#whatever this ship dynamic is called its so unique i love them | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

gg-selvish · 1 year

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please share your analysis

i talked about this on twitter so forgive me those who are gonna see me repeating myself but that clip is just so fascinating if u take a step back and compare it to the way dnn interact with each other because theyre all friends and theyre all in love or whatever but their duo dynamics are so drastically different from each other and the way they balance out as a trio is like the whole reason i ship them. every duo works despite how the tropes/dynamics/dare i say behaviours are unique yet the trio is like perfect balance

anyway. let's talk about george saying 'wait'

george has self-imposed rules of how he interacts with people and how others interact with him. we learned this from everyone in the uk and customer service workers who have talked about him where he can be a sweet people pleaser while still being a little spicy but he does know how to be normal. then he gets to florida with people he's incredibly close to and comfortable with and all we hear is 'george sucks' 'george is a menace' 'george is crazy' so as we all know people are multi-facetted, but i think george is especially multi-facetted and even multi-faced at times. there's like a different george for streaming, videos, in call, uk irl, florida/la irl, and then everything we don't see is a whole other george i can't even begin to think about

but im getting distracted. the wait. the dnn.

when george is talking to people he's close to, especially dream, sapnap, and now karl as they've gotten closer, he has more rules. like karl and sapnap pointed out in banter he has long pauses in between sentences and gets frustrated when he's interrupted when people don't know they're interrupting him so he just gets louder and more persistent and it drives sapnap especially crazy. it's so fascinating to me how things that dream is comfortable with an appreciates about george drives sapnap right up the wall. because he still loves george so much, you can tell it from the way theyre glued to each other and talk about each other constantly even if its negative. if he didnt like him he wouldnt be sharing stories about him constantly, yknow? he's mad and ranting but theres this lingering fondness under the frustration that brings me back to 'we wouldnt be friends if we werent already friends' and a lot of people took that as 'i dont want to be friends with you' but i read it as 'we're such a good friends you can do anything to me and no matter how pissed i get we're still gonna be friends because i decided 7 years ago that we're stuck together'

sorry sorry. the wait. the wait.

george does this all the time in calls. we see him do it with solo streams too. he reeeeeeeeeeeeally draws out goodbyes because i think he hates them. he says hes leaving and gonna end then reads pieces of chat or shares another anecdote then says hes gonna end again and doesnt again.

for dream this is amazing. he loves listening to george no matter what and entertains all of his weird mannerisms easy as breathing because he's a simp for him and infatuated and we all know this. a telling example of this is when theyre streaming and george does this exact thing

g: im leaving

d: ok bye

g: wait *says something else*

d: *waits and listens*

and then they get sucked into another conversation and go on or they move to an offstream call to continue what they were talking about because dream would listen to george read the newspaper and be enthralled. we know this. dnf is real. but sapnap is different

sapnap is george's favourite thing to needle. he pokes and prods at him until he's riled up and frustrated which is puts george on the moon with amusement because it makes him laugh and it means sapnap cares about him. their bickering back and forth is pure quality time, and when george gets quiet and starts to get soft it's sapnap's turn to make him uncomfortable. this is what they do... they find each other's tender underbelly and wait for the right moment to deliver a blow. it's a love language and a reminder of their dynamic which is fighty and spicy and always on their toes. they have their soft and sweet moments but their preferred way of interacting is lightning speed fighting back and forth to feel alive

but the wait.

george did exactly what he does with dream in that clip. says he wants to leave and is told not to leave and says hes gonna leave anyway so sapnap, who isnt dream, goes 'ok dude bye' and then HE WAITS. HE WAITS FOR GEORGE TO SAY WAIT BECAUSE HE KNOWS HE DOESNT WANT HIM TO HANG UP YET HE WANTS HIM TO WAIT. HE KNOWS THE RULES. george says wait and sapnap hangs up.

sapnap is satisfied with himself for putting george in his place and george doesnt get that from a lot of people 'has anyone ever said no to you?' sapnap has. sapnap does it all the time. sapnap is a firm hand on george's scruff and keeps him from playing mind games like an expert zookeeper and it's absolutely fascinating to watch.

i would love to see a moment like this in a threeway call and see how it balances out. it's literally like a lab experiment to me

#ask #thank u for letting me pop off this was fun

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gingerylangylang1979 · 2 years

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Black Women & BWWM Ships

I’m a Black woman, I sometimes like interracial ships, sometimes I don’t. But I will say that race isn’t the deciding factor in me shipping the BWWM ships that I have shipped in my life. The BWWM ships I have obsessed over are Richonne, Spock and Uhura for a minute (but I got bored with that franchise super quick), and Carmy x Sydney. There is a Black woman, Tamar, on The Chosen (the only other show I currently watch) and I want to ship her with somebody because she’s fierce and it would be interesting but nobody stands out for her yet. The only core male characters close to her are Jewish (the Apostles) so I would ship her with a white man by default but honestly it wouldn’t matter to me if it’s one of them or a fellow African who joins later.

Anyways, I’ve also hated or been indifferent to BWWM ships. A few that come to mind are Tara and Sam from True Blood (just awkward), Olivia and pretty much anyone on Scandal (I liked that show for the high drama but after a while thought her and all the boos sucked and dropped that show), and basically any BWWM pairing that seems forced (so many shows try to throw this in to be edgy or whatever and it seems token and lame).

My point is I’m not swayed just because a relationship is interracial. I just like what I like. A couple who has chemistry, interesting parallels, partnership, a common bond, obstacles they have to overcome (any good written romance does not come easy), an interesting world they inhabit together, and they look cute together (I can be a little superficial, why not) are going to suck me in regardless of racial dynamics.

Why am I writing this and who cares? I remember back in my days of the Richonne fandom there being a popular sentiment coming from some haters that only “desperate Black women” shipped Richonne. That isn’t even true because they are actually quite popular with all races, people are just gonna hone in on the “desperate Black women”. I remember the canon reaction videos, it was a widely diverse audience that was like “finally”. But I guess I’m waiting for that shoe to drop with The Bear fandom. There has already been some questionable posting about the pair but nothing as outright toxic and bad faith as I saw with Richonne... yet. Like, people literally calling Michonne manly. We’ve already got the sibling lameness and the they are strictly mentor/mentee claims so I don’t think the rest is far behind.

People swore Rick and Michonne were like siblings, they made a great team but not that kind of team, it would be weird if they kiss, a romance would be forced, Michonne is gonna get the Negan bat to the head, she was Carl’s babysitter, they are too much alike, etc. Rick was also shipped with any white woman on the show or people hoped The One would show up for him all while ignoring the obvious setup that was years in the making. Now, I’m not saying any BWWM pairing can’t have legit criticism and people legit just aren’t for it (of any race because plenty of Black people are not about the swirl)... but BWWM inspire a unique disdain historically.

A lot of people can’t imagine romance with these characters because they are sheltered TBH. I think the confusion that exists with Richonne and Carmy x Sydney in particular is because they get a Kerry Washington type being an ingenue who attracts the white lead but someone less glam in the way most of society sees glam throws them if a white man wants them. A white woman can be less than glam and they will get it. But with a Black woman it doesn’t register or make them comfortable. It doesn’t compute. It could be conscious or unconscious. I get it, I see it, I’m not sheltered. I’ve seen couples IRL that look like Richonne and Carmy x Sydney. It exists, it’s real, and it makes great fiction. Black women will support it in a story if it makes sense.

Now, granted I do think some fetishize interracial relationships and that has its issues but I also think Black women are going to love... Black women being loved, by anybody regardless of gender, orientation, or race. We just want romance and a compelling story. If there happens to be a Black person that could be paired with a Black woman but if it just doesn’t make sense, it just doesn’t. Or maybe it could be an ok couple but it wouldn’t be as epic as the BWWM pairing being developed. We pick up on what is being given to us.

I think if people don’t see blatant lust or intense flirting between a pair right away they assume we are imagining things. Many don’t often see the tiny sparks and hints or room for romance to grow and develop deeply for Black women characters. We are complex, too. We sometimes have to stumble, and be awkward, and push away, and be conflicted. I think any subtlety with a budding romance gets easily lost with Black women characters. When it’s a white man opposite us it can be hard for many to see it for what it is if it doesn’t read as obvious to them. But we see what we see and it just may be a fine white man and a beautiful Black woman navigating a nuanced something, something until it becomes SOMETHING.

#richonne #twd #the walking dead #michonne #rick grimes #michonne grimes #the bear hulu #the bear fx #carmy x sydney #sydney adamu #carmy berzatto

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prisonguards · 1 year

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FR!!! Like oh my GOD I didnt even ship smallidarity before likeeeee I was just your average flower husbands fan, and I wanted to stick hard to the whole boundary compliance thing because I was part of dsmp twt for a year and. Well. That should say enough, iykyk. But then Joel just kept obsessing over Jimmy, Jimmy kept simping for Joel, and then the entire thing with the "he's just sooo cuuuute" and "can we just compare the size difference again, its my favorite thing ever" and whatever the fuck fixating on the noise Jimmy made was and it was like. Well. Bro. BRO. THEEEEN the having a CHILD together thing happened and I just fell into shipping them immediately from E2 alone. And now I'm watching E1 and I'm gonna rewatch 100h hardcore because your blog has just made it Worse.

This has been an entire tangent but the tldr is I didn't ship smallidarity until Joel was absolutely unbearable and obvious over just how much the cuteness aggression he gets over Jimmy Gets To Him.

Also I see your tags and I bring you this: in watching E1, am I insane or is the whole "Katherine was his first ally but I am his BEST ally, I will call her a coward and get genuinely angry at her for not going to the lengths I will to protect Jimmy" give off possessiveness. Not possessiveness as in jealousy, ownership, or anything like that but more in the sense that he takes great pride in being the one who takes care of Jimmy best, so to speak and to be the one who protects him when he needs it. This isn't really related at all to what you said but I'm doing my best and it's 6 AM as I write this, I have not slept and I should cut myself off before I spout even more nonsense.

- life series anon

ANON I LUV YOU AUSGEUE. I hope you get some good sleep friend aaueghd

I think that happened to a lot of people :3 smallidarity like was ramping up all season thanks to enemies to lovers being such a popular trope/dynamic but its Exploded in popularity lately and Im so thankful for that!!! whether it be from Joels fawning or their. insanity inducing innuendoes. the more fans the merrier ^—^

IM SO GLAD MY MADNESS HAS GOTTEN U TO WANNA REWATCH 100 HOURS :3c !!! its a comfort series for me for sure. and the episodes with Jimmy in them are. absolutely the best. ep 4 is one of my favorite episodes of anything ever. and if you want more Joel fawning over Jimmys cuteness…

YESSSSSS YES.. I ADORE THEM IN EMP S1!!! their dynamic is so unique there because of how wholly and overwhelmingly soft/positive it is. theyre allies from the start and BEST allies… auuughh.. yesshh Joel gets sooo defensive over Jimmy in s1 its beautiful. how quick he is to go absolutely murder mode for Jimmy. but how quick he is to be soft for him too. SIGGHHHHH. its my dream fr. the possessiveness.. YES.. theyre just SO important to eachother and it drives me crazy. he treats Jimmy so special. the way that he has little rooms for just Jimmy and Lizzie in his palace… the special roles they both hold… his wife and his best friend… there is def such a special connection there. and the possessiveness, Jimmy has so many more allies and close allies than Joel does. Joel just enforcing and affirming his station and specialness to Jimmy every once and a while.. by insulting his other allies augshs.. augh.. I just love them

also, for anyone else mulling over boundaries still; if you want specifics he just said he finds it “a bit weird” and iirc he didnt really say you cant do it. he just doesnt get it cause hes such a wifeguy. if youre concerned you can still tag it properly/keep it out of main tags. but if he was Really upset by it he would Not be encouraging and escalating it, and making the jokes he does, and putting them in his videos, and liking comments people make about them, and the tweets he makes, and and and and… if people are harassing u on behalf of him, they dont really care about what hes comfortable with, they just wanna punch down at someone. I get wanting to be respectful, but Ive also seen it used for such cruelty 💔 so I think the most important thing to keeping everyone, including the creators themselves, happy is to keep things to the right tags and spaces and being kind to yourself and others and blocking what you need and keeping out of peoples business.

#life series anon #srry for going off abt the boundary thing I just…#some people seriously harassed my partner for posting like the MILDEST shippy video of us. who are dating irl. in smallidarity cosplay #like we didnt do anything seriously romantic but these people are block evading and calling them all sorts of awful things for the audacity #of… a five second tiktok cosplay of an irl couple cosplaying characters they have has a baby together in a VERY innuendo filled scene #like I think hell live. hell be fine. but youre making my partner scared tp participate in fandom #anyway you seriously make my day with ur asks aaaaah :3 #I love talking abt these guuuuys and I love seeing ur thoughts 💚#prisspeaks #asks #discourse #smallidarity

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pawtistics · 2 years

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bandori ship thoughts!!!!! give em!!!! <3

CRIES. I have friends or whatever SABLE FOR U AS WELL THANK U BOTH OF U FOR ASKING 🫂💗🍓🍒

OK SO MAINLY . ROTATING IN MY MIND

Yukilisa and mocaran are practically canon to me. Yukiran as well to a SLIGHTLY lesser extent. Lisa and moca work together and have literally been shown talking abt their gfs and their problems all shift. I think that they can have a little polyamory as a treat. The specific dynamics and who is dating who is a little messier in my mind but they’re all so homosexual . i need more content of them immediately (there is none) . ITS HARD TO COME UP WITH A NAME THAT SOUNDS GOOD.

