#what you ship doesn't make you a moral or immoral person

[sneezypeasy]

Why I Deliberately Avoided the "Colonizer" Argument in my Zutara Thesis - and Why I'll Continue to Avoid it Forever

This is a question that occasionally comes up under my Zutara video essay, because somehow in 2 hours worth of content I still didn't manage to address everything (lol.) But this argument specifically is one I made a point of avoiding entirely, and there are some slightly complicated reasons behind that. I figure I'll write them all out here.

From a surface-level perspective, Zuko's whole arc, his raison d'etre, is to be a de-colonizer. Zuko's redemption arc is kinda all about being a de-colonizer, and his redemption arc is probably like the most talked about plot point of ATLA, so from a basic media literacy standpoint, the whole argument is unsound in the first place, and on that basis alone I find it childish to even entertain as an argument worth engaging with, to be honest.

(At least one person in my comments pointed out that if any ship's "political implications" are problematic in some way, it really ought to be Maiko, as Mai herself is never shown or suggested to be a strong candidate for being a de-colonizing co-ruler alongside Zuko. If anything her attitudes towards lording over servants/underlings would make her… a less than suitable choice for this role, but I digress.)

But the reason I avoided rebutting this particular argument in my video goes deeper than that. From what I've observed of fandom discourse, I find that the colonizer argument is usually an attempt to smear the ship as "problematic" - i.e., this ship is an immoral dynamic, which would make it problematic to depict as canon (and by extension, if you ship it regardless, you're probably problematic yourself.)

And here is where I end up taking a stand that differentiates me from the more authoritarian sectors of fandom.

I'm not here to be the fandom morality police. When it comes to lit crit, I'm really just here to talk about good vs. bad writing. (And when I say "good", I mean structurally sound, thematically cohesive, etc; works that are well-written - I don't mean works that are morally virtuous. More on this in a minute.) So the whole colonizer angle isn't something I'm interested in discussing, for the same reason that I actually avoided discussing Katara "mothering" Aang or the "problematic" aspects of the Kataang ship (such as how he kissed her twice without her consent). My whole entire sections on "Kataang bad" or "Maiko bad" in my 2 hour video was specifically, "how are they written in a way that did a disservice to the story", and "how making them false leads would have created valuable meaning". I deliberately avoided making an argument that consisted purely of, "here's how Kataang/Maiko toxic and Zutara wholesome, hence Zutara superiority, the end".

Why am I not willing to be the fandom morality police? Two reasons:

I don't really have a refined take on these subjects anyway. Unless a piece of literature or art happens to touch on a particular issue that resonates with me personally, the moral value of art is something that doesn't usually spark my interest, so I rarely have much to say on it to begin with. On the whole "colonizer ship" subject specifically, other people who have more passion and knowledge than me on the topic can (and have) put their arguments into words far better than I ever could. I'm more than happy to defer to their take(s), because honestly, they can do these subjects justice in a way I can't. Passing the mic over to someone else is the most responsible thing I can do here, lol. But more importantly:

I reject the conflation of literary merit with moral virtue. It is my opinion that a good story well-told is not always, and does not have to be, a story free from moral vices/questionable themes. In my opinion, there are good problematic stories and bad "pure" stories and literally everything in between. To go one step further, I believe that there are ways that a romance can come off "icky", and then there are ways that it might actually be bad for the story, and meming/shitposting aside, the fact that these two things don't always neatly align is not only a truth I recognise about art but also one of those truths that makes art incredibly interesting to me! So on the one hand, I don't think it is either fair or accurate to conflate literary "goodness" with moral "goodness". On a more serious note, I not only find this type of conflation unfair/inaccurate, I also find it potentially dangerous - and this is why I am really critical of this mindset beyond just disagreeing with it factually. What I see is that people who espouse this rhetoric tend to encourage (or even personally engage in) wilful blindness one way or the other, because ultimately, viewing art through these lens ends up boxing all art into either "morally permissible" or "morally impermissible" categories, and shames anyone enjoying art in the "morally impermissible" box. Unfortunately, I see a lot of people responding to this by A) making excuses for art that they guiltily love despite its problematic elements and/or B) denying the value of any art that they are unable to defend as free from moral wickedness.

Now, I'm not saying that media shouldn't be critiqued on its moral virtue. I actually think morally critiquing art has its place, and assuming it's being done in good faith, it absolutely should be done, and probably even more often than it is now.

Because here's the truth: Sometimes, a story can be really good. Sometimes, you can have a genuinely amazing story with well developed characters and powerful themes that resonate deeply with anyone who reads it. Sometimes, a story can be all of these things - and still be problematic.*

(Or, sometimes a story can be all of those things, and still be written by a problematic author.)

That's why I say, when people conflate moral art with good art, they become blind to the possibility that the art they like being potentially immoral (or vice versa). If only "bad art" is immoral, how can the art that tells the story hitting all the right beats and with perfect rhythm and emotional depth, be ever problematic?

(And how can the art I love, be ever problematic?)

This is why I reject the idea that literary merit = moral virtue (or vice versa) - because I do care about holding art accountable. Even the art that is "good art". Actually, especially the art that is "good art". Especially the art that is well loved and respected and appreciated. The failure to distinguish literary critique from moral critique bothers me on a personal level because I think that conflating the two results in the detriment of both - the latter being the most concerning to me, actually.

So while I respect the inherent value of moral criticism, I'm really not a fan of any argument that presents moral criticism as equivalent to literary criticism, and I will call that out when I see it. And from what I've observed, a lot of the "but Zutara is a colonizer ship" tries to do exactly that, which is why I find it a dishonest and frankly harmful media analysis framework to begin with.

But even when it is done in good faith, moral criticism of art is also just something I personally am neither interested nor good at talking about, and I prefer to talk about the things that I am interested and good at talking about.

(And some people are genuinely good at tackling the moral side of things! I mean, I for one really enjoyed Lindsay Ellis's take on Rent contextualising it within the broader political landscape at the time to show how it's not the progressive queer story it might otherwise appear to be. Moral critique has value, and has its place, and there are definitely circumstances where it can lead to societal progress. Just because I'm not personally interested in addressing it doesn't mean nobody else can do it let alone that nobody else should do it, but also, just because it can and should be done, doesn't mean that it's the only "one true way" to approach lit crit by anyone ever. You know, sometimes... two things… can be true… at once?)

Anyway, if anyone reading this far has recognised that this is basically a variant of the proship vs. antiship debate, you're right, it is. And on that note, I'm just going to leave some links here. I've said about as much as I'm willing/able to say on this subject, but in case anyone is interested in delving deeper into the philosophy behind my convictions, including why I believe leftist authoritarian rhetoric is harmful, and why the whole "but it would be problematic in real life" is an anti-ship argument that doesn't always hold up to scrutiny, I highly recommend these posts/threads:

In general this blog is pretty solid; I agree with almost all of their takes - though they focus more specifically on fanfic/fanart than mainstream media, and I think quite a lot of their arguments are at least somewhat appropriate to extrapolate to mainstream media as well.

I also strongly recommend Bob Altemeyer's book "The Authoritarians" which the author, a verified giga chad, actually made free to download as a pdf, here. His work focuses primarily on right-wing authoritarians, but a lot of his research and conclusions are, you guessed it, applicable to left-wing authoritarians also.

And if you're an anti yourself, welp, you won't find support from me here. This is not an anti-ship safe space, sorrynotsorry 👆

In conclusion, honestly any "but Zutara is problematic" argument is one I'm likely to consider unsound to begin with, let alone the "Zutara is a colonizer ship" argument - but even if it wasn't, it's not something I'm interested in discussing, even if I recognise there are contexts where these discussions have value. I resent the idea that just because I have refined opinions on one aspect of a discussion means I must have (and be willing to preach) refined opinions on all aspects of said discussion. (I don't mean to sound reproachful here - actually the vast majority of the comments I get on my video/tumblr are really sweet and respectful, but I do get a handful of silly comments here and there and I'm at the point where I do feel like this is something worth saying.) Anyway, I'm quite happy to defer to other analysts who have the passion and knowledge to give complicated topics the justice they deserve. All I request is that care is taken not to conflate literary criticism with moral criticism to the detriment of both - and I think it's important to acknowledge when that is indeed happening. And respectfully, don't expect me to give my own take on the matter when other people are already willing and able to put their thoughts into words so much better than me. Peace ✌

*P.S. This works for real life too, by the way. There are people out there who are genuinely not only charming and likeable, but also generous, charitable and warm to the vast majority of the people they know. They may also be amazing at their work, and if they have a job that involves saving lives like firefighting or surgery or w.e, they may even be the reason dozens of people are still alive today. They may honestly do a lot of things you'd have to concede are "good" deeds.

They may be all of these things, and still be someone's abuser. 🙃

Two things can be true at once. It's important never to forget that.

#zutara discourse #the colonizer argument #anti anti zutara #text post #long post #anti maiko #anti mai #tagging just in case #anti purity culture #this is not an anti-ship safe space

[imptwins]

ALRIGHT, no more messing around I suppose.

Over the last twelve months my close friend @kimberlyeab and myself have been the targets of sustained harassment by a series of "anti-ship" accounts, that may or may not be the same person, that I am not going to name up here because I do not want to give them any more traffic than necessary. This is over some of the content we make, 18+ fiction revolving around Undertale and Deltarune, and sometimes involving dark kinks. I'm going to ask you to put aside whether you think this is immoral for the moment.

Under the break below is what I wrote a few hours ago. Things have since escalated. Both myself and Kim have been targeted by email bombs on our business emails, services/bots that spam your email address with garbage signups, rendering your email address completely unusable. At worst, this can overwhelm your email service so much that your account is unable to process new emails and is eventually disabled by the provider. I'm still getting bursts of activity after over 200 emails, so I'm not sure if it's dying down, or if it's so backlogged that this is what's happening.

This is literally a crime, by the way. It's classified as cyber abuse.

On top of this, whoever has done this has access to personal information. A full legal name, first and last, was used in several of the signups, so they are either implicitly threatening to doxx us, or simply flexing that they could. Likewise a crime.

Additionally, this seems well coordinated, but there are no suspicious recent results for us in The Usual Places. This makes me believe this person is probably using some foul back-alley site like KF to organize this. I don't think the legal name in question could have been acquired by one person, it's extremely difficult to trace back.

tl;dr: whoever is doing this knows their way around the internet and is actively dangerous, they are severely impeding our lives and have the potential to become incredibly, incredibly dangerous.

Why am I posting this? Not really to get those accounts in trouble (although you should absolutely stay the hell away from them, and severely scrutinize anything they leave a mark on). I don't think they'll be punished, nor would it help since they constantly block evade, and at this point I don't think this recent online abuse crap is actually them, just someone attaching themself to their crusade. Though I'm not sure.

