Will never understand people who don’t like friends to lovers. It’s about the PINING. The YEARNING. The UNREQUITED LOVE THAT’S NOT ACTUALLY UNREQUITED. Superior

So I decided to watch a bit of Bridgerton with my mother, which I'm not really interested in (I don't really like period pieces unless it's a fanfic for a ship I like) but it's a show she enjoys so I sometimes catch her watching it and join her, and literally the only takeaway from the stuff I've seen with her is that Colin, Lord Debling, and Penelope should have all been poly

Do u think Jack really liked Eric in that way or do you just ship it because it’s gay

That’s a great question! Being honest, I do really love a queer ship. However, I do truly believe that both characters are/were very queer coded. If you watch their scenes together closely or really think about some of the things they say/how they say them, it’s very apparent to see that 90% of the time there is definitely some underlying thing there. One could argue that they’re just being best friends, which is completely valid and canon in the show. Nevertheless, if you watch their interaction in Girl Meets World, one can see and even feel that chemistry they used to have. I mean come on, Jack looks at Eric like the man hung all the stars by himself. Don’t even get me started on Jack’s soft tones either. It was like ex-lovers crashing back into one another again, like fate brought them there because they just belong together. So, yes, I really think Jack and Eric both liked and loved each other very much especially in a queer way.

Hi. Official Fandom Old ™ here. I’ve been on this damn site longer than I care to admit and I’m here to tell you sweet little apparent newbies to fandom that multishipping within fandom is okay. It’s also okay to have an OTP and a NOTP. What we’re not gonna do is attack the people who are super excited about one ship within the show/book/media just because *your* ship isn’t going canon. Neither of you are wrong. Y’all just riding in different boats.

Hike your own hike. So what if one half of their ship is new to the show? Or has only been in one episode? Or not morally perfect? Take your beef up with the writers, hang out in the anti-tag, write ship-affirming fanfic. Do not take it out on a person who is sharing their excitement for seeing something that makes them happy.

And for the love of god, if your ship is on a show, DO NOT TAKE IT OUT ON THE ACTORS.

Have the day you deserve❤️

what are your favourite shows of all time?

Ahhhhh the question of all questionssssss

In no order (because who are we kidding):

The West Wing

Star Trek: The Original Series

Doctor Who

Torchwood

The Devil Judge

The Untamed

Will and Grace

Golden Girls

Daria

Arcane

Firefly

Supernatural

Stranger Things

KinnPorsche

Hannibal

Euphoria

Guardian

Heartstopper

Assassination Classroom

Yuri on Ice

Merlin

The Magicians

Fleabag

House MD

Gilmore Girls

Moonlighting

ineed some ppl to understand that like. if anyone has been upset with the idea of there being more gumlee than bubbline. it is not because they’re pitting them against each other for no reason or they hate mlm or whatever. it’s because if you give people on the internet a work of fiction. a whole lot of people are going to make a beeline for 2 prettyboys they can draw kissing. to the exclusion of everything else. notably, to the exclusion of Any Female Characters. and it would just be slightly annoying if the biggest adventure time ship, a canon wlw relationship, where 2 women and their stories frequently dominate the tag, got overrun by their genderbent au versions with significantly less development and total screentime.

anti r.eylo on my dash in the year of our lord 2024? god. get over yourselves this is ridiculous