To elaborate on Them:

yukilisa childhood friends that fell apart and came back together in order to make music as roselia (with 3 other ppl ♡ whom i adore) . What makes me insane is how much of herself lisa is willing to instantly sacrifice just to get to play with yukina again. That’s not a good thing and yukina is kind of cold for quite a while but she is Going Through It and AUUGH they’re learning each other again and healing and 💔💔 their dynamic is sooooooooo sweet and yukina puts up with things from lisa that she genuinely wouldn’t with anyone else and they are So close and yukina is kittygirl REAL I LOVE HER SOFT LITTLE SMILES THAT SHE GIVES LISA AND THEIR CARDS TOGETHER AUAUG

MOCARAN. I constantly think abt all of their matching items thats so coupley (OH CIRCLING BACK I ALSO CONSTANTLY THNK OF THE AREA CONVO WHERE LISA BUYS YUKINA N HERSELF MATCHING KITTY PHONECASES I REALLY WANTED TO DRAW THAT) . AND SWUWUAUAHUAUH Everyone in afterglow is always talking abt how, while they have ALL been friends since forever, moca and ran have somehow developed this really special unique bond. they understand each other ! what the other person will do,, or say,, AND THEYRE 💔 Also flawed, moca has a hard time expressing to ran when she thinks ran is doing something wrong (SAME W LISA @ YUKINA TBH !!! AND THEY GIVE EACH OTHER ADVICE ON THIS!!) but they get better and they care abt each other So much

YUKIRAN INSANITY theyre rivals musically and also they fight and its ❤️❤️❤️💜❤️❤️ … ONE OF MY FAV CARDS AND ALSO ONE THAT IS IN MY BAND IS THIS ONE :

AND ITS SO……….*))*/))&: I CANT STRESS TO U ENOUGH THAT YUKINA DOES NOT NORMALLY HAVE THE PURPLE STREAK BUT RAN DOES . NORMALLY HAVE THE RED. IS IT GAY TO MATCH UR GF? IS IT GAY TO CARE SO MUCH ABT BEATING / IMPRESSING ANOTHER WOMAN . In one story all the band leaders are talking abt their dream shows that they would put on in a huge impressive stadium AND RAN LITERALLY SAYS FIRST THING BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE THAT YUKINA WOULD BE THERE PRAISING HER )*(&)&)373)$)#;==:=:= AT THIS INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT GIGANTIC MILESTONE OF A STAGE. HELPPP AND IN THAT SAME STORY THEY HOLD HANDS IN ORDER NOT TO GET LOST AS A JOKE AND RAN IS ANGY AND YUKINA IS SMIRKING. SHES SO CUTE .

i still feel like i haven’t properly expressed my feelings on them or really Sold it LIKE I FEEL LIKE SOME OF THESE DESCS R SO SHALLOW BUT THEYRE SO AAHHFJBJFNSHDNM )5)&)&s . YOYUKNOW.

AND FINALLY IM THINKING OF . HIMARI/KAORU/TOMOE...? Ohhh my god ok this one is a lot more indulgent but it’s good i prommy .. Himari literally tells tomoe if only she were a boy 🥰🥰 CUZ TOMOE IS SO CARING N WARM N STRONG.

canvas2929 who works on bandori implied tomohima canon in the comments of this art piece i love so much :

HIMARI and rimi are So fucking gay for kaoru they literally bond over it together im Screams. I THINK RIMI COULD ALSO B IN THIS POLYCULE but it’s just that .. i think the other 3 have more close personal connections and r more interlocked than she is w them? I THINK IF Himari and rimi were any less intensely femme4butch they could date each other . But theyre obsessed w handsome women adn for good reason 🥰 KAORU IS SO FUCKING LESBIAN HAVE U SEEN HER CHARATCTER SHES LITERALLY 24/7 PLAYING A PRINCE AND SHE WONT STOP CALLING GIRLS HER KITTENS EVER SHES LITERALLY ALWAYS FLIRTING WHAT S WRONG W HER. Cluster b boss.

KAOTOMO R SO BUTCH4BUTCH. SDTUFGYKBHK . HERES A CARD FROM WHEN ALL THE HOT MASCS WENT ON A CRUISE TOGETHER FOR SOME REASON????????? YOU SHOULD SEE ALL OF THE CARDS THEY KILLED ME BUT I PICKED THIS ONE CUZ KAOTOMO IS BEING SO CUTE IN THE BG :)

TOMOE IS SO FWGHBGHVHJHK. i heart the udagawas :] :] SHES A DRUMMER AND SHES SOOOBBJGVJ K. It’s the older sister in her.. but she’s so ……………..

i also ❤️ kasuari i believe theyre canon but im thinking of THEM .

secret bonuses: i firmly believe sayo is crushing (unrequited? possibly?) on yukilisa. Im also pretty fond of misakao i just dont have as many thoughts :] i also believe chisakao are exes 💗💗 I leave u with……... mocalisa card…

#🍎#THANK UUUUUUUU SERIOUSKY

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airborneham · 4 months

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Best Frenemies: Dynamic Conflict in Social Deduction Games

That space-kitty has been taunting me for over a decade.

I’ve never played Twilight Imperium.

It’s not that I don’t want to, it just seems like an ordeal to get enough people to commit to a day-long, high-conflict board game. It’s a big investment. Several of my friends have talked about putting together a game for much of my adult life, but talking about it and doingit are very different things and it has yet to happen at a time or place that’s accessible to me.

However, I have played my fair share of other bigol strategy games that thrive on politicking and shifting alliances like A Game of Thrones, Root, or Cosmic Encounter, so I get the gist. Asymmetric factions, reluctant cooperation, unifying against the current leader only to realign when the dust settles; all great stuff that I love in my games.

These are traits of some of the highest-rated games of all time. However, they rely on the fact that there are more than two teams. It’s hard to have shifting alliances when it’s a good vs. evil situation. Even Batman and Joker set aside their differences sometimes, but usually only when they have a common enemy.

In my last post identifying some common problems with many social deduction games, I discussed how there are usually the two teams: werewolves and townsfolk, fascists and liberals, resistance and spies, etc. Go back and read that post if you haven’t so I don’t have to repeat myself much.

Are you back? Great, now let me pick up where I left off.

The gist of my argument is that once the lying team is found out, the social aspect of the game is over. However, what if it didn’t have to be? What if the social deduction part of the game was just the beginning?

Today I’m going to talk about some ways that social deduction games can learn from the Twilight Imperiums of the world, incorporating several factions with differing goals and creating the uneasy alliances as the hidden roles are uncovered. I’ll start with the LARP I designed in the past, move to some other games I have (and haven’t) played, and then get to how I am taking those lessons and applying them to one of my current projects: a new entry into the social deduction genre that I’m working on called Dreamland.

Hidden goals, not hidden roles.

Writing this is a nostalgia trip for me as I dig through Haunted Mansion files.

Before the pandemic, I designed and ran a LARP every single month called Haunted Mansion (no affiliation with Disney or Danny DeVito). The name was largely a holdover from its original inception as the theme and mechanics changed from month to month, but consistent (non-trademarked) branding is important.

One of the core mechanics that largely stayed the same through every event was some form of hidden roles. These came to a player in the form of a character name or title, a paragraph or two background, and usually two explicit goals involving the particular game’s mechanics or scenario.

Some events had explicit pre-made teams vying for one of a few possible outcomes of the event, such as Cyberpunk corporate employees wanting one of their own faction to escape with a data file. In other events everyone was largely on their own to form whatever teams they liked with certain restrictions involving their pre-assigned roles, like a pirate ship that needs all 4 unique role positions filled in order to sail, but there are limited vessels to escape on and limited capacity to boot.

In addition to the event’s unique story and the player’s primary goal that aligned the teams, of which there were almost always 3 or more and acted as our hidden roles like you would expect out of a social deduction game, the individual characters also had specific secondary goals that they wanted to accomplish. A secondary goal could be something relatively harmless like having a certain item at the end of the game, or it could be as nefarious as wanting to kill a certain number of other characters.

What all of this meant is that alliances would form between players working together towards a common primary objective, but there was always a certain level of distrust and uncertainty about the cooperation. Sometimes you have to identify your teammates and secretly cooperate. Other times you assemble a group you can trust to defeat the opposition. Either way, even if your best friend is on the same team as you, they could want to do something that doesn’t exactly help your situation or could be at odds with someone else on the team.

Some examples might help.

Heist was one of 30+ events we ran. They all blend together in my memory.

Our cyberpunk Heist game had 6 factions: Goggles and FaceBlock vying for Data Files, Golden Sacks and B.E.U. focusing on extracting Money Bags, and F.E.D. and The Syndicate trying to kill members of the other. These were represented in their Corporate Goals.

In addition, the personal goals for each player role were one of 3 things: Personally Escape with 2 Money Bags, Escape with a Knife, or Escape with both Slicer Tools and Decker Tools.

This created a pressure cooker environment as teams formed combining factions that didn’t have opposing Corporate Goals like Goggles and Golden Sacks. Being alone was dangerous as you could be killed by anyone, so getting allies was necessary for survival and there were plenty of allies to be found outside your opposition. However, there was a good chance that your new allies would be after the same personal goals as you, and there just wasn’t enough Money, Knives, or Tools to go around.

Click here to see some example roles from that event so you get an idea of the kind of energy we brought to Haunted Mansion and see how these goals looked on paper. We were pretty funny.

Nobody knew if the people around them would stab them in the back when it came time to divide up the heist’s payoff, so every team that formed was an uneasy alliance until the very end with uncertainty surrounding the goals each player had rather than a role may or may not have been concealing.

Infighting, splitting teams, players forced to pick sides, these were not uncommon scenes at Haunted Mansion. This is something I want to highlight because it can only happen at a certain point in a hidden role game that, as I wrote last time, most social deduction games end at.

Once players have found out who is who and who wants what, there is still so much excitement and tension that can come in the next phase of the game. The cards are on the table and everyone can start negotiating plainly. Opponents need to form temporary truces to stop another team from winning while conspiring on the side. Alliances are forged and broken. Decisions are difficult but imperative.

Was Haunted Mansion a perfect game? Of course not. But looking back now, 4 years later, we were very good at creating dynamic interactions between players’ goals that perpetuated an environment requiring uneasy and shifting alliances that I love from big-box strategy games but have yet to see recreated in the same ways in smaller social deduction games.

But that doesn’t mean that others haven’t tried.

Dead of Winter, the cooperative zombie survival game from Plaid Hat Games, is the game I’ve seen that comes closest to this. It doesn’t always have a betrayer, but always gives each player a specific goal that could be at odds with the greater mission. It’s big and has a lot going on, but is really a pretty straightforward resource management game when you look past the clunky rulebook and extensive components list.

Sparky the Stunt Dog doesn’t even get a place on the cover.

That makes it the perfect vessel for the obligatory cooperation but warranted distrust that I like out of horror experiences, like my own tabletop RPG, as you have a limited supply of stuff that’s hard to get, there’s a lot of things you have to use it for, and you don’t know what everyone else wants or if they are even on your team.

It also does something else important if you want to force people to make tough decisions with inevitable consequences.

PvPvE; or, The Game Fights Back

Something not unseen in social deduction games is a semi-cooperative aspect where players have to work together to defeat a common enemy while keeping an eye out for the traitor amongst them. This is a part of Dead of Winter, as well as the classic Battlestar Galactica game, it’s modern Lovecraftian remake Unfathomable, the aggressively named Human Punishment: The Beginning, and I’m sure many more.

It’s not exactly an innovation in the space anymore, but what I want to touch on is how much the pressure of a common enemy adds to the multi-faction, shifting alliance game. Something that everyone, or most people, need to combat together gives a lot of space for setting aside differences to deal with a problem at hand.

I also want to add that these game are a lot. Unfathomable says it takes 2-4 hours on the box, which is a wiiiiiiiide window and likely still an underestimate for your first game. Human Punishment says 2-3 hours. I’ve not played it, but I have read reviews saying it is extremely complex due to all the additional mechanics for each faction and takes much longer trying to unravel the rulebook. Dead of Winter, the shortest, is still 1-2 Hours. All of these games have a complexity rating of 3 or more out of 5 on Board Game Geek.

This is a lot of stuff and that board has a lot of text. I still want it.

In contrast, pure social deduction games like Secret Hitler or The Resistance are 30 or 45 minutes and a weight of less than 2 on BGG, which is a far easier sell to get on the table and maybe even multiple times in a night.

Does adding an outside pressure like zombies or deep ones really have to add an hour or two of play? Does a third or fourth faction require so much added complexity that the rule book can be used as a booster seat?

I sure hope not.

Enter one of my current projects and the topic of these devlogs: Dreamland.

Or “The Fate of Dreamland” or something like that. I haven’t really settled on a name yet.

It’s often said that limitations breed creativity. When setting out to design a new project, I usually try to define what my goals for that game are to avoid scope creep and keep the game in a lane, while also establishing which parts I am not willing to throw out if/when inevitable redesigns happen.

With Dreamland, I have 2 things I am settled on.

It should play in under 1 hour. That’s the goal. It should say 45 minutes on the box.

The dynamic between the 5 different roles is the part I care about. Everything else is there to facilitate those relationships and conflicts.

