You know, for a show with so many female characters that so many of us love given how they all get time in the spotlight one way or another and they fill that time up rather wonderfully since they are deeper and more developed than what we're used to seeing in general media, it is peculiar (to say the least) to see so few "alternative" ships to the main one.

I'm not saying the canon ship doesn't deserve its attention -- I'm wondering instead why the canon ship and it alone seem to guide the WN fans who just so happen to enjoy writing/reading fic or fanart or whatever.

You'd think all these cool women would inspire more ships or combinations thereof, but those of us who aren't invested in avatrice just... Float along, around one another, ignored (and, yes, mostly undisturbed too; being unpopular does have its advantages and that includes a lot less weirdos leaving you strange or awkward messages -- it does not, however, shield us from people flooding our goddamn tags on AO3 with fic that has nothing to do with our little ships and I do wish such negligence of the pairing itself meant we didn't have to deal with this spam...)

I am also not saying that fandom activity should be based solely on shipping (and recently someone on Reddit was rather confused by the fact that a lot of it is, which is quite an interesting topic to discuss in itself -- after all, there is more to fan creativity than shippy fic... Or there used to be), merely that, here, it appears that a canon relationship can outshine interest in the other, non-canon ones. It's already there and it was doubtless well-done by the show, so it's natural that it should claim people's attention, sure. It's just that being canon was never the parameter for whether people were interested in these or those two (or more) characters maybe being involved and trying to explore what that could mean through fanwork.

There has always been a complaint haunting fandom spaces concerning the minuscule amounts of f/f fic, art, discussion, w/e based on how few (interesting or sympathetic or relatable) female characters there are in media at large. So what I'm curious about is why fan creations made around WN -- a show that finally gives us a whole cast of female characters that are what we have been craving for decades -- don't also reflect its diversity.

There are alternative ships (I'm here, all happy in my tiny Doctor Superion bubble, and I know there are Camila/Lilith, Ava/Lilith, Mary/Shannon, Mary/Lilith shippers out there, so a warm hello to you if you're reading this), but go on AO3 and compare the numbers of things tagged with these proper pairings to the grand total of WN stories. Better (or worse) still, do so with the "otp: true" trick or simply by excluding avatrice from the search to see how many are left.

It's... A considerable difference. And a mystery, at least to me.

I wish I could tell my 9-year old self that no, growing up and getting excited about "boring" things like kitchen appliances isn't sad, because contrary to what people would have you think it DOESN'T tend to totally change who you are as a person and replace everything else you love - they add to what makes you happy, they don't replace a damned thing, and the excitement is VERY genuine

But since I can't do that I'll just put it out here for any younger people who need it

You grow to love "boring" things because they improve your life, not because it's the only thing you're "allowed" to get excited about once you reach a certain age

Also! That stage in life has nothing to do with numerical age; you can fall in love with something "boring" at any time and it feels exactly the same! Loving the new kitchen appliance as an adult is no different from loving the Easy-Bake oven or the first thing you learned to make your own recipes with as a kid! It's not "turning into your parents" (scary), it's bringing out new joy in YOU! It's fucking awesome!

I can tell i am now experienceing actual real sleep deprivation and not just the omnipresent idiopathic hypersomnia fake sleepiness that my stupid lying body never shuts up about. I can tell because I am fallijng asleep in class regardless if I take my medication and I feel like everything is so, incredibly stupid and horrible, and everyone giving me homework or telling me to do anything is attacking me. And I can;t hold a conversation. And people are noticing my strange manner and pointing out that I seem wrong. And yet here we are AGAIN I have AGAIN stayed up late AND not gotten any work done. And on top of that I broke my fucking glasses tonight because I left them sitting on my fucking bed. And I'm freaking my parents out by crying over the phone and also I think I actually injured my shoulder last week its been hurting for four days now. and I'm so sad and mad at myself for not sleeping and not working but I can't work because I havent slept and I cant sleep because I havent worked. And every single time I get in a bad time like this my dad worries im going to die because i was suicidal for like a week in 2019 and then he gets mad at me for worrying him and I feel so so so guilty. Im so so sad.

moms getting competitive w her eating disorder again

Sometimes it feels like my mom punishes me for things I can't control and it's actually kinda really upsetting.

