razielim:

I’m constantly bewildered by people thinking that No True Scotsman MLM would ever ship Sheith, that the only representation that matters is Klance, and that only Klance has mlm fans while every other ship has nothing but “straight women.” Listen, if Klance is what does it for you, great, but not everyone has the same tastes and emotional needs as you. 

I just get so tired of being spoken for by people who know nothing about me and think that their own little bubble of dudes who ship Klance is all there is. I personally know a lot of other queer men in the Sheith fandom, particularly on the discord. 

Maybe the problem is that we’re not bothering to make our numbers visible, and antis are taking advantage of that silence? I don’t know. Maybe that’s an easy fix.

Hi, hello. I’m a gay man that really thinks canon Shiro&Keith interaction is an incredible basis for romance between two men. Their relationship that’s built on mutual trust, equality, comfort, and tenderness is exactly what I enjoy seeing in love stories. It’s valid as a platonic relationship too, and I’m not saying it must be made canon, but if I could choose any one VLD ship that would make amazing canon rep, it would be Sheith.

(@ any other men who love Sheith, feel free to reblog/comment and sound off on why you think Sheith is a great ship)

Not very active in shipping it (or anything else in VLD), but Sheith is definitely a strong and well-developed emotional core to a show I wouldn’t care much for otherwise on account of genre. It’s not that I dislike or ignore the other characters or oppose any other ships – although the extreme popularity of Klance in fanon continues to perplex me, when there’s comparatively so little there – but those two are a major draw.

rabbittiddy:

leproblematique:

fiction-is-not-reality:

theassholeantiarchive:

a-ranting-chief:

lesbiankrolia:

normal people multiship but anyone who self-identifies as a “multishipper” is 99% guaranteed to be a creep.

@theassholeantiarchive @just-antithings

???????????

I tried going through the notes, sure that I was missing some kind of context that would make the original post suddenly make sense, but I only got people going “wtf op?” and then OP: 

and it didn’t help, I’m still confused. 

I looked through the notes of this post and someone was ‘kind’ enough to translate the thing:

In other words, people who openly label ourselves ‘multishippers’ are far less likely to buy into the anti worldview that something shouldn’t be shipped on the basis of its moral value. I’m sure that this doesn’t apply to all openly-declared multishippers and that some do have attitudes along the lines of ‘ewww, you can’t ship that!’, but it’s been my observation that a multishipper label does lessen the probability that someone is an anti  or holds anti-adjacent views.

You know what’s the funniest thing about this? If this is OP’s reasoning, then it also clarifies why a lot of antis keep foaming at the mouth at fans over 30 / call older fans ‘disgusting’ and other such charming terms. This is because older fans also tend to not look at fandom and shipping through a primarily morality-centric lens, but rather a pleasure-centric one (as in ‘does this ship please me / make me feel hot and bothered’ versus ‘is this ship an ideal to strive toward.’ Nota Bene: under this model, a ship can and does fit the pleasure criteria by being ‘wholesome / healthy’, if that’s what the shipper is into – it’s just that someone operating on a pleasure-centric framework is far less likely to start howling if other people’s enjoyment comes from a different source than their own, when compared to someone who judges ships primarily on the basis of morality / immorality)..

There’s also the thing that older fans view it as a hobby or interest, while antis tend to view it as a political area or a competition, sometimes both.

Part of it is the outside subcultural zeitgeist change (from inclusion and cooperation to derision and competition) while another part is this seeming push to go back to the worst part of the 90s in the wider youth culture.

Hence why older fans tend to be DLDW and MSINYS, while Antis (and s lot of younger fans) seem to be the lovechild of Conservative Evangelicals from the 90s and the hipsters that nobody liked back in the late 00s early 10s.

Off topic, but Screw it, as my several new followers may or not be yet aware I can never be relied upon to stick to just one topic with any regularity. Depending on how much you enjoy my writing (and/or potentially influencing the direction of said writing by replies and asks and so forth) that’s either a perk or a flaw.

