#(also lots of love subtext in there) (I decided to see it as romantic because I love hurting myself) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

amourdivine · 7 months

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𝐏𝐈𝐂𝐊 𝐀 𝐂𝐀𝐑𝐃 🤍 𝐇𝐎𝐖 𝐃𝐎𝐄𝐒 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐒.𝐏. 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐊 & 𝐅𝐄𝐄𝐋 𝐓𝐎𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐃𝐒 𝐘𝐎𝐔?

Hello, lovelies! This was a suggested reading from a dear anonymous. It had a more romantic subtext, but I hope you take out what resonates & leave what doesn’t! If you have any more suggestions, so let me know! Feedback is always welcome. If you liked this reading, please consider booking a paid reading or tipping me at @ [email protected]! xo. ♡

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how to choose your pile. take deep breaths for a few minutes & look at each and every one of the piles separately. see which one brings you to a feeling, a place or a memory. take your time and feel free to come back to it later.

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disclaimer. this is a general reading for entertainment purposes. tarot is a divination tool & is not a substitute for medical and professional advice, nor is it meant to be taken as such. i do not take responsibility for any choice(s) made by you or others regarding my readings.

amourdivine. 2021 - 2023 © do not copy, redistribute or edit my content.

PILE ONE 💜

what do they think about you? ten of swords • eight of pentacles • six of cups.

I just heard Coldplay’s “The Scientist”, specifically the bit in which he sings “take me back to the start”. I wonder if you two had a fight, some sort of falling out or heavy disagreement. They think they’ve lost you - this is weighing heavy on their mind. They wish they could go back to when things were simpler, when things weren’t so difficult and anxiety-inducing. I think they feel a lot of shame and blame as well (I heard “blame game”) and I’m not going to lie, pile one, this person may be overthinking this connection, especially the way they see it. It feels heavy, like my chest and my throat are holding so much energy but nothing comes out. They’re not thinking clearly, despite thinking so much, it’s really difficult for them to “think” a way out of this situation you’re in. However, they do wish to work towards a peaceful resolution with you. They want to find a way to make things feel lighthearted and happy for the two of you again. This person could also be listening to a lot of heavy/sad songs, because so many of them are coming through to me. They’re experiencing a lot of self-hatred and very difficult emotions are going through them. They’re mourning some kind of happy ending, but they’re still willing to salvage the relationship if that's something you also desire.

how do they feel towards you? the empress • ace of swords • page of pentacles.

Gosh, there’s so much love here. They not only miss you, but they want to talk to you… to ask you how to work this out. They just want it to work it out between you two, pile one. Even if it’s difficult, like I mentioned in the previous section, they only want you. They don’t see anyone else for them. They don’t want to let you go, to lose you. It’s why their mind is so foggy and so clouded with poor judgment, they feel a lot of despair over the thought of losing the love you two have and shared. If your connection ended, they’re still not over it - they’re refusing to move on, simply because in their heart, they’ve decided it’s you. And I don’t think they’ve fully voiced it out just how much they want you, but they intend to do so. No matter how painful this situation has become, they hold some sort of hope that you’ll want to work things out with them too. They love you in a pure, devoted way and know how unique, how beautiful this connection is.

channeled messages: “i hate myself for what i did to you”, “i can’t forget you”, “you’re beautiful”, runaway, empty roads, highways, road trips, memories, polaroid pictures, “i wish things were easier”, “you betrayed me”, burning bridges, “do you still love me?”, deja vu.

channeled song: ghostin’ by Ariana Grande.

PILE TWO 🩷

what do they think about you? the magician • the lovers • the world

I couldn’t name a more beautiful spread. They put you on a pedestal, sort of - this person sees all that you are and they’re amazed. They admire you, they love you and they can’t see anyone else but you. This person’s got heart eyes when they look at you, maybe their eyes sparkle - pay attention next time you speak to them in person. Although they may wonder if they’re good enough for you, this person truly, deeply is inspired by you. It’s possible this is a friend of yours who’s crushing on you and vice-versa, but neither one of you is willing to admit it yet. This is a dreamy vibe, even, I feel like I’m immersed in Piscean energy. Maybe one of you is Neptune dominant or has Pisces in 1st. It’s the feeling of a high school crush, the intense, beautiful and almost soul-crushing one, but the kind of connection that has a lasting impact. Even if you haven’t known this person for a long time, they are eager to know more about you, all the little things that you do and say are stuck in the back of their mind. They don’t take it for granted. You’re extremely important to them, regardless of the nature of this relationship, you’re someone they want around.

how do they feel towards you? three of cups • five of wands • nine of swords.

They’re anxious, because they’ve got some heavy competition. Even if they see all these positive qualities in you, this person is afraid they’ll ruin the friendship by risking it. So many people are interested in you, that they’re afraid of rejection, afraid of all the people vying for your attention and sometimes, they just wish they could get rid of these feelings already. It’s possible there’s a 3rd party situation going on - either you or them could be in a committed relationship and there’s a lot of guilt and anxiety involved. You’re this person’s wish come true, but they don’t know what to do. They’re stuck in their head about it, fantasizing about coming towards you, talking to you and not feeling so insecure or jealous when they see you with someone else. I got the vivid imagery of someone seeing their crush talking to someone else at a party and being almost soul crushed by the fact that they’re so afraid of approaching the other. It’s giving me fanfiction vibes (in the best way possible, I promise). I’m almost sorry for this person because they’re so blindsided by their pessimism that they can’t fully see a way into being with you, no matter how much they want to. They know they need to make a move before they lose you for good, though.

channeled messages: “i’m so sick of love songs”, “i just want to talk to you”, instagram, DM’s, subtle flirting, “are you alone tonight?”, crush, “i feel invisible”, insecurity, jealousy, bonfire party, college life, “give me back my jacket”, inside jokes.

channeled song: Are You Bored Yet? by Wallows ft. Clairo.

PILE THREE 💖

what do they think about you? eight of cups • six of cups • the devil.

“Gone for good”, I just heard that. My playlist started playing sad breakup songs too, it’s honestly a little heartbreaking and quite bittersweet. This person thinks, well, they know you’ve left them behind and you seem done with them. You left them and they’re triggered. They’ve got so much going on in their head, always filled with “what ifs”. Your connection has turned sour and they think you wanted to pursue something better for yourself, something that didn’t trigger the both of you so much. I feel like this connection may have turned toxic, so they know you needed to leave, but nonetheless, they’re grieving, they’re sour and bitter. I don’t know if this person was heavily immature towards you or even disrespectful, but you left them on a chokehold because they didn’t expect you to simply walk away so easily. I don’t think it’s been easy for either one of you. I’m more so feeling a situationship or a friendship kind of vibe here, not a full, official commitment. Everything they see in you is almost a projection of their worst fears. All your worst traits mirror back to them, calling them to do some soul deep healing. I saw the Death card in the back of my mind, so I think this person knows it’s time to move on, to let you go, but they’re still obsessing over this ending you’ve had and it’s possible they lurk on your social media. It’s not an evil or malicious energy, but they’re not in a good headspace to talk or see you right now.

how do they feel towards you? two of swords • knight of cups • ten of wands.

Sometimes they love you, they miss you. Sometimes they just hate everything that came to be about the two of you. They’re tired, overburdened by their feelings, so sick of feeling so much and nothing at the same time. This person can’t really pinpoint exactly what they feel for you, but I got nauseous and almost sick to my stomach? I think they just wish they could erase this pain forever, but sometimes, they wish they could get some closure from you as well. It’s possible they wish they could give you some closure as well. All these messy feelings are taking their time in this person’s heart and body, but I think this connection, as triggering as it may have been, has brought up a lot of things back into the surface. Regardless of how they feel about you, it all ties back to their wounds, their feelings and themselves. I got some heavy Scorpio feelings in the last section and now I’m getting some Libra - I feel like those were significant energies and placements for your pile. This person’s not only heartbroken but almost… burnt out by everything that went down. They’re slowly trying to heal, to let go and forgive, but they’re not having the easiest time. I don’t think they’re “evil eyeing” you in any way, but I also think some distance will do the both of you some good. I feel like Spirit wants to emphasize how good this ending will be for you.

channeled messages: “you deserve better”, “i want to go back to who i was, mental health, physical health, “get over it”, 777, friends with benefits, messing around, fuck around and find out, taylor swift, moved on, finally, second chances, “i was a second option”, simply unrequited.

channeled song: Berenstein by The Band CAMINO | extra: Favourite Song by Tim Chadwick.

PILE FOUR 🩵

what do they think about you? the magician • ace of cups • six of swords.

