#stricklake critical

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

fuck off, what even is your defense for krexie

my defense for krexie is that the block and blacklist buttons are right there, you watch a show about glorified child soldiers, i strongly doubt you have ever once put this energy toward strick/lake, and minding your own business is free 💕

[motherofsquirms]

Fever Break: A Stricklake Short

"You are sunlight and I moon Joined by the gods of fortune Midnight and high noon Sharing the sky We have been blessed, you and I"

Walter padded lightly into the dimly lit bedroom wearing slippers and carrying a tray with a glass of water, medicine, and a plate of dry toast. Barbara was lying on her side under the covers, sleeping soundly on the far side of the bed. She was facing the doorway, one arm under her pillow, the other resting on it. Walt walked quietly over to her and set the tray down carefully on the nightstand. He gently checked the temperature of her forehead with the back of his hand. Good, he thought, the fever had broken. Thank goodness she had not needed to go to work, otherwise he’d have had to try to convince her to stay home, a losing battle if there ever was one. He had played the “this is your body telling you to rest,” or the “you would not want to give this crud to your patients” cards already a few times. The welfare of her patients usually won out, the exhaustion of her body and mind less so.

He ever so carefully drew a fingernail across her cheek, hooking and repositioning a stray lock of hair slightly damp from sweat back behind her ear. Her auburn hair reminded him of late summer and sometimes the bright colors of early fall; its radiance rivaled the sun, and her eyes when opened the color of an intensely blue and cloudless sky, which he was now unfit to enjoy. She was his sunlight now, as she had been and continued to be for so many, giving them life; a bright star that his world revolved around. He did not mind. Such a bright star; so bright in the darkness of the world. Were the decision to trade one for the other an uncomplicated choice for him and him alone, the warmth of sun versus the fiery incandescence of her whole person given generously to him, he would take that trade a million times over and without a moment’s hesitation at that.

They had learned to lean on one another, ministering to the other’s pain or discomfort, offering sanctuary from the storms of life. She and Jim must have been like that, he thought, but their relationship, his and Barbara’s, was more balanced, that of capable and responsible adults. Jim was capable and responsible, no question, but parents were supposed to take care of and watch out for their children, not the other way around; this era of human history had at least THAT part right. Walt sighed and rolled his eyes, because there was no telling Jim anything once he had made up his mind to do something. Must have been a Lake family trait.

No, he corrected, no that was not the case at all. The tenacity, the grit, the determination to stick it out, that was all Barbara’s side. James Lake Sr., that idiot, that insipid cur, that— that— Walt closed his eyes and took a calming breath else he may become apoplectic and snarl involuntarily. His loss, the blind fool, Walter concluded, calming himself. His momentous, egregious mistake; a reeeeaaaal piece of work, that James Lake Sr., wherever the hell he was.

Anyway, Jim was away frequently and often for long stretches these days, off with Toby, Claire, and the crew, handling the hiccups of troll-kind and valiantly trying to right the wrongs of the world, mend its ills.

He, Walter, was her *rock* now, Barbara liked to quip. Har har, he’d say, very amusing, knowing full well it was an exceptionally fitting Waltolomew Strickler joke. He adored her for that. They could riff off one another, each dedicated to their deadpan delivery, sometimes even darkly or mock-acerbically, until one of them broke, unable to stifle a laugh. Other times they were droll or punny, playfully bouncing cringe-worthy wisecracks between them like a ping pong ball. Goodness knows they needed the laughs, especially him; so unfamiliar a sensation it was in his troll form that his chest even ached in the beginning.

Walt belonged to her and she to him. Refuge, confidant, and lover; those things toppled his extreme cynicism like a house of cards. He had worked so hard and so long to build it up too, darn her.

