#I’m not afraid to get into shipping and fandom discourse

[lostinthe--stars]

Do us all a favour and kill yourself, proshitter. You’re fucking disgusting for liking children. How can you think it is ok. The world is better off without you in it

How can you POSSIBLY think it is ok to say this to a person? How are people like you the ones who preach about morals and things being illegal, while telling people to off themselves? Excuse me?

Yes. I am a proshipper. It doesn’t and shouldn’t affect you in any way, so get the fuck over it.

Being a proshipper DOES NOT mean I am into children. Far from it. Just because I think pieces of fiction deserve to exist does not mean I consume those pieces of fiction.

There are many tropes, pairings, etc. within fiction/fan fiction that I do like not, but I don’t go around harassing people who do like it, and I don’t think that those things I dislike should be removed from existence.

Anti’s will never cease to amaze me.

Ship and let ship. Let fiction exist. Fandom is supposed to be fun!! Let it be fun! Like what you like, don’t like what you don’t like, and MOVE ON!

[meta-susie]

i love how metasusie haters always bring up the violence and the trauma. that’s catnip to me babey pointing it out won’t get me to stop shipping them

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

is there anywhere that in game that says the Mc is the same age as the other first years?? I've been seeing a lot of discourse like "yuu can't do this/be shipped with that person bc they're like 16!!" (for ships this mostly refers to malleus, leona, and lilia)

but I don't remember anything that specifically indicates this? people argue its because they're in first year, but there are canon instances of people enrolling late/being older than their classmates. I was always under the impression that yuu was dropped with the first years regardless of age.

idk I've seen a lot of people get into stupid arguments lately, acting like other people's mc's are a crime bc they're like 17 or 18 (or god forbid 19, even though leona is 20 and there are other... complicated ages).

sorry, this ended up a lot longer than I meant for it to

I think many do assume that Yuu is 16 since they’re in class 1-A and hang out primarily with first year students. However, there is nothing in the game that states Yuu is 16 or has to be (similar to the vagueness about their gender); it’s probably left open-ended so players can imagine their own “Yuus”. As mentioned by the asker, there is variation in the age of canon students (Leona, Lilia, Malleus, etc.)—and even in the Yuus featured in official TWST materials, such as 17 year old Yuuka Hirasaka from the Episode of Savanaclaw manga. I feel it’s pretty pointless to argue over Yuu being “canonically” 16 or which Yuus are and aren’t “allowed” to exist since the game itself is set up in a way that encourages using your imagination to come up with whatever kind of Yuu you want.

More likely, Yuu is lumped into a first year class for reasons other than age. Firstly, they are “half of a student” with Grim, who is starting out his magical studies as a first year student. The two need to stick together—they “complete” one another. Secondly, first year classes center on theory and are basically the only ones Yuu is able to take. The higher level classes require the practical application of magic. Grim is not to that level yet and Yuu is incapable of meeting those magical demands.

Mmm, I think that’s about all I have to say on this matter? I’m afraid I don’t care to delve too deeply into the shipping discourse mentioned—though I do understand being frustrated with fans policing and attacking others’ creations 💦 My advice is to just enjoy your own slice of the fandom rather than letting bad apples ruin your experience.

[conundrumoftime]

Fandom grandma tales: how I survived canon ruining two of the ships I liked.

(Written after a discussion with some of my TROP fan pals about how canon can break your heart re: shipping, and how fandom manages. There are spoilers here for the entire run of Babylon 5, and for one story JMS wrote after it. yes, that story. sorry.)

Babylon 5 was a sci-fi space opera show that ran from 1993 to 1998. It is sci-fi of the era of 22-episode seasons, of huge ensemble casts with characters who get their own B- and C-plots, with an effects and casting budget that doesn’t always match its ambition, and - something it was quite pioneering in, at the time - grand pre-planned story arcs. 

It’s the first fandom that I was involved with in internet spaces as it was running, or at least when its final season was (there’s Discourse and drama from earlier years that I missed). Its showrunner, J. Michael Straczynski - ‘JMS’ - was very active in (non-fanfic) fan community spaces, and you always knew exactly what he was thinking about things because he was part of the discussion around them. There was also fanfic, which he didn’t stop but didn’t go near on the grounds of legal liability for story ideas. 

Most of the fanfic in the early days as the show was airing was focused around two big ships, of which one was canon endgame (Delenn/Sheridan) and one was canon all-ends-in-despair (Marcus/Ivanova). I, as a teenager discovering a developing online fandom for the first time with all the overwhelm and excitement that causes (ask me anything about what reading fic was like before the days of tags/ratings/warnings!) got into Marcus/Ivanova and also into one of the minor ships, Delenn/Lennier.

Delenn/Lennier was never, ever going to happen in canon. This is obvious; it clashes with Delenn/Sheridan which was JMS’s baby darling OTP, the show’s big love story. Delenn is married for the later part of the show. Lennier is her diplomatic aide, is absolutely devoted to her, and they have a very intense mentor/student relationship, which it seems is kind of standard in their culture (when Delenn’s own mentor died she went briefly insane with grief and started a genocidal war over it) but is still Very Intense. He is canonically in love with her, but that’s as far as the explicit canon statements go.

However. HowEVER. Canon also gives us, for that relationship, some wonderful ship fuel. Lennier knows about every bad thing Delenn has done, including all the stuff she doesn’t/can’t tell her husband. He’s her link to her previous world and culture and stands by her even when they kick her out. She says at one point, “without him, I would stumble and fall and never get up again.” 

And then… we had Season 5, the final season.

Season 5, for various complicated production reasons, was operating a little outside of pre-planned story arcs and in this season the Delenn/Lennier stuff ramped up about three gears in one go. It was still very obviously never, ever going to be canon, and was almost certainly not intended by the creator (who wrote most of the episodes himself) to look like there was even anything there. At this point Delenn is married; any relationship with her aide would not only be going against the show’s OTP, but going against it in the sense where she’s cheating on her husband, and there is Just No Way JMS would have gone there. And yet! Season 5 gave us:

A scene where Lennier says he can’t stay, it’s too painful to be around her now she’s married, and she’s devastated and has the following conversation with her husband about it:

S: I got your message about Lennier. Is there anything I can do?

D [snapping]: Almost certainly not.

S: Is it because of me?

D: In part, I think so.

S: Yeah, I was afraid of that. Well, as we say back on Earth, three’s a crowd.

D: On Minbar, three is sacred.

S [slightly uncomfortable laugh]: Well, I don’t think I’m ready to handle that one, Delenn.

Delenn then calling Lennier back to the station to do some secret mission thing for her, which involves her sneaking out of her bed while her husband sleeps to meet Lennier in a darkened alley behind a bar, where she tenderly strokes his face and they have a whole conversation about whether her husband understands her or not.

A scene where Lennier comes back from his secret mission to meet both Delenn and Sheridan, Delenn goes to greet him with a hug, and Lennier does this very pointed step back and nod in the direction of her husband, and she pulls back and just sort of pats him on the arms instead. 