What I want to illustrate is how these kind of callout posts feed into targeted harassment of minorities. This is just another reason why things that make you uncomfortable should be dealt with by curating your experience using tags and blacklists and blocks, rather than trying to assign moral value to what people make. If my content makes you that uncomfortable I *actively encourage* you to block me.

It doesn't matter whether you personally dislike minorities or not, or whether you're subconsciously targeting them, or whatever. Someone else who does will latch on. That person who writes nothing but callout posts, yet they're always for small trans creators who make some 'icky stuff' and never for big-name bigots who parade their bigotry out in the open; is it because they're a sock puppet of an overt reactionary, or just because they want to feel some control over their life so they subconsciously focus on vulnerable people?

Simple: you can't know.

These people are the dangerous ones. Not people who just make content, properly tag it, and mind their own business. But these people, obsessed with ruining other people, with finding 'evil' in the world so that they can purge it? You can find their name below if you really want, and literally their entire blog is just constant callouts, broadcasting people doing callouts, trying to network with other people who do callouts. This is why these people were originally called 'antifans', their entire fandom presence is centered around tearing other people to shreds.

Do your due diligence and fact-check, before you broadcast that someone in your fandom did something awful. Make sure they actually hurt someone. I know mega-bastards will use 'you can't prove it' as an excuse, but actually analyze it a bit. It's almost always painfully obvious, I know, I spent years doing antifascism. And more than anything else, neither entertain, nor broadcast, nor embolden the kind of people who dedicate their entire existences on the internet to lateral abuse. Not just these particular ones, but ANYONE who dedicates their life to this online torch-waving garbage over fictional content. Whether they're a reactionary or just projecting trauma, whether they actually hate x y or z minority or they just happen to always go for the most vulnerable people, whether the person they're targeting makes content that makes you feel very icky and gross or not, these self-ordained Crusaders are consistently, unquestionably, dangerous.

That's one page out of 4. Also some of them have between 10 and 80 updates in the one email from the same address. There's about 300 emails all up. And there's zero reason they can't do this again.

===

Anyway. The accounts in question are @snowcollecter/@brieffamilycat/@krispy-chicken-shipping/@bonniehbunny. First two are definitely them, I highly suspect the latter two are their main, or at the very least someone who constantly signal boosts them. We have endured over 12 months of:

calling for brigades against us, and at least 4 other people

block dodging to constantly screenshot and reference our posts

literal libel by accusing us of grooming a child despite screenshots, as well as both statements and direct requests to stop by both the supposed groomed child and their actual friends who witnessed all interactions we had

spamming anon asks to literally every single person that they can find who we ever interact with

using tiktok cen)sor)ship nonsense to get past peoples' blacklists and force this stuff in front of them

using no less than 3 confirmed alts with about 5 more extremely suspicious accounts in attempts to artificially broadcast themself and again evade blocks (when the original account itself is transparently an alt too)

joining multiple random discords to try to shove this stuff in peoples' faces

now spamming Kim's business email at signup services

probably being behind the attempts to doxx and raid us last year on a certain hate-monger website, since the signup spam demonstrates they're cool with bog standard channer troll tactics

They also pretty tellingly refused to even talk to this minor we supposedly groomed, who attempted to tell them personally that we hadn't done the shit they claim we did. You'd think someone who is this caught up about the safety of minors in fandom spaces would jump at the chance to help this kid, to tell them not to talk to us and get them away from us, to convince them to stay away? No, they said 'I don't talk to minors' (this is demonstrably untrue: their discord accounts are in many all-ages spaces) and immediately blocked them.

Of course. Because this was never about the safety of minors. Flip a coin; if it's heads, they're a far-right sock puppet who just knows they can use the 'think of the children' angle to drive a wedge into queer communities. If it's tails, they're just a routine runt who's projecting their lack of ability to do anything about the ACTUAL assholes of this world onto other queer people, wailing and flailing and doing anything they can to have some influence despite getting 3 notes on almost everything they ever post. Hence the anon asks, and Discord spam, and blacklist/block evading. If they can't have a platform - because anyone who looks at their garbage for more than a month at most sees how absolutely deranged they are - they'll just force people to see it.

Do they ever attack actual transphobes, which this fandom is not at all short on? Well, sort of! They did one or two callout posts about a TERF who used to run in these spaces... But didn't say anything about the TERF shit. Just the porn. The porn constantly put behind age confirmations and thorough tags/content warnings. This person spouted generic 'all-powerful trans lobby' 'social contagion' 'please look at this study about desistance I found on a hard-right website' bullshit, but no, it was them drawing aged-up highschoolers (REMINDER: NOT EVEN CANONICALLY UNDERAGE, JUST VAGUE HIGHSCHOOLERS, *AND* THEY WERE EXPLICITLY OLDER IN THEIR CONTENT!) that was apparently the greater evil.

I'm not even really sharing this to call them specifically out or draw attention to them. Regardless of whether they're a chud in a mask or just someone who severely, *severely* needs psychological help about their obsession, they're not going to stop. They've made that plainly obvious. At this point I've basically just accepted I'm going to have this deranged stalker until I leave the fandom, which I don't plan to do anytime soon so buckle up I guess.

No, I just want people to see what these people are like. How they ignore the people they claim are victims. How they employ the same tactics as doxxing websites and old channer trolls, or even outright enlist them. How they only EVER put sustained effort into taking down queer people with small platforms because going after the in-plain-sight actual bigots and scumbags would just be too much effort, a reflection of how this is about feeling righteous and powerful, not actually making the world better. They create nothing, they contribute nothing, they bring nothing but arguing and drama and isolation to the spaces they inhabit.

These kind of people are blights on the fandoms they cling to. And any time you act like their *miserable* Hays Code, Jack Thompson With A Rainbow Flag, no kink at pride, BDSM is abuse, drag queens are indecent, cover those ankles *garbage* warrants any notice at all, you deal another blow to the fandom you are in, because nobody wants to be around these little goddamn nightmares. edit: I know how red-flag any grooming allegations are, if you want the full story to that I already addressed it here. tl;dr, no, we did not let a child look at our porn let alone show it to them, we in fact stopped them from doing so. We are not in some secret private 18+ server with them, we actively ensured they STOPPED making themself unsafe, and have strained extremely, extremely hard to keep our very limited interactions with them transparent, scrutinizable, and appropriate. The only reason we even stuck around was because it became rapidly apparent they were in an abusive living situation which we occasionally gave them advice to manage, eg helping them look up boarding options, unlike the torch-waving dipshits who did NOTHING to reach out to them or help them in any way. They're doing much better, both in their home life and in terms of not following or privately palling around with 18+ creators anymore, thanks to us, and at the expense of both our mental health and reputations. You're fucken' welcome.

#proship #antiship #anti harassment #harassment #deltarune #undertale

[tsukiyo-7]

societal taboos are funny that way. enjoying fictional mass murder, torture, blahblah? no proooooblem. demon dean was fun, boyking Sam my beloved, cas should've murdered MORE angels actually, spn is my favorite show etc.

consensual adult siblings (also fictional) incest? IMMORAL u heathens.

I think it's just because people don't act on an actual real moral compass or rational thinking but more on the very narrow and black and white basis "this makes me uncomfortable therefore is bad".

The general audience is used to blood, gore and sex, but everything is always filtered in a specific cultural lens; if before we had more variety and wiggle room in what the media portrayed, now most of the mainstream is the offspring of the U.S.A. and these illusory "western values" that, as European, I firmly believe are made up bullshit (but that's a discussion for another time).

Anyway, in this specific lens that I'm sure you can guess what it is, if and when incest is contemplated it's always cishet, between twisted motherfuckers (allow me the scientific term lol) or used for shock value and generally described as an unfortunate affair. And people can be okay with that, it disturbs them, sure, but they can move on with their perception intact. Look at the success Game of Thrones had.

The problem with Wincest, I think, is the fact that for starters we're put in a place in which Sam and Dean are the good guys. Your perception of their actions is increasingly altered as you progress, although they murder a worrisome amount of people, you still end up rooting for them. In the second instance, a relationship between them would be queer in a way people aren't used to seeing because they're not quirky or kinky or wholesome and their entire personality and story doesn't evolve around their identity. They're just some dudes, albeit a bit weird, probably perceived as peak masculinity, if the popularity of the show among the military is anything to go by. And finally, their love is destructive yes, but infinitely tender; they care for each other to an unbelievable extent and there's no denying that even if you don't ship them romantically.

You're forced to acknowledge the fact that something can exist beyond everything you've always been taught and believed in so far and that makes people more uncomfortable than a depiction of abuse ever will.

#supernatural #spn #wincest #fandom discourse #maybe I said a bunch of bullishit thread carefully 😂 #personal musings

[yourlocaldisneyvillain]

i would like to be in and foster an online environment in which discussions abt controversial topics can be handled civilly without ppl ganging up and sending an influx of anon hate. i think internet in general is a space where ppl love to be outraged and i want to challenge that. that's partially why i wrote this fic. i am tired of purity culture and of fandom/online hivemind. in a fandom where a lot of ppl clearly enjoy age gap ships, i say, what makes one better and more "morally correct" than another? what makes a sugar mommy au better than a college student x teacher fic? so many fics featuring dark themes are popular in this fandom (don't wanna name any names bc i don't wanna get anyone involved), but THIS is the one ppl are upset about?

i wanna ask a question -- is it possible to write a fic where ppl are NOT morally pure but still somehow manage to live and find happiness? why is it forbidden to explore those themes in fiction? when you look at ppl in real life and how weirdly their lives shape up, and how ppl are flawed and make mistakes and live unconventionally or sometimes immorally or unhealthily, doesn't that interest you? in a sense that you would like to read about it? explore what goes on in the minds of these ppl/characters?

ppl forget exploring a theme in fiction doesn't equate to condoning it in real life. each individual has to use their own best judgement when consuming a piece of fiction. i assume everyone reading my fic is an adult (as i write fics intended for adult audiences) and can form their own opinion.

i would like it if people could use their reading comprehension and critical thinking skills when reading my fiction, without me having to put up exact and specific 1826372929392 word disclaimers, so ppl's fragile feelings wouldn't get hurt. would it really be okay if i wrote in all caps before the story WEDNESDAY IS 22? you could have read the first paragraph and figured that out. i tagged it as teacher-student bc it's playing with the concept, even if they are not a student/teacher in the timeline of the story. i use implied underage sex as a tag bc in the 2nd chapter, and repeatedly throughout the story i reference larissa and morticia's relationship, that has occurred when they were underage. i mention that they engaged in sex. it is only mentioned, and not explicitly described. do you need me to write all of that out under the title in order not to send anon hate and clutch your pearls in disgust? or can you just read the story and decide if it's for you or not?

