#makes the train feel like there are more people than just shuake on board | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mistresseast · 3 years

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You make some really good points, but I wish literally anyone in this fandom wanted to write about it. I just hate how Akira is not allowed to be happy, and even with the long wait, no one seems to want him to be reunited with Goro and to be happy. Or address how Maruki was manipulative and fucked up. It's just so unfair to him.

I know this fandom seems really doom and gloom most of the time, believe me, it kind of wears me down too sometimes. I love some nice, cathartic angst as much as the next person, but it’s hard to watch characters you care about be essentially left for dead by the fandom over and over when there’s plenty of evidence that they are actually okay and will be able to grow and heal in the future. However, I promise that’s not the only content to be found here. Since Royal came out, I’ve seen a definite upswing in fics and art that celebrate their future reunion and the positives that resulted from the revelations of the third semester. Most of the popular, well-known stuff is just still from before Royal, so the tone is admittedly darker. There’s more emphasis on grief and exploring the repercussions of Goro’s unceremonious “death” and even fix-its tend to get hung up on atonement and redemption instead of healing. And it’s understandable; when a relationship ends the way shuake’s did in vanilla, it leaves people feeling restless and upset, and the best way to vent those feelings is through generating bittersweet content. It’s a catharsis, a way to purge all of the unfinished emotions vanilla left us with. And even now that we have a more hopeful ending, most fans, the ones who have been around since vanilla, are still in that frame of mind. We were so screwed over by the last ending, that we’re just kind of...used to mourning Goro Akechi at this point.

My experience following along with the real-time first playthroughs of Royal is something that will stick with me forever. I won’t get too into it, but when it looked like Goro’s fate in the ship was unchanged, I was devastated. But then he was back! And then he was gone again. And the translations were perfunctory at first, most of us didn’t know for sure what was going on, so we were all getting ready to accept Goro being “dead” again. Fortunately, that’s not at all what happened! He’s alive and he’s fine and in fact he was never dead in the first place, even in vanilla! It was amazing! And I was so happy for a reason to let go of the grief I’d been nursing since I learned his fate the first FIRST time around. But not everyone is as eager to leave that darkness behind. In some cases, people just genuinely don’t understand what happened in the game, and the narrative of Goro being alive bc of Akira’s wish is so tempting and so painfully beautiful that it’s become essentially fandom canon just by the sheer power it evokes. I may be wrong, but I feel like this is the majority of people. They take Maruki’s words at face value and are then inundated by fandom content that reinforces that idea, making it easy to ignore Goro’s brief appearance in the true ending or write it off. They’ve been trained by vanilla not to expect a happy ending for these characters and they just accept it. And there are also folks who prefer the darker ending, of course, and willingly choose to believe it bc it satisfies something in them. Even I’m seduced by the inherent eroticism of things going badly sometimes, and I write almost exclusively for the express purposes of getting the characters soul married or whatever. Tragedies are compelling and that’s just some people’s cup of tea. No shame there.

That’s not to say I don’t get frustrated by it sometimes though. It’s frustrating to me that the idea of Akira’s love for Goro sustaining a new dimension is so fucking delicious that it basically overshadows the fact that Goro is actually alive AND buries the lead about what a scumbag Maruki truly is. We’re all so enamored by the High Romance of it all that we fail to recognize it for what it is: a lie. Maruki fucking got us!! He tricked this whole fandom into living in a fantasy world!! God, how meta, how unintentionally brilliant. We’re just like Akira: too in love with Goro to even question what Maruki says. As frustrating as it is, you kind of have to love it.

That said, as time goes on, I believe the fandom outlook will continue to lighten. I saw a HUGE surge of positive post-game content after the deleted scene of Goro at the clinic was discovered bc people were finally willing to give into the desire to give Goro a happy ending now that they’re less afraid of being hurt by some new revelation later on. And as that becomes the norm, the discussion around Maruki will change too. Currently he has this reputation as a well-meaning villain, but when Goro being undeniably alive becomes more ingrained in the fandom consciousness, his manipulation will be more obvious to people. I truly believe that this fandom is full of people who WANT happy endings, who WANT Goro and Akira to be reunited, but have been taught for so long that believing one can actually happen is stupid. And the ending we got is just ambiguous enough to prey on that fear of being played for the fool. As time passes, so will that fear, and the fandom content will reflect that. And there’s already hopeful stuff out there if you look for it! People are catching on! Plus, there’s my time-honored advice: if you can’t find the content that satisfies you, you just have to make it! That’s why all of my fics exist. Putting more positivity out there will only help other people get on board the happy ending train faster.

I know you probably just wanted to vent and didn’t need a whole essay about fandom psychology, but I promise you, I know how you feel, and I’ve been steeping in the shuake stew long enough to tell you that things are already better than they were. We can only go up from here!!

Also disclaimer!! All of this nonsense is based on my individual experience and interpretation. Everyone experiences fandom differently and I certainly don’t claim to be an expert. ymmv

#ask tag #anon #idk if i should tag this fandom wank? how about i just not put it in the fandom tags #anon if you're out there: keep the faith!!#isablogging

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