I MEAN.

But, the issue here is not what fans did about it but what canon did about it. Canon did the canon equivalent of dragging that ship outside and shooting it in the head. 

In the final few episodes of the entire series, Lennier tries to kill Sheridan, runs away in shame, and then someone finds his diary in which he’d been writing for ages about what a bad decision he thought Delenn had made and how her whole marriage was an awful idea. Even to this day, it’s fun/awful watching people go through a first-time watch when they get to season 5 and hit that. ‘Character assassination in the form of a diary’ was a whole thing for a while. It’s been 20+ years and the actor who played Lennier is stilll mad about it (not because of shippy stuff, but because he - correctly! - thinks Lennier absolutely would not have done that). 

What *fandom* did, on the other hand, was Fixed The Problem.

Delenn/Lennier was not at all a big ship when the series was airing, and for a few years after. Then the fandom dynamics started to change. With less pressure on what canon was going to do, it felt like fandom had more space to play around with things it didn’t do. Fanfic got less interested in trying to fit within the overall story being told and started spinning off in all its own directions. And *this* ship started getting bigger and bigger. People did really interesting things with it, canon divergence went in all directions, everyone wrote a fix-it story of some variety, some authors did a great series of connected stories based on an idea that Minbari have three genders, the quality of the writing has been brilliant. And I think without that absolute whiplash feeling of what happened in canon, there would never have been this feeling of “well I’m not having THAT” which led to all this.

We did not need canon! Canon had done its thing. And canon had broken our hearts enough ways with many of the other stories it told (entirely on purpose) and we weren’t just going to sit back and let it ruin us forever.

By comparison, the other ship I was into was Marcus/Ivanova. This is entirely doomed. Susan Ivanova’s love life is just perpetually doomed. The first partner of hers we meet is an ex who’s interested in getting back together, but then it turns out he’s just using her to infiltrate the station for the fascist terrorist group he’s secretly joined. Then she falls for an archrival of hers, Talia, who works for Psi Corps, the organisation she loathes most of all things - but it’s okay because it turns out Talia is starting to question them too! Maybe these crazy kids can make it work! They have one night together and then OOPS turns out Talia was being secretly controlled by a sleeper personality implanted in her by Psi Corps the whole time. Ivanova’s love life is doomed. 

So for two seasons, she has this sort-of-flirty, sort-of-bickery, sort-of-friendship going with Marcus, who is on the surface of it very much “why not fall in love at first sight like a true romantic, YOLO!” but it turns out is actually deeply messed up himself and full of survivor’s guilt and pain and, you get the clear impression, would have died of shock if she’d actually called his bluff on the OTT flirting and said “yeah, let’s go for it”. And then he sacrifices himself to save her life. It is a very tragic ending, it is absolutely the way he would have wanted to go, she wakes up both furious and absolutely distraught, says that the last thing she heard was him saying “I love you”, says she wishes she’d at least slept with him once, and says that in a way all love is unrequited. PAIN. 

So, lots of fix-it fanfic, lots of ‘Marcus comes back to life’, lots of canon divergence AUs where he doesn’t die and they live happily ever after and both get over their huge levels of unresolved pain. Pretty standard for that kind of pairing. And as a pairing it doesn’t get in the way of any big canon pairings, it doesn’t imply anything icky like mentor/student power imbalances or adultery. And JMS clearly quite liked it. So that’s better, right?

NO. It was WORSE.

JMS wrote an Marcus/Ivanova story himself, published in one of the sci-fi magazines, to try to give them a happy ending. This happy ending involves Marcus, many many years in the future, waking up from the cryogenic suspension he’s in (it’s sci-fi, keep up, keep up). Ivanova is long dead, but he isn’t about to let this get in the way, so what he does is to *create a new Ivanova* by getting some kind of DNA + computerised memory/personality bank thing, finding a doctor who will clone her, putting himself back into animated sleep until the clone reaches the age Ivanova was when she died, then - THEN, I’M STILL GOING - takes her to a distant planet where, with her memories wiped and their spaceship having deliberately been crashed BY HIM so there’s no way back, they live out their lives in peace.

WHAT.

That pairing still does okay in fandom but it’s not really taken on a post-show world of headcanons and riffing on other people’s ideas and tropes in the way that Delenn/Lennier has (and we all just pretend that story never existed). 

So! This has been my experiences in the field of What We Do When The Show Has Thoughts On That Non-Endgame Ship We’re Into. Fandom manages. Fandom will see you through. And in the words of Susan Ivanova:

Babylon Five was the last of the Babylon stations; there would never be another. It changed the future, and it changed us. It taught us that we have to create the future, or others will do it for us. It showed us that we have to care for one another, for if we don’t, who will? And that true strength sometimes comes from the most unlikely places. Mostly though, I think it gave us hope that there can always be new beginnings - even for people like us.

[rockinlibrarian]

Post-Umbrella Academy S4 Reaction Part One: Reacting More to the Fandom than the Show (only vaguely spoilery)

I would like to state for the record that I enjoyed The Umbrella Academy Season Four. I had plenty of issues— things that weren’t to my taste, abandoned or neglected plot or character threads, plot contrivances and wasted opportunities— and I wasn’t satisfied with the ending AT ALL (it COULD have worked if done…completely differently?)—but I enjoyed myself, minus the downer at the very end (and I mean VERY end, I was hoping for more post-credit redemption than we got, and that could’ve fixed it for me). It’s like that post I reblogged this morning goes— there’s enjoyment, there’s in-universe sense, and there’s art-of-storytelling sense, and they can all stand separately.

I’d love to chew over the stupid bits and gush over the brilliant bits, but it’s kind of hard right now, because so much of the reactions online are not, well, objectively balanced discussions? People’s issues erased any of the enjoyment, and now the whole thing is trash and I think we all agree this never happened.

I’m not writing this post to call anyone out for that. All our reactions are valid. It just feels like the angry voices drown out the other voices, and it’s made me uncomfortable, and that is ALSO a valid reaction to have, so I just want to put my voice out there, too.

The weird thing about me and The Umbrella Academy is that this is the first fandom where I’ve ever been more invested in fanworks of it than in the original show (and in the comics, not at all. Though I still want to see Viktor and Diego start a punk band). So I think that’s why I’m not Ragey. I wouldn’t say I COMPLETELY didn’t care what happened in the show, but I know that there’s a thousand other AUs of it out there ALREADY. So I honestly went into it almost as if reading a fic of it. In fics there are inevitably interpretations I don’t agree with, ships I don’t care for, things I would have done differently, but the writer loves the same characters as me so let’s see where they go.