I’ve already discussed play time as a factor, so let me wrap up this week by outlining my 5 roles and how they interact:

The Dreamer - The original creator of Dreamland has returned, seeking to protect the world from Terrors that torment it.

The Prophets - Followers of the Dreamer who have foretold their return and seek to identify the messiah, protect them, and assist in the defense of Dreamland.

The Cultists - Worshipers of Terrors and the Nightmare, these players want to help the Terrors plunge Dreamland into eternal darkness.

The Nightmare - A sleep demon that brought the Terrors to Dreamland, but must keep them from destroying it completely as they locate and defeat The Dreamer in order to use them as a vessel into the waking world.

The Wardens - Those who seek to root out the Nightmare and defeat it, but can only do so by defeating the Cultists that give it strength.

This dynamic is what interests me about the game.

The Cultists and The Nightmare are technically allies, but The Nightmare cannot allow them to succeed as it will end the game before defeating The Dreamer. However, they should be protected from The Warden to avoid The Nightmare’s defeat.

The Dreamer and The Prophets are keeping the Terrors from destroying the world, and The Warden wants to help them (and even protect them), but cannot allow them to succeed in defeating the Terrors completely as the game will end before defeating The Nightmare.

The Dreamer must blend in with The Prophets to avoid being singled out by The Nightmare, but if they are about to be defeated they may need to reveal themselves to ask for help.

The Cultists might need to help the Dreamer survive to avoid The Nightmare winning before they can destroy the world.

This all gets to the part of the game I want to see more of. A post-hidden role phase where the different factions are publicly supporting or opposing each other once their jig is up. The social deduction is still a core feature of the first phase, but there is still game to be had once people out themselves. I believe it hinges on there being 1+ parties outside of the core “good vs evil” dynamic.

Next time, I will spend the whole post explaining Dreamland’s current iteration, the lore and world building and why I chose a whimsical setting instead of a “cool” gritty gamer one, and the mechanics and how they specifically drive the experience.

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Let me know in the comments of any games that I might not be aware of that would be at home in this post or help inspire me while working on Dreamland, as well as your thoughts on conflict and teams in social deductions games.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time.

#tabletop #tabletop games #table top games #board games #board game design #boardgames #social deduction #hidden roles #dead of winter #human punishment #twilight imperium #dreamland #game designers #game design #devlog

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baya-ni · 3 years

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Renga Shouldn’t Be Canon (clickbait)

No but seriously, I hope that Renga doesn’t become canon, at least not in the way that I think a lot of people are hoping that it will. Personally, I’m not expecting anything close to a kiss and confession and that’s fine by me.

Queerbaiting is a problem in mainstream media, there’s no doubt about it, and many people both within and outside the queer community are right to feel wary about hoping for that kind of representation. Personally, I’m still caught by surprise every time a queer person or couple is depicted in a normalized and healthy way onscreen. And that just speaks to the appallingly poor representation queer people are so used to seeing.

But I think that fandom likes to throw the word “queerbaiting” around a bit haphazardly, much in the same way faux woke people throw around words like “gaslighting” and “cancel culture”. They’ve become buzz words to evoke immediate feelings of self-righteousness and to prey on person’s fear of appearing ignorant or bigoted.

Unfortunately, I worry that when the season inevitably ends without Renga’s “canonization”, people will unfairly label Sk8 as Queerbait. And I have many Feelings about this- mostly frustration.

But we’re only mid-season. I can only guess where the show is going to go and only make assumptions about fandom behavior based on personal experience, and there’s a high possibility I’ll be proven totally wrong so... take whatever I say with a grain of salt. But anyway, let’s get on with it.

Fundamentally, Sk8 isn’t shoujo, it’s not BL- it’s a sports anime. And while that doesn’t preclude a total absence of romance between its characters, ultimately those aren’t the kinds of relationships that sports anime concerns itself with. The most prominent relationships you’ll see will be more along the lines of Teammates and Rivals (there's also a third dynamic I'm calling Opponents which is Not the same as Rivals but the Opponents dynamic is less relevant to my point so I'll focus on just the first two).

However, it's not hard to see why romantic interpretations are so common among fans of sports anime. At their core, the basis of Teammate and Rival dynamics bear many similarities to that of a compelling romance. Both Teammate and Rival relationships are built upon two characters' mutual admiration and respect for one another, they involve characters learning from one another and being inspired to push themselves to be their best. There's a great deal of trust involved, as is vulnerability, communication, and empathy. In other words, all the essentials of any healthy relationship.

But context and genre are important. I think that a good romance is one that is unique to its characters specific personalities and needs, as well as is believable within the context of the setting and story. For an anime like Sk8, I would find an on-screen kiss strange and out of place (unless it was done for comedic effect which would be... bad).

I'm reminded of this quote from Portrait of a Lady on Fire, which is one of my all time favorite films:

"Do all lovers feel as though they are inventing something? I know the gestures. I imagined them all waiting for you."

And that basically sums up what I've described, albeit more poetically. Love is invention. Romantic gestures form a unique language between lovers. And if I may add, genre and narrative establish the basis for the emotional significance of these gestures.

In a genre like action/thriller, one of the most meaningful things a character can do is risk their safety or straight up sacrifice themselves for another, because bodily harm and physical risks drive the tension in these kinds of narratives. In the romance genre, confessions, physical intimacy, and grand romantic displays serve the same purpose. In something like sports anime, I argue that its gestures like physically accommodating for your teammate, supporting them when they feel dejected, and being motivated to train harder and be better for the sake of being allowed to stand beside them, that hold equivalent significance.

But this is all broadly speaking, and genre is just one element. Characters’ personalities, habits, insecurities, and trauma, as well as a story’s themes, further specify the kinds of gestures that hold the most meaning in a narrative.

Let’s look again at Portrait of a Lady on Fire, on my favorite scenes:

Portrait is interested in subverting the power imbalance inherent between the Artist and the Muse, the Voyeur and the Subject, the Looker and she who is Looked At. Heloise’s observations of Marianne hold great significance because of this theme; she disrupts the power imbalance by taking back agency as the Subject, demonstrating that she is just as capable of Looking at the Artist just as the Artist does at her. This is visually represented by the framing of the final shot. With the camera pulled back, we now see Marianne as Heloise has been seeing her, and she is now subject to being visually scrutinized in the same way that Heloise has been up to this point in the film.

This scene is so poignant because the romantic gesture it depicts ties heavily to the story’s themes, its characters’ personalities, and its existence is believable within its genre.

Now, let’s bring this all back to Sk8. In this show, what sort of gestures are given the most significance?

Skateboarding. Duh.

Basically, this line establishes that “basis for emotional significance” that I mentioned earlier, such that skating is the means by which characters and relationships are developed and the plot is driven forward, that any and everything related to skating potentially holds symbolic meaning.

And specifically, equating the act of skating to love then allows for more romantic interpretations of all kinds of scenes. Take for example, these parallel sets of shots from ep 1:

(I mean cmon look at his tiny blush, it’s fucking adorable) And:

In a show that equates skating to a “ritual of love”, these scenes can be realistically be interpreted as Langa and Reki falling in love with one another. Skating acts as both the catalyst for their relationship as well as later on being the means by which they express their feelings and develop their relationship.

Skating is their love language.

Ok, I’ll try to wrap this up since this post has gotten wayyy too long. But basically my point is that Renga is about as canon as this show could possibly make it within the confines of its genre and narrative. Romance in sports anime is different from romance in shoujo, but it’s romance all the same, in the same way that different people express love in different ways.

A kiss and confession is not the only means by which a ship can become canon. And I personally would much rather have this kind of carefully crafted symbolism than a kiss just randomly shoehorned in.

But I understand that in the face of centuries of censorship, cop-outs, and barely believable and forced heteronormativity, people want same-sex intimacy onscreen, unapologetic and normalized. I get that.

But in my opinion, Sk8 isn’t queerbait, and it shouldn’t be accused as such just because its characters won’t kiss onscreen. I think this show depicts a wonderful and loving relationship between two boys, that isn’t any less loving just because it doesn’t fit into conventional romantic tropes.

Edit: I did a followup post about Sk8 and its queer representation here, where I go more in depth into the ways that Sk8 represents queerness through beyond its implied homo-romantic relationships.

So yeah, I’d love to hear yalls thoughts :)

#this is gonna get me cancelled #i kno it to be true #but Some Bitches like to reduce romance to kissing and sex #which is the smoothest fucking brain take i have EVER heard #gay ppl invented romance #Good Romance #i don't make the rules #sk8 #sk8 the infinity #sk8 meta #renga kyan #langa hasegawa #renga

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nightswithkookmin · 3 years

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Saw some ppl on twt having an interesting thought/theory the other day. That different from other pairings within the group, Jikook is one of the (if not the only one) pairings who have not had been shown having deep/insightful conversations in official content, what we see is mostly them being playful and flirty with each other instead, and that maybe that’s why a lot of people in the fandom don’t take what they say about/to each other seriously, and/or always try to downplay when compared to other pairings (i.e when Jimin said he was with JK on his birthday last year, or that he likes to wake up and see JK). Thoughts on that? Ngl, it got me thinking if maybe it’s one of the reasons why whenever jikook are jikooking it’s almost radio silence among armys who usually would get super loud when it’s JM or JK with other members 🤔.

They don't take Jikook seriously because Jikook flirts a lot and are often playful with eachother on camera than the others???

That's a lie. That's Sanskrit for homophobia.

I can see the homophobia in their eyes

If two people are flirty with eachother that is reason enough to take them seriously- especially in Kpop where people use the cover of homoerotic fanservices to live out their gay fantasies.

At the very least, when they flirt with eachother- however way you wanna take it, fanservice or not- they are assuaging their own homosexual tendencies and desires. If they didn't have them they wouldn't be flirting- unprovoked.

Flirting is a sign of sexual attraction.

What am I missing??

When Jimin says he likes to wake up to see JK's face, yes that's him flirting with Jungkook in broad day HD- it's gay, it's nonplatonic and borderline outing.

He likes to rile Jungkook up. No two ways about that. Sometimes he likes to engage in a staredown with Jungkook till the other caves- it's called gay lust and it's valid. Lol

Also, I don't get it.

Are they saying Jikook lacks depth in their dynamic or are they saying THEY don't see the depth in Jikook's dynamics?

If they can't see depth in their dynamics that's on them. Can't help them with that one. But I would have to disagree on that cos I see the depth in their dynamic more so than any I see in any ship in BTS.

When they say Jikook rarely have deep insightful conversations on camera, what metric are they using to measure that said depth? What insight do they want? Chilee

It doesn't get deeper than Jimin telling jungook he drinks to self soothe because he feels lonely sometimes.

Or Jungkook saying Jimin told him he wanted to be with him (the team) for a very long time.

You hear Jimin say very often, 'I was telling Jungkook the other day....' 'I was with Jungkook when X happened to me' etc.

Their ability to be vulnerable with eachother in ways they are not with other members, to understand eachother's feelings without so many words, to experience a lot of highs and lows together and connect on that deeper level weighs more than anyone's opinion of them.

May be they should pay attention to the things they say about eachother- the conversations they reference and the nature of those conversations. I'm sorry but a picture perfect two seconds screen time of a contrived conversation between two members does not equate to or determine the depth of their relationship. Especially if such said members leave that depth on set never to pick it up or engage in it off camera- yea we see them. We know just about who goes out to nurture their relationship beyond the directors cut.

Jikook nurtures their bond- as do certain other pairs in the group.

When JK is crying and he wants to cry in Jimin's arms that says more about their intimacy and the depth of that intimacy than any words can.

When Jungkook says he feels more connected to Jimin on stage after a performance when he holds his gaze that says depth than any words can.

I told Jimin he needs to calm down a little, that he can't sing like this or that. Jungkook helped me a lot with my lines. This says they are not too proud to learn from eachother. That's insight.

Whatever their Taxi fight was about, whatever conversation they'd had- that is emotional vulnerability. That is depth and that is insightful.

Jimin confides a lot of his fears and insecurities in Jk as JK does in him. Jimin would not know Jungkook sucked at emotional vulnerability or expressing his emotions if they hadn't branched into that genre of conversation.

They do have deeper moments- not necessarily conversations and they do have insightful conversations as well-

Besides, half the time Jimin is talking with certain other members he is constantly talking about Jungkook anyway so...

And Jk barely says two words beyond nodding, biting his lips or blanking out...

If Jikook lack depth the other ships involving them is worse🤣

I make exceptions for Vmin and Minimoni.

Jimin and RM are intellectually compatible. They've both said a lot of their conversations are of an intellectual nature. Personaly, I think Jimin makes RM emotionally honest too but whatever. Jimin did say his ideal partner is a mixture of RM and Jungkook. Rm because he stimulates his mind and challenges him, Jungkook because he makes him horny. Perhaps 😏

Vmin are like two emo lesbians. They just do too much emotional rawness and sentimentality in their conversations, sometimes I'm like spare us please😭- its always: Taehyung-ah, Jimin-ah... cue corny Bollywood romance song.

All the ships are unique. They all have different dynamics. Depth in one ship may not look exactly the same as the depth of another ship.

Perhaps, they should learn what deep and insight looks like in a real relationship. What depth and insight looks like in Jikook's dynamic. You put them in a room to talk and they are not gonna pour out their hearts or talk about dance and the things they are passionate about- they're gonna flirt because they find eachother attractive. They're gonna touch, giggle and if they have to say something I think it's gonna be I love you.

