#i think its like. a problem present in a LOT of media and fandom stuff

[llumimoon]

guys can we Please stop giving brown or black characters blue eyes im so sick of ittttt IM SICK OF ITTTTT

[skrunksthatwunk]

stole this chart from @asubakaa and spent wayyy too much time making my own so. yeah. also i did 6 instead of 5 bc i know no restraint

[seriousfic]

You know, people complain about insincerity in media--the constant quippiness, the constant irony, the refusal to engage with tropes or characters without a fat layer of postmodern self-awareness in the way--but I actually think that's a problem in fandom too and may even have influenced the problem on the creator side, through fans working their way into companies and creators trying to engage with fandom.

You look at discussion of Star Wars, for instance, and it's just a steady stream of smart-aleckness. Leia is a disaster lesbian. Darth Vader is a drama queen. It's good to have a sense of humor about this stuff--after all, it's only a show and taking it too seriously definitely has its own set of problems--but it feels like that jokeyness has started a feedback loop between creators and audience where the fans keep taking it less seriously and TPTB keep presenting it less seriously. Until it all seems more like Regular Show than a regular show.

Fandom sees Jim Kirk, a serious-minded leader of men who is occasionally used for comic relief like any good character, and for comedic effect fixates on his womanizing and disregard for orders (only when necessary--which does admittedly come up a lot in a series full of stories being told for dramatic impact. Nothing too dramatic about Kirk following orders and completing his assignment without any trouble).

J.J. Abrams sees this pop culture snowballing of Kirk after years and decades of exaggeration and turns Chris Pine into a horny cowboy.

Fandom unfamiliar with the original series watches the reboot, assumes horny cowboy is the natural state of Captain Kirk, and exaggerates that even further for laughs.

Abrams sees that fans like when Kirk is a horny cowboy--it's all they talk about, after all--and ramps it up by having him casually breaking the Prime Directive and lying about it in the second movie (and having a threesome with alien space babes, for what it's worth).

And so it goes*. That's a pretty extreme case, because most characters don't get decades of pop culture warping their perception, but I feel like... at present, with this miscegenation between fans and creators, where people can show their fan art directly to writers on Twitter... it's exacerbated some.

There isn't that distance that used to impose a certain formality on fans and creators. And so I think the way fans view characters and canon can very easily infiltrate how the creators handle them, even without some crazed fanboy actually getting to pen a Disney+ show or Marvel comic.

Or maybe not. I just see a lot of shows and comics that seem like they want to be fandom catnip ahead of and above being a good story or even an artistic statement the creator is trying to make.

*Digression for Star Trek fans. Ignore if you're not a Trekkie.

Thankfully, I've seen some pushback against Horny Cowboy Kirk in Beyond and Strange New Worlds. Beyond I think portrayed how Horny Cowboy Kirk would chafe against the demands of captaincy and need to evolve closer to Shatner Kirk to keep going on the path he wants to be on. While SNW just shows Kirk as a dutiful, if risk-taking, officer on the fast-track to command thanks to his obvious competence and passion for the job. Which is, you know, what you'd expect from Kirk pre-TOS, but it's good they didn't overthink it and say that he was, I don't know, a drug smuggler all this time (Star Wars. Poe.)

So, credit where credit's due. It's not all bad.

[gothprentiss]

people like to say that you need to learn the rules of writing in order to break them which is imo semi-true: on one hand, many people who write quite prolifically would be unbelievably well-served by having to get down to brass tacks with certain features of grammar, style, etc.-- tho this is, i think, largely a product of the fact that good writers are in fact very rare, and really probably most writers would be well-served by regarding writing as an art, and behaving accordingly. on the other hand, though, this is rarely a claim people are making with the assumption of doing an mfa or taking creative writing classes; more often it licenses the kind of overkill you get in, for example, the us high school writing curriculum, often with the expectation that the often very arbitrary writing guides being leveraged at 16 year olds map 1:1 onto the writing that will be expected from them in college. this is of course not the case.

as is often the case, valuable time and effort is sacrificed to The Rules, which are an unevenly wielded set of guidelines set, often quite arbitrarily, by a variety of people who rarely seem to be in communication. you might have 4 different english teachers in high school. you might be taught to write differently in history classes. few students emerge from these conditions able to generalize a set of rules they can apply in academic settings; rather, they're conditioned to expect to be told, every semester, how to write. every semester, not even just when i'm teaching freshman comp, i have students who are still struggling against the expectations of high school: the 5-paragraph essay; how to structure an introduction; specifics on citation when options are offered; whether the first-person is permissible in academic writing; etc. this in addition to the basic problem of how to make a good argument.

anyway my point is that i rarely see a similar claim being made about how to read (*interpret). i don't mean like Basic Media Literacy which is a ludicrous category we're pretending really exists, but i mean like-- most art and media forms have a well-established conventional language. the argument against this is that many artists make their names breaking said conventional language and norms, so teaching this stuff is limiting and inorganic, but you fundamentally deprive people of the ability to see innovation or difference if you treat it as the norm, an organic phenomenon which inheres in the medium or form rather than something accomplished by the work and thought of any number of creators.

this-- much like the Rules of academic writing-- doesn't really matter in a non-academic setting. it's clear that in fandom spaces, for example, a major concern is the validity of any given reading, which is often constructed and sustained on grounds of response and relation. histories of analysis or theory are semi-relevant. there was a post i saw all the time last month that was like "canon, fanon, and headcanon are all equally made up and none of them are better or worse than the others" (claim of specifically moral validity, i think? as opposed to quality) with a very cursory overview of stuart hall's reception theory (which presents encoding and decoding as intended and received meaning, respectively) tacked on by someone other than op. i've been thinking about this post a lot because it really grated me-- the first part is just like, true insofar as it's saying very little and its central point feels oddly buried (fictions shouldn't have an inherent moral hierarchy, esp not one derived from perceived originality). but the second thing is like-- if you cut out all of what hall's work actually is, and the work it's actually doing (e.g. it's not a methodology of reading but an ethnography), then sure, it's how you interact with the intended meaning of a tv show. but like how do you know. this is especially the case with audiovisual media-- a movie or a tv show isn't, despite the enduring presence of the auteur, the product or expression of a single intention. like "i think X is meant to be about Y but due to my positionality i perceive it to be about Z, which is as morally and intellectually acceptable as Y" is certainly a fair statement to make, but surely requires you to have an equally strong sense of how X is about Y-- positioning this as the primary, at least prima facie, form of meaning. like there is a hierarchy proposed here, if only in terms of order-- to negotiate against or oppose the dominant order one must be in conversation with that order, whereas the dominant order has no such order of operations. all of these meanings are equally arbitrary, but the assumption is that there are either knowing departures from the conventional language or actual idiosyncratic misunderstandings, which don't have the same systematic validity.

anyway my point is that like... i think hall is assuming more engagement with conventional codes than said post assumes, as well as a more functionally conventional set of codes. i think a lot of internet talk about reception theory (the bad readings of barthes yk) focuses on the validity of relatively disengaged interpretation, or maybe more specifically on a minimum standard of interpretation under which individual decoding involves a more profound truth claim than encoding. i think a good example of this is the way that people #onhere frequently sort of whack each other over the head with the Media Literacy cudgel rather than providing any amount of formal analysis or commentary-- depriving a work of its typical hegemon doesn't radically democratize processes of reading or allow for new and manifold forms of meaning to emerge, it seems, but rather proliferates new hegemons who are reaching for that same absolute truth status.

