#they’re my favourite fanon ship

[bisexualmultifandommess]

Coming out today as a Daryl and Rick shipper lmao give me all the fics and edits I need them especially ones where Daryl is protective of Rick because Rick is my favourite

[saintsenara]

Thoughts on Ron and Hermione as a ship?

thank you very much for the ask, @thesilverstarling!

i’ll state my position straight away: book ron and hermione are the best of the canon couples.

they will have a long and extremely happy marriage made rich by great and stalwart love, lust, fun, and faithfulness, rather than held together by duty and couples’ therapy like so many readers and authors (including jkr, who seems to have decided to spend the years since the conclusion of the series failing to understand anything about her own characters) tend to think.

i will state another position straight away: lest i seem like i’m just a fan with blinkers on, i think this even though hermione is, by far, my least favourite member of the trio. if she were real i would detest her, and i dislike how she is treated by the narrative as always justified in her negative characteristics. i like fanon hermione - perfect and preternaturally good - even less.

as a result, i think that it’s ridiculous that jkr has said that she thought ron needed to ‘become worthy’ of hermione. they belong together as equals - which is what they’re set up in the narrative as being from the off - and i hate seeing that undermined.

because ronald weasley? he’s an icon. and he doesn’t get anywhere near the respect he deserves in fandom.

there are multiple reasons for this - ron’s narrative purpose is to be the everyman sidekick, and so he is able to be less special than harry or hermione (the helper-figure); the amount of aristocracy wank in this fandom means that the weasleys’ ordinariness is less appealing to writers than making harry have twenty different lordships and call himself hadrian; the narrative interrogates ron’s flaws - especially his capacity for jealousy - much more intensively than it interrogates either hermione’s (cruel, inflexible, meddling) or harry’s (reckless, self-absorbed, judgemental) - but one i feel is particularly significant is that ron is such a british character that many of his traits are not understood as intended by non-british readers.

in particular - as is outlined in this excellent meta by @whinlatter - ron’s sense of humour isn’t indicative of immaturity or a lack of seriousness, but is, in fact, evidence that he’s the most emotionally aware of the trio.

ron is shown throughout the series to understand how both harry and hermione need to have their emotions approached - and i think there is no piece of writing which says this better than crocodile heart by @floreatcastellumposts:

That was what she liked most about Ron, she thought vaguely. He was very good at being suitably outraged on your behalf. For Harry, for her, for Neville. That sort of thing mattered, when you were hurt or embarrassed or wronged in some way. You needed to have someone else on your side, to be as emotional as you felt, maybe even more so, so that you might feel a bit more normal. It was very decent of him, and she was not sure he realised he did it.

ron’s inherent emotional awareness is an enormous source of comfort to other people. he does the work which isn’t flashy or special - he makes tea and tells jokes and is just there - but which is needed in healthy human relationships far more frequently than a willingness to fight to the death for the other person.

[as an aside, this normality - even though i think it is assumed rather than justified by the text - is also what ginny provides for harry. if you believe that hinny are a good couple but romione aren’t… i can’t help you.]

but let’s look at some specific reasons why ron and hermione belong together:

their communication styles mesh perfectly. ron is the only person hermione knows who feeds her love of being challenged and debated, and who is able to engage in this way of communicating without becoming irate when she refuses to back down. ron is good at picking his battles, but he’s also good at recognising that hermione’s tendency to argue isn’t intended to be confrontational a lot of the time - it’s just the way she works through feelings and problems. he’s far more easy-going about her tendency to nag, interrupt, try to provoke arguments, or speak condescendingly than he’s given credit for - and hermione evidently respects this, since when he does tell her not to push a situation (above all, when she’s trying to needle harry into talking about sirius), she listens to him.

that ron and hermione’s tendency to bicker is taken by fans to be a bad thing is because it’s something harry - from whose perspective the narrative is written - doesn’t understand. harry is extremely conflict-avoidant - he tends to take being pushed on views and opinions he has to be insulting; and he has a tendency to assume that he is right which is just as profound as hermione’s. he and ginny communicate not by debating, but by ginny having no time for his rigidity and refusing to indulge it - but ron and hermione bickering about everything is not a negative thing within their specific emotional dynamic.

[as another aside, this glaring chasm in communication styles is why harry and hermione would be a disaster as a couple.]

they each provide validation the other needs. it’s clear - reading between the lines - that hermione is a tremendously lonely person. the friendlessness of her initial few weeks at hogwarts seems to be a continuation of her experience as a child, and - outside of ron and harry - that friendlessness endures through her schooldays. i’m always struck, for example, by the fact that, when she falls out with ron in prisoner of azkaban, she has no-one else to spend time with, and that this is only avoided in half-blood prince because harry decides not to freeze her out. i don’t think her friendship with ginny is anywhere near as close as fanon seems to imply (ginny has no interest in being nagged either), nor do i think that she’s anywhere near as close to neville (not least because she is so condescending to him) as she’s often written to be.

and this loneliness seems to stretch beyond hogwarts. the absence of hermione’s parents’ from the narrative is - in a doylist sense - clearly just a device to maximise time with the trio all together, but the watsonian reading is that she doesn’t have a particularly good relationship with them. hermione’s obviously upper-middle-class background - the name! the skiing! the holidays in the south of france! - can be presumed, i think, to come with a series of expectations from her parents which she feels constantly that she’s not entirely meeting, particularly expectations attached to academic success.