You’re so nurturing, healing and magical. This person sees you as some sort of fairy, a beautiful, wholesome person who’s got so much love to give and to receive. Even the song that started playing is one of my favorites, a very healing and soft one. They see you as a safe person, an Earth angel, someone who’s almost like their lucky charm. The vibes here aren’t only romantic - they fit for friendships and familial relationships too. They’ve got a lot of fond memories and stories of you. I see someone going through a photo album and laughing to themselves in joy. This person sees a lot of good things in you and you’ve given them some sort of renewed faith in connections and humanity. They know you’ve been through a lot - they see you’re still healing. Every now and then, they catch glimpses of moments when you’re not feeling so good, but they still see your potential and growth nonetheless. I think your words and presence calm this person down. They value your advice immensely, all your words of wisdom and encouragement. I feel like Gemini and Leo are significant placements for this pile - I got the Strength card in the back of my mind, with the woman caressing the lion in the card. You bring calm and softness to this person’s life.

how do they feel towards you? queen of pentacles • ace of pentacles • two of wands.

I heard “wife you up”, lol. If this is a romantic connection, this person wants to offer you a deeper form of commitment - in whatever way that means for your connection. I feel like this person is smitten by you, even if you’re friends, you’re their closest, most prized friend. They’re making plans for something bigger, something greater between the two of you. This person views you as someone they could have ultimate success in every way, someone trustworthy and someone they intend on making accommodations for to fit in their life. It’s so soft and sweet, I see a woman arranging and rearranging pillows in a soft-looking bedroom to make sure her guests will be comfortable during their stay. I think they’re making room for you in their heart and mind, even their home as well. Maybe they haven’t told you, but they’re giddy to have met you and to spend more time with you. If this person proposes to you soon, please don’t tell them I told you! I’m not trying to ruin their plans, but let me say your connection has some really sweet, lovely surprises along the way. If you get engaged though, let me know, pile four. I’m really happy for you!

channeled messages: “fight for you”, “let me love you”, acts of service, bouquets, rainy days, “put your head on my shoulder”, “it’s okay to cry”, “i want to be there for you”, “you don’t have to pretend with me”, cupping someone’s face in your hands, comfort food, hugs, ice cream, care bears, pisces, cancer, healing, therapy, inner child.

channeled song: Room Service by Holly Humberstone | extra: Break For You by Valley.

amourdivine. 2021 - 2023 © do not copy, redistribute or edit my content.

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thomas-jefferson-miku-binder · 7 months

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Queer League of Legends Champions (with explanations) - Part II

Check out Part I

Confirmed Pansexuals – Twisted Fate

Twisted Fate was always speculated to be part of the LGBTQ+ community due to his, uh, flamboyancy. The sentiment that he felt something more for Graves was always there, portrayed in their stories through regret, friendship, and loyalty. The Boys and Bombolini color story officially confirmed him as queer, making TFGraves the faces of Pride 2022. This year, he was also seen with the pansexual flag in official pride art, with Riot finally labeling him. It's worth noticing a cute detail (that I doubt was intentional) where his card deck's colors form the colors of his flag!

Confirmed Queers – Ahri, Ekko, Evelynn, Ezreal, Kayn, Nidalee, Renata Glasc, Samira, Taric, Udyr

Ok, this is a long category. Here we have every champion we know for sure is queer, either through external confirmation (Ekko, Ezreal, Kayn, Renata Glasc, Taric), in-game dialogue (Nidalee, Samira, Udyr), or basic lore (Ahri, Evelynn). Let's start with the first group.

Throughout the first half of 2020, Riot released multiple chapters of a Pulsifire color story focused on Ezreal. It explored his relationships with numerous champions of the universe, but especially Ekko. The subtext was strong in this one, and the writer later took to Twitter to talk about how tough it was to have queer stories be censored when working for IPs, not so subtly mentioning Ezreal and Ekko after doing so. Even though Riot might not have agreed with making the Ezko relationship undeniably romantic, their love for one another is still an important part of the story, not to mention that it was the creator's intended vision to begin with.

Renata Glasc was confirmed as sapphic by one of her creators when sharing concept art of her design. Checking the link to the original post, they seem to have deleted the excerpt that mentions it, but people took screenshots before they edited it, most likely because of Riot. Taric, on the other hand, has been speculated to be queer since forever, although the motives are not that pure. Many people saw this hairless, beautiful man that likes jewels and was like, "Huh, that sounds kinda gay," which was the common dudebro mentality of the fandom at the time of his release that caused a lot of homophobia within the player base (more than usual). They weren't wrong, seeing as Riot did include Taric in official 2023 pride art, but he was not seen wearing or holding any flags. After all, it would make sense that he likes everything—and everyone—beautiful. But either way, both Taric and Renata are non-specified queers.

Shieda Kayn is a weirder case. I thought a lot about whether I should even include him in this category at all. There are many accounts of people affirming one of Kayn's writers pictured him as having fluid sexuality, but since then, wherever it was posted, it's gone now. I do believe it since we can still find Reddit threads on the subject, but the original source is nowhere to be found. I still decided to put him here, but take it with a grain of salt.

Moving on to our next category, we have Nidalee, Samira, and Udyr. Samira flirts more than once with Elegant Edge in Legends of Runeterra, and her attraction for her is not subtle. As far as I'm aware, she's never expressed interest in men, but we can't say for sure whether she's bi, pan, or gay. Nidalee and Udyr have had speculated romantic interests in other champions for a while now. Nidalee with Neeko, Udyr with Lee Sin. Nidalee and Neeko's story was first portrayed as one-sided, with Neeko rejected by her friend, prompting them to part ways. On the other hand, the addition of both champions to Legends of Runeterra explored their relationship once again, with the two reuniting and Nidalee finally realizing she did love Neeko and simply didn't know how to deal with it all those years ago. A love song, Shine On, even accompanied the update, which narrates their story beautifully. They have many romantic voice lines now, both in LoR and League.

With Udyr's rework, people started realizing he digs Lee Sin through voice lines expressing how he misses his "old friend" and that he's "loved twice, left twice" (which applies to his relationship with Lee Sin). Besides, his design includes memorabilia he exchanged with Lee Sin when they parted ways. It is also important to mention he's had a wife before, so he swings both ways. I think the context gives more than enough clues for us to safely say Udyr is queer.

Ahri and Evelynn are spirits/demons that prey on their victims (regardless of gender) through charm and seduction. Ahri is essentially a succubus, and Evelynn is the Demon of Agony, with desire and lust being important parts of their characters. It is also worth noting that Evelynn is genderfluid/agender, taking the form of anyone (or anything) that might lure her victims. So their lore essentially confirms them as not straight and not cis (on Evelynn's case, at least).

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meanbossart · 2 months

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So, not sure if you've covered this. But I thought I'd ask. How do you feel about the durgetash subtext? Are you pro or against? How do you treat the "relationship" / "partnership" between them? I'm curious to know how their interactions would play out hahah. (Im very pro Durgetash, cause... well. Yeah.)

First of all, obviously I'm all for people interpreting subtext however they wish to interpret it, and I think there's more than enough in the game to imply a canonical romance between The Dark Urge and Gortash; some of my favorite artists on here delve into that and I think both their art and theories are brilliant. Especially as the canon stands now, I think it's more likely that they DID have something going on rather than not, though I doubt Larian will ever confirm it one way or another to allow the player freedom with their avatar's background.

That said, in the lore I decided for DU drow they did NOT have a romantic relationship, although they did have a complicated one. My first impression upon meeting Gortash at his coronation (this was long before all the dialogue Larian added) was of someone who wanted desperately to butter me up to get his plans back on track. Yes, I do think he was happy to see the drow, but that's because he knew DU drow would honor their initial agreement (had his memories not been erased, at least) and was indeed more reliable than Orin - who clearly wanted to achieve things on her own instead of entertaining their alliance even before betraying her brother.

I did a write-up a while back on what DU Drow's perception and plans for Enver were here, but I would like to make some additions!

First of all I didn't clarify this, but when I talk about "love" in that post I did not mean the romantic kind. What DU drow had for Gortash was a tenderness that he could not bring himself to entertain in earnest because of his profoundly skewed sense of empathy and emotions. He did relate to Gortash, He did admire how he had lifted himself up from nothing and how he easily brushed off DU drow's attempts to get under his skin. DU could simply never admit such a thing or even recognize it in himself - had he been a more sane man they would have been dear friends, and there would be glimpses of that could-be friendship in how they interacted before. Gortash was probably equal parts annoyed and charmed by the Bhaalspawn's high eccentricity, his gaudy style and extreme bluntness and shamelessness- he thought he was fascinating enough to put up with his attitude, not to mention that he was reliable and got things done when he set his mind to it.

(More under cut)

Alas, DU Drow wasn't raised to entertain friendship or tenderness whatsoever prior to getting a clean reset to his brain - this doesn't change the fact that he is, by nature, a very intense man, and those emotions had to come out in one way or another. Hence his weird preocuppation with Gortash and how he made him feel. He is primed to become extremely conflicted in his feelings towards anyone who sticks around in his life as anything but a pawn or a victim, and Enver constantly tried to pose himself as a friend - arguably a even more baffling concept to DU drow than if he wanted to be a lover - because then he would at least be seeking out sex from their interpersonal exchanges. This is also why a lot of DU drow's focus when insulting/trying to torment him would have been sexually charged, besides a simple desire to shock and objectify himself and others as sacks of meat to be fucked and killed.