[allthefujoshiunite]

Do you mind if I ask your top 10 favorite characters (can be male or female) from all of the media that you loved (can be anime/manga, books, movies or tv series)? And why do you love them? Sorry if you've answered this question before.....Thanks..

Of course I don't mind! This is a tough question though, because the scope is too broad, so I'll list some recent ones that come to mind.

Bokuto Koutarou (Haikyuu): Such a talented and fun character! But the reason I love him a lot is because, contrary to the way fandom reads his character, he's quite smart and extremely perceptive. As we saw in the 3rd Gym arc, he doesn't go through training mindlessly and when asked, he was able to condense three years of his experience into useful advice in a non-forceful manner. He's the real star (together with Yamaguchi) behind Tsukishima coming to terms with effort and volleyball. Again, contrary to people that make it all about Akaashi or Kuroo. I can give a 3 hour long ppt presentation about Bokuto.

Julius Novachrono (Black Clover): I recently started reading Black Clover so I'm around chapter 200. Julius immediately became a favorite because of his glimmering eyes, childlike curiosity towards magic, and compassion towards other people. I generally like characters that are unbelievably strong but instead of going around acting big, they just... vibe. And occasionally cause problems for the authority with good intentions.

Kageyama Shigeo (Mob Psycho 100): Talking about characters who are unbelievably strong, I couldn't NOT mention Shigeo. I ugly sobbed watching the last season and it never ceases to amaze me the way One incorporates the notion of power into his works. Forever proteccccc!!!

Bocchi (Bocchi The Rock): This series was easily one of the best one, especially in terms of its visual prowess, I've watched in a long while. I love Bocchi because she's an anxious mess and a lot of the time she's running away from reality, thus dream grandoise dreams on the daily, which is... very relatable tbh. She's also extremely cool when playing the guitar.

Emilico (Shadows House): I love Emilico because, she's a smart and strong young woman, but not in ways we conventionally define "strong" or "smart". She's a quick thinker and very practical, and her strength lies in her ability to move others and create a support system where everyone can rely on others when needed. I'd like to be friends with her!

Minare Koda (Wave, Listen to Me!): I'd probably think twice before befriending her but gosh she's a ball of fire! And it was so much fun watching her fuk up a lot but manage to somehow make it through the day! Plus, people who can find stuff to talk for hours unprovoked have my respect.

Sieon (Love For Sale): This is a BL manhwa by Dal Hyeonji that I will never EVER forget and will always carry in my heart. Sieon is the older male lead who works in publishing and he's one of the most, if not THE most, well-written characters I've come across. I felt like I had a lot of similarities with him and appreciated greatly that among the generic romance stories, we got one that was able to look beyond the cliches and was able to show there are different ways to love people romantically. Another 3 hour long Ted Talk topic for me.

Mitsuya Majime (The Great Passage): The Great passage is a series that I always remember fondly and Majime is the serious (like his name) quiet and book-loving male lead. He's especially particular about words themselves and I felt like he was my spirit animal. Love him to bits.

Karlyle (Define the Relationship): Another character from a BL manhwa. I'm super fond of Karlyle because he's so tender in every way. I adore characters (and also, tbh, envy secretly)who are naive but not dumb, maybe a bit inexperienced and they take smaller steps/are timid but always work hard towards what they want and are honest to themselves about their feelings. This probably won't make sense if you haven't read the manhwa, sorry... But I just want to encourage him and pull him into a tight hug! Deserves the best!!!

Katsuki Yuri (Yuri!!! On Ice): I wrote my thoughts on his character before on my Twitter (you can read it here if you'd like) but... yeah. Another talented, sweet, lovable character that I felt lucky being a part of the series' fandom and watched it week after week together with other fans!

Honorable Mention // Higuruma (Jujutsu Kaisen): His arc was brief, but packed the biggest punch for me. His backstory and fight with Yuuji will be the arc that I'll never forget in Jujutsu Kaisen. Masterpiece.

Hope this was interesting enough! Have a nice 2023 ~

[talenlee]

We Don't Need An Animorphs Reboot

We Don't Need An Animorphs Reboot

It seems that every time a piece of nerd media comes out, other people in other nerd media spaces surface declaring that now, now is the time that our nerd media thing is ready to strike while the iron is hot. It doesn’t matter how unrelated it is. One of those spaces where I think I comfortably belong is the Animorphs fandom, even if I think I must come across as being so utterly negative all the time.

Whatever the current context, there’s always some reason that now, here, Animorphs is due a comeback. With the backlash against Hogwarts Legacy, there was a push that hey, now, now is a great time for us to make sure our Young Adult Fiction media property from the last millenium gets to take prominence and become the new thing everyone talks about with its own theme park! Then it was Goncharov, where the sudden thirst for creative element that encouraged people being able to make new Animorphs books and pretend they were always part of the canon as a great way to tap into that community! And then most recently, the fact there’s shapeshifting in the Dungeons & Dragons movie and an actor who’s a jerk —

Why, this movie is proof that we could totally have a great, successful, reboot movie for the Animorphs! You know, a movie! For that set of forty plus books!

Problem: This is completely unfeasible.

Part of it is just that the Animorphs books, for their own sake, are just impressively dated. It’s not just that the books are of a particular style or time or place, but the way they are is part of how they exist. The late 90s was a period when portable phones and secret communication networks and maintainable online conspiracies were a different species to what they are now.

If the Animorphs kids existed in the smartphone age, they could be tracked by the fact they were the only teenagers in town who didn’t want to carry smartphones around. And these aren’t small questions, these are questions that would fundamentally alter the world of their existence: How is the movement of Andalite spaceships going unnoticed in a world where everyone has cameras? How is there not a graphical database of everyone in town being surveilled from every diverse avenue by a conspiracy of Yeerks?

The world of the 90s was smaller. It was less connected. There was simply less surveillance, a conspiracy took a different form, the Yeerk’s avenues of attack were limited to needing a lot more material presence. It’s not like you’d need to answer all of these but these things would present questions that would need addressing to address the concept of the Animorphs at large in the newer world.

In 2020, if the Yeerks were invading, they would have Alex Jones telling you about themselves. They would advertise the idea of shapeshifting monsters and mind-controlling slugs, because we know there’s a population of people who can be mobilised and weaponised in a way we really didn’t anticipate in the 90s.

