#i just went through all the yoi merch and put what i want in the cart thats all u3u | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

robyn-goodfellowe · 3 years

Text

2020 Year in Review

tagged by @samwise-babeyy !! thanks so much!

Rules: Answer the questions about 2020 and tag some people to pass it on! (if you want!)

5 favourite films you watched in 2020:

i. wolfwalkers

ii. secret of kells

iii. midsommar

iv. harriet

v. song of the sea

5 favourite tv shows you watched in 2020:

i. i don’t watch tv much

5 favourite songs you listened to in 2020:

i. peach pit - psychics in la

ii. peach pit - you and your friends

iii. peach pit - shampoo bottles

iv. childish gambino - algorhythm

v. kanye west - violent crimes

top 5 albums of 2020:

i. peach pit - you and your friends

ii. childish gambino - 3.15.20

iii. taylor swift - folklore

iv. bruno coulais - wolfwalkers

v. alec howoka - at the end of everything/hold onto anything

top 5 books you read in 2020:

i. alexandra burt - the good daughter (tops the list every year tbh)

ii. alexandra burt - shadow garden

iii. mo haydar - poppet

iv. rosalind miles - who cooked the last supper?

v. smith glass jenkins - at the end of your tether (a comic, but ehhhh)

how did you spend your birthday this year?

- i ordered ihop (tradition) and my friend baked a key lime cheesecake. so good

what was your most memorable day this year?

- being in big bear. obviously it was irresponsible but im not about to fight my mother. i did have fun. wish i went on more hikes and school wasnt in session when it happened.

did you find any new hobbies or interests in quarantine?

- spent nearly the entirety of quarantine learning about coaster engineering and the history of amusement parks! i also got really invested in some internet mysteries. unfortunately it’s nothing thatll benefit me but it’s still been nice to learn and be involved with

what was the last big event yoy remember doing before covid?

- i was getting excited for a concert with my favourite band :( it was just a few months away and i had vip tickets with a backstage meet and greet, acoustic preshow and merch u.u

5 good/positive things that happened to you in 2020:

- i was almost a year clean of self harm!

- although i dropped it for the bigger part of the year, i made some awesome progress with writing

- art fight was fun

- made some new friends who i am very thankful for

- reconnected with an old friend through roblox of all things completely by chance!

biggest message learnt from this year?

dear god just put yourself first you know you want to

also cherish your family and friends, you never know what’ll happen to them. return calls and let them know you love them, don’t let them leave with regrets

and what are you most looking forward to in 2021?

- the aforementioned concert, hopefully revisiting six flags and for this to all be over

- also the possible livestream of trump getting dragged out of office

@danganronpa69 @kolya-was-cerdechko @jasmarie2500 @dannys-unforgivable-god and anyone else whod be interested

#long post #tag meme

1 note · View note

rainbowravioli · 7 years

Note

Unpopular opinion: Victuuri is the pairing I love the most for the time being, but I wish people would stop holding it on a too high of a pedestal – worshipping it like a God or some sort of that. There are flaws that shouldn’t be overlooked and people should stop downgrading almost every single BL works or m/m pairings out there in favour of Victuuri and acting morally superior towards others. (1)

