thoughts on marcus/joan/sherlock? (related: is there an ot3 tag i'm totally failing at finding? ^.^)
i love them and i’m waITING FOR THE CANON LISTEN IT’S RIGHT THERE THEY ALL LOVE EACH OTHER SO MUCH AND I’M SUFFERING
and honestly i have one but i feel like i never use it appropriately and i need a better tag for them??? rn it’s ot3: bell’s family at this point, which is like,,,, NEEDS UPDATING
okay wow I can’t reading comprehension tonight, I apparently convinced myself that the meme in question was going to involve asking for specific characters
1. How are they with clothing textures? are they fine with fashionable but uncomfortable clothes or do they prefer casual & comfy? or other?
Well, I mean. Most people wouldn’t call Spencer Reid’s sense of style, “fashionable” by any stretch of the imagination, but it also isn’t really casual and comfy? For him, it’s like…… yeah, texture is kind of an issue, sometimes? But even more than that, he cares about the fit of things. He wants to feel like he is being hugged by his clothing, please and thank you.
Not that he would phrase it like that, but I would, especially given that there have definitely been periods in his life where he used his clothes as a kind of stand-in for interpersonal physical contact, either because he really didn’t want to be touched but wanted the comfort that can come from being touched (esp. in the aftermath of Tobias Hankel), or because he was probably at least a little bit touch-starved and wanted said contact but he didn’t have anyone he trusted to touch him (e.g., when he was a lonely, abused and bullied 13-year-old wunderkind going to CalTech)
2. Stimming headcanons?
Penelope Garcia clicks her pens.
Even the ones that do not have retractable clicky things on them.
Granted, a lot of them do — and if they don’t, then they likely have something like feathers or sparkly pipe-cleaner designs of her own making (so she can texture-stim by playing with them) — but seriously: clicky pens.
Whether it’s by clicking the retractable button thing or by thwip-ing the the clippy doodads that you’re supposed to put over the edge of your shirt pocket (though Penelope, if not stimming with them, uses those to dangle pens off of her necklaces), or tapping her pens against her desk, or stretching her fingers all over her pens
Just. Let the woman play with her pens. Please.
12. Is there any senses they struggle with particularly? (hearing, taste, etc)
If something smells even remotely off, Emily Prentiss can most likely detect it and she almost definitely will not like it.
(If you are like several people she thought she was going to hit it off with, and then they screwed up and made a, “lol but are you maybe pregnant or something” joke about her sensitivity to smell, then you are cordially invited to go fuck yourself, and Emily will not hesitate to cut you out of her life entirely if you do it more than once.)
True, she may not know exactly what the scent is or why it’s different or what about it is bothering her… but she has a very sensitive nose.
Like, one time, Reid had to switch his shampoo because it got too difficult (read: time-consuming and expensive) to get the kind that he’d been using for the past few years, and while this was low-grade sensory Hell for him, it was highkey, “okay, it’s nothing personal, Spencer, but Emily is just going to sit on the other side of the table and as far away from you on the jet as possible until she gets accustomed to the smell of the new shampoo, because it’s so different, and it does not smell like what she is used to you smelling like, which makes everything feel weird and kind of broken, and it’s not your fault or anything but omg no” levels of sensory hell for Emily.
15. if you ship them with anyone how is the other person(s) with them? (do they like listening to them info dump cause of how happy it makes them. do they know what smells/textures/places/etc to avoid so not to stress them out. etc)
I’m trying to answer this seriously, but mostly I’m just going, “…but. can i only acknowledge what was canon through the last time i watched, so Derek can still be on the show and I can have Morgan/Reid. Or Morgan/Garcia. Or Garcia/Morgan/Reid. Because… those were my favorites and now there’s no Derek, fml, but also I haven’t watched any new episodes in several seasons so can I get away with not acknowledging this.”