But Gortash grew up in literal hell, I think his capacity to withstand abuse from others (and swiftly brush it off) would have been extremely well honed, especially if it will ultimately get him what he wants. He never flinched at the guy's constant allusions to perversion and cruelty, likely rolled his eyes at it even lol. This would have been very disarming to DU drow and kept him coming back for more, and fostered (along everything else I mentioned) the admiration brought up in-game in that one letter durge writes to Bhaal. That letter would have been a very rare moment of clarity and introspection between DU drow and his father - perhaps the only entity he could ever disclose this kind of conflict to, much like a man having a crisis of faith is still likely to turn to the very god he's doubting for comfort.

I haven't yet decided how Gortash felt towards him, though, besides the aforementioned fascination mixed with irritation. I do think that after being tad-poled, when DU drow shows up in his coronation room looking so dramatically different from the man he knew (hair unkempt, clothes reduced to their practicality, shell shocked stare, the absence of his usual, lecherous grin) he would have thought what a shame that was, that this relentless beast he knew would never allign himself with someone beneath his caliber, often to the point of being unreasonable, had squandered his own ambition and was now in such meager company lol like he's got this half-elf girl just short of hanging onto his arm, this squishy wizard that he would have chewed up like hide in his teeth once, and the smug little elf? That's just his type, but the man Gortash knew had eyes for no one but his sister - regardless of how often he tried to warn him of her duplicitous nature. Ohhh what a mess she made of him, he wishes he remembered anything so he could at least say I told you so.

#ask #du drow lore #enver gortash #bg3 spoilers

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kingofanemptyworld · 2 months

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Rin, identity issues, and the complications of being an isolated, alienated teenager

It feels sort of weird to say but I generally don’t head canon characters as having particular sexualities. Whatever people go for in fics is usually fine with me - gay, lesbian, bi, pan, something more general like queer. As long as it makes sense for the story they’ve built and the character they’ve shaped to fit it, I’m good. Unless you’re ignoring a canon LGBTQ+ sexuality, in which case, yeah, I’ll take issue with that.

But anyway. Rin.

I’ve got my personal ship for him (BonRin my beloved), but regardless of the pairing I see him as bisexual. He’s so open with his infatuation with Shiemi, and okay, sure, fandom likes to ignore the love interest in shounen for the most part because we’ve got gay ships to peddle. But I don’t see the point in that unless it really reads like it’s a front, or a result of a character suppressing themselves for one reason or another. And with Rin, I think it’s pretty clear his affection for Shiemi is sincere. You technically have the in-universe evidence of the demon that brought out his true desires to back that up, but even without it, Rin likes her. It’s complicated because of Yukio and Shiemi’s own inexperience with romance, and yet I never once doubt he really likes her.

That being said… he’s very appreciative of the guys in his life, too. (Peddling my gay ship here) Bon in particular, considering he’s often admiring how cool he thinks Bon is, that his haircut suits him whether it’s the blonde rooster look or the undercut. If you don’t want to see it as romantic interest, that’s your prerogative, but to me Rin comes across as seeing cool and cute as different traits he finds attractive (in Bon and Shiemi respectively).

I also think his bisexuality would fit neatly into his narrative struggles to “pass” throughout the early parts of the series. Rin has grown up as the neighborhood problem child, ostracized for being violent, and eventually he decides he’s fine with just his brother and his father — and the rest of the monastery, presumably — for company. (Except that’s absolutely not true and clearly he’s starved for friendship and support.) People looked at him and saw a monster, even before his demonic heritage made an appearance; why would he bother giving them even more ammunition when it comes to reasons to hate him? So no matter when he figured out his attraction to guys, he’s not going to lean into it, because he also likes girls, right? (Ignoring for a moment that bisexuality is a lot more nuanced than that.)

Rin likes girls, Rin is human — that’s what’s going to get people to like him, or at the very least tolerate him. That he likes guys, that he’s half demon, he can shove that shit down and pretend it doesn’t exist. Lock up any stray thoughts and keep the sword sheathed around anyone who doesn’t already know.

(Excuse me for being amused by Rin wielding his humanity and supposed heterosexuality as a sword and shield.)

The problem, of course, is that he can’t keep up the facade forever. The narrative won’t let him. Rin has to embrace his demonic side, because it’s the only way to move forward and to continue to help his loved ones. And once he’s moved past the issue of his friends being upset over the deception, when they understand he’s still Rin despite what he’d hidden from them, Rin is finally allowed to be himself. He uses his flames, he lets his tail move freely in the open around the Cram School kids. Rin still doesn’t like this side of himself — it’s inextricably tied to every moment of pain and isolation he’s dealt with his entire life, including the death of Father Fujimoto (and, y’know, his mom). But he is moving forward, he’s trying to adapt.

And isn’t that some great fucking subtext for his bisexuality, too?

#king’s court #blue exorcist #ao no exorcist #okumura rin #rin okumura #bonrin #because I love them #anyway thanks for coming to my ted talk #I probably made more sense in my head than I did writing everything out #but oh well #there’s a similar conversation to be had about yukio and his suppression/obsession that develops #but I am not qualified for that one #also I promised myself when I made this blog that I’d try to be engaged with the fandoms I got into #because the one I’d sunk a lot of time and effort into on my main no long brings me much joy and I miss interacting with people #so. uh. here I am I guess #god this is probably less compelling than my season 2 analysis of bnha seven years after it aired

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doki-doki-lesbians-club · 3 months

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hello! please rant about the comphet subtext in ddlc. i wanna hear it so bad please please please please please

Hi! I think I've written on this before, but I can't recall when or where, so I'll try and recall as many points as I can!

This'll be a long one, so under the cut!

For starters, let's talk base game. Obviously, all four girls fall for the MC and that's that. However, watching the ways that the other club members interact, it's pretty clear to many players that they have feelings beyond just friendship.

Namely, I sight Natsuki's poems. First off, the poem "Amy Likes Spiders" can be read as Yuri's love of horror (which is how I initially read it when I first played). However, it's also pretty easy to read this as either Natsuki's experience being trans, or being gay. Either way, that makes the entire narrative of the poem make sense, and also explains lines like "I tried not to let her touch me. She likes spiders, so her hands are probably gross." as well as "It doesn't matter if she has other hobbies. It doesn't matter if she keeps it private. It doesn't matter if it doesn't hurt anyone.

It's gross. She's gross. The world is better off without spider lovers."

Seems pretty clear, right? These lines may feel intense and out of place with other readings, but when you imagine Natsuki being outed to her shit friends as gay, or trans, it all starts to make sense.

Have you ever read the poem "I'll Be Your Beach"? Because it's gay as all hell!

We're led to assume that the romantic poems Natsuki and Yuri write are about the MC, but that would be odd to imagine when reading this poem. Natsuki writes about "your heavy thoughts", "your insecurities", and "your memories" and ends by saying "You'll learn to love yourself again." When, exactly, did the MC express any of these sentiments? Let alone to Natsuki?? But I think it would be pretty easy to connect all of these points to another girl: Yuri.

It's easy to see some strong subtext here for gay Natsuki (and maybe trans too, if you wanna see that). But when we break into the Side Stories, this is where it gets real interesting...

MC is not there. The Side Stories are purely scenes to read through to watch the Literature Club form for the first time as all the girls meet each other and get to know one another. Because of this, we get to see more of them and their feelings toward each other than we could have ever dreamed of in the base game!

Without giving too many spoilers for some of the best scenes in the entire game: the Side Stories are pretty gay. It's nearly impossible to ignore. These girls are clearly imagining each other as more than just friends, are going through some feelings. Each pairing even gets their own spotlight, and we see how each and every one of them has some interest in each other, which is a stark difference from the base game.

The main difference? MC is not there.

The base game has a lot of themes surrounding control, reality, and choices (or the lack thereof). Not only are all the girls destined (or "programmed") to fall in love with MC, it can't be avoided, even by Monika, who wasn't meant to have a route at all. They were already playing with the ideas of fate, and programming, and free will, but what happens when you remove the object that decided their fate?

Well, when we removed MC from the scenario altogether, we see the girls happier, getting along better, and showing interest in one another that we only got in subtext in the base game. To me, this leads to another theme of choice and control: compulsive heterosexuality. If part of the "generic dating sim" frame of their reality is forcing them to express interest in the male protagonist, even if they couldn't care less and really are interested in each other, that's the same themes but on a whole new level.

Left to their own devices, the girls are happy and expressing interest in one another. In the "game" they are forced to play roles in, we see their problems exacerbate, their situation spiraling, as they all desperately cling to the MC as the object of their affection. Seems pretty comphet to me.