i implore you to read all of my works as a story, without attaching a moral judgement to characters' actions. if and when you do attach a moral judgement and form an opinion, pls remember those are fictional characters, and i am an author exploring certain themes bc i can and it interests me to do so. i want to write unconventional stories, controversial stories, romantic stories, funny stories, horror stories, i want to explore everything. everybody who reads is invited to look at them as a piece of fiction they can enjoy or not enjoy, and nothing more. i hope to take you on a journey that leaves you with something to remember, good or bad, but impactful.

from now on, i will probably write longer works and venture into darker themes (next thing i'm planning is murder mystery/thriller). there will still be fluffy pieces, but i just want to push myself out of my comfort zone. i would like to associate with fandom ppl who are open-minded and can read a piece of fiction without going ballistic. if you look at things black and white, you likely won't like my fiction -- and that's okay.

however, if for any reason you want to send me hate, you will absolutely be blocked. i am a person, and i do not deserve insults and rudeness in my inbox. it's easy to feel empowered and feel like you're fighting for A Cause (TM) and attach the Bad Guy etiquette to a single person. that can feel like you're solving something. esp when ppl accuse me of promoting actual p3dophilia -- that's a cause everyone can get behind. banish the evil p3do apologist!

i am a victim of child sexual abuse, that went on all throughout my formative years, and into my adult age, simply because i thought that's how it must be. that experience has scarred me beyond belief. i don't want to share the details. it's not smth i'm sharing for pity points, nor do i need anyone's sympathy. however, it is an experience that has shaped who i am, and perhaps for that reason, combined with other things, is why i'm drawn to certain themes in fiction. i don't owe anybody an explanation as to why i choose certain topics, but since there have been idiots in my inbox who have accused me of harming victims of minor sexual abuse, i feel compelled to say something. fuck you for using a group of suffering ppl to support your own flimsy arguments born out of puritanism and inability to cope with heavy themes in fiction.

you are absolutely welcome to CIVILLY discuss your opinions about the fic with me -- off anon, exclusively. but i know nobody will, bc this isn't about the actual contents of my fic, this is about the delicious morally righteous thrill of a witch hunt.

enjoy the fic. i will post next wednesday.

#personal #i will produce my own garbage and also consume it

[hyperfixingfr]

CW for the whole torra situation 🥴 last post.

LAST POST ON THIS because some of you actually believed it when Torra flipped their shit and tried to twist everything around like a five year old who got caught taking from the cookie jar

- I did not directly call Torra a pedophile and if I somehow did I apologize. I used the word "pedophilia" to describe the creepy age gap. That is NOT calling them a pedo. That is calling the PAIRING pedophilic in nature. For someone who claims they don't want their words twisted, you sure do it a lot to other people!

- I didn't even WANT it to escalate it to a call out post/warning to the fandom. A matter of fact, I tried to avoid that by commenting on the original post questioning some things that I could've explained further had they not decided it would be completely appropriate and mature to make a whole passive aggressive POST (now deleted and rather incorrectly) dissecting my comment instead of debating it calmly with me. Every person in this fandom who has EVER had an interaction with me where I question their thoughts knows I'm never trying to work against you if it's clear you wish to learn and be educated as to how what you said made some people feel, or how it may of come off. They responded to me in a very immature way that showed they didn't want to have the debate - and the call out post went up for the vast majority of the fandom who obviously want to avoid such content.

- I never implied they were shipping the two as minors. I have tried VERY hard to acknowledge in these posts and make it clear that I know exactly what they're saying and them being "far into adulthood" doesn't change the immoral factors. "BuT tHe LaW sAyS-" the law banned abortion. I don't think you should base your morals off the law.

- Torra tried to backtrack on the whole shipping thing by claiming it was, "just a proposed dynamic" and "not even a ship" or something along those lines. Considering this is still on their profile (with underlined text to call out their lie for those who might have trouble finding it) it's really bold to try and come back like that.

Even if you don't directly ship them, obviously you proposed the idea in a positive light. THAT'S what people are mad at you for. And it shows right here that you proposed the idea to be "cute". Also while admitting you knew the gap was 4 years (possibly 5-6 if you count the gaps within lore knowledge because we can't ever know for sure unless given official information that proves it wrong!)

- Torra is 31. That is DOUBLE MY AGE. I really think it should say a lot that they've decided to blow this whole thing out of proportion since the very beginning despite me really only wanting to educate about why the romantic pairing is still immoral. The vast majority of people obviously agree with me on it, and I've even changed the opinions of two people who originally sided with Torra after explaining why it was immoral. Torra is handling this poorly, to say the least. I mean... Directly tagging my user in a post that goes absolutely HAM on me trying to back down on things and twist the situation (which didn't NEED to be a situation!) is so incredibly immature I can't even believe they would have such guts for it. I'm sorry for calling you out on something the entire fandom is uncomfortable with for moral reasons but YOU decided to hand me a passive aggressive "I stay right where I stand" response. Warning the fandom about the "dynamic proposal" you had in the tags knowing that the entire active fandom would feel uncomfortable or even TRIGGERED if they saw your post shouldn't sound crazy or bad to any normal person lol.

- some of you are gonna be peeved at me for this one but I am NOT mad at Torra (for the most part... As long as those death threats I've gotten weren't supported by them) and I'm actually hoping they get their act together and just... Own up to it. I literally wouldn't care if they just got up and said, "okay, I've educated myself and I no longer support the pairing". As much as I would have preferred they'd have done that from the start, it's not like people can't fix themselves later on. I doubt they'll wanna because they seem very grounded with their idea but I've got hope for it.

Thanks for those who've sent me best wishes since I have gotten nasty messages over it. And on that note... I hope to god none of you sent any of the sort to Torra. I get they're being immature but holy shit, there's nothing more immature than SENDING NASTY MESSAGES 😭 sit your ass down. You can write the messages onto a crusty piece of paper and burn it when you're done if you really have to. Do not send it to them or their supporters. EVER. Thanks

#knd

[hermitcraftx]

I agree with your post about hermit fans in regard to things being very popular. I’ve seen more people being angry and annoyed about scarian in the last six months than people celebrating it. Not tagging shipping is shit but it’s better than harassing people. I don’t know what was put in the water but something changed drastically and I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s seen it.

IT'S FUCKING INSANE! This fandom used to be so positive and welcoming and overall way more pleasant than some... other MCYT fandoms, but now??? I can't log on without seeing untagged negative interpretations in the main tags, can't express an opinion without getting anons calling me heterosexual sympathizers and hoping that I die, everyone has turned their back on everything that used to make this fandom really... fun? Like, I don't tag ON MY BLOG, but usually I don't maintag my shipping posts, and if I do, I tag the ship name so people can filter it.... I don't maintag duo names. What the fuck happened to make everyone so- miserable. Anons are probably going to be permanently off for me, too many people comfortable with their opinions and not comfortable with mine and desperately needing to tell me that.

And like- look. I get not liking interpretations. Personally I'm not a fan of the Double Life cheating arc because of how abusive and out of character people made Grian be, and I had to avoid ao3 for a bit because of that and filter the fucking tags. Same thing with found family dynamics. Just because you don't like something doesn't make it "overrated and popular" and just because you don't like something doesn't make it immoral or unethical either!!! People have to make everything a moral standpoint nowadays and it's really exhausting-

But that's a tirade. All over all the confessions blogs there's "scarian is overrated" despite Grian having nearly 10mil subscribers and most of them being on YouTube and considering all the hermits friends or family truthing them. Yes, there is more shipping than before- that's because Hermitcraft season 8 made it very obvious that the people on the SMP and the people IRL are very different, and it's no longer considered RPF. None of the real hermits died via moon explosion, ZombieCleo often says she's doing "lore", they make different skins, even GRIAN acknowledges that he's acting and playing a part with the permit office. Despite all that, there's STILL wars on shipping and people insisting that we're shipping real people, I fought this war on the DSMP side of things and it's SO TIRING.

DND podcast listeners, do you ship the people playing the characters? NO!!!!! Unless you do, in which case, have fun with that. I don't really care about RPF and I filtered the tags for it a long time ago, so maybe they do do that.

Every other day I see "Third life is overrated" "Last life is overrated" (LAST LIFE IS OFTEN THE LEAST FAVORITE SEASON I SEE PEOPLE SAY!), "the life series is overrated" "the cactus ring is fucking stupid" "they left the desert but we didn't" "no, THIS interpretation of scarian is bad and wrong" and like... guys. Guys. Fandom is supposed to be fun. It is not supposed to be a full time job. It is not supposed to be moral or ethical and you shouldn't feel the need to police shit. Jesus Christ, every other month there's a new fad that tumblr users flock to and once it's over everyone goes "EWWW THAT WAS LAME AND OVERRATED AND I NEVER LIKED IT ANYWAY" like.... I promise you cannibalism as an allegory for love is not mainstream you are just on Tumblr.

Like Good God. If it's so bad here go to Twitter. I'm sick of all the complaining and misery and hatred and I miss when things were fun- people are so scared of being cliche that they don't want to write things that they enjoy. Where are the coffee shop aus???? Where are the fun silly things??? Where are the 100k grimdark fics with worldbuilding??? Wheres the 500k fics that aren't even about the same characters anymore but that we love just the same??? Where are the forums and people talking to each other in comments and meeting each other that way??? Where are the roleplay servers?????? What are you all doing??????

People are scared of being judged. They want to do what everyone else is doing. They don't want to be cringe or cliche and every day I see a "cringe culture is dead" post and then someone making fun of another part of fandom, an antithesis to their previous statement. They don't want to be late to things, either. Who cares if Last Life was a couple years ago? Draw the fanart anyway!

I'm scared. Maybe I'm just old, but every post I see I notice that I get maybe a 10th in reblogs of what I do in likes, and I don't even post my art or fics to this site. Every post is like that. More and more people only like posts and they die, unseen, by everyone. More and more people misuse archive of our own's functions, treating it like it has some algorithm, when it doesn't, and it never has and hopefully never will. I see fic reuploads to "gain traction" (not how it works) and people reaching out to find RP partners (breaking TOS) and all sorts of other shit on both sites and it fucking horrifies me. I'm not even that old- I'm eighteen, and I can already tell how fandom has changed for the worst for everyone. Fandom used to be a community. Not consumption.