That said: it’s always going to be kind of a negotiating process with Spencer, Penelope, and Derek, because on one hand, the two autistic people in this OT3 are autistic and have their respective difficulties or happy places (to say nothing of their respective traumas, since…… they also have those, and Reid has to deal with his addiction as well)
—but on the other hand, Derek has OCD himself and he is still dealing with a lot from the abuse he went through in his adolescence, and then you add on the stress of the job (esp. from periods like when he had to take over for Hotch because of how Foyet was still loose and so on), and Derek’s on-the-job traumas, and……
It’s not that any of the three of them disregard each other (quite the opposite), but they have to balance between three sets of needs, happy places, difficulties, and triggers, and predicting tiggers is perpetually sort of touch and go for them
It takes honesty, and open communication, and patience, and different degrees of compromise and balance in different situations
It’s a perpetual work in progress, but then, so are they as individuals, and they all love each other, so they can make it work, even if it sometimes harder than at other times
Derek is still not going to cosplay as Mickey Smith or dude!Martha Jones for you two at Comicon, though.
He would, however, be the Ten to your Four and Eleven, respectively — as long as he can do it without wearing a ridiculous wig that:
1. looks like something crawled on his head and died,
and 2. really, really, really bothers Derek on an OCD level because it’s just…… so. messy. and he wants to put it in order, but then the two of you will go, “omg no” because it doesn’t look like David Tennant’s Ten!hair anymore
and yes, he knows that the hair is a big deal to you two with Ten…… but Derek would also really like to cosplay a Doctor, too, and he thinks that maybe there is a mutually agreeable compromise to be found here
The want to write and the continued words of support of writer friends far better than me and those who read my work and leave kudos and reviews
12 Favorite place to write.
Right here at my desk, which is in my bedroom
17 Favorite AU to write
I don’t know that I have a *favorite*?
26 Story you’re most proud of?
As I said in another ask I’m really proud of The Call (Annalise x Eve + Ophelia)
More recent work though, I gotta say Common Ground, (Nova, Charley, Too Sweet, Micah) it put me through it but @studgenius and @youngerdrgrey were A+ for all the support during it and I’m pleased with how it came out after a many doubts
hate meme: harry james potter, abed nadir, freddie lounds & santana lopez? ^.^
“send me literally anything and ill tell you something i hate about it”
abed nadir
sometimes got too much attention and/or narrative forgiveness
like? abed is one of my favorite male fictional characters, period, and he means a lot to me because he’s one of the only examples of GOOD autistic spectrum representation in fiction, and i know that dan harmon and the writers loved him a lot (and for that, i don’t blame them)
but look at troy’s last episode in season five (the one where they had a massive, school-wide game of, “the floor is lava” before troy left to sail around the world with levar burton, but abed tried to drag it out forever, at the expense of literally everyone else, because he didn’t want troy to go)
for one thing: on the in-universe level, abed dragged the entire population of greendale into this game and kept dragging it out without regard for the game’s effects on anyone else (and people were getting hurt, greendale’s ability to function as a school — even by greendale standards — was pretty much dead, and abed was totally fine with that)
and he massively disregarded troy’s agency in the whole matter (because he lied to troy about the purpose of the game; britta, for all her many faults, is the one who went, “uh, troy, abed is screwing with everyone to keep you at greendale”) — and this was all cast not just as sympathetic, but as ultimately more or less okay, because abed only did it because he loves troy so much and he’s terrified of both change and losing his best friend
which *is* sympathetic, and i feel abed on both counts, but that doesn’t make what he did okay???
for another thing: on the meta-level, troy’s last episode wound up being more about abed than it was about troy. like, this was going to be the last time we got to see troy at greendale and he did have an arc in the episode, but his arc was subordinated for the sake of an abed-focused ep
and if they were trying to have a “troy and abed” focused ep, then…
1. troy’s last episode was really not the time for that; abed should’ve been a secondary focus, at most
2. they did not succeed, in terms of foregrounding the troy/abed relationship, because they approached troy and abed individually, rather than looking at their relationship, and they didn’t go back to the relationship enough to make it work (like in the “pillows and blankets” two-parter)
3. there wasn’t a balance between troy and abed like the one you had in the “pillows and blankets” two-parter, or like the abed/shirley balance in “messianic myths and ancient peoples” or like the jeff/shirley balance in “foosball and nocturnal vigilantism” (or basically any jeff/shirley episode; they usually balanced pretty well, without either overtaking the other)
