Commence Hyori Ittai Lamento 

HANDSOME SASAKI — ✦ SASAKI TO MIYANO

Yk… I feel like people have become So used to like TikTok doom-scrolling feeding their limited attention span and having most sapphic rep be TV-Y7 shows (She-ra, TOH, TLOK, etc.) that when they’re faced with a TV-14 show where they actually have to Pay Attention to little things like facial expressions over words instead of having constant exposition shoved in their face they don’t like it.

And this is not me saying you can’t be an adult and watch a TV-Y7 show, but you Do have to keep in mind that the shows target demographic Is younger viewers so they have to utilize stuff like exposition so younger viewers can easily understand it. And those shows have pretty black and white morals “Horde = Bad” “Princess Alliance = Good” all that fun stuff.

But Arcane isn’t like that, it makes you think deeper about what’s actually being told to you and I’ve had to do a couple rewatches myself to pick up on stuff I hadn’t noticed the first time. And putting those same black and white morals to the characters like these really does the show a disservice.

(I also think the "oh I don't like oppressor x oppressed" complaint to be Incredibly stupid because you could slap that onto practically Anything. Heterosexual relationships/Hetero-passing relationships? that's oppressor x oppressed because of men over women. Mixed relationships involving any white person? that's Definity oppressor x oppressed. Relationships involving a cis and trans person? yup oppressor x oppressed again. Reducing characters down purely to their socioeconomic status and occupation and ignoring all the nuance, complexity and logic of them and their actions frustrate the hell out of me because they refuse to think deeper than that.)

And I'd RATHER Caitlyn Show she's remorseful and changing through her Actions rather than a sob session of "I'm sorrys'" (Also, LAST time Caitlyn merely said words to Vi ("I won't"), her actions didn't reflect those words, so why would Vi trust a simple "I'm sorry" now? Not to mention we already got that "I'm sorry" plot beat when it came to Jayce and Viktor back in S1 with Jayce doing stuff like setting the Bridge Blockade (and No one wants to bring up the "oppressor x oppressed" thing when talking about Jayvik despite it being the same dynamic...))

(Let's also address that Vi never said "I'm sorry" to Jinx for joining the Enforcers. No, the "I'm sorry" in Ep 3 wasn't for That it was an "I'm sorry for what's about to happen" because they Both know that there's a high possibility that Jinx might be dead at the end of this fight, and I know this because Vi becomes defensive in Ep 5 when Jinx brings it up. Vi doesn't say "I'm sorry" for hitting Isha either (btw if you say Vi saw Jinx care for Isha as a "I'm a bad sister" then you just lack basic media literacy all together). Jinx never says "I'm sorry" for all the fucked up shit she does like kidnapping Caitlyn and forcing Vi to kill her. Also, Vi AND Caitlyn come up with the plan to take out Silco loyalists, Shimmer and Jinx so why the hell does Caitlyn have to apologize for that? Caitlyn admits that forcing Vi to take the badge was the wrong thing to do and gives an explanation as to why she wanted Vi to join her as an Enforcer, because Caitlyn's worry of "one of us comes back in a box" IS justified)

(I also think the time jumps have fooled the audience, because they feel that Caitlyn's scene with Ambessa in ep 4 is "a complete 180" when you have to keep in mind that Caitlyn's been watching how her actions have affected those in these 6 months that we haven't really been seeing her on screen; we see bits of her during the "Paint the Town Blue" montage and Even Then you see her damn near crying in one of those still shots and looking so exhausted and over it in another. Once again part of that "Arcane wanting you to use your brain to connect those dots instead of the show doing For you but the audience refuses to do so" kinda stuff.)

Also, do people need to go through their Own trauma, grief and anger in order to understand Caitlyn's actions/motivations? because it's kinda starting to look that way. Caitlyn wasn't maliciously manipulating Vi with the kiss and the "I won't" statement because when going through emotions like this, Caitlyn doesn't have the time to reflect on those actions and see how she is changing, it's more of a hope that she isn't changing in the way that Vi doesn't want her to (you have to remember that S1 Ep4-S2 Ep3 happens within the span of like a week, maybe two at the most; Caitlyn's not being given time to stop or think about what's she's doing or what's going on, she's merely going through the motions in a sense. So by the time we pick up Ep 4 and there's been months of shit happening under her watch, she's had Time to be like "I don't want to be this, I hate this and the person I've become in all this".)