The whole idea of a reboot seems to be built out of a want to have more of it. The idea that Animorphs is good, and that means more of it would be better is at odds with my opinion that we’d be better off with less of it.

Some of Animorphs is effectively filler. Some of it is contradictory. Some of it is extremely silly. Some of it – like, y’know, the Ellimist and Cryak story chunks – can feel cheap in the context of a story that starts out as a science fiction fantasy narrative. The Megamorphs and other game material, that stuff isn’t really ‘part’ of the Animorphs narrative and it can feel really weird and wrong compared to the core material. Just having a clear vision of how important the mystical elements would become compared could make that eventual discovery a little more gentle.

What I would really like, if the idea was to create a new Animorphs product, for the vision of the fans of the 90s work who want some way to bring the product back, is an immense editing parse designed to attain the following goals:

Restructure the narrator order to give those picky fans the right number and sequence they say they want.

Diminish a few inconsistencies from early in the story that wound up being unimportant to the later stories.

A few added scenes or sequences to mention or explicate what happened to some minor characters that people like.

A single, standardised collection that lets people like me buy the whole set in a nice, readable form in a way that gets money to KA Applegate and the other contributors.

Problem: This is completely unfeasible.

What’s on the page is on the page. The people who made the books have moved on, they don’t get the money from reprints of the books, they don’t get to benefit from our desire to turn their existing, successful, good media, into another, different, differently available media. The last thing in the world we should want is ‘Animorphs Media’ being produced because it’ll all be just the same thing we already have, fan media, but being made by people who are going to make us pay for it.

Make fan content. Make Animorphs stuff. Share it with friends. Make reading lists. Make editorial revisions – show how you’d trim things or change them. Make fan comics. Sure, even use whatever dumb image tool you like to make fanart, 3d rendered or whatever.

Right now, Animorphs is a rare and precious thing in that it is widely available. You can get digital ebooks reasonably easily without spending money. You can find the books second hand if you want physical copies. The people who are sitting on the rights for it are not trying to monetise it, and the people who made it have moved on. We are free.

I get it.

I really do.

But stop thinking of the companies as sources of what you love.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#Media

[chihirolovebot]

i feel like a big problem in the danganronpa fandom and anime fandom in general is japanese and east asian fetishism? i'm constantly coming across people who like, are super obsessed with dr & other similar media and give themselves japanese names and try to be 'experts' on japan and its culture. i'm a japanese-american and this is so frustratingly common where i go to school and i did like a cultural camp this summer and it was just packed with weeaboos who were totally convinced they could be japanese if they tried hard enough. there's a lot of like, racist -- maybe unintentionally but still racist -- danganronpa fans (especially teenage cosplayers on tiktok??) and obv there's elements of racism in the games themselves (rn i can't think of many examples off the top of my head except for angie?) it might also just be an american thing, do you see this very often as a british anime fan? (sorry for ranting in your inbox lol i thought as a fellow dr fan who's kind of like, willing to confront the bad sides of the franchise + fandom you would be able to get what i'm saying :P)

you're all good!! it's an interesting and frustrating topic to be sure. i'll answer the easiest thing u brought up first— as a british anime fan, i would say the subculture is a lot smaller here than it seems in america? conventions and stuff don't seem to be as popular or as often as they are elsewhere. like i've never heard of an anime convention anywhere near me, for example, and i have a few bigger cities near me. STILL obviously anime and japanese media consumption breeds weirdos.

when i moved into my flat for my first year of uni one of my flatmates was one of those people who are. very loud about liking anime? idk i kind of see anime as like, just another form of media, not a personality trait or even the only thing i consume. like, i watch a lot of shows that aren't anime and play a lot of games that aren't japanese, so i personally dont see the point in identifying urself as an anime-watcher or a 'weeb' which. blegh. but yeah he was ur typical 'mommy-misato-dragon-maid-zero-two' fanboy who randomly broke into broken japanese, referenced anime all the time even when he knew the person he was talking to hadn't watched or even heard of what he was referencing, and overall just seemed to have a very distorted idea of what japan... is like? and obviously im english and have never been to japan so, i dont claim to know what japan is like either. but this guy seemed to think it was some apolitical utopia full of 'traditional' women who all adhere to the 'waifu' archetype (which. gross. fucking gross). i mean needless to say i dont speak to this guy anymore. but my point being that yeah, there is definitely still elements of asian fetishisation present in groups here in britain!! it's why i tend to avoid people who make watching anime their whole personality, i guess, because it always seems to lead to other red flags.

i think some of it you can chalk up to healthy fascination. like, japan and most other asian countries are super different culturally to england, or britain as a whole. for me, i think it's fun to learn about cultural differences, and japan has a very interesting history (in good ways and bad) and it's generally a fascinating country. but what a lot of people do is let the way it's portrayed in anime become a representative for how they think the country actually is, which, like. eh. i guess it's kinda like how a lot of non-brits think all our schools are like hogwarts, when if you want actual representation you should look to educating yorkshire or the inbetweeners. but obviously there's a line to be drawn, and i think it's stupid to assume you know what a country and its people are like because you've consumed media from that country.

as for racism in the game. yeah. the mishandling of angie's god (which, i think is a localisation thing?? apparently in the original japanese, she just called her god, 'god.' and 'atua' was done in the localisation as they thought she was polynesian. but this is very weird and i dont see why they would change it when 'god' is used in many, many cultures and 'atua' is a lot more specific). there's also the daisaku bendai, the ultimate farmer, who's design is..... awful. and then there's the anti-semitic imagery, particularly on kokichi's splash-art, where he wears a nazi-esque hat and holds grape fanta (for those unaware, fanta was a drink create by nazi germany) as well as his title being ultimate supreme leader. it's a bit. like. one of those things on it's own would maybe be okay but all three together is a lot of nazi imagery and it's very odd.

in short, there's a fuckton of racism surrounding danganronpa, both in the game and in the fandom. it's awful and disgusting, and disheartening that this kind of stuff should still exist in 2022, and im very sincerely sorry you have come across it so often. i think it's a consumers duty to educate themselves about the media they consume and think critically about it. i dont even really say i 'like' danganronpa because most of the time im sort of fed up with it and all the problematic aspects. it's more just like, i see the potential for something great and it frustrates me a lot that it wasn't developed, as well as being attached to a lot of the characters. but yeah. thank you for this ask, it was actually a good thought exercise and i hope it helped get some frustration off your chest too!

once again. obviously. im not japanese or asian at all, so if i've said anything that comes off as ignorant, please just drop me a message correcting me. and if you have any other thoughts on this, feel free to send them my way ^.^

[liquidstar]

I feel as if many people, myself included, have been having problems with the way “critical thinking” is conducted in fandom circles more and more. Which I’d say is a good thing, because it means we’re thinking critically. But still the issues with the faux-critical mentality and with the way we consume media through that fandom group mentality are incredibly widespread at this point, despite being very flawed, and there are still plenty of people who follow it blindly, ironically.