so, yeah. i love abed, but ffs. making him the show’s pet was really not good for anybody. to be fair, i would also say that annie suffered from this at least as much as abed did, so it’s not like abed was alone in this — but it really sticks out in a series that otherwise tried to be good about balancing its ensemble cast and challenging the typical protagonist-centered worldviews you see in most sitcoms
harry james potter
it’s less about him, exactly, and more about how tumblr fandom has taken to handling his status as a survivor of horrific childhood abuse and a few metric fuck-tons of trauma (but tbf, i think most of these answers fall into the heading of, “it’s less about the character, more about X thing in contexts surrounding them,” so)
which isn’t even exclusive to harry, because the hp fandom is totally bogus about handling abuse culture in general, and it’s rife with all kinds of double standards
—like, on the one hand, sirius attempts to commit a very premeditated murder by proxy, and even though the proxy is remus and he would’ve suffered for it more than sirius bc he’s a werewolf and the murder would have happened on the full moon, this is apparently totally 5,000% acceptable because sirius has abusive parents and the intended victim is snape
but on the other hand, you are victim-blaming, abuse apologist garbage if you think that severus is justified in never forgiving james and sirius even if his actions based on that were mostly in the wrong, or thinking that he had every right to fight back against james and sirius when they tormented him in school
(and never mind that james potter was not, at that time in his life, a victim of fucking anything. he is a wealthy, pureblooded man who came from a loving, supportive family, and is canonically regarded as both straight and white
TO BE FAIR, he is also never specified as being white, like voldemort, lucius, and draco all are — and as other readers have noted elsewhere, the way the dursleys talk about james/lily is heavily racialized, despite being about him being a wizard, in the text — so poc!james is one of the, “jkr didn’t say it’s not canon, so it could be” type of headcanons
but he’s also never said to be a poc, so that’s fanon
moreover, it can’t be treated as canon in order to make it out like james’s years of bullying snape were anything but a guy who is canonically privileged in every way that he can possibly be privileged in jkr’s universe bullying another kid who does not have most of james’s privileges [he’s male, a halfblood — less privileged than purebloods but more privileged than muggleborns — and he’s canonically regarded as straight and white; that’s it on the, “privileges that snape has in jkr’s universe” front]
—but hey, if it’s fair game to bring up all of the racialized coding in how the dursleys talk about james by way of trying to ignore the fact that jkr treats him as white in canon, then how about let’s remember all the antisemitic coding in how jkr writes about severus, even though she doesn’t outright say that he’s jewish: source (nb: this post was written in 2005, the author didn’t have dh), source, source, source, source, source
and oh, never mind how james flat-out says that he bullies severus, “more [because of] the fact that he exists, if you know what i mean” [ootp 647]
and never mind how plenty of the people who act like severus was obligated to forgive james and sirius have reblogged things about how nobody is ever obligated to forgive their abusers, and/or condemn him for fighting back while applauding when hermione punches draco [which i say without judging them bc she’s fighting back against a blood purist little snot who torments her and her friends for fun, and i love that moment too], like??
ffs, guys, you can criticize and/or condemn snape’s actions without acting like he was terrible because he saw no reason to forgive james and sirius for what they did to him, or acting like it was Totally Wrong Forever for him to fight back against the guys who meant he didn’t even get a reprieve from his abusive, neglectful home-life at school bc they decided to torment him, and they had classmates who thought it made them cool)
furthermore, it’s apparently soooo totally not sirius’s fault that he abuses kreacher because he’s stuck in grimmauld place and lashing out against his abusive parents because kreacher still loves them…… or so say people who are otherwise happy to call out the wizarding world for having this institutionalized and magically reinforced system of slavery, which i guess doesn’t matter when sirius “cinnamon roll uwu~” black is the person abusing that system to get away with his bullshit and explicitly abusive treatment of another sentient being—
which all goes back to harry because of how abuse culture ends up rearing its ugly head in how people discuss him as a survivor
like, apart from the double standards that all fandoms have toward abuse culture and survivors, there are two big sides that i’ve seen, in this trend.
on one hand, you have the people who want harry being a survivor to excuse him of things like trying to use the cruciatus curse (and successfully using it on amycus in dh!) or similar
on the other hand, there was the shit like what you saw after “cursed child” first came out, where people were going, “omg but harry is an abuse survivor, he would NEVER say/do anything like this to his kids ever” — which…… uh?
no. not how it works.