Now in the cocooning, quiet darkness of the bedroom, Walter could not resist tenderly touching the smooth softness of her cheek and letting his hand fall to the side of her neck. He thought he saw her wince briefly before she noisily inhaled and stirred though still asleep. She smiled faintly and murmured a “Walt” sweetly, and almost longingly, her voice thick from deep slumber and a pillow denting her cheek. The changeling’s ears perked up, his maudlin smile and eyes nearly breaking his face at hearing her.

The euphoric feeling was short-lived, unfortunately. The wince bothered him. Had he really seen it or just imagined it? Had she felt a twinge of pain from that old wound because of his touch? Had he also at that same moment felt the same on the left side of his own neck? Was there still something remaining, some lingering fragment of the binding spell? Of the injury? His face fell and he panicked just a bit at the memory of her pain, a suffering which he had caused.

He had tried to forgive himself — but it seemed he never could, he reflected ruefully, despite how things had turned out, despite his sincere efforts to let go, despite her insistence that he should, she had forgiven him long ago— he sighed and tried his best to remember, to drill home into the bedrock of his mind that he could not change the past. “Silly Walt!” he chastised himself finally, shaking his head as he peered down at Barbara’s sleeping form. Even if Barbara had winced she was, in all likelihood, reacting to the coolness of his hand on her neck’s sensitive skin. His own extremely minor twinge a psychosomatic response, or a random nerve ending deciding to speak up at some minuscule outrage – a change in air pressure, perhaps - as they sometimes did inexplicably.

There had been nightmares, though; he did not hide them from her but he was reluctant to do much about them, as he considered them the most minor of penitence for all of the wrongs he had committed. Gruesome dreams plagued with scenarios where they did not make it to Trollmarket in time, Barbara did not survive, Jim getting crushed by the grief, and Angor Rott laughing, his sinister laugh rising in intensity after each breath from his gravelly growl to a high-pitched, ear-splitting scream. Walter would then abruptly wake to an alarm clock blaring it’s demonic electronic guts out.

He sucked in air and squeezed his glowing eyes shut, trying to rid himself of the sour taste of bile rising to his mouth. There may come a time when my debt is paid, he told himself, but not yet.

“I must bear this as a true Lake would,” he muttered resolutely to himself.

He relaxed and quieted the noises in his head by again peering down at Barbara, dreaming peacefully. How long had he stood there for? Too long. The toast on the nightstand had been patiently cooling, but it would have to wait a while longer.

Carefully Walt lifted the covers on the bed and cautiously crept in next to Barbara, slippers and all to keep from scratching her. He tucked his right arm under the pillow and deftly snuck his left under hers, wrapping it around her midsection, the palm of his hand cupping the space on her side above the right breast. Slowly and simultaneously he brought his head and horns down with deference to the pillow, burying his nose in her hair and nuzzling the back of her neck. Even now just after battling the illness she still smelled faintly of sweet, night-blooming jasmine and the tang of a weather-worn, wooden walkway along a sandy beach, baking in the sun.

She stirred again, moving the hand that rested on her pillow and wrapping it around his, lifting it and pressing it closely to her sternum, fingers lightly entwined.

“I love you, Walter,” she yawned softly, before her breathing quieted back down and became regular again. He gently kissed the back of her ear and whispered into it softly, “I love you, too, Barbara. So very, very much.”

[theoldandnewfirm]

Something Special

Fandom: Trollhunters (Tales of Arcadia)

Characters: Walter Strickler, Waltolomew Stricklander (Familiar), implied Barbara Lake/Walter Strickler (Stricklake)

Rating: G

Summary: Waltolomew/Will wants to make a Mother's Day card Barbara will remember. Inspired by a Reddit post that I can't find anymore, which is a pity because it was hilarious.

-----

“I don’t like it,” Will said.

“It” was the Mother’s Day card Will had crafted using what seemed to be every article from the 1,000-piece craft vault Nomura had cursed them with at Christmas. Walter looked up from his project—a calligraphed invitation to a weekend for two at the Plaza—and cast a weary eye over the decorative debris field surrounding his familiar before leaning over the table to examine his work.