[for example, the grangers - were she a muggle child - would undoubtedly have ambitions for her to attend an elite university and then go into a prestigious career. tertiary education of the type that they’re familiar with doesn’t seem to exist in the wizarding world - most careers seem to be taught by apprenticeship - and this, alongside all the other divides between the magical and muggle worlds which contribute to the distance between them, would be one very obvious area in which she felt the need to prove herself to them.]

ron, too, has quite a difficult relationship with his position in the family - voldemort’s locket is not wrong to point out that he seems to receive considerably less of his mother’s emotional attention than ginny or the rest of his brothers - and he too is constrained by expectations which he doesn’t know how to explain he has no interest in - above all, molly’s desire for her sons to achieve top grades and go into the ministry.

he also suffers while at hogwarts from being ‘harry potter’s best friend’, something which harry never appreciates. but hermione does. she recognises ron’s jealousy and never allows harry to minimise it (and she and ron are very much aligned on having no respect for harry’s saviour and martyr complexes). she appreciates ron’s strengths - above all his kindness and his sense of humour - and makes him feel as though he’s achieved things with them. and ron does the same for her; he is hugely observant when it comes to her, and he challenges and defends her.

the two of them clearly spend a lot of time together one-on-one while harry’s involved in his various shenanigans (including outside of school - hermione has often arrived at the burrow days or even weeks before harry, and they seem to write to each other frequently when apart). they do this within a relationship which is fundamentally equal. one issue with hinny is that, post-war, harry is going to have to get used to seeing ginny as a peer, rather than as someone he has to protect. but ron and hermione never have that issue - equality is baked into their relationship from the off.

because, to be quite frank, fandom overstates the role that jealousy plays in their relationship. it’s true that ron certainly doesn’t acquit himself brilliantly when it comes to hermione’s relationship with viktor krum (it’s because he’s bi and doesn’t know it yet), and a tendency to externalise his insecurity into trying to make others also feel insecure is one of his primary negative traits (hermione does this too, via her patented lofty voice when she’s trying to condescend to people). but this is often taken as the initial red flag for how the relationship would crash and burn, and ron’s toxic jealousy is often used in fan-fiction as the trigger for emotional and physical violence towards hermione which, frequently, seems to drive her into the arms of either draco malfoy or severus snape… who are, of course, the first people we think of when we hear the words ‘not prone to jealousy’...

but i think it’s important to point out several things in defence of ron’s jealousy over krum. firstly, hermione evidently regards his jealousy as ridiculous - she’s upset by it, yes, but her upset must be understood as being caused by the fact that she wanted him to ask her out. she doesn’t think he’s being possessive, she thinks he’s being stupid. secondly, hermione is equally as jealous over ron’s crush on fleur delacour and relationship with lavender brown. she behaves just as cruelly when it comes to lavender as ron does when it comes to krum - and the narrative only treats her actions as more sympathetic or justified both because harry dislikes lavender too, and because, by that point in the series, jkr has dispensed with any inclination to ever criticise her.

but, outside of this teenage pettiness, ron is never jealous of hermione over things which matter. he is never jealous of her intelligence or competence or ambition or success (indeed, he defends her constantly from attacks designed to undermine her in these areas). for someone who struggles with being overshadowed by harry, he is never upset at being overshadowed by her. he is clearly going to be happy to support her in any of the career ambitions she can be written as having post-war.

and, on this point, i think it’s worth interrogating why so many readers still seem to feel uncomfortable with the idea of ron and hermione having a dynamic where she is the more ‘powerful’ one. [it’s always a bit trite to say ‘but what if the genders were reversed?’, but actually that’s not irrelevant here]. if hermione ends up taking the ministry by storm and ron becomes a stay-at-home father or has a job which is just to pay the bills, what, precisely, is wrong with that? why, precisely, should hermione regard ron making that choice for himself as a negative thing? hermione so often seems to leave ron in fan-fiction because of a lack of ambition - something which seems to be particularly common in dramione - but, in canon, she is shown to not particularly care if ron and harry do the bare minimum when it comes to studying etc. she nags them to do their work so they don’t get in trouble. she doesn’t nag them to do it to the same standard that she would.

and, actually, i think that ron being less ambitious than hermione is something which is key to how well they work. because ron provides not only emotional support, but emotional clarity.

hermione is shown throughout canon to - just as harry does - have a tendency to become obsessive to the detriment of her own health. she is also often - as harry is - emotionally or intellectually inflexible, and finds it hard to move on when what she feels or believes is proven to be wrong. both she and harry are micro-thinkers, who lean towards knee-jerk assumptions and stubborn convictions (and, indeed, hermione has a remarkably hagrid-ish tendency towards blind loyalty).

ron is none of these things. ron is a big-picture thinker (it’s why he’s so good at chess). he’s a pragmatist. he’s the least righteous of the three. he understands that faith and loyalty are choices, and that sometimes these choices will lead to outcomes which are bad or hard. he is the one of the three most willing to own up to having made mistakes. he is the one least likely to act on gut instinct (and, therefore, the hardest to fool - i think it’s worth emphasising that he clocks that tom riddle is tricking harry immediately, the only one of the trio to do so). he understands that things are a marathon, not a sprint. he is the least obsessive.

and these traits contribute to aspects of his character which are underappreciated. ron worries about hermione making herself ill during exams, or when she is using the time-turner, and makes an effort to get her to set healthy boundaries and redirect her anxiety. ron stands on a broken leg in front of sirius or goes into the forest to fight aragog not out of righteousness, but out of choice. ron takes over the burden of preparing buckbeak’s defence when it is clear that hermione is approaching burnout. ron is completely right that harry hasn’t done any long-term planning for the horcrux hunt, and his anger does force harry to tighten up after he leaves the trio. ron has a clear head in the middle of battle. ron makes harry and hermione laugh. ron is unafraid of human emotion. ron arrests harry’s tendency to brood over the little things by looking at the bigger picture. ron will always come back.

ron is bringing his politician wife regular cups of tea and making sure she doesn’t work all night. he is helping his lawyer wife to feel less upset over losing one case by reminding her that she’s won ten others. he is noticing stress creeping in and whirling her off for a dirty weekend, or even just a takeaway on the sofa. he is teaching his daughter to be proud of her ambition and his son to treat women as equals and both of his children that all you can do when you fuck up is apologise and try to do better. he is making hermione smile on the worst days of her life. he is helping her strategise her long-term goals when she gets stuck on the short-term ones. he is telling her straight when she needs to get it together. he is seeing a misogynistic head of department call hermione a ‘silly little girl’ and choosing to tell him exactly what he thinks of that.

ron is the ultimate wife guy. hermione is a very, very lucky lady.