And then I leave a comment about all the positives. “Oh, I love what you’ve done with Viktor!” (I won’t MENTION that I think you should have let him get back into music and spend a LOT more time with Five, because it’s not my story, and hey, you have done some LOVELY, thoughtful things with one of the characters that is dearest to me so let me tell you that in this comment!) “I’m REALLY enjoying your Allison-and-Klaus partnership, we don’t see enough of that but it’s so obvious in retrospect that they should be friends. They probably bonded over fashion as children when Viktor was like ‘Sorry Allison you know I REALLY DO want to be friends with you but I JUST DON’T GET IT’.” (I am thinking about how you never really resolved the huge emotional thread between Allison and Viktor in your last chapter, but that’s not what we’re talking about here). “This is admittedly not my ship, but you’ve successfully captured my own beliefs about HOW this character would behave in this situation” (shouting out to @stephsageek for that one, who did it, and did it well, before canon even thought to attempt to. ;) ) I could write lots more in my theoretical Comment on “Season Four of the Umbrella Academy” on AO3, but I don’t want to be too spoilery in this post and I’m just being metaphorical.

Honestly, I’m more upset now after a day of discourse than I was about the ending, and I think it’s because I’m afraid of people rage-abandoning the fandom. Because Legion, the show that started me on Seriously Writing Fanfic, was a mess after season 1. I personally didn’t enjoy MOST of season 2, but I DID enjoy season 3 even though so much of it made no sense, and I can rant about it (Legion did a variation on the same terrible ending as TUA, actually! I have to say that the emotional beats were handled better, but the plot itself was way way stupider). But I didn’t start writing fic until after the dreaded (but not without redeeming qualities) season 2, when quite a lot of people had given up on the show. I’ve written fix-its, mostly ones that embellish on the canon of the later seasons, fixing it without actually throwing it away. I’ve been playing in the whole sandbox for six years now, and “Magic Man of Oz” uses like every grain of sand in it, and it’s my favorite fic I’ve ever written, and I am genuinely sad about all the people who rage-quit that show so will never read it. I am mostly sad that the person who got me on AO3 to begin with abandoned the Legion fandom the moment they finished their epic How Season Two Should Have Ended fic (or before— pretty sure the last few chapters were written with gritted teeth determination to just be Done with the whole thing) and so THEY never read “Magic Man of Oz.” And they were my biggest cheerleader when I started posting fanfic! Honestly, is this whole paragraph just me freaking out about TUA fandom just because not enough people read a fic of mine from a different fandom that was fairly cult to begin with? It might be. Sorry. I apparently have issues?

(That first sentence is really the thesis statement of this post now. The moment I wrote it, I reread it and said, "Oh. THAT'S what's happening with me, isn't it?" My 11th grade research writing teacher is yelling at me in my head to move the dang thesis statement to earlier in this essay, but too bad, this is Tumblr).

I can’t help comparing Legion and TUA, not least because the latter only got bumped up my watch list by someone describing it as “Legion-Lite”— and it really is, in so many ways! But they’re also my top two most-written-for fandoms, and I’ve been toying with a crossover or two— which I feel even more compelled to write now, because it’s post-canon for both shows (even though both shows claim there IS no post-canon— I have found the way!) And it honestly helped ME emotionally to accept the end of TUA when I could immediately say, “OH, well actually, that flows right INTO how I was already going to start working-title A Legion of Umbrellas!” I originally started this paragraph in parenthesis because it seemed like an aside, but it’s really not, because all I’m saying is fanfic flows eternal! and so forth.

So, hi, out there. Just letting out my feelings and hoping someone out there feels the same way (maybe not about Legion— I keep TRYING, but can’t find any takers), and I may still write a more detailed and spoilery reaction post to the show ITSELF, but I had to get this off my chest first.

[bellabrady]

I need to vent this to someone and idk why but i just feel like you’ll understand me idk but….

I’m terrified about next week’s episode… like I feel like there is so much within the fandom that is hanging onto next week’s episode being a definite thing on whether or not buddie will go canon, and it’s been stressing me out seeing all of the discourse… I have so many strong feelings about the idea of Tommy (who has always pissed me off as a character from the Begins episodes) and how so many people just suddenly out of nowhere love the guy and compare him to Buck and Eddie when there has literally been barely anything comparable to the two of them as characters since he’s been back. Not only that, but the theory of Buck and Tommy being a thing as a potential for Eddie to come to terms with his feelings doesn’t make me feel comfortable— Not in a “omg i just want Buck and Eddie to jump into bed with each other and call it a day” because i don’t… I just know us queer people are still only seen as tokens half the time, and I’m worried that if they pair Buck with a guy (while Yay for bi!Buck) who is a character that A) is from his past, and B) is for some reason all of a sudden adored by a bunch of people (for reasons i will never understand)… I’m afraid they will just put he and Buck together and call it a day, and just keep Eddie and Buck as “brothers” when that is such a disservice to both of them… If Buck does become confirmed as bisexual, I have no issue with him exploring his sexuality with other men who aren’t principal characters because that won’t have any bearing on the finality of buddie as a ship, but I’m afraid that by putting Buck and Tommy together will somehow be ABC’s way of saying “Eh this will do” because of the way so many people have suddenly jumped onto the bucktommy train.

On top of that, the idea of getting jealous!buck would make me happy if it weren’t for the fact that it’s Tommy, and I am terrified that the writers are trying to wrap him up in this glittering duct tape bow and say “we’re not going to give you what you’ve been asking for for 6 years, but we’ll give you this cheap knock off” due to the speculation that Eddie will somehow reaffirm that he sees Buck as just a friend being the catalyst for Buck exploring his sexuality with Tommy.

It would be painful as a longtime buddie truther, but it would also be painful as a genuine fan of the characters because i feel like that would ruin everything they have built together over the past 6 years, and it would be a cop-out because they don’t want to go that route, even though they are the ones who have set up buddie in this context on so many different occasions…. sure a lot of buddie moments can be real things that happened in platonic relationships, but the framing and subtext has always been this will they/won’t they dynamic, and it feels so icky to me for them to make Buck Bi, and have him NOT end up with Eddie.

And I know people are quick to point out Ryan and Oliver in these recent interviews and everything as some sort of evidence towards buddie canon, but I would think a lot of us have been in this carousel long enough to know that if the possibility of a popular queer romance on a show is one of the BIGGEST marketing tactics that shows use. I’m not saying that Ryan and Oliver themselves are queerbaiting because of how much they’ve supported the buddie fandom over the years, but something in me feels like a lot of their PR appearances lately have been to intentionally cause speculation so that they don’t lose the buddie portion of the viewers when they rip the rug out from under us…. (again not blaming Ryan and Oliver AT ALL because they have no say)

idk if any of that makes sense and im sorry for like the novel i just wrote in your asks lmao but i just needed to get that off my chest and you are one of the few people I have seen who also seems to dislike Tommy’s character, and could maybe possibly see where I’m coming from with my anxiety on this whole thing because it’s been making me spiral lately….

it’s just this ship (as i’m sure it is to others) is really important to me and seeing the online support of a bucktommy romance as a means of getting buddie worries me that the writers will take that as people wanting bucktommy canon and just giving us that as consolation for not giving us buddie and that breaks my heart because i have such a deep connection to both Buck and Eddie in different ways, and i want to see them and their relationship done good service, and frankly none of the theories i’ve seen surrounding it have been anything i want to see with them because i hate tommy, and don’t want him of all people to be the reason we get screwed over.