It's just... sad. Old fandom had PLENTY of fucking problems, and we have problems here too, but at least the positives outweighed the negatives. It's so... mean here, now. Even the happy things are mean-spirited. People treat it as if certain people have invaded this fandom space, spreading horrible opinions and ruining it for everyone, but the truth is is that shipping is always going to be a thing. It's a foundation of fandom- fandom started with housewives in the 1950s writing Star Trek fanfiction. You can never get rid of shipping. You can just interact with what you want to interact with and leave others to mind their own business.

#sorry i kind of went on a rant i think i needed to get that out of my system #sort of went on several tirades but im SO FUCKING GLAD ITS NOT JUST ME #OTHER PEOPLE CAN SEE IT. WHAT IS UP WITH EVERYONE LATELY. #ugh.... thanmk u for the ask :3333 #jamies bad posts #jamie answers asks #grimaussiewitch #jamies serious posts #discourse

[k-s-morgan]

Hi!

Ur sebaciel fic is such a good read, and there's relationship is explored in such detail.

When looking at their relationship, I think of how different yet similar they are and how they are learning from each other. If they had met each other previously I think they would be disgusting with one another. Ciel would be his innocent, naive self and Sebastian would be a regular terrible demon.

I think Sebastian still is evil and terrible, he is a demon ofc. However, we see Ciel is not put off by that as he found the plague incident funny. However, I think Ciels perception of Sebastian is still misconveived, just like many readers when we see him being a charming butler. I think if Ciel knew that he enjoyed watching him be tortured and assaulted, he wouldn't be able to look past that. Ofc sebastian doesn't enjoy it anymore as u mentioned, but I think that he still is an awful person, who could enjoy seeing a child violated and tortured? I think Ciel needs a reality check tbh.

I think if Ciel were to know the depths of Sebastians evilness, he would not be so trusting of him, and I think Sebastian is aware of this. I know Ciel has a dark side to him, but under no circumstances is it comparable to that of Sebastian, and he can only relate to him so much. However I think this is good character development for Sebastian since he will learn how to be less evil I guess, at least in front of Ciel.

Is there anything Sebastian won't do or lines he wont cross? Or is he just a immoral, evil, demon? I kind of like the latter more, it makes his progression more impactful.

Thank u if u read and respond 🥰 ik it's long rambling

Hello! Thank you so much, I'm glad you've been enjoying this twisted story!

Your question is very interesting. On the one hand, I think there are no lines Sebastian wouldn't cross as a demon. He has no morality, he thrives on darkness, pain and suffering as it's in his nature. On the other hand, he does seem to have some principles, which distinguishes him from other demons. For example, he's genuinely distraught when he fails at his duties. He is authentically respectful to Elizabeth and some other characters sometimes, and like he himself admitted in the anime, he grew tired of mindless destruction a while ago. If Sebastian has to torture and murder a child, he will do it without blinking, but he won't go out of his way to do it just for the sake of it. He finds the concept of pure evil boring, and this gives him depth.

In the context of his relationship with Ciel, I think Sebastian becomes even more interesting. Now it's not only about his instincts, it's also about meeting the needs of a person he cares about. I was recently discussing one of my favorite ships, Buffy/Spike, and what I said about them fully coincides with how I see Sebastian/Ciel: when it comes to love, Sebastian is a morality chameleon. He'll be as good or as evil as his beloved wants. If Ciel goes full-on villain who plots the destruction of the world, Sebastian will help him. If Ciel decides they'll be the saviors of every miserable person, Sebastian will follow him into this with no questions. Naturally, his own nature will shine through occasionally, but it'll be pretty tame, and most importantly, he won't mind. He'll be happy to do what Ciel wants (But Ciel will also never expect him to turn into the opposite version of himself - they are drawn together for a reason, after all).

Right now, Sebastian has an instinctive understanding of what Ciel finds acceptable, and his feelings have affected some of his perceptions of violence. The Sebastian who watched Ciel being tortured and violated with pleasure no longer exists: if he was in a similar situation now, watching some other child, he'd either feel indifferent or maybe even interfere because he'd immediately associate the victim with Ciel.

Regarding Ciel, I think he knows very well that Sebastian is a complete monster, but because of how Sebastian acts with him, Ciel's perception is indeed altered. The important thing is that he knows it - he even acknowledges it sometimes. He realizes that he's biased and that he's too used to Sebastian being his, which is one of the reasons why he usually doesn't want to know the details of his past life. Ciel would be shaken if he witnessed some of the grotesque acts of violence and pleasure Sebastian engaged in before, but it wouldn't change much in the long run. Ciel knows he shouldn't trust him, but his feelings are stronger - he's in too deep now.

I think Ciel and Sebastian could still grow interested in each other if they met earlier, at least in my story. The anime likely wanted to present the pre-fire Ciel as a totally innocent angelic boy: in this case, yes, he and Sebastian would be disgusted with each other. But I have a head-canon of Ciel always having some traces of darkness (hence the story of him almost getting Edward killed), and if Sebastian noticed him, he could be curious; he'd be intrigued by Ciel's potential, his cunning and his creative mind. Ciel would experience natural curiosity toward him, and who knows, they might have become some semblance of weird friends! Sebastian was an oddball even before they met, so this could be an interesting experience for him.

#my fics #sebaciel #black butler #kuroshitsuji #sebastian michaelis #ciel phantomhive

[darkstarofchaos]

For the ask thingy... I have a feeling I might know some of the answer to this, but here's a two-fer. Take your pick (or answer both if you're in the mood): - OpStar -OpFire

OpStar: Don't ship it.

Why don’t you ship it?

Well, for starters, there's Optimus laughing at the idea of Megatron doing horrible things to Starscream. Bit off-putting, that.

More generally, Optimus has a... morality thing. Specifically, his own view on morality, which he pushes onto anyone in his vicinity. Which, y'know. Starscream is a villain, you kinda have to redeem him if the ship is actually going to work, right? Or file off his rough edges and make him Secretly A Good Person Actually, or a generally good person/helpless victim who just needs to See The Light.

Two problems with this: first, I prefer corruption arcs. Let Starscream bring people to the Dark Side, darn it. And second, Optimus does not practice what he preaches. One might even call him a hypocrite. Case in point, mind control is Evil when the Bad Guys do it, but he was perfectly happy to try controlling the Constructicons - and through them, Devastator - in The Core. And if mind control is an acceptable approach to turning people to your side, what does that mean for the ex-Decepticon you're looking to bed? I wouldn't trust any canon Optimus to treat Starscream with legitimate kindness, save for Armada Optimus. Because he actually did that. And maybe EarthSpark, but we only have a couple lines of dialogue to go on so far, so I'll reserve judgement there.

(Note of clarification, most of my Optimus Problems apply to G1 versions of the character. I actually kind of like other Optimii. Still don't ship him with Starscream, though).

As for Starscream, he's not going to do a 180 and suddenly be a loyal and obedient follower just because he gets some praise once in a while (if he does, that's incredibly unhealthy and he shouldn't be in a relationship with someone who could very easily take advantage of him). Starscream has opinions and ideas. And when he sees someone doing something stupid, he's going to call them on it. But Optimus does what Optimus thinks best, and if Starscream thinks differently, they are going to fight. And Optimus isn't going to listen to him, because he doesn't listen. Doubly so if Starscream's opinion can be construed as immoral.

Tl;dr: they would be horrible together.

2. What would have made you like it?

I think TFP is the only place where they would have had a chance with me, so... Maybe if Optimus had tried to reach out to Starscream after Arcee chased him off? But the irony is, if Optimus was the kind of person who could be trusted with Starscream's well-being, he would also recognize that his status as a powerful authority figure makes him someone Starscream shouldn't be in a relationship with. So it still wouldn't work.

3. Despite not shipping it, do you have anything positive to say about it?

It's fun when they argue. Which has nothing to do with them as a pairing, I just enjoy when their dynamic is ruthlessly antagonistic.

-

OpFire (just gonna lump Jetfire in with Skyfire): Don't ship it.

Why don’t you ship it?

I ship Skyfire with one (1) person. Irrationally uncomfortable seeing him with someone else. OTP in the purest sense of the term.

Optimus is not that one person.

2. What would have made you like it?

Might need to rewire my brain, tbh. First, I'd need to be comfortable shipping Skyfire with someone else. Second, I would need to like Optimus enough to ship him with anyone. Third, they would need to have enough in common that I could ship them specifically.

Impossible task, I would say.

3. Despite not shipping it, do you have anything positive to say about it?

I had a roommate a few years ago who really liked anime, so I decided Armada would be a good way to introduce them to Transformers. They came away with a few ships, including Optimus/Jetfire. And they decided the ship name was Flying Fish, because of how the pair's combined form looks.

So that's a fun little story.

#transformers #Starscream #Skyfire #Not gonna tag the pairings since I went pretty negative on them #Unsure if I should tag Optimus because I went pretty negative on him too #Ah well

[problematicbyler]

I’m genuinely curious are mileven shippers also “uncomfortable” talking about sex and reading smut? Or is this “creepy” labels are just suited for a gay ship?

Because I’ve always loved reading smut ever since I was mature enough to understand and experience it myself (yes I was a teenager) and I never had any morality issues with it, considering that I’ve been in many many fandoms and one of them being freaking Harry Potter with endless supply of fanfics. But I remember when I first had my gay ship (aahhh those were the days). I also read E rated fanfics about them, amongst others. And very soon after I met byler and saw all these people accusing us.

I remember being so afraid that I actually liked reading smut about gay characters because I’m a heterosexual woman. I started to question my own sexuality and gender but not in a healthy way a person should’ve. As if that was not a big deal by itself I started to question my morals, i was constantly thinking “am i really fetishizing them?” After internalising it and hating myself and thinking I’m a horrible person I confided in some of my friends who’s sexualities and genders are different. Some of them don’t like engaging in smut content (they don’t have a holier than thou attitude they just don’t like it themselves) and some love it. So I wanted to get perspective on this.

(It turned out that yes, I am in fact a heterosexual woman who enjoys this type of content and that doesn’t make me immoral. Just like it doesn’t make anyone immoral.)

These stupid things that are being said can actually harm people, cause them to think negatively about themselves when there is no reason to. When this byler issue first happened back in 2022 I almost went back to that place.

I love engaging in all parts of a fandom and I love hadcannoning and exploring about my ships in every aspect. Regardless of their gender or sexualities. But if this “discourse” only concerns Byler and not mileven then all these people who are slandering us have a different problem (internalised homophobia) and need to take care of it themselves.

Because Harry Potter characters were also teenagers. Fans also watched and read the characters grow up. Those fanfics were also written by both adults and teenagers. This type of conversations never happened. Is it because all the canon ships in HP are heterosexual couples? But if so, were Drarry shippers ever accused also?

So yeah I’m genuinely curious, do milevens even care?