[mrthology]

okay but what is it about perpollo? I swear the ship just crept up on me randomly and now it's my fav pjo ship but idk how it happened because they have little actual interactions in canon?? hermes had more scenes with percy. is it the poetic "sun and sea" thing, what??? (im sorry for bombarding you but i see your fics a lot in the perpollo tag so idk who else to ask but i just wanna hear people's input about this ship)

A lot of ships in fandom as a whole barely interact—there are some mammoth ships where two side characters that barely interact and barely have scenes have thousands of fics focused on them, and large fandoms dedicated to their relationship and fanon!

Gods and humans (or other immortal, powerful beings and humans) have been popular and fascinating in stories forever, and with Perpollo specifically there’s the advantage of Apollo having an entire book series himself, and being more “known” in fandom. Even if people haven’t read TOA, if they read fic, they’re likely to encounter elements from the books, and Apollo is a more fleshed out character in the PJO universe as a whole.

For me, I studied classics and enjoy exploring how a book series and characters I loved growing up (Percy) may interact with a blend of the book canon, my own ideas, and mythology. Apollo works well for that, though I’ve explored themes with other characters as well. One of my favourite fics I’ve written is actually exploring themes with Percy and Dionysus lol. Some characters fit certain themes I want I explore well!

There's also community and support. I (and @ashilrak) had a couple PJO servers, and having people to bounce ideas off of, gush over characters with, and basically have fun with definitely inspires writing! And while those servers are gone, there are inevitable countless more that likewise foster supportive environments.

In short, Perpollo’s been a ship since the first series, as have a million other random ships! Perpollo also had the advantage of community, Apollo later being more fleshed out in the PJO canon, the tried and true “immortal/human” ship people often find fascinating going for it, Apollo being portrayed as a teen, etc.

[eye-of-yelough]

why do you assume people are “afraid” to make their durgetash more toxic? that they should “come over to the dark side and have some fun?” people are having fun, they’re just not into what you’re into and thats fine. i think your durgetash stuff is very interesting, but i dont know why you have the need to post about how other people should feel, or how they should interpret gortash.

i guess because some of the people i’ve talked to have told me they were initially afraid to break the mould, as i was myself until recently, what with how sanitised fandom in general has become lately, and the whole “if you enjoy problematic media without giving a disclaimer that you don’t condone the actions taking place that makes you problematic” mentality. and i’m fine with people enjoying what they enjoy!

i’m not gonna pretend my last few posts about it haven’t been a little hostile and petty, they have been, but that’s just how i’ve been feeling lately. 90% of durgetash/gortash content is just . so not what i’m looking for. which would be fine, live and let live, but man does it make me feel like i’m losing my mind, the amount of people i see just ignoring canon to say gortash “worships the ground durge walks on”, or “just wants to be loved”, or “cared about karlach deep down”, or, worst of all in my opinion, is somehow “redeemable”. Mr “i want those Gondians aware of what they’re doing and deeply unhappy about it”. Mr “tadpoled and harvested the brain of a child in her sleep” to.. what? what the fuck was he doing with that kid?

ooh i know! what about Mr “renews his pact with The Dark Urge swearing to bring them no harm -

- only to subject them to psychological torture with his machines 2 minutes later for daring to refuse to Witness His Ascension”

but yeah, sure, their relationship was totally healthy and respectful….

…anyway. i’m being petty and hostile again arent i.

i genuinely harbour no ill will towards people who enjoy durgetash in the popular shippy way, it’s just that gortash is my favourite character at the moment, and he’s my favourite character because he’s awful. because he terrifies me. because he does 6 absolutely heinous crimes against humanity before breakfast. and the gortash fans who, like me, like to really embrace that and put serious thought into to what that means about him, how his brain works, how that effects his interpersonal relationships, are startlingly few in comparison to the sheer amount of people who seem to just. see him as someone to ship their durge with.

TLDR: every fandom has a fanon-ised version of events that gets passed around and around until it starts getting accepted as canon even though it isn’t. and sometimes those fandoms need a few people screaming no. so that’s that i’ve been doing.

[andiftheycare]

hello, what made you to like and ship satosugu? I love satosugu so much

I see you. I love them so much and they’re giving me so much joy.

So. There were a couple of things that made me go “oh,”

And I think these are just… very basic? I’m so sorry I’m going to be boring 🥹

- Hidden Inventory, the KFC break up. Iconic, incredible, heartbreaking. Up until that moment I was jokingly shipping them. Then I watched the KFC break up, and thought that Gojo wasn’t the most emotional character. Or rather: they show him happy and joking around and angry, but they never show him losing his composure until that moment. And with losing his composure I mean something different than, e.g. when he goes feral in Shibuya. It’s one of the few moments where he’s incredibly emotionally vulnerable and it shows. And this was the first moment when I went “okay, so this guy was down badly”

- Shibuya, “My six eyes tell me you’re Geto Suguru but my soul knows otherwise.” This is one of my favourite tropes and again, what can you say, what can you do, if barely hearing your long lost dead lover’s voice makes you stop for long enough to be trapped in the prison realm. What can you do when his voice alone floods you with memories of your youth. What can you do, if you can recognise him by the way he says your name? Nothing. Hence, here it’s when I gave up and opened ao3.

- The JJK official fanbook. There’s a line in there about Geto’s body reacting to Gojo’s words in Shibuya, when he tried to strangle Kenjaku. I don’t have this in English, but in my version it says that the reaction it’s “like a dragonfly that keeps moving after you cut off his head.” And, in my head, there are two layers to this. The first is that Gojo provokes this reaction — “Suguru, are you really letting this thing use your body like that?” - and even if you don’t read it romantically, it says a lot that this ignites the body’s muscle memory, and speaks about the type of character Geto Suguru is. The second, is that, well, protecting your friend is an instinct that stays in your body (not even your soul, geez) after you died and I cannot. I cannot.