We learn a lot from the things people say about Jikook but we see for ourselves what Jimin and Jungkook are about because most times they show us and not just tell us.

People don't take Jikook seriously because they don't want to take them seriously. Anything else they say is just an excuse to marginalize them and invalidate them especially if they take others much more seriously.

Or it's just because they aren't abreast with same sex relationships- which I don't think is a mystery at all. Love is love.

Swap any pair in BTS with heterosexual couples and I don't think people will make Jikook, out of all the other ships, to be the fanservice ship of BTS. If anything the term couple would be befitting of them the most.

And yet somehow because they are men people would rather describe what they have as brothers and for those who admit it's couple-y they wanna dismiss it as a joke or fanservice.

You swap certain ships and you realize people are shipping their own delusions.

As a queer woman, I look at all the ships and wonder how in heavens people can assume certain ships are remotely real.

I find it bizarre.

I really don't care about people's opinions. They are entitled to it. I know what chemistry is, what attraction is, what love is and I see all of that and more in Jikook's dynamic.

No one can bamboozle or bulldoze me into rethinking or redefining what those things are and what they mean.

Sis forget the Jikook antis. Don't waste energy trying to understand them. Let's focus on our ship and put energy into supporting them the best way we can.

I hope this helps??

Signed,

GOLDY

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autisticcassandracain · 3 years

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I have many thoughts on the weird phenomena in the DC fandom and the Batfam fandom specifically where probably the majority of people just straight up. haven’t interacted with the source material. and almost all of those thoughts can be summarized as ‘lmao that’s weird and mildly concerning’.

and because I’m annoying I will list them all here right now <3

1. To preface this post, I mean, obviously, comics are inaccessible as all hell, both in the disability kind of way and the ‘you need to understand the concept of hypertime to fully comprehend the DC timeline’ kind of way. Because of this, even if you don’t have a disability that prevents you from reading comics, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to look at the amount of comics you need to read to have even a base understanding of a character and go ‘no thanks <3′ and just enjoy fanart and fanfic in a vacuum. Ultimately, this is fandom, this is supposed to be fun, it doesn’t really matter.

2. That said, it’s VERY weird to me that the majority of this fandom just straight up hasn’t interacted with the source material, and moreover, that it’s considered rude to tell people that they should do so. It’s especially weird considering the amount of fanon-only fans I’ve seen who straight up have a superiority complex over canon. The idea that it’s gatekeeping to tell fans of something to actually interact with canon is just. so weird, and a fundamental misunderstanding of what ‘gatekeeping’ actually entails.

3. But honestly I’m less interested in discussing the ways in which canon and fanon fans should interact with each other (personally, I think it would be helpful to create separate tags of some kind, but that’d require quite a big overhaul of the current fandom state) than in figuring out how this actually happened in the first place. On the one hand, it’s obvious; long-running superhero comics the way DC writes them have made themselves so thoroughly inaccessible that most people are simply too daunted to even try. Most media has a cohesive beginning and end (or at least, a planned end somewhere). Comics just... don’t.

But I do think it says something that, even among people who are clearly interested in the characters (since they have, you know, entire blogs about them), the effort to get into comics just seems to be too much to even bother. This really doesn’t bode well for the future of DC Comics. Obviously, I am no expert on anything at all ever, but I’d personally be surprised if DC survives beyond the few decades, at least in its current form/without a big overhaul.

4. But on the other hand, I don’t think the confusing state of DC Comics is the only thing to blame here. Fandom has a well-known problem with reducing any character down to archetypes to more easily ship and write fic/make content with. This problem is particularly prominent in fanfic, which, if you read enough of it, you’ll eventually start seeing not just the same tropes and trends, but essentially the same fics over and over again. And not just within the same fandom; everywhere, or every large fandom, at least.

Fanon Batfam is entirely built on a bunch of those tropes; insecure/depressed sadboy Tim, team mom with optional hidden trauma/emotional problems Dick, bad boy with a heart of gold + sadboy combo Jason, abused sadboy Damian/angry easily-villified-for-fic-reasons monster Damian, good dad Bruce for found family fic and bad dad Bruce for angst fic, etc. This all culminates in a found family dynamic that’s generic and malleable to whatever fic the writer wants to write.

(This isn’t getting into the ship fic, which I avoid like the plague because the vast majority of it is incest, but I’d bet real actual money that the tropes in those fics fall under what is often preferred by the Migratory Slash Fandom.)

By having a decent excuse not to get into canon (the inaccessibility of comics) and a, by now, well-established fanon fandom, many fans feel free to use the batfam fandom as essentially an excuse to write whatever fic with reduced archetypes and tropes they personally feel the itch to write, without having to bother with even consuming a canon. This is compounded by the fact that canon itself is often contradictory and frankly bad, meaning that whatever interpretation of a character you want/need to go for your fic is at least theoretically backed up by canon (for example, you can just as easily cast Bruce as an abusive shithole dad who his kids need to get away from as a loving father figure who cares deeply for his children), which you can always use as a defense if people question your characterization.

5. This focus on fandom trends and tropes over actual creativity or care for the characters is also visible in the way bigotry manifests in this fandom; namely, in literally the exact way you’d expect. The female characters and characters of colour are shuffled to the side, non-existent, vilified, and/or reduced to harmful stereotypes.

Barbara is probably the one I saw the most often in fanfic, but usually just as ‘Dick’s girlfriend’, and even then, she was often vilified for Dick angst (especially in fics about examining Dick’s trauma from his canon sexual assault; Kori also often gets the short end of the stick in those). After that, probably Stephanie, who fanon fans don’t really seem to know what to do with, so she’s basically just there as comic relief waffle girl, most of the time, though sometimes she can be used to either further Tim angst or further vilify Tim, whatever the fic calls for. Cass has gotten included more in batfam fics as of late, likely in response to critiques of fandom racism for leaving her out, but again, it’s clear people don’t actually know what to do with her. She’s often reduced to a racist stereotype of a quite, stoic therapist for whatever guy du jour needs it. That, or she’s in Hong Kong and just not there. Duke especially gets left in the dust in fandom, usually just being non-existent, but when he’s there, he’s almost always nothing more than the straight man for the actual fun characters to play off of. Talia probably has it the worst, though, and almost universally gets vilified by fanon stans in order to write sadboy Damian.

All of this is extremely predictable behaviour and falls entirely in line with general fandom misogyny and racism; ignoring or vilifying women and characters of colour, or using them as very minor characters at best. The only two characters of colour who aren’t regularly left out of fic are Dick and Damian, who are both also conveniently the two characters most often drawn and written in a whitewashed manner. In addition, there’s a real trend of demonizing Damian in fanon fics where he isn’t written as an abused sadboy, which I’d argue is in no small part due to fandom racism, considering Damian’s behaviour is in no way as bad as Jason’s, who doesn’t get anywhere close to the same demonization and gets woobiefied instead. I also find it convenient that Damian is probably the batboy who receives the most vilification in fic, when he’s the most obviously non-white of the batboys they’re willing to acknowledge.

Fandom often cries for more diversity in canon, only to ignore the diversity already there and focus on the same generic white guys. The batfam fandom is a brilliant example of this.

Which is not to say that fandom racism and misogyny isn’t present in the canon parts of the fandom (and canon itself); it absolutely 100% is. But I’ve found that canon fans are also more likely to like and care about at least one of the characters I’ve listed as ignored/vilified, and are willing to create and consume content for them, whereas fanon fans... aren’t, really. I’ve never seen a fan of fanon Cass the way I’ve seen fans of fanon Dick, for example. Obviously, this could just be by coincidence, or I’ve just surrounded myself with people like that, but it’s been a trend I noticed. Racism and misogyny is present in every part of this fandom and should be addressed as such, but I feel like it manifests the most blatantly in the fanon parts of this fandom.

(I’d also recommend the articles Migratory Slash Fandom’s Focus and Beige Blank Slates, which expand more on the type of fandom racism I think is especially prominent in the batfam fandom, as well as literally every article in the What Fandom Racism Looks Like series.)

6. All this leads me to conclude that the majority of fanon fans don’t actually like the characters all that much; they’re convenient excuses for them to participate in fandom. Which I also think is, in no small part, a reason why so many of them react so negatively to being told to pick up a comic; they came to this fandom specifically to consume it as a fandom, because they wanted the fandom experience without having to consume a canon.

This is not a phenomena unique to the batfam fandom (again, see the Migratory Slash Fandom), but it does fascinate me. While fandom is often said to be an experience focusing on transformative art, I think it’s also safe to say that, especially as fandom has become more mainstream, an increasing amount of people are looking to it less as a way to engage with their favourite pieces of media, and more as a type of media in and of itself. I think the reasons for this are similar to the reasons mass media entertainment like the MCU are so popular; you gain a lot of enjoyment out of it with very little risk involved.

By consuming the same fics of the same characters (or the same archetypes) over and over again, you are rarely at risk of being challenged or even disappointed. It’s often very clear right from the start whether or not a fic will appeal to you, and if it isn’t, it’s easy to just look for another one. It requires less emotional investment than most other types of media, even ‘popcorn media’ like the MCU - or, yes, DC Comics. It’s safe, it’s enjoyable, it’s comforting, like McDonalds, but just like McDonalds, it’s ultimately bland and unsubstantial.

7, TL;DR. Ultimately, I don’t think it’s like, wrong to enjoy the fanon version of the batfam without wanting to engage with canon, and I certainly don’t think it’s okay to harrass people over it. But I do think it’s in large part based on a desire to interact with fandom rather than other pieces of media because people are scared of being let down by those pieces of media (or worse, just uninterested in actually thinking), which is mildly concerning.

#long post #my posts #infodumping #btw i say this as someone who also has trouble consuming much more than popcorn media/fanfic due to emotional exhaustion #but it's not a healthy habit and it's something people can and should try to break out of #also obviously this isn't about EVERY fanon fan specifically so if this doesn't apply to you specifically great then move on

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captainhysunstuff · 3 years

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hey hey, in celebration of kingdom hearts’s anniversary, you should talk more about your version of birth by sleep with death note characters :D

Oh noooooo *covers face in nerd shame while laughing hysterically*.

Had to draw my favorite Birth By Sleep exchange. Misa’s always seen as so young, and it annoys her. She’s such a little sister~. I honestly never thought about what their outfits would be, so I came up with something on the fly, though Light’s just in Terra’s as a placeholder. It’s harder since they’re supposed to look like an older more traditional fashion (though Ventus still seems to wear whatever the heck he wants, just with a muted color palette~). Oh, and sidenote, everything is completely platonic. I actually don’t ship anything in the Kingdom Hearts series. I support all the ships that exist though, canon and not~. ^__^ I do intend to draw more scenes with these three in these roles when I have time. Maybe I should draw more actual KH fanart. *snort*

Ha~! I honestly don’t know what else to say about it aside from what I’ve already said in this post [link]. All I can really say is that I didn’t mean to do it~. I really try to accept things the way they are, but as I kept coming back to BBS’s story, the Death Note part of my brain did its thing. *shrug* I still love Aqua, Terra, and Ven just as much on their own, though. ^__^

I just love this family dynamic between Terra, Aqua, and Ventus, and seeing it with Light, L, and Misa is freakin’ adorable. And their story is tragic, perfect for Death Note characters who just want happiness and fulfillment, but are firmly denied it and are sent through hell just to reach a better conclusion. The BBS trio are put though so much. *cries*

L being sent to keep an eye on Light, who seems to have strayed onto a dangerous path, fits. Light being confused and upset that he’s mistrusted fits with his memoryless Yotsuba Arc self; friendlier but no less focused. Misa wanting to be more included but keeps getting left behind fits. Her being spiritually cleaved in half works due to her life span getting added to and chopped up, starting out involuntary, but then willingly sacrificing herself (though in Death Note, it’s done selfishly while Ventus does it to protect everyone; chalk it up to her darkness still being firmly in place~).

The story’s basically the same, aside from my selfish recasts. They’re the only three I’ve recast and Vanitas is re-gendered to be female while still looking like Dark!Sora (though I think Xion does this, too, so it’s not that farfetched). It’s all an excuse to see the Death Note trio in sweet situations (going to Disney Town and winning custom ice cream and being disappointed the other two aren’t there, treasuring the wayfinders L made for all of them), kick lots of ass, be emotionally and physically tortured as far as a kids game can go (heart cleaved and put to sleep and having to watch everything Sora goes through [good and bad], manipulated and bodysnatched, being forced to wander a dark monster-infested world for 10 years and slowly succumbing while your guilt and longing torment you) and finally earn an amazing reunion ending where they cry in each others’ arms because they never stopped thinking of each other that whole time~.

Also, I can really see the main cast of Death Note being keyblade wielders (they all have strong hearts and stand by their beliefs and goals, regardless of what that entails). One day, I want to draw each with their own unique keyblades and Dive to the Heart stained glass pillars, but in the context of Death Note’s canon story. *looks them up* Apparently they’re called “Stations?” That’s an ambitious goal for the future.