I think I also figured out why I don’t particularly like any of the fanon queer ships. And that is because they have the potential to be sooo interesting and complex. However the fandom just turns it into the most blandest things ever. There is no drama between any of the gang and there is no complexity in any of the ships that are created. Byler is reduced to Will having feelings and the suspicion that Mike also loves him back. And El is just reduced to being the emotional support for the ship even tho her and Will have a sibling bond and Mike was her first boyfriend/love. Ronance is just reduced to two women in love without actually seeing that there would be problems there. And Steve is just reduced to the emotional support for the ship when Nancy was his ex and hurt him (unintentionally or not). And Robin is his best friend so he would feel hurt over it. Steddie is just reduced to two men being in love and they immediately get over their jealousy over each other’s friendship with Dustin. And no one ever touches the fact that Steve and Eddie are different from each other. It just seems like everyone just takes away from the complexity of the ships dynamic. And it really just seems like people will put anyone together without actually thinking about the problems/challenges that dynamic may have. Also everyone’s reactions are all just dandy and fine and they’re the emotional support group of the ship. Everything’s all perfectly fine when it would change dynamics between the Party/group in general. Also it lately seems like everyone just puts them together and gets mad when canon doesn’t do it. Like y’all created a version of stranger things in your mind and then got mad that it wasn’t what you imagined even though it’s never actually been that at all. Like you can be annoyed at the duffer brothers for certain things but don’t get mad at the creators when you created your own version in your head and a show that’s been on for years, never fulfilled your desire for what it should be.

no bc in retrospect why did (and probably still does) the dr fandom have ZERO media literacy its insane. ive never seen that level of cognitive dissonance in any other fandom in my LIFE

Fan fiction written by queer people just hits different that stuff written by straighties

On Friends-To-Lovers:

I get so annoyed when people throw around the “healthy platonic relationships are so important” thing because YES THEY ARE but you don’t actually think that.

What you think is that, in this particular case, I want these two characters to stay platonic so that I can ship my ship and, simultaneously, feel morally superior. The reality is that there are multiple non-canon ships for whom this applies… but one of them happens to be queer.

Woah hold those trigger fingers!!

While this train of logic does apply to people calling queer coded relationships “besties” or, heaven forbid, “brothers”, it also applies to straight (or straight-presenting) relationships.

You do not need to write two characters as romantic interests (or *groan* enemies) for the story to be romantic. It is OKAY for those characters to form a deep, romantic and emotional bond after years of building trust and loyalty.

As a person who identifies as demisexual, I find the erasure of friends-to-lovers extremely harmful and inherently invalidating. Especially now that we are seeing screenwriters and authors being critical of the trope.

Please, sit me down and explain to me in excruciating details why these two characters - who have seen each other through their darkest periods, who have been each other’s personal cheerleaders, who have loved each other unconditionally - are not good as lovers?

“But can’t two characters just be friends anymore?!”

They certainly can and good for you for believing that characters should show genuine love for one another without having any romantic feelings. But that doesn’t mean the latter can’t exist.

Listen, I never go in expecting my ship to happen and I never expect everyone to agree with it but it drives me up the wall to be invalidated purely because friendship and romantic love can’t coexist in your world. If you want to believe that platonic soulmates should be a thing (AND THEY SHOULD), you also need to understand that you cannot use that term to invalidate another’s ship when the foundations of your own (usually rival) ship are the exact same as mine.

So people are talking about a post in the Zolu tag by a certain tumblr user in regards to their issues with Zolu as a ship. They shall be unnamed because i dont wish to bring attention to them and instead just want to focus on their arguments because they're not the first people to make some of these points and so this is also an opportunity for me to talk about these things (a tweet is going around on Twitter containing these screenshots with the username so you can find it there if you need to anyway).

The way this person dismisses the relationship between Zoro and Luffy as a result of needing to pair gay Zoro with someone is too laughable, they must be very fit in order to be able to do these mental gymnastics. I believe that many people who are going on about the Zolu scenes in the OPLA were already Zolu shippers who were familiar with the original story and are enjoying the moments because they were well, really good Zolu moments? And there is actually, shockingly, many good Zolu moments in the original story too which is why many people ship them. Wild, I know.

Then there's 'straight-washed Sanji'. Equally if not more of a bizarre thing to believe. I might make some people mad especially the Sanji stans out there who constantly insist on the 'repressed queer' narrative with his character, but Sanji is written pretty explicitly to be seen as a cisgender and heterosexual character. The way you say with your whole chest that Luffy is 'canonically' aroace but don't acknowledge that Sanji is 'canonically' cishet is beyond hypocritical. If you believe Sanji looking like a 'misogynistic straight man' is different from the way he is written in canon then maybe you should go back and reread/rewatch series with your eyes open this time. If you wish to headcanon him with the frankly offensive repressed bisexual/transgender cliché then go ahead, but that is clearly not the intention Oda has with his character.