Thank you sooo much for this ask! It's been a while since I wrote a long post like this! :D Speaking outside of my own trans/gay perspective, it seems pretty hard to imagine any other future for these girls in light of the Side Stories. And to that extent, I think the Side Stories gives us a window into a happier world; one where they are all free to grow and thrive as who they are, regardless of what that means for each of them! I think that's only further fueled this wonderful fandom: seeing them happy.

and gay.

Thanks again for the ask~!

#doki doki lesbians club #mailbox #doki doki literature club #ddlc #doki doki literature club plus #ddlc plus #I didn't go back and proof this post at alllllll

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bibibbon · 2 months

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Hello, can I ask why do you think there are so many BL ships from BNHA and JJK? Do you also have fav ships from those two series?

I don't mean any negative things to any fan fics writers or fan art artist (thanks so much every one for sharing your hard works in the fandom).

But like, I'm a fan of both series for years now, and I saw them mostly as just platonic (bakudeku, tododeku, kiribaku, satosugu, itafushi, etc). Now, I'm not anti mlm or wlw because I love BL and GL media (manga, manhwa, books, tv series, etc), but I'm kinda hard to enter into shipping. Do you think I'm weird? Or maybe I'm slow in understanding the romantic subtext in those scenes from both series?

My take on it I guess is that people just love shipping characters together. Fandoms low-key thrive on shipping most of the time and especially when it comes to rareships. In my opinion any legal ship can work depending on how someone writes the story so there's that.

Iam not a huge shipper myself and if I do ship stuff I tend to be a multishipper prefering to enjoy multiple amount of contents that people make. MHA has horribly written ships point blank. Sure togaocha could of worked but it doesn't the same with BKDK. Any ships in MHA that were introduced as possibilities also lack any sort of development. This obviously doesn't stop people from shipping and developing their own ships (as they rightfully should) but canon wise there isn't much going for MHA

When it comes to Jujutsu kaisen akutami already acknowledged that he isn't that good at writing romance so he chooses not to excpet of already established ships like hakari x kirarka or tragic ships like mechamiwa. Even when it comes to that people do view stgs and itafushi as heavily romantically coded and I can see where theyre coming from as there is some heavy romantic subtexts.

Overall, Iam not much of a romantic shipper myself I just love platonic bonds and ships. For some reason I find that platonic ships and bonds are just better written and can connect with the audience a whole lot more easily and better compared to romance. Iam not much of a romance fan so I don't consume much of that side of media. Iam not sure if it's only me but stories centering around one ship get really boring for me whereas other stories that go out to critique stuff or explore ideas are more enjoyable.

Also no I really don't think you're weird I do somewhat relate to you tho.

I don't think MHA has any romantic subtexts however I definitely do see the Jujutsu kaisen romantic subtexts.

Writers usually give readers freedom to decide how they view things. Iam not much of a romance type of reader so I just like viewing a lot of things as platonic just because I think platonic relationships are overall stronger and better then romance ones

#thanks for the ask!#thanks anon!#not much of romance shipper #mha #jjk #bnha #Jujutsu kaisen #ramble #anti bkdk #anti togachako #platonic soulmates are just better #romance is cool but iam not a huge fan #writers usually allow readers for interpertations

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leportraitducadavre · 7 months

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I don't know if you've written about it already, and if so you can just redirect me if you'd like, but there's obviously a lot of gay undertones to Naruto and Sasuke's relationship, and all the suggestive illustrations. How much of it do you think was consciously intentional by Kishimoto?

I'm sorry but what "clear undertones" are you referring to? Why does the friendship between two males have to be represented in a particular (usually Westernized) way so that it's not confused with romantic interest? It's prototyping homosexual romantic relationships so that they are labeled within a standard that the reader identifies them with.

It's perfectly fine to ship SNS if that's the desire of those who consume the manga, but to justify that choice on the premise that "Kishimoto planned it because there are clear indications of what I consider a homosexual romantic relationship to be" is dangerous (encapsulating homosexual relationships inside one specific dynamic diminishes the relevance of romantic LGTB+ bonds that do not develop on the same premise), and fetishizes same-gender relationships.

Kishimoto wrote similarly premised relationships throughout the manga, highlighting the relevance of having a "rivalry" between two people within shinobi culture, in that sense, Sasuke and Naruto are no different from other characters.

At the same time, this idea of a "romance clearly planned by the author" usually also hides the shipper's ideology that romantic love is intrinsically superior to any other kind, nullifying the relevance of other bonds that do not fall into this category. Sasuke is constantly relying on his love for his family to carry on throughout the manga, yet that bond is diminished by many SNS fans in order to give more relevance to his bond with Naruto. His friendship with the main character is also of incredible importance, yet somehow Sasuke considering Naruto his best friend isn't as relevant as him seeing him as a romantic partner, as that kind of bond is, to them, superior.

There is a huge market for queer products to enjoy within Japanese media and that is a much better place to explore such dynamics, as they are specifically designed to address such a demand. Seeking queer representation within products aimed at a largely cis-male, heteronormative audience encapsulates LGBT+ relationships under toxic and/or heteronormative codes and behaviors by stripping them of their self-identity and fetishizing their interactions in the process (here).

Furthermore, I've seen people questioning Kishimoto's own sexuality because "he's clearly a closeted gay as he wrote SNS" which destroys their whole stance as "LGTB+ supporters" because not only did they decide to publicly question the sexuality and "out" an author based on his fictional work, but also decided to lock same-gender relationships into a single dynamism, where the idea of "romance" is encapsulated in a largely antagonistic relationship with obsessive undertones. We call that "toxic" when it's a heterosexual relationship, so why wouldn't it be for a homosexual couple?

What exactly is different about that dynamic that allows an LGBT+ couple to explore the kind of bond that we consider toxic and unbalanced within a heterosexual relationship? Usually, many of these issues fall back on an internalized misogyny where, because women are usually inferior both physically and mentally to men, they cannot develop this kind of union in the same way that men can. The relationship remains equally toxic and dangerous for both parties, but because they now don't find a concrete visualization of this imbalance (because, again, they perceive women as inherently inferior to men), they do not regard it in this way.

As I've said, shipping SNS it's alright, I personally can't see any romantic dynamic to get behind in the manga (which is, again, a personal preference of mine as I don't think Kishimoto cared much for those types of bonds), finding queer subtext in media is a common practice and was born out of the need for representation of a minority within a highly repressive society; but to see it as the only valid reading of a product and justify the lack of canonization of the couple under the premise of "social homophobia" within a community that the shipper usually does not know anything about (such as Japan) is a dangerous and senseless practice. Even more so considering the well-known and mainstream Japanese Yaoi market that exists and could use more support.

I'm sorry, I don't want to be rude to you in any manner, but your ask allowed me to explore a difficult and important topic that I tried to address very carefully because I think that people got completely desensitized with and, in their attempt to become a "supporter", they fetishized LGTB+ relationships.

#anti sns #anti sasunarusasu #anti sns fandom #anti shipping #western visualization of queer relationships #feminism #misoginy #lgbtq

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itsclydebitches · 1 year

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it genuinely surprises me that CRWBY wants to push this idea that the bees have been planned for ten years (idk if you're on twitter but yang's VA responded to someone who said 'wow this was planned for the past two years?' and she said '2? try 10' and an animator said something similar in another thread), because at least if they owned up about how they hadn't actually decided to do anything with the bees officially until fairly late in the game, they wouldn't basically be saying 'yeah we had this planned, we just never bothered to write anything confirming or alleging it for years because reasons'

it's just infuriating bc like you said, the straight relationships are not treated this way. pyrrha's crush on jaune, jaune's crush on weiss, and weiss' crush on neptune in the early volumes are all entirely unambiguous, despite none of them looking at the camera and spelling it out in dialogue. nora and ren's relationship is likewise unambiguous, or at the very least nora's interest in ren (leaving ren's feelings to take longer in the story to really be given form).

and EVEN IF we accept that they didn't want blake and yang to be aware of their own feelings for whatever reason (even if that's shoddily hamfisted in the narrative--they don't have any of the conversations they should have had post volume 6 to work through their feelings, leaving the confession in this limbo where it's simultaneously forced by the narrative and yet also like 'uh, duh? why are they so worried about confessing? what obstacles remain in their path that weren't clearly deemed unimportant by the fact that the story never cared to linger there?') there's zero excuse for the story not choosing to unambiguously confirm their sexualities.

blake could have had a conversation with ilia where she made it clear that she didn't return her feelings because her own lay elsewhere, not because she doesn't like girls (which would go a ways to alleviate some of the uncomfortable framing of ilia being the psychotic lesbian in love with her straight best friend and trying to kill her about it). yang could have had a brief crush on a girl in their beacon days, or talked about past relationships, etc. there's no reason for blake to be the first and only person yang ever shows true interest in, especially since blake has an unambiguous romantic history (with adam and also with sun).

especially since this is a world where, ostensibly, homophobia doesn't exist. (at least according to word of god) it's also not like this was a network television cartoon where they had to worry about BS&P or sneaking things past the censors! there were no censors to worry about! so if this was being planned for an entire decade, why doesn't it show?