The face of the card was occupied by what seemed to be a seafoam-colored worm holding a bean in a stubby protrusion on its trunk. A large pair of blue buttons and several orange pom-poms glued at the wider end of the worm suggested it was meant to be Barbara, or perhaps a deflating lion.

“No?” Walter said. “I think it’s very avant-garde.”

“What does that mean?”

That I have no clue what the hell I’m looking at. “That you’ve captured the, er, essence of motherhood in a way no one’s seen before.”

Will gave this feedback due consideration. Then his small mouth screwed up in a pout. “But I don’t like it.”

“Well, the artist is their own worst critic. What don’t you like about it?”

“It’s not special.”

“Oh, Will. It will be special because you made it.”

But that was no consolation either; if anything, Will’s expression grew dourer.

Just as Walter was about to suggest they leverage Hallmark’s expertise for this particular problem, Will gasped and looked up at him, beaming. “Mommy’s stickers!”

“‘Mommy’s stickers?’’”

“Her special stickers in the bathroom!”

Walter shook his head, bemused.

Will sprung up and tugged at his wrist. “C’mon, I’ll show you!”

Will lead him to the upstairs bathroom where he opened the vanity cabinet, peered in, then tugged out a box and held it up triumphantly.

"See? Mommy's stickers!"

Walter mostly succeeded in masking his laughter behind a violent coughing fit.

"Sorry, dear. Yes—ahem—yes. Mommy's stickers. Of course."

"Will she get mad if I use them?"

"No, I think—" he swallowed back another laugh, "no, I think she’ll be delighted actually.”

Will let out a whoop, clutched the box of pantyliners securely to his chest, then bounded past him towards the stairs.

Walter grinned. Barbara’s card would be avant-garde indeed.

[phantomsilva]

Thoughts on Rott

I’m not very active because of time, but I really need to put this out. So now that everyone has had their rants on rott… It’s my turn.

A reminder that all I’m going to talk about, is simply my opinion on the matter. Oh, and this will be a pretty long text.

ROTT SPOILERS(I guess)

I’m not even gonna talk about how OOC the characters were in the movie, I think other profiles already did a pretty good explanation of that, and I actually expect it from a movie.

I’d like to talk about resettings and about how as a writer myself (at least in my native tongue) I swear I’ll never use a timeline resetting as an ending in any canon fiction of mine.

To begin with, resetting being used as a resolution, an ending, is by concept disrespectful.

First, it disrespects all characters’ arcs.

Everything every character went through, their growth, their pain, their victories, is completely thrown at the garbage. It means nothing anymore because all of them went back to the start, none of it ever happened and there is no way in canon to know if it will happen the same way again.

I don’t know about you who is reading this but a big part of the reason I follow a series is for character development. That was the one thing in toa I was always proud to affirm it was chef’s kiss. Well, none of this exists anymore, jokes on me.

So, my second point: Ending with a resetting disrespects the viewer.

I think it is bad enough when you waste two hours of your life watching a movie, for the resetting to happen at the end. But then it was only two hours. Rott was a movie, but it was a part of a 5 years franchise. 5 years that we spent waiting for new stories to come, to see our favourite characters grow, come back or even die. All the engagement, happiness, and other emotions we felt while following these same characters were completely meaningless when the franchise ends with “And so we are back to the beginning”. I think it is even worse when they complete it with “and now everything is different and you don’t know what is going to happen… But we won’t tell you how”.

The disrespect doesn’t even end there for me lol . Besides the “So, and it was all for… nothing” feeling, I think the specific way it was done in toa affects it on another level.

Trollhunters was a comfort tv show for me, I found it in a very difficult time of my life and have been rewatching it for fun in stressful weeks.