hi there! you pretty much described exactly what i've been feeling and i 100% understand and feel your anxiety. most people have been super excited for the next ep but i truly feel like it won't go over well for us (though i'll gladly be pleasantly surprised). i even had to log off twitter for a bit because thinking about all the potential ways this thing with tommy could go was giving me legitimate anxiety (yes i'm aware that's not an entirely normal way to feel about a tv show, but sue me, i'm mentally ill)

i feel like i also haven't really been able to enjoy 911 twitter, tumblr, tiktok etc anymore because so many people, like you said, just jumped onto the bucktommy train and i hate it for so many reasons. i just wish everybody was as keen on ignoring that guy as i am.

so yes, i completely agree with you and i definitely relate. i'm glad you felt like you could vent to me and if you ever wanna DM me so we can share our anxiety a bit, please feel free! <3

[pitchforksraised]

Hey hey! [Intro post number. I don’t even know at this point lmao]

Hihi! The name’s uh. many things, but I mostly go by Silhouette, Koi or Star(dust(ed))! You can see more things (which includes pronouns, other names / nicknames, honorifics and more) here if you want. Not required, but it’d be appreciated if you at least checked it out!

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I do NOT accept donation / advertisement asks. I am very, very much afraid of answering an ask and it being scam. Now, I’ll never straight up block you for sending asks unless you’re doing it repetitively and purposefully, I’ll just remove the ask and leave it be, but just keep this in mind.

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To get it over with quick, here’s a DNI, Thin Ice and BYI list.

DNI: - If you’re on any basic DNI list - If your blog is 18+, NSFW / NSFT, minors DNI, etc - If your blog is centered around any kind of discourse - If you enforce or heavily pressure your religion onto others - If you actively support something or someone that is inherently wrong - If you support AI art - If I blocked you (I blocked you for a reason. <3) - Selfcest shippers (Selfcest makes me EXTREMELY uncomfortable.) [Note that this may change overtime, and that I do NOT support Blushcrunch (Creators of Dandy’s World) or Groink (Creator of AIB) for their actions. I simply like what they have created and interact with content made by other fans.]

THIN ICE: - If you ship mirrormystery / Rodger x Glisten (I personally hc them as siblings and dislike this ship heavily. I don’t care if you do ship it, just don’t bring it up around me, please.) - If you ship host x contestant (It generally makes me uncomfy for some reason I can’t describe well. I don’t mind if you ship anything of the sort as long as it ain’t problematic, just don’t bring it up to me pls.) [This may be updated in the future. This is all I have for now.]

BYI / NOTES: - I am a minor! This is extremely important. Don’t be weird or you’re getting blocked, especially if you’re an adult. - I most likely have anger / emotional issues and I can get extremely emotional and pissed off pretty quick. I’m sorry if I cause anything bad to happen because my emotions are extremely chaotic and basically control how I act n stuff. - I am a huuuge mess, and a ping pong ball is constantly bouncing around in my brain - I probably have adhd, more specifically hyperactive impulsive adhd. I am not diagnosed (though I really want to get diagnosed), but I have done a decent amount of research to assume this, so please keep that in mind. - Tone tags are essentially my life support. Please use them or some other indicator for tone, since I can’t understand it unless it’s very blatantly being shoved in my face. - Anything I hyperfixate on something, you’re 100% going to notice by my reblogs. I will flood your page lol - I will like and mass reblog posts a lot!! If you don’t like this, please let me know. - At times, I will randomly condense my speech. If you can’t understand, I’ll fix that! - I refer to characters I really like or relate to a lot as “me”, especially Pitchfork from AIB and Razzle and Dazzle from Dandy’s World. If you ever have a problem with this, PLEASE let me know. I myself am not a fictionkin, fictive or anything of the sort, so if this ever becomes a problem to you I’ll change it asap. - I can’t read things right sometimes. Be patient with me I’ll get it eventually lmao

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I use my own personal tags when making posts every once in a while! These tags will be listed below.

-.River’s shenanigans (Kind of a shitposting tag. Basically just dumb or silly things I post.) - River’s art (My art tag! NOT TO BE USED BY AI.) - River’s ask responses (My responses to things I get in my inbox!) - River’s thoughts (Kind of a vent tag atp, originally and sometimes used as a marker to indicate that I’m posting about things on my mind. Not used often.) - River’s writing (My writing! Read TWs on posts if needed.)

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Fandoms, interests and hyperfixations! I’m in quite a few communities in the moment. Some of these are:

-.Object shows (more specifically AIB) - Dandy’s World - Just Shapes n Beats - The Pink Corruption (I consider them two different things. If you don’t like this, don’t fight me over it; just DNI and move on, please.) - Pikuniku (Is there even a Pikuniku fandom-?) - Bugbo - Sprunki - Pressure - Blocktales - The Robloxia: Until Dawn

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Lastly, here’s a few funky lil userboxes. Thank you for reading! [Credits to the userboxes in order: 1 (me!), 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

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Preferably like / interact with this post if you’ve read it, but I’m not forcin ya.

[starryjkoo]

i think we should be allowed to be a hater more, i think we should called out people for making mistakes and being dumb more, i think we should be free to be SOMETIMES a person with flaws and bitter more... its UNHEALTHY to be understanding, positive and good vibes all the times.

being a hater is not about being jealous with someone, hating something or someone is not always about envy cause not everything in this world is about this feelings... sometimes you just hate something or someone cause its not good, the person is not talented, not charismatic, dont have an ounce of something worth of being famous and we should be allowed to not like it.

and im purposely seeing a hater and not an anti cause anti are just vile people, that dehumanize others, i dont do that. i will never go to places saying what i think about certain idols or groups where i know they can see.

if kendrick taught me something is that hating someone and being loud about it can be cathartic in a way that will take me places. that its healthy cause its a normal feeling.

we should be allowed to called things that we dont like in our spaces more we are not saints, we should be allowed to feel ugly things too not just the beauty of life

LOL yeah I totally agree with you!! tbf I think the main problem is that so few people can ever be normal about their hatred/dislike of something in this fandom. Especially if you’re part of whatever fandom faction where that hatred usually gets extremely amplified. So I get why people are really touchy about certain things.

On the other hand it’s weird how you’re not allowed to have normal human thoughts, opinions or emotions around here sometimes either. You can’t dislike or be disappointed by something, sometimes you can’t even be anxious or worried. I think there should be less scrutiny over having negative emotions and more on how you choose to handle them.

The whole recent discourse was funny because some people were making it seem like you were more OT7 if you… multi-shipped? And that disliking certain ships made you a bad ARMY? Another example would be the whole Jeju debacle where even the jkkrs who were being non-toxic about their disappointment were jumped, judged, and shamed so harshly. That kind of thing is so weird and unnatural to me. We can’t even have a bias or a favorite duo/dynamic now? Because of woke?