Henh, this isn’t nearly as in depth as you probably wanted. It’s more like a wordy mess I spewed with a doodle~. :P But thanks for the ask and showing interest~. :D

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southslates · 3 years

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a rant about the saturation of zvkka fandom

as a tyzula shipper i get really surprised by how the most popular lgbt/wlw atla ship before the renaissance fell off when it started; to the point where tyzula fandom still exists but it’s much smaller and constantly made fun of for being abusive

and i think this is in part because of purity culture, where there can’t be nuance in anything and therefore tyzula is abusive and we can’t ship it! but i also think that as @army-of-mai-lovers outlined in this amazing post ty lee and azula aren’t love interests for any of the boys in the show, especially sokka and zuko, so content for them doesn’t need to exist because they simply don’t need to be sidelined. most tyzula content that exists is tyzula centric; not maiko or sukka or kataang or zutara centric, but tyzula centric. it explores ty lee and azula as characters because their chemistry is seen

you can see that most of the popular wlw atla ships in the renaissance are at least partly characterized by their relationship w zvkka, and clearly i have a lot of problems with that fandom, least of them all being the times i’ve been called a homophobe for disliking it. and one really large issue i have with zvkka fandom in general is its saturation of atla content to the point that it’s sidelined into a different au, that so many shippers see zvkka in atla when it just . . . isn’t there. it wasn’t the most popular ship before the renaissance because for fourteen years there just wasn’t . . . anything there. and i don’t know why it’s gotten popular, likely the help of some big name blogs (including the one that came up with homophobic katara) and the fact that fandom has started to really tend towards mlm ships more and more, and honestly good for zvkkas, the ship is cute, but uh

essentially just that even though zvkka has been the largest atla ship with the renaissance, it is not the most popular atla ship and it likely never will be because of that lack of longevity. there’s a lot of issues with misogyny and migratory mlm ships in fandom and i really, really see it here. zvkka fandom =/ atla fandom, atla has always and should always be more than about ships. of course i stick to mainly zutara/tyzula corners of fandom, which are super far removed from zvkka fandom in general for obvious reasons, but it’s almost sad to be entrenched in twitter and general tumblr fandom where people who’ve joined with the renaissance characterize zvkka as such a large feature of atla when atla as a fandom has always been surprisingly great with its characterization of women (atla specifically, ignoring lok etc). i’d never thought that the subtle misogyny would increase in the year 2020? and obviously as a zutara shipper i know that our fandom has had its issues with mai before, i am the last person to deny that, but i think that we are growing past it and trying to be better

one thing that i really hate seeing here is the idea that zvkka shippers “solved the ship war” by making zvkka larger than the kataang/zutara ship war. and i ship both zutara and kataang and one reason i absolutely hate this take is because i am in love with the fact that for fifteen years, whatever side you were on, atla discourse was about katara, what the brown woman in the show deserved. you can’t solve a ship war by shoe-horning her into kataang because that’s easy for your ship, because you’re just throwing away her agency and the entire point of the ship war. i actually pity a lot of people who mainly ship kataang because kataang; a ship between an asian monk and brown woman, which is canonically good representation, which is canon, is being pushed aside and made a sideship for a completely fanon mlm ship

maybe there’s a fetishization aspect in there? like i hate to make broad claims but the amount of zvkka nsfw for one, and then all the incredibly racist tropes i’ve seen there; the infantilization and feminization of zuko and the way sokka is supposed to be a big strong man or something just reeks of racism, especially when written by white people. it just strikes me as mischaracterization and the input of certain characters into boxes, because people don’t want to ship sokka and zuko, they want to ship mlm insert one and two. and i hate this because their dynamic is super interesting, canonically! i’d love to see how sokka with a plan and on-his-feet zuko work together :)

i mean fetishization is kind of prominent in internalized misogyny presenting itself as wanting two men to have sex to exclude women from the narrative, and in the post i mentioned above the op’s point was that atla fandom’s misogyny presents as unique because they don’t hate women, they just treat them like they’re really one-dimensional, and at the end of the day everything must come back to the dynamic between two guys who were intended to be cishet (i headcanon zuko as bi but i’m not stupid, this show is from 2005, it is what it is)

anyway i don’t know where i’m going with this! but i absolutely love atla wlw and i wish that the female characters could be analyzed further in depth than they are, and i’m still at a total loss to why fandom-- made by women, for women, and often queer women-- is willing to maintain so much misogyny in the guise of upholding queer rep in fanon ships with gay men.

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gayspock · 2 years

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data!

omf fank u...

How I feel about this character he is my best fucking friends <3 SORRY I DONT- IM SORRY THATS NOT A VERY INSIGHTFUL TID BIT IS IT, OMG... but he is 😁

All the people I ship romantically with this character i like data/geordi a lot! i think it's cute, yknow.<3 inot so much a unique, novel answer- though i think, in general.... god, it's really hard to describe. because it's like- TO ME, data/geordi to me are a pairing where i dont always label them in my head. does that make any sense?? like- i'll call them boyfriends and besties cutely and whatnot, but im also just sort of like ... (draws a love heart around the options that say relationship status for them)

like, dont twist tht: i dont mean it (or at least, i dont intend to mean it) in like a SUPER PRETENTIOUS sense? like goodness... blah blah blah, these characters transcend romance, or that their bond is more particular than any others, blah... moreso- i feel like data himself, and relationships of any sort, will inherently be different. and thats ok! bc the world is inherently different for him, and its like hmm...

idk how to explain it that well, you see, but its not that i dont think data cant NOT feel romantic love- but rather i dot think he'd feel different "types" of love at all, or at least not as clearly as we do, or its in a different way than we do, or- whatever..... i suppose thats a very abstract take on it, and partially its like. FR my own self-projection, a another autistic little guy who also really doesnt understand romantic love or friendship as theyre described to me by others but i can have my own silly little confused takes on either and be like well its this. :) and idk i thnk thats jst how it is <3 and i understand other readings on him completely bc of that- i think its all interesting, how ppl see him....

BUT YAH. him and geordi, above all else...i think what they are for each other is just really fucking nice, you know? like- it is... IT IS babe, you know? just so lovely and nice. bc like they arent pre-determined soulmates nor are they in the fros of passion for one another, yet theyre quite perfect for each other in the same way its pretty perfect when you put a bit of peanut butter on apples..... love and light. i hope theyre happy together being besties.

My non-romantic OTP for this character

everything i said above with him and geordi BUT ALSO FUCK IT IUP DATA AND DOCTOR CRUSHER

anyway fr tho everyone is data's bestie i think. literally what i will say about data is i think literally his dynamic works very well with, like, everyone because he IS a particular type of character and i think his perspective and inquisitive nature do, like, lend themselves to encourage certain reflection from each individual - so long as they're open to him. i really enjoy almost all other dynamics he has with ppl pretty equally!? i guess with the exceptions of picard and pulaski- neither of those really.... brought much to the show, in my opinion.

My unpopular opinion about this character:

dont think i have any off the top of my head?

LOL. I GUESS I WILL SAY- i agree that, though hes one of my fave tng characters, i deffo think hes overrated in a specific sense of like.... ik some ppl will hold him up and fr fr insist that hes the BEST THE BEST THE BEST and soo true 😁💖 but like in all honesty i'd get irritated also if he wasnt my cup of tea and i was a tng fan, like help.

ALSO. i havent seen the tng movies. hell- i might... man, i MIGHT. maybe when my exams are done- i feel like... this will sound so goofy, but i try to wait for specific days for things tht will be important to me. :3 ik at some point data gets an emotion chip- and i dont think this is that unpopular at all, but i suppose that this will be my own opportunity to say that i fucking HATE that... like i dont have to see it. I HATE IT.

like- in general, i hate the emotion chip. even with it not in his head- the very notion of it is bullshit, nothing girl<3 as corny and as shitty as a narrative move as it would be, i'd rather it were a fucking placebo- some bullshit "the emotions were inside of you all along!!!<3" kind of move. bc like... i mean. well. they are. data already feels plenty- he differs only in exactly HOW he processes the world, how he was learnt it, etc...... to make him seamlessly human, i think that'd only make sense if you completely erased all sense of self he had and rebuild him to percieve more "humanly" from the ground up. it certainly shouldnt be a chip that you can stick in his head that can be turned on and off at will.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon

(strokes my chin) hmmm i am not sure. i'll think on it. i do- i do WISH... sigh. i dont know. i think its moreso a problem with tng and its format in general- i do kind of wish... there could have been more progression, yknow? in the sense of. mm. i wish characters actually WOULD-would understand him.

and its like- its like... sigh. i dont want ALL of them to. i think the way picard treats data? hell, i hate it- but it makes a hell of a lot of sense, and i think its realistic for him to be snappy with him. for him not to properly sit down and try to understand data- like that does... actually make sense to me, from what i get from picard as a person. unfortunately enough. and its like- im not "fine" fine with that, but i like it in terms of like. a character decision bc i actually do value some sense of honesty with that but then in comparison....

idk... theres some other characters who will be dismissive or irritated with him sometimes. and again- i suppose it is just... how people would BE, but its like. they will all insist they love him but then also fail to understand him and get mad when he starts going to funny decimal points and its like. nooo babes... ITS LIKE I GET IT- everyone will have their moments of frustration/irritation, and HELL even everyone will have their limits of understanding, but then its also... like idk. a lot of the time some ppl who rlly should, at a point, understand him will then make a comment at him that... just doesnt FIT right. and i think its moreso- HONESTLY, i think its moreso writers trying to get in a funny haha data is an android joke in which despite it just kinda being clunky to the scene and- EH. its annoying i guess. thats just what it is, sometimes.

#egg yells back #Anonymous

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ordinaryschmuck · 3 years

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What I Thought About "Eda's Requiem" from The Owl House

Salutations, random people on the internet who certainly won’t read this! I am an Ordinary Schmuck. I write stories and reviews and draw comics and cartoons.

...

...HOW IS SEASON TWO SO GOOD?! WE'VE HAD SEVEN EPISODES SO FAR, AND EACH ONE OF THEM WAS A HIT!

Take "Eda's Requiem," for example. It's yet another episode where I have NOTHING bad to say about it! That's two weeks in a row where that happened! HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN?!

HOW!

...But anyways, "Eda's Requiem." It's another fantastic episode, and I'm about to dive into explaining how and why. Just keep in mind, it's gonna require spoilers to do so, so be wary of that as you keep reading.

Now, let's review, shall we?

WHAT I LIKED

Eda’s Checklist and Grom Photo: Within the first second, "Eda's Requiem" perfectly sets up Eda's central conflict in the episode. Despite spending years being on her own and looking after herself, she now has two kids that she's constantly caring over. Eda can try all she wants to say that she doesn't care, and I bet she has in the past. But given the hard work she's putting into getting King and Luz what they need and having a grom photo of the three of them together pinned in her mirror, it's pretty clear that those two knuckleheads wormed their way into her heart and are never getting out.

Eda’s Worried About King and Luz Leaving: And thus, that's precisely why something like this bothers her so much. Eda inadvertently adopted two rambunctious rapscallions (Yeah, I know. I'll get to it), so the idea of them not being around her anymore is going to be terrifying. That is a situation most parents, especially mothers, can identify with. It’s called empty nest syndrome and it proves just how much Eda loves Luz and King that she can't stand the thought of her babies leaving the nest. It's yet another well-made, wholesome, found-family moment that this series continues to excel at each week, making me extra excited for more like it to come...while also readying myself for heartbreak when one of them eventually does leave Eda.

Eda and Raine’s Music: Ok, I don't know the exact instruments that were played during this episode, but I also don't care because it was all (for lack of a better term) music to my ears. Every time Eda and Raine played resulted in melodies that are so beautiful and filled with so much emotion and feeling that I'm honestly tempted to listen to them again, multiple times, on repeat. Shows rarely do that for me, as background music doesn't always draw me in as much as lyrical songs do. Usually, it takes something so extraordinarily composed to give me the desire to listen again, and that's the case here. So huge congrats to Brad Breek for doing so. Seriously, the man's been killing it this season.

Eda’s Bard Magic Causing Things to Turn to Ash: This was assuredly a surprise side-effect of the curse. The fact that Eda can sort of do magic at all was its own shock. To then reveal that a specific type can do dangerous things to people and environments is...Well, it definitely brings up its own fair share of questions. Like, how can she do this? Will she do it again, one day? And are there other types of spells that can be negatively affected by Eda's curse? We don't get answers for any of these questions, and odds are, we never will. But that's alright with me. Because if a show makes me consider these many possibilities after a brief amount of time, it is a show that has to be doing something right. Even if I don't get the answers I want, the fact that it caused such a reaction makes me less willing to care.

Raine Whispers: Hey, would you look at that. Another fun, interesting, and compelling character added to the list of this shows' other fun, interesting, and compelling characters...how is this series so good at this!?

Joking aside, Raine's pretty good. I like Raine. They could have been this super serious leader who lost all their fun after years apart from Eda, but I'm glad that they're not. There are moments when Raine takes their job as leader of the BATs seriously, as one would, but I still prefer the fact that they kept a jovial nature despite how grim their situation is. It's an admirable trait to have, and it avoids the trope of making leader characters boring just because they're the ones who have to take things seriously.

