My frustration has very little to do with what's canon and a lot more to do with the way fandom shippers feel like the lack of explicit confirmation can be used as a bludgeon against people expressing discomfort with the ship when fandom is a media space rampant with romance-centrism and when the coding is as explicit as it is. And then try to throw out "I accept he's "canon" ace" as a way of shielding themselves from criticism despite that not actually being anymore canon than anything else. Also, frankly, I think people would be entitled to get mad if they walked back from this coding. You talk about fighting for representation, part of doing that is voicing criticism when representation falls flat. (And walking back the coding would be falling flat even if that wasn't the intention.) I don't actually think Riz is canon ace or canon aro. Because I do believe in death of the author and that the ability of the audience to interpret art is very important. And I agree that heavy coding alone isn't enough to make something inarguably canon. The problem I have is the way that so many fans go out of the way to dodge Riz's potential as representation and refuse to support aro fans who see themselves in Riz. Mostly, as far as I can see, for the sake of continuing to ship a pretty bland ship. And a little bit to protect the creators from some potentially deserved criticism. (Also, having not watched Voltron, I can't speak to the accuracy of the Klance comparison. But generally ship happy fandom exaggerates queer coding on everything except ace and aro coding. So I'm inclined to suspect it's not entirely apt)

There's is no problem with aro people relating to Riz and seeing him as Aromantic, but if you don't like when people ship Riz with people, just block them. Other people shouldn't have to stop having different interpretations because they make you uncomfortable.

Maybe people are dodging representation for the sake of a ship! But if that's your issue, I think you're talking to the wrong person. I'm not saying he isn't, and I'm not trying to ignore the coding. I'm simply saying that it isn't canon. That doesn't mean that the characteristics that make people believe he's aromantic aren't there. He still has those traits no matter what his sexuality is.

I have said over and over that there is a lot of coding, and it's obvious why some people believe that he's aromantic, but stating that he isn't canonically Aromantic isn't an attack on anyone, it's a fact.

Also, please don't get mad at Murph if he doesn't make Riz canonly Aromantic. Coding doesn't equal representation, and it's his character.

hey guys am i allowed to say on main that i dont like metadad . am i gonna get beaten up for saying this.

guys i think we all took the term found family too literally and now everythings flattened into a boring nuclear family. guys can we stop. hello . is anybody there

Look I love and respect the yuri nation and also think it Sucks when fandoms ignore perfectly good f/f relationships in media for mediocre yaoiz but like we cannot understate just how strong of a presence farcille has in the dungeon meshi community as of writing. Newcomers making the guys suck and fuck is such a non-issue can we chill

Leafhawk cause people on twitter think corny heterosexual toxic romances are unheard of in warrior cats

I love reading this blog but as an ace person why is solarmoon such a big deal? This show isn't really popular in terms of mainstream media and is just a subculture of a subculture, why are we not focusing this energy into Jughead from Archie not being aroace anymore and removing that from the comics that seems like it's worth the effort and debate.

I'm sorry but Davis and Reed don't have as much power over the influences as you all think they do they just have control over the world they built that wasn't even entirely there's in the first place.

.

defending kotone shiomi on the internet isnt enough. i need a gun

Did you man beam Drizzle? If so, why not just pair up Rustle with Cranberry instead? I get for the amazing ship name but I'm curious about the choice /gen

I totally forgot Drizzle's original gender, but also, I really don't want to overthink it. I'm so tired of overthinking it. I wanted CranberryDrizzle funny ship name and it was getting exhausting to plan out where every pairing in several hundred cats would be getting their kits from

Rustle is going to die at some point after having two QR kittens, and Cranberrydrizzle is going to have 2 important litters (Sunstrike and Emberfoot in the first, Fernstripe in the second). I have done an exhausting amount of work (weeks of planning and hours of work at a time, scouring the wiki and facebook screenshots, redrawing tangles, reading through suggestions, writing out full posts of changes and creating new groups with their own histories) untangling broken fragments of family trees and like... I'm tired. No more shuffling. I deserve Funny Ship Name. is this too much to ask

Boy Drizzle is just the easiest answer. I'd like for Drizzle to just be transfem but I was also told to avoid cats being trans just to have kits, which is ALSO frustrating me at this point, I don't like this weight of "perfect representation" that's being put on me when I'M not even perfect representation as a living human queer.