ARMYs always do this thing where there’s a problem in the fandom and then they over-correct to the opposite extreme so it’s just weird and toxic in a different way. This is where critical thinking is important because it’s good to understand /why/ something is bad so you can fix the actual problem instead of just mindlessly reacting to everything associated with it.

Anyways as someone who is big on haterism I feel this lmao. I have plenty of hater opinions that I share with people (and sometimes we even debate about it in a friendly way) because they’re also just not that serious and it’s pretty general commentary about things going on with BTS content or with other groups or artists in this sphere (even western ones). It’s the same way I approach and interact with any fandom I’ve been in or any content I’ve consumed, pretty normal stuff. Sometimes we also just, you know, dislike stuff.

Art is also supposed to evoke a reaction so if you’re really just having the same lobotomized response to literally every piece of content… isn’t that kind of unnatural? It’s good if something evokes emotion, even if it’s negative (that’s why I really like and am excited about how Jimin isn’t afraid to do something polarizing — and no I’m not saying there’s anything wrong if you genuinely never have a negative emotion around any of this either lol)

Sometimes people also just need to vent and learning how to manage your negative emotions constructively is always going to be more productive than just repressing everything to fit in. It’s better to have ARMY spaces where you can freely talk and work through your thoughts, share conflicting opinions and emotions rather than constantly shaming people (and I’m not talking about toxic echo-chambers).

i will never go to places saying what i think about certain idols or groups where i know they can see.

I think this is really the key here. Haterism is not about harassing or trying to hurt or publicly shame artists or join in on hate trains, it’s just about expressing personal opinions in your own spaces with friends or on relatively contained spaces like Tumblr that will not reach the artist. This is not in defense of or supportive towards the way that a lot of people online are just incredibly mean, cruel and nasty towards these artists and the mass harassment that’s been going on, nor is this advocating being obsessive over your hatred or dislike or something either.

It’s just nice to complain or vent or be shady about inconsequential stuff in your own space sometimes and to do that without certain ARMYs breathing down your neck looking to pounce because they get off on feeling superior to other fans over stupid stuff like fanfic preferences or having never ever disliked a BTS song. I just don’t think anything good comes from toxic positivity even though I can understand and empathize with some of the defensiveness, especially in certain spaces or around certain topics.

Also on calling people out, tbh it’s just a slippery slope. But I definitely don’t get why some people get a pass in this fandom. If we held people accountable maybe some of the toxicity wouldn’t have grown so large and some of these antis wouldn’t have such huge platforms. The way that some people get mad when you point out they interacted with or are following an anti instead of just thanking you and blocking is super weird and telling tbh.

[problematicbyler]

I’m genuinely curious are mileven shippers also “uncomfortable” talking about sex and reading smut? Or is this “creepy” labels are just suited for a gay ship?

Because I’ve always loved reading smut ever since I was mature enough to understand and experience it myself (yes I was a teenager) and I never had any morality issues with it, considering that I’ve been in many many fandoms and one of them being freaking Harry Potter with endless supply of fanfics. But I remember when I first had my gay ship (aahhh those were the days). I also read E rated fanfics about them, amongst others. And very soon after I met byler and saw all these people accusing us.

I remember being so afraid that I actually liked reading smut about gay characters because I’m a heterosexual woman. I started to question my own sexuality and gender but not in a healthy way a person should’ve. As if that was not a big deal by itself I started to question my morals, i was constantly thinking “am i really fetishizing them?” After internalising it and hating myself and thinking I’m a horrible person I confided in some of my friends who’s sexualities and genders are different. Some of them don’t like engaging in smut content (they don’t have a holier than thou attitude they just don’t like it themselves) and some love it. So I wanted to get perspective on this.

(It turned out that yes, I am in fact a heterosexual woman who enjoys this type of content and that doesn’t make me immoral. Just like it doesn’t make anyone immoral.)

These stupid things that are being said can actually harm people, cause them to think negatively about themselves when there is no reason to. When this byler issue first happened back in 2022 I almost went back to that place.

I love engaging in all parts of a fandom and I love hadcannoning and exploring about my ships in every aspect. Regardless of their gender or sexualities. But if this “discourse” only concerns Byler and not mileven then all these people who are slandering us have a different problem (internalised homophobia) and need to take care of it themselves.

Because Harry Potter characters were also teenagers. Fans also watched and read the characters grow up. Those fanfics were also written by both adults and teenagers. This type of conversations never happened. Is it because all the canon ships in HP are heterosexual couples? But if so, were Drarry shippers ever accused also?

So yeah I’m genuinely curious, do milevens even care?

II did think it was hilarious that I saw some folks posting like "this [sexualization of teen characters] never happened in xyz fandom" citing Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, even It. Which like, it definitely did happen, lmao, just because you didn't see it doesn't mean people weren't doing it. And to cite It is hilarious when the canon text has an actual child orgy. But whatever.

I agree it's wild that people assume things about your sexuality based on what you like in fiction. I also saw someone saying that people who like Byler smut are just into it because they are attracted to Finn? Like, I'm asexual. It is so not like that. I just think that Will and Mike want to fuck. It's that simple.

And yeah, the Mileven thing is an interesting point. I haven't seen any Mileven sex discourse but that's because I am not in Mileven spaces. I remember some folks talking about wanting a sex scene in season 5 at one point, but I have no idea if they were attacked for it like Byler smut creators have been.

Ultimately, like you said - the moralizing and harassment hurts real people, unlike the smut itself, which hurts no one.

[lostinthe--stars]

I am not afraid to get into shipping and fandom discourse on here, as that seems to be the way I’m heading. I am very proudly and vocally proship, and I will not apologise for that. This is peoples sign to block me and move on if they don’t like it.

[fireandiceland]

Hello recently fell back into the hetalia fandom again , uhh i kinda dont know how to navigate the fandom etiquettes around here anymore since the last time i was interested was like 8-9 years give or take and wonder what has changed (sorry if its an annoying ask...)

Hi! It’s not annoying at all, don’t worry! I’m not sure if I’m the right person to ask this though because I joined this fandom in 2021, no coming back to it then or anything, I got here as a new fan only 4 years ago haha!

But from what I have gathered through interaction with older and newer fans & what I’ve seen on old blogs I can tell you the following: people tend to be a lot more conscious about real life history, especially when it comes to shipping, but also tend to ignore canon more these days? You should definitely be ready to see a lot of character and ship interpretations that are rather far removed from canon (which isn’t particularly bad but you can like that or not I guess).

Hmm what else.. The manga is still ongoing with weekly updates, but we are currently in what I would call a canon AU arch called gangsta (or gangstalia). I haven’t kept up with reading but it’s kinda like if you combine a non-serious mafia AU with Yugioh-esque card game battles. (And we got some really cool outfits for the characters for that, even for some minor characters!)

What else is new.. If you like “discourse”: I think it was 4 years ago now that the hetalia collezione came out. It’s a book featuring character descriptions lots of little bits of information and trivia about the characters and there was 1 mention there of Austria and Prussia being cousins which caused a huge uproar for a while (a lot of people tend to ignore this now or don’t take it for canon because seriously wtf lol). And recently there’s been a lot of usuk hate on tiktok, seemingly because younger fans haven’t read any older manga strips started calling people names for shipping what they deem brothers or father/son. On tumblr we just block and ignore though, I generally don’t bring hate and negativity here onto my blog.

