#fanfom discourse

[toxicanonymity]

Dear Anon Haters (Not just mine),

You don't have to like everyone. People can rub you the wrong way. But sometimes petty hatred goes too far. Hating Elon Musk or Stephen Miller? Rational. *Productive* if it leads to activism. Hating members of fandom so much that you can't stop watching them or sending hate? That's a problem.

The solution isn't to justify the emotion by convincing yourself that anyone you hate must be doing real harm. Slapping them with labels that are universally considered vile and hate-worthy is a desperate move. Doing this serves no one except those who benefit from the dilution and misuse of those terms. Like predators and the far right. It hurts everyone else, including you.

Obsessive hate is a form of self sabotage.

It can raise cortisol, disrupt sleep, and weaken libido. Hate is a black hole that sucks up mental energy and space that could be used on things with actual payoff. You don't wanna look back and wonder what you could've done with all the time and effort you spent stalking, dragging, or stewing over someone. You'll never know what you could've created, learned, or experienced. If you're in an echo chamber, it's robbing you of these things.

Making someone else's life miserable will never make you fulfilled. I'm not asking you to swear off being a hater for life, and I'm not saying no one is ever worthy of hate. But for your own good, try being honest with yourself and open to the idea that there is a better use for that energy, even if your only motivator is self-interest.

I know you care less about the impact to the other person, especially if you've truly deluded yourself into believing everyone you dislike is a terrible person. But it is worth remembering that behind every screen, there is a real person with an entire life and inner world and people in their life. People behind the screen have their own responsibilities, goals, regrets, dirty dishes, bills, trauma, shortcomings, failures, losses... You might have more in common with them than you think. They might even be actively involved in something IRL that you would support. And you never know what someone is going through. But you do know they are not responsible for your core insecurities.

You and the person you hate have common enemies, for sure. Like the ones devaluing human life and taking health care away and militarizing ICE, sending BIPOC and immigrants to alligator alcatraz, destroying the earth, and literally poisoning marginalized communities. If spite/hate is the only motivation that works for you, maybe try a placebo like redirecting it to one of these common enemies.

These common enemies are so insidious, so much more worthy of that hater energy. But you already know that, so what's the deal? Maybe the idea of upsetting someone lets you feel some kind of power and control you lack elsewhere. Maybe, with those more deserving of hate, the instant gratification isn't there compared to lashing out at someone more likely to read your message. But where is that gratification even coming from? What is it made of? What does it say about you? Because I promise you, it doesn't say anything at all about the person you hate.

Ty for reading, even if you hate-read. 🖤 ☠️

Managing your tumblr experience

How to stop obsessing over someone you hate

12 steps to stop feeling bitter:

1. Do a genuine re-evaluation, being honest with yourself. Often, in telling our story to others, we stop telling the truth to ourselves. What actually haunts you, versus what you tell your friends bothers you because they all agree it should?

2. Put your story on hold. What would happen if, just for a week, or even a few days, you take a break from telling it?

3. Take what responsibility you can for your feelings. The point is not to blame yourself, but to reclaim your personal power.

4. Stop spying. Spying on the person who triggered your upset is self-torture that inevitably lowers self-esteem. Spying on others can also be addictive. If you can’t stop spying, you might need support.

5. Face up to your hidden fears. Bitterness often is a perfect disguise for fear of failing. If the odds are stacked against you and nothing is fair, it's not your fault if you don't succeed how you want. If you deal with the fear, you won’t need the bitterness.

6. Forgive when feeling bitter? Sure, but only at your own pace. Fake forgiveness can be a way of just denying how you feel, or even hold you back from processing emotions and situations.

7. And don’t forget to forgive yourself, too. It’s possible to hold on to feeling bitter for a long time so you can focus your anger on someone else because the hard truth is that you are furious at yourself.

8. Step into the now. Bitterness lives in the past and the future. Get into the now moment by concerning yourself with current opportunities and goals.

9. Branch out from feeling bitter. Bitterness tends to fade in the face of excitement and joy. In other words, new and better experiences.

10. Set mini goals for yourself each day. Bitterness is a powerful tide, and best intentions to try new things and be mindful can soon be caught in its tug. The way around this is to not just make big goals, but also small, achievable goals that keep you on the road away from feeling bitter.

11. Try a new perspective. Feeling bitter can have us seeing life from a very narrow perspective indeed. Imagine what the situation you are struggling with would look like from a different viewpoint entirely.

12. Seek support. Feeling bitter can be quite the battle to move on from. And sometimes the strongest tactic and easiest way forward is to accept help.

----

[kari-izumi]

LMAO, common fandom puritan L

Took off the person's Twitter screenshot since they want me to, but they strongly believe it is not common for minors to be negatively affected by fandom content of kids shipped with adults, at least not enough that adults should feel any responsibility at all about where they post it.