Do I let Drizzle be transfem and "break a rule," or change them to a boy and "lose" a lesbian pairing? It feels gross to me to have fallen into a mindset where I'm treating queer relationships like quotas or rigid rulesets

I feel like if I 'get something wrong' (like forget the gender of a Missing Kit or a side character, or handwave 'where did these kits come from' with 'trans/queen's rights' without considering a real secret surrogate) I'm going to get smacked upside the head and be forced to hyperfocus on one small part of a massive project when I already have a million other things to work on.

So unfortunately the most honest answer I can probably give is that im tired. I'm really tired. Overthinking minor details before making every single tumblr post is draining me. I forgot the missing kit's original author-assigned gender and didn't scroll to the bottom of Onestar's wiki page to check it before posting. I like the ship name. Cranberrysplash somehow gets pregnant twice, but I was told to avoid trans bioparents, yet doing that is making things even harder after I had to do weeks of work to make a good tree in the first place

I'll figure out Drizzlefall's gender when they become relevant in some context

listen i was guilty of this once upon a time too but dawg ppl GOTTA stop calling any platonic dynamic they like “siblings” without any precedence 

One of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to fandom/media interpretation in general is that seemingly whenever something tries to explore the emotion of love in a nuanced or non-straightforward manner everyone and their mother jumps to the conclusion that it’s inherently romantic in nature. I don’t know if this is my aroace brain speaking, but it’s something I’ve never understood when clearly the author doesn’t mean it in a romantic sense. The two examples I’m thinking of are Violet Evergarden and Ancient Magus Bride.

Violet Evergarden is about a child soldier, Violet post-war trying to discover what emotions are, so that she can better understand the major who sacrificed his life for her. She’s specifically fixated on the notion of love, because the major told her once that he loved her and she’s struggled to understand what he meant by that. As the show goes on, she begins to discover just what these emotions mean, both to other people and to herself. Now, it needs to be said again that she was a child soldier, the major was around 30 if I remember correctly. Either way very much an established adult when he found Violet when she was like 8-10. Naturally he meant that he loves her in a familial way, everything the show does supports this interpretation, the only obscurity comes from Violet’s perspective because she doesn’t understand his meaning at first. Take a big fat guess as to half the posts I saw about their relationship framed it. Yep, “oh how gross he was in love with a child,” “this show is gross,” “its so sad how he was in love but now they can never be together T-T.” Like. What the fuck y’all. What the actual fuck. Did we watch the same show????? It’s legitimately baffling that just because the word love is used that is the assumption made in direct contradiction to what canon is saying.

Ancient Magus Bride has it much, much worse unfortunately, because it’s a much more,,, morally suspect look at what love is, or more specifically, the nature of human relationships. Chise and Elias have a bond that cannot be easily summed up in a few words (which is the entire point), and they see a lot of various twists and turns in their dynamic as they learn  not only to live with each other but come into their own and grow. Now, a lot of people assume Ancient Magus Bride is a romance because of how it starts out, with Elias stating that he bought Chise to be his bride. However, as you read further, specifically into the 40′s, Elias reveals that he only said the word bride because he understood it to be people who spend their lives together, and wanted to cut corners by making his student and bride the same thing. Elias, as an inhuman creature, does not have the capability for empathy or understanding emotions/concepts as humans do, which is what leads to a lot of the suspect situations in the beginning of the story because he doesn’t get the implications of what he’s doing.The author herself has even mentioned in official interviews that she doesn’t see their relationship as romantic (not that it stopped anyone), along with the entire story rejecting such an interpretation because shoving Chise and Elias into such a box goes against what it’s saying about the messy nature of relationships. Additionally, much like Violet Evergarden but worse, Chise is 16 while Elias is a being 100s of years old (although without the emotional intelligence to match). Either way though, their dynamic for the beginning of the show is very much of Elias trying to control Chise. He withholds information from her, manipulates her into trusting him more easily, does things behind her back that he knows she wouldn’t approve of. And that is important, I appreciate that aspect being there because it’s all completely necessary to show just what kind of person Elias is, and how his standards are vastly different compared to human ones. But a lot of the whole “EliasxChise is soooo good” hype came from anime only watchers- and is that really the dynamic yall wanted? Really? Especially when the anime watered down the resolution to that conflict? More importantly, imagine being braindead and also having no taste at all simultaneously. You take so many interesting aspects of their dynamic by just going “and theyre in love UwU” because you ignore their complexities. On top of being really fucking gross in my opinion.