II did think it was hilarious that I saw some folks posting like "this [sexualization of teen characters] never happened in xyz fandom" citing Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, even It. Which like, it definitely did happen, lmao, just because you didn't see it doesn't mean people weren't doing it. And to cite It is hilarious when the canon text has an actual child orgy. But whatever.

I agree it's wild that people assume things about your sexuality based on what you like in fiction. I also saw someone saying that people who like Byler smut are just into it because they are attracted to Finn? Like, I'm asexual. It is so not like that. I just think that Will and Mike want to fuck. It's that simple.

And yeah, the Mileven thing is an interesting point. I haven't seen any Mileven sex discourse but that's because I am not in Mileven spaces. I remember some folks talking about wanting a sex scene in season 5 at one point, but I have no idea if they were attacked for it like Byler smut creators have been.

Ultimately, like you said - the moralizing and harassment hurts real people, unlike the smut itself, which hurts no one.

#ask #anonymous #spicy byler #discourse #harry potter mention #(fuck jkr)

[dj-of-the-coven]

Neku and Joshua - Detail Diatribe

Otherwise known as my complete analysis of Neku and Joshua's relationship, from the first moment they share to the last.

------------

BEFORE YOU READ:

This post is an opinion piece and will thusly be colored by my biases. I am not a big fan of Joshua or the Joshneku ship. This means absolutely nothing about what I think of the people who do like him or Joshneku. I don't think liking villains or morally gray characters makes a person immoral or villainous themselves, nor do I think having a ship that CAN be read as abusive makes anyone an abuse apologist or an actual abuser. Ship and let ship--we're all just here for enjoyment. If reading a negative depiction of Joshua or Joshneku will upset you then I implore you not to read this essay. Please take care of yourself and block liberally! This post is also NO EXCUSE to send harassment towards Joshua fans or Joshneku shippers. It is meant to be analysis of a fictional relationship in a game that I enjoy, not a reason to bully or make fun of people who disagree with my reading of the text. To ensure that those sensitive to Joshua-critical arguments do not see this post, I will not be tagging it with any of Joshua's character or ship tags and I humbly ask that you refrain from adding them as well. BE KIND TO PEOPLE AND BE UNDERSTANDING OF THOSE WITH DIFFERENT PREFERENCES.

------------

Whether or not you liked Yoshiya "Joshua" Kiryu after finishing The World Ends With You, it's no stretch of the imagination to say that his character is incredibly complicated--both morally and textually--to fully grasp. His opinions are often hidden behind layers of fluff and fancy words, and his actions might be even less comprehensible at times. He was the one responsible for kicking the plot of the entire first game into action. To put things bluntly: Joshua wanted to purge the world of something he deemed worthless, humanity, so he non-consensually "employed the help" of the moodiest teenage boy in the city to gamble over the lives and deaths of about 203,500 people in a game that cost his proxy...

his memories (initially)

three full weeks of his life

the life and safety of a new friend (twice)

the life and safety of a new friend's little sister (whose erasure he witnessed)

the lives and safety of literally every person he's ever met in his lifetime (e.g. the roughly 203,500 people living in Shibuya, Tokyo in 2007-2008)

his own safety

his stable perception of reality

And eventually, upon being sent to Shinjuku...

three whole years of his life

three years of his living memory (it's unclear as to whether ANYBODY but Beat and Shiki were able to remember him)

three years he could've spent with his new friends

three years of physical touch and interaction with living humans

the rest of his already ruined health and sanity

And this was after the proxy extended his friendship and good will to Joshua, despite him being unable to forgive the atrocities committed against him during those initial weeks of the game.

This begs the question, "Is Joshua a good person?"

Well, I wouldn't say he's a great one. I'm personally not so fond of those who perform genocide as a silly thought experiment, and I don't think most people are either--however, in the context of the game, this doesn't feel true. It does not feel true that Joshua wanted to kill, or was at least ambivalent about killing, 203,500 people in one swoop. Joshua's definitely supposed to be annoying, a bit disturbing, and NOT the good guy, but he also doesn't feel like a genocidal maniac within the context of the story. He feels like an annoying little bitch, and that's for the very important reason that he needs to reasonably be comparable to Neku Sakuraba, his proxy.

Part 1: Sides of the Same Coin

Neku Sakuraba was a boy who had closed himself fully off from the world before his involvement in the Reaper's Game. He had no friends, nor did he want any, as he was under the false impression that humanity had literally nothing to offer him; to Neku, people were burdens he was forced to bear and obstacles to weather through in order to live a peaceful life. This makes him the perfect proxy for Joshua at the start of TWEWY, because Joshua was operating on nearly the exact same axis of thinking. Humanity had nothing to offer him. He thought himself above it, so he felt no real remorse at the idea of making them all go away.

The way that the two of them differ, however, is that Neku was essentially being untruthful with himself in order to maintain his fragile worldview. It took less than a full week with a kind person for his ideology to start crumbling around him. This only continued to happen when he was confronted with someone who hated people, a boy exactly like him, in week 2. Neku's time with Joshua was fraught with conflict, manipulated actions and memories, and confrontation with the existential horror of needless cruelty. It served to show that he was already displacing himself from the niche he'd wanted to fit into. Neku no longer worked as a real, proper proxy to Joshua once he started to open up to others and expand his thinking. This was only cemented when Neku started his third week learning about acts of selflessness, first with Joshua's "sacrifice", then with Beat's act of true mercy, benefiting nobody but Neku himself. Neku could no longer be a proxy to a murderer. Through Beat's actions (and Joshua's perceived death), he learned the value of human life--why someone he didn't even get along with would put himself in danger just to make sure Neku had a fighting chance.

Neku was like Joshua, but he was able to start seeing the humanity in others after spending time with only one of them. Neku is what happens when someone like Joshua deconstructs their worldview at its core, opens up to new people, makes friends, and truly gets to know them. That's the first half of the foil. In order to complete this foil, Joshua is what happens when someone like Neku does not deconstruct their worldview. While Neku was learning an ideology of trust and mutual benefit, Joshua was still viewing everything as transactional, up until the very end. He crushed what little was left of Neku's trust by proposing the shootout at the end of the game--also taking Shiki and Beat for good measure--then asked the boy he'd been emotionally and physically manipulating for weeks to kill him.

When Neku put down his gun, he was displaying an ultimate act of selflessness. Not because he thought Joshua was deserving, as he admitted through his own words that he didn't forgive Joshua for what was done to him, but because he wanted to trust that Joshua could change.

Neku had the maturity at that point to realize that he and Joshua were fundamentally the same: neither of them understood why people bothered to help each other, but Neku, crucially, had been offered a way out through Shiki, Beat, Rhyme, and a number of other side characters. At the end of the first game, Neku had learned all he needed to know about why humanity was worth saving. He even tried to extend a hand to Joshua in spite of his deep hurt, asking him to come meet him and his friends at Hachiko for a second chance. But Joshua didn't take this invitation. And by refusing his second chance, Joshua's foil with Neku was completed, leading him to a life of literal inhuman detachment as an angel.

Now, how does Neku feel about his act of mercy being rejected?

Part 2: A New Day

During the events of A New Day, we get to see Neku after an indeterminable amount of time since the Game ended, at least more than one week and less than one year. There are a few important things that get established on this day:

Neku regularly sees Beat, or at least has seen him recently, not commenting on any long separation when they get inexplicably paired up for a game

Beat has a very negative view of Joshua, exclaiming "Priss Kid!? Lemme at 'im!" when his name is first mentioned

Neku does not have major qualms about this behavior, only responding with "Wh-whoa, slow down."

When having memories of his first death, Neku's face is dark, implying that he has no fond recollection of the incident

It is implied that Neku and Beat have not seen Joshua at all since the end of the Game

Beat calls Joshua a whack-job, and Neku again has no problem with or comment on it

Beat is rude and confrontational towards Joshua during their entire conversation, and Neku has no reaction to any of it, implying his silent approval

Immediately upon returning to the RG, Neku makes plans with Shiki to hang out, and chats lightly with Beat, but shows no concern for the whereabouts of Joshua

When Neku is shot by Coco, the camera first pans to Joshua's gun, NOT Coco's, mimicking an episode of PTSD from Neku's perspective

In short, we can see what Neku is like in a world without Joshua's continued presence... and it appears that he's doing fine, minus the lingering pain of a traumatic incident. He hangs out with his friends. He talks to them, or at least to Beat, enough for him to know that Joshua has majorly wronged him. Beat's anger can be extrapolated as protective, and his anger towards Joshua is treated by both of them as justified. Neku has told Beat enough about his death and partnership with Joshua for it to be old news--old news that Beat is sympathetic about to the point of wanting to immediately wail on the angel at the first mention of his name.

So, how did Neku feel about Joshua after the first game? Based off this information, it seems like Neku had been willing to befriend Joshua for real--but treated it as a missed opportunity. He moved on with his life as normally as possible given the circumstances, and even began to consider his time with Joshua to be somewhat traumatic, at least enough that was willing to pour his feelings about it out to Beat at some point. And this, keep in mind, is before the reckoning.

Part 3: Isolation and Desolation

Isolation does funny things to people's heads. According to this article published by the Prison Policy Initiative, people who go through extended isolation or solitary confinement often experience significant changes in memory and personality; changes that are mostly permanent. It's so damaging to memory in particular that isolation physically shrinks the part of the brain that plays the biggest role in memory after too long without human interaction, and this point comes much sooner than many people realize: after only fifteen consecutive days. Beyond the sixteenth day, forced isolation is considered by the UN to be a type of psychological torture.

Neku was subjected to this torture for three consecutive years.

No breaks, no visitors, no living people. Neku was in isolation for three entire years, waiting for Joshua or anyone else to release him.

Knowing about the effects of isolation on personality, it's easy to see the ways that Neku has changed when he returns to Shibuya after his time away. Despite being warm and amicable, seemingly all smiles, it's immediately obvious to players of the original TWEWY that his personality is lacking something important--that being the trademark snarkiness that made him such a compelling narrator. He has his moments of course, but for the most part, he's very different from how he was as a young teenager. He's soft-spoken with everyone and is mostly content to trail behind Beat as he catches up on the things he'd missed in his time away. He takes less action than he used to. He's less blunt. Considering all that was happening at the time, it makes sense that Neku wasn't too talkative about his own problems, but he hardly mentions anything at all about the place he spent three years being fully, completely isolated in. He even lies to the Twisters about knowing who put him there in the first place. Neku is clearly... off. And I bet that not all of it is unintentional on the part of the developers.