I saw someone commenting “how can I enjoy the rewatching if I know in the end none of this ever matters?”. That is my problem with the specific way they used it. It affects my rewatches. Maybe it is still too early, but everytime I think about rewatching season 1, I realize there is no reason to do it. And not because I already watched it several times (thanks anxiety), but because all of this was undone and maybe never even happened.

I never expected an ending would ruin a whole franchise for me and I followed Steven Universe weekly. Worst case scenario, I thought we would have had a weak ending that could easily be forgotten, or continued in our fics. We would lose some characters, like we’ve lost Draal, but when we revisited them in past seasons they would still be there.

Revisiting past seasons now just tastes bitter.

I see Jim riding his bike on episode 1, I see Strickler with his character arc, Steve that has grown so much as a person.. And then I remember it was all for nothing. All of it was erased and, canonically, they will always be on square one.

I saw someone today saying “It is worse than ‘it was all a dream’ ”, and that is it. “It was all a dream” is already a disrespectful trope, this was worse.

If you are still here, I'm sorry, there is more to this rant. I won’t be repeating the disrespect thing though, I think I’ve made my point.

There is another aspect of the resetting that I really want to talk about.

Have you ever watched Dragon Ball? Yes, guys, I’m that old.

Dragon Ball was known for the trope of reviving characters. We always used it as an example to criticize this trope.

Reviving characters out of nowhere or with frequency takes the weight out of a character’s death. The spectator doesn’t care anymore when they see someone die, because they will come back in the end, and you feel that the writers take killing people very lightly because of that.

Difference between Reviving Characters and Resetting Timeline as an ending is that Reviving Characters can be good if used with caution. Resetting Timeline can’t, and that affected writing in Rott.

I found it strange how so many deaths felt light there, and to me the explanation is: they knew in the end it wouldn’t matter, so they didn’t need to put that much weight into it. “If none of this ever happened, I can kill whoever I want however I want.”

Which takes me to my last point of “Ending with Reset Timeline is bad by concept”.

When you know you will reset a whole world to the start, you can do any crazy thing to the plot or the characters because you don’t have consequences from that. Which, to me, explains the “wtf” feeling a lot of the fandom got while watching so many OOC scenes and silly situations during the movie. From a fandom who was waiting for an ending for more than a year, it is really disappointing.

Now, of course I’m not saying any of this was done on purpose, or with malicious intent. I think the writers had very good intentions, we know there were crew there who worked on other seasons of TOA. I even get the concept of “the adventure will continue forever”. I just think they forgot to read the fandom room.

Anyway, I really wanted to share my feelings about the “Resetting Timeline as an ending” trope (?) because I don’t think the issues here are limited to TOA. All points T made are pretty general and I got it from all the works I’ve seen using this “solution”. I’ll advocate any day that this is a lazy and disrespectful solution, no matter who uses it or where it is used. Unless, of course, you do give me the whole franchise rewritten after the resetting, but that ain’t ever gonna happen.

I’ll take from TOA the amazing artists and storyboarders I found out here. The stricklake discord that gave me so much joy over the last two years and let me meet great people. Even the screenshots and beautiful scenes from the movie because the art was Amazing! That part I'm taking with me. Oh, Good Aaron, of course, cause now I’ll be following his work wherever he goes because this man is amazing. Actually, only him to make a good situation out of this. As he himself said, all headcanon is now canon.

So I’ll be disregarding the existence of rott, as I disregard the existence of the last airbender, take the rest of the franchise with me and any post-Wizards/rott rewriting fics I’ll find. And if I don’t find one I’ll write one. Nothing can be worse than resetting timeline ending.

I hope someday I can revisit the old seasons without this bitter taste, though.

That being said, I’m open to fic suggestions. Rott AU's, Rott erasement, post-wizards AUs, you name it. Do you need a reader? Send it to me.

And I’ll be doing stricklake month, once I recover from this.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

[the-fanaddict]

5 for toa and 19 for httyd

Has fandom ever ruined a pairing for you?

