#normally i'm a 'live and let ship' person but jesus christ can people not be normal for 3 seconds

[furst1ded]

Thoughts on Shipping Alastor from an AroAce person

(this entire thing is copy and pasted excerpts from a Discord rant so if the grammar is funky, that's why, I just felt like giving my 2 cents on the topic)

Aroace people can still participate in romantic and sexual interactions. All being aro/ace/aroace means is you don't feel romantic/sexual attraction upon seeing other people. You can feel it later on or in waves or could never feel that attraction but still can participate and love others in a fulfilling way. Some aroace people are fine performing intimacy onto others but dislike reciprocation, others are the opposite where they're fine receiving but not giving. It's a spectrum.

The nuances of asexuality and aromanticism aside, you can be in a relationship without being in a relationship. Platonic relationships beyond friendship are a thing (QPRs for example). But like, I get it. Not everyone who ships Alastor keeps it confined to a QPR. And his character seems pretty sex-repulsed and romance-averse. But here's the other thing. He's fictional. As long as his character remains aroace in canon, fans taking the silly radio man and making him kiss the devil isn't taking away from aroace representation.

This next bit is coming from me as an AroAce person myself. I ship Alastor. I write/read him kissing people and fucking and acting romantic. And guess what? It's related to expressing my sexuality. Alastor is one of my favorite characters in anything ever and I love that there's a character that represents a facet of myself in a popular media. I relate to him so goddamn much and that's why I ship him. He's a fictional character I like that I project onto, so I use him as a way to navigate and explore romantic/sexual relationships that I'm never going to participate in myself. He's not real so I just puppet him around to live through vicariously in the scenarios I don't want to be a part of myself but find super interesting. It's not anything new, I do the same with my own characters in the stories I write them in, it's part of storytelling, I just use him for a specific type of story for a specfic part of myself.

It's not like we're hurting anybody by shipping him. We're not drastically effecting canon and making him an alloromantic. I've seen plenty of fics that ship him that either make it a QPR or they thoroughly explore the nuances of his asexuality and what subtype of sexuality he is and how he navigates it and I love those fics because they speak to me on a spiritual level. Grayromantic Alastor, demisexual alastor, sex-repulsed but romance-favorable Alastor, sex-repulsed and romance-averse Alastor in a one-sided ship fic, etc they're all so important to me because it helps me live out my own sexuality and romantic orientation and explore myself.

I get it. Not everyone is respectful. Not everyone feels the way I do and use characters in this way. It can suck seeing people just ignore his sexuality when asexuals and aromantics don't get much in terms of screen-time. But you can't control everybody and what work they put out. And trying to censor stuff like that does more harm than good. I just explained why fics involving Alastor are so important to me. They normalize QPRs and aroaces being in relationships. That's probably what pisses me off the fucking most. If we're not allowed to write about aroaces being in relationships or romantic/sexual situations, you put aroaces into a box. A box where every aroace is perceived as sexless and loveless, which just isn't true. A box where aroaces are prudes or infants who can't handle hearing the word "sex". It's just so frustrating. You can be mad at fics that expressly rewrite or stomp on his sexuality, sure. You can't stop them, but you can disapprove of them. But let the rest of us have our fun making the literal devil and TV head man have the hots for a man whose teeth are yellower than the sun, Jesus Christ.

TL;DR: asexuality is a spectrum, I'm aroace and use shipping as a way to explore and express myself and I know I'm not the only one, trying to suppress works where an Aroace character is seen participating in romance or sex can actually be harmful in that it promotes only one idea of what being aroace is, and at the end of the day the character I'm talking about doesn't even exist.

#sorry to flood the aro and ace tags with more hazbin stuff but I feel like what I said can be important to the community outside of hazbin #asexual representation #asexual #aromantic #aromantic asexual #hazbin hotel alastor #hazbin hotel #radioapple #radiosilence #radiostatic #one sided radiostatic

[cairoscene]

N for DC! (also would love to hear about batlantern so i guess that's a Z?)

