fan behaviours

works i generally like

i'm not terribly picky about genre or form. i like to analyze so i tend to prefer things that are well-written and rely heavily on audience interpretation, though that's not a hard rule and i enjoy some nice simple fun too! i tend to be more character-driven: strong characters are extremely important to me and i get quite bored if a piece of work doesn't have at least two. two, partly because how characters interact with each other tends to interest me more than how they interact with the world, and partly because...

i'm a romantic so i like shipping. how heavily i get into a works fandom tends to rely on if there's a ship i really like... i can still enjoy a work if there's no romantic pairing i can sniff out, but i probably won't talk about it very much!

in general, the question i ask most often before starting a piece of work is: is there yaoi? and yaoi has led me places i wouldn't go with a gun.

how i engage in fandom play

truth be told, i don't partake in fandom at large as much as i used to... in my formative years, i loved scrolling tumblr and engaging in anyway i could. i was an ao3 addict and spent a loooong time roleplaying homestuck (don't @ me i already know). lately though, i've found the landscape has just became too combative and exhausting... it's hard to get excited online when half the posts you see are about the same discourse you're way too old for. nowadays, i tend to prefer to dream up scenarios in my head/fantasize about fanfics i'll never write and quietly enjoy art from fandom artists.

i also rarely read fanfic these days... it's kind of sad to admit!! if i get into something new and there's a ship i really like i might take a gander at the ao3 tag, but i larely just prefer to read BL manga/webtoon these days. i think the closest i get is doing meta or discussing ships/aus with close friends who share my interests. in that way, most of my fandom play now happens over dms or in my head ( ´ ▿ )

shipping-wise, i tend to be a pretty strict monoshipper when it comes to my favourites. i will multiship sometimes, but usually only with ships i care less about... at best, i can acknowledge or appreciate a ships appeal, but not necessarily ship it myself.

i'm an oldhead fujo so i tend to keep my top/bottom preferences strict! there are a few exceptions where i care a little less/can't decide, but even then it is very annoying for me and i'm always trying to choose one LOL. as a tradjoshi, i like the taller/bigger character to be the seme. but i also like the one that has more emotional problems/sopping wet cat vibes/ego to be the uke.

tropes, expanded

as you can gather from the left, i tend to prefer darker and more transgressive pairings! i hope it goes without saying that i do not approve of or condone any of the twisted, illegal, or harmful things that i enjoy in fiction in real life, and further that for many i am outright disgusted by them. my enjoyment of transgressive shipping is purely fantastical and completely separate from my moral code.

with that out of the way! the two biggest things i love in a dynamic are (1) when (at least) one party is plagued by guilt and (2) when a love has become so warped, monstrous, and obsessive it almost can't be called love at all. all of my favourite tropes can generally be defined by the two: student x teacher, extreme age gap, cheating*, and power imbalance fall under the guilt umbrella; and codependency, mutual obsession, yandere, and stalking fall under dark love.

i do have other favourites though. i also really love enemies/rivals to lovers! i think it lends well to creating an interesting narrative to take characters from complete opposition to love! and there can be juicy fighting scenes too (´꒳`)♡ plus i love tsundere-style "nooo i don't like them that'd be ridiculous" characters and the turn from hate to love usually involves a lot of that.

i have childhood friends to lovers listed under tropes too... i didn't include it under the "dark fic" umbrella because it does not inherently include that, but i tend to like this trope best of all when it's paired with codependency, obsession, or jealousy. i also really like if they have been friends so long that they engage in romantic behaviour without really acknowledging/talking about it! like holding hands, cuddling, or sharing little kisses... the kind of stuff you might do as kids but would normally stop as you got older, except for some reason they didn't!!

cheating comes with an asterisk! this is because i only like when the characters i'm shipping are engaging in the affair. i hate when one ship partner cheats on the other. it's the "i know what i'm doing is wrong but i want you so bad" type of guilt that i'm after!!

blorbos who aren't blorbos

i have a weird pattern i follow with my most favourite characters! i'll start by calling them "my boyfriend," maybe even get a little yume with it for a brief period, but then slowly move to headcanoning them as gay and usually start shipping them with another character. so they're my blorbos in that they're my most favourite special guys, but they're not for me... i usually refer to such characters as "my boyfriend who is gay." they also don't tend to be the sort of character i'd actually want to date in real life... that tends to be the character i end up shipping them with, honestly. there's probably something psychological there. i'm not going to think about. more than anything, i just like characters that are insane!!

funnily enough, this isn't usually much of an issue for my girl favourites! while it does happen (kotori love live is my wife but she is also umi's wife, i don't need to be involved whatsoever), it's more common that they are just my gfs frfr. the unfortunate side of this is that it means i tend to think about them less. i used to get very wrapped up in defending my fixation on male characters and bl shipping but i am simply not going to do that anymore. what can i say? i am just not that interesting to me!!!