So feel free to add all the thoughts you want in notes, and if you'd rather be anonymous here's a poll (if you've never seen any such thing happening just skip it)

[insult-the-glory]

Since there's a release date now for the ocean saga (!!!!!) I figured I might as well type out a thought I've been nursing for a couple months now

As much as I love Epic as a piece of art, fundamentally I disagree with Epic's philosophical position as I understand it from what has been released.

The point of Epic, at least as far as I see it, is that Ody is presented with several competing philosophies on how he must act in order to get home, among them being Polites', Eurylochus', and the gods'. Mainly I want to focus on the conflict between Polites' philosophy and the gods' (Eurylochus' as far as I can tell is just "be more cautious"). Polites' philosophy is "whatever we face, we'll be fine if we're leading from the heart...greet the world with open arms" while the gods' advocate a more ruthless approach: Athena tells Ody "Have you forgotten the lessons I taught you? / He's still a threat, until he's dead" and Poseidon's philosophy famously is "Ruthlessness is mercy upon yourself".

Now my fundamental philosophical disagreement with the show is that the text seems to agree with the gods'. Ody's refusal to kill Polyphemus directly causes all his troubles with getting home; Polites' open arms philosophy results in his death; Ody will eventually ask "if became the monster to everyone but us / and made sure we got home again, who would care if we're unjust?"

The thing is though , this isn't even about Ody's responsibility to his crew because he will ultimately fail to bring anyone but himself home! And if the text ends up thematically saying "it is good and right to do whatever's necessary to get what you want, no matter who gets trampled along the way" idk that super won't sit right with me. Now, hopefully the show will end up saying something different—I think Athena's relationship with Telemachus might end up reinterpreting or transforming her philosophy but frankly I don't know enough about what her relationship with Telemachus will be like. Also there are still two songs I believe of which we know nothing. And when we have the whole show I'll be able to properly do a close reading!!

[valentialbein]

Echoes: Shadows of Valentia is kinda of in a weird fandom spot, the Awakening-Fates fans don't like the old school gameplay and lack of an Avatar, but the NES-SNES era fans don't like the Awakening call backs. That is my opinion anyhow.

there’s also the story which is mediocre-to-good. due to being pretty simple but having a few major controversial plot beats but still being presented very well. fates was the mainline game before it and people always have something to rag on with fates so echoes probably looked like a 5 course meal to those who hated fates story (though ive seen too many people on reddit comparing alm and corrin being the narrative’s special little babies) but it also managed to somehow be more sexist than og gaiden???? like imagine being the old school fans seeing they made your game have more brainwashed girls and this time it’s celica

but this is all speculation. i played echoes this year man i missed all the fandom discourse. what isnt speculation is that the map design leaves a lot to be desired

[ourochoco]

fandom discourse is stupid but if you call someone a “puriteen” or “fanfom police” or something then im just gonna ignore what u say…

[vampylily]

one flaw I have is that I hate being involved in fanfom drama and discourse and what not but I love reading fan responses to events and gauging different pov and general fan opinion. Like I don't want to be the solider on the front lines but I will visit the site 4 years later with a little brush to dig up the bones and try to stitch together what the story was.

by that i mean I just spent a solid 30 minutes reading old tweets by korean bandom fans about the ryan/idkhow drama and what the fan opinion is compared to the majority here. it's been so polarizing bc I guess there are ryan s main girlies* out there.

[suenitos]

Genuinely I was never in the fanfom, never watched vld, never even gave it a cursory glance , and even I KNEW about the sheith/klance wars shit was BAD

the proshipper discourse........shivers

[florencekinnie-slash-hj]

Heat waves is a fanfic, there was a piece of fan art from it in the image you posted.

Additionally, most of us in Minecraft SMP fandoms that have ships in them don’t ship the content creators. We ship their roleplay characters.

If you see somebody refering to a character, it will be referred to as “c!” For the DSMP, and “q!” For the QSMP. if they’re referring to the actual people, they’ll specifically write “cc!” Before. I know it’s really confusing because the characters are referred to the same names as their content creator usernames, but the two are not one and the same. I, personally, don’t ship RPF or any of the content creators together. I ship the characters that they play.

As for RPF, you have cc!s that are fine with it and encourage it, and you have cc!s that aren’t have have stated that numerous times. Most of the people that engage in RPF or ship the cc!s are respectful of the boundaries that the streamers have set up. You have plenty of people who aren’t (people who shipped cc!Tubbo and cc!Ranboo and how they acted towards the two is a perfect example), but that’s not the majority.

None of the cc!s (at least that I’ve seen) have an issue with their characters being shipped or written about. Cc!Wilbur literally wrote a fanfiction about c!Wilbur and c!Quackity, which you can find on ao3.

