#when there are insanely popular ships out there where the characters barely interact

[tenebrous-academic]

I think starting off with bucktommy having so many scenes focusing on them just made us greedy (Understandable, how could you get enough of them?😭). Like I'm mourning tommy's scene with henren. It's already established that chimney is bucktommy warrior but I really wanted to see how things between hen and tommy are. Like damn, there's no way we're finding out huh?

But considering how short the season is I think tim is doing a good job at establishing bt. We've seen tommy in many 118 important moments (the rescue, madney's wedding, the ceremony, even mentioned in Bobby's goodbye 😭, and the hospital). It's safe to say that tommy is like no other love interest. And buck already knows/feels that much. We only need the little nudge that makes him go: "yes, he's is the one for me". Could be in the hospital scene, could be not.

But the desperation is felt and REAL, like it's our last chance to get any substantial bt scenes to live off during the hiatus. It's gonna be wild out there

Anon, we were given a FEAST at the start of this season. The soft conversations, the chin grabs, the promise of something more beginning to blossom???? We had everything we wanted in the start of their relationship. The queer awakening of Buck was given so much attention and screen time (as it should) and, once the storyline focused on other characters (as it also should because this isn’t just the Buck show), we had to make do with small interactions and background scenes. But oh my, what we were given to begin with was almost too good to be true. It was such an authentic start to a relationship. The chemistry, awkwardness, earnestness, and desire was so amazing to witness because it felt so real and lasting. And it’s created such a believable couple that we’re still here, even though we’ve basically had nothing else to go off of since the kiss in the hospital.

It absolutely makes sense that people are saying it doesn’t feel like we’ve been shown enough of an established relationship because we were given so much of the start of the relationship. There seems to be a disconnect now where, if people aren’t shown it, then it just doesn’t exist. I don’t agree with it, but I understand why some fans are upset or are claiming it’s not there.

And, because this fandom is amazing, we’ve thought of all the scenes and interactions we want to see. Just look at A03 for the sheer untapped potential of Tevan content. But we’re not getting them because this show already has so much to showcase. RIP Hen and Tommy discussion scene, RIP Hen and Buck heart-to-heart over Buck’s newly discovered bisexual identity.

I completely agree that Tim is doing his best to give everyone equal screen time. We already know he’s returned from his Lone Star vacation with a determination to bring Buck back to former glory and I think the journey he’s on now is going to be incredible to witness. Tim is laying a foundation for Tevan in a way that isn’t monopolizing the screen (which we know Buddie fans would also complain about if that were happening) and he’s giving us just enough crumbs to keep us fed. The scenes you highlighted are so important and it’s weaving Tommy into the fabric of the 118. You’re so right that it’s unlike any other love interest. Taylor was there but we know she was there for the stories and the exploitation. Tommy is there for Buck.

Depending on what we get next episode for the finale this hiatus is going to be so wild. If we’re lucky, we’ll get some truly sweet moments between Tommy and Buck. If we’re not lucky, Tommy will only be there briefly (or maybe even only mentioned) and we’ll have to rely on fanfics to sustain us with codas and AUs.

Either way, what a way to go.

[mari-lair]

I got some asks about aoinene before so i may as well get my view on them off my chest.

( warning: I have a negative bias toward this ship and despite trying to be brief and unbias, I very very likely failed.)

To me, Aoinene makes each other worse, not as people, but as characters.

It's the kind of ship that the more I look at it the more empty their friendship feels, and yes sure they have their problems, but I don't mind when a ship have issues (hakubo and sumire are such a cool dynamic, 10/10 for me and they are a million times more 'toxic' then aoinene will ever be), but the aoinene problem is that they feel like fanservice. There is no conflict. There is nothing. They become shadows of themselves.

Aoi isn't stuck in the "I am an exposition girl :D" role because she is oblivious to the bigger story, and all they need is communication, Nene put her there. Iis insane that they've known each other for 2 years but she don't know anything about Aoi. Every time we learn something interesting about Aoi, is when she is seen in other's people's pov, even characters that barely interact with her like Teru and Mei have a better understanding of Aoi than Nene.

To Nene, Aoi is the troupe of a perfect friend. Nene cannot process her flaws, she rejects the idea, and Aoi can't make Nene talk, face her own issues. So there is never conflict. Their friendship is a love that morphed into a horror situation. A staged friendship.

"Aoi is cute and nice and kind. I refuse to believe she wouldl ever be anything else, let's not think about how i was thrown in the trash by her, that aoi was mean, she was a fake. I will not accept her being the real aoi. I won't even think about it."

"I know Nene is going through a lot but I need to play the happy girl with no troubles role for her. I won't ask about her problems or even show hints that I know something is off after learning about supernaturals, and that her crush is dead, and human sacrifices are a thing that happen. That's not what she wants from miss popular me."

It reach the point where their fluffy arts feel like fanservice to me, more of a 'look! cute girls doing cute things!! Aren't they such good friends??' photoshoot magazine than a genuine bond.

Look at this beautiful and cute art for exemple.

You would imagine the chapter is about them, that they will have some form of talk about their feelings in it, so much happened since the last time they talked after all!

Maybe Aoi apologize for throwing Nene out while Nene apologize for planning to die without Aoi's consent, making the same selfish mistake Hanako had done to her when he sacrificed Aoi so Nene could live. Maybe is just a quiet talk about how much things changed? A lighthearted but warm chat of how disorienting seeing supernaturals are as former girls that never had to deal with it? Something, anything, to connect them. Maybe the oposite, a big conflict that gets ugly now that the masks are down...? We had a lot of those in this arc, like kou and teru in chap 87, aoi and akane in chap 69, nene and hanako inc hapter 91! But no.

There is nothing. Is always nothing when they talk.

This beautiful cover art is from the chapter where Aoi issues were immediately brushed aside when she tried to bring them up and the usual bubbly Aoi was forced to come back.

They are bafflingly shallow for how much time they spend together and how much potential is bubbling under their mask, keeping their basic dynamic from their introduction even when the characters are begging for something to change.

So that's why I dislike them, they don't make each other better, they don't even have the gall to make each other act worse, they just make each other boring. Aoi is only allowed to be a fleshed out character when we get away from Nene's pov.

Is only through her interactions with other characters that any hint of dept, or hell, even fun quirks and overall aspects of her personality that are hinted with her friendship with nene, are explored or allowed to shine.

There is potential though! And I could see myself enjoying writing a one-shot exploring how painful for both parties the shallowness of their relationship is in some alternative universe, but unfortunetely the fandom ruined it for me. Which is a shame, since Nene is aoi only other friend, and their charade friendship is genuinely valued/loved by the other.

I tried to read fics and analysis to see if I was missing something but the fandom have a 'omg they are so cute and can do nothing wrong! All their issues will disappear if they hold hands <3' take on them, with so much mischaracterization both girls become unrecognizable. There is also a lot of Akane and aoikane hate, even masked aoi hate, cause god forbid their dear girlboss angelic lesbian queen have any negative feelings towards her bestie or likes a boy whose main flaw used to be the same as Nene (idolizing her to the point of dehumanization), and while that is not the manga's fault, it does affect my negative bias for this ship, make it far stronger.

After 2 years in the fandom, I just don't have the patience for this ship anymore. I don't think people are secretly evil if they ship aoinene or project themselves onto the girls, but it just isn't my thing. I am not looking for a fight either Anon, I block people cause I want as much peace as i can, and if what they ship makes me uncomfortable, is not their problem, is mine. Let them have fun out of my sight so we both strive pls.

[sarcasticgaypotato]

thoughts on Caroline?

What to say about Caroline?

She's a massively important character to the franchise, but she barely speaks. She's constantly present in the story, but she's only acknowledged a handful of times. She's everywhere and nowhere, she's everything and nothing at all.

She's GLaDOS, but she isn't, or is she?

Depending on your perspective of Caroline, we either know a lot about her personality or next to nothing.

I think my initial impression of Caroline as a character was much more negative because it was shaped by fanon interpretation.

It's probably not a huge secret that I don't enjoy c/aveline, and that WAS the majority of Caroline content for a long time. I honestly kind of resented that ship, partially because it practically became a given that where there's Old Aperture, there's this ship. These two who barely interacted were EVERYWHERE, and I always got the feeling that the only reason they were popular as a couple was because it's a m/f ship, and the Portal fandom was practically beside itself with excitement to focus on any male character.

I'm not here to ship-bash, if that's your cup of tea, good for you. But personally? Not for me, and it negatively colored my perception of her for a while. It felt a bit like she was a character defined by fanon more than anything else, just there to be in a relationship with Cave (healthy or otherwise) just so it can end in tragedy when he puts her into the robot. I understand why people might enjoy that, but I've always felt like it cheapens GLaDOS's (and by extension, Caroline's) story to make it all amount to just 'being the girlfriend of a mad scientist and tragically paying the price.'

Cave's a creep! He, in my opinion, probably thought his relationship with Caroline was much more friendly than it was. She responds to him like a secretary who knows how to please her boss— "Yes sir Mr. Johnson!"— but nothing personal. She was probably nice and polite because she was a secretary, and look at the era she lived in. If she wasn't all sweet and cheery, Cave probably would've told her to smile more.

So does that mean I think she's the opposite of what we hear? Is she sadistic and cruel like GLaDOS is? No, I'm not saying that either. I'll get into who and what I think Caroline is in a second, but above all else I wanted to point out my frustration with how she's portrayed in connection to Cave. Making her Cave's love interest is boring and bland to me, basing their connection off of the same level of friendliness from her that I've shown to people working in customer service. It's just part of the job.

For Caroline herself? I'm also not a fan of 'evil Caroline' takes. I mean I love a girlboss, but it sort of misses the point here. If Caroline was always evil, sadistic, and scheming, it waters down GLaDOS and her development. If Caroline is too similar to GLaDOS, it takes away from the weight of who and what GLaDOS is. If they’re too dissimilar, it’s difficult to imagine the connection between them.

The fandom was so obsessed with the incorrect— and stupid— idea that Caroline is Chell’s mother that it missed the much more obvious metaphor under their noses. Caroline is GLaDOS’s mother.

Cut from the same cloth, GLaDOS is born of her, but she isn’t her. Without Caroline, GLaDOS would never exist, but it would be absurd to say that GLaDOS is the same person that Caroline is. GLaDOS grew, changed, and became who we saw at the end of Portal 2 much in the same way that anyone grows into being their own person, not a copy of their parents.

Here I go talking about GLaDOS in this ask about Caroline— it’s impossible not to.

If you want my personal take on Caroline?

I think she was a smart woman, keeping up with the actions of a madman and holding her head above the flood of insanity. I think she was able to look the other way when she had to, anyone who worked at Aperture needed that dubious morality. That being said, I think she had a heart. We can all debate until we die whether or not GLaDOS was remotely truthful at the end of Portal 2 about deleting her, but I think there’s a reason she attributed her act of compassion to Caroline— it wasn’t Caroline forcing her hand (claw?) via possession, but rather, she is the only framework GLaDOS has to reference that feeling. That scene is definitely GLaDOS projecting her own emotions onto someone else to avoid confronting them, but I don’t think she would make that comparison for no reason, Caroline might have been how she learned that emotion, even if the feeling is all her own.

Ultimately, Caroline is a character we will only really ever understand through the lens of other characters. We can only try to extrapolate who she is from what we see and hear, but she will likely always be a bit of a mystery. She’s the ghost haunting this franchise, and I kind of love her for it.

