and asexualism, it doesn't inherently mean you don't want friendships, every individual apl person has different needs and wants in regards to friendship and each person will go about it differently.

I for example am aplatonic and don't specifically feel platonic attraction as in, i don't feel a drive to befriend people. I don't get "friend crushes" or ever get the desire to befriend specific people. I am personally, very open to the possibility of friendship if someone else approaches me and we vibe. I am not platonically attracted to them, but I also do get enjoyment from socializing with others in that way and can become attached to them, etc. Platonic attraction does not equal caring about someone/being good to them. Attraction is not moral in that way. it just is.

Just like how some ace people still enjoy sex, even without sexual attraction. Some aplatonic people still enjoy friendship, and some don't. And that's okay! There are so many types of relationships out there that people can form and explore what makes them happiest and it looks different for every person and that's such a wonderful thing.

[mae-i-scribble]

One of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to fandom/media interpretation in general is that seemingly whenever something tries to explore the emotion of love in a nuanced or non-straightforward manner everyone and their mother jumps to the conclusion that it’s inherently romantic in nature. I don’t know if this is my aroace brain speaking, but it’s something I’ve never understood when clearly the author doesn’t mean it in a romantic sense. The two examples I’m thinking of are Violet Evergarden and Ancient Magus Bride.

Violet Evergarden is about a child soldier, Violet post-war trying to discover what emotions are, so that she can better understand the major who sacrificed his life for her. She’s specifically fixated on the notion of love, because the major told her once that he loved her and she’s struggled to understand what he meant by that. As the show goes on, she begins to discover just what these emotions mean, both to other people and to herself. Now, it needs to be said again that she was a child soldier, the major was around 30 if I remember correctly. Either way very much an established adult when he found Violet when she was like 8-10. Naturally he meant that he loves her in a familial way, everything the show does supports this interpretation, the only obscurity comes from Violet’s perspective because she doesn’t understand his meaning at first. Take a big fat guess as to half the posts I saw about their relationship framed it. Yep, “oh how gross he was in love with a child,” “this show is gross,” “its so sad how he was in love but now they can never be together T-T.” Like. What the fuck y’all. What the actual fuck. Did we watch the same show????? It’s legitimately baffling that just because the word love is used that is the assumption made in direct contradiction to what canon is saying.

Ancient Magus Bride has it much, much worse unfortunately, because it’s a much more,,, morally suspect look at what love is, or more specifically, the nature of human relationships. Chise and Elias have a bond that cannot be easily summed up in a few words (which is the entire point), and they see a lot of various twists and turns in their dynamic as they learn  not only to live with each other but come into their own and grow. Now, a lot of people assume Ancient Magus Bride is a romance because of how it starts out, with Elias stating that he bought Chise to be his bride. However, as you read further, specifically into the 40′s, Elias reveals that he only said the word bride because he understood it to be people who spend their lives together, and wanted to cut corners by making his student and bride the same thing. Elias, as an inhuman creature, does not have the capability for empathy or understanding emotions/concepts as humans do, which is what leads to a lot of the suspect situations in the beginning of the story because he doesn’t get the implications of what he’s doing.The author herself has even mentioned in official interviews that she doesn’t see their relationship as romantic (not that it stopped anyone), along with the entire story rejecting such an interpretation because shoving Chise and Elias into such a box goes against what it’s saying about the messy nature of relationships. Additionally, much like Violet Evergarden but worse, Chise is 16 while Elias is a being 100s of years old (although without the emotional intelligence to match). Either way though, their dynamic for the beginning of the show is very much of Elias trying to control Chise. He withholds information from her, manipulates her into trusting him more easily, does things behind her back that he knows she wouldn’t approve of. And that is important, I appreciate that aspect being there because it’s all completely necessary to show just what kind of person Elias is, and how his standards are vastly different compared to human ones. But a lot of the whole “EliasxChise is soooo good” hype came from anime only watchers- and is that really the dynamic yall wanted? Really? Especially when the anime watered down the resolution to that conflict? More importantly, imagine being braindead and also having no taste at all simultaneously. You take so many interesting aspects of their dynamic by just going “and theyre in love UwU” because you ignore their complexities. On top of being really fucking gross in my opinion.

And these two aren’t the only example of this. In general I think plenty of relationships would be far better off being explored as the nuanced, complex things that they are without slapping an “in love” label on them. (Jayce and Viktor from Arcane come to mind for me, what they have going on as friends and the importance the narrative places on that friendships is so much more valuable to me then any shipping). And again, I’m left wondering if this is an aroace thing, bc talking with a friend who is also aroace about her experiences in researching romance literature and what allo people find rewarding about a romance is like reading about an alien species. Do yall just live like this???? It’s so sad you are missing out on so much

[kumakuma-circus]

you ever think about how if it was a straight relationship then yukichie would definitely be canon or at least heavily implied given shadow yukiko calling chie her prince cuz i realized that earlier-

[booasaur]

The Equalizer (2021) - 1x07

[konodimada]

More thoughts on Bruabba no one is surprised but I’m obsessed with the fanfics that portray Bucciarati as reluctant to enter into a relationship with Abbachio because he’s technically kind of Abbachio’s boss. Not because it would be an issue if they broke up, not because of anything reasonable, just the optics of dating someone who is technically his subordinate. Like is Passione’s Head Mafioso of Human Resources gonna call them into his office? Have a talk about office romances and power dynamics? Gonna make them take one of those two hour HR courses? It’s up there with “Bruno does paperwork” for me as a fanfic trope.