A thing that we in the TWEWY fandom joke about a lot is that Neku keeps befriending his murders, but to be fair, this is actually a bit of a non-point when you think about the fact that Neku has gone through a massive, relentless trauma of total isolation. After being by himself in Shinjuku for so long, he was probably desperate enough to talk to someone for his memories of anyone to start shifting, to give him literally anything to hold onto in an attempt to keep himself alive. This is compounded with the fact that time also changes one's own perception of past traumas. It wouldn't be a stretch to say that his memory of the time before his isolation would be hazy and hard to grasp, and this goes double for anything before the Game. He remembers the important bits--the people who inspired him, the intimate moments they shared, the fear and uncertainty that plagued those weeks--but he remembers everything in its vague emotional constructs, and some of those emotions smudge onto each other. So, when he sees Joshua in NEO, he smiles.

I'm not saying that Neku is literally remembering everything improperly, but I am saying that his recollection of the Game is colored by the fact that it was the last time that he'd been with people before he was isolated. He sees his time there as more nostalgic because it was the "before" to his "after". Neku is happy to see anybody from his past at this moment; he's reeling from the experience of suddenly being around them again. Combined with Neku's general dislike for unnecessary conflict (lying to the Twisters & not telling Beat about Coco, both to avoid making a scene), and also being in the middle of something too important to be derailed with petty fighting, he decides to take Joshua's sudden appearance as comforting. He's not necessarily happy to see Joshua anymore than he's just happy to see somebody that he knows.

This is a huge contrast with how we see him thinking about Joshua in A New Day, in which nearly every mention of him is treated as negative or neutral by both Neku and Beat alike. The expected thing for Neku to do here would be to first act surprised, then roll his eyes or make an annoyed sound. But instead, he smiles and allows Joshua to stay before returning to the task at hand. Why is he glad to see the man who killed him and then rejected his friendship? Well, that's because he isn't really, or at least not to the extent that a lot of fanon content would have you believe. It only looks like that if you don't compare how he interacts with Joshua to the way he interacts with Shiki and Beat.

Neku's reunion with Beat is one of the most beautiful cutscenes in the game, full of warm light and soft expressions:

Their eyes meet, and they grasp hands, coming together in a shower of golden bubbles and sparkles. It's pure magic.

As for Neku's reunion with Shiki, it's less spectacular, but appropriately emotional and sweet:

Meanwhile, Joshua gets introduced like this:

The difference is obvious. Joshua gets almost no fanfare from the narrative, not even receiving some sort of special animation or character sprite for the moment. And though Neku does eventually crack a smile, his initial reaction is stunned and doesn't change until the whole dialogue is through. He smiles a little right after he says "Not at all, partner".

"Partner" is the word that's the most important to this reading. Neku smiles after he affirms Joshua as his partner--someone he knew and briefly traveled with before his extended isolation in Shinjuku. E.g., someone he placed trust in. Someone he used to speak to after years of not speaking to anyone. Essentially, even though Neku had little to do with Joshua after the events of the Game, and definitely doesn't get along with him... he also does want to trust him, which runs directly counter to the moment that Joshua admits he didn't trust Neku enough to release him from Shinjuku. Neku's memories are warped by years of being so fully alone that it changed his whole manner of speaking and interacting with the world. Of course he clings to a familiar face and voice, if only for a moment.

But here's exactly where that moment ends:

Neku immediately loses that smile from earlier, confronting Joshua with a deadpan expression.

He asks Joshua about a couple of loose ends. Then, when Joshua mentions that he had plans to intervene if Neku and his friends were unable to do anything, he smiles again and he asks to go home. At this point, his grand reunion with Joshua has been completed: now he knows that Joshua has little visible remorse about what he's done, but at least he also has confirmation that Joshua had been planning some kind of backup in case Neku wasn't able to pull through. Neku's demeanor was largely uncomfortable and stiff until the moment that he realized it was all going to be okay. It was only after Joshua mentioned that he would've saved the city anyway that he truly relaxed--he does trust Joshua at his word, after all. And then he decides to go home, back to Shiki and Beat, the way he'd been wanting to.

Part 4: Conclusion

Neku and Joshua's relationship is like a rubix cube: a question with a simple answer, but a method of solving so complex that the majority of people who pick it up will never finish the puzzle. Most TWEWY fans do what humans do best and slap a romantic label on it, but I think doing that and ignoring some of the other dimensions to their relationship does a bit of a disservice to the way that Neku was treated by Joshua throughout the series, regardless of whatever his true intentions may have been. It's fair to say that Neku, Shiki, and Beat are best friends--if not something much stronger--just based off the way they interact, particularly with the beautiful mundane moments we get to see between Beat and Neku in NEO as party members.

On the other hand, for Joshua, his moments are few and far in between after the original game ends, but his presence is still a lingering thread throughout Neku's life that forces him to reckon with himself again and again. He could've been like him. He didn't end up that way, and so they can't truly be close. Neku wants to remember him fondly. For a moment, he does, until he remembers who was the warden for his years-long imprisonment. They are mirrors of each other and they will each haunt each other's actions forever, with Neku as Joshua's guilty conscience and Joshua as Neku's ironic shoulder devil. I don't think they could ever be described as friends, given their history, though I do think that they'll probably meet up for coffee once a year and make incredibly intense eye contact. Neku will silently ask why Joshua did it all, and Joshua will sip from his cup without ever answering the question. Maybe both of them or neither of them truly know.

#twewy #ntwewy #neku sakuraba #daisukenojo bito #shiki misaki

[pulchrasilva]

What's an anti-anti? Or an anti for that matter

Oh my friend I am so sorry to introduce you to the shitpile that is antishipping discourse

Anti is short for "antishipper", which is someone who believes certain types of ships are immoral and nobody should ship them or engage with media about them. Exactly what types of ships that includes varies (because morality will always be vague at best and you can't meaningfully categorise anything into "always good" and "always bad"), but people usually take issue with incest, ships involving one or more minors, age gaps, etc.

I consider myself a proshipper/"anti-anti" purely because I think this kind of discourse is extremely inane and potentially harmful.

Antis tend to say "problematic" ships "normalise" harmful dynamics in real life, ignoring that exploring these ideas in fiction is a safe way of engaging with darker topics and sometimes people do so to process personal trauma. Personally I've found that reading fanfiction about dark topics made me wayy more emotionally prepared to handle discussion of them in real life.

And, as I said, it's nearly impossible to draw a solid line between what should be allowed and what shouldn't be allowed. Age of consent is an arbitrary number that's chosen because legally you need a strict number if you're going to enforce the law, but a person 1 year older and 1 year younger than the age of consent aren't actually that much different. Plus the law varies from country to country, but antis tend to choose the US age of 18 because the US dominates the internet. Age-gaps between two non-minor characters get even more blurry!! And let's not forget that a ship between two men is way more likely to be flagged as pedophilia than a ship between a man and a woman. Imo if you can't make a concrete rule about it there's no point in making a rule at all.

Plus it's fiction, and not even mainstream fiction, so it's hardly gonna cause any significant shift in real life culture. These ships get criticised to hell and back in fan spaces and people get properly harassed over it, but there are plenty of professional writers portraying these things in well known media and don't get much flack for it at all - because it's way easier to tear down a fan, your equal, than a creator. It seems to me that the problem isn't really "normalising" these behaviours, because if that was the case mainstream media would be a much bigger contributor than fandom

For some reason, toxic/abusive ships are less commonly criticised despite being objectively harmful to the characters involved, and incest is the one people hate the most despite it being (imo) the one least likely to cause actual harm to the characters. Also depictions of rape and sexual abuse are usually considered off limits but you rarely get the same criticism of, say, depictions of murder. The sexual aspect of the topic seems more important than the actual harm.

AND THEN there's the fact that antis generally only argue against the ships that make them personally feel uncomfortable. Different people have different boundaries for what they consider too far, and I lose my shit every time I see antis shipping something I know other antis claim is the devil. And often the whole thing gets coopted by someone who doesn't like people shipping characters A and B because they ship B and C. ("You can't ship these unrelated characters because they're sibling-coded which makes the ship basically incest" is something I've seen a truly bonkers amount of times)

So yeah. That's the whole mess. Like I said I dont really care about whether or not antis follow me? I'm proship purely because I don't think this is a conversation that needs to be had at all. Like who cares But, go wild, romanticise the hell out of the most repulsive things!! It's nobody else's business but yours. But if I see a mutual who followed me first reblogging "any proshippers who follow me should explode and die teehee ^-^" ONE MORE TIME I might actually explode

#take what i say with a pinch of salt because im obviously biased and youre free to come to your own conclusions but. yknow #also i feel wayyyy safer around people who openly ship filth (affectionate) than people who insist everything they ship is Pure and Correct #because 1) ideas of 'purity' are largely based in unexamined bigotry and you never know when that's gonna jump out at you #and 2) i think it's important to consider the dark aspects of ships bc to some extent youre considering dark things that exist in real life #antis dont want to do that they want to hide it all under the carpet and pretend it's not there #I'd much rather discuss fictional teenagers being groomed and isnt that fucked up? and call things 'groomercore' #because how are you supposed to spot groomer tactics if you dont do that? #ask #shipping discourse

[alectoperdita]

You don't have to answer this if you're uncomfortable, especially since it's a hot topic. Or you can even indirectly answer/post saying "to the anon i just got: yes/no" etc etc

But are you more of a ship and let ship person. As in you may not like something but you'll just move on/ignore it? Or more of the type who can't get along with someone if they ship x thing (examples: underage, incest, etc. Basically Dead Dead criteria). As in you'd feel they're a bad person/immoral

I don't want to just ask if you're "proship" or "antiship" because those labels seem to have s lot of mess involved with them lol

I put more stock on how people treat others than trying to infer morality based on their shipping/fandom preferences. Someone shipping the same thing as you is not a guarantee they're a decent person. There have been a number of assholes or just plain tactless people flitting in and out of my OTP's fandom over the year.

So if you must put a label to it, yes, I ascribe to a "ship and let ship" mentality. (I cannot emphasize enough how that and YKINMKATO were generally regarded as default fandom attitudes until several years ago.)

What a person likes or makes has no bearing on me, even if it's a ship I don't care for, whether it's due to disinterest or personal discomfort with the subject matter. Because if I don't care for something, I'm not going to actively seek it out. So people having fun or venting in whatever way they prefer doesn't affect me.