even ignoring the irl psychology parts related to abuse and survivors of it, jkr has two big models of abusers in the series:
people who are over-privileged af and bully down because they fucking can and who the fuck is really going to stop them (draco, bellatrix, the dursleys, bartemius crouch sr., umbridge, tom-mort voldingdong, albus dumbledore, and oh yeah, james and sirius);
and people who have been hurt by others before and lash out at others because of it, to the point of becoming abusers themselves (severus, sirius, barty crouch jr., peter pettigrew, arguably albus and tom-mort have shades of this as well but it’s very debatable, and if ginny, and remus actually crossed the line into abusive, rather than being, “well, they’re not abusers, but they have these examples of behaviors that could become patterns that went this way,” they’d both be on this list too, but since they don’t, they’re only getting mentioned)
(she has three big models if we include, “abusers who are not recognized as abusers in the text because she didn’t feel like it today i guess” — which mostly means the weasley parents, but other characters definitely have moments of doing shit that should’ve been called out and wasn’t, c.f. harry running around and trying to cast the cruciatus curse, hermione keeping rita skeeter in a mason jar and hexing the signup parchment at the DA, hagrid trying to attack dudley and turn him into a pig over shit that vernon said and dudley trying to eat harry’s birthday cake, fred and george full stop)
so, yeah, uh
idk guys, how about let’s NOT invalidate abuse survivors in fandom by perpetuating these ideas that survivors are and/or have to be perfect cinnamon rolls, while all abusers ever in the world are these ridiculous slobbering caricatures of all things terrible
that’s not how it works
acting like that’s how it works ends up helping police survivors and invalidate their experiences because it plays into things like the idea that all abusers are obviously abusive, which leads to real-world survivors having a harder time being believed when they try to reach out for help
which makes it all a function of abuse culture
if you really care about survivors — and if you really care about harry as a survivor — then don’t use his status as a survivor to make shit harder for irl survivors, period
freddie lounds
i guess this is more of a problem with how freddie was written tbh
but, like…… true, nbc!hannibal avoided being absolute about most things even more than hannibal himself avoids vegetarian recipes
the most absolutism you really got was, “murder is generally wrong, like. killing in self-defense is one thing, but even if you’re trying to get ingratiated with a cannibalistic serial killer again in the name of stopping him (william), murder is probably going to be wrong so you should, like…… not do that, i’m just saying” and, “eating people is wrong unless hannibal didn’t tell you that you were eating people, in which case it is still wrong but it’s his fault, not yours”
all of which is stuff that the show doesn’t really get any cookies for taking a stand on because, “in 99.999% of cases, murder is wrong and should be avoided” is…… not really a unique or groundbreaking moral sentiment
like, it’s one of the beliefs you find in, as far as i know, every human civilization all over the world, throughout history
(there are, of course, differences of opinion on how to punish murderers, and there are exceptions made for people who get around the law by being wealthy and powerful, or by virtue of having some form(s) of societal privilege [e.g., whiteness, or straightness in the case of the, “gay panic” defense], or all of the old arguments about how killing someone during a time of war isn’t a murder and therefore doesn’t count, and then there are all of the semantic debates about, “are all killings inherently murders or what”
—but still. most people tend to agree that murdering other people is generally wrong.)
but yeah, uh
one place where i would’ve liked a little less ambiguity is freddie’s relationship with and feelings toward abigail
like, i wouldn’t have needed her to suddenly develop an increased amount of sympathy toward other victims — whether in general, or even just specifically, “other victims of hannibal lecter,” and given how he treated her on multiple occasions, it’s pretty ridiculous to just expect her ever stop being a pain in will’s ass (i mean, even when she wasn’t in the right, which was most of the time, some of how will treated her was unhelpful to everyone and in the realm of, “yes, i get where you’re coming from but this still wasn’t cool”)
—but with abigail specifically, the show sort of went back and forth between, “freddie is genuinely interested in helping abigail and does have some kind of regard for her as a person” and, “freddie is just out for herself and only using abigail and her trauma to further her own career,” which was all further complicated by the fact that pretty much no one on nbc!hannibal was a reliable narrator about anything, for any number of reasons