Do you guys ever feel slightly unwell and you overthink about it to such an extremely unhealthy point that the thing you were feeling got 1000x worse and won't leave you the fuck alone precisely because you kept overthinking about it, jumping to the absolutely worst conclusions and now you feel like absolute and utter shit?

I still want to write a fic about Makoto set after 0 where she goes off the rails because she is a traumatized 21 year old with not a single living connection in the world and now she has 10 billion yen to her name which just spells trouble to me

diversity win! your favorite system host has been made a SINGLET❗️❓ because she was TOO insufferable for the masses 😱 of angry EPs and dollar store protectors 👀

im tired of ppl using headcanon stuff as proofs on the show. ''mike never stopped calling will.'' yeah no, that is not canon at all, lmao. you guys just took dustin's words and used it as some sort of a canon thing to prove that mike called. c'mon guys... canonically it doesnt make much sense anyways bc it doesnt fit. because mike learned abt joyce's job at the beginning of the season after el sent her letter. unless the duffers just made a mistake and screwed the time, it doesn't make any sense for mike to have called will constantly or 'complaining' due to joyce's job when he just learned abt joyce's job at the beginning of the season after reading el's letters. for all we know mike didnt send any letters to will, and they just only talked for a couple of times. like. that's the canon. we cannot just take something and treat it as canon and come up with criticism based on that. same as the 'lettergate' situation, for all we know mike just didnt bother writing and he didnt have a present. also u cannot really blame will either. for all he knew, the situation was just a repeat of S3. and we know what happened in S3. just a casual 'what if u wanna join another party' doesn't fix the issue at hand, and it literally didnt either. so.

okay, yes, this is what i was saying in the tags of this and what this post i reblogged earlier is about!!! you can't just say "mike 100% called and we don't even know if will called so will is equally to blame for the fact that they didn't keep in touch/for their rink o mania fight". i mean you can but i'll disagree every time because there's this little thing that happened between them that never got resolved that totally explains why will would be hesitant to reach out...who out of the two of them was rebuffed the last time he tried to show that this friendship was important to him? who was crying in the rain and calling himself stupid over it? as a very wise woman once said, i would've wanted mike to make a little bit of an effort too after that tf

and the thing is, if it turns out mike didn't call/doesn't have any unsent letters i'm not gonna be mad at him? they both have reasons for not reaching out. people being more forgiving of will probably has to do with the fact that his reasons are you know. not speculation

as for the technicalities surrounding the theory, the job part of it just doesn't add up to me like i...have spent a very long time thinking about it, it's april and i still don't get it. and as people have pointed out el can't use the phone and there's a walkie talkie in her room and all that but yk. idk. and i like lettergate and i like mikeactuallycalledgate but at the end of the day they're just theories you know

There are many things about the "happy couples are boring" writing philosophy that annoy me, but especially because those kinds of writers never let their characters be single either. The characters are always dating but nothing can last unless the characters leave the story or the story itself ends.

"Non farlo piangere" girl he literally cries in his mother's arms when he's trying to fall asleep because he gets frustrated when he can't and now I'm making him cry???????????????

ough gotta write an email to a therapist

when it’s nobody’s fault but it still Happened and it still Affects you and it’s not worth thinking about because there’s no one to blame but it’s still there. it’s still. there.

Gentlemen, a quick glimpse back to the past... Zak, I bet ya regret your comments on the red bull driver academy at the start of the year now lmao x like sweetie you and McLaren might have just destroyed Oscar -

I had to stay at my mom's last night bc I couldn't figure out another option but I'm currently waiting for the bus into the town I take the greyhound home from so update: I'm not okay(physically I'm fine) but I'm at least out of there.

Anyway I have a 2 hour wait out here in the cold so if anyone wants to help me distract myself that would be grand :/