I'm not on twitter, but I did see those tweets when they made their way over here. For the record, I personally don't believe it. I hate saying that because I'm not someone who enjoys accusing someone else of lying, but as you've established above, there is nothing in the story to imply that this was a decade long endeavor. I mean that quite literally. Yang eyeing the shirtless guys, Blake's entire romance-coded arc with Sun, the rejection of Ilia, Adam framed as a potential ex, Yang never once showing an interest in other girls, the lack of explanation for why they won't confess (AKA an established, long-term arc about one or both of them discovering their sexuality, coming out, overcoming homophobia, working through another relationship first, etc.)... The Blake/Yang subtext began late post-reunion - which isn't a bad thing! But why in the world would you pretend that it was in the works 5-6 years earlier?

I mean, we know one potential reason why. Right now, there's a lot of uncharitable conversation surrounding how the romance is being used to prop up a struggling show. So if you're hoping to draw in more viewers through your work's queer rep, it helps to present that rep as a celebratory achievement after a decade of work. It makes RT appear to have always been progressive and worthy of your time/money. There never was a fear of queerbaiting because this was planned from the get-go. There are no problems with the romance's writing because we knew this was the end goal from day one. No, no, pay no attention to how our queer employees are treated. Why would you doubt our allyship when we strove for a decade to bring you a queer main couple? Noooo, also please ignore that nothing was stopping us from giving you that in Volume One. Good romance has to be earned, remember.

My tone in the last paragraph heavily implies that I've made up my mind regarding why we'd get this narrative of the bee's development, but the reality is that I just don't know. Obviously. I'm not in the writer's room, I'm not in their heads, I will never be able to provide irrefutable proof either for or against that interpretation. But given how RWBY was written and given what RT has to gain from acting like this was always the end game (which is a lot), I think the most charitable reading (if not necessarily the most likely one) is that RT is subconsciously stretching the definition of "planned." Do I believe that they sat down at the start of Volume One, decided that Blake and Yang would be a couple, and then somehow spectacularly failed to write that story for the better part of a decade? No. Do I think it's possible that, given the nature of fandom, RT immediately picked up on the fact that people instantly shipped Blake and Yang (because they were partners, complimentary, if you've been in fandom for longer than five minutes you know that splitting the RW and the BY is easy picking), maybe joked about them and WhiteRose being a thing, spent a couple of years writing safe het romances while testing the waters, realized after 6-ish years that providing serious queer rep would prove more helpful than harmful to the show, stayed in the ambiguous 'Are they friends or something more?' stage to further cover their bases, and then at a time when the company was at its most vulnerable, give the fans exactly what they wanted, capitalizing on the gratitude by thinking back to those initial days of joke-y what-ifs and going, "Yeah! This has been in the works since the very start! That'll help get us renewed, right? ;)"?

...Yeah.

Honestly, a part of me doesn't care. Queer rep is queer rep, regardless of how it came about, and a few years from now the drama of it all will have begun to fad. From here on out, newcomers to RWBY will never have to deal with that potential queerbaiting. They'll start and end the show knowing that the rep exists and, likely, won't give a damn how it came about. But for those who do want to unpack that motivation, I'm personally of the belief that RT is stretching (at best) the definition of "planning" in an effort to make the company look as good as possible during this time. People are welcome to call me pessimistic and overly critical if they'd like, but I think it's important to keep in mind that RT is a company. They're not a bunch of home-bound fans writing simply for the joy of it. They're also not an individual, safely established author who can push the boundaries of their craft without fear of (much) repercussion. They're a company. Their job is to make money and though that doesn't preclude them from creating amazing art and taking great pride in their work, at the end of the day 99% of the writing decisions are based around what will bring in more viewers. I'd caution anyone to think critically about a saluting emoji and a very simplistic summary of - what we know having lived through it - was a very complicated situation.

#rwde #rwby #mymetas

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ingravinoveritas · 9 months

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Crowley and Aziraphale always came off as romantic to me; both in the book and in the show. They have so much more chemistry than anyone else. And I always second guess me reading their relationship as romantic when I see the general public's takes. So then I go back over like, okay, if this was a man and a woman, how would this read. They do couple things all the time. They use pet names. The show leans more into pining but in the book it feels like they're already married. Both the narrator and other characters refer to them as a couple and its never contradicted. Is that subtext or just plain text. I wouldn't call it queerbaiting, but queercoding or representation doesn't feel quite right either. Are we reading too much into it or is media literacy dead.

Hi there! Thank you for sharing these thoughts in response to my post from the other day. What you've mentioned here (how this would read if it was a man and a woman) is something I have thought about as well--both in terms of Aziraphale/Crowley and Michael/David, as I have shipped them outside of the show for some time now, and especially given the increasingly fuzzy line between them and the characters (which both Michael and David themselves have talked about in multiple interviews).

I think what we're seeing is neither queerbaiting nor queercoding/representation, but instead a sort of incongruity between what was put on the printed page when Good Omens was first published and what was brought to life on screen when it came to TV. What I mean by that is I often see a lot of people point to the line "gayer than a treeful of monkeys on nitrous oxide" as proof (almost typed "poof" there--hello, Freudian slip...) that Neil/Terry meant for the characters (specifically Aziraphale) to be gay. But from what Neil has said, the main intention here was for this to be a play on words--so, "gay" as in homosexual, but also "gay" as in happy, which was the original meaning of the term. I'm then led to think that in the minds of two cishet men in the late 1980s, "gayness" conjured a particular, unserious image, which they then brought into the writing.

Fast-forward to thirty years later, and you have Good Omens finally becoming a television show. Terry Pratchett (Gnu) had sadly left us, and so the task fell to Neil to write the screenplay and honor Terry's last wish by faithfully adapting the story. And while Neil wisely decided to cast Michael for his goodness and angelic-like nature, what I think he didn't count on was Michael's long-held beliefs and ideas about the character of Aziraphale and how he would portray him, or his profound penchant for playing numerous queer characters over the last several decades. The gayness of Aziraphale on the written page was something that Neil could control, but he couldn't control the gayness of Aziraphale as interpreted by Michael.

So that led to Neil having to address some things that I don't think he was quite prepared to address, both about the show and inside himself. Mainly, that if we are to extrapolate that what we see in season 1 is a reflection (to some degree, anyway) of Neil's views on relationships, a straight couple with little to no chemistry can jump into bed together without any hesitation, but a gay couple with tremendous chemistry and who share a deep and profound connection can't express that, either physically or by simply saying "I love you."

Much discussion has been made about how it's not necessary for someone to say "I love you" to convey such a sentiment. But what I've noticed missing from this discourse is the age/experience of anyone who has been in a relationship where that wasn't said (or conveyed) by one partner and how painful that was for the other partner. And as I mentioned in my other post, even once gay/queer people started to exist in media, they still weren't allowed to fall in love. (The phrase "the love that dare not speak its name" even came into being because of this taboo, for crying out loud.)

So when we then look at the countless tweets from Neil about how Good Omens is a love story while considering the vastly different ways in which that love is regarded when it's straight vs. when it's gay, his words start to ring somewhat hollow. And if he repeatedly has to emphasize that something is a love story, then maybe it isn't coming across as a love story in the way he thinks it is. Maybe Neil being more comfortable with casual, meaningless sex than a deep commitment speaks to a larger issue on his part. Or maybe Neil was fine with the abstract idea of a gay love story, but suddenly less comfortable with the concrete, three-dimensional reality of it.

If I had to use a word to describe it, then, from a media/cultural standpoint, I think I would call it "queerplaying," which I would define as roleplaying queerness on a surface level without actually delving into the complexity and messiness of what it actually means to be a queer/non-cishet human being. (To be clear, I am applying this to the writing/the original GO text, not to what Michael and David ultimately brought to the roles as actors.)

I hope this all makes sense. Again, the second season could come out tomorrow/Friday and prove me completely wrong about everything I've just said here, which would be wonderful. But I'm glad that other people have felt similarly about what we saw (or didn't see) in the first season, and the disconnect between the perceptions of fans/the perception of the public vs. Neil's authorial intent. Thanks for writing in! x

#pavoptes #reply post #good omens #good omens 2 #aziraphale #crowley #ineffable husbands #neil gaiman #creators are not perfect #i think neil may have some internalized homophobia he is still dealing with tbh #but i'm glad we've had Michael and David as Aziraphale and Crowley #not holding anything back #can't wait for the second season #discourse

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shipcestuous · 2 months

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So I was looking through your posts seeing if anyone brought up the recent Avatar Live Action, and I haven't seen anyone on here talk about it?