N. Name three things you wish you saw more or in your main fandom (or a fandom of choice)

well if i'm being selfish, i wish there were more fics about newly adopted jason, or jason with bruce and alfred before the adoption. i'm so deeply interested in that vague window between the tire-stealing incident and the adoption, and i want a million fics of it. i personally headcanon that bruce doesn't immediately rush jason into being robin and instead focuses on giving this kid a safe place to live, so i'm always thinking about that

for superbat and ghostbat and any bruce ship really, i wish there was more content of bruce being like, deeply romantic and intent on making it work, rather than the prevailing fanon of him being so suspicious of happiness that he sabotages the relationship or doesn't even realize someone's in love with him. i love to think about a bruce who very much wants to love someone and will do what he can to make that happen

and i think for fandom in general, i wish there was more tolerance for fanon? even in my chill perusal of the tag it's hard to avoid ppl disliking certain fandom interpretations of characters or holding up the comics as the only true source of characterization. we all have interpretations that we like, and personally i think it's really fun that there's so much room for different takes on characters. we all have things that annoy us that we bitch about in private chats, i get that, but sometimes fanon is fun and even dare i say it, more interesting than canon. but yeah ppl get really tied up in what's canon and what's fanon and i think you should just let people have a good time. don't be a hater lol

Z. Just ramble about something fan-related, go go go

ooh okay for batlantern well. first of all go read all of FabulaRasa's fics bc they're very entertaining and engrossing and very very compelling. but yeah i love batlantern bc they offer such a different dynamic from other bruce ships where bruce becomes so, so petty in response to hal being The Pettiest person on the planet. please watch justice league war if you haven't already. i was also just explaining to @burins last night that hal is the wettest most pathetic blorbo of a character. he's always one bad day away from death or homelessness or joblessness or illness. he reminds me of nancy drew in that seems like he gets hit over the head and dragged around a lot. don't even get me started on the parallax thing. i love a pathetic man. anyway what i really enjoy about batlantern is the dynamic where hal is such a deeply good, decent person doing his best and yet his life is falling apart to such a degree that bruce wayne, known fuckup of epic proportions, is the one to be like "christ let's get you some help. jesus." for bruce to be like, actually really competent and normal and functional by comparison, but also very compassionate and loyal. and i love the expectation that hal thinks bruce is a freak and then gets a peek behind the curtain and discovers....that bruce is deeply domestic. that delights me to no end. ALSO for bruce to have this giant messy but loving family that he cares so much for and for hal to be essentially on his own entirely, for hal to see that family and want desperately to be part of it but not feel like he's worthy of joining it. that's some good pangs right there

send me ABC fandom asks

#asks answered #cair speaks

[laura-is-a-weirdo]

Ok, so. It's been a looooong time since I used this app to rant, but Helluva Boss is my comfort show at the moment (I know it's weird but it makes me feel things and it makes me happy) and reading so many things about the new ep and about the characters in general triggered me.

I begin by saying everyone can enjoy the show as they like and ship whatever they want to ship and in whichever way they want (yes, I will also talk about ships and I think you already know where I want to go with this), but there are few things I read that left me confused. Sometimes I wonder if some people and I are even watching the same show, seriously.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

Ok, first thing first, the whole Loona/Octavia thing.

Yes, I ship them, so if you want to call me "ped0phile" or "stupid" or "gross" go ahead, but I think the reasons people use to judge those who ship them are RIDICULOUS. First of all, reading the Wiki, Loona is 22 and Via is 17 and I know for some Americans this is such a sin, but where I live is totally normal for people with a 5/6 or even a 10 year gap to be together. Shipping them in a romantic way is not the same as shipping them in a sexual way. It would be the same if I say I ship Blitz and Stolas when they were kids and they met for the first time. Of course I don't ship them in a /sexual/ way as kids, I ship them because they are cute together and there's the whole "endgame" thing so they grow to be a couple, but Jesus Christ chill out guys. You can see whatever you want in their last interactions, but if I want to ship them I will ship them. Let people enjoy the show how they want without judging everyone and everything just because you don't like something.