And these two aren’t the only example of this. In general I think plenty of relationships would be far better off being explored as the nuanced, complex things that they are without slapping an “in love” label on them. (Jayce and Viktor from Arcane come to mind for me, what they have going on as friends and the importance the narrative places on that friendships is so much more valuable to me then any shipping). And again, I’m left wondering if this is an aroace thing, bc talking with a friend who is also aroace about her experiences in researching romance literature and what allo people find rewarding about a romance is like reading about an alien species. Do yall just live like this???? It’s so sad you are missing out on so much

need square enix to release kh content soon, im having to watch a modern version of the overanalysis into ships and i don't think i could handle that a second time

“Edwina isn’t a lesbian” “there’s no canonical reason for Edwina to be gay” “Edwina isn’t bi” okay well have you considered the fact that Edwina told me herself she kisses girls? Have you considered the fact that she threw the first brick at Stonewall? Have you considered that you are very fucking stupid?

As someone who hates Bioshock Infinite with all his heart, I kind of start to realize that this game would become absolutely unplayable if Rosalind and Robert Lutece didn't exist. I only really grew an appreciation for them once I painstakingly beat everything in the game. All the characters are either constantly reminding you of how racist they are entirely for shock value, or are all around completely insufferable people; depending on what disingenuous narrative the game wants to tell in that moment, it will either be shoved down your throat at every opportunity to remind you how BAAAD they are, or will be ignored and excused by lazy writing to act like they're actually a good person who's "trying to become better" when they never ever do. Oh yeah and theres this secret third trope where a character only exists as a racist caricature for the game to dehumanize and call slurs, but then say "oh but OBVIOUSLY the racism they face is bad!" After they literally kill them for no reason.

Rosalind and Robert Lutece are the only ones who don't fall into those categories. Every time they come on screen it feels like a breath of fresh air between all of the constant stream of bullshit. They're the only characters there to break the tension of the unbearably tone deaf centrist politics. I mean, judging by how this game has all the subtlety of a cannonball to the face, you can probably assume they're also just as racist as anyone else, but.. does it not *tell* you how awful this game is, that a character not screaming racial slurs 24/7 and actually having a character trait outside of being racist is something to be commended and rewarded as if it's some great impossible achievement? That a character that is actually funny and entertaining is the highlight of the entire experience? Meanwhile that was to be expected of every Bioshock character from previous games? Because all of them are all likeable in their own ways? That theres no one specific "highlight experience" for Bioshock 1 or 2 when all of the characters are so engaging and compelling? But with Bioshock Infinite it's ALWAYS them, because they are objectively the only well written characters in it?? Yeaaah..

people have to stop acting like they’re oppressed because people are being annoying and/or mean about their otps

sorry but i really really do Not like the ideas people have of sonic actually liking amy back and being too shy to admit it. or that sonic SHOULD agree to be amys boyfriend because amy "deserves it after waiting for so long" and by not doing that sonic is mean or immature or leading her on. or that yeah sonic isnt interested Now but they Will get married as adults. or whatever people go around saying.

for the entire time amy was actually open about her crush and trying to get sonic to date her he would almost always either outright reject her or just not say anything but still obviously be uncomfortable or annoyed by it. to say that he actually has always liked her or that he Should like her just feels like youre saying his feelings of not being interested in amy or romance in general arent valid and are a problem that needs to be fixed. that he MUST be with amy just because she likes him and he needs to get over any discomfort he has with the idea because he doesnt have a choice. its like people are so obsessed with shipping that theyre ignoring sonics feelings or at the very least prioritizing amys over his . Hello can anyone hear me

(Milgram self-insert oc masterpost hehe)

Name: For the sake of posting online I’ll call her Rose!