So much for what you might have missed in recent years. As for current fandom etiquette I think it’s mostly just the basics. Don’t spread hate, curate your online experience (don’t be afraid to use the block button), live & let live (ship & let ship), reblogs are better than likes, keep comments in the tags if they don’t add onto the post.

I think that’s it. This got longer than expected, I’m sorry for getting a little off on a tangent! I hope what I said is at least somewhat helpful & most importantly welcome back and I hope you have a good time coming back into the fandom 🥳🧡

[crazylittlejester]

Hey, I'm going to be a tad bit ranty, and this by no means is targeting anybody but-

I am getting tired of some Zelink shippers on the internet man.

Like, I get it. It's a pretty darn cute ship and in some cases I love it to peices (Skyward Sword and Spirit Tracks Zelink my beloveds), but I swear some of us are straight up insane.

They go out of their way to beat down anybody who doesn't only ship Zelink or completely despise other female characters because it gets in the way of the "correct ship". Seriously I cant be the only one to notice the pure hate Ilia gets because she's another one of Link's love interests. Like, I get it, seeing ships you don't like is annoying, but to harp about how only one is right and above the rest is plan stupid. In some cases it doesn't even make sense, like for TP, but if you dare mention it it's as if you insulted their mother 🙄.

And don't even get me started on the homophobia. They act as if Link kissing a man or Zelda kissing a woman will send them into a coma.

I really like this community, but the shipping discourse is atrocious and trying to find somebody who also likes Zelink but isn't insane is difficult and if I mention I like it people are afraid I'm one of the crazy ones too. It's disheartening and is the reason why I don't even dare go onto Zelda Twitter anymore despite the amazing artist.

Sorry about the rant, but I really had to get this off my chest because I had the misfortune of stumbling upon somebody here doing the exact thing that ran me off of Twitter 🤦‍♀️.

I’m sorry you’ve had a bad online experience with that, I luckily haven’t had too much of that happen around me

I understand why people ship Link and Zelda in all the games, and while I personally don’t, I don’t disagree with people who do. I think it’s a bit insane (/pos) of nintendo to not really confirm anything and leave everything up to the player’s interpretation, and the best part about that is that we don’t have to ship Link and Zelda in every game. There are so many other great ships in the games! And yeah, homophobia is really disheartening and I hate to see it happen in fandoms I care so much about as a queer person myself. Personally every single version of Link gives me queer vibes in some way, and seeing people being so outright homophobic makes me sad.

Keep shipping who you like, as long as it isn’t problematic 🫶🫶🫶 The best advice I can give it to try not to let others ruin a fandom you enjoy, I just block homophobes when I see them

[littleragondin]

SHIPPER TAG GAME

I was tagged by @lurkingshan, thank you very much (´꒳`)♡ My memory is not the best so some of these are going to be a little challenging lol but let’s try!

1. What ship were you completely obsessed with when you were a teenager, but now you don't care anymore?

I don’t know how to “not care” about things I once loved I’m afraid lol. But ships that consumed my life that I now don’t think about very often and am more “what a good surprise to see you here, I still like you" than "oh you are back to consume my life for the next two to fifteen months" are most of the things I watched when I was younger: Logan/Max from Dark Angel, Sam/Jack and Daniel/Jack from Stargate:SG1, Jim/Blair from The Sentinel, Piper/Leo from Charmed, Tim/Tony and Gibbs/Tony from NCIS, etc...

2. Which ship would you consider your first one?

Hmmm… I think the first time I felt emotionally invested in two characters ending up together – in a “watching religiously and asking my mom to tape the wedding episode because we would be traveling on the day it was to be diffused” kind of way – is Fran Fine and Maxwell Sheffield from The Nanny.

We knew they were end game, but STILL!

3. Your first fanfic belonged to which couple?

Oh, good question… I came into fandom via manga and while they were not the ones I shipped the hardest (I was a hardcore Gaara/Lee fan ♡♡♡), I think the first fics I read were NaruSasu and/or Kakashi/Iruka – on personal fan websites.

The first shipping fic I wrote hmmm… I think it actually was some Kakashi/Iruka? I tumbled into fandom really fast once I found it so it’s a bit of a blur lol but yeah, pretty sure it was something Naruto related.

4. Do you remember the first couple you saw a fanart over?

… Not really, but probably either something from One Piece (Zorro/Luffy or Zorro/Sanji) or Neon Genesis Evangelion – those two were the very first manga I read (circa 2002), and I vaguely remember checking them on Google Image for my favorite hobby: “collecting images from the internet that I would then organize carefully in the computer’s little folders” so I must have found some cute stuffs that I didn’t even realize were shipping…

5. Did you ever get into ship discourse?

No. While I generally have strong opinions about stuff, I am pretty non confrontational and I’m here for a good time, not to fight with people, so I avoid it. I’ve seen stuffs that I’m glad I didn’t poke with a ten feet pole. On top of that, I am a huge believer and practitioner of “shipping one character with more than one person (in a polycule or not)” so ship wars have never made much sense to me. Even in qL, even when I really adore the endgame couple(s), I often like thinking of the options, the what-if, etc. so fighting about that does not sound appealing lol

6. Did you used to have any no-otp or have it currently?

Talking about my very first fandoms, I never wanted Sakura with either Naruto nor Sasuke lol I loved her, but hated the idea of either options. Still not sold on it tbh. I also really hated the idea of Hermione with either of the other two lsdfj same reason, I loved her so much, and I loved that they were friends!

I have ships I am uninterested in but I always feel like notp is a little stronger than that, so I don’t think I have any currently.

7. Who were the couple in the last fanfic you read?

Oof, okay, life does come back full circle lol I binged the One Piece Live Action at the start of the month, so the last fics I’ve read since were all Zorro/Luffy.

8. Currently, do you have any OTPs?

DO I EVER?? I have OTP that have been in my heart since I’m 10. And, I mean, by virtue of watching so much QL I have an OTP in every couple I watch get together for 8 to 12 episodes, I’m a big, mushy romantic. Also I will daydream about ships from about anything I watch so…But! My current OTP, the one that owns my heart, that gets me to literally squeal in delight, makes me gasp and cry and twirl my hair while kicking my feet is Nomoto and Kasuga from She loves to cook and she loves to eat!

I love them sooooo much it’d be ridiculous if I had any sort of dignity about that kind of things (I don’t) (*´▽`*)

9. Is there any couple that, to this day, you are extremely mad about not getting together?

Ok you know what? I rewatched some episodes with my mom over my christmas break so I will say yes, Jack O’Neil and Samantha Carter in Stargate:SG1. Yeah, yeah I don’t care that he is her commanding officer and blablabla.

After all this teasing, damn, we could have gotten a little something something when the team finally breaks alright?