I sort of felt like I had to examine my personal feelings on it and I ended up writing a whole novel, which I’ll put under the cut, and I do welcome other people’s voices in the matter, because while I’m being as nuanced as I can here I obviously am still writing from personal experience and may overlook some things from my limited perspective. But by and large I think I’ve dissected the phenomena as best I can from what I’ve been seeing going on in fandom circles from a safe but observable distance.

Right off the bat I want to say, I think it's incredibly good and necessary to be critical of media and understand when you should stop consuming it, but that line can be a bit circumstantial sometimes for different people. There are a lot of anime that I used to watch as a teenager that I can’t enjoy anymore, because I got more and more uncomfortable overtime with the sexualization of young characters, partly because as I was getting older I was really starting to realize how big of an issue it was, and I certainly think more critically now than I did when I was 14. Of course I don’t assume everyone who still watches certain series is a pedophile, and I do think there are plenty of fans that understand this. However I still stay away from those circles and that’s a personal choice.

I don’t think a person is morally superior based on where they draw the line and their own boundaries with this type of stuff, what’s more important is your understanding of the problem and response to it. There are series I watch that have a lot of the same issues around sexualization of the young characters in the cast, but they’re relatively toned down and I can still enjoy the aspects of the series I actually like without it feeling as uncomfortable and extreme. Others will not be able to, and their issues with it are legitimate and ones that I still ultimately agree with, but they’re still free to dislike the series for it, after all our stance on the issue itself is the same so why would I resent them for it?

Different people are bound to have different lines they draw for how far certain things can go in media before they’re uncomfortable watching it and it doesn’t make it a moral failing of the person who can put up with more if they’re still capable of understanding why it’s bad to begin with and able to not let it effect them. But I don’t think that sentiment necessarily contradicts the idea that some things really are too far gone for this to apply, the above examples aren’t the same thing as a series centered solely around lolicon ecchi and it doesn’t take a lot of deep analysis to understand why. It’s not about a personal line anymore when it comes to things that are outright propaganda or predatory with harmful ideals woven into the message of the story itself. Critical thinking means knowing the difference between these, and no one can hold your hand through it. And simply slapping “I’m critical of my interests” on your bio isn’t a get out of jail free card, it’s always evident when someone isn’t truly thinking about the impact of the media they consume through the way they consume it.

I think the issue is that when people apply “Critical thinking” they don’t actually analyze the story and its intent, messages, themes, morals, and all that. Instead they approach it completely diegetically, it’s basically the thermian argument, the issue stems from thinking about the story and characters as if they’re real people and judging their actions through that perspective, rather than something from a writer trying to deliver a narrative by using the story and characters as tools. Like how people get upset about characters behaving “problematically” without realizing that it’s an intentional aspect of the story, that the character needs to cause problems for there to be conflict. What they should be looking at instead is what their behavior represents in the real world.

You do not need to apply real-world morals to fictional characters, you need to apply them to the narrative. The story exists in the real world, the characters and events within it do not. Fictional murderers themselves do not hurt anyone, no one is actually dying at their hands, but their actions hold weight in the narrative which itself can harm real people. If the character only murders gay people then it reflects on whatever the themes and messages of the story are, and it’s a major issue if it's framed as if they’re morally justified, or as if this is a noble action. And it’s a huge red flag if people stan this character, even if the story itself actually presents their actions as reprehensible. Or cases where the murderers themselves are some kind of awful stereotype, like Buffalo Bill who presents a violent and dangerous stereotype of trans women, making the character a transmisogynistic caricature (Intentional or otherwise) that has caused a lot of harm to the perception of trans women. When people say “Fiction affects reality” this is what they mean. They do not mean “People will see a pretend bad guy and become bad” they mean “Ideals represented in fiction will be pulled from the real world and reflected back onto it.”

However, stories shouldn’t have to spoon-feed you the lesson as if you’re watching a children’s cartoon, stories often have nuances and you have to actively analyze the themes of it all to understand it’s core messages. Oftentimes it can be intentionally murky and hard to parse especially if the subject matter itself is complicated. But you can’t simply read things on the surface and think you understand everything about them, without understanding the symbolism or subtext you can leave a series like Revolutionary Girl Utena thinking the titular Utena is heterosexual and was only ever in love with her prince. Things won’t always be face-value or clear-cut and you will be forced to come to your own conclusions sometimes too.

That’s why the whole fandom-based groupthink mentality about “critical thinking” doesn’t work, because it’s not critical. It’s simply looking into the crowd, seeing people say a show is problematic, and then dropping it without truly understanding why. It’s performative, consuming the best media isn’t activism and it doesn’t make you a better person. Listening to the voices of people whom the issues directly concerns will help you form an opinion, and to understand the issues from a more knowledgeable perspective beyond your own. All that means nothing if you just sweep it under the rug because you want to look infallible in your morality. That’s not being critical, it’s just being scared to analyze yourself, as well as what you engage with. You just don’t want to think about those things and you’re afraid of being less than perfect so you pretend it never happened.

And though I’m making this post, it’s not mine or anyone else’s job to hold your hand through all this and tell you “Oh this show is okay, but this show isn't, and this book is bad etc etc etc”. Because you actually have to think for yourself, you know, critically. Examples I’ve listed aren’t rules of thumb, they’re just examples and things will vary depending on the story and circumstance. You have to look at shit on a case-by-case basis instead of relying on spotting tropes without thinking about how they’re implemented and what they mean. That’s why it’s analysis, you have to use it to understand what the narrative is communicating to its audience, explicitly or implicitly, intentionally or incidentally, and understand how this reflects the real world and what kind of impact it can have on it. 

A big problem with fandom is it has made interests synonymous with personality traits, as if every series we consume is a core part of our being, and everything we see in it reflects our viewpoints as well. So when people are told that a show they watched is problematic, they react very extremely, because they see it as basically the same thing as saying they themselves are problematic (It’s not). Everyone sees themselves as good people, they don’t want to be bad people, so this scares them and they either start hiding any evidence that they ever liked it, or they double down and start defending it despite all its flaws, often providing those aforementioned thermian arguments (“She dresses that way because of her powers!”).

That’s how you get people who call children’s cartoons “irredeemable media” and people who plaster “fiction=/= reality!” all over their blogs, both are basically trying to save face either by denying that they could ever consume anything problematic or denying that the problematic aspects exist all together. And absolutely no one is actually addressing the core issues anymore, save for those affected by them who pointed them out to begin with, only for their original point to become muffled in the discourse. No one is thinking critically because they’re more concerned with us-vs-them group mentality, both sides try to out-perform the other while the actual issue gets ignored or is used as nothing more than a gacha with no true understanding or sympathy behind it.