Color: #E7355B [the pink in the art]

Age: I guess she’d be 20 given when Milgram started huh.

Status: Milgram Staff, Machine Technician

Symbols/imagery: ballet/musical theater, science experiments

Song genre: very similar to Mahiru's, something upbeat and extra pop-y

Tentatively she's number 011? She's not really prisoner but she's also not free to come and go, so I'm not actually sure if she'd get a number (Edit: I've decided she'll actually be 012. Staff is given the 01X range, and even though Es doesn't actively have a number they'd be staff member 011, making her 012.)

Story: Since the project is supposed to be realistic/present day, the mv machine would be brand new and unpredictable tech, so they’d want someone keeping up on maintenance and making sure the brain-invasive process won’t cause any harm to the prisoners. Rose was studying abroad in Japan working on some cool neuroscience tech (irl I know nothing about technology or brains but shh) and she stumbled upon some secret tech/plans from Milgram. Long story short, she was dragged into the experiment to make sure things ran smoothly.

Writer's Reasoning: She’s really fun for me to play around with, as she allows me to work with a character who has a tiny bit of pull over Es’ mindset in conversation but not the final decision (aka mirroring the voting system), and someone who is simultaneously trapped in the prison but has a reason to see all the canon content.* I really enjoy the character interactions and dynamics Milgram has set up so far, so it’s been super fun seeing how things change for better and worse when someone not quite aligned with either Milgram/the prisoners is thrown into the mix!

*As much as I love dramatic irony in fiction, it would drive me crazy if I knew every detail of of the vds/mvs but Rose didn't – and every single Milgram character is The Worst Communicator Ever so I couldn’t justify that she’d hear it secondhand from them...

Story roles:

She’s a bit conflicted -- she’s officially Milgram staff and knows she should remain neutral on the prisoners, since she won’t be allowed to interfere with the process/executions. At the same time, her job description is literally “make sure the machine doesn't hurt them and everyone's safe :)” and she's way too emotional to avoid getting hopelessly attached to everyone 😅

I really enjoy the theory that the machine extracts videos based off of priming, so one of Rose’s duties involves listening in on the interrogation and making sure there’s been enough material discussed/not too much time has passed overall (hence the ringing of the bell happening at different lengths for each vd -- That's her ringing it :3). She then watches the mvs along with Es to make sure there are no machine glitches, and know how to calibrate it better for next time.

(IEdit: I've since decided to add in official trial mvs, but before when I wasn't ready to tackle that:) She has to run some tests on the machine to make sure things are calibrated correctly, so she'd extract little things here and there. It gives me the opportunity to think up lyric snippets and recurring symbols for her without worrying about full encompassing music videos.

I'm not afraid to admit she can fall into Mary Sue territory every so often by being everyone's friend, because it's less about "aw everyone likes her" and more about "canon is too painful rn and I need a fix-it tool to take care of these guys and give them hugs and tell them someone forgives them and cares about them and unfortunately these characters wouldn't let anyone less than a friend do that." Rest assured she's definitely not perfect and will fuck everything up on occasion :3

Miscellaneous: Whenever I play around with normal au ideas she's still working on the machine (but in a public, more ethical setting), and she's Mahiru's roommate :) Her character isn't super focused on love, but if I had to pick a cover song it'd be Stickybug II. It's very much my vibe, the lyrics fit well enough (better than most songs, at least lol) and it's one of my favorites out of my limited knowledge of unchosen Deco songs! (Edit, I've actually given her non-deco cover songs hehe)

So yeah, I hope she's not too boring without a cool crime to decipher, but I wanted to share since I was really proud of her! It took a bit of tinkering to find a way to fit her into a perfect secret-third-thing role that runs very smoothly with all of canon, so I was very excited!

im just gonna say it: the people drawing the most detailed, fetishizing, and sexual art who turn right around to holler “babes shippers dni!!” will never not blow my mind with hypocrisy

like okay suddenly we’re really caring devoutly about morality and what’s okay regarding fiction and characters 🥴