So idk if you heard but in ep 4 (and throughout the whole series) they've been mixing plots to save time(??) but for some reason they decided to have an episode that originally in the cartoon happens in Season 2. It's the Cave of two lovers which originally has Katara, Aang and Sokka going through a cave, but Sokka gets separated from them so it's just Aang and Katara and they have a whole romance plot about going through this cave and for "plot" reasons they might have to kiss. It's uncertain if they did or did not kiss.

Basically what I'm getting at is in the Live Action, it's JUST Katara and Sokka going through "the cave of two lovers" which.. odd choice having SIBLINGS do the plot of an episode that's a WHOLE SEASON AWAY, and the fact it's a ROMANCE episode!

They even have Katara say to Sokka "I'm not a little girl anymore!" ....while in the..cave...of....lovers..... odd choice fr..

I'm just saying it's a WEIRD choice having the siblings do a romance subplot that's not even supposed to happen for another season. And then have her and him in the dark, arguing about how she's "not a little girl" when us as the audience KNOWS this plot is supposed to be romantic (it's supposed to be with Katara and Aang)

In the end they get out with the power of "Familial love" and hold hands while a badgermole helps them out of the cave.

The whole time in my seat like "WTF ARE THESE WRITERS TRYING TO DO TO ME??? THIS IS WEIRD??? I'm loving it"

There's also a LOT of subtext with Azula and Zuko in the show even though they haven't been in scenes together. As well as some more, let's say "odd" choices between Katara and Sokka (romance clichés like Katara helping Sokka lace his bracers before a fight and him picking on her for liking another guy)

I've had a relative wealth of asks about the live action ATLA and I love to see all of the Katara/Sokka enthusiasm. There others are here, which I didn't answer until after you sent this in. I searched my inbox because I wanted to answer all of them at the same time, and nothing came up, but I guess there were a bunch of messages at the bottom that hadn't loaded, including yours. Anyway, those asks and in that post and this one is here, for everyone's reference.

Writers ship Sokka/Katara confirmed.

I'm glad you pointed out her line about not being a little girl anymore, because he's the big brother and has his whole complex about being the guardian. And her whole flirtation with Jet shows that she's growing up.

#asks #anonymous #katara and sokka #r: brosis #nc #avatar: the last airbender #commentary #noiv #nr

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hxhhasmysoul · 4 months

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Just see this in twitter by someone :

"Why do people read shonen for subtextual doomed yaoi click bait when X exists and you don’t have to pretend?"

"I'm starting to think maybe people should read actual BL manga. perhaps considering manga written with actual gay characters in it in addition to shipping m x m from whatever battle shounen you're into."

Like because of those subtext, there can be fanfics and fanarts, right? And then I decided to come here, this blog of yours is one of my favorite place...

First of, thank you for the kind words. I'm glad you're enjoying my blog even if it's a hot mess at times.

While I enjoy my ships that I have from the shounes I like, I didn't read /watch HxH or JJK for the ships. When I first watched the HxH anime it was after years of deep depression where I stopped reading things and watching things or playing games with plots. I'd just put forgettable shows or youtube videos in the background and play some mind numbing click game if I wasn't working.

I literally don't remember anything from that time, at least I was semi functional then, I had worse times. But summer was the worst, I didn't make much money generally but over the summer I had like one fifth of my regular work load at best and I just couldn't handle the existential dread and anxiety.

And I was watching videos of people speaking about media i knew all day and eventually I ran out of those that were about stuff I knew but I liked the person's voice so I clicked onto videos about stuff i didn't. And things they said about HxH made me go: really? And it was something about the last phase of the Hunter's Exam, it had nothing to do with any ship.

And I made the effort to watch a whole ass fucking anime. Like 100+ episodes. In about 5 days. It had characters I really started to love early on like Gon and Killua or Melody and train-wreck characters like Hisoka or Illumi that I couldn't stop myself from looking at with utter fascination, like wtf. And it had these intertwining plot lines and it didn't focus on just one character and Gon didn't even fight some of the bosses and the plot just veered into places I didn't expect but in the best fucking way possible and in the Chimera Ant arc it was really going from bad to worse and getting more tense and painful and the sense of dread and doom was mounting ... and it traumatised me. And I didn't know what to do with myself and for the first time ever I turned to fandom to process what I've experienced. And yeah I came out of convince that Gon and Killua loved each other in a romantic way and it was very important but like I didn't go into it or even kept watching for that.

HxH unlocked in me the ability to enjoy stuff again. To actually interact with media. It made me write alone again, not just co-write with a friend.

And like I don't watch/read that much. I don't have the time or energy, I also want to keep enjoying fandom and that takes up time and write my own stuff.

I don't even remember why I watched JJK. I knew absolutely nothing about it going, not who the characters were, not what the plot was. Like I must've read some blurb but I really don't know. And like episode one and I loved Yuuji and I just kept watching and the Junpei episodes came and I had to stop watching for a day and collect myself because how could they you know, how could they to my child... And after I finished the anime I read the manga and it was better? And worse, so much more traumatising.

But JJK is my kind of story too, it doesn't overfocus on one character, it has intertwining plots. It has some characters that I love or am fascinated by.

Years ago I used to read a lot of BL but none really stuck with me because they weren't that much my kind of stories. I'm not saying they were bad, they just weren't it for me.

But this is why I read HxH or JJK. The shipping for me is the result, not the reason. I just want more with the characters I love, more situations more emotions. So I love the fanart and the fanfic and it really adds to my enjoyment of these characters and their stories.

But also everyone is different and reads for different reasons. So people who say you should read X instead are really presumptuous, the imagine that they understand why someone enjoys something, what experiences and emotions they are after. And like maybe there are BL stories with characters like Gon and Killua and Yuuji, there are certainly BL stories with guys with kinda Sukuna vibes, I vaguely remember that. It's just that I haven't stumbled upon any that'd have the other factors too that make me enjoy HxH or JJK. Maybe I will encounter them and enjoy them but with how much time and energy I have, I likely won't go out there to look for them to prove someone's point that I'd just enjoy those hypothetical stories more.

There's this annoying culture in fandom where people expect others to justify why they enjoy things. And it's not enough for you to have a reason to like something, the reason will be scritinised and it's validity will be judged. And those people who feel that need to play judge to what others enjoy and and how, they really make fandom and online spaces worse for everyone. They are like those nosy neighbours who stand in their window all day watching what everyone else is doing. And we all know that the window neighbours are creepy, but somehow the fandom judges are not called nosy and creepy enough and honestly they should be. Because honestly they should mind their fucking business.

#answering asks #thank you for the ask #fandom #sorry i went off with this answer #it took my adhd places XD #i'm slowly going through the asks #i hope i will manage to answer most of them this weekend #or not if they all trigger my adhd like this XD

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lnkedmyheart · 11 months

Text

@themoonawaitsherexecutioner

So about how skk would hit different if one or both was a woman is less in regards to how it changes the overall story but how the general energy changes.

For starters if either one of them was a woman while the other stayed a man, the biggest change in their interaction and by extension in the way they are perceived would have been their dynamic. Nobody would have denied the way their interactions are heavily charged with some kind of tension. Sexual or romantic or whatever there is a pull there in canon but with one of them being a woman nobody would deny that they have some kind of subtext there. From Dazai waiting for Chuuya to show up, their banter moving from vitriolic to friendly teasing, to the dead apple scene with the princess-prince analogy, to Dazai catching Chuuya in his arms in sb, the silly little love confession and admitting Chuua was part of the reason Dazai decided to live at the time and even the current meursault situation with the line about the moments where their hearts connected. Remove the mlm or wlw aspect for half a second and people will automatically begin to notice all the subtext present in the story and interactions.

We also know that Dazai is a womanizer who broke many hearts back in the mafia and that his interactions with women tend to be pretty shallow (except Yosano and Koyou) and I think it would have been interesting how that would have changed had Chuuya been a woman. There is a distance between Dazai and the important women in his life, there is also a distance between him and the men, all of them, including Oda (at least from Oda's perspective he never fully grasped how much he meant to Dazai). That distance is entirely absent with Chuuya and it's repeatedly brought up not just in the text but also in their interaction. Dazai has a way of talking to Chuuya and Chuuya can read his words like they're his own thoughts. Dazai is also very physical with Chuuya in general, constantly ignoring his own boundaries all the time. I would love to see how that would change had Chuuya been a woman. It would also lead to a scenario with a woman as the muscle and the man as the thinker/damsel.

The same is true vice versa, how would their interactions with each other change if Dazai was a woman while Chuuya stayed a guy? Chuuya is stated to be very respectful to women by the creators, we know he has a soft spot for little old ladies, but he doesn't underestimate them as was the case with Yosano and he has been raised by Koyou. The point is how would things change in that situation? It would be more traditional, yes. Dazai being the damsel and Chuuya being the rescuer on a surface level but not entirely because Dazai is never actually helpless. I also think the most interesting thing about Dazai as the woman is actually in how it changes a lot of the subtext in general with everyone else in the series and not just Chuuya. Dazai would perhaps be less feared in the mafia as the demon prodigy as a woman because of the potential to underestimate her or maybe even more feared idk. How would it alter her interactions with the men in her life normally. How would Dazai's depression and suicidal tendencies be viewed and treated in the story and how they would affect her. Would there be any major change at all or would there be none.