There's also the fact that aroace people can uh. Be in relationships. Get married. Have children. Did it occur to you that many people who ship Zolu ship them as an ace couple or-

First thing I want to say here, as a trans man who is 'mlm', can other dudes stop with this idea that women or fem-aligned individuals enjoying homosexual relationships between two men is inherently fetishising or that as a masc-aligned individual your enjoyment of a ship is morally superior in some way. Stop pulling out your 'mlm/ transmasc / cis gay' card in order to justify why your ship is superior. Its cringe af.

But if we are to insist that 'cishet female gaze fetishising mlm' is going on then ironically Zosan fits that the better than any ship in the fandom. It being by far the most popular mlm ship means there is likely a higher proportion of people who identify as cishet women who ship it. Its also the classic 'two men who dislike/hate eachother and have a toxic relationship but hot sexual tension' slash/yaoi stereotype. Majority of Zosan I've come across is depicting Zoro as the masculine male man in the relationship while Sanji the effeminate twink that Sanji stans project themselves onto and they go crazy for the bickering that is apparently reminiscent to them of a toxic heterosexual marriage. Meanwhile every Zolu/Luzo shipper I've interacted with has been some flavour of queer and Zolu is closest to the 'falling in love with your same sex bestie' narrative that the majority if not every non-heterosexual person has experienced at least once in their lifetime. This is just my personal view of course, but I think noting a difference in perspective on this topic is interesting and reveals that at the end of the day this is totally subjective and based purely on anecdotes.

Also it's just a very weird point here that apparently OP has 'plenty of varied queer rep' (it actually doesn't have that many canonical queer characters in relation to its cast size but anyway) and other media doesn't so shipping aroace characters in gay relationships is valid in those but not in One Piece … HUH???? So you're saying if One Piece had 'less' queer rep, then Zolu would be fine to ship? Idek my brain hurts.

"I have black friends so I'll speak for the black community and get offended for them" (btw this person then proceeded to block aroace people who had issues with their depiction of aroace people).

Also if we're talking canonical depictions, the only thing Zoro has been canonically depicted as is also aroace, equally if not moreso than Luffy. So by your own rules, you can't ship a cishet (sanji) with an aroace (zoro), therefore Zosan is now invalid. Stop erasing Zoro's aroace identity bigot.

'Categorically wrong' makes me laugh. I don't ship Zoro and Nami but like, people can ship what they want to??

'The general public is aware enough of gay people and how to spot them these days' uh... firstly this sounds very homophobic. Secondly the general public (cishet ppl) are famously bad at recognising queerness even when its in flashing lights before them. Thirdly you make it sound like Zoro was going around on roller skates and booty shorts listening to YMCA and Madonna in the show. I do agree he was gay-coded but it was mostly because he had sexual tension with every man he interacted with, not for the strange reasons you pointed out...

Its kinda the elephant in the room too but like. These are just headcanons. You can have multiple headcanons and interpretations of a character's sexuality. I can see Zoro as aroace virgin one day and a gay h*e the next. I'm actually allowed, legally, to do that.

The way they think shipping Zolu is harmful to aroace representation when BOTH characters are closest to being canonically aroace than anything yet ship Zosan, label being anti-Zolu as some kind of pro-ace activism, and then proceeded to block aroace people for criticising their incorrect depiction of what being aroace is...

This was a lot of words to say that you don't like a ship. Just say you don't like it, and it gets in the way of the ship you like, instead of writing a virtue signalling essay to justify your reasoning. Please.