I know the problems in yaoi and I’m not going to defend it since I don’t even read and like yaoi but I understand that yaoi is purely fantasy for straight women as it stands for “yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi” (no peak, no point, no meaning). Yaoi is also a subgenre of hentai – to quote Wikipedia, “In Japanese, hentai describes any type of perverse or bizarre sexual desire or act generally aimed at members of the opposite sex from the persons depicted.” (2) What I’m trying to say is, people shouldn’t compare Victuuri to yaoi in general because it’s two different genres and of course the point of YOI is not about having sex. This is also why in shonen-ai or gay couples in non-BL works tend to have healthier representation and YOI is not the first to have a canon gay (and healthy) couple in non-BL anime. Patalliro had did that long ago before some of us even born, and they even kissed (the first same-sex kiss featured in anime). (3) Heck, the two male leads in Samurai Flamenco got married before Victuuri was canon. I also know that yaoi and shonen-ai are outdated terms and BL is the right one but I don’t see much difference (Yaoi is BL with sex while shonen-ai is BL with no sex. I forgot to mention that hentai is not a genre, it’s anything that has porn). Thus, I don’t want to compare YOI to BL works because BL is mainly focusing on gay relationships while YOI is mainly focusing on figure skating or Yuuri’s growth. (4) And we all agree that YOI is not BL and the romance is just a subplot, right? But if I were to compare Victuuri with something, then I would compare it to some sports/bishonen anime that doesn’t have the guts to go any further than teasing (Free, Owari no Seraph, Boei-Bu, etc) to hook fangirls in. P.S. I love your opinions and meta! Don’t mind any of the haters, it’s not cool to hate somebody just because of conflicting opinions. Keep on writing, your meta is my drug :3 (5)

Awwww anon, you’re sweet

I agree with you that Victuuri is not BL and should not be compared to it. BL is a genre and while it has been developing in recent years (look at things like Doukyuusei), it still continues to exist within its own framework, with its own history, themes and tropes it typically conforms to. Yuri on Ice is not BL, it’s a sports anime that happens to include a same sex couple between two men. It’s also certainly not yaoi considering how the term is applied to works of a graphic sexual nature (though I would hesitate to call it a sub-genre of hentai, they have different histories and origins but I get where you’re coming from).

That said, I also agree with you that people should not use Yuri on Ice or Victuuri to diminish other works that portray healthy gay couples. That said, while Victuuri is far from perfect, both in canon (lack of resolution and communication problems brought upon by the finale) and in Word of God (~platonic wedding rings~ kill me) it did a lot of things right. It is extremely beloved for a reason and it gained notoriety over things like No.6 and Samurai Flamenco for a reason.

I’m a big fan of No.6 and it has that beautiful thing over Yuri on Ice where we had two kisses on screen that were not at all debatable on whether they were kisses or not or whether they were romantic or not. That said, Nezumi and Shion don’t exactly have a happy ending. And in fact, their entire story is less than happy. Understandable, considering they live in a distopia and are trying to take down their corrupt government. And again, I love No.6 and I love Nezushi, but Victuuri does have the “advantages” of: a) being from a more mainstream anime with a wider audience, b) having a relationship that is happy all the way through, even with problems, and ends happily, c) a more natural, arguably more realistic development to the relationship. Still, No.6 has been receiving constant praise since it aired by the people who watched it. It’s an important staple when it comes to representation.

Samurai Flamenco is a prickly case of what do you consider to be canon? Is it what you see on screen or what the author says? Which interestingly is a big question with Victuuri as well, but staying with Samurai Flamenco for a moment. If you go with what happens on screen than indeed, it’s canon, they end the series kind of engaged, and post-series material indicates they married. The problem specifically with this series is the infamous post-finale interview where the staff completely dismisses any sort of romantic interpretation of the relationship. Now, I say screw them, and so does most of the fandom. People basically ignore that interview, but we can’t deny it exists. Now a reason why people may not praise Samurai Flamenco for representation the way they do Victuuri probably comes down to how the series is not very well known and is also just downright weird. It’s also easy to dismiss the “let’s get married” scene as not being really serious (though I would argue that doing so is ignoring who Goto and Masayoshi are as people and how they develop through the series). I mean, compare it to the scene where Victor and Yuuri exchange rings and it’s a strikingly different set-up and mood.

That said these animes do have the huge advantage of having actual confirmation of characters’ feelings and romantic intentions through both words and gestures. It’s very unfortunate that Victuuri can be considered ambiguous at this point, what with the whole #kissorhug (and if it was a kiss did Victor mean it romantically) and ~platonic wedding rings~ (I die a little bit inside every time) and never ever saying “I love you” or referring to each other as a significant other. There’s also the matter of the staff interviews and the language they use to talk about Victuuri. Soulmates =/= romance. The Free! staff also calls their characters soulmates, but nobody is waving the banner of representation on that side of the fandom.