[azulas-daddy-kink]

Z*kka is a very good example I like to use when I talk about how trend, timing and tropes effect fandoms that you don't see happen in older fandoms

The ATLA renaissance happened during the same time the Voltron trainwreck happened. At the same time, certain tropes like opposites attract, blue/red gays etc are insanely popular. Almost every big thing falls into this easy category of who fits who in their incorrect quotes or popular tropes and ship dynamic.

And Z*kka fits the bill. Silly/Serious? Check. Conventionally attractive guys? Check. Blue/Red? Check. On paper, they sound like any other popular ships that technically speaking would make at least a decent ship.

Except they don't. Because they're from a 3 seasons show where they canonically don't have that much meaningful interaction, barely any acknowledgement of each other, and they just don't have chemistry. They DON'T. Just because they LOOK like they fit on the surface level doesn't mean they actually do. Sometimes opposites don't attract. Sometimes the characters who fall easily into a ship dynamic aren't actually compatible.

The ship is solid proof that modern fandoms these days prioritize surface level things over what canon actually gives them. I UNDERSTAND why some people like z*kka, but it DOES NOT deserve the level of popularity it receives! And the fact it became one of the most popular ships in ATLA because the voltron fans project kl*nce into the ship is IMO disheartening. They already choose what they wish to see instead of appreciating what these characters got and who they actually connect with in canon.

I know I sound pretentious, but I really can't stand these kinds of fans because of how much they REFUSE to engage in canon. Tropes are nice. Having preferences is not a crime. But actively forcing your own vision into canon just because they fit your tastes in the most shallow way possible is just sad. Why bother engage in any new media then? Why not actually pick up something that actively fits your taste?

You said it all, Anon!

I seriously had no idea where Zukka even came from until recently.

It wasn't a thing when the show was airing and then suddenly it just exploded out of nowhere. I was so baffled. I was like "why this?" Of all the slash ships people could have latched onto. Jetko is right there. Hell, even Zukaang and Sokka/Aang make way more sense.

You're so right, people just base everything off """vibes""" or aesthetics, or just jump on the bandwagon when a ship/headcanon gets popular without giving it any real thought. And because Zukka is just a copy+paste version of Klance, they just wind up wildly ooc and it's like they're two entirely different characters. I have to ask myself if these people even like Zuko or Sokka independently...

And for the record, I don't think you sound shallow at all. The enforcement of popular headcanons as canon is a problem in all fandoms, but it's especially bad in this one.

If it sounds like I'm pointing the finger solely at Zukka shippers, I'm not. Zutara shippers are just as bad, if not worse. As are those who shove the idea of lesbian Azula down everyone's throats.

It's just fucking exhausting.

Ship whatever you want. Headcanon whatever you want. Just stop torturing all of us with it.

[bonesandthebees]

Bee i don’t enter your anon box very frequently but i am just SO EXCITED about you branching out into writing for house of the dragon, even if you don’t end up continuing, its just super exciting to see!! Especially as someone who has been following your work since the final few chapters of clinic and now is insanely obsessed with got/hotd i am just so so so excited to see where you go from here!!!

I also might be delusional but i’ve noticed that incredibly complex and interesting wlw dynamics tend to be ignored in favor of the far less complex or developed mlm dynamics (especially in fanfiction), so it is just soooo nice seeing an author i really enjoy and respect writing for such interesting characters.

ANYWAYS this is just your reminder that no matter what you end up writing you’ll have readers who support you because your work is really really good <<<33

aaaa thank you!! it makes me so happy to hear this. I loved house of the dragon when the first season aired (and is what directly inspired under the hanging rose) so I've definitely thought about writing for it before, but I just never had an idea that really stuck until the other day when I was like wait a second-

also you're not delusional. wlw ships are almost always the least popular in fandom, with female characters very often being shoved out of the way, ignored, or pigeonholed into stereotypes by fandom at large. it thrills me to see how popular rhaenicent is in the hotd fandom, but even while being relatively popular it's still often overshadowed by ships between male characters who have barely interacted before. and of course I think fandom is a space to have fun and anyone can ship what they want, but sometimes I think people need to sit down and actually reflect on why they feel more drawn to the ship between two male characters who barely had a minute long scene together (*cough cough* all the ship content I've been seeing for that blackwood guy and the bracken guy) compared to a more complex, interesting, and nuanced dynamic between female characters.

I have a lot of strong feelings about misogyny in fandom spaces. but also I'm a lesbian who just loves writing about sapphic romance. and I just adore alicent and rhaenyra's dynamic in the show. there are so many layers to the pining and resentment and guilt and frustration they feel for each other and just. agh. it's so good.

ty for this it means so much that some of you guys wanna stick around to reading my stuff even when it's not mcyt <33

[limeade-l3sbian]

the fetishisation of gay men by straight women is actually insane within fandom bc tell me why it’s common to see MANY more fanfics of a romantic kind between two male character with either barely any interactions, barely any chemistry OR both and we will have one female and one male character or two female characters have insane chemistry, a lot of hints or outright statements of their feelings for one another and yet the fics about this couple is almost always as a background couple to the two dudes with zero stuff going on between them canonically 😨

and then when other people in fandom rightfully call out the misogynistic, male centered-ness of it all, said authors, readers and worshippers of the ships only rebuttal is “well write ur own then!!! no one is stopping u!”, which while true still doesn’t answer as to why these lifeless fake gay ships are always made more popular than the actual canon stuff with real things to work off of? i don’t want this to come across as me automatically hating ships with two men, i have some ships i like of that, but like… i can still recognize limits to how reality bend-y i can make a headcanon compared to actual content to consume.

i can’t think of a single reason why ships between two men with NOTHING GOING ON, sometimes it’s even just pure hatred in like two scenes and nothing else, nothing good or developing ever, would be more popular than a ship between for example two women or a man and a woman in a ship or book or whatever where there’s actual strong hints, longing, outright statements, etc, except for a certain dislike of women. They either don’t see women as whole people, feel weirdly jealous of women with their “man”(the character they like) so they instead use some random other male character to make a “bottom” and project their y/n fantasies onto, don’t see romance between two women as interesting either bc they can’t sexualise it for their own enjoyment bc they are painfully straight(also a reason why there’s more and more gay ships who now contain “boy pussy” or making canonically male characters into trans men, since that way they can still call it two men but they can better self project onto someone with a vagina being in a relationship with their desired character)or they don’t see two women in a relationship as a real relationship bc it requires penetration in their eyes.

.

[strangefellows]

:) Dantes, Oberon, and Luxu?

First impression

Dantes: KOMAEDA?????????????????????????

Oberon: Oh, cool, Oberon, he has a nice des-- WHAT THE FUCK IS HIS FULL NAME???????? NO FUCKING WAY?????? I NEED HIM

Luxu: Oh, okay, faceless apprentice, he seems sweet-- [cue epilogue of KH3] brb screaming into my pillow

Impression now

Dantes: My god, I love this absolute fucking madlad. My good sir you fuck severely, please keep protecting me in my dreams from horrible beasties.

Oberon: I LOVE HIM I LOVE HIM I LOVE HIM OH MY GOD I AM SAVING LITERALLY ALL MY SQ FOR HIM IN AUGUST I WILL CRY IF I DON'T PULL HIM I LOVE HIM SO MUCH I AM ACTUALLY GOING INSANE I CANNOT EVEN BEGIN TO TELL YOU HOW MUCH I LOVE EVERYTHING ABOUT HIM AS A CHARACTER

Luxu: That's my tired old man that's my boy that's my love oh my fucking god. I was so mad when they squished him into Braig because I had sO MANY HEADCANONS FOR BRAIG but I worked with it and I love him so much now.

Favorite moment

Dantes: Every time he shows up in our mind to sweep us out of trouble dramatically. Bonus points for everything in Shimousa. He loves us so much, the weirdo.

Oberon: GOD. GOD. His flashback with Castoria where he teaches her magic and barely manages not to blow his cover with just sheer outrage at how they treat her. His genuine vengeful rage over the burning of the Welsh forest despite how much he claimed to loathe it there. The way he almost tore Koyan's throat out immediately on seeing her. How he's one of the only people to look at Fujimaru and be angry about what they've been through on their behalf. Everything about the final confrontation with him. When you summon him after beating LB6 and he's just completely fucking gobsmacked you'd actually want him around after All That Bullshit.

Luxu: The epilogue. His confrontation with Ava. Everything about Bragi.

Idea for a story

Dantes: I want to explore more of his time in Chaldea, not just in Fujimaru's dreams, go talk to other people, have interactions!

Oberon: I NEED PHH VORTIGERN EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW IMMEDIATELY I WANT TO SEE PHH VORTIGERN RECONTEXTUALIZED WITH THIS NEW INFORMATION FROM LB6 I WANT MORE OF THE VORTIGERN PART OF HIS EXISTENCE!!!!

Luxu: Goddd, more of his past lives please.

Unpopular opinion

Dantes: IDK what's popular or not lmao.

Oberon: Related to the above, I think people tend to focus too much on the Oberon aspect? I want to see more focus on Vortigern he's my favorite part of this whole amalgam, I desperately want to see PHH Vortigern looked at again now that they've retconned Garden of Avalon's version. There's SO much potential.

Luxu: I absolutely do not like this painting of him as cruelly stealing other people's bodies like Xehanort, I don't like the idea that Braig was bodysnatched DURING BBS, I don't like the focus on what if Braig/Bragi are still in there. I prefer a juxtaposition where he's gentler about it and I definitely think we've only ever known Braig as Luxu.

Favorite relationship

Dantes: Besides the comedy of Dantes and Nightingale, I love him and Fujimaru's relationship so much. I kinda ship it ngl.

Oberon: LB6 TRIO OBERON FUJIMARU CASTORIA I CRY UNCONTROLLABLY, DEAR GOD. But also please for the love of god let me explore Oberon and Merlin's relationship especially in context of the mythos with Vortigern and Emrys holy shit.

Luxu: RADIANT GARDEN SQUAD ACTIVATE but also him and the other Foretellers, Oof.

Favorite headcanon

Dantes: Despite being his usual batshit self in most settings, due to my Fujimaru's unique abilities he's a bit more chill if he's in Chaldea proper, and he actually Needs those glasses he wears in the summer alt outfit.

Oberon: OH GOD I CANNOT EVEN BEGIN WITH THESE. Please don't make me start in on my Vortigern headcanons and my hcs for my version of him in Chaldea, I have way too many. But here's one: PHH Vortigern raised Merlin for at least part of his life. Fuck your timeline weirdness.

Luxu: Luxu and Braig's hearts accidentally merged so they're literally the same person now, whoopsie. That's why he says this is his last vessel. He Can't Leave. Good thing he doesn't need to!