They had some more to say on future posts I'll just pick my favourite bits

They really have this narrative that Zolu is only popular because of OPLA and can't fathom that its just a popular ship in general and always has been huh. And they couldn't make it more obvious that they're totally salty about it ranking in the top 100 most popular tumblr ships, lmao.

Your classic case of 'self-identifying ally who speaks over the people they are supposed allies of'. Its a general rule that you feel the need to declare yourself an ally you're probably not an ally, actual allies know they need to just shut up and do the work. Saying 'this character's aroace' and 'I have aroace friends' actually isn't what allyship is, thats just accepting that ace people exist which is like... the baseline.

Calling a wholesome loving ship like Zolu an icky ship is a severe consequence of online brain (this person is 26 years old btw)

The reason why so many shippers ask why Buck is suddenly into Tommy is precisely because they weren't joking when they kept saying Buck and Eddie were "gay for each other". They want an OTP, a soulmate duo whose love is Superior and Transcends The Boundaries Of Sexuality. They want proof that their ship is above something as primitive as a queer relationship.

In their mind Buck and Eddie aren't grossly queer, they don't have gross gay butt sex, they Make Love and only after the Purest of Slow-Burns during which they realise that they just Can't Be Apart because It's Fate. Those two are just that Special.

Now that there is undeniable on-screen proof that Buck is in fact grossly queer and would like to partake in gross gay butt sex, it interferes with their fantasies and makes their OTP less appealing. They can no longer project themselves on one of them without the fear of being confronted with something as disgusting as the reality of queer people's existence in this world.

Substitute "Tommy" with "men" and you won't any difference between those takes and homophobic rants about Buck under 911's instagram posts.

I can agree if there isn't a clear break in the finale fine. But honestly I'm tired of Buck Tommy shippers for one reason

I have been in this house for 6 years. Shipping a groundbreaking couple. 2 "straight " men. From similar but not similar family backgrounds and military backgrounds. Do one of the most masculine jobs out there. Coming out later in life. Raising a child together. Similar but also totally opposite personalities. The first slow burn queer couple that doesn't end in kill your gays.......

And I'm going to get lectures from Buck Tommy shippers that they are the groundbreaking ones. Please, you have been in my house for 2 months. Not to mention I can see Tommy's POV about his earlier behavior if they actually addressed it. Not in one conversation where he almost outs Buck but blames everyone else. Give him a decent back story to it and really apologize.

But sure.. It's me, hi I'm the problem it's me.. Not you guys who come here having watched one season and think in any way Tommy is superior to Eddie in Bucks life.

you're completely right.

watching the show since s1 and seeing all the bucktommy stans jump ship just because tommy showed up and kissed buck within two episodes is such a unique and frustrating experience and i--

i haven't said this in a while, but we, as a fandom, need to not settle for some half-baked ship who doesn't have any chemistry and where one emotionally harassed two out of the main five 118 members during the probie years, and has yet to have a proper redemption.

i know they get mad at us calling tommy a plot device, but tim himself called him that, so i have no issues with it. tommy is/soon to be was the method that they chose to give us bi buck, because eddie obviously still has a long way to go before he's ready to be with buck, and they knew the relationship wouldn't work if they were both struggling with figuring themselves out. tommy's just here to help buck understand himself better. i hope for buck's sake that it ends amicably and not with tommy getting mad because buck realizes he misunderstood his feelings.

Charlastor brainworms anon here again. I was reading your reply to a recent ask and i have to say I agree, and also it's really silly to me that some people act like charlastor is some kind of morally dubious ship.

I don't think anyone's here to ship this because they want it to be canon, it's honestly just for fun! There's nothing wrong with it being non-canon compliant.

As an aroace lesbian, charlie isn't even lesbian herself, just in a lesbian relationship. So many ships split up canon pairings anyway, it's not something new. And i think people tend to forget aromanticism and asexuality are broad spectrums, it's not a black and white one or the other. The aroace label can encompass a lot of different identities, and there are many ways to pair alastor and charlie while still respecting his identity. He could be romance favorable, or they could be queer platonic, or people could just generally have different headcanons for him. It's also very telling that I don't see people bringing up how he's aroace nearly as much with radioapple or other ships. Fan works don't have to be an exact mirror of whatever's canon, and that's not the serious issue that some people act like it is.