It has just come to my attention that making the rounds in the Voltron fandom at the moment is an enormous Klance shipping manifesto dubbed the Klible – which I assume is pronounced “kly-bull” and not like “kibble” with an added “l,” though it sounds ridiculous either way. Aside from the opportunity to comment on a moment in which shipping has taken on explicitly religious overtones, I was curious to see what all the fuss was about since Klance is very much the VLD equivalent of Finn/Lachesis (from FE4 and 5): a tremendously popular ship in fandom at the center of a ship war that exists despite limited canonical support.

The problem is that the thing is over 150 pages long, and even though a good bit of that length comes from screenshots that would still take ages to slog through.

Of course, I can’t help but be reminded of a similar project undertaken by one of my mutuals a few years ago on the sexuality of Ike (from FE9 and 10 and also Super Smash Bros.), and how certain infamous member of the fandom who is vehemently opposed to non-heterosexual readings of Ike refused outright to read this exhaustive and extensively-researched piece on account of it being too long. Far be it from to appear equally as deaf to counterargument, especially since there’s no question of homophobia or any social justice issue that I personally care about in the main Sheith vs. Klance Voltron shipping war (I don’t include the “everyone and everything ever is pedophilia” mentality as that’s a broader problem in Tumblr fandom spaces), but nevertheless getting through all that would be an absurd undertaking and one that I don’t think would give me insight into much other than why the ship is as popular as it is. Would that even be worth it? 

And finally Tressa, Therion, and H’annit:

Tressa

Nice scenery and the resolution to the plot was clever and cleverly reflected in the random battles, but that’s about it. I saw the ship captain’s reveal coming fairly early. I don’t think I got a good feeling of the merchant job’s gameplay through the prologue – apparently the main mechanic is a skill that lets you spend money to summon an NPC? I’m also wondering if there’s some obscure Japanese cultural reference in merchants using polearms/lances and bows, because that’s the same weapon combination used by the class in FE14.

All in all I was expecting more from this one seeing as I’d heard people hailing it as an underrated hit of a prologue, but maybe it’s just because I’m largely indifferent to Tressa’s cuteness factor.

Therion

Not as thematically dark as I was expected based on earlier reading, and thankfully his and H’annit’s prologues finally break with the repetition I complained about last time and have their dungeon segments be something other than caves. It’s a little strange to have random encounters in someone’s mansion, but still. As with Ophilia, I appreciate that this prologue sets up a quest with more steps than just one vague goal off in the distance, and I’m interested to see how all of these quest lines will interact with each other when the group’s all together (although from what I’ve read they all remain separate at least through the chapters available in the demo). I like Therion’s playstyle, and I imagine this would be one of the better options to start out with since you can get your hands on a ton of equipment via stealing and looting chests. HP Thief is OP.

Homoerotic grade: uncertain, as there’s potential in his backstory but nothing resembling a payoff yet. I found it strange that the flashbacks use child sprites but adult voices – are they supposed to be teenagers?

H’annit

I’m sure the same two things stand out about H’annit’s prologue for most people:

1) the silly faux-archaic dialect. I actually appreciate that a village in extreme rural isolation gets the SNES Chrono Trigger medieval period treatment, as it’s communities like those that are most likely to hang on to antiquated elements of a language. It would amuse me if the French version wrote their lines in the Cajun patois. This would however require the localizers to acknowledge that Louisiana still exists as a Francophone entity, work with a dialect that has no standardized orthography, and do so when the English localizers clearly aimed more for parody than any kind of authenticity.

2) H’annit’s path action and unique mechanics are more or less Pokémon minus the training aspect. I think it’s easier to capture beasts if you weaken them first, even. It’s a fun added nuance to her playstyle, and it definitely helped against her boss fight which might have been the hardest of any of the prologue bosses.

So…yep. That was H’annit.