And lastly if they were both women, again, most of the above points still hold true for this scenario. However there is more here given that there would be heavy subtext with 2 women instead of 2 men. In this situation there would imo be less change in how they interact with each other and more in how the others interact with them and perceive them. (Also I'm a lesbian, wlw is always more fun to me than mlm or wlm lmao).

On a negative sidenote, had one of skk been a woman it would have been less popular of a ship because it would have been a het one.

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darklinaforever · 6 months

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Listen. I get not being happy your ship didn’t get more stuff this season. But ignoring how amazingly written this season was compared to the last just because of less romance is so stupid. And That’s the only thing Sylki shippers are saying. Like it is so stupid. Sorry ya girl and your guy didn’t smooch during a story that WASN’T SUPPOSED TO BE FOCUSED ON THAT.

Oh. An anti Sylki (probably ?) comes to see me ! Hello !

My opinion is my own business. You are not happy ? Ignore posts about this.

Also, the basic story of the Loki series was built on the Sylki relationship (Loki was literally kept by the TVA only to find her) and also by extension their very explicit romance, and of course, the fact that together, these two were stronger. Season 1 and therefore the basic story was literally built around the Sylki relationship, which is, it happens to be romantic, whether you like it or not. Hell, there's even a whole lot of thinking and questions about what love is in season 1. Sylvie was even discreetly associated as Loki's glorious purpose in episode 5.

And in season 2, this glorious purpose becomes Loki sitting on this throne in this tree that I hate. It wasn't me who decided all that in season 1, but the creators of the series, who in season 2, finally decided to change their objective.

Even those who are not focused on the Sylki relationship can see that something is wrong in comparison to season 1, when it comes to paying attention to the characters. This season 2 is more about the universe than anything else sometimes. Beyond the Sylki romance (which becomes subtext in season 2) and relationship, the character of Sylvie herself took a hit by becoming secondary more than anything else without much notable action, I have already said it, as well as other annoying things that I have already mentioned in others publications in relation to this story of a collapsing universe.

But I got lost, so, to return to the romance, you make me laugh with your "that WASN'T SUPPOSED TO BE FOCUSED ON THAT". We must not have seen the same series two years ago then.

Because season 1 was precisely centered on Sylki, their respective characters and their relationship, which is romantic.

I will never understand people who can be so disturbed by a story with romance at its heart. It doesn't kill anyone, people, and it's not a cheap scenario ?

Also, Loki has already had a horrible ending once, a second time is what we call lazy screenwriters. You don't bring back a dead character who's already had a pretty shitty life to give them another type of shitty ending.

And even if Loki returns and his story is not yet finished (with Sylvie and Thor), the path the writers of this season 2 took to get him to where he is was, in my opinion, poorly done. Whether you like it or not ! Also, I want to say that no anonymous person with his messages will change my mind on this subject. Waste your time if you enjoy sending me empty messages.

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hello-nichya-here · 1 year

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If you don't mind me asking. Why do you interpret Zuko dreaming about Blue Dragon Azula as something erotic? (if I'm understanding you correctly when you talk about this scene). I think I have never seen that scene in that way. Although acknowledging that in this dream the blue dragon with Azula's voice works as someone trying to "lure Zuko to the dark side of the force"

While I love calling it "Zuko's wet dream" as a joke, I wouldn't really call the scene "erotic", despite my belief that there is a pretty strong subtext there - if that makes sense.

For starters, we have the obvious. It's a scene of a "hero" being tempted, corrupted by a "villain." That kind of stuff isn't always intended to be romantic/erotic since "seduction" doesn't really have to be sexual, but the interpretation is often not much of a reach.

Then there's the fact that Grey Delisle, Azula's voice actress, has never been shy about the fact that she likes the ship AND has repeatedly said she played some scenes (mainly the infamous one in "The Wakening" in Azula's bedroom) as Azula making a move on her brother. Even if the writers didn't intend for it to be seen as a zucest scene, the same cannot be said about Grey.

And let's not forget that, while the scene is meant to foreshadow the events of Ba Sing Se, at that point in the story has shown zero interest in "corrupting" for literally any reason - yet he is dreaming about her being the devil on his shoulder, during one of his MANY weird fever dreams that are meant to show us all of his internal conflicts. That, at the very least, tells us that he wants SOME kind of connection with his sister.

Finally, we have the fact that Azula's intentions are deliberately dubious during that scene. The audience/Zuko's own mind doesn't really know what Azula wants as she's acting all sweet, and eventually his brain decides "she must be planning to kill me!"

However, before Zuko "chooses" a motivation for Azula in his head, we see her asking him when he'll be going to the bedroom, and whispering things like "relax, just give into it" right at his ear, which sounds suspicious as hell, even with the line in which she explicitly mentions sleep.

Considering Zuko's feelings for his sister are very confusing (he resents her for being "perfect" but that also means a lot of grudging respect, doesn't want to see her die but clearly wasn't looking forward to having her in his life either, doesn't trust her at all yet somehow always falls for her lies, etc) and that whole scene is part of an episode in which he's having a deep internal conflict, it isn't hard to imagine that some part of him is trying to deal with some repressed attraction towards her - and gets shut down immediately not just because denial is Zuko's whole deal, but also because, as I said before, he doesn't trust her at all so having ANYTHING to do with her makes him get into fight or flight mode.

Basically, it is one of those scenes in which, out of context it can look suspicious, yet the context somehow makes it worse (after all, we go from "Zuko had a weird dream about his sister" to "Said sister would also be getting way too touchy with him the second they're home")

#asks #zucest #not safe for what

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imagitory · 7 months

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Barbie Review [SPOILERS]

Hi everyone! So my mum and I FINALLY got around to seeing Barbie (I swear, we would've seen it much sooner, had it not been for RL getting in the way!), and we both really enjoyed it. That doesn't mean we didn't have thoughts about it -- a LOT of thoughts about it -- so I thought I'd go ahead and write them all down in a proper review!

For those of you who want a short, spoiler-free analysis, I'd say the movie was a very entertaining and surprisingly thoughtful story that had a lot to say about gender politics, "girl power," and our patriarchal society, and although it sometimes was a bit too simplistic in how it approached those topics, that doesn't mean it wasn't still timely or meaningful.

For those of you who want me to dive in more deeply...here's a cut!

The Good!

+Speaking as someone who was never a Barbie girl or even a "doll" girl growing up (my favorite toys were figurine sets of my favorite animated movie characters), I can still testify that Barbie Land's whole aesthetic perfectly captured a "little girl" vibe. It was bright, plastic, nonthreatening, and very what-you-see-is-what-you-get. Up to a certain point, it has a very "Stepford" quality where everything is just like the day before and nobody is ever unhappy or angry, but it's still a charming and likable place. You can float off of buildings and down to the street below; you can go down slides instead of stairs; you can drive in a car that becomes a ship that becomes a rocket and then an RV. Everything is about friendship, solving problems that seem huge and dramatic with incredibly simple solutions, and finding joy in cute, everyday things. It's a bit shallow and vapid, yes, but it's never oppressive or sinister, and the inclusiveness of the many different kinds of Barbies and Kens -- not just racially, but in personalities, body types and abilities -- immediately communicates that anyone could belong in this world. (A theme that's explicitly stated later and reinforced when the discontinued Barbies/Kens and "Weird Barbie" are brought more into the fold.) Therefore you understand both why our main character wants things to stay as they are and feel investment in that world being saved, even despite its flaws. It also made for a perfect contrast between Barbie Land and the Real World -- when the two aesthetics collided, like when Barbie and Ken first arrive in Los Angeles, it was appropriately jarring.

+Our main Barbie herself!! Talk about a relatable character! The juxtaposition of her desire for happiness and "normalcy" contrasted with her anxious and depressive tendencies really makes for a funny and engaging protagonist. Her character arc was incredibly well-done, and I love that she came around to embracing humanity largely because of how much more...well, for lack of a better term, "real" things were in the Real World. The scene with Barbie in the park enjoying listening to the birds in the trees, laughing herself upon seeing two strangers talking and laughing together, and complimenting the old woman on her beauty was absolutely perfect. From what I've heard, director Greta Gerwig was pressured to remove that scene at one point, only for Greta to viciously refuse, claiming that if that scene was cut, she wouldn't "know what the movie was about" -- and you know, I can totally see why. It really pinpoints Barbie starting to understand that as shallow and pretty as her fantasy world is, the things that inspired it are even more beautiful, because they're not just plastic and manufactured. Instead they're natural, imperfect, warm, and alive.