One of the other issues that comes from this is the fact that pretty much everyone thinks they’re the only person capable of being critical of their interests. That’s how you get those interactions where one person goes “OK [Media] fan” and another person replies “Bro you literally like [Other Media]”, because both parties think they’re the only ones capable of consuming a problematic piece of media and not becoming problematic themselves, anyone else who enjoys it is clearly incapable of being as big brained as them. It’s understandable because we know ourselves and trust ourselves more than strangers, and I’m not saying there can’t be certain fandoms who’s fans you don’t wanna interact with, but when we presume that we know better than everyone else we stop listening to other people all together. It’s good to trust your own judgement, it’s bad to assume no one else has the capacity to think for themselves either though.

The insistence that all media that you personally like is without moral failing and completely pure comes with the belief that all media that you personally dislike has to be morally bad in some way. As if you can’t just dislike a series because you find it annoying or it just doesn’t appeal to you, it has to be problematic, and you have to justify your dislike of it through that perspective. You have to believe that your view on whatever media it is is the objectively correct one, so you’ll likely pick apart all it’s flaws to prove you’re on the right side, but there’s no analysis of context or intent. Keep in mind this doesn’t necessarily mean those critiques are unfounded or invalid, but in cases like this they’re often skewed in one direction based on personal opinion. It’s just as flawed as ignoring all the faults in the stuff you like, it’s biased and subjective analysis that misses a lot of context in both cases, it’s not a good mindset to have about consuming media. It’s just another result of tying media consumption with identity and personal morals. The faux-critical mentality is an attempt to separate the two in a way that implies they’re a packaged deal to begin with, making it sort of impossible to truly do so in any meaningful way.

As far as I know this whole phenomena started with “Steven Universe Critical” in, like, 2016, and that’s where this mentality around “critical thinking” originated. It started out with just a few people correctly pointing out very legitimate issues with the series, but over time it grew into just a trend where people would make cutesy kin blogs with urls like critical-[character] or [character]crit to go with the fad as it divulged into Nostalgia Critic level critique. Of course there was backlash to this and criticism of the criticism, but no actual conversation to be had. Just people trying to out-do each other by acting as the most virtuous one in the room, and soon enough the fad became a huge echo-chamber that encouraged more and more outrageous takes for every little thing. The series itself was a children’s cartoon so it stands to reason that a lot of the fans were young teens, so this behavior isn’t too surprising and I do believe a lot of them did think they were doing the right thing, especially since it was encouraged. But that doesn’t erase the fact that there were actual real issues and concerns brought up about the series that got treated with very little sympathy and were instead drowning out people’s voices. Though those from a few years back may have grown up since and know better (Hopefully), the mentality stuck around and influenced the norm for how fandoms and fandom people conduct any sort of critique on media. 

That’s a shame to me, because the pedestal people place fandom onto has completely disrupted our perception on how to engage with media in a normal way. Not everything should be consumed with fandom in mind, not everything is a coffee-shop au with no conflict, not everything is a children’s cartoon with the morals spoon-fed to you. Fandom has grown past the years of uncritical praise of a series, it’s much more mainstream now with a lot more voices in it beyond your small community on some forum, and people are allowed to use those voices. Just because it may not be as pleasant for you now because you don’t get to just turn your brain off and ignore all the flaws doesn’t mean you can put on your rose-tinted nostalgia goggles and pretend that fandom is actually all that is good in the world, to the point where you place it above the comfort and safety of others (Oftentimes children). Being uncritical of fandom itself is just as bad as being uncritical of what you consume to begin with. 

At the end of the day it all just boils down to the ability to truly think for yourself but with sympathy and compassion for other people in mind, while also understanding that not everyone will come to the same conclusion as you and people are allowed to resent your interests. That doesn’t necessarily mean they hate you personally, you should be acknowledging the same issues after all. You can’t ignore aspects of it that aren’t convenient to your conclusion, you have to actually be critical and understand the issues to be able to form it. 

I think that all we need is to not rely on fandom to tell us what to do, but still listen to the voices of others, take them into account to form our opinion too, boost their voices instead of drowning them out in the minutiae of internet discourse about which character is too much of an asshole to like. Think about what the characters and story represent non-diegetically instead of treating them like real people and events, rather a story with an intent and message to share through its story and characters, and whatever those reflect from the real world. That’s how fiction affects reality, because it exists in reality and reflects reality through its own lens. The story itself is real, with a real impact on you and many others, so think about the impact and why it all matters. Just… Think. Listen to others but think for yourself, that’s all.

[baya-ni]

SHADOW’s Queer Coding

I first started exploring this idea of Sk8′s implicit queer rep (as in stuff other than explicit same sex intimacy) in this post.

I know we like to joke that Hiromi is the Token Straight of the protag gang, but I argue that he’s as much an example of queer rep as any of our main characters, albeit in a less conventional and fanservicey way.

So that’s what this post is gonna be, an analysis of Hiromi/SHADOW as a queer figure, how his character fits the Jekyll/Hyde archetype as a metaphor for queerness and The Closet, the similarities between SHADOW as a skatesona and early drag, and how his character represents a larger problem of exclusion within queer fandom spaces.

The 1886 Gothic novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson is the origin of the phrase “Jekyll and Hyde”. What I’m calling the Jekyll/Hyde archetype, refers to the same thing; it refers to duality, to a character who is “outwardly good but sometimes shockingly evil” (as described from the novella’s wiki page).

And the Jekyll/Hyde dynamic has also long been associated with Queerness. The antagonism between Jekyll and Hyde as two sides of the same person resonates with many people as similar to the experience being in the closet, and many many scholars have written about this queer reading of Jekyll and Hyde. Do a quick google search if you don’t believe me.

Hiromi experiences his own Jekyll/Hyde duality through his SHADOW persona, which seems to entirely contradict with Hiromi’s day to day personality.

Whilst Hiromi is sweet, romantic, and generally very cutesy, SHADOW is mean-spirited, sadistic, described as “the anti-hero of the S community.”  And though these two personalities seem entirely at odds, SHADOW doesn’t exist in a vacuum, he’s very much a part of Hiromi. In the show, this manifests as SHADOW’s sabotage moves being all flower themed, as Hiromi works in a flower shop, and how he’ll “step out” of character when playing babysitter to the kids.

Below is passage from an essay titled, “The Homoerotic Architectures of Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” which reminds me a lot of Hiromi’s character, such that I think his character arc can be read as an allegory for coming out and self acceptance.

The closet, here, is a space not only for secrecy and repression, but also for becoming; it is the space in which queer identities build themselves up from “disused pieces” and attempt to discover the strength needed for presentation to the world. The closet is both a space of profound fear and profound courage—of potentiality and actualization. (Prologue)

Unlike the kid/teen characters, the show’s adult characters all lead double lives. When they aren’t skating, they have day jobs. Kaoru is a calligrapher, Kojiro is a restaurant owner, Ainosuke is a politician/businessman (but tbh his job is just being some rich dude), and Hiromi works in a flower shop.

