Cleopatra V Laimós

Existence, like hope, is an act of stubbornness.

[queenaegon]

i understand all that shit about honor and knighthood and solemn vows but “kingslayer” is simply a bad insult. it sounds cool as fuck. might as well call him the landlord annihilator or the billionaire’s bane.

[write-on-world]

[for-the-freaks-and-geeks]

[incomingalbatross]

Thesis statement: The popularity of "found family" is a great thing, especially as it celebrates the importance of non-biological, non-romantic relationships. However, an overemphasis on this relationship model can lead us to undervaluing philia in favor of storge, in much the same way that an overemphasis on shipping can lead to undervaluing philia in favor of eros. It can also lead to an erasure of the differences between philia and storge, treating these two types of love as interchangeable instead of celebrating the distinctive aspects of each.

[incomingalbatross]

...Yeah, this could definitely be an Entire Literal Essay, actually. This is...not the short version, but it is the shortest I can manage.

So my main thought is that Friendship is the hardest form of love for our culture to see as distinct and important in its own right, and “found family” often (though not always) ends up as a sort of...middle ground between that point and the “Only Romance Is Important” idea. In a ship-dominated culture, Friendship is often reduced to Level 1 Romance, and—at least in some ways—a found-family-dominated fandom culture can end up reducing Friendship to Level 1 Family.

In practice, I think that....even when we know that we don’t see or want to see an important relationship as Romantic, a lot of us still struggle with the idea of Friendship by itself being equally valuable or important. So we equate “familial” with “important” (because family is undeniably as important as romance, right? Or at least it’s a lot easier to make that case—and also, there is the not-at-all-insignificant benefit that it marks your view of a relationship as CLEARLY platonic!), and then we try to fit every relationship we love into a clearly-labeled Family-Shaped Box, in order to affirm its importance and give it legitimacy that “just friendship” might not.

...which is, ironically, what shippers are sometimes doing when they seem to be putting every relationship they love into a Romance-Shaped Box for the same reason. That’s the highest-status box there is! Don’t you think this relationship deserves the highest Relationship Rank??

But Friendship—philia, using the Greek word (or at least using it as C. S. Lewis uses it—isn’t a weaker form or “first stage” of other loves. It’s its own form of love. Not lesser, but different. And if we keep following our instinct to “legitimize” it by conflating it with family/storge, we end up doing both kinds of love a disservice.

(And I am definitely including myself in the group of people with this instinct! There’s a fandom I’ve gotten into recently that—as not infrequently happens—has a central relationship you could easily consider “father-son,” “best friends,” or a mixture of the two, and there’s variance within the fandom. I personally view this relationship pretty much purely as “best friends” in my own interpretation, but...a few years ago, I would have been much closer to the “father-son” camp. And even though I’ve consciously changed my approach to character relationships over those last few years—mainly due to a variety of other fandom exposures over the past few years, and the pro-friendship opinions I‘ve formulated while thinking about them—I still have some of those pro-familial instincts I entered fandom with! They’re very much what I came here with, and even though I now like other approaches better, they’re still in my brain.)

The disservice to philia comes in the fact that we are still not celebrating it as a non-romantic, non-familial form of love in its own right—which stinks, because it’s great!! and important to humans!! and we should all appreciate how wonderful Friendship is without feeling like we have to turn it onto another kind of relationship once it passes some Importance Threshold. It’s also a less-important disservice to specific fictional relationships that we try to fit into a Family Box and maybe end up misrepresenting or oversimplifying in the process.

The disservice to storge comes in the fact that, with the label of “Family” so highly valued in itself, it tends to get overused and slapped on everything until it’s started to lose all distinctively familial meaning. It becomes harder for us to explore the depths and beauties of distinctively familial love when we’ve lost the verbal distinction between “relationships founded upon specifically familial roles, a strong shared background, and/or an unchosen yet unbreakable connection” (which is how I would identify storge relationships just off the top of my head) and the “found family” definition of “any group of people who love each other not-exclusively-romantically and aren’t related.”

Personally, I kinda miss alternative labels like TVTropes’ “True Companions” or “Platonic Life Partners.” Characters don’t need to be spouses or siblings to be important to each other. They can be solely and purely—though not “just!”—friends.

[ymfingsteadilyon]

@depizan

[emilybraydenblogs]

I confuse people. i have a happy personality and a sad soul. i'm bold but shy. i love deeply but sometimes i feel heartless. i'm healing and hurting at the same time. i'm dedicated to growth, but i self sabotage

[girl-in-ur-daydreams]

Sometimes I wonder if I’m ever missed by those who don’t speak to me anymore.

[haruchuchuiyo]

Tokyo Revengers Bonten SPOILERS , crack Edit feel free to use

[aurelianamu]

Right Hand of Hades

Reblogs very appreciated ♡

[c-monthecob]

When Bonten says they're gonna harvest my organs instead of passing me around like a hot potato

[banana-revenge]

Banana Rambles: Tokyo Revengers Edition -- Part 3

I applaud Wakui for writing an array of complex characters, like Mikey, whose dark impulses originated out of Shinichiro's love for him, and Kisaki, who used his obsession towards Hina to get into the top simply because he secretly admired Takemichi. But he created a lot of characters to the point that he failed utilizing each of them that should help the readers and viewers to connect with them somehow.