Secondly, Via and Loona are NOT sisters. Even if Stolas and Blitz end up together, they wouldn't STILL be blood sisters. If you want to see their relationship as something sisterly-like it's perfectly fine, but if I want to believe that Via is going to have a crush on Loona I can do whatever I want. I read some bullshit about "sibling-coded", what the hell is that supposed to mean? They are not blood-related, so even if their dads will marry each other at the end, they still won't be related by blood so JUST STOP SAYING IT'S LIKE INCEST WTF

Another issue I have is about Loona herself. I don't get why people hate her just because of how she acts with Blitz. Of course I'd love to see them interacting in a more father-daughter way, but Loona being aggressive is totally in character for her, you get that she cares about Blitzø because of the way sometimes she looks at him and because of the speech she gives to Via. She cares about him but she was presented as very aggressive since the pilot and she is still young and probably still learning how to interact with people properly. She was abused, Blitz isn't perfect anyway, but she cares about him even if she doesn't show it. I know some people in real life who are like her and they're going through therapy to fix it, so it's not impossible that she acts that way and still be a well-written character. She can be your least favorite in the show, but don't say it's bad writing if she acts that way. You can't expect characters of a show that's placed in HELL to be all kind and cute, part of why I love Helluva is that the characters are REAL: they aren't perfect, they are little shits sometimes, sometimes toxic and they all have flaws, but besides that they try to establish relationships and stay together, work together and even love each other. You don't have to like everything that happens and everyone, but if you want to criticize something try to understand the difference between what is ACTUALLY shown and what are your personal preferences. Which leads to...

Stolas being a "massive piece of shit" and Stella being "one-dimensional". I'm sorry if you don't expect that a character can be bad just to be bad. Stella doesn't have to be bad because something happened to her, doesn't have to be bad because of some trauma and shit, she can be bad just to be bad. She can just be a bitch because that's how she is, she can be abusive just because she is that kind of person, it can also happen in the real world. There are people who are little shits just because, it's not that big of a deal. If you like her that's fine, but you should like her because she is a bitch and she is toxic, not because you hope there's something more. Maybe there WILL be more, but for now you should like her for what is shown, stop justifying her.

As for Stolas, why would he be a piece of shit? Just because after YEARS of abuse (Stella even speaks with Striker on the phone IN FRONT OF STOLAS about killing him), after YEARS of being punched, getting yelled at just because he existed, being ridiculed in front of everybody, while trying to be a good dad to Via because he loves her and just want her to have a normal life, just because he says to his daughter "your mother is being a bitch" one time... THAT'S why you call him a piece of shit? Before the divorce he had NEVER said anything bad about Stella to Via and this can be easily understood by the fact that Via both in Loo Loo Land and in the latest episode isn't fully aware of what Stolas did to keep her safe (and it's understandable since she is a teenager) and Stella has always treated Via like shit (just look at Stella's face in every picture they're in but also in every scene they have together, she's just mean to Stolas and doesn't even talk to her daughter) and now that Via is old enough to understand it on a certain level it's totally legit for Stolas to say that. Via has seen all her life Stella being a bitch with her father, I think that's also why she was so scared that Stolas might run away with Blitzø and leaving her. You can say you don't like Stolas, but he didn't live a shitty life because he couldn't be with who he wanted, he didn't have to endure years and years of abuse and yet found the strength to do his best to protect his daughter just for you to call him a "massive piece of shit". He did his best and of course he has flaws, of course he is not perfect, that's the whole point. People in real life are not perfect, they do things that hurt others without thinking, they try their best to go through whatever they have to go through and they make mistakes, it's part of life.

I didn't expect this rant to be this long but I care too much about Helluva to shut up, I just wanted to put on paper my thoughts because lately people made me feel like I was wrong and my ideas weren't valid enough and I hate that. Everyone should be able to do whatever they want as long as they are not hurting anybody and of course you can have different ideas, but discussing in a calm manner with valid arguments is better than just yelling at people and judging just because. It's a FAKE show with FAKE characters, just try to enjoy what we have and if you don't like you don't have to watch it.

#helluva stolas #helluva blitzo #helluva boss #helluva spoilers #helluva octavia #helluva loona #helluva stella #just some random rant