There’s more and I can keep going, but these are the key moments that made me ship them. I’m not commenting on the bike scene in the opening because that’s straight out of a BL. Or the fact that the first time I read a stsg fanfic I thought that most of the things mentioned in the fic as canon events were fanon and made for the sake of shipping — when, in fact, where not.

And anon, hope it’s ok - I’m interpreting this question as “things in the show/manga” that made me ship them, rather than adding too much on narrative/themes! Thanks so much for leaving this question in my inbox, I always love to yap about those two 🥹

[dianaladrislovebot]

hey yall i was talking to a friend about certain ship dynamics in the series and after the video i posted a few days ago and some of the responses ive got (not particularly bad responses, just interesting thought provoking ones), i wanted to talk about it here too.

there’s a reason there’s a lot of ships i like and don’t like, and i’ve had it pointed out to me that it’s actually bc there’s a power imbalance. see, for example, drake and caine work as a relationship bc they’re both as fucked up and awful as each other and it balances out, but putting drake w people like diana or astrid or sam, people he’s personally victimised and tormented who’ve struggled to fight back, it adds a power imbalance that leaves the relationship being nothing but toxic and abusive unless you take creative fanon liberty and physically change the characters entirely.

it’s also why i don’t particularly like quinn and lana. at the point in the series when they’re together, lana seems to be at her lowest mentally and i wouldn’t say it’s unlikely that she took that out on him. i mean, she pulled a gun on the guy. lana’s the kind of person who’s fierce and opinionated. she’s someone who won’t take people’s shit. quinn’s the kind of guy who does. he’s someone who won’t stand up for himself and call her out on her behaviour, preferring to stay quiet in order to keep the peace. this is where it becomes toxic. it’s exactly why lana and sanjit DO work, bc sanjit refuses to allow her to pull something like that on him, while also forcing her to confront her demons in a healthy way and helps her heal from them, which is something quinn would never have been able to do. he’s simply not strong enough. lana’s too strong for him. too overpowering. it’s a game of the mouse and the lion.

alternatively, this is why i enjoy the (partly hypothetical) dynamic between quinn and caine and it’s why it’s one of my favourite ships in the series. at the point of their forced proximity, caine is at a much lower state than he was when he and quinn first met, having lost a lot by then and almost walking on eggshells. early fayz caine was far too cocky and arrogant but i think by fear he’s toned it down quite a lot. he’s still a prick, but he’s slightly less of a prick. he’s a prick who understands loss. in the first book, he hadn’t experienced that yet, and it’s what ultimately led to his downfall. he was too confident. meanwhile, early fayz quinn as previously mentioned was cowardly and wouldn’t stand up for himself, whereas late fayz quinn does exactly that w the penny plot. caine previously had something he could and did hold over quinn, but by the end it’s turned entirely on its head and it’s quinn who can hold something over caine. this doesn’t leave them overly unbalanced however, bc it simply knocks caine down to his level. it wouldn’t have worked in the first book bc they were both wildly different people in wildly different positions, but by the end of the series they’ve grown significantly, as well as their importance to the town, but can also still learn things from each other, like caine chilling the fuck out and perhaps not being a shit person, while quinn learns how to stand his ground and be stronger. it’s balanced. i think that’s the foundation any relationship needs, and in the series there’s a lot of ships that simply don’t have that.

a ship can have an interesting dynamic and still not realistically work. if there’s no balance, everything falls apart.

[blommis-writes]

"We should welcome twitter users coming to tumblr" yeah okay but have you ever had to interact with twitter fandom people? They're some of the nastiest beings to ever exist on this fucking planet.

They're the same who stalked Joseph Quinn wherever he went after season 4 of Stranger Things dropped and Eddie Munson became a fan favourite, leaking his dating app profile and his private cellphone number. (They also leaked Gaten Matarazzo’s cellphone number from what I got.)

They’re the same who harassed the Heartstopper cast so much that one of the main actors deactivated his twitter profile and the other was forced into coming out as bi.

And god forbid if you DARE criticizing the show they like, even if you’re a fan of it yourself. Just this morning I got a load of shit thrown at me on twitter because I dared pointing out how netflix acts in different ways towards wlw shows than mlm shows. I went about it logically looking at stats, and used First Kill and Young Royals as an example, because I watched both and the stats were very different in terms of budget, of views, etc. so overall, an easier comparison to make than between two shows who had almost identical stats.

Somehow (considering I usually get, at most 10 interactions under a tweet on a good day), my tweet blew up among Young Royals fans and I got 1000+ among replies and qrts of people who disagreed and I thought okay, not everybody has the same opinion right? Conctructive criticism is a thing right?

Well, on the goddamn blue bird app it is not.

People just said stuff like “it’s just because that First Kill sucks ass” and I tried explaining why (aka the tanking starting budget), so they went on to straight up calling me stupid, dumb, ignorant, they said I did not understand that one is Netflix USA and the other is from Netflix Nordic, mixed with a lot of swearwords in the crassest display ever.

And like. The fun thing is, I’m completing a master’s degree in Swedish. With my main faculty being media criticism. It will literally be my job, one day, to translate and criticize Swedish-speaking and English-speaking media.

Plus, though it’s not one of my favourites, I’m a fan of Young Royals myself because I started watching it to practice my Swedish language skills, and actually worked with its subtitles for a project of translation I had to do for class.

Tumblr may be a hellsite (affectionate) bit it’s really chill now, and kind of a safe heaven for me where I can interact with any kind of fandom and talk freely about which shows, characters and ships/pairings I love (i.e. apparently everyone on twitter is a Billy Hargrove anti. Seriously. Went to see if there were some fanarts, hcs, or other pieces of fanon really, but there was nothing except for hate tweets against both the characters and fans who like him), even when it comes to more serious and technical stuff like why netflix dooms certain shows from the start (cough cough First Kill cough cough) and I would hate to see it become full of hate just like twitter is.