For toa, probably Stricklake. I never liked them in the first place so it wasn’t “ruined” per say, but Stricklake was popular since s1, and I don’t see the appeal at all given what Strickler did. I’m down for redeeming Strickler but getting back with Barbara needed way more time. 

What is the one thing you hate most about your fandom?

For HTTYD, probably rtte discourse. The show worked for some people, and it didn’t for others. Both sides had valid points but I feel like everyone took it way more seriously than needed for a show that didn’t have the same movie budget or crew.   

Best way to watch rtte was pick and choose canon, make up some fun headcanons/AUs/OCs and criticize through memes. 

[noleftsocks-blog]

Stricklake Gives Me Pause

First let me begin by saying this isn’t meant to be a criticism of the ship itself within the fandom, or anyone who loves this ship---there are many. I don’t like ship wars. Our fandom is so new and positive, we don’t need that kind of pointless drama here. Gross.

If you follow me, you’ll know that my posts and contributions to the fandom are largely analytical in nature. So this post just serves to look at Stricklake from an objective, non-romantic perspective; and why it doesn’t resonate with me on a shippy level...

I like Stickler. I like Barbara. I like what their relationship contributed to the plot, and to both Jim and Strickler’s character development—independently and together as a protagonist-antagonist unit. I like the arc of Jim and Walter’s relationship from student and mentor, to adversaries, to reluctant allies. I like that Jim and Walter parted ways on neutral grounds.

But let me tell you why the very popular Stricklake ship does not grab me. Yet.

When Strickler starts dating Barbara, it’s under false pretenses. He obviously isn’t going to tell her he’s a changeling, but he uses her as a prop to get closer to Jim; to antagonize him, and to ultimately kill him. What the ship does have going for it is that Barbara (and by extension, Jim) humanize Strickler, who had been spending years simply going through the motions of being human. After hearing nothing but how changelings are “impure” and “half-breeds” meant to serve Gunmar and nothing else, here comes Barbara, treating Walter with genuine kindness, affection, and respect. This obviously takes a toll on Strickler who, while still ultimately acting in his own self-interest, comes to deeply and sincerely care for Barbara (and Jim, by extension). This a wonderfully complex character arc; and so I love what Stricklake does for Walter’s character, and his relationship with Jim.

I’m just not behind this pairing as something to be romanticized at this point.

When Barbara finds out the truth, albeit temporarily, she is repulsed by Strickler—and not because he’s a changeling! Even in her rejection of him, she considers him through a very human lens. She sees him as a liar and deceiver. He’s someone who exploited her feelings for his personal gain—to keep tabs and ultimately do harm to her son. It doesn’t matter that Strickler may actually love her. It doesn’t matter that Strickler is an interesting, fandom-favorite we may want to see succeed in some capacity, in the future.

The point is, his entire relationship with Barbara up until that point is predicated on a nefarious lie. Whether it ultimately developed into something sincere for him is not relevant to the legitimacy of the relationship, if Barbara is being deceived.

Does that mean I hate Sticklake? No. Of course not! It’s a compelling, albeit very problematic relationship.

As I said, it contributes a lot to the story and characters. I just can’t get behind it right now. What I hope happens with it, is that Strickler gets a redemption arc—a true, full blown redemption arc. He can be wholly back in Jim’s good graces and rekindle a relationship with Barbara based on honesty, trust, and completely mutual feelings.

That is my hope for Stricklake. Until then, I just ain’t shippin’ it.

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

when y'all come for stricklake, THEN you can talk to me about ~normalizing abuse.~

you're not going to, though, because what you care about is having an excuse to harass people. y'all will literally harass and attack people for saying--without even judging the shippers--that stricklake is fucked up, because it's the popular ship, and attacking people who dare criticize it gets you clout. this has been done a number of times by the exact same prominent BNFs who go after less popular Bad Ships(tm) which are easier targets, it's transparent as hell, and it's fucking disgusting.