Oh, and also, Raine's Disney's first non-binary character who has a stake in the plot. This is a tremendous deal, as you don't usually see that many non-binary characters in children's animation, let alone ones that hold importance to the story. So it's pretty cool for the writers to feature Raine, as it helps several kids feel as though they're finally seen and respected. And the fact that Disney of all companies gave the thumbs up is even more impressive. I hear people say that Dana Terrace should have pitched The Owl House to more progressive networks to avoid pushback, and while I absolutely see your point, I'll have to respectfully disagree. Disney is the largest entertainment industry of all time, so if you want to make LGBTQA+ representation normalized, you gotta stop making splashes and start making waves. Because if the same company that made three racist cats in the span of a few years manages to say that being gay is a-ok, then you know there's something wrong with you. Yes, Disney ended up screwing over the show anyway. But for that one moment, when kids felt pride after seeing a character like Raine, then, in the end, it's kind of worth it.

Also, if you're still having issues with more representation like this popping up in kids' shows, then allow me to redirect you to the complaint department.

...I made that post earlier today for this bit. YOU HAVE BETTER APPRECIATED IT!

Day of Unity is meant to be a Secret: At least, that's what I got when Raine stumbled over their own words. So if it's true, then I wonder why? Why does Belos want to keep the most critical change in the Boiling Isles a secret? Does he want to make it a surprise for his grateful subjects, or does he not want to spread worry and fear amongst the wild witches? It has to be something big if he doesn't want his followers to even say the words "Day of Unity." Whatever reason he has, we most likely won't know until the future. A future that I grow more and more afraid of each week.

Hooty Eating Echo Mouse: My heart sank in that brief moment when I thought that Hooty intensely screwed Luz over in getting back home. But looking back...it is pretty funny.

Just the suddenness of Hooty eating the poor creature that Luz desperately tried to earn its trust is priceless in how shocking it was. And also, Luz's expression.

That was the look of a young girl who immediately shoved her hand down an owl demon's throat the second the scene cut away. The Owl House may not always be a hit in the comedy department, but scenes like this prove that when it's funny, it is hilarious.

Luz and King Entering the Grand Prix: Not much to discuss here. It's just a cute subplot that adds frivolity to the intensity of what's going on through Eda and Raine's story. But I will say that I love how both stories occasionally interconnect with each other through the many moments of Eda being worried about King wanting to leave to find his father and avoiding any conversation about it. It helps both plotlines feel like they belong together, without being something like "Through the Looking Glass Ruins," whereas both stories could have been in their own episode. Which is neat.

How Bard Magic Works: I really love how this season is diving into how the other magic types work. More specifically, the ones that seem a little vague. I mean, stuff like healing, potions, and plants are easy to figure out, but what does it mean when a witch's talents are construction, beast keeping, and bard magic? We've been getting a lot of clearing up lately, with bard magic looking like a witch can control their environments and enemies through the power of music. Which is fair. Music is pretty powerful in the metaphorical sense, and I actually love that it's powerful in the literal sense when in the Boiling Isles.

The BATs: Not much to comment on these three either. The BATs have the potential to have an entertaining dynamic, but they do very little in this episode that I can't say much other than I hope they make a return in the future. But I will make this claim: Amber is my favorite. I'm sorry, but her screaming "You're not our mom!" to then go, "Bye, mommy Eda" is just too precious for me not to love.

I'm a simple man who falls for cute s**t. Leave me alone.

Raeda (RainexEda): Well, EdaxCamila, you were a fun crack ship while it lasted, but I'm afraid that this is now goodbye. The current canon has provided an incredibly adorable and believable relationship that I would be a monster not to support with my whole bi-heart. It's been real.

Ok, back in serious mode: I love these two together. Eda and Raine are grown-ups, and they still act all flustered near each other as if they were still Luz and Amity's age. It's definitive proof that you're never too old to get flustered near a crush, and seeing them interact adds a sense of wholesomeness when seeing them together as well as heartbreak when they're forced apart. Plus, we get confirmation that Eda's LGBTQA+! Whether she's bi, pan, or whatever, now that we know Eda can catch feelings for someone like Raine, it's yet another case that The Owl House is the most important series to the community. Because having the main character be queer is fantastic in its own right. But having the same apply to the motherly mentor figure? That's is an extra bit of normalization that anybody would be willing to appreciate.

Unique Guard Designs: Not many fans are going to appreciate this, primarily compared to everything else this episode does perfectly. For me, I actually like that you see a few Coven Guards looking differently from the others, as it helps make them less like clones and makes it seem like anybody of any body type could be a part of the coven.

Gus Looking Uninterested when Presenting Grand Prix with his Dad: I am positive that you didn't notice this (I didn't even notice it until someone else pointed it out), but there's something to dissect here. It hints that perhaps Gus isn't as interested in his father's field of work as one might think. If he did, he would look a lot less bored and much more excited to be helping Perry Porter present the race. It could just be the race itself, but judging from Gus' expression, it really seems like the kid would prefer to be anywhere but there. And why would he have that reaction to a race that his best friend is competing in? To me, this seems like an inkling of what Gus' relationship with Perry could be, which may not actually get time to shine, what with how little wiggle room the series has now (Thanks Disney). Regardless, it is interesting to notice, and it will certainly have fans thinking for a while.

Bump Being Smug of Luz Being in the Lead: That's it. Principal Bump looking smug as his human student is beating the students of his rivals is yet another moment that proves why Bump is easily the best cartoon principal.

Darius: First of all, this guy is f**king fabulous, and I love him. *Snaps*

Second, he is definitive proof that you do NOT want to f**k around with Coven Leaders. Lilith may have had her intimidating moments, but none of them compare to the guy who can turn himself into an abomination monster where only magic that hasn't existed before can take him down. It's genuinely scary to see Darius lose control, and I fear for the day when Luz inevitably ends up in his crosshairs.

With that said, Darius' still a ton of fun! He may be threatening, but he's just a flamboyant guy that hates the idea of getting his outfit the tiniest bit dirty. And I love that. I love that these Coven Heads have actual personalities instead of being generically evil. I consider it preferable to make villains entertaining rather than blatantly scary as I'll remember the personalities first and the villainous acts last.

Eberwolf: But this one's my favorite. I told you: I'm a simple man who gets easily swayed by cute s**t. And Eber? I mean, just look at her:

She's just a cute widdle rascal! I just want to pinch her cheeks, give her a belly rub, and--

...Eberwolf is not a cute widdle rascal. She is a strong, independent woman, and I will respect her as such from this moment forward...lest I feel her wrath.

That is all. Let's move on.

Eda and Raine Attempting a Final Performance: This was the best scene of the episode. It looked gorgeous, it shows the dedication Eda and Raine have for stopping Belos, and it says so much through so little. Go back and look at how Eda and Raine regard one another when performing Eda's requiem. Through their expressions and a few short words, you know they understand that if they complete the song/spell, they probably won't make it in the end. And yet, they don't care. They both know bad stuff will happen if Belos wins, so Eda and Raine put everything to the side, both their feelings for one another and the people they leave behind if it means putting an end to a tyrant. That level of dedication...Words can't fully describe how powerful that is.

Raine Sacrificing Themselves Instead: But in the end, Raine can't do it. Not when they know the life that Eda has and the people she'll be leaving behind. It's an extra bit of nobleness to the character seeing that Raine refuses to take away a woman from two kids who need her the most. A tad bit selfish, sure, knowing what Belos has planned. But when it comes to love, the romantic, familial, or platonic, the best decisions aren't always the logical ones.

Eda Crying: Luz crying tears me up, but seeing Eda cry is a whole different level of heartbreak. Like Lilith, Eda has her emotions locked up tight, with the closest she came to weeping were those two tears in "Young Blood, Old Souls." In "Eda's Requiem," she cries but almost quickly stops herself. As if she knows that doing so isn't going to save Raine. That is...even worse than seeing Luz break down after losing Eda. The fact that Eda refuses to give herself time to mourn losing someone she loved is tragic because crying is the most natural way of showing grief. Turning that off isn't healthy, and seeing her do it with little resistance is sad to me. It's sad to see a character I love can easily shut off all emotions despite how badly she may want to embrace them. It's one of those moments that, again, by doing so little, it shows so much.

“No one watches Crystal Balls anymore. It’s all about streaming.”: Oof. Even I felt that burn towards cable.

King’s Message: King's message was the pick-me-up I needed after the heart-wrenching sadness this episode put me through a few minutes ago. Seeing King say who he is and listing all the things he loves is nothing short of adorable. On top of that, I adore that Eda willingly recorded the whole thing. She may not want King to leave, but that doesn't mean she'll sabotage the one thing he wants. Especially not after Raine gave up everything so Eda could be with her kids. The opening scene may prove how much Eda cares about a rascal like King, but this heartwarmingly sweet moment reveals just how far she'll go to make him happy.

King’s Dad Reveal: ...ok, I'll be honest, I did not think we'd get that reveal this soon. Dumb of me to say, considering the number of times I've said that these writers don't waste time getting to the s**t, I know. But still, it's pretty cool knowing that King's dad is alive and well, added with the fact that we've got a fair idea of what he looks like. At this point, it's only a matter of time before we see him figure out where the Clawthorne residence is and witness the tear-jerking moments that will follow.

King Changing his Name to King Clawthorne: Not the official adoption I was expecting Eda to make...but DANG IT, is it still diabetes-inducing levels of sweetness!

Personally, I feel like the main reason why Eda breaks down this time is not only because she shouldn't be worried about King leaving her life, but also because Raine's sacrifice wasn't in vain. Her kids really do need Eda because no matter how far apart they'll be, she will always be a part of their life...dang it, I'm going to cry too!

What those Coven patches really do: Well...that was horrifying to see.

...Writers, if you kill off the best non-binary character in animation (it's a short list, I know), we are going to have PROBLEMS!

IN CONCLUSION

"Eda's Requiem" is--surprise surprise--another A+. The emotions hit hard, the representation hits harder, Raine is a fantastic addition to the cast, and it was all surprisingly cute at times. Season Two is currently on a hot streak, constantly winning with every episode that's come out so far. When a bad episode does eventually show up (IT'S GONNA HAPPEN!), I'll be sure to sing my requiem then. For now, I'm just gonna enjoy the ride.

#the owl house #the owl house season 2 #the owl house reviews #eda clawthorne #raine whispers #raeda #king of demons #toh darius #toh eberwolf #what i thought about

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thoughts-on-bangtan · 3 years

Text

a poem for small things

by Admin 1 & 2

The time has come, the first proper post for this segment we’ve settled on calling a poem for small things, a nod toward BWL and its Korean title. Like we said in our call for submission post, this is supposed to be something like a place full of positivity for vminnies (and perhaps the occasional namjinist) where you (and us) can share whatever we’d like in connection to vmin, both as vmin and as Jimin and Tae the individuals, and have something to raise our mood and also strengthen our vminnie confidence. We’ve gotten several wonderful submissions and quickly realized that for this first post the theme is mostly how I became a vminnie, even if three submissions talk more about vmin moments they enjoy instead.

I think it’s a really interesting theme, especially since everyone’s story is different, and everyone seems to find something else about vmin that captured their attention and hearts so sharing these memories and experiences is a great way to start off this segment. We’ve said it many times before, though I don’t think you can say it enough times, but this bond that Jimin and Tae share is truly special and so one of a kind, it’s wonderful to see how we all relate to and resonate with it in our own way and find something in it that makes us fall in love with their loves, regardless if we see it as platonic or romantic love. Love is love after all. 95z is love.

For the order of these submissions, we’ll simply go in the order in which we’ve received them. Most of them came from anons, which is more than okay. We’ve also opened the possibility of submitting posts for those who would like to submit wordier posts/asks, should we do another edition of this. It all depends on how much you’ll enjoy it and if you’ll come through with more submissions that could be gathered for future posts.

Anyway, enough talking from our side, let’s dive into these submissions below the cut, shall we? Like we said in the original post (and demonstrated in the preview post), we’ll add some of our commentary and observations along the way, too.

From anon: This is going to be long winded story but Vmin is like a Serendipity to me. I've heard of BTS mainly from my hubby when he complains that times sq is packed because of BTS (when they’re in town and doing their rounds of morning shows). I knew they were very popular but it was a great surprise that i discovered them after watching ILand during lockdown. Their songs were great and i started playing their classics like Fire, DNA Fake Love etc. Then they did an appearance in the show...

I love how you heard about BTS because of your husband and Time Square being packed, this is honestly the most original and unique version of how I’ve come across BTS I’ve read over the years. Amazing!

I was drawn to Taehyung's beauty during their appearance in Iland. And my first Vmin ? moment was when Tae commented about being handsome and attractive are 2 things and being attractive weighs more - along those lines... then JM made a comment that its unfair that he's both and Tae was like Im talking about you... I went like ok he thinks JM is attractive- theyre good friends.... then Jimin did the FakeLove choreo and the camera focused on Tae and he had this wide smile...The Iland Tae/Jimin clips made me do a double take but I dismissed it since it was just only a few seconds worth of screen time but still...

I-Land vmin was really something else in both episodes.

Fun fact: I-Land was the first Korean survival show I’ve ever watched, mostly because it had something to do with BH and since it was streamed online with subs in real time. Unfortunately, my faves—Daniel and Taki—didn’t make it into ENHYPEN, though I’m happy that Taki will be in a future Japanese BH group.

But, going back to vmin, that moment with Jimin dancing FAKE LOVE and Tae looking at him with that boxy smile as though Jimin hung the stars in the sky? I melted, even if it was just one of those brief moments, yet still it’s so cute! And it was all over sns being shared by vminnies and non-vminnies alike. What a great time that was.