Let’s compare Victuuri to Free! then. I’m very familiar with it so I’ll go with that, since I’m aware of the other two examples you mentioned but haven’t actually watched them.

Free! made baiting into an art form. Good lord, I don’t think I’ve ever seen an anime do baiting as well or as profitable as Free! is doing. Thing with Free! though, is that it profits from multiple pairings. You can combine the Free! boys in any whichever way you want. Sure, there’s more evidence for certain pairings, but lack of evidence never stopped the fandom (looking at SouMako). And things is, KyoAni wants you to do this, they want you to ship the characters and buy the shippy merchandise and they know exactly what they are doing with a lot of their content. That said, Free! has genuine emotion and development with its characters, which is part of why I think it’s so popular. There is depth there, whatever your preference amongst the main ships is. That helps sales. But they will never take that extra step with any pairing.

Yuri on Ice doesn’t play the field the way Free! does. Victor and Yuuri are very much exclusive in their affections. They don’t have romantic coded scenes with anyone besides each other and, other than Yuuri’s crush on Yuko, they are not shown to be attracted to anyone other than each other. Their relationship drives the story, while with Free! multiple relationships drive the story (which is normal, the main characters are a group and the main theme is friendship).

Now, going back to what I said above on how you consider canon - I consider Victuuri canon and nothing Kubo says in interviews will change what I saw on screen with my own eyes. My dear co-captain @soobaki on the other hand, doesn’t, because of the lack of resolution and confirmation from Word of God. This is interesting when compared to Free! however, because one must ask: what’s stopping Free! to be as canon with its ships as Victuuri? (spoiler alert it’s money but) And here I’m going to look at one of the big ones and one of the “unofficial official pairings” according to KyoAni merch from s2 going forward: MakoHaru.

MakoHaru never kiss on screen and they certainly don’t get engaged or exchange rings. But they have an extremely deep bond that goes beyond friendship that gets developed throughout the series. Oh and they get a heavily romantic coded love confession.

Oh but Rita, you say, that doesn’t count! That’s only platonic love! Look they are even talking about swimming and putting their relationship in swimming terms, the way they do for most of the series. It’s not romantic!

Ah, but Victuuri does the exact same thing with skating. Victor and Yuuri constantly talk about their relationship in skating terms and skating metaphors. And never once say “I love you”.

Then we have the things staff says in interviews. Some things said about MakoHaru were how “they are each other’s other half”, “their relationship is an inviolable sanctuary”, writing their dialogue feels like “writing a married couple”, referred to Haru wearing Makoto’s shirt as “boyfriend’s shirt”, saying that unlike the other characters in the group Makoto is “drawn to Haru’s existence alone” and not just his swimming. All of these things are very reminiscent of the sort of things the YoI staff says about Victuuri, how they are “soulmates” and “can’t live without each other”.

The fact that I can even drawn comparisons like this is exactly the problem with the current status of Victuuri, which I’ve already talked a lot about. But like I said, Yuri on Ice can’t fully be comparable to bait anime like Free! and the rest because it went further than those and because it doesn’t contain the group element. Mappa is not trying to sell you Victor x Chris or Yuuri x Phichit, there’s no basis for that. Or for any pairing that’s not Victuuri. Unfortunately, Victuuri can still be considered ambiguous as it stands and its resolution was extremely lacking since it stopped the on-going romantic progression we’ve been having for 10 episodes. Add to that things like The Rings being missing from most of the official art and there’s a strong argument to be had about Victuuri being next-level bait.

Alas we are currently experiencing Schrodinger’s Victuuri, and it will only ever leave that limbo with either the staff finally giving acknowledgement to them as couple (which they are) or with the series going forward and sparing 10 seconds to establish them as a couple, with no margin for doubt or ambiguity.

#replies #yoi critical #long post #that got long and rambly #I hope I addressed what you wanted me to address anon #Anonymous

24 notes · View notes