(and no, if you try to crawl onto this post saying stricklake as portrayed in canon isn't fucked up as hell you will get a long fucking response, by god.)

and for that matter, hoo BOY are you poking a hornet's nest if you dare criticize barb's behavior toward jim. this entire fandom talks constantly about what a great mom she is, when her treatment of jim is abusive, and not only that, but in specific ways that many, many csa survivors have been harmed by. i have literally been told to suffer and that i, an abuse survivor, don't know what real abuse is (because op ~is writing about it, they should know~), and have been openly mocked in the tags multiple times by multiple BNFs, for talking about it.

and for that matter, while we're at it, how about strickler explicitly telling jim he was worthless for anything but protecting his mom, and that he couldn't even do that right? you know, the exact same thing everyone hates merlin for?

do people like me, who are immensely triggered by this shit, not matter? do people who are, by your standards, having partner and child abuse normalized for them not matter?

the answer is no. we don't. not to people like you. it only matters to you if the characters kiss, because that's easiest to weaponize disgust against for clout.

you wanna know just how much these people don't give a fuck? some of the people in this fandom who are loudest about how Bad Ships are Illegal and Deserve Death openly make content--lots of content--of adult/minor ships of their own, which are portrayed in VERY fluffy, romanticized lights. openly! in between posts foaming at the mouth about other people doing it! they're popular among the other fandom police!

all of this is completely leaving aside everything else about this discourse (which you people clutching your pearls over this shit and wailing to Think of the Children are ignorant as all fuck about and it shows). the point of this post is that y'all are fucking hypocrites and you're not even subtle about it.

don't pretend you care about kids or survivors. what you want is victims. sit the fuck down and shut up.

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

like, for real, i know several people just out of my close friends who are triggered, squicked, or otherwise deeply upset by stricklake, canon-flavored especially, who have it shoved in their faces on a regular basis, often untagged, and for whom the tags have become completely unusable after prominently featured canon content of their triggering NOTP, with even more upsetting tropes and framing specifically. ‘stricklake being mushy and domestic and cooing over babies’ is REVOLTING to me and to them, and to i’m sure a lot of other people who are frankly just too scared to say anything.

do you think even half of stricklake shippers would give one single fuck about making sure we don’t have to see it? much less see it romanticized, which is done in 90% of the fic even just that comes out of the ao3 tag? 

every now and then somebody mistags a Bad Ship fic or post, or has poor boundaries, and triggers people. that sucks. being triggered is legitimate. i’m sorry it happened.

now multiply that by hundreds. hundreds. hundreds of times, by hundreds of people, for years. untagged ships and dynamics, people coming into our inboxes to request or talk about stricklake after we’ve explicitly said to keep it away from us, people being fucking furious with us for expressing that we don’t like it or find it triggering.

and yes, by romanticized i do mean ‘romanticized,’ not ‘depicted.’ it is explicitly portrayed as a cute, romantic dynamic between two people who have a thousand adorable babies uwu, in canon and fandom alike, and/or otherwise the fucked up aspects are just. brushed over. did you know he has literally never said sorry to her for what he did to her or her family? not once?

but no, he’s ~grown and changed~ and ~atoned for what he did.~

that is romanticization. that’s fucked. 

and there is not only no escape from it if you engage at all with this damn fandom, people will be FURIOUS with you for calling it what it is. not for making any judgment on them for shipping it; not for telling them what they are or aren’t allowed to like, or make. calling it what it is, and asking other people to have the basic respect for abuse survivors to do the same.

but nah. nah, we’re the ones who are triggering abuse survivors literally just by shipping a ship, usually portrayed as the fucked up dynamic that it is, most of whom are abuse survivors ourselves working through shit, when we as a group make it a philosophy to give people the tools to avoid it. we’re the evil ones. we’re, and i can’t fucking stress this enough because holy fuck, literally as bad as genocidal white s*premacists.

go fuck yourselves.