If I find someone's behavior toxic and unpleasant, I block that person. Otherwise, I try to afford people common courtesy. If we don't have any interests in common, then we're not likely to interact. That's just how it works sometimes. I have no interest in sports, so I'm not going to spend my time hanging out in sports bars or forums. It doesn't mean I want to malign every sports fan that crosses my path. That's the common courtesy part. 🤷‍♀️

#replies #anonymous #i gave this the benefit of a doubt and replied because it's not overtly hostile #but anon i hope you can see why people might wonder if this is a rhetorical trap #if you've followed me for any length of time i hope my interactions with others speak for themselves #i hope this was a question posed in good faith and that's my answer

[calicostorms]

hiiii calico ^w^ 8 and 25 for redacted (sorry for fueling the evil in your notes)

Hiii it's OK bc I love u

8: common fandom opinion everyone is wrong about

Yall are way too quick to shout "abuse" about normal ass disagreements when characters experience emotions (see: David argument video, Geordi/Cutie stuff, etcetera). Of course the character will have strong emotions or not say everything perfectly phrased when they're upset its like. Fine.

25: common fandom complaint you're sick of hearing

No hate to these ppl whatsoever but I'm a bit tired of the constant rehashing of whether or not Alexis is a villain (by both sides, not just one). It doesn't matter— her textual portrayal is by Sam and what matters is how HE feels about her, not nessessarily if she's actually a good person or not. I think she's a great grey morality vehicle who was in a difficult position and it's interesting to think about her perspective but ultimately the story isn't about her and it's clearly framed that way for a reason.

Also the complaints abt ppl writing any caelum ships are annoying. My guy there's a max of 3 people who ship this even if you include me (known caelum disliker, not a guy who likes creating things abt or reading abt him) you just need to grow up and realize people are going to write things you think are "immoral" and you just need to leave them alone or block them. It's fine if you don't like it but be niceys and stop making annoying discourse posts abt it 👍

#to those who talk abt these lots dw I have the alexis redacted tag blocked bc it annoys me #peace and love on planet earth #fandom wank #calico speaks #ty lo for the ask ily #i also have the caelum tag blocked bc of The Constant Discourse so whatever

[kayjaydee17]

1, 3, 4, 7, 9, 10, 12, 17, 18, 22, 24, 25

I'm fully aware this is almost every single question but I am deeply curious; and this doesn't have to be just for the Avatar fandom either! Just whatever you're most passionate about in the violence ask game :)

I may be fighty and this ask game is literally called the choose violence ask game, but I do want to preface this by saying I get rambly about my opinions here and say things that I find annoying, but that doesn't mean there's one right way to engage in fandom! It doesn't mean you have to agree with me! My personal opinions are not things that everyone has to agree with or believe. I want everyone to do fandom however works for them, interpret characters however they want, ship whatever they want, babygirl and woobify and villainise whoever they want!

Also, if I said anything in here and anyone wants to discuss it more, please feel free to message! That includes disagreements or questions or anything.

That said... time to choose violence.

(I'm putting this behind a cut because good fucking god, it got long)

1) the character everyone gets wrong

The "everyone" is tripping me up, because there is nothing that everyone does, but I am so tired of seeing so many people's lack of nuance with Quaritch. Either he's a flat villain who exists only to be a war criminal or he's a soft little kittycat who regrets being Bad and can't wait to be a good father. Let! the man! be a war criminal! who awkwardly tries to bond with his son! (bonus points if he fails miserably in the bonding). I think there's a lot to explore with Quaritch and people falling so firmly on one side of the line or the other just feels so boring.

(I also struggle to find good Lo'ak fics. I can't put my finger on what's off about the characterisation, but when I first started reading Avatar fic, I was craving some Lo'ak hurt/comfort and couldn't find anything that felt true to his character.)

3) screenshot or description of the worst take you’ve seen on tumblr

Ahahahaha oh my god you're really going for it with this one. There are so many worst takes I've seen.

I think the worst is the idea that writing about underage characters in sexual situations makes you a pedophile. Like, god, every time I think that people out there actually believe that, are actually comparing fictional characters to real children -- god, I can't actually believe it. Like, good fucking god (and also, jesus, how fucking disrespect to actual victims/survivors of child abuse).

And it's always about sex!!! Like, no one's out here accusing Stephen King of actually wanting to murder children, but the moment you add sex, it becomes Big and Scary and Immoral. Like your genitals are somehow an off switch for your actual real-life morality. (and when I'm feeling particularly salty, I imagine these people must have the most fucking bleak sex lives because how??? can you assume??? that the fantasies, fiction, stories, imaginings, thoughts, anything, are the exact same as things you literally actually want to do? Like, goddamn, imagine being the partner of one of these people and wanting to explore a slightly edgy fantasy, good fucking luck)

(shout out to the kink community and their ability to play pretend and realise it's not real; shout out to the darkfic/dead dove fic community and their ability to write dark sexy stories and realise fictional characters are not real people, that what you write does not reflect real-life desires, that fiction serves so many purposes and I-want-this-to-happen-in-real-life fantasies are only one of them)

(this answer stretches across fiction as a whole rather than being fandom specific. For a fandom specific answer: I find the takes that recom Quaritch and human Quaritch are not the same person and that recom Quaritch doesn't have any sort of responsibility for the choices he made as a human absolutely wild. Up until the point he uploaded himself, they're the same person, same brain. Maybe we just have very different theories on the self, but god, that one annoys me.)

(good lord, we're on question two and I've already written so much)

4) what was the last straw that made you finally block that annoying person?

I don't actually have many people blocked on Tumblr. I should, but I just don't. I've been lucky, though, and haven't had anyone harassing me; if someone did, that would be a block for sure.

7) what character did you begin to hate not because of canon but because how how the fandom acts about them?

I've been going back through all my fandoms over the years and I don't think this has ever actually happened to me! I've had the opposite happen -- didn't really care for a character and then fanfiction made me. (I actually didn't have a whole lot of interest in Spider when I joined the Avatar fandom? And then I found the hurt/comfort post-movie Spider fics, and then the dark monstrous incredible Quaritch/Spider fics, and I was changed, that is my boy.)

But I tend to have a really carefully cultivated Tumblr dash, and it's the only place I engage with fandom, really. I don't have much time for arguing about character interpretations; it's not really how I have fun with fandom? I don't care about how people interpret a character's actions or tend towards fighting about what a character meant. I sort of feel like for me, fandom is just a space to find your people and vibe with them and ignore everyone else.

(am I too chill for the salty ask game?????)

(also, I'm stubborn enough that if people's takes on a character were annoying me, I'd probably just start loving that character and my read on them even harder)

9) worst part of canon

I mean -- the white saviour narrative, especially in the first film, is icky and I wish it had been done differently.

The first thing that popped into my mind, though, was the fucking way Spider and Quaritch's relationship was written. There, I said it. It's badly written.

We're asked to have emotional investment in this relationship; a huge turning point for the future movies, Spider saving Quaritch's life, hinges on this relationship. But we're just given so little. This isn't a CinemaSins-esque critique that absolutely everything needs to be spelled out and stated explicitly for the audience, but goddamn, James, you need to give us more than

Spider being tortured. Being saved by Quaritch. A brief, combative conversation between the two. Spider smiling like absolute fucking sunshine when he realises Quaritch hasn't been killed by the ikran.

It makes no emotional sense. Fandom has done a wonderful job at filling in the gaps, but the movie doesn't give us anything to hold onto in this relationship. We see Spider being kidnapped, being tortured, and then being inexplicably comfortable with his kidnapper. We need something to bridge that gap for this relationship to hold any sort of emotional resonance. It felt so weird to watch for the first time, and Spider saving Quaritch had me throwing up my hands in frustration.

It's fine to let your audience fill in some blanks on their own, but don't make them write the whole goddamn story for you.

10) worst part of fanon

I'm struggling to answer this one! I don't know if there's anything commonly accepted as fanon that annoys me too much. There are certainly some fandom-wide takes that annoy me, but that's more people arguing about fictional characters (and how you're allowed to enjoy them) than actual fanon.

12) the unpopular character that you actually like and why more people should like them

Okay, I'm flashing back in time here to my days in the Harry Potter fandom (with the obligatory fuck JKR disclaimer, and if we're choosing violence, I think "you can never read HP fanfiction ever ever again because its creator is a terrible person" is a bad take). There were so many anti-Ron takes, and you know what! Ron Weasley! Is a good egg! He is strong and loyal and hot-tempered and he supports trans rights! We love Ron Weasley in this house.

(Unrelated bit of information: Harry was my first fandom little black dress -- the character I could ship with anyone.)

17) there should be more of this type of fic/art

This is very selfish because it's more "I want to read this" than "I feel this is lacking", but looooooong hurt/comfort fics. Like, god, just give me thousands and thousands of words of a character being hurt and traumatised and ignored and thinking they're not good enough, and make me fucking ache, and make that moment where they finally get a hug so so good because of how much we've been hurting beforehand. I'm such a slut for that.

Actually, you know who I'd really like to see in these kinds of fics? Lo'ak. I've got a few for Spider that I love and there's of course "pretty boy snuff film" for the absolute wrecking and traumatising of Jake Sully, but I haven't been able to find any hurt/comfort Lo'ak fics that really speak to my tastes.

(As for art -- more porn. Always always more porn.)

18) it’s absolutely criminal that the fandom has been sleeping on…

All the incredible amazing unhinged possibilities of darkfic. The majority of the Avatar fandom seems more preoccupied with gasping in horror that someone could write non-con than understanding why people might want to write that, the things darkfic can do, and yes, that includes dead dove stories, the ones that want to roll around in all their dark awful sexiness solely for the purpose of getting people off.

(there are of course people doing this! And they're doing amazing things! This is a ramble about fandom as a whole. It feels like everyone always needs to be sweet and wholesome and pure, and even the angst has to be because everyone has the Best Of Intentions at all times. Give me people being messy and making mistakes and fucking up and being selfish and making bad decisions-- whether that turns into dark fic or not)

(this extends to the recoms. I don't really understand recom love (mainly out of it not speaking to me, not in the pearl-clutching "how could you possibly" way) but I especially don't understand it when people make them sweet little kittens. Let the kitties have claws!! Let the monsters be monstrous!) (and, once again, this is just how I enjoy fandom. Not everyone has to enjoy fandom the way I do!)

22) your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores

I've sat on this one for a really long time and I just don't know! Nothing had really jumped to mind for me. I mean.... I'm mad at James Cameron for ignoring Neytiri for more than half of the second movie, but that's not a fandom thing. My favourite part of canon that canon just ignores?

24) topic that brings up the most rancid discourse

I've already mentioned it, but the fucking "if you write underage characters in sexual situations, you want to harm actual children". It's just so fucking gross to equate the abuse of real-life children to people writing fiction. What a way to fucking downplay actual harm to real people.