(I mean we can have Another discussion of how a lot of hate is just performative activism. One of the reasons I Like Caitlyn so much is because she shows that even with good morals, someone from privilege can easily fall down that rabbit hole. Because that's happened to myself before. Despite being lesbian and mentally disabled I still come from certain privilege, while I don't come from aristocratic wealth, I still lived a life better than most and just being a white woman that also gives me privilege and I've had to do my own reflecting on how my thoughts and actions can affect others simply from that privilege; which is what Caitlyn's able to do herself over the course of the season, which it seems that none of these haters are able to grasp)

I see people posting things like, "Why are you some people obsessed with proving your ship is canon? Who even wants their ships to be canon, it's more fun when it's not?"

I get where people are coming from with this sentiment--it is fun to have your own headcanons, your own control of how you're interpreting the characters, not being reliant on what canon gives you, etc. I'm very much in favor of people doing whatever they want in fanworks, canon be damned! Ship what you want, go wild, ignore canon altogether if you want!

But with HxH and especially Gon and Killua, it IS important to me how essentially canon it is for a number of reasons. One of these is that the bond between them is one of the main emotional cores of the series, and to reduce it down to "Haha no homo! They're just bros! If you see it in ways other than that you're delusional!" is a disservice to what Togashi is writing--and it's essentially willfully misreading the source material.

Obviously, no one is obligated to ship it themselves, no one is obligated to like seeing it in a romantic light, but it irks me when people pick apart all the incredible nuance and beautiful details in HxH, all the rich subtext and meaning, and then pretend that the very present subtext and romantic framing between Gon and Killua isn't there at all. Especially as throughout the years I continue to learn more about Togashi and look even more deeply into HxH and it becomes increasingly more and more crystal clear how intentional it seems, how much of this is thoughtfully put in there for people to pick up on.

There's so much shounen out there that puts on a veneer of gayness--essentially giving the audience just enough vaguely gay things for the female audience (as well as gay audience, etc.) to latch on to for marketing/merchandise reasons, while mostly pushing het ships in the canon material officially. (And I'm not saying in all cases it's like that, but I do think that's the trend specifically with shounen series.) With Togashi, it very much seems like he creates it out of his own genuine personal interest and because that's the story he wants to tell--the kind of story he's wanted to tell for a long time and can get away with now because of changing social norms and the fact that he's already incredibly popular and he owns HxH outright.

And as someone who loves Togashi's storytelling--all of it, not just the gay parts, of course--I care about what he's trying to create and intending to convey and it bothers me to see people outright denying it out of their own biases. I feel like people who deny it's there or refuse to see it in that way at all are missing a big chunk of the series, an important and intentional part of the series. (And this extends to other parts of the series that are queer, too, like Alluka for instance. There's so much in HxH that is queer in some way! Denying it all is there is ridiculous!)

And again, it doesn't mean people have to ship it, everyone is allowed to see what's there and ultimately choose to see it in a platonic way if they want, it's more when I see outright denial that this is the author's intent when all signs point to it being so that bothers me.

I think part of this is people just being casual viewers/readers of the series (though some of it is pretty blatant IMHO) and not being aware of all the Deep Lore that points to it being way more than in your average shounen, but a LOT of it is simply homophobia. It's frustrating being in a fandom for years where there are a bunch of people who go about picking apart all the nen powers and the beauty of Chimera Ant Arc in exhaustive detail and then utterly and completely deny that there are sound, well-documented reasons why a large part of the fandom sees it as a gay/queer work.

So hopefully this explains some of why I bother to argue the canon aspect at all, and why I think it matters to a lot of people specifically in HxH fandom.

Rewatched ParaNorman recently and this exchange made me think of these two

what’s ur type?

first next >

site that you can type in the definition of a word and get the word

site for when you can only remember part of a word/its definition 

site that gives you words that rhyme with a word

site that gives you synonyms and antonyms

do you ever just-

roommates au sleepover episode

winter night

Killugon sketches or something

Ya