This only leaves the question of who I’m going to start with when the game releases. I think I’m going to stick with my original choice of Olberic. He seems to be one of the better soloists – no telling how long it’ll take to work your way around the map and recruit everyone – and I like my men beefy and well-connected.

draxen1123 said

Potential reason for Alfyn’s ice magic: Refrigeration. Some of his medical components might need to be kept cooler than others, and in a pseudo medieval world there are no machines to do so. On the flip side anything needing to be warmed up, or cooked can be done with a basic fire. That’s my thoughts on it at least.

That’s as good an explanation as anything I could come up with. Oddly Therion’s and H’annit’s equally arbitrary magic types don’t bug me as much. In any case it seems that outside of the dedicated caster jobs those magic spells only make up a small portion of the total skill set so it’s less noticeable overall.

Moving on to Primrose, Cyrus, and Ophilia (will really have to get used to that spelling…):

Primrose

Eesh…they went there.

@damoselcastel cited this as the best of the prologues, and so far in terms of story content I’d definitely have to agree. The gameplay, not so much, because aside from the boss battle this one felt the least substantial. Then again, the developers could only expect so much when asking the player to solo something with a support character.

But back to that story. I’ve joked a few times that the dancer class in FE is just a sort of family-friendly way to include prostitutes or camp followers. OT doesn’t bother with being coy though; Primrose and her fellow dancing girls are explicitly sex workers and are treated and stigmatized as such, and her prologue is all about breaking free of her pimp so she can pursue her true goals. Aside from Yusufa’s death scene which went on entirely too long for someone stabbed and thrown off a cliff (think Desdemona from Othello) it was all excellently written. As a sex worker and sexual submissive myself – albeit one in very different circumstances – I thoroughly enjoyed the ending…which is also the first of the five I’ve played so far where the character actually kills someone. Dancing with her own two feet, indeed.

Also, as a male sex worker specifically I find it interesting to consider that the dancer job is unisex like all the others in this game despite appearing so heavily gendered in this prologue. That’s another leg up on FE (except Heroes Inigo, I guess).

Not doing homoerotic grades for the female characters, as I’ll leave that to fans who can get invested in F/F subtext.

Cyrus

Soloing as a pure offensive mage is less interesting than I thought it would be…but backstory! At last a prologue comes along that looks to be tying together some of the threads from the others. It figures they’d work in the world history lesson as a literal lesson at a school, but I’m game.Other than some odd commentary on false sexual harassment allegations that impacts nothing however I don’t find Cyrus’s story here to be too interesting, perhaps because they seem to be setting him up as a Sherlock Holmes type (person scan and narrative-pausing summation included) without any of the quirkiness that’s supposed to make Holmes endearing. There’s his utter obliviousness to his student’s crush on him, but that’s about it. I was actually a bit thrown to see him as a lecturer at first, because in his official art he’s such a waifish twink like Alfyn that I would have thought he was going to be a student. Eh. *shrugs*

Incidentally, every one of the prologues so far has ended with a cave, and this one is the most arbitrary yet. Would it be too much to ask for a change of scenery for the obligatory newbie dungeon?

Homoerotic grade: none to speak of. He doesn’t notice women, but he’s so wrapped up in his studies that I doubt he’d notice men either. Of course that’s what fanfic is for.

Ophilia

Light magic and pseudo-Catholicism and a snowy environment, yay.

The archbishop has a (legitimate?) daughter, boo. At least they’re not being ambiguous about clerical celibacy not being a thing in this universe.

But anyway, the gameplay was fairly straightforward though entertaining, and as I said I love the aesthetic on multiple levels. Getting a primer on this setting’s basic cosmology was also a nice bonus, even if it’s not really anything special (worshiping the flame left behind by a deity is slightly different from the usual Crystal Dragon Jesus method of swapping in a goddess, but the principle is the same). I’m curious to see how the locations Ophilia has to visit on her quest will play into the story as a whole, since none of the other characters I’ve played have had more than one specific destination mapped out, if any at all.

One criticism I have of Primrose’s and Ophilia’s path actions is that it feels a lot like you have to get lucky with the NPC you choose to bring into a fight unless you know the enemies’ weakness beforehand. I was fortunate enough to have brought a cleric with a multi-hit ice spell that really helped against the boss here, but I could have easily found myself with someone less useful. I doubt that’s as noticeable a problem outside of these solo sections, however. 

jkl-fff:

June: Gay Pride 
(because we are FABULOUS, bitch!)