Then VMAs Dynamite perf happened- both Vmin looking good. I saw a lot of their promos especially the Jimmy Fallon interviews... and I noticed in hindsight how JF was so careful when referring to Jimin ... Since Tae was my first bias, I searched YT for Tae related content eventually saw in my YT feed Vmin moments. Theres a lot of Vmin content in YT or maybe the T*ek*ok ones didnt really register as extraordinary to me. But defo the Vmin moments were extraordinary to me,,,the BV4 sleeping together, kitchen role play & BV3 JM excited to see Tae and them holding hands and then Tae crying and then Tae's busking with Jimin cheering him on were all amazing to see. Up to this day this specific YT vid stood out to me first

I actually went to check what video this is, and also looked at the comments where my favorite was this one: The staff member went straight to Jimin to tell him V was crying. That's all you need to know. They’re not wrong with that one, are they? That is pretty telling. BV3 vmin were a work of wonder, truly. Jimin watching Tae sing that Sam Smith song during the dinner in the sky looking all soft and endlessly fond?

Jimin encouraging Tae to busk and gently petting his hair was just such a pure moment and showed how much Jimin appreciates Tae and the talent he has, how in moments when Tae might brush aside wanting to do something, is a little hesitant and unsure, Jimin will stand up for him and give him strength/encouragement, which reminds me of Tae’s vlive in April 2020 and the fact that Jimin had told him that he wants to be his source of strength. Beautiful. And it shows that it wasn’t just pretty yet empty words, but something he truly meant. They both do.

Then i came across vid trans of Friends & cried first time hearing it especially when it got to the part "One day when the cheer dies down, stay hey.." It felt raw and honest to me. Then there's MOT:E concert and that part in Dynamite where they bumped their heads seemed bizaare to me - i was like were they fighting? because JM looked really fierce(or maybe emotional) then i saw the close up. i couldnt remember the exact moment I became a Vminie but it made quarantine easier...

This, I’ve noticed, seems to be a recurring theme among quarantine ARMY and vminnies, the fact that becoming ARMY and vminnies made it easier, and it fits with what we’ve been saying about BTS for years: they will find you when you’ll need them most. And in these trying and uncertain times, it’s certainly proven true once again.

Thank you of much for your submission and sharing your story with us, and I’m glad they could make quarantine a little easier for you.

From anon: I've been following BTS on and off since BST, but only really consider myself a true fan late 2019. I can't recall having a bias at first, but I was captivated by Jimin's everything when I binge-watched all their content. I must admit, my first OTP is T*e/k*ok, where I fell down the route of considering Jimin 'an interfering 3rd party' in their relationship, and it shamed me. Since then I've been cycling through Jimin ships, namely yo*n/m*n, j*n/m*n, m*ni/m*ni, and I even thought that j*/k*ok was real at some point. Strangely, Vmin never struck me as something extraordinary. I don't want to blame anyone, but Vmin caught my eye after I watched official BTS content without filter (presumed bias/judgement) all in their glory. I realized that while other ships may go up-and-down as in one day there's a frenzy and another day quiet af, Vmin has been and is still going constant. That's what makes me love Vmin, and for the first time in my fandom life, I have no qualms about whether they are real or not. Their bond, whatever it is, is already precious and something to be cherished forever. Thank you for providing us vminies a special corner to speak up about our experience 💜

You’re very welcome! I hope you’ll like how this turned out as well. Thank you for sharing your story with us and personally I find it fascinating how, despite Jimin being the one who captivated you most at first, you still fell into the “he’s an interference for my ship” trap that’s quite popular with that particular ship. I’m glad though that that never ruined your love for Jimin. It’s also really interesting for me how you went through different Jimin ships yet it took you the longest time to notice vmin. I feel like, because vmin and vminnies are more “low key” than the other bigger and louder ships, as well as Tae and Jimin simply being quieter in their interactions (not always but you get the point) as compared to, for example, Jimin’s interactions with Hobi, Jungkook, or even Namjoon, it takes people a while to really notice them.

This is my favorite part of what you wrote, and I think it’s a great way to describe vmin in general and what makes them different from other ships in the grand scheme of things: I realized that while other ships may go up-and-down as in one day there's a frenzy and another day quiet af, Vmin has been and is still going constant.

From vminot7: So i fell into BTS hole after watching blood sweat and tears mv casually on youtube. Jimin immediately stole my attention with his unique voice, graceful moves and handsome features even though i didn’t know their names at that time. I watched more MVs and jimin continued to hold my attention but i was also extremely drawn to taehyung's voice and facial expressions. So i started looking for more content such as RUN BTS and other compilations and realized my love for all 7 of them. I also noticed how jimin always had a soft spot for taehyung and was curious about their dynamics. I started looking at more of vmin content and i was really surprised to see how in the early days they were nowhere near as soft with each other as they are now. I think they have a unique bond and i have never come across anything quite similar. Now vmin are both my biases and my bias wrecker is hoseok.

I admire jimin for being a hardworking, passionate perfectionist but also a caring soul who is always ready to offer love and comfort to people in need. I love taehyung for how he looks at the world in his unique ways and how he has a childlike awe for things and how he is so passionate over the things he loves. The thing i love about vmin together is how they are so different yet work so hard on their relationship when it would be easier to just not try that hard.

Ah, another mention of the queen that is Blood, Sweat and Tears. The MV truly is such a masterpiece so I’m not surprised that it caught your attention, and especially Jimin since he was…something else in that MV, or like Tae said, his eyes were temptation (this boy, I swear). Since you mentioned how in the first years they were nowhere near as soft with each other as they are now, I think watching their dynamic and relationship change and evolve over time showcases the one thing I think a lot of people (as well as movies and TV shows) forget or gloss over, despite it being so incredibly important: in order to make a relationship of any kind work, especially in order for it to grow as deep and strong as the one between all members and especially vmin, you need to put in the emotional work to make that happen. You have to make an effort, have to learn to understand the other person and teach them to understand you as well, learn to appreciate and love their little quirks and how to accept others. And it’s so clear that that’s what vmin did, continue to do, and it more than paid off in the long run. I’m glad you highlighted that in general but also as something you love about them.

While the overall bond between the members is a class of its own, I think especially what vmin have achieved is a whole masterclass in relationships and fostering strong ones, in and of itself. There is a lot I think we can learn from them and I’m so happy that people recognize how special they are.

Thank you so much for your submission!

From anon: There’s this small moments in Dear Class of 2020 that i just adore! I’ve watched it at least 20 times this past month

It starts with “Spring Day”- tae and jimin laugh and look at each other and it’s just so sweet!

Also, maybe it’s my delusional mind but after tae’s and jin’s small and adorable moment- it seemed that jimin did the same with junkook right after maybe out of i duuno if jealousy but like “pay attention to me too” kinda way- dont know really and maybe it’s me being extra🤷🏻‍♀️

I agree partially, in that Jimin watched Tae’s and Seokjin’s adorable moment, obviously must’ve thought of it as cute just like we did, and thought he could do the same with JK. I don’t think it had anything to do with jealousy, especially if we work off of the idea that vmin are a thing, but also because it’s a performance and these things primarily serve the purpose of being cute and entertaining use, in other words, it’s fanservice (which isn’t the evil word some portray it as). Also, within that same performance, Tae and Jimin actually sang some of the lyrics toward each other, therefore they, too, had a cute moment they shared with big smiles and everything, just like you mentioned.

But we’ve gotten to see much more of Tae’s friendship with Seokjin in 2020, and especially the second half, so it was really sweet to see them interact during that song. Their friendship and dynamic is really a beautiful one, just like JKs bond with Seokjin, which I feel we’ve also gotten to see more of in recent months. Part of me (and that part can very well be wrong) feels that perhaps once the members caught on to Seokjin feeling the way he said he did/does, they decided to give him an extra dose of love and affection, off camera but also on where we can see it. That isn’t to say that they didn’t show him any of that before, but maybe they increased the intensity a little, a reminder that Seokjin truly is loved, that he deserves all of this, that it’s just his imposter syndrome (or at least what sounds like it) lying to him.

I’m still so touched and moved by the fact that he trusted us enough to share his feelings with us, to gift us Abyss and how it came to be, and that Bang PD was on his side and coaxed him into pouring his feelings into music, even if it would be “bad”, that the fear of it potentially being “bad” shouldn’t hold him back (and Namjoon helping in even if just a tiny bit with the lyrics). It was one of those times where I feel like we were all reminded that regardless of our opinions of BH and their doings, the members are surrounded by kind people who have their best interest in mind. After all what’s good for Bangtan is also good for the company, a win-win for everyone.

…wow, okay, I kind of went off on a tangent, I’m sorry…

Either way , then we have “Mikrokosmos” where we have a sweet moment at their part and towards the end where they switch mic and hear each other

I love this performance overall and especially “spring day”- jin’s and j-hope’s lovely voices and of course tae’s!! This song fits them so well and all the members of course

Well this is my rent , i love your blog and always wait for another post! Also i love the new idea and look forward to it!

Thank you so much for your submission and for bringing up their Dear Class 2020 performance. It was a truly magical one, and after reading this the first time, I did go and watch it again. To this day I’d still very much like to know how and when and why the mic switch between vmin happened, and I kind of hope that we might get a Bangtan B*mb or EPISODE about this eventually and it might shine some light on that question. Overall it was one of my favorite performances on 2020.

From Sky: While I enjoy cute, physical moments with VMIN, I really do value how emotionally attached they are to each other. For example (I don’t know if it fits as vmin moment but), I love how Jimin asked V to take the Promise cover photo, and how he ended up putting V’s name for credits on the cover. (Special Thanks to V, Best Photographer) This really shows a lot. Coz he can easily choose any Bighit photographer to take it. He could have chosen JK because we know how he takes good pics and vids too (and also apparently alot of people say that vmin had a falling out and that Jimin and JK were much more closer, lol). Or he could’ve asked Suga too bec he’s into cameras too. But he didn’t. He chose V, and chose to shout it out to the world how thankful he is for V’s help. RM co-wrote Promise, and maybe had offered more help in this project, but he didn’t put it in the cover. I’m not saying Jimin is ungrateful for not crediting RM in the cover. The difference is that he and RM had a vlive regarding the making of this song, a lot of people already know RM’s participation, he was officially credited as co-writer and Jimin really showed how thankful he is to RM. But no one knows of V’s participation (except for a snippet in that Run ep), so Jimin felt the need to tell it to everyone. I’m sure it’s not only the photos, I think he wanted to acknowledge how V helped him through the process, whether directly or indirectly. Also, remember this is Jimin’s first non-album solo single. By putting V’s name in it, he is sharing this very special song with his soulmate. How endearing it is! V also included Jimin in his first full English song. He used the two bears given by Jimin as Winter Bear’s cover photo and he included the photo Jimin took (sleeping V in the plane) in the MV. Like, seriously, they are trying to consciously imprint each other in their life’s milestones, openly or subtly. I’m crying. 😭

This was lovely, and yes, Jimin could’ve asked whoever to take those pictures, could’ve chosen any other ones, and yet he wanted Tae to be the one to take them, wanted those specific ones as covers. It’s very sweet and creates this subtle connection between Jimin, the song, and Tae. Sure, it isn’t the first time a picture Tae took is the cover for a SoundCloud song (the picture of JK on the 2U cover was also taken by Tae if I remember correctly), but it’s the fact that Promise is Jimin’s first non-BTS song, his first solo release, that makes it that much more special. Even more so when you think about how meaningful that song is to Jimin, and by having Tae as cover picture photographer, he’s in a way forever attached memory wise to that song as well, right?

The same also goes with Winter Bear and the two ceramic bears. Remember how excited Tae looked when I kinda spoiled that gift being a thing happening in an upcoming RUN episode during Jimin’s vlive during the summer 2019? Adorable. It’s also curious how though the title is singular—winter bear not winter bears—there’s two ceramic bears. One for Tae, one for Jimin? Maybe, or maybe I’m reading too much into it. Either way, it’s really cute, and it was a very thoughtful gift, even more when we think about just how much Jimin loves that song.

From anon: Love this idea it's super cute!! 1st thing that came to my mind is a rather simple moment, jimin bopping taehyung's nose and making a lil game out of it

Taehyung asking for more and that dazed smile 🥺 he had the same expression in that concert when jimin placed his face just above him, tae's smile afterward... it was so pure u could almost read "love" in his eyes lol

What a lovely note to end this post at, thank you for that. I don’t know what got into them during that photoshoot for Season’s Greetings 2020 but this was so disarmingly adorable. I remember when that moment appeared all over every sns and everyone just melted, myself included. Their smiles, the cute clothes, Tae’s head on Jimin’s chest, the softness and innocence of it, just all of it. It truly was so pure and like this sweet visualization of ‘love’.

And with that, we’ve reached the end. Did you like this? I had a great time reading your submissions and adding my little comments to them. If you’d like for us to continue this, same rules as last time, send in a submission marked with “VMC” and once we’ll have enough of them gathered, we’ll do this again, if you’re interested in more, that is. Send in whatever positive vmin you have, a thought, a moment, a memory, whatever you’d like.