+Can I also just add a bullet point celebrating that Barbie is not interested in Ken romantically and the movie makes that very clear not just in subtext, but in actual written text? I liked the struggle Ken had to deal with having feelings that weren't reciprocated, as well as Barbie just never having to engage in a romantic relationship, even after deciding to become human and theoretically grow up and grow old. She just never gives a shit about Ken or other guys or even romance overall at any point, and for someone who identifies with the "A" side of the LGBT+ community, that was so bloody refreshing. (Seriously, that whole scene where Ken tried to kiss Barbie good night and Barbie was just quietly like "nope"? I felt that SO HARD.) It's such a common thought process that media that focuses on friendships exclusively are inherently more child-like, especially ones with female protagonists, and it's always nice to see a film clearly made for adults with a female protagonist not feature the convention of our female and male leads being in a romantic relationship. It's especially nice considering that Ken's whole identity was wrapped up in "being Barbie's boyfriend," and shoehorning in a romance between them would've completely contradicted his whole arc of him learning who he is as an individual.

+There was some really, really good humor in this movie, especially once Barbie and Ken got to the Real World. My mum and I laughed a lot while watching this, not just quiet chuckles, but full belly laughs! A lot of jokes I saw in trailers and in fan art and gif sets online ahead of time, like Barbie and Ken getting arrested, but even the ones I saw coming were still hilarious in context. And the ones I didn't, I laughed SO hard at. The Depression Barbie commercial made me laugh so unbelievably hard. (Yes, I could see binge-watching the BBC Pride and Prejudice for the seventh time until I fall asleep on one of my bad days. Don't judge me.)

+There was also some excellent dance choreography in this too -- I can only imagine how fun this movie was to shoot!

+Good plot twist with it being mom Gloria that imagined up our Barbie, rather than her daughter. I saw it coming as soon as we saw Gloria at work with those costume concepts, but still, very good plot turn, and I like how her and her daughter's contrasting views of Barbie bumped up against each other while they helped Barbie escape Mattel.

+Oh yeah, and Gloria? GO OFF, GIRLFRIEND!! That whole monologue she did at Weird Barbie's house was so well-written and spot-on it hurt. Next time I encounter anyone who thinks men and women are treated equally, I think I'll just quote that scene.

+Speaking of Mattel, YES on having the board members all be men, and almost all white men at that. And YES on the movie for calling out both the tragic reality and absurdity of that.

+Adding onto what I touched on above, as much as I do have a few somewhat-nitpicky problems with how this film depicted "the patriarchy," it did overall really beautifully showcase the toxicity of it. In a day and age where women of all kinds are being targeted -- whether by restricting abortion rights and access to birth control, challenging women on their femininity in sports or even public bathrooms out of rampant transphobia, or otherwise -- this movie couldn't have come at a better time, and I love that a movie that so clearly embraced unabashed femininity is being celebrated so much.

The Not-So-Good...

+One thing I really didn't care for in this film was its use of music. I thought the shift from the music being largely non-diegetic (namely, something played as accompaniment for montages) to a staged, musical-style battle scene was incredibly jarring. As much as the campiness of the sequence was a little fun (the Grease references in particular made me grin), it did go on a little too long, and again, it felt like a sudden shift. I would've much preferred it if the film had either gone full-out in making itself a musical or just stuck to using music as a side element, rather than a focal point.

+As much as I understand the film was trying to make a point that superiority for any gender is inherently harmful to everyone, by having the Kens being quietly subjugated in the matriarchal Barbie Land the way women are in the Real World, I personally found that concept a little unpleasant in practice, because it plays into the idea that any victimized group would -- upon being treated with respect -- immediately turn around and want to subjugate others. It's not that I can't understand how Ken could get suckered into such toxicity, or even feel empowered, being in a world where people like him have power and autonomy...but it just made me really sad seeing him reacting so positively to being respected and represented, only to become an antagonist who turned all of his female friends in Barbie Land into mindless arm candy. Yes, incels exist and innocent men get suckered into that all the time, especially men who, like Ken, are desperate for romantic approval from a woman who is not interested in him...but considering that the film makes it clear that Kens -- unlike Real World men -- are considered as an "addendum" in Barbie Land and are second class in that society, the allegory feels a bit muddled. This isn't an issue of men growing up in a world where they're told to expect certain things -- namely, getting a great job without much effort, earning lots of money, "being the man of the house," "getting the girl," that sort of garbage -- and yet when they can't achieve all those things, they take it out on women because they can. It's become a story of a marginalized group turning around and marginalizing others...and honestly, I think that's what a lot of racists, sexists, whatever else fear above all else and why they're so desperate to keep their claws so tightly around what they see as "theirs" -- because they're convinced that the people they've victimized will want revenge against all of the groups that hurt them and victimize them just as much in return. That their victims are somehow just as self-absorbed, spiteful, and terrible as they are. And well...that's just not true! People asking for equality is not equivalent to them subjugating those who've subjugated them. Justice is not vengeance. And I can't help but feel this attempt at "putting the shoe on the other foot" loses the core of what makes "the patriarchy" and toxic masculinity so dangerous. Kens are not like men in our world -- they weren't raised with any idea except that they were "Barbie's boyfriend," much like how women in the Real World are treated. They're not privileged in the way that men in our world are. And the patriarchy is built on the back of privilege -- on the idea that having to share with others is somehow oppression against them -- not on the backs of people who feel like they've been silenced and want to be represented and heard.

+Perhaps it's also the idealistic, political side of me...but I really didn't like how the Barbies didn't take the knowledge of the unspoken privilege they'd had before over the Kens in their matriarchal society and use that to be more active in breaking down that old system after getting their minds back, rather than just make Barbie Land "like our Real World, except with Barbies in charge." Just because our Real World can't be that easily changed doesn't mean Barbie Land can't! Hell, Ken changed it into a misogynist dystopia overnight!! And after the film spent so much time accenting the importance of Kens and Barbies being their own people and not having to be defined by what they are, it seemed so horribly backwards to just go back to the old system with the Barbies overruling all the Kens' changes and taking all the power again. Couldn't we at least have all of them at the table for that vote and come together another way? Ken even admits toward the end that he didn't really even like the patriarchy idea much after realizing horses weren't so important -- couldn't we keep some of the horse stuff and just ditch the stupid mini-fridges and beer shots? Girls like horses too! Plus it would really dismantle the strict gender binary of Barbie Land overall and allow for more overlap!

+My biggest problems with this movie, though, actually come back to the ending, and they both have to do with this film's character arcs. The first problem I have is that the ending largely neglects all of the character's arcs that aren't Barbie's. The whole movie comes back to Ken discovering who he is and realizing he's "Kenough" -- okay, where's my spin-off project from Mattel, playing off of Ken's supposedly "super profitable" Mojo Dojo Casa House toy set? Where's his happy ending of Ken having dolls sold of him where he's just him, and that's cool? Why doesn't Ruth Handler bring up that Ken was ALSO named after one of her kids, HELLO, that would've meant SO much more to Ken considering his identity originally began and ended with Barbie!! (The real Kenneth Handler also came out as gay and tragically died of AIDS, for the record.) Where's Gloria's promotion, after putting forward her own ideas for new Barbies? Why can't she supplant the old CEO, finally putting a woman back in charge at Mattel after so long? Not to mention that Sasha's arc was kind of glossed over in this film, with her turning around on Barbie just by transitioning from the Real World to Barbie Land and little else.

+The second part of this problem is in the conclusion of Barbie's arc. There's a lot of focus in the script about how ideas are forever, but reality isn't: that people will eventually grow old and die and be forgotten. And that's really powerful! But when Ruth asks Barbie to take her hands so she can really understand what she's choosing when she chooses humanity, all the video footage we see Barbie experiencing is happy. There is no anger -- no sorrow -- no loss or pain. And so Barbie saying "yes" to that falls flat, for me. The whole crux of Barbie's arc is embracing the depth of the human experience, rather than Barbie Land's shallow recreation of it...but in the end, there is none of that depth, because Barbie doesn't choose a temporary human existence because she's come to see beauty even in fear, uncertainty, sadness, anger, and pain. She chooses humanity presumably because of the depth of human happiness, in contrast to Barbie Land's, and not even despite all of those more negative things, because again, it's not depicted in that sequence at all. And that felt like a real missed opportunity to me.

Overall, I found this movie incredibly entertaining. Considering I was never a fan of Barbie as a franchise, and yet I was never an active hater either, I honestly had had little interest in seeing this film until I heard such astonishingly positive feedback for it online...and yeah, I am really glad that I did finally get around to seeing it! It's definitely a very relevant and clever movie with some awesome humor and powerful themes, and even with the critiques I have about it, I couldn't be happier that it's getting the praise it's so clearly earned. Way to go, Barbie!

Overall Grade: B

#reviews #barbie (2023)#barbie #opinion #analysis

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