10. Is there any ship you used to dislike but now you think they are kind of interesting?

I can’t really think of anything right now to be honest… I feel like anything I’d feel strongly enough to remember I would still dislike now, though, to be frank.

11. Do you have any ship that, in the past, was considered normal but now you would be canceled over?

I guess? I mean, I came to fandom and to QL via yaoi – wich I started reading around 2005, so you can imagine the amount of “problematic” content I enjoyed. Age gaps (I was a HUGE fan of Naono Bohra who like those a lot), power imbalance, dub-con (one of the first yaoi translated in France was Gravitation), and so on and so forth.

12. What was your favorite crack ship?

I can’t answer that one, mainly because I used to have so many of them (I still do, don’t look at me). I got into superheros comics when I was something like 18 and I did RP with a friend where looking back, it seems like our main game was to pair everyone no matter how silly it might have been. I guess in those, I still have a fondness for everything we did that crossed the DC/Marvel divide. We also played a lot with those random ship generators? They gave you two characters and you tried to find a way to make it work. I still like those!

13. Who is the couple you read more fanfics of?

Across all of time?? I… have no idea… like really none. Recently, it’s probably any variations of 3zuns from The Untamed, but for the early years I could not say.

14. What most of your ships usually have in common?

The love I have for them (*¯︶¯*)

Joke aside, I’m not sure? I’m a simple creature, I’m easily swayed, if there is something compelling in the dynamic, I will be interested. I like them sweet but I also have pretty toxic ships, so I think the main thing for me is that there is something interesting going on that makes me want to root for them and/or think about them and how they work together.

15. What do you absolutely hate in a ship?

I need to believe there is a way for them to genuinely love each other. But sometimes, ~the vibes~ just feel rancid to me and I can’t get into it, I can’t explain more than that ^^”

I'll tag, if you feel so inclined: @benkaaoi @troubled-mind @bengiyo @gillianthecat @iguessitsjustme and @heretherebedork

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

The worst part about the anti-proship discourse is the adults who bully teenagers into taking sides in their meaningless online war. They pressure teenagers into siding with them because they know they’re easier to manipulate and control into saying or doing whatever they want. I feel awful for the teenagers forced into this mess who are too afraid to leave because they're scared of what'll happen to them if they do.

yooo that literally happened to me it sucked. I’m still petrified people will hate me bc I write dark fics as a coping mechanism bc I was told that only the side I was on (proshippers) would ever accept me for that and bc of the us vs them mentality you would get sent weird shit just for that so i genuinely thought everyone would think I was an awful freak for it. i was so terrified to talk to anyone who wasn’t involved in that dumb shit until I was like 17 and got into the mcyt fandom where shipping just isn’t as much a thing and i could let my guard down a bit. i don’t know about every specific community, some might be sensible, and most people i've met involved are fine, but my experience was nothing but toxicity that fucked with my moral ocd.

[fizzigigsimmer]

@mania-mono I had to move my reply so I can give this my best shot at an answer without worrying about a word limit. So here I go, and pardon any pre-coffee typos.

I don’t speak for every Billy fan, because I can’t, nor do I speak for every POC because I can’t do that either. Blanket statements, generalities, and opinions grounded in the belief that what you see in front of you - which can only ever be a sample size - is everything, leads to closed mindedness. We are all vulnerable to these things. I think it is human nature to accept what we see and what we are told, in order to make friendly in our groups. So that we feel accepted as well as acceptable and to never think beyond that.

So I understand where opinions like “People only care about Billy because Dacre is attractive [and white]” come from. Within those opinions I can hear the faint echos of social discourse that I as a woman of color have had to bring to the table at one time or another, and I recognize that there is a merit of thought there, that I am 100% sure some fans need to reckon with.

I will never be the person sitting out here trying to disprove that the general fandom is suddenly unproblematic and completely free of the persuasion of whiteness combined with attractiveness and a preference for men.

This black girl will certainly never tell you that she hasn’t run into Billy friendly hot takes and writing that did have whiffs of white washing and erasure that made her uncomfortable and irritated at times. I have no reason to be afraid or to hide from that fact because it’s my lived reality. Every day in every fandom, in every ship. It’s my reality. It sucks. And I am confident and grounded enough in my own thinking to say something when I feel it needs to be said, or to just move on and find something better to read for my own peace of mind.

Yes, some Billy fans are problematic. But that is not my whole experience nor even half of it, and that matters.

Because I will also tell you that in my year or more of engaging in Harringrove fandom I have experienced that type of blindness and bias less than I have in other fandom spaces I have taken part in.That’s why I am here. I do not subject myself to being in places that make me consistently uncomfortable.

My empathy for the character brought me, and I stay because it’s a lovely place to explore my thoughts & feelings and make friends. For the most part I have found this pocket of fandom to be filled with nice people who actually do think through the characters flaws and have conversations about culture and social issues as often as any other fandom space. We bond, we have fun, and occasionally I might get into a debate with someone who I disagree with or disagrees with me about how we perceive the character’s flaws and their cultural impact.

I will tell you that I avoid many other subsections of Stranger Things fandom because my experience was that the balance is not the same in other tags. Because I felt consistently attacked, provoked, and silenced. Not just where it comes to discussions about race, but also disability, fat phobia, and my experiences of trauma and surviving abuse.

The problem I see a lot in fandom is that people are very good at manipulating others. There are whole communities that thrive on the basis of taking popular progressive opinions and using it to bully others for their entertainment or to control their behavior, or both. They rely on the public memory of the valuable work other people have done within culture and use those talking points to invoke fear and shame in their peers for their own selfish reasons. To feel good in the moment. For more reblogs. To feel like they’re part of the winning “team”. To feel like they’re meeting requirements of acceptable behavior. And for many more reasons I’m sure.

Whatever their reason, these folks know when they type out, “people only like Billy because Dacre is attractive”, that most people will instantly remember every discussion they ever sat through on the topic of bias and think ‘I don’t want to be that guy’. Because that’s natural and good and without those natural and good instincts we couldn’t be manipulated into a fear response. But the reality is even just a little bit of critical thinking would make it obvious how biased and unreasonable this take is.

When I hear “People only...” no mater what follows, a little yellow warning light goes off in the back of my mind. Because yes we can joke about certain things and make dumb memes for the fun, but when it comes to making a serious judgment, “People only” is a dangerous place to start. More people need to remember that.

Because I don’t think anyone actually needs to spend a great deal of time talking to Billy fans or researching much of anything at all to debunk this theory. If you replace Billy’s name with any aspect of his character that a person might relate to it falls apart. Because they are there to be related to. And if they are there to be related to, you’d have to be carrying some deep seeded rage and wearing some thick ass blinders to stick to the argument that you truly believe that nothing but white male attractiveness matters to anyone.

“People only care about that teenager because his actor is good looking.”

“People only care about that child, whose mother left, because his actor is good looking.”

“People only care about that blue collar boy because his actor is good looking.”

“People only care about that child of divorce...”

“People only care about that boy who was forced to move towns right in the middle of high school because...”