Right?

I've generally noticed in recent years that people act so much more viciously towards non-canon ships when they're het-presenting.... :')

I think a lot of it has to do with how fandoms generally tend to assign more inherent moral value towards more visibly queer pairings... Combine that with the bs that is twitter's infestation of performative activism and morality policing in modern age fandom culture and this is the result lol

What gets me is the sheer fucking hypocrisy of it all tbh?

People keep conflating Aromantic and Asexual and confusing them with one another in their anti posting about this ship and it will never not be the bane of my goddamn existence tbh, especially because they're not even consistent with what ships they apply this criticism to, as you've also pointed out.

I will personally assume that anyone who can't tell these two labels apart and acts like they're one and the same yet whines about shippers not respecting Alastor's canon sexuality is probably nobody worth listening to anyways.

Charlie btw is canonically bisexual, and the amount of blatant fucking bi erasure I keep seeing people do just to feel morally superior for calling her a lesbian like it's a clever argument against a non-canon ship is so tiring...

Ultimately the best course of action is to silently block and ignore them.

Can we go back to that era of the internet where people would explore shipping two characters just because they stood next to each other for three frames or because their color schemes match or something equally insignificant?

We had so much more fun getting creative with how we just made random dolls kiss for fun back then :(

IT'S NOT ABOUT THE HICKEY

This post was triggered by an anon moving around in these spaces trying to explain away the hickey/bite moment as something trivial. I will save my thoughts on the hickey for the end of this post.

First of all, to that anon- Get off your high horse. Not being a shipper doesn't make you superior. You are probably one of those cringey people cancelling queer armies on tw!tter these days. Now readers, sip your drink as you read this short think piece-

OT7 Captains in the fandom bubble:-

I really don't get the superiority complex of so called OT7s who love to live inside this cute little bubble they have created for themselves or as they call it nowadays:- " a curated tl". Cancelling people everyday and actually driving people away from the fandom. Every bio says "multis, solos, shippers dni". What are you afraid of? Little pixels? I have personally followed solo fbs of all members and boy the things I have found! They can get extreme at times, but it takes 2 minutes to fact-check their claims and draw your own conclusion.

I follow wholesome ship pages too, they are a great way to not miss out cute moments between various duos. If you are blocking them out, you'll be swept into whatever the OT7 decide the important interactions are. 🤷

Have y'all watched 'The Social Dilemma' on Netflix? I would actually want all bts fans to give it a watch. A very prominent tech figure admitted that she follows a good number of Tw!tter accounts that disagree with her to ensure that she gets to see all sides and all opinions. When you deliberately 'curate' a timeline to feed only your opinions, to make a 'safe' space that doesn't trigger you, without letting new thoughts penetrate it..THAT! That's the beginning of a cult.

Army is not a cult for defending BTS or for calling out billboard and other big authorities, but army is indeed a cult with the way they move against people within the fandom.

I said what I said.

With a curated 'OT7 captain' timeline, you start internalising things about the artists that the people you follow want to believe:-

1. All true army are OT7 and non shippers. 💫💫

Sure some of them are. But biases exist for a reason, right? If you think people don't run their bias's playlist more than the other 6, you are so deluded. Spotify wrapped'23 was a prime example. With the solo era, the rise of solo fanbases was unavoidable.

2. Your favourites are spotless, impeccable people. 💌💌💌

They are so not. They date, they make mistakes, they hurt people (like we all do). Heck, they might even offend certain groups of people, unknowingly or knowingly. Being ignorant is also a flaw.