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

like really truly and honestly if you’re going to complain about ships not being Pure and you’re not going hard against strick/lake or drom/ura first then you don’t care about ~bad ships,~ you care about finding small, easy targets to bully and shit on to feel powerful, shut up

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

you know what actually i do have one more thing to say, and that is that you wanna talk about romanticizing abuse? you wanna talk about shoving it in the faces of survivors who are triggered by it? 

take a look at fucking stricklake, and how it is impossible to avoid it in this fandom no matter what you do and no matter how many blacklists you use. how even saying you don’t like it and don’t want to see it gets you booed and labeled a killjoy. how saying that it’s abusive/manipulative/predatory gets you openly mocked and insulted in the tags. (by some of the same people, noticeably, who do the most whipping up hate about Bad Ships!) 

hey, for that matter! take a look at how saying barb’s behavior toward jim in season 1 was abusive goes over! namely, it also gets you mocked and ripped apart in the tags! i have had people make fun of me for being a ~triggered abuse survivor,~ saying i don’t know what real abuse is, and telling me i deserved to suffer, for saying it was abuse. real abuse, the kind of abuse i have gone through, that many victims both children and adult have gone through and don’t even realize was bad because nobody is willing to admit that it’s not normal or okay.

take a look at how anyone gives a shit about any of us who are triggered by any of that. take a look at how saying a character or dynamic is abusive at all, without any kind of judgment on whether people should or shouldn’t like it, nets survivors hatred and harassment (again! from the very same people saying this shit now!) because they DARED to say anything negative about a fan favorite. 

come back when you’ve gleefully launched a campaign to kick every stricklake shipper and barb fan out of the fandom, and equated them with white s*premacists..

oh? doesn’t sound like fun?

then you don’t care about survivors. you care about something that will give you an excuse to bully people. fuck you.

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

a thought

to the people who, like me, felt that how the show handled stricklake was poorly done and fucked up: how would you, specifically, have gone about writing it differently?

would you be aiming to rewrite it to be genuinely healthier, or would you aim to follow the logical conclusion of how awful it's portrayed in the show? what character and narrative themes would you have changed it to reinforce and structure better? how would you have chosen for it to end?

there's myriad ways to go about it, honestly; it's a fascinating trainwreck to unpack and it can be kind of an inkblot test of different interpretations and points of view, and i'd love to see other people's thoughts on it!

(note: don't start fights or be a dick. know going into this thread that people are allowed to disagree with you on something, and you are allowed to disagree with them, but stay civil, please.)

(that said 'stricklake isn't (fucked up/abusive/etc), how dare you!' is not at all welcome on this post, please go elsewhere)

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

hey all! so this blog is just getting started out, but i’d love to hear from you guys with season 2 coming up! send me asks about a ship, two or more characters and what i think about their dynamic, details and theories, themes in the show, headcanons on a specific subject, themes, aus, anything. you might get meta, you might get rambling about why i like or don’t care for the thing, you might even get snippets of writing or a doodle if the mood strikes me!

all i ask is that you:

a) don’t ask me to draw or write something unless i’ve specifically asked for prompts. i’m not a vending machine!

b) don’t send blatantly nsfw asks--you can send those to @stricklanderpls, but this blog is sfw! it doesn’t have to be totally pg, but if you have doubts at all it’s much more likely not to go unanswered there.

c) don’t ask me about ocs unless i know you and them already, please. i also don’t write reader inserts.

d) please try not to ask me a lot for stricklake or jlaire! i don’t hate them or anything, but they’re about all the content shipping or otherwise that i can find anymore, and the flavor they’re almost always written with is Super Not My Cup of Tea. if you want to hear about my particular take on them or have something to add that hasn’t been done to death, go ahead, but there’s lots of other things to love and talk about in this show!

anyway, i have a lot of Opinions but i don’t bite, so hop on over and say hi!