As for the post that you took a screenshot of, I don’t think that you even read the whole thing. If you did, you probably would have realized I was talking about characters and not the actual people. I’m going to give some context, because it’s important when it comes to that post.

Fred is a (technically) NPC from the QSMP. He’s not even played by a streamer. He’s played by one of the mods on the server that plays a bunch of the characters on the island just to fill those roles for the lore. It’s like if someone was controlling all the Minecraft villagers in the Minecraft world instead of them being pre programmed mobs.

I know a lot of this information is really confusing, but it’s really easy to judge a fandom from the outside without knowing any of the context or nuance inside of it. Especially since you’ll never see the faces of fans that are in specific fandoms. It’s really easy to demonize the actions of any fan group that you may not understand the culture/context/nuance of. I hope that if you read up until this point, you were able to understand at least a little bit of the nuance that goes into those of us in SMP fandoms.

This next part is to respond to these tags

I was referring more to young people in fandom who don’t understand general social etiquette when it comes to respecting other human beings. A lot of the people that were in fandoms that have bad reputations (such as Homestuck, Undertale, Hamilton, just to name a few) were young and inexperienced when it comes to fandom. The difference with Hamilton is that many of us didn’t understand that the characters we saw portrayed on the stage/in the music, were portrayals of the founding fathers. For me at the time, it didn’t at all register that the two were one in the same, because of how far removed they were from everything that we’d learn in history class. I saw the Lin Manuel versions of the founding fathers as their own characters, rather than slave owning rapists.

Younger people in fandom have under developed pre frontal cortex’s, and less life experiences than those of us that are older. For some, it may even be their first time in fandoms/fan spaces. I know that for me, I was surrounded by this entire culture of owo-ified founding fathers when I saw fanart/fanfic for Hamilton, and so I, as an inexperienced 12 year old, jumped on the train without critically thinking through any of it.

Most older people in fandom have horror stories of the things that they saw, or even actively engaged in, from their youth in fandoms. What makes the Hamilton fandom different is that the characters were based on real people.

This sounds, on a surface level, very similar to the the c!s/q!s and the cc!s in MCYT fandoms, but the difference is that the characters are characters, and that the only thing that is the same as the cc!s, the real people, is that they share the same username.

On top of all of this, I’m sorry if my initial reblog felt as though I was attacking you or your post. That was not at all my intention. All I wanted to do was to humanize the kids that didn’t/currently don’t know the weight of their actions. One day they will. (I also was just being silly when I wrote the things in all caps, but I know how sometimes in internet speak, all caps = yelling. I’m sorry if that is how it registered.)

[aroaceconfessions]

being an aspec shipper is actually the funniest fucking thing. a lifetime of getting blasted with descriptions of what romance is like and it bouncing off you because you are literally not built that way, but redirecting your limited understanding of it onto two characters and going "yeah i think that tracks. that's probably how it works. love that for them. i think"

[fragranceman]

say it with me everyone

STUFF CAN BE TWO THINGS

[drake-the-incubus]

Ignore this post and move on.

What killed the Eddsworld fandom? Purity politics.

And I’m not talking Moho’s ass with the racism and transphobia, I’m talking about continuously harassing creators that have done past wrongs into leaving. Harassing people over “shipping abusive ships” (it’s Eddsworld every ship is abusive) or for engaging in weird fetishes/tropes you don’t agree with (vore is weird but... how the hell is it some horrible thing?)

It shot itself by continuously having a constant set of ship wars. Hell, the Paultryck one being the worst one and I remember that!

People saying to stop shipping it completely because “what are you a freak” genuine person who separates the creators from the show?

People who refused to not use the real names bc uwu shipper rights because they deadass liked having their heart in front of their eyes with how far up their asses they were.

Then there’s the decent people who literally didn’t do anything wrong caught on both sides who listened to the requests like nice decent people, who got blamed usually for the wrong doings.

We’ve had people obsessively stalk Tord (leave him alone you awful, horrible people) and harass him off the Internet. Tord. Edd’s friend. That’s when a lot of people left the fandom bc who would want to stay? I wouldn’t.

Eddsweenie/Sinsworld discourse. Just... no. (Let’s not even start with the fact that sinsworld wouldn’t be half the issue if there were more women the fandom could latch onto and the four main characters wouldn’t be men, and the fact eddsweenie was genuinely used)

Tord got harassed and stalked off the internet, PART TWO! Because everyone didn’t learn from the FIRST TIME!

Every time you idiots invoke Edd’s name as what he would and wouldn’t want in the fandom regarding shipping content or fanfics I lose twenty years of my life, my will to live and millions of braincells. I don’t know how to tell you to respect the creator and stop using him for woke discourse points.