[redjennies]

Why do you think that b/j and w/j are so popular? Not asking you to engage in hate, you just seem level headed about this stuff

in general, Jester ships are so popular because Jester hits the Katara/Hermione Granger/Bella Swan/etc character mold where she's the fun, relatable, pretty but not too pretty girl that the audience can latch onto and imagine "character I'm attracted to is attracted to me." while this can lead to problems of "reducing a character to a shipping prop" especially when the extremely shippable character is female, this "character a is me and character b is what I'm attracted to" model isn't an inherently bad thing. it's where most shipping comes from. so when you consider that Jester ships are popular and that w/j and b/j were also the sort of "underdog" ships to fjorester, which anyone half paying attention saw coming from a mile away, it's kinda unsurprising that these two are so big.

speculation on contributing factors to the popularity of these ships specifically under the cut. full disclosure, I am specifically looking at these through a "how fandom works" lens, not a "how they are in canon" lens because it's a more interesting perspective for me.

so by this logic, w/j is popular because it's most popular guy character/most popular girl character. like seriously, Jester and Caleb could probably barely ever interact and not have anything in common and even actively not get along at all and this would probably still be an immensely popular ship. so the fact that Jester and Caleb do get along and do interact frequently and do have things in common and Caleb does have canon feelings for her only adds to this popular formula the ship already has going for it. in fact, the way fandom generally works dictates that this probably should be the most popular ship in the fandom, if not second to a Caleb m/m ship.

but it's not. which is insane.

from a "just how fandom works" perspective, b/j has everything going for it that w/j does: canon feelings from one party, the inherent popularity of Jester ships, not being fjorester, etc. while it's not most popular male and female character, Marisha and Laura were the only two female players at the table for the majority of the campaign so that's going to win over the f/f shippers. but for the life of me, I am amazed that an f/f ship beat out every single other ship in the fandom without being the central focus of the show (such as catradora or xena/gabrielle). like the beauyasha in me is *eye roll* at this development, but the lesbian in me is living for it.

here's a few of my theories as to how the fuck this managed to happen that were not mentioned above:

in the same vein as "beauyasha is a good shipmate for people who want Jester with Fjord or Caleb," beaujes is a good shipmate for m/m shippers who want to see Caleb and Fjord with Essek, Molly, Caduceus, or each other. I have thoughts as to why an m/m ship hasn't managed to get extremely popular but I do think this feeds into it.

it's relatively inoffensive as far as the major Jester ships go. where some people who don't have strong opinions on any Jester ships might still hate widojest and/or think fjorester is just god awful boring, beaujes is really only disliked by people who are really, really invested in beauyasha, widojest, and fjorester. while tons of nasty shit has been said about it during ship wars, I think the average multishipper probably has a positive, if not particularly invested, opinion towards it.

a friend pointed this out to me but it's actually the closest to a good girl/bad "boy" Jester ship. like Fjord and Caleb both have their dark sides but let's be honest, they're kinda dweebs. Beau actually has an edge to her and that's a very popular ship dynamic.

hell, I've noticed even FJs and WJs who don't particularly like beaujes tend to prefer it to the Jester/dude ship that they don't like.

anyway there's legit canon based reasons to ship either of these. I don't ship either, but they have their moments. this is just some of why I think these ships in particular flourish in a fandom environment.

I say this as someone who draws, Beau and Jester are extremely fun to draw and so there's a ton of fan art of it and some really fucking good fan art of it and that's gonna further the positive fandom opinion of it. shit I don't even like beaujes and you can still catch me liking art of it on a regular basis. it's fucking cute.

eta, because I cannot believe I forgot to add this back in after my app crashed and deleted the initial response: never underestimate the shipping power of "oh my god, they were roommates."

[welcome-to-the-gay-bar]

So I we started to watch Attack on Titan again after many years and I’ve just finished season two and before starting season three I wanted to take a trip down memory lane and look at all my old favourite AOT fan fictions from 2014 (and see what’s popular nowadays that I may have missed, since wow, a lot has changed since I was last present in this fandom and compared to what’s happening in the current episodes season one was tame).

I’ve noticed a huge divide between fanon and canon and I kinda wanted to ruminate on this a bit.

Eren’s character in the show isn’t my favourite. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still fond of this brash idiot, but he’ll never be my favourite. He falls into this shonen protagonist trope of being hot headed and ill tempered. He doesn’t take advice, he’s not going to listen to plans or authority, he always thinks he’s right and only follows his moral compass, and to tie it all up he’s not even that strong. He can’t back up the threats that he’s laying down and yet he always rushes into situations with fists flying and never thanks or appreciates the characters (Mikasa) that get him out of those tricky situations. The only way to get through to him is to physically beat him down and even then it may not work if he hadn’t already somewhat respected you (Mikasa again). This character type is seen so often in shonen and I’m really not a fan, I like the cool and calculating protagonist better. Someone who has the power behind their threats and doesn’t rush into situations. Again, I like Eren, but I think it’s the other characters in the show that balance him out and the plot itself that makes me like Attack on Titan.

Compare this to fanon where his default character is happy ray of sunshine who’s a little bit naive. It’s a rather jarring comparison but I also don’t necessarily dislike it either. To me canon and fanon characteristics are almost completely seperate. If I had to always think a d compare fan fiction to canon I probably couldn’t read it. I read about happy fanon Eren and see canon angry Eren and to me they are two completely different characters - two completely different people even. If I had to read fan fiction about canon Eren I can 1000000% say that I just wouldn’t. I couldn’t. I’d be totally bored. As I said before, I like Eren but it’s the people around him and the plot itself that makes him bearable. I can watch a show about him because it takes less time and emotional energy, but I couldn’t invest in reading a book about him (which is why I haven’t read the manga either).

This isn’t even exclusively towards Attack on Titan. Back in my Teen Wolf phase I noticed how different canon and fanon characters were. Small secret - I was knee deep in the Teen Wolf fandom before I realised that I hadn’t actually watched an episode of Teen Wolf. One of my mutual’s reblogged TW artwork that was linked to a story and from that I never looked back. When I actually did get around to watching TW I can honestly say I was more than a wee bit disillusioned. Derek and Stiles are obviously not the main characters and I was prepared for that, but then they barely interacted, and when they did interact it was nothing like what I had read about - nothing like what their fanon characters or interactions were like. I can honestly say that I never made it past the first season - the show just wasn’t for me - but I was still thoroughly invested in the fandom for another year or two.

Something about fanon Sterek dynamics just did it for me, their characters and relationship was just so on point for what I wanted, and this is kind of when I came to accept that canon and fanon can be so different that it almost feels as if it’s two pieces of completely different media. I mean, fanon has its own set of rules, it’s own character tropes and story arcs that even completely different authors with completely different stories somewhat instinctively know to follow. I think that’s amazing, but it’s also a double edged sword. See these first two examples were of shows that I A) never watched/finished before reading fan fiction, B) don’t necessarily love love the characters in canon. That means that fanon is more appealing because it takes something I don’t care too strongly for and changes it to something more appealing. But what about when fanon takes something I love and cherish and remoulds it?

I want to briefly take this time to talk about something I’ve dubbed “the twink affect”. When you take a character that’s originally strong willed, self sufficient, and somewhat masculine and you pair the, up with someone EVEN MORE strong willed, self sufficient, and masculine - the “Alpha male” of characters if you will. I find that fanon is incapable of seeing two strong men together in a relationship and will eventually slowly twinkify one of them. Make them smaller, softer, lonelier, less self sufficient and more reliant on others, they need to be taken care of, they’re now a ball of sunshine that’s radiant and joyful, they’re cotton candy that melts on your tongue. You put them next to the pairing you ship them with and instead of seeing two strong men you see a bear and a twink. That’s definitely what’s happened to the two characters/pairings mentioned before and I honestly didn’t mind because I wasn’t protective of the source material, but when it does happen to a character I love it’s the most frustrating thing in the world, and I can’t even complain because I’ve already reaped the benefits from other fandoms. (I am going to complain though, this is my blog and I can do what I want mum.)

I’m going to talk about Mo Dao Zu Shi. Beautiful story that I love in (almost) all its various adaptations, but I’ve noticed the ever slow changing of fanon’s Wei Wuxian. For anyone reading this that hasn’t read MDZS (or if anyone’s reading this at all, I am expecting to just be shouting into the void at this point) Wei Wuxian dies - not a spoiler, it happens at the very beginning of the story - and comes back to life in the body of Mo Xuanyu. Mo Xuanyu is small malnourished and twinky - he even canonically wears makeup (or at least has it in his possession, I’m getting the various adaptations confused and I can’t remember if in canon Wei Wuxian woke up in Mo Xuanyu’s body already wearing the makeup or if he just finds the tin of makeup in Mo Xuanyu’s possessions). Wei Wuxian’s character is also a bit of a tease, and now he’s alive and unburdened by the past he’s much freer now than he was in the past, couple that with the fact that he’s pretending to be Mo Xuanyu (a character who is rumoured to be gay and also a bit insane) he goes all out in pretending to be a shameless flirt, and it’s honestly hilarious, I love his character. So in a sense he has all the makings of a canon twink and I’m really not here to shame on those who portray him that way while he’s in Mo Xuanyu’s body.

My personal issue is with the same extreme twink portrayal while he’s in his original body. In his original body Wei Wuxian is BUFF. He’s hunky, he’s in the top five most eligible bachelors, he’s *car honks* woof woof bark bark *whistles* puurrrr, he’s one of the most powerful cultivators of his generation, he’s a genius too. He’s hunky. He still has the cheeky shameless character, but when you compare him to the male lead Lan Wangji, they’re about the same size and strength. My favourite type of fan fiction in MDZS is fix it/everybody lives nobody dies/no war/etc etc. Basically stories where Wei Wuxian keeps his original body. The fanon twink portrayal of him being so small and soft and weak while in canon he’s one of the strongest and smartest urks me in ways I can’t explain. It’s not what I want, not what I’m looking for. I love him for who he is in canon and to see his character so distorted by fans of the original work is frustrating. I just want to read about Wei Wuxian as a jock with his equally buff and tall nerd boyfriend.

I want to pause here and say that I have nothing against authors that write him in a twinky way, I respect your work and your characters (and as I said before I’ve reaped the benefits of other fandoms twinky character portrayals numerous times), if I read a fic that I’m not happy with the characterisation I just close the tab and move on so absolutely no hate to anyone who enjoys this character type. I’m just ruminating on the fact that I’ve been seeing it happen more and more often lately to the point where I’ve kind of bounced the fandom and am sticking to other works like Scum Villain that haven’t yet twinkified too much (there will always be one or two stories in every fandom that twinkify and honestly? I respect that. Authors said twink rights ONLY, good for them).

Mo Dao Zu Shi isn’t the only fandom I’ve been in that I’ve negatively reacted to fanon. Another one would be Batman (I love Tim with all my heart and I love him getting treated nicely but damn I sometimes wish people would remember how freaking strong and amazing he is too), 2Ha is another I’ve started to see “twinkified” (although I don’t mind seeing Chu Wanning being soft and taken care of, he is canonically called handsome and masculine and he’s quite tall too), I’ve even seen the canonically “top” character (and that seems so weird to write oml) be twinkified by fandom because they want to see him get bottomed for ~equal rights~ because apparently bottoming is seen as a “woman’s position” to them and they’re trying to be woke by switching the sexual positions up but failing to see how misogynistic and homophobic that take is (imma stop myself here because that a WHOLE ‘nother can or worms to be opened right there).

What I’m trying to say is fanon is a double edged sword and I’ve definitely enjoyed some and hated some. I think it’s important to seperate the two. I do think it’s annoying for fandoms to be flooded with mischaracterisation when you actually do like the original characters and I wish there was some way to seperate fandom into “actual canon fans” and “fans of fanon”, but I don’t have a solution and I’ve definitely contributed to the problem in the past so for that I’m sorry.

I don’t know how to end this long ass rant, I don’t know what the goal was in writing this, but taadaa ~ here’s my exceptionally long take on fanon.