[the-fanaddict]

A, B, C, D, M, N, O, R, T, Y, and Z. Though, Z is optional since I've been told it's hard to find something to ramble about.

A - Ships that you currently like a lot. (They don’t have to be OTPs because not everyone has OTPs.) Friendships, pairings, threesomes, etc. are allowed.Jesskas and Jetra (mcsm), heatstrid, the Love SquareTM (miraculous ladybug), and fishlout to name a fewB - A pairing–platonic, romantic or sexual–that you initially didn’t consider, but someone changed your mind.I wasn’t into Jlaire at first, but honestly? I really like how they’ve developed and what they are in season 2. C - A ship you have never liked and probably never will.Hoo boy. I guess Stricklake. Sorry but I don’t see the appeal of it. Especially when you consider how manipulative Strickler was in the first season. D - A pairing you wish you liked but just can’t.Okay I will be honest. There are some aspects of Hiccstrid that I like, but overall it’s really meh for me. I like how casual they are in httyd2 but the way they got together in httyd1 was kinda cliche. M - Name a character that you’d like to have for a friend.Fishlegs! We can nerd about dragons!N - Name three things you wish you saw more or in your main fandom (or a fandom of choice).Httyd fandom: 1) open to criticism I guess? Rtte and httyd in general has flaws that need to be pointed out. 2) don’t be petty. Yeah rtte has flaws but at the same time don’t be extra about it pointing things out (idk how to put that into words) 3) what happened to Hiccup and Toothless? I miss the good hictooth content. O - Choose a song at random. Which ship or character does it remind you of?So I chose a hindi song called Pungi (from Agent Vinod). That song is very comedic and reminds me of Dagur in a way. R - Which friendship/platonic relationship is your favorite in fandom?HICCUP AND TOOTHLESS NO QUESTION. T - Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending? Httyd and Trollhunters take place in the same universe. Y - What are your secondhand fandoms (i.e., fandoms you aren’t in personally but are tangentially familiar with because your friends/people on your dash are in them)?I see a lot of Star vs the Forces of Evil. It’s a show I want to eventually watch, but I haven’t got the motivation to. I’ve watched the first few episodes on a plane a ride and it seems cool. Also because of the Last Jedi, I see a lot of Star Wars stuff. Personally, Star Wars isn’t really my cup of tea, though I have seen empire strikes back and rogue one. Idk there’s a lot of content and it’s would to take me forever to catch up. That animated rebels show looks hella cool tho. Z - Just ramble about something fan-related, go go go! (Prompts optional but encouraged.)Minecraft story mode ramble becuase there is not of content in this fandom:I love that you can make Jesse’s character however you want it to be (forgiving or unforgiving, skeptical or optimistic, etc) Everyone has such amazing interpretations of Jesse and no one fights over ships becuase it’s their choice in the game. I love that Jesse’s gender doesn’t matter in the game and in shipping, in the end, it’s up to the player. Whether or not they ship Jesse with Petra or with Lukas.

[noleftsocks-blog]

olbas006 says:

It's ok =) you have every right to your opinion, but I'm afraid that people will still continue ships wars. believe me - if you do not like the most popular Pairing in a fandom, people will hate you. if you love the most unpopular Pairing in a fandom, people will hate you even more.

Yeah, that has been my experience in fandoms to this point.

And my opinion on Stricklake isn’t so much a criticism of the pairing for merely existing, or that it’s a popular ship---it was simply an analysis and what that analysis means to me as far as my personal feelings about shipping them. Like you said, it’s just an opinion and my given analysis to support those feelings, y’know?

I just feel like I have to give a constant disclaimer that the post isn’t a knock against the ship really, or even the shippers---mainly it serves as analysis---because if I don’t, someone is going to accuse me of trying to start a ship war. But, as you pointed out, they might go ahead and do that anyway. *sigh*

Thank you for your reply, though!