“People only care about that kid whose dad was abusing him because...”

“People only care about that kid who was dragged into the dark by a monster one night and violated because....”

I think the ridiculousness as well as the danger of this thought process speaks for itself.

I think that if someone finds it easy to believe a blanket statement like “People only care about Billy because Dacre is hot,” and can’t think up a single other reason someone else might relate to the character and talk about it honestly while defending their opinion, that’s their problem and not mine or yours. Either this is someone who doesn’t think much for themselves and is just parroting others, or someone who knows what they are saying probably isn’t actually true, but doesn’t care because the aim is to hurt some and manipulate others.

[confusedgoldenflower]

I’m posting this to add my own story, and to show that just because you weren’t groomed or cyber harassed doesn’t mean your hurt and trauma aren’t valid. Don’t play the suffering Olympics.

This is what got me *officially* into the “discourse,” prior, I’d of course been exposed to it as a child in fandom, especially scrolling on the various fic sites I’d used (AO3 is the only one now because the UI doesn’t hurt my head). I was disgusted and distressed by a lot of it along with being, frankly, afraid of the aggression I’d seen going on. It was probably the best thing for me to not be in the full know about everything; my anxiety would not have survived back then especially if someone harassed me. Also, because of how entrenched it is in fandom, I was fucking one, as previously mentioned, I fucking shipped Thorki. I’ve grown since then, thank fuck. That was the beginning and end of me being one unless one wants to count the absolutely influenced maladaptive daydreams, which I’ve thankfully [mostly] corrected by now. The mostly part may just be intrusive thoughts though…. (Get this, the trick is to not dwell on it!😱)

So I was on my laptop, where I’m not logged in to Reddit, scrolling for prononcon hypocracy for a post a bit ago, because I was sick of being on my phone and came across a familiar post; a post I had seen when it was published and quickly hid (which you can’t undo) because what in even the fuck. Why. (Ex-friend says shit like “oh she’s hardly on she won’t see this,” fucker my accnt was clearly active wth.)

That was a post by a now speedrun ex-friend. And it brought everything flooding back, so I had to talk to my therpaist about it, especially talking through the falsities/blatant non understanding shared in dms and in the thread, which I did see briefly before hiding it and him blocking me on everything—which I maintain is a far overreaction.

Some background is that mainly because of my main persecuter/abuser (sister), being purposefully misunderstood or having words put into my mouth is triggering—not in a “lose my shit” spitting profanities and insults way, but it genuinly causes distress.

And also because of how he spoke, I felt I needed to see how they and him talked him into the mentioned full blocking and how I was this terrible, horrible person that was manipulative and gaslighting (didn’t actually see any of that on my brief scroll).

First, could it have been handled better? Obviously. For sure both parties could have done better. Yes, I used “shit,” which I often use benignly like other Americans (i.e. don’t touch my shit!) though I do understand how he could have found it offensive, I have a brain issue and can’t find the right words when I want to like normal people (we are OLD friends, he KNOWS this), and what led up to this was that I got an email update message about the fic in question, since we were close, we were obviously subscribed to each other on AO3 when the option came up, and since I’d “grown”/come to realizations and left my Thorki “phase” I was taken aback that he was still on this minor character being pimped out story. When he blocked me, it must have affected emails too because I can’t find shit about any updates from him, so no I can’t “pRoVe” it now. And I never read the fic for obvious reasons, though I don’t recall ever seeing “recovery” or any such tag in the info the emails gave, only the “noncon,” I’m fairly certain the innapropriate child content tag as well as, of course, the summary.

This isn’t “harassment” or “doxxing,” especially not any more than him fucking escalating everything by posting it to begin with.

I “address” him without actually meaning to or wanting to speak to him. If he sees this—why the fuck have you violated your own boundaries? Hm? You blocked so stay gone.

The ONE singular decent thing he did was give me red. I like red.

I believe nothing was cut out? Of course I blocked them back so now it only shows one or a few messages at a time in our dms.

You DID miss my entire point, how momentarily self aware, because you were too busy “sticking to your [prononcon] guns” and assigning people words/and actions they didn’t say!

“Thanks it was so hard to cut ties with someone I care about but I needed to.” [I’m not finding this fucking comment again. I used just the few screencaps I’d sent to my therapist.]

So you admit all the time we spent together meant shit all. That despite everything, I was delusional in thinking we had an actual relationship and that I was more than “a rude anon.”

Also, shit of you not to respect all my pronouns.

No. No you do not. For a number of years, you’ve leapt to aggression in all sorts of situations (aka including where it isn’t called for), but I suppose I know why now. I got a comment of blatant misunderstanding/not reading and you jumped down their fucking throat—I’d asked him if I was reading it wrong and did not encourage him to do anything though I did feel I needed to “thank him for helping me” handle the commentor especially since I didn’t feel all that safe saying anything like “why’d you do that” or “that was an overreaction,” with the aggression he’d just exhibited; his comment was demeaning and ended with “grow up.”

So weird to say that alleging abuse and then blocking on everything a long-time relationship is “level headed.”

SO sorry I trusted not only a long time friend but someone who l'd gotten the significant impression was emotionally mature and understood how to establish boundaries say "| don't like this," "or this is over” when they’d need to.

Only with anons/strangers online are the first acceptable boundaries to be blocking. When there's a relationship, there's to be dialogue, actual dialogue. Not making up topics that were never brought up and claiming "you hurt me you hurt me."

I’m the one that ended the conversation by saying you don’t get to treat me like my sister does. And I left. You continued speaking. You ran to fucking Reddit. You didn’t set it down for a better dialogue at a different time, you blocked me on everything over words you made up me saying.

Nowhere there did you make it clear to end it, especially when you kept bringing up unrelated shit/assigning me words.

“I had to block her, she’s the type to keep calling if she doesn’t get a response.”

What in the fuck. Actually. I don’t do calling, I do messaging. I only “call you repeatedly” if we have plans and you’re not answering, or your mother called my mother to call me to get a response from you because you’re not responding to your mother.

Some of the other comments were so pathetic too. Repeating that “they’re too stupid to understand” schtick. And “omg that wording is so ridiculous”—wrow, for someone who gave the impression of understanding, thanks for just the pure shitting on and no actual understanding like “this person has a difficulty with words but their intent is understandable.” And making fun of on-the-spot ideas for BETTER tagging? Really? At least I’m trying—oh wait, you don’t care about any of that, that’s right. Silly me, thinking empathy would exist here.

There was another thing I wanted to highlight. If I remember I’ll add it.

Having a meaningful relationship blown away like fucking smoke for what should have been a nonissue between two communicative adults, and not just him but an entire fucking thread acting like my abuser really hurt.

And having all those interactions and years recontextualised has been difficult.

Him and my sister: logic? Listening? Nah, I’m assigning you what you’re saying so I get to have the argument that’s in my head using your body without caring about you. Also I’ll get offended when you make decent points or point out what I’m doing.

Honestly, what he’d said about his mother and what she’d reported makes a lot of sense now.