Harassing guest animators for not being Edd’s style.

Pre-Legacy vs Legacy and which is valid in serious discussion, (as if legacy wasn’t building from former ideas with Edd). To the point of fandom elitism if you enjoy any of the new Eddisodes. Especially Saloonatics, Trick or Threat (?), Mirror Mirror, The animated Christmas one done by someone else, or The End (I mean it’s not the greatest but let the team live jfc eventually it would have happened with Edd)

Genuinely confused on why people have hated WTFuture considering it was Edd’s favourite Eddisode.

Oh Tord got someone who used the wayback machine obsessively to track his information down to peg him as suicidal so THAT was something, am I right?

Tomska left for good because people would not shut up and leave him alone, treating him horrible for wanting to step away from the show because it was ruining his mental health and he valued the memories of his dead friend more.

On top of that, around that time around 5 major EW artists with comic series and popular fanons left because a friend got called out for 2 year old art. Of a show that literally made that ship canon, bc that’s the kind of show it is.

To the point of TomTord was abusive was used to much, why? The person ended up being solely an EddTord shipper and not caring about abusive contexts around that. Nor about spreading CSEM. Wonderful am I right? Gotta win those ship wars.

I’ve seen three people I follow constantly be fucking harassed over bullshit.

“Anti-Antis ruined the fandom” uh no that would be like, idk, the fact no one wants to create for a bunch of people that’ll rip you a new one if you’re not a perfect person.

TBATF did kill the fandom. That was a thing.

Flop accounts

Discourse accounts

Things that did NOT cause people to leave the fandom but were weird and made even me personally uncomfortable;

- TomTord vore video, sent to Tomska (1. Why? 2. Stop sending fan shit to creators asking them to condemn it, leave the creators alone you weirdos. 3. Why would you send someone essentially pornography)

- Omegaverse AUs. (Genuinely didn’t see people leave over this one... surprising)

- Dear Starboy (It’s bad but I don’t think it ruined the fandom)

- Dark Content (Really you got a lot of Fluff)

- Any other minor stupid thing that you’ll bring up to me that I’ve heard Jack shit about. (In context like, HD. I hardly think Drake killed Eddsworld but I think he wants to secretly.)

I’ve been in the fandom since 2016. I’ve seen and heard the shit since 2008. There’s so many more things that happened that I can’t even name. I’ve been here for four years. I’ve lost mutuals and friends and each person has told me, “I’m leaving because the fandom is too toxic”.

[lost-in-the-stars-for-eternity]

Would be nice if the fnaf fandom could chill out for one goddamn fucking moment

[kari-izumi]

More sane Bleach fans?! And Renji fans???!!?

It's sad how much shit bad fans in VLD entirely ruined for people. I remember NB Pidge was a popular headcanon until some couldn't be content that she identified as a girl and always did and of course transphobes that acted like trash because The Gays Are Demanding Things(tm) and eventually what killed that was the collective Two Minutes Hate over Bex themself for their speaking up to bullies for harrassing their coworkers.

Makes me disappointed that so many people in those harrassed groups decided to drink Stupid Asshole Juice over Shiro and Curtis and call Keith white be side he didn't get the guy he "fought for."

(and it's ironically why I came back to Bleach, to take a break from that brand of stupidity now that it's in the fandom cycle of shedding most of it's longer fans and gaining new blood that already know who got with whom or don't give a shit. Too bad I didn't come back before December to snag the hot lemon art tho)

Why is Keith being Shiro's adopted brother bad? Is that an anti thing? Because I actually do like the dynamic when the ship is something other than Sheith. (I do really like Sheith, though!)

generally it’s a sure sign that someones an anti, and it’s kinda racist, but im white so take that with a grain of salt

the term ‘broganes’ stems from shiro’s last name and keith’s last name, even though keith. doesn’t have a canon last name in legendary defender.

they mainly used it to “shut down those nasty incest sheith shippers”

they would cite the season2 bom episode where keith says “you’re like a brother to me” as “evidence” for sheith being incest, as well as a lot of other lines that just. were not in any way implying that shiro and keith are related/see each other as brothers or whatever

and then after the black paladins, they felt even more vindicated and upped their harassment extremely

all in all it’s just a really bad thing overall, and any time i see anyone calling shiro and keith brothers, i get the fuck out of there

[stardoopy]

🤡

[princessbb]

This fandom used to be fun and I enjoyed it so much . But the bullshit HAS to be called out ! That might mean seeing things you don’t really want to see , and I know that might hurt .

[tired-and-salty]

A villain is not necessarily  a bad character. You are allowed to like villains even if they are evil. Hell, you can like them because they are evil. You do not have to justify their behavior.