Soooo, tl;dr: Like hell am I welcoming people you can’t have a civil discussion over anything with here.

[blackgoldaster]

I don't like pure evil Gasters

I don’t like pure evil Gasters.

Or rather, I don’t like Gasters who get treated like they’re (pure) evil.

If Gaster is anything like any other character in both Undertale and Deltarune, he won’t be pure evil. His ‘evil’ will most likely come from pain, if all the pain mentions have anything to say about it.

Basically, If Spamton and Jevil can be forgiven (and become fan favorites) because their evil was from a source of pain…

Then why would Gaster be any different.

Why should we assume and treat Gaster like he’s pure evil, and thus, claim he deserves the pain…

When we treat nobody else like that.

Sure, there is the spade king, but the worst thing that happened to him was that he was thrown in a cell.

A far cry from being thrown into (metaphorical) hell, as so many people headcanon happened to Gaster.

Nobody in Undertale or Deltarune deserves their pain, it’s one of the core traits of these games. So why should Gaster be the sole exception.

If the vilification of Chara can result in an entire defence squad protesting, then why does nobody care that Gaster gets treated like a scapegoat as well?

I think it’s because we see so little of Gaster, plus his portrayal as devilish and creepy, makes people just. Not sympathise with him.

And I find that so unrelatable, as someone who felt really bad for Gaster ever since I discovered Goner Kid.

Which heightened the more fanfiction I read.

Other people hate Gaster because of their personal headcanons, which would be fine, except for the fact that AUs like Handplates and Underverse became so popular, that Hateable Gasters became so common, that it’s both very difficult to avoid…

And that there’s barely any variation.

The only Gaster headcanons that are popular are Dadster, which is usually good, sometimes neutral, rarely evil, and Badster, which always gets treated like evil no matter how nuanced he gets made (and people think the only way he can redeem himself is to be a dadster)...

And ships, more specifically Grillster (which is pure fanon), Kingdings (which makes more sense than Grillster at least) and Sanster, which gets called incest by dadster fans who can’t stand people have different headcanons than themselves.

And guess what? That's not much. If you just so happen to have completely different Gaster headcanons than any of these, including ones that are actually based on canon rather than preference…

Well, then you’re screwed in the content department, so that your only option is to look for niche content, blocking an endless stream of popular content just to get to it…

Or to write your own stories (assuming you can).

Now, I clearly don’t speak for most people here. In fact, I'm speaking about my own experiences here.

Remember the theory that Sans and Papyrus are pieces of Gaster? Or the theory that Papyrus is Gaster? Or even that Sans is Gaster?

Those theories never got popular.

People say it's because they think it's unlikely, but i suspect it's really because not many people just. Liked the idea that Sans and Papyrus could be one person we know nothing about that might be potentially evil.

In a similar fashion, I don’t think dadster and badster got popular because they are ‘likely to be true’ (which I heavily disagree with), but because most fans prefer some mundane dad whose entire character is determined with how he treats Sans, and to a lesser extend, Papyrus, over the Yume Nikki inspired eldritch man that Gaster most likely is in canon.

Which I personally think is really boring!

And if canon has anything to say about it, if Gaster turns out to be the father, he will be anything but mundane and he’ll actually have a characterization that isn’t centered around the fan favourite.

[bleachbleachbleach]

i'm interested - idk if you've ever answered this before, but what are your favourite bleach ships, canon and not?

We present two canon ships and two fanon ships, all of which we love dearly:

Byakuya and Zaraki fucked in the dangai (canon)

Hisagi/Ishida, because Hisagi said it first (also canon)

Hisagi/Akon, wherein, as Dieselsexuals, their relationship is structured by and around watching Fast and Furious movies together (canon to us)

Hitsugaya/Byakuya/Aizen, in the Bleach Rock Musical verse (canon to us)

whipplefilter: I don’t really SHIP ship things. At least, I do not consider a ship, and have something swell in me, something that provokes the thoughts, and gives me experiences that are meaningful and precious. I love character relationships, absolutely, THE BEST THING, the thing I will devote my life to!! But I think when people talk about their ships, or shipping, I get the impression they’re talking about that and also something more than that, and that’s not my experience of pairings.

As far as fanworks go: For art, I’m happy to see renditions of most anything! For fic I mostly read HitsuHina and RenRuki, because they are my top blorbos, but there are a lot of pairings I’d probably read if something pinged me in an excerpt or summary. For example, I LOVE Emergent Properties, which is a Grimmjow/Akon fic by @berrymascarpone. I haven’t read very much doomed Matsumoto/Ichimaru, but their scenes in the Winter War chapters may be my highlight of that entire arc.

Other ships I am nominally interested in but not always for great reasons, and which I will put in a separate post because this got very long:

Basically any kind of weird oddball thing brewing in the 12th

Soi Fon/Rukia

Hinamori/Kira, Hinamori/Nanao, and Hinamori/Isane

Kira/Akon/Rose/Hisagi

Soi Fon/Hitsugaya and Byakuya/Hitsugaya/Zaraki

ippoddity:

I also do not really ride or die for any particular ship (unless it’s Dieselsexual Hisagi/Akon). As long as it’s well-written/well-presented and I can see the characters meshing, I’m down to try just about anything. Like whipplefilter, I’m mostly interested in characters, and if an exploration of their character is through the lens of a relationship, that’s what piques my interest!