July: Gay Wrath 
(because we are sick 
of the heteronormative bullshit–
STILL HERE, STILL QUEER!)

August: Gay Sloth 
(because we’re going to need
to rest after a solid month of tearing down
the white patriarchy that oppresses us all)

September: Gay Gluttony 
(because we gotta bulk up 
so we can hibernate through winter)

October: Gay Pride 2, Hocus Pocus Style

New Orleans Decadence is in September and is definitely Gay Gluttony + Gay Lust. I approve.

Impressions from Olberic’s and Alfyn’s prologues:

Olberic

This was where I started the demo, so having not watched many preview videos I was surprised by just how much voice acting there is in this game. It’s almost to the level of FE15 (note to anyone who doesn’t follow me and may be reading this – I’ll be making frequent comparisons to Fire Emblem since that’s the RPG series I’m most familiar with), which is a bit strange alongside the 2D sprite work. You get used to it, though.

Olberic seems to have one of the largest backstories in scope, at least from what I’ve played and what I’ve read of the other six though of course that’ll be subject to change. Even though I find his playstyle a little dull and haven’t yet seen much point in his path action (aside from the comedic element that comes with going around and beating up an entire village of NPCs), there’s still plenty of room to expand on that with more skills and a subclass later on (cleric maybe, to make him feel like a paladin?). The combat system has a bit of nuance that took me almost the full length of his prologue to grasp, but that’s by no means a bad thing. Having an actual party should really make the weakness system interesting. I laughed when I saw how oversized the boss sprites are in battle. It’s so perfectly ridiculous for human enemies. At the end I opted to restart the demo after leaving the area of his prologue; I’ll play through each one of the eight and from there decide which one I’ll use as the main character in the actual game.

Also, I had to look up the term “hedge knight,” which apparently originated in A Song of Ice and Fire and is identical to the more recognizable term knight errant. Curious that the localizers would go with a Game of Thrones reference…I really need to get around to watching that show one of these years.

Homoerotic grade: fairly low. The obviously-voiced-by-a-woman kid Olberic is mentoring idolizes him so innocently that even I’d have trouble reading daddy kink into their relationship though go for it if that’s your thing. There’s nothing romantic between him and the boy’s mother though, so yay for avoiding some predictability there. There’s also Erhardt I suppose, but so little is known of him from the prologue alone that I’m withholding judgment there.

Alfyn

Hey @markoftheasphodel, it’s Greg Chun voicing yet another ambiguously not-straight character, very relevant to your interests. This one is a simple country boy who says “shucks” often – a bit of a silly sound for him, but it’s something different.

Why does the apothecary job have ice magic? Not that I’m complaining as I could bundle it with cleric to have my two favorite magic types on one character as they basically never are in games, but I don’t see the connection. At least axes makes sense in a somewhat gruesome way that the game even leans into with the Amputation skill. Anyway, I got more use out of Alfyn’s path action and his concoctions seem like an interesting mechanic, but either I wasn’t using them to their fullest potential or I should have gone with his poison-curing skill when I got the chance because poison hits hard in this game. I actually died to some generic snakes, how embarrassing. As for the character, his motivation to embark on adventure comes off as abrupt, as in he just wakes up once in the middle of the night and decides to leave his hometown after randomly reminiscing on his backstory. It’s not terrible and is helped out by a fair amount of romantic subtext with his BFF (see below), but I hope the other characters come with a bit more drive.

Homoerotic grade: high despite some no-homo dialogue. I was alerted to Alfyn/Zeph by a mutual before I started the demo so I was expecting it. It’s kind of cute, even if fandom will probably tend toward shipping the playable cast together since they get more development. But still, they’re carrying each others’ satchels. That’s either adorable or a double entendre, or possibly both.

Not sure who I’ll be checking out next – possibly Primrose or Cyrus for a change of pace from these sleepy little villages.