(also, if you think AO3 is full of "literal pedophiles", maybe stop using the fucking site.) (shout-out to the time I saw someone clutching pearls that they saw incest fics on AO3. You know, the archive built on the platform of "maximum inclusiveness")

25) common fandom complaint that you’re sick of hearing

Ahahahahahaha that you mustn't age up teenage characters because it's still somehow harmful to them. (once again, it cannot be stressed enough, they're fictional and you cannot hurt them). I once saw someone say, "Imagine how Neteyam would feel if he saw you writing smutty stories about him" and I did not know what to feel because Neteyam does not get to have an opinion. Neteyam isn't real.

A claim I've seen a lot is that aging up isn't okay because "you still saw a teenager and thought about writing smut about them!!!!" And I mean -- maybe? But it also doesn't matter, because the way you feel about fictional characters does not mean anything in terms of how you treat people in real life. I think seeing someone write smut about 21-year-old Lo'ak and saying, "You want to fuck teenagers!!!!" is absolutely unhinged.

#asked and answered #avatar 2009 #avatar the way of water #harry potter #fuck jkr #fandom #purity culture #ao3

[silver-wield]

wow, it's been quite late for me but during jan 4? It seems like a twitter has been gettin shit for a shitty ass take he made about tifa and cloud. He's called profnoctis? And honestly? Shame man. He calls himself a theologian or professor? But wth are these bad takes and immoral standards? I swear, they like to act like cloud was tearing up the world from the pain of losing someone he barely even knew and he had a brain defect as well. Like i get its rpg, but ff isn't that kind of rpg. I can't stand anybody preaching they love cloud but really? They only love to self insert themselves in cloud because she has tons of girls who are into him. It's an incel dream.

I also hate HATE how they frame shippers as only shippers when literally we know more about the game than these dudebros who are allergic to the genre of WELL WRITTEN romance. Just because he PERSONALLY sees cloud is available, doesn't mean he has an infatuation to everyone who's into him. Might as well say he feels the same way for jessie or madam M while they're at it. That's like saying cloud only had feelings for tifa "after" because he's fine now like wtf??? What shit ass love story is that??????

Sighhhhhhhhhj you can't call yourself a theory maker wtvr if you don't understand he literally did everything for tifa, name Lockhart is literally based on that. What use would "he had a cRuSh" has in the game other than for incel fantasy. Cloud isn't you, cloud has his feelings, and hell no, it's only for tifa.

I swear saying "he only ever loved tifa" is auto-shipper for them. Like it needs to be both or you're a shipper. Well id rather be a canon shipper with proof than an incel who wants to make up excuses how he's not one. If you don't have proof, your personal opinion is fck all nonsense, just common sense so they shouldn't call it canon.

Plus i saw they gave you shit for it. The original poster, I know that guy, i immediately unfollowed him before when i realized he's just desperate for followers and it shows. Making a thread discussing the girls and not expecting a shipping discussion to arise? Calling you jairus? Lmao FARRRRRRR from it. I hate cleriffs and these " neutral"s aka "we just want both of them idgf " type of mofos.

Jfc, im so sorry for the anger but I can't stand their bullshit. I always thought both these guys are weird for some reason and it shows. God i just feel so bad for cloud. I really fcking do. Not even his fans know him, so much for so called acceptance that he wants when they just "want you/ fave you" when they need to self insert.

Idgaf if they're not real. Their shitty moral standards show what kind of people they are on real life. That's like stating you'll cheer for walter white, despite the fact he's a pos but yeah he's not real . Lmao sure sure they should hide in those mantle of BS because they have nothing to say back that has proof other than " i want nothin of this war" for which they themselves provoked.

It seems that "prof" deleted the tweet. I guess he didn't want others to unfollow him or rightfully correct him on his bullshit. I mean when I say these dudebros just want followers and acting all high and mighty but it's all air anyway. I've seen max say some shit at some point but i hope he stays consistent and not say bs if he says he actually knows the game.

btw, for a theory maker, why can't he see that , that supposed "infatuation" is just jenova all along? And has 0 to do with his real opinions. He's a puppet, who only shows his real self with tifa as toriyama stated. Sigh, ill stop now but I really really hate shit takes. It's been decades, it just makes me want to kill them. I just wish they clarify exactly what cloud's motivation is and why he's even tf alive now (we know why but they don't sigh).

#ship war #for the fandom

[gascon-en-exil]

Nel and Raval broke the Internet. We have a serious debate on whether or not Dragons are acceptable of siblings incest with people even wondering how on earth dragon reproduction works.

I think they've just broken my inbox. I made an observation preemptively joking about how this was going to become a thing, and for some reason this is what's getting me dozens of anons. I've been a vocal critic of Avatars as a concept and have certainly never cared about shipping them with anyone, and yet here we are. It really is quite baffling; hopefully you all stick around for my next paralogue video this weekend and sub to my channel (let's go 500 subs!). Anyway, more anon perspectives:

So the fandom will never accept that the alternate universe equals to an excuse as to why there is no siblings bound between the main game siblings and the twins ? Man we are doomed. I guess that Nel and Rafal needs to screams a bit more about how their Sombron is not Alear's Sombron as if the developpers did not made it clear enough.

"normalizing harmful relationships" ?? what ?? ehm. so it's the people won't dont separate reality from fiction despite the fact that nobody will be able to one day travel dimension and marry the children of their own parent's counterpart.... god, even the game itself doesn't want it to be incest and is trying SO hard

I love how you basically stated all the reasons why a "morally good healthy ship" is not so healthy nor moral according to the very own anti' definition. I guess that there is something about people saying "love is love" in real life but when it's fictional character, it's literaly a death battle.

I think I know why the "Alear is dead" is brought on. Because from the start all ships were technically fucked up. No need for lolis, siblings, teenagers, old man or whatever relationship ties Rafal and Nel with Alear. If were on morality, all characters are marrying a dead person so even healthy and moral ships end up being immoral (asides from the whole species mixing that proved to be nothing but problem as it motivated Ashunera to make a flood). Good job Fire emblem.

This is going to be the Fates situation ALL over again. Except people this time will be petty with the whole separate dimension thing. We will have the anti trying to crave out, and the other who buy the excuse because they don't like incest while "Nel is waifu". and now that rafal has been confirmed to be a tsundere that like sweets... Yeah, Rafalear is going to be the great winner of the controversial not controversial pairing.

Ah yes, the infamous Byleth discourse because people don't know nor want to admit that grooming is not even age factor as there is kid that groom each other and some of them can be called pedophile. Wait till they discover that youngester can sexually assault older people, with the oldest of the party being the victim.

I gotta say, it must be very miserable to have an anti mindset when it comes to shipping, especially with a series like Fire emblem, which doesn't give a crap about power-imbalance like they do. I mean this is a series that has lord-retainer pairings, noble-commoner, incest, student-teacher, etc. I mean at this point, it's kinda FE's brand and it'd be a lot easier if people just accept that FE is a weird series that doesn't care about power dynamics in the same way Clamp didn't care about power imbalance with its relationships. It all just reveals that at the end of the day, these antis don't actually care about the real life victims, cause if they did, they would boycott the series and encourage people to do so like the moral satanic panic guardians of before. It's why I actually begrudgingly respect the people who do boycott Fire Emblem for "problematic elements", cause at least those guys are consistent with their moral uptight behavior.

Fe players : Alear and the twins are siblings as they share a dad

The whole DLC + the twins interactions with Alear and Veyle na dthe emblems denying it and making it canon taht they are not siblings and that the 2 Sombrons are different being just sharing a name and similiraties : are we a joke to you ?

God I am tired. Seriously ? the twins come from a dimension where Firene loves war, Brodia is the peaceful one, all the characters are complete opposite of their game counterpart, where Alear is not even Sombron's kid nor THE SAME GENDER AS THE ONE CHOOSEN BY THE PLAYER and they still think that Sombron is the same as main game Sombron ??? And we both knew that even if the twins were Lumera's kid, they would still call it incest because Lumera adopted Alear and made them a half divine dragon !! there is no way out.

my God it's insane. People really tries so hard. They went into a full rent over Alear's anatomy despite it being a mystery I mean their are originally a fell child, but then they got breeded with divine blood making Alear a half breed of both dragon's race, then they turn into a zombie and then into a Emblem with their hair being even more chaotic as we have 0 idea if the full blue hair made them full divine dragon or not. Worst, they even wonder if Sombron's DNA is the same in the paralele universe. My GOD JUST LISTEN TO WHAT THE GAME IS SAYING !! There is literaly not a single moment of the alt version speaking without making it clear that they are different people. Never though we could still be broken after all of this yet here we are !!

I totally get being uncomfy with some pairings but does it matter at the end ? Alear and their spouses will still give birth to either a monstruosity of a human child mixed with a mix of divine and fell blood while Alear can have children OP as hell with the twins, a broken monster dragon child with mixed blood while taking into account that Alear also become a mixed of Corrupted x Emblem hence a dead living. Either way we are cursed

Alright I have completed the DLC characters supports. I think it's safe to assume that Alear is to the twins what Rin kagamine is to Len kagamine.

I feel like I must conclude that Alear/the twins is not an incestuous ship but that because people think it is or that it looks like it we are gonna have a whole wave. Yeah never mind that i will soon see Rafal/Alfred fanart blooming when the lad are literally calling themselves brothers, something that Rafal never did with Alear, and that Rafal kind of turned Alt!Alfred into a Corrupted and cause his death... is it double standard ?

Gregory is the only Romantic DLC S Support, these anons onto nothing 😭😭😭😭

This is going to backfire into people saying "would you ship Celine and Alfred just becaus they are not related in another dimension" but yeah it's kinda the idea because Alternate Celine would not be our Alfred's brother so technically it's not the same as shipping the regular Celine with the regular Alfred. except it is with Alear and the twins and that they are never siblings in any dimension and I am feeling depressed writing this because why are we fighting over pixel hooking up ?

Are we gonna talk about how from the twins perspective they are marrying someone they are not related to but is dead in their universe whereas from Alear's perspective they are marrying someone they are not related to but simply did not exist in their universe ?

We literlay went through a DLc were our units could kill counterpart of themselves while getting 3 units who are polar opposite of the one we wanted to have. It can't get any weirder, not even with those fake incestuous support.

I feel like the problem of the game justification if the shippers use it would be to face people who would told them "then why don't you ship the Royals with the alternate version of their siblings" and them being grossed out but the thing is context : the twins keeps denying they are Sombron child and asserts that Sombron and another sombron are different people + they never act as siblings with Alear + the fact taht in both dimensions they are never related. So why this open the door to some pairings I find unsavory like Alcryst/ALt Diamant, it at least would not be real incest... but it is also never real incest because fictional characters are not related to each other unless you are asked to believe so.

The antis are exagerting. God won't send you to hell for liking a "problematic ships".

#Fire Emblem #FE17 #Fire Emblem Engage