He also wrote misunderstood but actually beautifully-written characters, like Takemichi. Let's all admit, nearly half of the fandom hated him for being a crybaby (and hell some pretending to be fans totally hate crybaby characters) and a sissy, but I believe he's the realest and the most relatable at some points. And duh -- Hina wouldn't even bother falling in love with him at first sight if he didn't do that stupid heroic act which made her believe that he's the bravest person she met in her life.

Have you seen that part of the spinoff where Baji, with a fractured left arm, MANAGED TO LIFT A HEAVY SHELF WITH JUST ONE FUCKING FUNCTIONING ARM!?

Some chapters in the spinoff were cute, slice-of-life school scenes -- until those heavy drama going to the 'present' a week after Baji's death.

It took me months before realizing that Emma was never present in the current timeline -- because she died in the past. That triggered Mikey's hidden dark urges to go uncontrollable that he had to disband Toman to save their futures.

I was even hoping that, in the good timeline, Koko would end up with Akane -- but nooo, he outgrew his feelings towards her as he grew up.

I wonder if Akane was, actually, one of those twenty girls who dumped Shinichiro.

Fairy Tale Revengers was the cutest thing they have developed since sliced bread. But JUSTICE FOR KOKO AND INUPI FOR BEING MISTREATED IN EVERY STORY.

Please don't show me Mikey in his vegetative state, I'll definitely cry.

Have you ever wondered who that mysterious old time leaper was before he was killed by Shinichiro to get his power?

Above all, how the fuck time leapers began to exist in that manga!?

If I were Takemichi, I would be baffled as well at how jacked Draken was at only fifteen (until, duh, anime and manga logic, like if you're a Jojo fan, you'll understand). Emma is, indeed, the luckiest girl alive.

Did Pah-chin financed their uniforms when Mitsuya made them?

We never heard about Kazutora's shit of a father after he was taken to juvie. He's actually to blame for his son's mental issues.

Baji might have only served a light sentence 'as an accomplice for Shinichiro's death', which was why he managed to remain in Toman until he learned of Kazutora's early release.

I nominate TsudaKen to be Takeomi Akashi's seiyuu.

If anyone would voice South, my prediction would be either Kiiyan (GRANRODEO frontman) or Makoto Furukawa. Watch their live performances and you'll understand why. Because, well, if South was ranked the best singer canonically, they should pick someone with powerful vocals too.

Expect me NOT TO SHUT UP once Season 4 trailer has been released. The biggest question now is when.

Alright, time for bed. Will add again if my brain screams at me again. Strange, this entry is short.

[singerofthesea1]

Você já se perguntou quem era aquele misterioso viajante do tempo antes de ser morto por Shinichiro para obter seus poderes?

Yes, yes, yes.

Acho que ele é um Takemichi que não conseguiu consertar as coisas e enlouqueceu. Tipo, só porque você voltou no tempo não significa que vai conseguir consertar tudo.

I kind of wanted a story where the time traveler couldn't fix anything.

[freshmadeoystersoup]

instead of dying, emma falls comatose. the tenjiku-toman fight never happens and toman is disbanded when mikey disappears. 3 years later a gang called bonten emerges set on dissolving and absorbing every other gang in tokyo with a familiar face at the top.

[singerofthesea1]

Wow🫦

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

fanfic writing culture isn’t “oh dang! I wanted to write about this prompt with this character but someone else already wrote it, so now I can’t”.

fanfic writing culture is always “two cakes is better than one. the more the merrier. there can ever be enough fics of this character with this prompt!”

[torchwood-99]

"I love you but you're doing wrong in a way I cannot condone" and "I hate you but you're being wronged in a way I cannot stomach" are top tier and I need more of them.

[singerofthesea1]

The villain was defeated, but he was the only one capable of saving the world, so the hero travels through time to save the villain.

Does this type of trope have a name? Because I need to read this.

[redstonedust]

the thing that bothers me with 7 deadly sin based characters is when they cant decide if they embody the sin by suffering from it or by drawing it out of others. ie. if your gluttony demon is a guy who loves eating then your lust demon should be a gooner sex pest. and if your lust demon is a seductive girlboss then your gluttony demon should be a 5 star chef. does this make sense.

[sgtsparkles]

Most valid of valid takes

[snburntandsad]

“You only ship doomed yaoi” not true i ship doomed yuri and doomed straight ships too. Im all inclusive with my consumption of soul crushing angst

[sangohigurashi20]

This is so me.

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

hey so. don't do this. being a minor doesn't give you an excuse to be an entitled piece of shit. if you're old enough to use the internet and communicate with strangers online, you're old enough to know basic manner. fanfic writers write for themselves, they don't owe you anything. you’re privileged enough to read their works for free. either be respectful to them or shut the hell up.

to clarify, this didn’t happen to me. I found it on twitter and it made my blood boil

by the way, if you talk like this to a stranger in real life, you might get a black eye. I don’t condone violence, but sometimes if you fuck around, you’ll find out. it’s one thing to joke like this with your friend, someone you’re close with. but a stranger? know your boundaries.

(X)