like, beverly probably came the closest before she got totally fridged for no good reason, but even she wound up hindered by the fact that hannibal was manipulating the evidence and playing everyone around him like a really overpriced theremin
and idk
i think the best “compromise” or interpretation here would’ve been, like… “freddie starts out just trying to advance her career because that’s just how she does things in general, but eventually, she did come to genuinely care for abigail as a person and to genuinely want to help her, which would explain things like why will was open to working with freddie against hannibal in season two, since he may not have trusted her in general, but he would trust her to want to take down the man whom they thought killed abigail (even though she was secretly still alive, at that point)”
but the show itself was never really clear on that, and it’s like
okay, guys, i don’t think you need to spell out absolutely everything, and i realize that a certain degree of ambiguity in most situations and with almost all of the characters is part of your #Aesthetic
but this would be an example of you once again screwing over the characters who are not named will and/or hannibal, especially since I got a feeling like it’s less that you were leaving things vague on the, “freddie and abigail” front, and more that you just didn’t really care to figure things out about this part of freddie’s character
so……… yeah
santana lopez
okay, i don’t blame her for wanting artie out of the way when he was dating brittany back in season 2 because lmao, i did too, but for starters, artie wouldn’t have been dating brittany if santana hadn’t blown her off in the first place
—which isn’t #Problematic in terms of her character development because…… uh, well yeah, that was the point. santana created the problem by blowing brittany off and trying to convince herself that she was “totally straight, except sometimes scissoring with brittany, lmao feelings are totally pointless and should be hated and santana doesn’t have them” and it was part of the story of her coming to accept herself as a lesbian
but it was kind of, “ummm…”-inducing that she… never actually had to accept her own responsibility for brittany/artie happening, like
first, in the duets episode, she tried to meddle and break them up by going, “brittany’s just using you for the free dinner at breadstix lmao” — which she succeeded in, because brittany and artie didn’t even sing (though they both still voted for themselves in the, “who should win” bit at the end) — and santana apparently thought that was it
tbf, it’s not like she could foresee puck and artie bonding, and puck trying to ““help”” artie get back with brittany by being so thoroughly himself…… but then brittany and artie were back on, and santana’s response was to manipulate brittany into cheating on him by going, “it’s not cheating bc we’re both girls” and expecting brittany to just go along with it
then, brittany calls her on that in “sexy” — inasmuch as brittany got a chance to do back then — and santana only accepts responsibility for anything in the sense of, “okay, brittany wants me to get more in touch with my feelings and admit that i do love her because that is how i fucked up before”
she doesn’t look at brittany’s relationships with other people, or at brittany’s feelings about anything but santana and the current state of their relationship + how it might go in the future, and so on — and this is another example of a situation where santana is presented as being sympathetic but still in the wrong, and brittany calls her on it, and it’s part of her overall growth in the end
but we never really address the manipulation in telling brittany, “it’s not cheating because we’re both girls” (which, by glee standards, is not that bad, and tbf, brittany and artie weren’t perfect angels in any of this, either, since artie was pretty ableist to brittany even before the, “how can you be so stupid, brittany!” “you were the only one in this school who never said that to me!” moment in the fleetwood mac episode, and brittany had her own manipulative moments with both artie and santana
—but it still kinda bugged me that santana had an opportunity to grow and learn more about using her capacity for manipulation for good, and it…… didn’t really go anywhere?
and you can tell that she didn’t learn about manipulating brittany — at least not until way later down the line — because a few episodes later, she’s plotting to use dave to win prom queen bc she thinks she can then go on to convince britt-britt that she’d made a royal decree that brittany had to be her girlfriend)
finally, santana was really ableist toward artie throughout the entire brittany/artie arc
……and beforehand.
…………and afterward.