But of the adult protagonists (so not Ainosuke), Hiromi compartmentalizes the most.

Kojiro leaves his face totally exposed such that he can be recognized both on and off the skate scene. Kaoru at least covers his face, but his trademark pink hair and constant use of Carla doesn’t make it very hard to connect the dots between him and CHERRY. He’s also always with Kojiro in the evenings, so if you don’t recognize him as CHERRY when he’s on his own, you certainly will when you see him interacting with Kojiro/JOE.

Next to these two, Hiromi seems the more adamant at separating his Work from Play.

Even when he’s been clearly found it, he still tries to deny that he and SHADOW are the same person. Miya even uses this to coerce Hiromi into helping him and the boys:

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that the separation between Hiromi and SHADOW can be interpreted as a metaphor for being in The Closet. As SHADOW, he leads a secret life, one characterized by an tight-knit underground community with a vibrant night scene, where he behaves in ways typically frowned upon by larger society. He worries about being found out and judged by the people close to him.

But in Ep 4, the walls of his Closet begins to come down, or in this case is literally imposed upon by other members of his community, by its younger members, who don’t feel the same need to hide their passion for skateboarding or lead the same kind of double life.

We then see the line between Hiromi and SHADOW begin to blur.

He becomes less of an antagonist, and instead the audience sees him become a mentor and “mother hen” figure for the younger skaters. Later on in Ep 4, we see him casually interacting with the other protags in full SHADOW mode, not as an “anti-hero” but as a friend.  In Ep 6, he acts as a babysitter for the kids, and we see him totally comfortable appearing both in an out of his SHADOW persona throughout their vacation.

And I think that this gradual convergence of Hiromi and SHADOW will culminate in this tournament arc.

There’s something more personal that’s driving SHADOW to do well in this tournament. It’s not just for bragging rights or his pride as a skater, but the results of this tournament is going to have some kind of greater impact on Hiromi’s personal life. Personally, my theory is that Hiromi is using this tournament to prove to himself that he’s worthy enough to ask his manager out on a date.

Hiromi is no longer compartmentalizing, his two lives are overlapping and influencing each other. Recall the essay quote I cited earlier:

The closet... is the space in which queer identities build themselves up from “disused pieces” and attempt to discover the strength needed for presentation to the world... of potentiality and actualization.

This is exactly the case for Hiromi. Through skating, he is piecing together the disparate parts of him such that he can present himself to the world as a more unified and confident being.

And the show presents the very skating community that Hiromi has been working so hard to keep separated from his personal life- Reki, Langa, Miya, Kaoru, and Kojiro- as the catalyst for that becoming.

That, my dear readers, is queer coding if I ever saw it.

But there’s probably gonna be people claiming something along the lines of “But SHADOW can’t be queer rep because he’s Straight!” And I assume that’s because he shows romantic interest in his female manager.

First of all, Bisexuality. Also Ace/aro-spec people. And second of all, SHADOW is Hiromi’s drag persona.

And before anyone can say anything about how Hiromi can’t do drag because he’s straight (assumption) and cis (also an assumption) uhhhh no, fuck you.

Drag didn’t start with RuPaul’s Drag Race, that’s just how it got mainstream. And it’s also how it got so gentrified and transphobic. You heard me. But anyway.

Drag is, and has always been, first and foremost about exaggerated, and oftentimes satirical, gender presentation and performance. It’s about playing with gender norms through artistic dress and theater, not so much to do with sexuality or gender identity.

Literally, what’s the difference here?

SHADOW is a persona of exaggerated masculinity with a punk aesthetic. Regardless of his sexuality or gender identity, Hiromi’s gender performance as SHADOW is drag- that makes him queer representation, change my fucking mind.

Queerness is more than same-sex romance, and by extension, good queer representation is not limited to canonized gay ships. The very word Queer, in it’s ambiguity, is meant to encompass the richly unique experiences of everyone within the LGBTQ+ community.

In my opinion, Queer =/= Gay. I mean, they’re colloquially the same yes and even I use them interchangeably. But for the purpose of this post, they’re not the same, and that’s to argue that Hiromi/SHADOW’s lack of acknowledgement as queer rep illustrates a larger issue of exclusion within fandom.

I mean, this is something we all kinda been knew, but in the case of Sk8 specifically, there are a two main reasons why I think Hiromi is rarely acknowledged as queer rep.

1. He’s not shippable with another male character

Fandom favors mlm ships when it comes to what’s considered good queer rep. And the ultimate mark of good queer rep is explicit acts of romance or intimacy between two male characters. Unlike with any of the other characters in the show, we can’t point to Hiromi and automatically clock him as gay, especially because he expresses romantic interest in a woman.

So by default, he’s less popular, because “Ew Straight People” amirite /s.

2. He’s not attractive

This is really interesting, because like JOE, Hiromi is a beefcake.

But fans don’t thirst over him the same way they do over JOE. Granted, the show really plays up JOE’s muscles in a very strip-teasey way that literally encourages viewers to find him attractive. By contrast, Hiromi is pretty much covered head to toe and he paints his face in theatrical makeup- the point is to look scary, not attractive.

In essence, even though Hiromi engages in “queer behavior” through his SHADOW persona, his queerness isn’t palatable.

But I also think there’s some pretty insidious undercurrents of fetishization going on here, of both Asian people AND gay men. Which is... a whole other thing I really don’t have the capacity to unpack completely.

But basically, Hiromi doesn’t fit into any of the popular BL archetypes so he’s less likely to recognized as Queer. Relatedly, he’s also less often subjected to a fetishistic gaze as other characters. I mean...

So again, fans just don’t find him as appealing. Attractive characters are always more popular than ugly ones.

And I’m sure there are a lot of people who just don’t care for Hiromi’s personality, that’s fine, he does act like an asshole sometimes. But this post is meant to illustrate that queer rep takes multiple forms, and unfortunately I think a lot of media just tends to fall back on stereotypical portrayals of queer people for the sake of broader appeal. And by consequence, the fandom’s idea of what constitutes queer rep narrows to same-sex romance, usually between two cis gay men.

With the release of Ep 9, I know a lot of people queer people are going to find representation in the Kojiro’s whole “unrequited love” thing. But personally, I feel more represented by Hiromi, his journey of self-acceptance and subversive relationship with gender- that’s what resonates with me as a trans person.

And I think it’s important to see that kind of less palatable type of queer representation more acknowledged in fandom, and in Sk8′s fandom especially, because I know the demographics of this fandom lean heavily queer.

But that’s all for now, lemme know what you guys think :)

[babykittenteach]

I like this addition, and actually, PCCP is useful for once here because I'm not particularly concerned with offending him. Please skip this additional chatter if you're not in the mood for it, lol

To expound on the Context point and the level of seriousness, well before worse problems came up, I a number of times in private had convos with people about why I simply couldn't read PCCP's stuff, and I said something along the lines of, "It reads like infantilization kink* without being presented or tagged as kink."