In terms of pairings I usually find myself reading, it’s usually RenRuki, IchiHime, because that’s what seems to come across my dash. I just want to add that I find Grimmjow/Akon very interesting, and @chujellies has some art that really makes my mind go brr. But there’s other pairings that I also really enjoy thinking about (in no particular order):

Traitor Trio (Aizen, Ichimaru, Tousen) and their lieutenants (Hinamori, Kira, Hisagi)

Relatedly, incarnations of Ichimaru/Tousen/Kira/Hisagi and however you want to pair them off

Hisagi/anyone

Zaraki/Mayuri

Kyouraku/Ukitake

Rose/Kira

Find the explanations post here

[arthurtaylorlester]

D, K and U for the fandom ask game? :D

D - A pairing you wish you liked but just can’t.

back when i was in the hamilton fandom, i just didn't get why people shipped lams (john laurens/alexander hamilton). like sure irl they were an item (probably) but like! laurens is barely in the show, he has no canon personality and the fanon one sucks. anyways i shipped hamilton and burr instead lol (i still do lowkey)

K - What character has your favourite development arc/the best development arc?

ooh, this is a tough one, i'm not sure. i really like cecil's progression throughout the whole show, going from a government yes-man to standing up for change and not trusting the government blindly multiple times. it's lovely to see people be changed by the ones they love, because i'm certain that without meeting carlos, it wouldn't have been as easy for him to change :)

U - Three favourite characters from three different fandoms, and why they’re your favourites.

ok ok let's get into it

john doe malevolent ; do i even need to say? he's like. my blorbo-est blorbo. he's done absolutely wrong in my eyes. he's fucking fantastic, he's stupid but he's also really smart! i relate to his lack-of-humanity-yet-still-trying thing very much. i like mostly because i feel like he does most of time.

ty betteridge WOE.BEGONE ; ty betteridge the man you are !!! i went from not caring about him to hating him circa s7 and fell in love with his character during season 9 when outlaw!ty became a thing! mostly i like him a lot because of clinical he is with his friendships, but like it's not a façade that's just how he is with everyone

aziraphale good omens ; outlier because he isn't a podcast character (but he is technically an audio-drama character) but aziraphale has my whole heart. from collecting books to indulging in food to always trying to save everyone, he's just sooooooo. i love him very much.

conclusion? i like characters that are functionally me

thanks for asking ^_^

[holycartoonwarrior]

do you ship Stewy and Roman

Nope. Not even a lil. I know outside of Kenstewy it’s pretty popular but idk. They would NOT work. Shivstewy is a more fun hypothetically pairing cuz they’re both such catty cunts and I want to see them be a well oiled stabbing murder machine together. And Kenstewy is my favourite yaoi yuri straight all in one couple. I just think roman and Stewy aren’t suited for each other But also I don’t even think they’d be dysfunctional in a fun way like Tom and Stewy is a funnier weird messed up couple. I just find Roman and Stewy a boring idea and a lot of the writing around it I’ve seen from FANON just feel like the worst parts of some kenstewy fics (meek white man and his ethnically ambiguous big strong man protector) but…..more. Esp when ppl add in the sexual component where Roman’s the blushing virg and Stewy’s the sex master ready to lay down some epic sex moves Lmao. Idk if u like it that’s cool. But for me? shivstewy and Kenstewy>>> also obligatory romtom shout out

[saintsenara]

Love your ship opinions! They’re so much fun. If you’re still answering them… how do you feel about Severus/Regulus as a ship?

thank you very much for the ask, anon!

here is a little, tiny spoiler for my fic scylla and charybdis… severus and regulus are going to hook up.

it’s not, however, going to be great [and it is… not the main ship of that piece…].

i’ve written before about how much i hate the standard fanon characterisation which has coalesced around regulus - above all the fact that it always seems to make him incredibly sweet, when he is, canonically, someone who was keeping a pro-terrorist moodboard above his bed.

which means that the snegulus i’m writing has, as part of it, a regulus who is not a particularly nice person and whose traits therefore impact the relationship in a way which makes it quite toxic.

above all, as we know from sirius, regulus was not only someone who was a sincere blood-supremacist in his youth, but also someone who believed utterly in the restrictive class structures which govern the wizarding world. he’s obsessed with family and lineage and duty [including the duty to produce more purebloods, which means he’s… conflicted, to say the least, about his attraction to another man], and this is going to be in constant tension with the fact that snape clearly hates the classism baked into wizarding society, which sees doors close in his face for the crime of being poor, having a muggle surname, and having a regional accent.

and, indeed, this tension causes conflict within their shared interest in voldemort. it’s clear in canon that snape’s attraction to the death eaters is because voldemort - himself shut out of the social class he considers his birthright because his name is tom riddle rather than tom gaunt - offers him a way to transcend class barriers and become important simply because of his magical talent. regulus, in contrast, obviously believes that voldemort’s aim is oligarchy - and that his assault on the ministry will end with a pureblood minister of magic being appointed and the old families given the respect he thinks they deserve. he’s not going to understand why voldemort is highly likely to prefer snape - whose personality is strikingly close to his own, and whose background is obviously something voldemort is sympathetic to - and i am wedded to the idea that regulus becomes quite unpleasant once he realises that he is not the dark lord’s favourite death eater just because he’s a black. snape, himself prone to jealous rages, isn't going to lie down and take that...

still… it’s probably a more fulfilling relationship than jegulus.

[elven-kisses]

LITERALLY AAAA YOU UNDERSTAND FINALLY SOMEONE GETS IT!! I’m biased to ships that involve scar because he’s my favourite atm, but I really wish more love was shown to mumscar or convex or mumscarian because they actually display a healthy relationship whereas most of the scarian stuff I see makes it seem like grian really dislikes scar and that’s not true! They’re good friends man!! Even non-romantic media of desertduo often depicts scar as a burden to Grian and it just makes me so sad cuz it’s so out of character :((

yeah, love/hate relationships can be fun sometimes but I think the dynamic fanon tends to push on them is pretty toxic. to be honest, I'm not the most knowledgeable on it since I almost avoid scarian like the plague, but I completely get what you're saying

I just wish people played into the more silly side of their characters more because you miss a lot of what scarian has to offer if you take it too seriously :')

also completely agree abt the other ships, they have much smaller fan bases(?) in comparison so the popular ship syndrome hasn't gotten them yet (thankfully)!!

what gets me most is that grian and scar equally annoy the shit out of each other but its always depicted as one of them being awful and the other getting their feels hurt like... no they are both evil and terrible that's why they work so well+!!!!!!

