#i feel like i'm taking the onus out of the post's original intention

[alteredphoenix]

I'll be honest: I think MHA lost the plot and went off the rails as far back as the Dark Deku mini-arc so I don't actually read it anymore (and there's a lot that can be unpacked and said about how the cracks can be seen even further back, toward the beginning of the story).

Hawks (and Nagant) is one of the very few good aspects that performs their intended purpose and barely gets touched on afterwards, but that won't stop me from reblogging more of spy guy Birdman Jim.

#the manga for me is very choppy now #in the way that it's not only pushing the gas pedal all the way to the floor to get to the finish line #(hori's health issues notwithstanding) #but in the way that it's slapping all these pieces together rather messily #never mind the moral quandaries between heroes & villains #how there is talk of changing the status quo but very little effort being shown for it #hawks should've been the gateway into that world #regardless of whether or not he was right or wrong in his decisions during the PLF arc #sadly this isn't the direction the story wants to go in #opting in favor for a very naruto-lite brother vs brother myth arc #that basically overtook and overrode any opportunity at exploring society beyond heroes outside of a few mere glimpses #i feel like i'm taking the onus out of the post's original intention #and probably should just do a critique on the manga separately if i really want to dive into it #TLDR i'm just watching from the sidelines now while rbing the occasional hawks art b/c that design is ICONIC WOOP WOOP

[charcubed]

but is it wrong to feel upset that Neil Gaiman repeatedly acknowledged fans' readings of Azri/Crow as ace/queerplatonic if the intention was always for it to be romantic/sexual? not because that's a problem, obviously that representation is also important and I'm glad it's there, but I don't think he should've given the impression that a community with even less (practically nothing) might be represented (or at least an equally valid reading) if that was never the case? feels bad man :/

I don't think it's wrong to feel that way, because those are your feelings and you're feeling them. But I do think this is overall... a little complicated? Disclaimer before I continue: I am like a step removed from what Neil Gaiman's actions have ever been on this site or just in general lol, so I'm not speaking from the perspective of being intimately aware of the lore there or what instances you may be thinking of personally.

At minimum, all I know is that he's always said since season 1 that it's a "love story." Does that necessarily have to equal romance? I mean... no, because "love story" is a storytelling framework, but also. Well. [gestures vaguely]

But! That aside – again without knowing the history of potentially specific instances – I will say two things:

Acknowledgement of fan readings or gratitude or headcanons or whatnot does not have to always be, like, word-of-author-God tacit endorsement or confirmation of canon. It could very well be "I'm glad you enjoyed it, or "I'm glad you see yourself / see value in this story," or even (based on what I remember of some of the Discourse of the time) "I'm glad you're advocating for the legitimacy of the love in this story." What I'm trying to say (as gently as possible) is that him liking posts or engaging with fans' happiness was not necessarily a promise with any specificity of the nuances of the characters' identities in canon or where the story might go in future. Hell, it's even likely that he engaged with such a spectrum of fan content years ago that some could consider things he acknowledged to be contradictory, i.e. maybe he liked a sex indifferent ace reading and also liked a demi-and-super-into-each-other ace reading for example. (There's also something to be said for how messy things can get when a creator is this dialed into fandom conversations and engages with fans directly, because then people read into the creator's every online move, and some of the onus is on the creator for that broadly speaking, but... I digress.) So essentially, it's very possible with whatever acknowledgements he made that he wasn't intending to be giving impressions or promises of future material at all.

This is pure conjecture, but there's also nothing to say that he did always know what the "intention" would be in regards to the extent of the romantic or sexual nature of Aziraphale and Crowley's relationship. It's highly possible their relationship has evolved as much for Neil as it has for us. Writing can be like that, y'know? The characters or the way you end up taking their story can surprise you. And that's especially true in the case here, since there was an original book, and then the show vastly expanded upon their relationship in season 1, and now everything beyond that is largely uncharted story waters in terms of character work. I'd bet on it tbh. When Neil was liking tumblr posts or whatever back in ye old 2019, who knows how much he had mapped out for the future at that point?

But like, look. You're not wrong if you feel bad about it, as long as you're being normal about feeling bad (and you seem to be), aka not taking it out on anyone else or shitting on what the story is now or may become in future.

I also want to add that I don't think an ace spectrum reading has to inherently be considered irrelevant now or in the future for these characters? Yet I also very much know that that can sound like bullshit if a specific flavor of ace spectrum reading is what you had in mind, so I'm sympathetic to that :/

I don't know if this is very helpful smh but uhhh those are my thoughts. At the end of the day I'm sorry you're upset and I hope you continue to enjoy the characters / the show!

#anonymous #asks #I'm doing a little bit of catch-up on asks if you couldn't tell. hi everyone sorry I'm bad at this sometimes #I just never have short answers to literally anything RIP