Kink and jokes are both areas that require some nuance in evaluation. Like, I'm typing here with the username I have and anyone who's seen me around knows I'm more likely to be joking and/or kinking in my fannish output than I am to be wholly serious. Mutual understanding between creators and audiences about the intended context of the text --kink, joke, analysis, criticism, etc. etc.-- can make or break something.

If you see me draw Ed sitting in a kitten Adopt Me basket, you can probably guess there's some intentional level of absurd involved and it's not to be taken as serious analysis of the character. If I did what PCCP did and wrote wholly sincere meta and fic about Ed being helpless at day to day tasks and needing Stede to manage him**, it's going to creep up on you that some genuine opinion about Ed's ability and agency is at play here.

And kink and jokes are not always going to land for everyone, which is why you want to be upfront and self-aware about what you're doing and what who you're interacting with is doing. And use the mute and block functions various places because not everything's for everyone, etc. Then take that a step further, while kink and jokes do have more leeway than Serious Discussion, they still exist in the world and can reinforce stereotypes if it's the only way you talk about things. To stick with the helplessness humor I first used above, there's a viral screenshot that went around of a girl texting her dad the excuse of "Sorry, I'm just a girl" and his response "I don't know what the means but it sounds like it minimizes you as a person." Something being just a joke doesn't mean it's harmless if the humor relies on a harmful stereotype being true, so you go through a process like: Is this meant to be taken seriously or is it a joke, is it a kink, is it satire, is this intentionally presented as such? Am I reading it as intended? And then, if it is humor or titillation or absurdity, does it still rely upon and therefore imply something about the author's worldview? Is there another way to take it in good faith/have I potentially missed something?

Extreme Tangent, holy shit, please skip this if you don't find this kind of blathering interesting: Gonna get up on one of my more personal soapboxes here, but while the specific questions vary case to case from what I said there and what jellybeanium listed, the general idea of interrogating anything by looking at author, intent, context, etc. is something your school system should have made you practice until it became second nature both for fiction and non-fiction, and if your school system failed you, which many did, it's never too late to choose to learn, whether you want to do it in fandom or not.*** We can go on forever about the lists of facts schools do or don't teach, but the primary things imo they should teach are the processes for figuring things out-- the critical thinking needed for media literacy, the scientific process, and yeah, sorry to the internet, some math. They're tools you can pick apart most things with, which anyone can use but especially, man, for the fellow neurodivergents out there, you can figure out a lot about what's going on around you even if it's not as easy as for other people. The asterisks from above: *Infantilization Kink, like most kinks, is not inherently evil and harmful when just treated with intent and awareness and kept in its proper setting. PCCP was a dick who at best didn't know how to separate his kink from his meta which he then tried to enshrine with fake authority. **Having disabilities and quirks and flaws that mean you need help is not bad either, but there is a world of difference between having the agency to determine what you need from other people and ask for it on your terms, and a benevolent savior who comes in and handles those evaluations and choices for you that you have been deemed incapable of making for yourself. ***I do actually think it's okay to say fuck it, fandom is my escapism, I don't want to think about things too hard here. We're all just trying to get through our days, bud. Please get through your day, but if someone's like "hey, this thing is harmful," and you keep doing it without evaluation whether it might be or not****, or some form of mitigation like tagging or venue choice (making or finding space where you and people you're at odds with don't having to step on each other's toes while doing escapism), you've made it harder for them to get through their day, which doesn't seem necessary. ****And yes sometimes reasonable people can disagree about things, and sometimes people are acting in bad faith because every part of the internet has some jerks, sometimes there's people who really dislike something but either aren't self-aware enough to pinpoint why or think that they won't be respected if they stick to expressing personal opinions instead of couching things as social ills, sometimes people's contexts or mental abilities differ to the point where things come across very different to them, etc etc etc. Figuring out whether something is a genuine concern expressed in good faith with proper context or not is a thing you just gotta do if you're going to engage with someone.

And still, nothing here is about someone specific (except that one dude), and good faith disagreements are possible. I'm just sitting in a barrel blathering.

Not in response to any one specific take, but how much of the grey area for people in the back and forth about the ethics of babygirling is due in part to the conflation of cuteness and incompetence? The girls and the gays and especially the bottoms can't math can't drive need jars opened etc etc etc type humor that I would say is rampant on tumblr and tiktok, because it is, if that didn't obfuscate that it's an old trope across like all of society.

Because there's a lot of other sources of cuteness, most of which aren't demeaning --personally I'm a fan, one will note, of dresses and plushies and sparkly eyes, etc.-- but there's a lot of internet culture built up around treating helplessness as charming. And perhaps on this specific part of the internet, there's a somewhat high rate of neurodivergent people who are invested in various inabilities being treated as lovable.

Stick that in a blender with race and you can have at the exact same time both the legacy of black and brown people not being allowed the affection of being seen as cute/pretty and the legacy of black and brown people being seen as incapable. Add in a general lack of specificity, and while we're at it, some people who just don't seem to like certain tropes because it's just not their thing holding grudges and some other people defensive because it is their thing, and honestly, any time I stick my eyeballs back on tumblr it doesn't seem like anything like actual synthesis is happening.

Idk, but this late night post is not actually in defense of or accusatory towards any Thing Someone Did so much as general meta musing about how people talk about things.

[trackinghallownest]

i’ve seen a lot of posts flying around recently discussing the use (or not) of they/them pronouns for the canon vessels and as a Certified They/Them myself i feel at least a little obligated to add my two cents

you don’t really... see nonbinary characters in media too often. least of all when their nonbinary-ness isn’t like.. a huge deal. the vessels being genderless and using the pronouns they do is super important to me and many other people who identify like me, because it’s so so rare to get that sort of representation at all, least of all without it being made into a whole social justice issue or commentary (which is all great ofc, but it’s nice to have something just casual once in a while). which we get in hollow knight! and i love that! so do many others in my position!