[cosmicriff]

001 MLP

Favorite character: Twilight

Least Favorite character: hmm Trenderhoof ig

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): raripie, fluttercord, appledash, twiset, spikebelle

Character I find most attractive: they’re horses Twilight

Character I would marry: they’re horses Twilight

Character I would be best friends with: Pinkie

A random thought: Big Mac should’ve been transfem

An unpopular opinion: never cared for flutterdash. Always saw them as having more of a sister like relationship and I wish there was more of that in fanon

My canon OTP: fluttercord

Non-canon OTP: raripie

Most badass character: Twilight

Pairing I am not a fan of: again, flutterdash

Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): Diamond Tiara. She got redeemed and never showed up again

Favourite friendship: Pinkie and Rainbow! They were my first ship but now I think I like them platonically more!

Ask Meme

[nappybones5]

What are your favorite things about Raven x Taiyang ship? Outside of their whole relationship not getting showed in the show, is there something you don't like about the ship?

What songs remind you of them?

Thanks for the ask, first off, and sorry I’ve taken a little to get back to you. This took me a bit to type up and I did it instead of working on more Phoenix stories lmao. I did end up getting a bit grouchy about Tai as a character, so fair warning, there’s a bit of critical content here; you can of course scroll right past it to get to the good stuff.

Probably my favourite thing about Raven x Taiyang is the fanfiction; it’s as you say, their relationship is never actually shown in the show, a ship that sunk well before it even sailed-which, fair. It’s not their show. But it still irritates me, because Raven was a character who immediately caught my interest on Youtube because she was hot, and then I watched those videos and I thought “oh wow this lady’s got some serious baggage”. That scene in V5, where Raven’s gaze drops from Yang to the ground and she breathes Tai’s name piqued my interest in that man a thousandfold, and then it turns out he’s…there. He’s been sitting on his ass at home, gardening and gawking the telly while his children fight in the forever war that he must have some idea of, if his glare to Qrow at the end of V3 meant anything. It’s been said before by others: Tai being the stay-at-home parent in an empty house makes no sense. It’s authorial intervention to make sure the protagonists didn’t curbstomp their way through the events of V4-5 with two veteran Huntsmen (sidenote, how cool would it have been if instead of doing nothing and getting left behind by the story, Tai had accompanied Yang to Raven? I mean, shit, if Raven had an out-of-body moment at the mere mention of her ex-husband what would his presence in those scenes have done? The angst! The drama! I AM LITERALLY PICTURING A SCENE IN WHICH Raven ushers them into the tent without a fight, she’s twiddling her thumbs like “aha well, you see…fuck” while Vernal is like “why…is she…OH YOU MUST BE TAI” and then Weiss breaks out of the cage and she’s wiping the floor with those tribal jobbers-and Raven turns to Tai and Yang while they have no idea what's going on, Yang’s instinctively stood up before Tai’s like “nah this sounds like a her problem” and Yang goes “oh yeahhhhh! Good luck bitch lmao”).

You ask what I don’t like about the ship. I’d argue there’s nothing to dislike, because there is practically nothing there, beyond the maddening tease of a handful of scenes that never amount to anything. What I do dislike are the characters as they are written in canon-Raven is hilariously incoherent (“Salem only uses people until they are no longer useful” “…Are you having a stroke” “Yes. Vernal get help”) and Tai is boringly incoherent. They make no sense and they reek of wasted potential.

But the fanfiction. The shit that fan writers get up to when they’re not being hemmed in by canon. <> I originally had a little list of recommendations written up, but on second thought I am unsure how comfortable those writers would be with getting mentioned in a post that is probably going to be tagged RWDE. So…rest assured, there’s some good shit out there, you just have to look. But my favourite one is a genfic that isn’t tagged Raven Branwen/Taiyang Xiao Long. So I’m sorry. <>

Aside from the fanfiction that started all this, I guess I’m also very fond of my own interpretation of Phoenix; think black cat golden retriever, except that the cat is a desperate thing and the dog is mangy as all hell, because I’ve said it before, I don’t like fanon STRQ-era fuckboy Tai. It’s nothing personal, I just don’t care for writing that kind of archetype. Canon Tai isn’t particularly interesting to me either. I consider him a narrative deadweight EXCEPT in the matter of how he relates to Raven, who is far and away the more compelling character to me (hopefully it doesn’t show in my writing, considering what I’m about to get into).

Writing Tai for me personally has been like constantly asking myself the question: Who did Raven Branwen fall in love with? My answer, and I guess parcelled with it the answer to your first question, about what I actually like about Phoenix, is that Raven fell in love with someone who was so unexpectedly like her-with all her rage and doubt and hurt-someone who has suffered, if not measure for measure, a life not unlike hers, and who yet despite it all is still holding out hope-is still fundamentally a good person. Life in the tribe broke that scared little girl-it made her solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. Tai, on the other hand, drank his milk. With Tai, she doesn’t get the excuse of ‘life was shitty to me so I’m dealing it back’; he sees her, and Raven likewise, because to their mutual shock and rage, they’re looking into a mirror.

I know opposites attract is and probably always will be in romantic vogue, but I like to think that that trope is only the superficial appearance of Phoenix. I imagine them initially enraged by each other, barely able to breathe in the same room without scoffing or making some biting joke (more often than not Raven instigating, Tai retaliating). As the seasons change, rage cools to resignation, and a kind of morbid curiosity sets in. From Raven’s perspective: Why are you like this? Where do you find the will to care? I need to know. From Tai’s: Why are you like this? Can I help you? I want to help. Them working their way from a tentative ceasefire to a comfortable peace; days and days gone without a backbiting that feels so petty and pointless to them now-or if it persists, everyone can feel that there’s no more heat to it. They’re together more often than they’re not-they’re the only people that can pull each other back from the brink, that can realise that the ever-mediative Tai or the taciturn Raven was even there. One blazing day in spring, the sun is on her skin and his hands are in her hair and her mind can only stutter out a double ‘Oh’ before their lips brush and it occurs to her that even if she runs now, she’ll stay. So for a brief and blessed time, she stays, whole, taking an anxious, guilty pleasure in this life that she hates she doesn’t hate. Even after everything she’s done, maybe she has a right to life too. Coming home every day to a home she’s never known-he smells like timber and stock, roses and earth. He’s warm when she’s cold, he’s kind to her when she’s cruel to herself-he holds her as the setting sun washes them in rosegold and she hopes.