3. Everything they say on camera is true.🙊🙊🙊

Everything they say on camera is what they want you to know. As Park Jimin of BTS, as Kim Namjoon of BTS and so on. And yes, your perception of them should be built based on their words alone, but it doesn't mean that you purposefully stay blind in a way that serves your personal projections onto the members. As Jimin once said " please take our words as they are"(Festa 2022). Read between the lines, and you get- "please do not make assumptions about us, please do not project past or future narratives onto us." No matter how much it makes BTS look like a saint, DO NOT paint them as perfect human beings just because they are your idols.

Once you get into the fandom bubble, you start rejecting all opinions that threaten to puncture that perfect bubble. In that process, you end up never getting to know about how some member promotions were horribly managed, how company delayed certain stuff, the obvious company agenda and different business strategies for different members. It's not about victimising members, but calling out the company when they make obvious mistakes. You do not see when hate against a particular member gets aggravated to the point it affects streams and sales.

And musical preference? The way the fandom just collectively decided that if you hate any song except 'ON ft Sia", you are basically an anti. I have no words.. I'll come out and say: I don't like DNA. SORRY JIMIN. Sure it's a great concert song, or maybe at a party, but it's never making it to my down-time personal playlists. Cancel me?

Top Social Artist?

This is my personal opinion. BTS having a huge presence on social media is both a boon and a curse. While it ensures that new fans are made everyday, the bts social media presence is an uncontrolled monster right now. Millions of insta, YT channels- most of them spreading a superficial image of BTS. It's for this reason, there are so many 'fans' out there who just love BTS for the few members and their visuals. I can guarantee you that they don't even know how streaming works, but they'll be sure to have an insta name like "mrs.jeon jungkook". If you made it to this part, I don't need to tell you how certain ships inducted their shippers through these very channels, spreading misinfo about the group dynamics and a completely manipulated idea of the boys, as if it's not real life, but some shitty bl drama.

While the company is obviously doing nothing about this mess, it is YOUR duty to focus on what's important as a fan and participate in projects that plan to counteract this mess. ( Of course only if you have time)

So..what does the hickey have to do with all this?

When you finally grow out of your perfect pure breed OT7 agenda, who considers this group of men a picture perfect family who can do no sin, you'll be ready to view the hickey/bite mark as a normal functioning member of the society who's in touch with reality.

Did I just write "pure breed"..

Let's say the hickey/bite does not actually mean anything intimate in a romantic sense. Sure. Even I think it was probably not an exclusively romantic thing. And this is coming from someone who ships them, but I do not see them as 2 people who are dating each other (because I don't claim to know their personal lives).

An older person biting the neck of a younger person long enough to leave a mark is NOT A NORMAL LEVEL of skinship. For friends, for family, for brothers. And this goes for Korea as well as at a global level. Not only k-jikookers but also k-armies had raised eyebrows when that happened. If you didn't raise your eyebrow at this, you need to go out more, have a social life, hang out with long term friends, idk.

But I'm sure if it was a man and a woman, you would have already declared that they are f@cking.

If you have observed jikook through the years, they have had an abnormal level of skinship that even surpasses skinship within their own group. Reminds me of the Butter photoshoot behind, where JK's hands so naturally slid under JM's crop top, like it was a usual thing. Now if one of them reacted differently or in a goofy way, I'd still brush it under the rug. But what had me scratching my head was the indifference. How close do 2 people have to be, for someone to SEARCH for familiar skin to touch?! Let's not forget how JK always touches JM's neck like a habit, massaging, holding, or just caressing, usually a little inside the collar.

Now if they were a man and a woman, you would have already declared that they are f@cking.

If you don't at the very least, acknowledge that it's an abnormally high level of skinship, and that jikook are at the very least, a highly interdependent, symbiotic, close, 2 souls-1 body entity, the closest duo in bangtan..then you are the delulu here. 🫵

I would advice such anons to stop visiting shipping spaces if you are bringing nothing to the table. (As I always say, opposing views are always welcome as long as you bring receipts and not hate). Maybe spend some time talking to real life people, couples, friends, you know?