[petruchio]

whats thalico????? republican annabeth???? can u please explain?????

whats thalico GOD ANON I WISH THAT WERE ME. thalico is people shipping thalia and nico and it was a HUGE thing in like 2011. but this ask really made me think so im going to actually answer this as thoroughly as i can. so first, let me set the scene... 

back in the early days of the pjo fandom, we were in sort of the second wave of internet fandom culture. we'd moved past livejournal and book-specific website forums, and most fans were on fanfiction.net and deviantart, posting fanfiction and fanart respectively. (at least. most 12 year old fans.) we were writing songfics, lemons, and fanfictions solely in chat form. author's notes in the middle of stories were rampant. ragecomics and cat memes ruled the internet. they were dark times anon, dark times. this era happened to coincide with the conclusion of many popular YA book series--harry potter, the hunger games, twilight, and, you guessed it, percy jackson and the olympians. all these series published their final book between 2008 and 2010, right around the time when this sort of internet culture was on the rise. 

now, my personal theory is that this type of shipping came out of that tragic epilogue in harry potter, where jk rowling just threw in a bunch of random characters in the last 10 pages of the series, and hp fans took it upon themselves to create these whole elaborate fanon relationships and backstories, and started shipping them based on little more than a few pages of information at the end of the deathly hallows. back in those days (and maybe a bit still now, but i would argue less so) the percy jackson series was kind of like a "baby harry potter." it was shorter, it was perhaps aimed at a slightly younger audience, but it still featured a sarcastic, black haired protagonist who discovers a magical fantasy world that is living in tandem with our own. the similarities were clear to fans and critics alike, and percy jackson was literally marketed as "the next hp" like that's one of the critic quotes thats on most of the books in their original printing. 

so against this backdrop, we can begin to think about why ships such as thalico or tratie (travis stoll/katie gardener) emerged. in an effort to mirror the sort of side character shipping we were seeing in harry potter, fans found side characters in pjo and invented these huge stories about their relationships--keep in mind that this was before hoo was even close to being on anyone's radar, so there was only one really "big" couple in the series, and if you wanted to expand past that, you had to really dig. 

 now, for me, thalico was always the weirdest one of these because like? they barely interact at all in canon. i think the ship really came to prominence after the titans curse because they both are introduced as characters in that book and you sort of get to know them at the same time. they also are both sort of "goth" i guess, which again was really trendy in this early 2010s world. then after the series ended it just sort of took on a life of its own, and it was all over fanfiction.net and the like. 

anyway it's pretty much completely dead since the mass migration to tumblr in like 2013/2014, and ever since hoo came out there hasn't been much need for MORE ships. then since house of hades its been literally dead in the water, for obvious reasons. a quick glance into the thalico tag its mostly just like, me making fun of it and a few random posts. 

long story longer, if you want to truly understand what it was like you can go to fanfiction.net and filter for thalia/nico, it's literally balls to the wall insane, but there was a time when that was unironically the one of the biggest ships in this fandom.

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh S4 Ep 26: What the Hell is Glued to Valon’s Ass?

Well guys.

I should preface--since it’s effecting the voice I have in these recaps quit a bit--I’m still in quarantine and losing my entire mind. So, I took a break from making a whole lot of content because I actually can’t judge if anything I make is good or funny right now. I think it’s a weird consequence of making just so many decisions navigating things I won’t go into. tl;dr, It’s been ridiculous.

And so I’ve only really been on twitter, and it just so happens, that there’s been a bunch of really insane and juicy art fights going on that have kind of ramped up in insanity the farther LA goes into the red, (since most of art twitter lives in LA since art twitter is elitist as hell, which was it’s own very spicy art fight), but one of the most recent ones was...I kid you not...about if it was possible to make cannibalism ethical...and I threw my Wacom tablet out of the freakin window was like...y’all. I’m done.

I’m done!

I DON’T KNOW HOW ART TWITTER WORKS. At all. I don’t know what the people want!

And I was like, I need to look at something that came out before this epidemic. I just need this and so we’re back to Yugioh. I have no idea if this post is any good, because again I can’t judge my own abilities anymore, and I probably sound very very salty, and whatever, but at least I’m not talking about freakin cannibalism in the middle of art twitter. At least I got out of that mess, amiright?

I can’t get worse than cannibalism. I can’t get worse than certain people at the top rungs of art twitter that are absolutely going to eat somebody at some point in their life and I don’t really want to be a part of that club nooooo thank you.

Like Yugioh is pretty effed up, and I will eat these words (just the words) but I’m pretty sure we’re not going to venture into cannibalism.

So anyways, I had to read my own recaps to catch up with what is even happening, and so for those that forgot, like me--Everyone is sort of standing in the middle of the road in San Fransisco and there’s a bunch of orcs everywhere.

Seto is still in denial. Maybe he just assumed Roland threw out a bunch of hologram projectors all over San Fransisco and so there’s just...monsters everywhere? I mean how prevalent is his hologram trash?

We barely even have parking, why would we have hologram projectors everywhere, Seto? San Fransisco barely has HOUSING. Even when Google Glass was a thing, we only whipped those bastards out at parties for the gram. They weren’t actually USED.

Somewhere in like...the grossest park in SF, (like there’s a light pole that’s tipped over? There’s weeds everywhere? No playground equipment? What is this?) Valon and Joey are...throwing cards at eachother. Not much to say about this interaction other than Valon is going to be in a robot suit the entire time, and no you did not miss anything, I just don’t go over the cards here, and...that’s his card schtick--he gets in a robot suit and punches you in the balls. That’s it.

(read more under the cut)

Speaking of getting punched directly in the balls, Mai is still on the hunt to murder Joey Wheeler, because that’s how she’s decided to work through her trauma. Just kill a completely unrelated person to the one who actually gave her the trauma in the first place. Sounds like American politics in 2020.

I will say, it is nice that we have a consequence to the Marik season and a little more depth into Mai, I just wish we had more of an explanation of how she jumped this far other than “I dunno, man, Orichalcos.”

Anyway, she sees the Bat signal and was like “Valon, you had one job”

Bro brings up that Mai seems hella jacked now and like...yeah...It has to be a real workout to do a bunch of wheelies all day on a heavy motorcycle. Go for it, girl.

Valon’s robot suit has robot vision, by the way, and it’s extremely 00′s UI.

mmmm just like Samus Aran.

Can’t have a Yugioh show without beating up your protagonists for a good while. At this point in the series, just comparing trauma of one character to another, you’d think Joey would be the one with trauma that makes him murderous as hell. Instead, he’s remarkably one of the most stable people here. Especially compared to Valon, who is this strange hypocritical broken record of “you gotta let Mai make up her own mind” while doing his very best to manipulate Mai.

If they had both left eachother alone, then Mai would have been way more likely to come back to her senses, just throwing that out there. Valon was a guy who latched on too much, and Joey was the guy who didn’t latch on at all--she needed a good in-between guy. A good in-between guy over the age of 21. It’s a shame that this type of guy does not exist on this show for her to hang out with. 

So Valon flashes back to the moments directly after he introduced Mai to his dad (Dartz) and Mai got possessed with Oricalchos powers.

After Mai refuses to join the team, she joins the team and directly kills Pegasus. To which, she was like “Oh yeah, I don’t actually have any personal agenda against this bastard. He’s just some guy who kills other people, this is just normal vigilante work.”

And so Joey decides he should share flashbacks, since that’s what we’re doing now, and we get a slight retelling of this scene in S1.

In this retelling it’s different because the hanky was actually holding the money card. This was not how it originally went, the card was given separately--but they had to do SOMETHING to make that hanky make some sort of sense, so it...has a card now.

That’s kind of the Yugioh solution to every problem, actually--just put a card on it.

(EDITORS NOTE: OK so apparently, actually-turns out the hanky DID contain a card originally in S1 but I just hella forgot--and normally I’d change this to reflect that but like my mind is full of quarantine spaghetti, so I’ll just leave it as is for posterity because I don’t feel like rewriting anything.)

What IS it though?

Don’t think about it too much, but what IS that?

On the other end of town, Seto remembered that if he spends too much time with these people, they might accidentally mistake it for friendship.

So...Seto Kaiba joined them so he could take back Kaiba Corp with the team, and then just...forgot I, guess. Maybe he got the munchies. A shame to be Kaiba, San Fransisco has NOTHING open past 11 PM except for bars. It’s not really like New York, SF sleeps really freakin good.

So now that Kaiba’s gone, Rebecca has to guess his password.

She’s supposed to be some top tier hacker but she doesn’t have a program to test these permutations for her? Whatever, girl.

And then, out of no, where Tristan had a panic attack.

Mom friends have to do that some times, they have to carry the guilt of their stupid children. But TBH, I kind of forgot that Tristan exists so it caught me off-guard.

Hey I kid you not, I went back to art twitter for a hot second, and there’s this person I follow who is very popular because they’ve drawn this one ship for I want to say 20 years--and they generally make very pretty art. And they recently drew their shipping pair on a set of matching toilets--facing eachother without any bathroom stalls--and they’re just...poopin while looking at eachother. I just...

What Is Going On With Art Twitter!?!?

I need to retire!!!

I don’t understand anything at all going on outside my bedroom, y’all.

I mean I guess I fell for it, I did click the image to see it in full--just in case it WASN’T a picture of them pooping but...no....that’s just what it is.

I need to delete my twitter account.

Anyway, stay safe out there, it’s a mess.

here’s the link to read these in chrono order if you’re bored and you just don’t want to go outside today, I get, I’ve been there, been doing that.

[starryjyrus]

What Jyrus Means Too Me and Why I’ll Never Be Fully Won Over By Tyrus:

!!TW OF ATTEMPTED SUICIDE AND DISCUSSION OF MENTAL HEALTH!!

The Summer of 2017 was by far the best Summer I’ve ever had, it’s kind of a shame it was followed by the worst Summer I’ve ever had..

Anyway, back at that time I had been really into SmurfVlogs (still am, I’ve been watching him since about 2015-16 I’d say) anyway, everyone had been mourning the loss of Girl Meets World and he had announced on his channel that Disney planned on making a show similar to GMW and that the pilot had been released on YouTube, I became hella curious especially when I had heard the rumor that there was a possibility of a gay main character and that there was supposedly going to be a gay love triangle between Cyrus/Andi/Jonah, this definitely peaked my interest considering Disney, outside of Good Luck Charlie and a few other cameo like characters/relationships spotted in different movies/series, like Finding Dory, hadn’t really had that. And a MAIN character? Possibly TWO main characters being LGBT? I obviously had to watch. I of course heard other things that made the series look good, ie the Teenage Pregnancy storyline, the diversity in casting and more, but this is what sold me. Thus started my obsession.

Anyway, I watched the show. I watched the first episode on YouTube and continued watching after that, I remember the break in between the middle of season 1 that was only like two weeks, I remember seeing missing scenes in the show that wasn’t in the original promo (their was a shot of the coming out scene in the season one promo, if it wasn’t obvious to some episode 1 of season 2, or at least the first half, was originally the episode 13 of season 1) and I remember the speculation around that and the reasoning as to why they had cut that scene out.

I was in love with it. The whole storyline was just so pure and the relationship between Jonah and Cyrus was the single best thing I’ve ever witnessed. I made a fan account on Insta for it, a Tumblr, edits and so much more. The whole community was so beautiful and it was so much fun and wholesome. I’d watch the show and remember how amazing the world could be, how something like the ‘friendom’ could exist haha. I was getting older and I know it seemed weird (I was going into my Sophomore year, possibly just ending my Freshman year of school when I started watching) to be so invested in a CHILDS show but I couldn’t help it. It was an escape from reality. A place with positivity and happiness which at that time I desperately needed.

I made some of my best memories of my life during that time of the show premiering and during the hiatus. And the majority was because of things in relation to Jyrus. I’ll never forget those times and what being connected into a fandom like that was like.