………………and just in general, even without brittany needing to be involved, because to be fair, this was just one part of a larger overall pattern of ableist bullshit on glee’s part, of which artie wasn’t even the only victim (he was just one of the most notable ones because he was one of the only canonically disabled characters)
so, it’s like? yeah, santana said pretty ableist shit about artie, on a pretty regular basis — the “stubbles mc-cr*pple-pants” nickname is one example i’ll never forget
—and yeah, she said offensive things to basically everyone else on the show (c.f., calling rachel, “yentl”; calling mercedes, “wheezy”; taking her internalized homophobia out on kurt, not in the scenes like, “kurt and blarren sing about how much they love each other all over santana’s pain over being forcibly outed because that’s so what she needed to hear right now, stfu both of you” or in fairly going, “hey, shut up and quit judging MY wedding to brittany as a bad life choice just because YOU couldn’t make it work with blarren” but in all the smaller instances that you barely even notice at first; taking her internalized homophobia out on dave even while asking him to help her win prom queen/blackmailing him into it; list goes on)
but the ableist shit she said to artie sticks out to me, in particular, bc santana’s other examples of this behavior were generally cast as, “she’s witty and outrageous, yes, but you should really probably not actually say things like this, it’s asshole behavior on her part,” while the shit she said to artie…… kinda didn’t
not because the ableist shit she said to artie didn’t get called out
(bc lbr, most of the things that santana ever said didn’t get, “called out”
it got shown to be Not Cool bc it would get associated with people getting upset with her
or it would sound too much like Sue [who is almost always in the wrong, so sounding like her is something that you generally want to avoid]
or it would be used to show that santana is being selfish and rude even without it being called out [like when she called mercedes, “wheezy” before going, “we don’t have to like each other, let’s sing a duet together and win that free dinner at breadstix”]
or it would otherwise have some kind of repercussions
—but it probably wouldn’t get, “called out” as such, outside of REALLY big exceptions, like how they used, “well, but santana was bullying him” as a justification for finn getting her outed, when…… yes, her bullying him was wrong but these things are not the same
or the bit in, “silly love songs” where oher glee club kids [in order: finn, lauren, puck, quinn, tina, and rachel] bite back at santana over insulting them)
but her ableist shit toward artie sticks out because the show always kinda seemed to…… not agree with santana about it, exactly, since her saying it was still narratively seen as Not Cool?
but it seemed to give her a half-pass because plenty of the other characters who weren’t physically disabled expressed similar feelings about artie and his disability, just with less vitriol (e.g., puck, who even got to be friends with artie but still said ableist shit; he just wasn’t actively trying to be mean like santana was)
or they tried really hard to make it sound like, “well, this is just commonsense and how things are, what can you do” (e.g., MOST of them, back in season 1’s “wheels,” where rachel was pretty vitriolic in her ableist nonsense, but not directly at artie
—like, she was one of the, “but this is just how things are, don’t take it personally” when talking to him, but then lumped schue’s, “all of you will spend this week in wheelchairs to learn about accessibility!” lesson plan in with him giving kurt a fair audition for the “defying gravity” solo when she had her little diva moment of, “maybe someday, you’ll find a way to create teaching moments without RUINING MY LIFE” and then tried to storm out while still in a wheelchair)
which is all really less about santana herself, and more about how santana fit into the show’s overall patterns of ableism, but
i’m really hard-pressed to come up with something that i actually hate about santana, which is why hers is the longest answer (bc i had to dig deep and bullshit my way through it, oops)
(harry’s is closest in length but that’s because i had an actual point to make; by my standards, his answer is pretty short)
cho/fleur: Not my most-favorite ship for either of them, but I love it and I mean?? Let’s add Lavender and have a, “canon lady characters who got unfairly shit on by the fandom but you can’t even really be mad at fandom because JKR unfairly shit on them in the books and acted like it was okay because Cho is so ~emotional~ (……like Harry and Hermione aren’t???) with her dumb girly feelings, and Fleur is ~so pretty and feminine~ (……uh huuuh. like Molly, Lily, Minerva, Ginny, and Hermione don’t exemplify other common feminine archetypes, in their own ways, and like Lily and Ginny aren’t both regularly portrayed as being gorgeous), and Lavender is ~ugh so emotional~ and so ~girly~ and so stupid for being a teenage girl (………uh huh, right, like YOU were never a teenage girl and most of your readers are not teenage girls, Joanne)” OT3 party