Thank you once again to everyone who participated! :)

#vmin #jimin #taehyung #a poem for small things post series #bts #bangtan sonyeondan #so many sweet vmin things #you really came through with the cute submissions #dear class of 2020 #bts seasons greetings #BTS bon voyage 3

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theunconcernedembalmer · 3 years

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what’s the issue with elisop? is it just bc you hc aesop as ace? im so concerned by seeing ppl adamantly opposed to mlm/wlw ships but im also genuinely curious about why you dislike it and other lgbt ships so much lol

hmm. that is a strong accusation, n i find it just a bit odd. are you new here? or perhaps you are taking personal offense at my dislike towards a favourite ship of yours and using the lgbt argument as moral high ground?

whatever the case may be, i thank you for asking. if u r truly looking for an answer, its below the cut n it is very very long. mind u these are all my personal opinions n i am in no way policing how others enjoy ships. just in case this wasnt clear; i dont wish to start discourse on this blog, especially since my takes are probably... unpopular.

firstly i would like to address the “disliking lgbt ships” bit, because this has very strong implications in itself. i have nothing against lgbt ships. i enjoy them, even. if the two characters have chemistry between each other, i ship it. however, the moment characterization is broken for the sake of romance, i lose interest. this is generally my stance on ships in general, n this applies for both straight n lgbt ships.

the ships themselves are fine. however, i do have issues with the ship dynamics, so ill let u in on that.

i want to touch on mlm ships in particular; i believe u are familiar with the top/bottom dynamic that is rampant in these kinds of ships? (i wont deny that this dynamic can be found in other types of ships, but for arguments sake i will be focusing on gay ships because i feel that this occurs more commonly here) its such a popular dynamic that is prone to stripping the personality from one if not both characters, only for them to be reduced to being dominant/submissive. for a character to be pigeonholed into a stereotypical category based on... preferred sexual positions? its just downright insulting, never mind the larger more problematic implications of it. top/bottom is not indicative of someones personality, by the way. flattening multi dimensional characters into these stereotypes is so so so insulting.

unfortunately this is The Most Popular portrayal of just about any gay ship around. ive seen it being used everywhere in so many fandoms n it just about becomes apparent to me that ppl come to stories looking for a Ship. not the stories, nor the characters, just a ship. while id like to say theres nothing wrong with that, keep in mind not everyone is just looking for 2 characters that look pretty next to each other. if i ship something, i see interesting n meaningful interactions between 2 characters, which is so often not the case once u bring in the top/bottom dynamic. why is it so popular? because somehow this is what ppl like from a gay ship n hence it sells. ppl want the drama, characterizations be damned. ppl want to see the big kiss that happens in the end, n maybe the sexy parts that come after. characterizations be damned.

so u can say im a little wary of gay ships when they cross my feed. hell, as a joseph aesop shipper i see this trope everywhere n im pretty disappointed as well. small tangent but i feel like this is the reason why zh0ngli n ch1lde is so popular in g3nshin. i try to see the appeal, i really do, but after a long while of analyzing their respective characters i dont think they have as much chemistry as ppl think they do. dont even get me started on how incredibly ooc they make either of these very interesting n unique characters in ship portrayals. all because of the top/bottom dynamic that ppl want to see. i say this for that particular ship, but this is pretty much the case for a lot of ships out there, n the latter part is painfully true even when the 2 characters do have potential between each other. ill say it again im disgusted by the blatant disrespect to the characterizations if all ppl ever want is 2 pretty puppets to mush lips together. cos thats what theyre essentially reduced to this way.

n its so obvious to see when an artist subscribes to this rhetoric, because u can so clearly see it in the way they draw their characters. the “top” generally has sharper features to go with their “dominating personality”, while the “bottom” has disturbingly softer, feminine, dare i say sometimes child like features “to submit”. n thats where the uwu soft gay trope comes from, i believe. which, in case u still dont know, i hate with a burning passion.

so again for ppl with impaired reading comprehension, im fine with ships, including lgbt ones, but the moment u break characterization for the sake of the ship, im not that okay with it. u want to do it for a short crack comic? fine. but if thats the only way ur portraying the 2 characters then im immediately wary of ur content. ill still look at it cos usually the art is really good, but im very very wary. so im not “adamantly opposed”, just very critical of how the ships are being portrayed. if other ppl want to enjoy their ships like that, sure. just dont expect me to join in on something i dont agree on.

now id like to address not shipping “because i hc aesop as ace”. for ppl who are new to the blog (hello there), im an ace in a romantic relationship, so thats definitely not the reason i dont ship elisop. its more of being in a relationship has largely shaped my views towards romance as a whole. even before i met my boyfriend, i hated the romance genre in stories n media. most of it comes off as incredibly forced, especially those love triangles they seem to love putting into teen novels. thats one reason why i stopped reading when i was younger, but i digress.

did i partake in shipping when i was younger? i did. for a gay ship too (if anyone really wants to know, its kurotsukki from haikyuu. at least this was one that i can remember, i was mostly working on my 20 odd ocs for the longest time). i also used to write little short romance ficlets that i never posted anywhere cos i hated (n still do hate) my writing. but writing romance when u dont have experience was really just a way of projecting n probably a way of coping for myself, not that i knew at that time. but after i actually started a relationship with my boyfriend (whom i love n cherish a lot thank u very much), i began to see how much all these have skewed my views towards romance n have actually done some harm to our relationship. the bullshit that the general media feeds u constantly doesnt help in the slightest either.

quick topic shift to elisop in particular (about time, right?). i already stated that i only ship characters if i sense chemistry between the two personalities, n if u have seen the part where i dont ship elisop then u must have seen how agonized i am over not being able to have a concrete personality for eli. that is the main problem i have with elisop: eli does not feel like a solid character to me. n that is a huge problem, because if he doesnt have any defining characteristics besides being mild n nice, then he can be whoever i want him to be. (i have done this in my exorcist comics, i will admit this. n the fact that i can just do that... it really does not sit well with me personally.)

n that is dangerous.

back to young me doing lil ship things. i think its also pretty safe to say when u really do ship 2 characters, chances are u kinda really relate very very hard to at least one of them. that very quickly can turn into projecting, n shipping therefore is not “exploring the relationship between 2 characters” n it becomes “my preferred dating simulator 101″. of course this isnt always the case, but at least it was for me, n subconsciously it might be for lots of ppl too. n since this is ur mental playground, u call the shots, n there is no consequences if u slightly (or even entirely) alter one or both personalities to fit ur desired narrative. n u wouldnt even notice or know, cos ur blind to ur own biasness.

we bring our perceived notions into real life, im sure u know that. so when ur partner does not become that perfect knight in shining armour, or when they get upset at things that u do (which is a very normal thing by the way), n u think (very subconsciously), That isnt what my otp would do, something is wrong here (nothing is wrong, actually its just ur skewed perception of a stable romantic relationship). why wouldnt ur otp do this? because u are both halves of ur otps, there is no hidden secrets between them (apart from the pining part but thats irrelevant), n again they have been altered to fit ur preferred narrative.

a real relationship requires a lot of communication between parties, because newsflash, liking someone doesnt mean that u have to like every single thing they do, they will make mistakes n it will hurt u, n guess what, the reverse is also true. if u do go with absoutely anything that they would do with 0 objections whatsoever, ur not crushing on someone, ur idolizing them, n that power imbalance is detrimental to a relationship. these things are not obvious to ppl, especially when the whole climate is hell bent on getting into romantic relationships by a certain age or some bullshit. communication is key n is pretty much the only way to solve relationship issues, because the other person has a lot that u r not seeing n vice versa. as similar as 2 ppl can be, i doubt u can have 100% the same thoughts on all things. i dont make the rules.

so in ur mental playground u focus on the fluffy parts, maybe there is communication, but rarely is there any meaningful conflict. thats unrealistic, n if u bring that mindset to an actual relationship, thats not going to end well. i say meaningful conflict, because yes, generally u shouldnt have conflicts with ur significant other. but inevitably when ur with each other for long enough, u will realize that there are habits that u must change in order to be with the other person. habits that are harmful to the other person directly, or harmful habits towards yourself that indirectly harm the other person. these are meaningful in a sense that if left alone, it will manifest into larger problems that will harm u, the other person n the relationship as a whole. its meaningful to the relationship.

all these is made even worse if ur neurodivergent. maladaptive coping practices, self sabotaging behaviours, inherent disabilities. all these must be adjusted n addressed. im so incredibly thankful for my boyfriend for being incredibly patient with me when working all these out, n it has not been easy for me to work on myself n all my problems, n im still not done working on them. this aspect is often not explored in romance in general (or properly), n there is a very good chance i would have still been stuck in the unhealthy mindset of “this isnt like my otp, maybe we’re not meant to be”. because loving someone is a choice. no one is made for each other, it is a conscious choice made between 2 ppl to make things work. this is how arranged marriages work, i am told, n i do see the appeal, not that it actually does appeal to me culturally.

special mention to the kurotsukki ship, cos from there i found a very, very good fic that explored their relationship before n after getting together, n it actually showed aspects of this problem in the incredibly slow burn of (at that time) 20+ chapters. it was just one fic (n a very good one at that, i believe it was called Leviticus), but it had a lesson i never thought i needed to learn, n learn it i did, with a lot of help from my dear.

this is also probably the reason why i dont really want to delve too much into romance now. i know its a lot of work, n everything (mostly) that the media feeds u is really false advertising, but ppl eat that shit up n so it remains one of the most popular genres to date. im just very wary that if i do start on a romantic story, i want to be able to show it in a way like that fic did, the truths of relationships, because i dont want to make something that sells, i want to make something that meaningful to me, if a little indulgent. n that also includes being very careful in how the respective characterizations will change in a relationship. almost too careful now that i think about it, but its not something that i mind. i was never one for romance from the start, n now im very careful about shipping because of what happened to me persoanlly.

okay enough about me, lets talk about aesop. in any au u put the character in, the essence of the character must remain despite the change in environment. so lets say we have ur typical modern au. dead mom, check. shitty mentor doing illegal stuff? also check. autistic boy with social anxiety? we’re good to go. all these have implications on aesop as a character, n while ppl are aware of this, again the way they go about portraying it can go, in my personal opinion, very wrong. ppl who immediately woobify aesop completely because he has autism annoy me. ppl who reduce him to uwu soft boi cos he has social anxiety do not know how the disorder really works n as someone who has that i hate it to the core. ppl who do all these for the sake of ship have lost my respect. its insulting.

remember the top/bottom dynamic? not that elisop is completely free from that (even if i dont know much about eli, to put him in either one of those stereotypes feels very insulting to his character. i wont even say anything about doing it to aesop its so upsetting), but its not entirely made up of either. but now i want to introduce another trope i am very wary of, which is “i can fix him”. im sure u guys have seen the meme going around poking fun at this trope (for those who havent, its along the lines of “u can fix him? well i can be his worst nightmare”) n no doubt yall would have seen it n gotten sick of it in some forced hetero romantic bullshit. we have one damsel in distress with a saviour that solves all their problems just by existing n being romo with each other.

remember “my preferred dating simulator 101″? this is not mutually exclusive n from my point of view this is dangerously close to this trope. lets be real, if it was actually a thing that all ur deep rooted trauma magically disappears if someone were to waltz into ur life, we would want it. definitely. no painfully dissecting ur own problems n constantly facing them head on. real life states that this is not the case, but it will not stop us from dreaming. n so this trope is born n lives n will go on.

(finally) pulling aesop n eli into this, at least in my mind, u have one severely traumatized boy with lots of issues n u have this. nice mild guy who can be anything u want him to be. i hope u can see where im going with this, n thats the direction i see some elisop heading towards (i dont read a lot of elisop to be fair). if u came from my eli character talk, i mentioned that it is incredibly one sided. this is exactly what im talking about.

putting it all together in case u havent already, aesop is the damsel in distress, whose problems magically disappear because of elis godly kindness n little to no work on improving himself, n they lived happily n gayly ever after.

can u tell how much that does not appeal to me.

never mind the butchering of character that inevitably happens somewhere somehow, the unrealistically perfect themes n implications of this trope makes me so viscerally uncomfortable. this is, of course, due to personal reasons, n i definitely see the appeal of this dynamic because i would probably have been interested in this once upon a time as well. but as i am now, with everything i have explained up there n everything i have been through, i would politely rather not.

n its difficult to think of another dynamic, because of how little i know about eli apart from him being this saint, which easily makes him a candidate for being aesops trauma panacea. never mind aesop rarely, if ever, does anything for eli as a character in return, n its so damaging to buy into this rhetoric, where a person like this who would solve all ur issues no strings attached exists somewhere in the world. they really dont. a relationship has to be mutually benefitting, or it will be draining n disastrous. maybe u say, Oh its nice to imagine it once in a while. n yeah, i agree, except once in a while is a little difficult to keep track of n that is sort of what happened to me. id rather stay as far away as possible from this kind of unrealistic fantasy, i just got this shit sorted out with myself n my boyfriend.

i have some other reasons, but theyre more personally problematic, so i wont go into them here. but this is mostly n generally why i do not ship elisop romantically. if u do, u do u, and have fun, but again dont expect me to join u. thank u for coming to my ted talk, this took a lot longer than expected.

#mun rambles #its me the mun #unconcerned ramblings #posting this now cos this is a question ive been getting #although this has been worded in the most unnecessarily passive aggressive way possible that i do not appreciate #im wary about all u so called social justice warriors championing this n that liberal idea when all u want to do is stir shit #thankfully i dont have much experience with this but just passively seeing all these ppl run their mouths is getting very annoying #but just know that i will not tolerate any of that bullshit here. because if u really do care about ppl as much as u say u do #then why r u attacking ppl period #ur really just hiding behind a righteous excuse to harm people. thats disgusting. i dont want u here

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