The friends, the edits, the Insta live-streams from casts, it was insane too see how happy they got from it all and how much of a new experience it was. Other things like the Asher ‘be you’ memes and Josh on here with his ‘persongoingfast’ tumblr made it great as well. Even if I’m not a big fan of Josh as a person now, due to reasons, (mainly with him seemingly making fun of or mocking Jyrus and stuff like that, considering I used to really look up to him and be a big fan to see belittle something I cared so deeply about hurt me on a level l cannot describe) him being so interactive then was still an amazing thing and helped make things so much more fun at that time, so thank you @joshua-rush for that. Sincerely.

Everything was so beautiful during that..until it lwasn’t.

My mental health got really bad due to some losses and such in my family around November of 2017 and I had to be hospitalized in a mental health facility for a few weeks. It was extremely scary but I found comfort in the place, mainly due to some fellow people inside that watched Andi Mack, relating to them and being able to talk about the show with people who actually watched it? It was incredible. No one up to that point (aside from my mom who I forced to watch with me) watched the show and could talk with me about it.

I got out and the support and concern I get from friends online was overwhelming, so many people cared about me while I was gone and worried about me. No one ever really did that, at least my friends didn’t, I remember opening my phone for the first time on the way back home when we stopped at a McDonalds and the amount of messages put me into tears. There were people online who I’ve never met and we only really knew each other through a ship and a show genuinely CARED about me? It was breathtaking. I have much more friends now that would be concerned and care about me, but at that time irl I really didn’t. And the fact so many did was unbelievable.

Everything slowly but surely was getting better and worse in some areas, my overall depression state was getting better, due to medication and such, but I had relapses a few times in bad areas like self harming as well. It was pretty back and forth for a while.

Then, the worst thing that could’ve happened, happened. A quick backstory is that I don’t live with my mom, I haven’t since 7th grade and instead have lived with my Great Aunt and Great Uncle. I was always very close to them for my entire life, especially my Great Uncle, he was for a long time the most important person in my life, he was like a father too me. Hell, he WAS my father for the majority of my life. And last year on July 11th, he had unfortunately passed away.

This was absolutely devastating and considering I already was struggling with mental health and depression in the first place..ya can probably guess the spiral that ensured.

For a while I was doing okay, and then one day I broke, it had been around the time of Cyrus confirming he no longer had a crush on Jonah and when everyone started to switch from Jyrus to Tyrus and Jyrus shipper hatred became pretty popular. People were sending a specific Jyrus shipper anons of saying they wished they’d die just because they shipped Jyrus, you couldn’t go on YouTube comment sections on videos about Jyrus because you had people shitting on it everywhere, people started commenting under Jyrus edits on Instagram about how Tyrus was better and how gross it was to ship Jyrus, I got DMs of people genuinely upset because I didn’t like Tyrus, I had friends leave the sites due to the bullying they were receiving, we had some Tyrus account going around saying Jyrus shippers were ped*philes, It was insane. Now, I of course was NO saint and I know I’ve done and said some messed up shit too and if I ever hurt anyone I am deeply sorry for that, it was not my intention. And I know Jyrus shippers are not all saints either but this was just out of control. Especially whenever it was hurting a lot of people who were innocent and making them feel wrong about something as little as shipping something.

And I had a mental breakdown. I had just lost the most important person in my life and now the place that I considered my safe haven was crumbling before my eyes and all I could do was watch. It was too much. I had people saying they wanted shippers like me dead, and finally I just couldn’t handle it and completely had a melt down. If you are already having thoughts like these and you have people reinforcing what you already thought and not making you feel like you belong, well, anywhere, it really does get too you.

I of course, came out alright. Thank you to the Tumblr creator that called the police that night for a lot of that.

I’m sorry this is so long but I’ve been holding this in for so long so please bare with me.

Anyway, I am doing much better now and I’m thankful to be here still. I’m learning to fight against the haters rather then take shit and bottle things up like I used too. I still have a lot of issues but since that awful night, I haven’t had any plans of suicide or many thoughts of it.

I’m going into my last year of high school and soon I’ll be a legal adult. It’s been such a ride to get here and honestly I never thought I would but I finally think I’m getting past all of the shit in my past and am moving on.

My main reason to make this post and to be so open about everything here was to try to explain a lot of why I’m always going to be for Jyrus and not so much for Tyrus. I have other issues then the fans when it comes to Tyrus, but it has always been a main one when it comes to me not wanting to ship it.

When I look at Jyrus, despite them being pure and amazing on their own, I see some of my last good memories, I see the best time of my life, I see a point where I felt the best and where everything was going really right too me, I see long lasting friends, I see beautiful edits, I see a community, I see love, I see loyalty and so much more.

But when I look at Tyrus, all I see is the bad memories I have associated with them and the shippers, in a lot of ways, Tyrus has been a huge source of my personal pain in life, I know it seems silly and it probably is, but I have such an emotional dependence on Jyrus and Tyrus messed me up in a lot of ways in regards to that. I lost the majority of my safe haven when they emerged as more then just a crack ship. All I see when I look at them is sadness and that’s all I’m probably going ever going to see.

I tried in numerous areas to get fully on board with the ship but I just can’t. I have no love for it in a way I do for Jyrus. It’s not a terrible ship, I know that, but throughout everything that has happened even if it had no flaws I don’t think I’d ever ship it a lot.

I know everyone has their own version of things and reasons why they ship what they ship or don’t ship what they ship or like some shippers but hate others, this is just my personal story on the matter and I hope it clears up some of why I act the way I do online sometimes and why I’m so defensive of the ship and shippers.

Sorry this was so weird, I just needed to get this off of my chest cause I’ve had it in there for so long and I needed to talk about it.

[jonsameta]

Hi, me again!

jesuiscommejesuis: Haha, I’m on that GoT grind and probably won’t stop until the premiere 😂. I trust your opinion so unfortunately you have to endure another ask from me. Anyway…I think that most of us have considered the possibility of Jonsa not being canon. (RIP me if that happens). But my question isn’t about whether Jonsa will be or won’t be (I’ve come to terms with the fact that GoT will end how GRRM always intended it to end) it’s about what that possibility means for all of the evidence, clues, foreshadowing, etc that we’ve gathered. In your opinion will Jonsa not happening render those clues and meta meaningless and we were all crazy after all? Or do they take on a new meaning and point us in a new direction? Idk if that even makes sense. Maybe I’m just afraid that Jonsa wont happen and I’m afraid for no other reason other than that I will have looked and sounded insane to all of my GoT friends and had nothing to show for it. Also do you know of any interviews or blog posts from GRRM possibly supporting Jonsa? Same for D&D? Or any other people on or working with the show? Thank you so much!! 💙

—-

Hi there, 

The thing about theories is they’re like Shrodinger’s cat. If you try to be objective, you have to entertain the possibility that it won’t happen, but it can’t completely be false until proven otherwise. That said, some theories are more probable than others because there’s material within the text that thematically undoes something. This is because a story’s themes (which differs depending on the adaptation but it can’t be completely divorced from the original source either) define its boundaries because they essentially make up “the heart of the story”, not the plot. They give the main characters a moral dilemma that drives their journeys. Considering the themes of the story - both bookwise and showwise - Jonsa is very probable because it answers a lot of long standing character arcs that go beyond these characters and provides a bookend that Jon/Dany cannot considering R+L=J. 

I think anything in this story has to be considered according to the politics - even the fantasy part because the personal is political. With such a spread out story only the themes and the morality dilemmas of politics that the smallest moment can have is what holds it all together. And I think the strongest argument for the probability of Jonsa comes from a structural level of gauging the politics. 

Jon’s parentage is a political game changer and the way it’s been built up it cannot just be for personal angst - especially when the element of his parentage revealing him to have a higher claim than Dany is brought up. It doesn’t just affect him or his relationship with Dany. It affects Westeros and Dany’s own longstanding goal.

Jon may not want to be king, but Dany is walking in as a very unpopular figure into the North and the way she has gone about her campaign hasn’t improved her reputation and only worsened it. And Jon himself will lose popularity after having 1) bent the knee to a Targaryen, 2) consorting with a Targaryen and 3) being a secret Targaryen. 

Dany doesn’t realise that although Jon claims to have pledged his allegiance to her, it doesn’t mean the North has fallen into her hands. He’s only lost their faith from this move so no Targaryen by themselves could claim the North. Not to mention the Vale and Riverlands are more allied to Sansa than they are to Jon. To regain faith, he’d have to separate himself from Dany and the Targaryen identity a bit and yet he would need a political statement that only a marriage alliance to Stark could give if he were to remain in power. There’s also the pesky issue of how unknowingly Sansa and the Starks have more allies than Dany (or Jon without the Starks) does as everyone comes into Winterfell. So Sansa’s constant label as “key to the North” and the importance of marriage alliances becomes very important here. He can’t become king or even gain the faith of the people (back) without Sansa. So in that case, the whole notion of the Pact of Ice and Fire being fulfilled through Dany and Jon falls apart because Jon will be seen as an outsider. @thelawyerthatwaspromised has even written a post with infographics to make it easier to understand. It’s like R+L=J resets the chessboard. Ironically, what the audience thought Jon/Dany’s union would do politically is far more possible through Jon/Sansa. 

As it makes sense as a political match, the possibility of it happening and impacting the narrative increases a lot more. The original outline also matters here because clearly the pseudo-incest tag didn’t stop the author. However, as the characters haven’t interacted in real time in the books and aren’t close, there’s not much people have asked him about it nor has GRRM has said about it unless you count his vague reply once (”I won’t say more than I’ve already said in the books”). I’d say there’s more to be gauged from what he has to say about other ships that fandom roots for, that isn’t as positive as they make it out to be - whether Jon/rya, San/San, San/rion or Jon/Dany. It’s not obvious because he hardly shuts down possibilities but there’s reading between the lines. It becomes more obvious through a process of elimination. It’s also because Jon/Sansa as a ship tramples over so many ships that fandoms have banked on that people are inclined to dismiss it rather than re-evaluate the pre-existing ships. 

On the show, people have been coy too but there’s more content to gauge as the characters have already reunited and their dynamic has become pretty pivotal to the story. Where D&D shut down Dany and Yara ever happening, in the same panel they evaded a question about Jon and Sansa being developed as a romantic relationship. Aiden Gil/lian commented on how Jon’s parentage opens up possibilities for Jon and Sansa’s relationship romantically at the end of season 6. Sophie was asked about it post season 6 and she said it was possible because it’s GOT and they’re cousins. Also, there’s Liam Cunnin/gham who once liked a Jonsa fanvideo lol and he barely has any likes. Sophie has said it’s possible, even as she joked about how it would be embarrassing to film an intimate scene. Kit has somehow avoided all questioning, but he has some pretty interesting reactions regarding Jon and Sansa’s relationship - either in the words he chooses (”She twists him like no one else”) or how over the top his reaction to Sansa is when he talks about how annoying she is to the point where he’s flushed and red and laughing while saying “I’ve gotten really animated now that Sansa has come into the story”. Bryan Cogman has a lot to say regarding this dynamic too, that he even wrote Jon leaving Ghost behind to watch over Sansa when he left for Dragonstone. 

What helps regarding the show is that it’s not just the actors or the political sense, but the camerawork and visual framing that makes their scenes very confusing because they’re shot as a romantic couple about to happen, as @trinuviel has explored in her series “All is Subtext”.  This notion that it was “framed” or “shot” that way was echoed by multiple reviewers and podcasts through season 6 and even into the beginning of season 7. 