ginny/fleur: Ehhhh? It’s cute, I guess, and it has potential, but I personally have a lot of trouble overlooking the way that Ginny treated Fleur in HBP for literally no reason beyond, “Fleur exists, Fleur is more conventionally feminine and conventionally pretty than Ginny (who is both feminine and pretty, so wtf???), Fleur is dating/engaged to Bill, and Molly bags on Fleur constantly while implying that Bill needs to break up with her and get with Tonks when neither Bill nor Tonks has any canonical romantic or sexual interest in each other — which absolutely smacks of, ‘ewww, get the evil LGBTQ-ness out of my alleged found family!!!’ in Tonks’ case, because up until JKR pulled the Rema//dora ‘no homo! never homo! get that icky gay shit off of my nice hetero books!!! :)))’ carpet out from under our feet at the end of HBP, Tonks struck me personally as being Hella Gay — which must mean it’s okay for Ginny to be a shit to Fleur, too”
Like, yes, Hermione also got in on it, but Ginny was consistently the one who started the, “let’s bag on Fleur because it’s okay to hate other girls for being a girl in different ways from your own” game when it wasn’t actually Molly doing the thing and Hermione just went along with it. Which wasn’t cool, either, but makes it clear, to me, that Hermione is projecting other insecurities onto the situation while Ginny does seem to have some kind of personal Thing with Fleur — and if the, “lol he only pulls on your pigtails bc he likes you!!” thing isn’t good for m/f couples, then it’s not good for m/m or f/f couples, either
Which is a perfectly fine basis for a ship…… as long as it’s acknowledged that this is going on and NOT treated as if it’s okay bc ~lol ginny just sucks at flirting!!~ (which?? is canonically inaccurate??? like, come on, Harry is the one between the two of them who sucks at flirting; Ginny is the one telling him to quit trying so hard and just snog her before he hurts himself) or as if it’s cute and romantic because they’re both girls. Which, sadly, a lot of Fleur/Ginny doesn’t seem to do — but tbf that’s a very qualified statement since there isn’t a lot of Fleur/Ginny to begin with
—and, like? One of the only fics I’ve ever seen of them was one of those, “Character A is stuck-up and pompous and skinny, so Character B does a thing to punish them by making them gain weight because lmao being fat is Bad and a curse and a punishment” fics that are wicked shitty about both consent and fatphobia — also misogyny and sapphophobia, in this case, since that fic was skeevy af about objectifying both Ginny and Fleur, especially wrt Ginny’s “kinda crushy, but kinda hate-y” feels about Fleur
—and even if other Ginny/Fleur fics aren’t that great at really dealing with Ginny’s canon treatment of Fleur, they’re probably already miles better than that one
luna/padma: Not my most-favorite ship for either of them, and on the, “I ship it” scale, it’s not as high as most ships I have with either, but it very definitely has potential, and they could be adorable nerds together
@bizeke that’s totally fair, though, and it’s one reason why i’m more understanding with fleur/ginny shippers than i usually am when people try to make excuses for draco’s behavior in order to ship him with harry or hermione* like, on one hand, you have the desire for more f/f content, and a series that manages to have so many great lady characters and yet so few, because jkr treats most of them like shit, wastes their potential in various ways, and unfairly maligns them in canon for “crimes” like, “being a teenage girl” while expecting everyone to do backflips over narcissa’s redemption when we’re given no actual indication that she learned shit about shit about why blood purism is wrong, she just wanted to save her son (and like? i like narcissa and i don’t deny that it was badass to flat-out straight up lie right to lord tommort voldingdong’s face… but it’s right there in the text that she cared about draco more than actually opposing blood purism and domestic terrorism, which makes her moment of “redemption” at the end of dh a lot like her son’s alleged redemption for me: yeah, it’s nice that they no longer support voldemort, but i see NO indication that they have actually learned that blood purism and oppressive supremacist bullshit are wrong, and most of the newfound lack of support is based on how tommort and his shit affected them personally, so……) —so it makes sense to me that some fans might easily forget ginny’s treatment of fleur in hbp bc they’re so desperate for f/f ships and content, and ginny and fleur are two of the better developed ladies in the series, so it makes sense to ship them because you have more to work with, personality-wise otoh, the books themselves don’t call ginny out at all but act like she’s totally in the right and like harry is just going, “hey, fleur was a triwizard champion and she’s actually kinda cool” because fleur is hot and quarter-veela and lmao harry is a dumb horny teenage boy who can’t help himself, sit down before you hurt yourself sweetie — so i can’t be that mad at fleur/ginny shippers for missing it when the books don’t even recognize that ginny’s in the wrong (………and now i am just wondering how lesbians and gay men are or aren’t affected by veela, but that’s beside the point) *: or with neville, but that one’s a rarepair, its shippers usually keep to themselves, and actually, it has a better rate of people going, “draco’s behavior is completely unacceptable, here is why the ship appeals to me with that in mind,” so at least in my experience, there’s less nonsense to deal with from draco/neville shippers then there are the draco/ginny shippers but. my earliest exposure to that ship was pure unleaded nonsense — cassie clare’s post-ootp fic, “a lot to be upset about,” like a million years ago (…by which i mean about 14 years ago) — and i don’t see enough of the rest of the draco/ginny fandom bc i actively avoid it, so i can’t really say