And then Yang is born. It’s hardly her fault-for the first week or so, Raven loves her. But the creep of post-partum depression exacerbates all that old rage and doubt and hurt. She’s angrier than usual and she doesn’t know why. Why is she here? She’s killed dozens of men like Tai before-good men, fathers. She’s killed the occasional scrawny kid who fought back, who decided their mementos were worth more to them than their shitty lives. And she gets to be a mother? One day she looks at Yang and she’s just. Disgusted. She’s disgusted by her, and suddenly she’s terrified by herself. She’s going to get someone killed. Well, she can do that somewhere else.

Tai left to father Yang, alone. Raven in the thick of her PPD, making a name for herself across Anima. Nodding until her head hurts when she’s sober and her mind is drawn home. Yes, she made the right choice.

And then the lift of that awful fog. Just as she’s earned the title of ‘Bandit Queen’ it feels worse than meaningless. What the fuck is she doing? Where’s Tai, where’s Yang? Stumbling through that portal. She left them without a damn thing, what was she expecting? They look happy together. She won’t ruin that for them, not again. She staggers back through the portal, heart still rotting in that old home.

Years and years and years passing, letting this new wound scab and scar but it still stings, the worst mistake she’ll ever pay for. Every night, tired eyes to the tent roof, wondering what the look on Tai’s face would be if she cut a path to him right now. She twists, he turns, they grasp at nothing and laugh at jokes half-remembered in the dark. He misses the person he used to be. She doesn’t. She wishes she’d been better.

My favourite thing about Raven x Taiyang is all the shit I made up about them. As for the music!

Going in chronological order of the progression of the relationship, I love to imagine Perfect Pair as a mood for Raven and Tai in their prime. A love unconditional, trusting the other to hold their heart in their hands without breaking it. This followed by the super-sentimental Herz über Kopf (Heart over Head), Raven fighting all the torturous insecurities she has about her right to this life. Two optimistic songs, followed by the steel chair of Tek It to the face, Tai trying to shrug off the betrayal, Raven more than faintly ashamed. This to be emphasised by Out of My League, as a song from her perspective after it finally, really hits her what she’s done. And conclude with Show Me How, a song I reckon perfectly encapsulates the sense of lost love that is radiated by these absolutely miserable, mourning, yearning people. 😊

[go-to-the-mirror]

any thoughts on basira and daisy for the ask game?

[ID in alt: @isnt-loving-lovely’s ship bingo. The title is “ship bingo.” From left to right, top to bottom, the spots are: “I’d read a fic,” “sure i can see it,” “otp x 1000,” “the angst. the drama,” “t4t,” “qpr,” “unhealthy in a good way,” “been married for 30 years,” “unhealthy in a BAD way,” “best in a certain part of canon,” “canon no, fanon yes,” “they sure do exist,” “free space,” “I didn’t know about that one,” “rotating in my brain like a microwave,” “theyre exes,” “i can see the appeal,” “I have So Many Headcanons,” “awwe I love them :),” “I used to like them a lot more;” “no,” “part of a bigger polycule,” “fandom doesn’t know them like I do,” “canon did them Wrong,” “wlw/mlm solidarity.” Crossed out in purple is: “unhealthy in a BAD way,” “free space,” “i can see the appeal,” “no,” and “fandom doesn’t know them like I do.” “i can see the appeal” is only crossed out a little. “no” is crossed out a lot. /End ID]

(CW vague mention of TMA canon-typical police stuff)

Alright, I have Feelings about Dasira, but I’m mostly going to be talking about it in an aromantic way, because I am not the person who knows enough to talk about TMA and cops. (But I will say that if one more person headcanons Daisy with BPD I am going to Die, please Stop.)

So, as an aromantic person, I appreciate that canon!Dasira is completely platonic. They absolutely suck ✨ platonically ✨. They’re a toxic ✨ platonic ✨ relationship. Basira has double standards about Daisy killing people versus Jon taking people’s statements, but her feelings for Daisy are completely platonic.

Yes, queer romantic relationships are important in fiction, I acknowledge this and I’m not going to say it doesn’t give me warm fuzzy feelings to have queer romance be a thing, I love it as much as the next person, but as an aromantic person, I absolutely adore how Daisy and Basira can be so devoted to each other — to the point of it being harmful to the people around them, don’t think I have forgotten — and have the relationship still be completely platonic.

I have a problem with the TMA fandom and how a lot of people just sort of… assume romantic!Dasira is canon, when it’s not. Some of my favourite fic authors are guilty of this (I will not name names because. No. They’re lovely. I don’t know if I have the power to make people do anon hate and I don’t want to find out), and it’s just… hhh. It makes me annoyed. Ship and Let Ship, yeah yeah, but also, aaa, just. It doesn’t sit well with me, personally.

Also, not the right person to be talking on this, but while I really like Daisy’s redemption (?) arc and the message of forgiveness not being necessary but trying to do better being necessary, I… hm. Idk. I just don’t want to say something wrong, so I tend to just stay away from Daisy and Basira as characters. Don’t have much experience with it and have not done enough reading on it.

Anyway, thank you for the ask, you’re v snazzy, and if anyone else wants to… uh you can send stuff for:

MCYT (specifically Hermitcraft and adjacent, but I can do any MCYT, I’ve absorbed some stuff via osmosis), BNHA/MHA (I had a phase), PJO (and related fandoms), TMA, Malevolent, WTNV, RQG, TMC, and any other fandoms you fancy but those are the main ones.