A huge part of this was because it very subtly visually paralleled more positive romantic ships on the show like Ned/Cat, Jaime/Brienne, Robb/Talisa, Sam/Gilly, Missandei/Greyworm and even Jon/Ygritte to some extent. This is over a course of 7 episodes under 5 different directors. One of the most telling scenes for me was when they did two back to back parallels to Ned/Cat and Jaime/Brienne after Jon chokeholds Littlefinger over Sansa and they go on to give a Jaime/Brienne-esque goodbye. The same director Mark Mylod directed both the season 6 Jaime/Brienne and season 7 Jon/Sansa goodbye. Bryan Cogman even confirmed that the Littlefinger chokehold was meant to parallel Ned doing the same over Cat. 

But in my opinion, what weirdly cemented it was how Jon/Dany contrasted Jon/Sansa’s dynamic and framing. There were a lot of structural decisions made that undercut the Jon/Dany “romance” and made Jon/Sansa look more compatible and romantic, which is something I explored in my “Undoing Romance” series. Again, this is looking beyond the actors. The biggest tell for me was that they never got a first kiss so romantic tension was never released but just dissipated over plot exposition. Moreover, how is it that Jon and Sansa have more parallels with romantic ships than Jon/Dany do? Why do Jon/Sansa have more Robb/Talisa framing through season 6 than Jon/Dany through season 7 if that’s what’s happening? Why was there no passionate first kiss like theirs? We just skipped to the sex in between a montage that told us how related they are. 

Why didn’t Jon look back at Dany when Jorah did, while he looked back at Sansa? Why does Jon react more violently to Sansa’s suitors than to Jorah? Why are these characters caught in triangle with interlopers, who pose a political threat but are also interested in one romantically? Why is this dynamic given so much importance where there’s tension but also there’s emotional vulnerability that pours out contrasting Jon/Sansa’s and Sansa and Arya’s season 6 and season 7 battlements scenes respectively. Why did they reveal R+L=J at the end of season 6 - the season in which people questioned what the hell was happening in the Jon/Sansa dynamic and a whole season before Jon met Dany. Both season finales also teased conflict because of political claims that change because of R+L=J. Where his parentage reveal, relieves Jon/Sansa of the direct incest factor because it biologically distances them, it makes Jon and Dany biologically more related - especially because she’s heavily inbred herself. 

So it is a situation of “will they/won’t they?” but even more subtly because the cast and crew always skips past discussing it and with Jon/Dany happening people take it as accidental chemistry. There’s no heavy dismissal from the TPTB though when there could’ve been or laughing at it like Tormund and Brienne, which is totally for laughs and a show ship. What they do keep saying is that this relationship is key to watch and you have to wonder: why is it so important? To me it’s not about the actors chemistry or singular scenes. It’s about the story’s intrinsic narrative structure and the camera framing that makes the visual subtext convey more than the text does. 

The show frames Jon and Sansa’s relationship is odd because we know they weren’t close and Arya was his favorite and yet they take up quite an important part in each other’s arc at this point, where they both want to trust each other completely but don’t and yet their vulnerability comes out most around each other in these last two seasons. They’re being built up more slowly than Jon/Dany and more subtly so while people expect a full blown romance, I expect something more subtle, more quiet and thus emotionally rewarding for these characters individual and collective arcs. If it happens, D&D are building it up as a plot twist/game changer because it’s related to politics. But it’s not to say there can’t be emotional catharsis too because these characters have a lot of issues that they answer pretty well. 

Hope that answers your questions. 

- lostlittlesatellites

[primeadv]

SITS DOWN

PULLS OUT 10 GIANT ALBUMS :))) 

(this came out way longer than I intended im so fuckgkdsdf sory)

How I feel about this character: EVERYONE WHO KNOWS ME KNOWS I’M IN LOVE WIHT RATCHET. I love him in all iterations of Transformers because he’s always the tired, pragmatic one of the group. In contrast, he’s also almost tiredly optimistic in some ways. He won’t get out of bed, but if someone gets shot in the head he’ll spend however long and beyond to resuscitate them. There’s 2 halves to this--the me who identifies with the beating exhaustion he exudes, and the me who’s in awe that he’ll still fight his way through life.  I won’t... get into each continuity...because that’s too much, so I’ll stick with probably the most unpopular version of him and that’s IDW (my impression, anyway). IDW Ratchet gets a lot of flack for being way too sour and like, maybe not selfish, but uncaring. He cares! A lot! He’s always thinking about everyone in really surprisingly thoughtful ways. Like when he’s 90% sure he’ll die due to Overlord and his last words are to promote First Aid to CMO (he’s ready!! god that’s sweet), and to give his hands to Whirl (though maybe a bit blindsided, he’s paid attention to some roots of Whirl’s trauma). Or yeah he’s hella mean to Drift in the beginning, but when Drift is dying in his arms he’s scREAMING at him “you’re gonna make it! You’re gonna be fine because I’m gonna make sure you’re gonna be fine”. He can be an asshole, but he knows the time and place. Death isn’t something to play with--he’s seen probably countless friends die, and he doesn’t want that to happen again. Even now, even after the war.  So I feel very confused when ppl act like he’s this mean, cold person. He’s exTREMELY emotional. He’s probably way too invested in everyone’s lives, honestly? He interrupts a round table story for Rung just to reminisce on the veery last time he, OP, and Roller were together in the same room (not even hanging out or anything, just being together one last time. who remembers that after 5+ millions years??). He started an illegal clinic in the bad part of town because he wanted to put his skills to better use! Like! LOL.  ALSO, a point that i think is unfair is that ppl think his atheism is just really mean. IT is! But I think it shows just how much of an emotional and extremely, deeply hurt person he is. It gets aggravating when he’s condescending of religion, because there’s no simple logic to it. He reacts the way he does because he’s a hurt person who’s gone through years of trauma and this is his way of coping. Is it healthy or right? Nah, but it’s humanizing. It’s why when he becomes closer to Drift he occupies this weird between space where he snarks but also tries to indulge more in perspectives outside of his own in his own dumb old tsundere way. He’s a person who believes in justice, ultimately, and religion to him doesn’t fall under justice.  ALSO, can I say that his inability to say good byes is so.. like relatable? I have rly bad social anxiety, and so I’ve definitely ghosted people who’ve been nothing but really supportive for me. It’s not because I wanted to burn them, but it freaks you out needing to, not even say goodbye, but communicate with ppl. And for Ratchet--how many times was he FORCED to say good bye to friends + patients who were dying beyond his help? Maybe, if he could help it, he doesn’t want to say goodbye. And it’s tragic the times he’s just left, these were people who ended up either dying for falling astray into insanity, i.e., beyond his help. But he learns. He chases after Drift, who he actually said, in a way, good bye to (helping him off the floor after being attacked, also I should point out that a very tiny handful of people were comfortable interacting w/ Drift at all, and how much Ratchet just doesn’t give a shit abt how other ppl think abt him. he’ll help drift off the floor bc t’s the right thing to do). He says goodbye in his old dumb way--First Aid calls him out on it. ALSO his trust in First Aid is super cute. ALSO he’s like.. genuinely nice to Ten (he helped him get a date with Minimus!!!). And he’s not afraid to call out on other ppl’s bullshit (telling rodi straight you dont deserve to be captain which, at the time, was really true). He’s also SUPER smart. Also there’s that post on tumblr that pointed out that Ratchet immediately goes to deescalate conflict. He’s willing to put aside pride and anything if it means ultimately coming to a resolution where EVERYONE involved is safe. The only time he doesn’t is FUCKING OVERLORD who he rightfully, immediately, tries to briefly incapacitate to lockdown his medibay (protect patients/information). Ok I gotta stop I can go on forever just going page to page. Also, despite my love, I can totally point out his flaws. He’s grating when it’s unnecessary, he’s abhorrently bad at communicating, he’s privileged, he’s narrow-minded at times, etc. ec. But again what I love about him is that despite all that, he’ll throw his own self out the window for others’s well-being bc he genuinely, genuinellyyy cares about other people. If only he could care for himself //cries All the people I ship romantically with this character OH god... everyone. He’s my bicycle.  ok look, ya’ll know I’m an intense dratchet shipper and I could literally write a god damn essay. ... here’s another essay???!! So, I’ma be real, I wasn’t a super dratchet shipper before. I wasn’t anti (i have no notps), but I was just “yeah they’re cute i guess haha”. But 99.99% the reason why I ship anything is all for super cute adorable fanart. and I kept drawing them because 1) ratchet’s my fav, 2) drift is super popular so I figured I should learn to draw him. And they became the only 2 mechs I could draw. I used to be way more into Scavengers + megarod. I used to only like 1 dratchet fanfic and that’s bc it was less romantic and more plot centric (still a fav tho). Then I kept seeing cute fanart, I would read posts by other dratchet shippers too about what makes them so nice? And I was yeah.. oh yeah. And it doesn’t help that in Lost Light, drift is CONSTANTLY by Ratchet’s side. He’s constantly checking up on him and holding him and touching him, like as if Ratchet is the thing that he needs to make sure, at all costs, is safe.  In Drift’s life, Ratchet is the one who appears to him when he needs support the most but is in the most denial of it. When Drift is at the brink of death, overdosed and about to be broken apart and Orion brings him to Ratchet’s clinic. Ratchet patches him up pro-bono and tells him that he sees something special in him.  like??? can you imagine how that feels? To have no one believe in you--you don’t even believe in yourself, and yet here’s this person who tells you “you’re gonna be great”. And it totally doesn’t hit Drift in anyway, at least in a way that’s tangible to him, until much later in life. Or maybe it does (hey, how do you weave character narratives when it’s been written by like 3 different ppl shrugs). And that statement means 2 different things to them. To Drift, it’s a reminder that he’s worth something, even if it’s a sliver of nearly nothing to hold onto. To Ratchet, it’s a reminder that the greatness he saw led to the deaths of thousands of people.  HEY can you imagine this person you saved, patched up, tried to encourage, ended up being a mass serial killer in the future? (have you ever read Monster by Naoki Urusawa). Ended up killing people you loved?  So it’s no wonder that a good part of Ratchet is absolutely mad at Drift. And I think if that was all, they probably would’ve ended up being amicable. But Drift also ended up being super religious and seeing the hand and primus in everything and oh my god is this person really waxing poetry on the value of life when he, himself, shot several bullets at me at one point?  I also believe they are uncomfortably similar as they are different. The reason why they constantly butt heads is they’re two people trying to escape a past they don’t want and found complete opposite ways to cope with their losses. Drift found religion, Ratchet is gratingly pragmatic, and they see each other and go “how could this guy choose to be this way?”. I’ve heard ppl like to cite the annual as the reason why they could never work out. BUT, can I point out, that they act around each other in a way they don’t with anyone else? Drift gets SO MAD. Ratchet gets extremely talkative and incredibly personal (pulled out an electro slug from someone’s spark, holy shit that fucking traumatized you didn’t it??). They challenge each other emotionally, and it’s so fucking difficult bc they’re both extremely depressed and suffer from PTSD and would probably rather just go on their dumb space adventure and look at stars--take 2 emotionally constipated idiots and you get them. And hell no, don’t tell me Drift is in-tune with his feelings bc he’s 10000% not. He uses religion to cope with a past and life that he doesn’t want to think about. He tries to re-contextualize himself because he hates who he is. OUCHHH. And Ratchet MAKES him confront the parts of himself he hates--bc Ratchet has seen his worst traits and isn’t afraid to make him think about it.  So why do they work out eventually? They realize how important they are to each other. Delphi, Drift saves Ratchet’s life while he’s barely holding onto his own because he probably feels like he owes Ratchet his own life. And that’s a huge turning point in their relationship--Ratchet sees that... Drift tries really really fucking hard. My friend Zig pointed out that post-Delphi, Drift is eating energon w/ chopsticks (what a fucking nerd), and you can see in a later panel that Ratchet (who chose to sit next to Drift) is using those chopsticks too. IT’s such a small thing, but they’re becoming closer by sharing and learning from each other. And then Drift takes the fall and leaves. And Ratchet realizes just how important Drift’s presence is in his life. I mentioned it already lol but the scene where Ratchet helps Drift up off the floor and it’s superimposed with the love message Rewind left for CD. They care about each other so much!! And Ratchet chases after him!! HOLY SHIT. If that isn’t romance, what is?? lol I kid, but it’s obvious just how important Drift’s presence meant to him. IT’s really because they became so so so close in a way that can’t be described as just friends. They deeply understand each other in really uncomfortable ways and bring out the absolute worst and absolute best in each other. And this point is where Ratchet again appears when Drift doesn’t realize he needs someone in his life. Drift thinks he can be a loner and just float aimlessly and voicelessly--hell no! He needs friends, he needs community. He NEEDs belonging, because he wants to belong somewhere. And Ratchet helps bridge him back to friends and found family.  And Ratchet slowly changes the more he’s with Drift. He reads religious text and tries to brag about it bc he’s a dumb tsundere lol but he’s trying to understand Drift’s interests more even if it takes a decade and more to get there. And Drift values him for being his rock. That’s why he’s constantly making sure Ratchet is safe and unharmed, because he owes at least that much to him. And yeah they eventually fall in love because they value each other in a way they haven’t anyone else. IM EMO I CAN GO ONE, this all probably didn’t make a whole lot of sense but yeah. I’m just so soft to the fact that they’re horribly hurt people who don’t know how to redirect their pain, but by being together they come out healthier and more confident. IT’S RLY ROMANTIC IDKKK My non-romantic OTP for this character As much as I also love OpRatch, they are also great best friend platonic ship. They know each other best, they’ve been through SO MUCH together. It’s honestly a shame they barely interact in IDW bc the small tidbits we have, they obviously deeply respect each other’s opinions and deeply value the relationship they’ve had over the past millions of years.  I’m also all for non-romanceOTP for dratchet because I can totally imagine they go to each other to talk about things they feel uncomfortable sharing with others (they’ve seen the absolute worst of each other afterall).  My unpopular opinion about this character I don’t... think I ahve one. Some ppl view my love for his as grating lol.  One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon. Medic spin off.

[razberryyum]

Gintama live action 2 movie review Part 3 of 3...SPOILERS!

Again, you should probably read Parts 1 & 2 first cuz now it’s like you’re starting a movie when it’s already 2/3rds over...which you literally are....

That image looks good whether it’s in black and white, animated color or live action.

I ship GinHiji no matter what form they are in, so this moment, where they’re like THISCLOSETOGETHER, of course made me happy.

Ok, I don’t think I’m crazy but this ass pounding scene went on longer than it did in the anime. It was unbelievable, especially how into it Tosshi was. They didn’t include a few of the other abusive moments between Gintoki and Hijikata, but this prolonged scene made up for it.

This happened. I don’t know why cuz I didn’t understand what they were saying, but bless Director Fukuda for finding creative ways to include Zura into the Shinsengumi Crisis Arc. I hope he continues to do that in future movies. 

This happened too. Actually in addition to the Evangelion parody, there was another reference to another famous anime when they were in Gengai’s warehouse, but I just didn’t include it. I’ll leave at least one surprise for those of you still planning to watch the movie (you should. Seriously watch it. Totally worth your time and honestly, why are you even spoiling yourself by reading all this? Of course I appreciate that you’re doing that, but please don’t think this is enough so that you don’t have to watch the movie anymore. WATCH IT DAMMIT)

Kagura the Queen saving everyone’s ass. She is really so awesome in the movie, Hashimoto Kanna did her proud. 

 Baby Itou was adorbs in the manga, anime AND in the movie.

The movie proving Shinsengumi drinking parties are the bacchanalian feasts that we all assumed them to be. 

I wanted to take a moment to just say how freaking amazing Nakamura Kankurou was as Kondou. He really was a perfect Kondou. Man went all out in the dramatic moments, totally brought tears to my eyes. I pretty much cried every time Kondou cried. My only lament is that he didn’t have any scenes with Otae. There was a point during the Snack Smile Host portion where he was on a tank screaming about Otae, which I’m sure was him confessing his love all over again, but I would’ve really liked it if they actually interacted cuz the short scenes they had in the first movie were so adorable.

Obviously I loved the movie, but if I really had to point out a flaw, I would say the Bansai fight scenes could have been better scored and his fight with Gintoki could have been better. First, the music in his fight scenes...it was pretty bad. Like, weird, generic 80′s electrical guitar shit. I think they were trying to go for rock and roll, but it ended up putting a damper on what were otherwise really well-choreographed fight sequences. I wish they would’ve just used Otsuu’s music. They didn’t need to explain why, we fans would’ve known immediately. And then his showdown with Gintoki was kind of weird because they inserted a lot of bad CG because of his strings...which were ridiculously thick, as you can see. There were some Matrix slo mo too which...I’m just not a fan of after the first Matrix. I also thought they should have kept the fight near the train instead of bringing it back to Edo since it lacked the heightened sense of urgency in the original scenes where Gintoki was trying to save everyone on the train. But on the bright side, Edo looked freaking amazing....reminded me Xandar in Guardians of the Galaxy.

I cried. I cry every time we get to this moment, but this time, I felt especially sad because I kinda wanted this Itou to stick around for the next movie.

I am so damn glad live action Yamazaki got his opportunity to shine on the big screen because Tozuka Junki was so delightful in Mitsuba-hen. Btw, one big bummer of the bluray set is even though it had a second special features disc, it DIDN’T include the special episodes that were shown on dTV. I was hoping they would be nice enough to include them since the had a whole extra disc, but nope. It was like cast appearance and character profile stuff. Nice of course, but still wasn’t what I was really wishing for. I wish someone would sub those and put them online like they did with the Mitsuba-hen eps.

They were sitting back to back in the manga/anime...I can’t decide if this is better, the same, or worse. It’d be nice if they were at least sitting closer cuz they were closer when they were sitting back to back. I know, I’m insane. Whatever, I loved this movie. I want a third one. And a fourth and a fifth. With this cast and Director/Screenwriter Fukuda. 

So, please, Gintama gods, give it to us. And let it cover either the Yagyuu Arc, Vacation Arc or the Baragaki Arc. Or basically any arc that can build upon these last two movies and yet be self-contained AND most importantly, include the Shinsengumi boys and Zura. I would love the Popularity Poll arc to be brought to life, since then Tsukuyo can be involved, lest anyone think I’m purposely excluding her, I’m not, it’s just the Yoshiwara arcs don’t include the Shinsengumi or Zura at all, and I don’t know how they can reasonably add all of them in, even though I would LOVE to see live action Kamui and Abuto too. And the Courtesan of a Nation arc is too involved. Maybe we can do that for the fourth movie. Gods I wish the live action can be an entire series. I could watch this cast act out every chapter of the manga. It’ll be costly, no doubt, but it’d be nice. Omg, except for one dude, wow I almost completely forgot about him because I kind of want to. Live action Takasugi is NO GOOD. I know Domoto Tsuyoshi was (is?) popular, I know he has lots of fans, Sorachi-sama is probably one of them, but holy crap is he miscast as Takasugi. It was actually physically HURTING me to see his scenes with live action Bansai (Kubota Masataka) because Bansai was so perfect in comparison. I mean, everything was just wrong with LA Takasugi...down to the fact that when he first appears in this movie, we see his ugly bare feet and legs first. It was such an off-putting entrance and yet, somehow fitting. I wish they would just recast him since, from what I heard, he didn’t even want to be Takasugi to begin with. But otherwise, everyone’s wonderful. I really hope we’ll get an American release, if not theatrically (though I wish it would be) then at least VOD or BD/DVD so that I can finally understand what everyone is saying through subs.

Anyway, that’s my long-ass review of the second live action movie, Gintama 2: Rules are made to be broken. Thank you for reading, please see it legally when you are able to so that Fukuda-san and his team can make enough money to make another one. 

[nighttimefjaeril]

Shipper manifesto (or "why do I ship Houmei/Jyoan?")

Welcome to rareshipping hell, grab a seat, grab a drink, ‘cause this is gonna be a long one.

So, I’m pretty sure that anyone that has ever the slightest interaction with me, can at least tell two things about me: 1. I’m incredibly, borderline insanely passionate about Saiyuki Ibun 2. I love Jyoan and Houmei the most.

Now, I’m sure that most of you also know that I not only I love them separately, as their own characters, but also together. ‘Cause I ship them, you know. Hard. I’m probably not very subtle bout that, am I? But at the same time, I have to say that, unless I’m in an environment where I know people are gonna be accepting, I don’t feel extremely comfortable talking about it. Why? I’m not sure to be honest. This is not a problematic pairing by any stretch of the imagination, the guys are roughly the same age and there are no signs of dub or non-con in their dynamics. I guess that what it all boils down to is my fear of having people come up and tell me “But WHY?”. Which, to be fair, it isn’t an offensive question at all, per se. It’s probably that people wanna know the reasons behind me shipping these two characters. Gosh, they probably never thought about it, they’re just curious, and understandably so. It’s just that my silly, insecure mind can’t help but perceive this otherwise innocent question as judgemental. As in like “How can you ship these two as they barely interacted in the first volume??” , “How can you ship them when you should ship Koumyou with Ukoku (I do) and in his Houmei-form with Toudai (I also do, I’m a shameless multishipper) and Jyoan has Ganpuku (I…sort of do?) as his go-to shipping partner!”. Again, I’m not saying that these are necessarily the other person’s thoughts behind the question, it’s just how my mind perceives it most of the time, and I feel like I have to justify myself for liking it, in a way. Well, today I thought I try and leave my insecurities behind and explain once and for all why not only I ship Houmei and Jyoan, but it’s also probably my OTP. For now. Until Minekura gives us more Ibun and you know, things may change…

Why do you ship Houmei/Jyoan?

There are many ways I could start this… it’s a combination of things really. The easiest way to put it is this: I’m in love with the potential dynamics of their relantionship, based on the chemistry of their personalities… which is definitely the most developed thing about Ibun characters so far. Not the estabilished history with each other, as there is very little of it at this point as the story has just began; not their backround, which is hinted at best, and not their motivations, which in most cases are still pretty murky. But their personalities, their well-roundness… for characters that have only appeared in one volume, they’re all incredibly developed. This is one of Minekura’s greatest strengths: being able to create intriguing and memorable characters within their first apperance. Of course there is room for further development for all Ibun characters (including Houmei, we may have seen more of him compared to but we still know so little about it) but as far as the core of their personalities goes they’re incredibly well-constructed and adaptable for many, many scenarios.

We know that Jyoan is a proud, ambitious, tsundere-like character that wants to be at the center of attention at all costs; we know that Houmei is a free-spirited, kind but sneaky, incredibly gifted boy that succeeds in everything he does with very little effort. With these canon elements in mind, I think it’s only natural to imagine a scenario where Jyoan, who is probably one of the most driven candidates, would feel nothing but a devouring envy towards Houmei, who pretty much surpasses him in everything (hell Minekura even pointed out that Jyoan is one of the best with spells… only second to Houmei :’D) without even trying. We haven’t seen this yet, true, but to me it’s just a natural progression of the premise we’re given with these two. Actually, we have proof  that Jyoan is well aware of Houmei’s incredible talent, as he has shown towards the end (he basically wants him out because he knows he’s the biggest threat, and goes as far as to saying that “Whatever they test they put him through, Houmei will manage”. He states that in front of everyone too, and guys, this is Jyoan we’re talking about, someone who would put anyone down in favor of himself at any chance!). So, knowing Jyoan’s pettiness and… not-so-understated personality, I can’t expect nothing but obsessive jealousy towards Houmei. And once the object of his obsession realizes that, after wondering for quite some time why does that purple-haired weirdo keep looking at him like he wants to put a hex on him, wouldn’t you think that Houmei wouldn’t pass the chance to take this to his advantage, or at least have some fun with it at Jyoan’s expenses? 'Cause let’s face it, Jyoan is lthe perfect victim for Houmei’s trolling, more than anyone else; he’s touchy, petty, resentful and while I wouldn’t call him dumb nor exactly naive, I think… he would fall for it? :’D At the beginning at least; I stongly believe that at some point he would be able to tell that Houmei is full of shit, and why you ask? Easy: because Jyoan hides his true personality behind a mask as well. A narcissistic and self-confident façade that hides his insecurities and weaknesses, just like Houmei hides his real nature behind his ditzy and goofy persona. I think that, once they get to know each other a little bit more, it would be pretty apparent to both, and the discovery would lead to some tense and perhaps dramatic moments between them (you know, like “Bitch you fake” “LOL bitch look who’s talking” xD).

So yeah. We have Jyoan’s obsessive jealousy towards Houmei, and Houmei taking advantage of that for his own enjyoment. They both may be calling each other fake at some point and may get into a twink fight. So where does romance come to play in all this?

To be fair, I’m not even sure if I ship this romantically or not. I mean, I do I guess, but not in a “and they lived happily ever after” kind of way (do I ever lol). I will say this: I definitely believe that,given the premises aforementioned, I don’t think it’s hard at all to imagine some romantic/sexual tension building between them as a natural progession. Because you see, obsessiveness can lead to attraction pretty easily, in a “love-hate” kind of way. Isn’t “being attracted to your rival” one of the tropes as old as time (from Jyoan’s pov that is)? Besides, it may be a pretty weak point to make, but Jyoan is obsessed with beauty, too, and well, is there anyone more beautiful than Houmei around the temple (beside Jyoan himself, of course, of course! :’D )? Let’s be honest, Jyoan is a bit shallow that way, he would be attracted to the prettiest person… second to him :p I do however believe that his attraction wouldn’t be limited to that: it’d be a mix of awe and jealousy towards Houmei’s talent, his intelligence, his popularity, his good looks… would Jyoan ever admit that? No, but deep down, would he want to (get) hit (by) that? Probably.

This took only Jyoan’s side into consideration, so what about Houmei? Why would he be attracted to Jyoan?

First of all, I would like to make a point about Koumyou that comprises every other ship revolving around him: usually, it’s pretty easy to tell how the other person involved feels about Koumyou. But how about him? Do we really know how he truly feels about Ukoku, Goudai or whomever? We can imagine that he cares about them, sure, but does he really show it? I think not, at least not to the extent that the other person does. That’s because Koumyou is an incredibly aloof, distant person, with a very complex and detatched attitude towards life itself. His Houmei-form isn’t that much different, quite the contrary: he may hide it more behind his goofball façade, but his thoughts and attitude aren’t less enigmatic than his more mature self.

Having said that… based on what was said earlier, I think that Houmei wouldn’t think much of Jyoan at first. The “rival” narrative doesn’t really hold up for him. He would definitely find Jyoan odd (which he is), maybe irritating even, and perhaps him and Toudai would make fun of him a little, 'cause remember, Toudai doesn’t like Jyoan and viceversa (they would never bully him of course, but maybe commenting something along the lines of “Oh that weirdo is making a fuss again, how did he even end up here?”). But after playing some practical jokes on him and getting to know him better, I feel he would warm up to Jyoan quite a bit. He would find his tsundere-ness and over-the-top-ness pretty endearing, probably because it would make him laugh. He would have fun around Jyoan, in a way or another. They’re both pretty strange, “extra ” kind of people, not in the same way of course, but they do share some similarities and who knows, they may discover they have more stuff in common than they think (like c'mon, like they wouldn’t love spending their evenings with clad in robes, face masks on, catching up with some ridiculous gayass program that only them would be into :’D). Also, I feel that Houmei would be able to pick up on Jyoan’s attraction (or well, weird mix of contrasting feelings and “I-it’s not like I like you or anything, b-baka”) towards him pretty soon, and would he go for it? Sure, why not? I feel that Houmei would be…adventurous that way and would basically go with the flow, it the premises are right. Knowing him, he would definitely take pleasure in teasing Jyoan and well, basically play with him a bit, unless… things turn into a nuisance. If it takes too much effort, Houmei is likely to lose interest fast, leading both parties to frustration and unresolved sexual tension. Which, I don’t know about you, I’m all for. (Also, I have no problem picturing Houmei finding Jyoan attractive, he’s a pretty boy, just like he is. Unless he’s solely into big, masculine dudes, which I think not *cough*Ukoku*cough*, I think that there are good chances that he would find him fuckable. I don’t think he would have a “type” anyways).

Ok, now that we’ve roughly estabilished how their dynamics and chemistry work, what’s next? Would they fuck? If yes how?  Would it be hot or not (Hell yeah it would!)?

And then what?

Alright, let’s talk about sex. I don’t know about you, but the temple of hot dudes in fundoshi scenario just works for me. Much like prison, the military etc., it’s one of those things where sexual frustation may lead even the straightest man to… exploration (I don’t think it’s Houmei and Jyoan’s case, BUT). Without elaborating too much on it, I think that, if these two would reciprocate attraction, it’s most likely that they would end up doing it. Why wouldn’t they? They’re young  men in their prime and probably suffering from the worst case of blue balls ('cause you know, forced celibacy), it’s only natural that they would find a way to release some tension. I have a thing for Koumyou as a top in general, and with Jyoan, well… Jyoan definitely strikes me as a bottom. I’m not saying he wouldn’t top like ever, but… yeah, it’d be definitely a very rare occurance. Ok, one could argue “the feminine one as the bottom cliché”, but actually, I don’t think it’s quite the case with these two: in fact, they’re both pretty feminine dudes. Dare I say that, between the two, Houmei could be actually the most feminine? Appearance-wise Jyoan has a more androgynous look, but who speaks like a schoolgirl and uses “watashi” between the two? Minekura mentions that Jyoan can be surprisingly masculine at times, and I can honestly see that, as in his demenor is definitely more aggressive and imposing. Despite all that, Jyoan in my eyes would still be the world’s biggest bottom, and a very submissive one at that. Me and others have often referred to him as a “pillow queen”, too, which I think it’s very fitting: Jyoan makes you work for it, only then he would reciprocate…maybe (I headcanon him to be pretty skilled at oral though, blame it on the illustration where he’s licking a lollipop: goddammit Minekura, be a little bit more subtle about it :’D). But all the attention must be on him, all the time. As for Houmei… he would be happy to oblige :D He’s the most adaptable and creative of the two, and he would get a kick out of dominating Jyoan, for sure; no matter the position or role, he’d be the one in control all the time. And Jyoan would be totally ok with it, whether he admits it or not. Also, I could picture them being into some light kink stuff, nothing too extreme, but you know for sure that ropes would be heavily involved (well guys, Koumyou would have had to practice on someone before going all out on Ukoku, wouldn’t he? ;) ). To put it shortly, I think that they would have very good sexual chemistry. Would that reduce their relantionship to the one of two fuckbuddies? Eh, don’t think so. Perhaps it could start that way, you know, once they overcome all the confusing feelings and tension (which may take a while lol). But I do believe that they would definitely manage to estabilish some form of emotional connection and bond, once they get to know each other better. And since we know that they’ll spend at least two years together living under the same roof, I’d say that there is more than enough time for that.

Having said that… do I think that their relantionship is meant to last forever? Probably not.

…

“BUT YOU SAID IT’S YOUR OTP AND YOU DEDICATED THIS UNREASONABLY LONG POST TO THEM AND-” Ok, ok, I know, but hear me out. Not all otps are meant for an happy ending. Some of us prefer some… contrasting and unbalanced dynamics that would lead to drama. Tormented lovestories. Awful people doing awful stuff and making each other suffer. Perhaps it’s one person loving the other more and receiving less in return? Perhaps it’s a crippling inferiority complex leading them to believe that? Or perhaps it’s simply a matter of incompatibility, despite all the love and the good that it’s there? Or it could be also for reasons that go beyond their will. Or it could also be just that Jyoan is an egoistic and childish piece of shit and Houmei is a manipulative insincere bastard, you know. I do sense a certain degree of dysfunctionality between them, of the kind where being together doesn’t bring up the best but the worst in them. I’m not saying that there is no other way to interpret their relationship, and I’d be lying if I said that I wouldn’t dream of a universe where Houmei and Jyoan would grow to become just like the guys from Vicious (if you have never seen it, look it up and tell me that Sir Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi’s characters aren’t Jyoan and Houmei respectively in their sixties :'3 ). But I do believe that, in a way or another, their relantionship is probably not going to be a long-lasting one. Probably too much drama. Too much instability. Lack of trust and fear of committment could play a role in it, too (no I’m not blaming everything on Houmei, like can you imagine how it must be being around a perpetually pissed primadonna for a long period of time? Yeah, can’t really blame him). Even with this conviction in mind, do I still love it and ship it to death? Heck yeah. If anything, this only reinforces my devotion, as it’s said that the most beautiful things are meant to be short-lived…you know, like a butterfly (insert JYOAN IS GONNA DIE IN IBUN!!!! conspiracy theory).

I think that I covered everything. I guess I could get into the whole symbolism topic, bringing up the fact Houmei being very often surrounded by butterflies in Ibun illustrations, including a black one, and well, Jyoan has been associated with both butterflies and the color black (the black kitsune mask illustration and his “mundane” clothes are always monochromatic, too); I could also point out that butterflies are attracted to light  (Houmei = light ; Jyoan = buttefly), until they burn themselves to death; I could bring up the fact that their birthdays’ numbers are basically flipped (Houmei -> 29/08; Jyoan -> 28/09 = 29/08 28/09) and more. The thing is, I don’t think I necessarily need to bring any evidence to the table in order to make this pairing acceptable. Or any other pairing, for what it’s worth. 'Cause at the end of the day, it’s all a matter of taste. My reasons for shipping a pairing are personal and legitimate, and don’t require any justification for that. I wrote this so-called manifesto mostly for myself, as a way to rationalize why I like Houmei/Jyoan so much. If, at the same time, this can help others understand my fascination behind it, and who knows, maybe appeal some into learning more about it, then even better. I’m not trying to convince anyone to ship them or that they’re canon, not at all; I just want to prove that it’s totally ok shipping two characters just based on potential and personal, subjective feelings, and that rarepairs aren’t less “legit” than more universally accepted ships, canon or not. If you look deep enough into the characters and use your own imagination as a way of filling the gaps left empty by canon, anything it’s possible. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

So… could all this gigantic amount of text be summed-up as: “I ship it because I like it”? Well, yes. I’m very sorry.