however when it comes to fandom, both for this game and others with nb characters and protagonists (COUGHundertale) there is somewhat of a problem with people who see a genderless character, explicitly said to be genderless by the source material and/or the creator, and go “oh cool! a blank slate to project whatever idea of gender i want onto!”. which is pretty textbook erasure. and usually that gender is male, from what i’ve seen, which is a whole other can of worms about male being the “standard” that i don’t want to open but sure is a thing too that i and many others have noticed

making gender headcanons for canon characters that aren’t canonly marginalised identities is naturally all fine n stuff, but think of it this way (purely theoretical scenario): say there’s a gay character in media, who is widely seen as good representation, and openly shown/said to be gay in the source material or by the creator. however, for whatever reason, a big chunk of the fandom just so decides that this character is instead straight, and only describes them as straight and ships them with the opposite gender, because “it doesn’t matter that much” or “it’s up to interpretation” or “people make straight characters gay all the time” or *insert excuse here*

can we all agree that that would be homophobic at worst and erasure at the very least? ok? cool. that’s how I feel when I see people downplaying the importance of nonbinary/genderless characters in media. especially considering they’re even rarer to see compared to gay characters. you could replace the above example with just about anything - trans characters being hc’d as cis, poc characters being hc’d as white, it’s all the same principle and proves the same point

at the same time, though, nonbinary people do exist who use binary pronouns! that’s incredibly valid, pronouns don’t define your gender etc etc, my problem is more with people who completely erase the fact the vessels are nonbinary at all. i’d be considerably less iffy with people who make binary pronoun headcanons keeping that in mind (though anything other than the canon they/them for them does make me eeehh a bit, it really isn’t my place to judge people who aren’t exactly crossing any lines, so yall keep going even if its not my thing) but sadly i don’t see that too often

tl;dr cis/binary people please keep in mind that the canon vessels’ gender and pronouns may not seem so important for you, but to others it’s a huge deal when it comes to representation that’s otherwise very few and far between. please be considerate and listen to nb people when we say it’s an issue!

extra note: this post has nothing to do with ocs, feel absolutely free to have your vessel ocs identify however you like! it’s more a matter of the representation present in canon that i’m discussing here

[mylordshesacactus]

A Writer’s Guide To Hurricanes, I Guess

I realized with a bit of chagrin that, while I’ve spent years bitching about how it drives me up the wall that nobody (in fandom or, in fact, mainstream media) has a goddamn clue how hurricanes work and yet insists on portraying them anyway...I’ve never actually tried to help by explaining what they’re actually like.

So, here’s a genuine, non-sarcastic, good-faith attempt by a Floridian to help you guys who might want to write this stuff at some point understand it, just a little.

So here we go, chronologically in terms of the storm’s progress.

The storm itself is the least of it.

This is the thing non-hurricane places don’t....get.

You can see a hurricane coming. You can watch it. You have, in fact, no choice. I need to reiterate this.

You have no choice but to sit there and watch a hurricane coming.

I’ve actually talked a lot in another post about what that feels like, and why hurricane parties are a thing. But try to imagine what that feels. Just...try. You have to sit there, for about a week, watching the wrath of God bear down on you.

You watch it come and you hope the path changes. You hope it veers off back into the Atlantic, of course, but you also--you hope it hits somewhere else. You know wherever it goes people will die and you hope it goes somewhere else. And you feel kinda bad about it; but you also don't because these are just facts, this is a fact of hurricanes, they will go somewhere and people will die in that place and all of us hope it goes Somewhere Else and if it does, we know that the people Somewhere Else are praying frantically that it gets back on course and hits us instead and we understand.

(And when it does change course, when it doesn’t hit you, you almost feel....cheated? Because you spent so much time and energy preparing and fearing and coming to terms and accepting and bracing and then it--doesn’t happen.

And the guilt of praying it would go Somewhere Else is nothing compared to being disgusted with yourself for actually feeling disappointed that you were spared the apocalypse this time.)

The wind is different.

If you listen to weather reports on hurricanes you’ve absolutely heard the phrasing “sustained winds of X miles per hour with gusts up to Y” without really thinking about what that means.

Now, of course everyone’s been in windy conditions. It’s hard to put a finger on exactly how the hurricane is....different, so I’m just going to describe what it’s like.

The wind always comes from one direction. There’s no being “knocked this way and that” or whatever; the wind comes from the direction the wind is coming from. Always.

(If you’re near where the center of the storm passes, this direction will slowly change as your position relative to the eye changes. But it changes over a matter of hours--like the angle of the sun.)

The wind is a constant, unrelenting force. There’s no....there’s no dips in the wind. It never lessens, it only spikes and then returns to baseline. In a normal windstorm, no, it’s not that the wind ever stops blowing, but...there’s an ebb and a flow. A hurricane is a wind tunnel in which every so often someone revs the engine and there’s a few seconds of higher wind, but it never drops below where it’s set.

(The wind will snake under plywood and storm shutters; it will rip them clean off, if you haven’t screwed them in properly. Screws, not nails. The wind makes deadly projectiles of anything not fastened down. Plywood and storm shutters can be broken, by anything travelling fast enough. It is standard procedure, if you have lawn furniture or anything else not secured that doesn’t float, to carefully lower that furniture into a pool--if you have one. It will stay untouched, and won’t be flung through your neighbors’ plywood.)

This is why hurricanes take down so many trees, why they do so much structural damage. Buildings in hurricane zones are built to withstand high wind, and most trees in these areas can survive high wind too or they wouldn’t have survived so long. But there’s only so much that nature and engineering can do about sustained high winds, without a moment’s rest, for hours, unending, no respite...

In landfall footage--ie, the stuff you see on the news--you likely see this effect in the palm trees-watch how instead of tossing, they’re just bent. It never lets up. In the instances where a bent tree violent bounces back before bending again, trust me--that’s not a letup in the wind speed. That’s the tree having been bent too far, and springing back from the sheer pressure on its internal structure. That’s the tree being stronger than the wind--for now

It’s mostly not like the TV reports.

There’s a reason I referred to “landfall footage” above. News broadcasts, for a lot of reasons, focus on the storm at its worst. The highest storm surge, the highest winds, the most brutal damage, occurs where the eye wall first crosses from being over water to being over land.

(Remember--by the time a storm “makes landfall,” everything for miles around has been experiencing the storm for hours already. “Landfall” is when the EYE of the storm first hits land, not when the storm “arrives”.)

But hurricanes are...vast. Look up satellite footage of hurricanes. Really look at it. Look at how much sheer area they cover.

Most places do not experience landfall-level disaster. That’s why, when people evacuate--well, when residents evacuate, the tourists and recent transplants tend to panic harder--you’re basically always evacuating to someplace that will still have vanished under that mass of swirling clouds. Evacuation sites are still inside the hurricane, but wind speed, storm surge, etc--everything drops dramatically even a few miles from the eye.

On a related note, the eye itself rapidly starts shedding power the moment it’s no longer over open water. Generally, the simple act of making landfall instantly drops a hurricane at least one category in severity. Hurricanes are eldritch gods; they rise from the sea and from the sea they take their power. Cut off from it, they starve.

Do not think for a moment that just because you’re “only” experiencing Cat 1 winds that this storm can’t kill your ass dead. Do not underestimate what the death throes of a dying god can do.

Storm surge isn’t high waves, and it isn’t rain.

Storm surge is the actual sea level rising. The entire ocean being dragged onto land by the power of the storm.

Particularly wet and slow hurricanes might--rarely--drop enough rain to cause flooding. However, that’s unusual; most places here can handle heavy rain. The rain isn’t the problem.

(Slow hurricanes are killers on another level. It’s everything I’ve already said about the unrelenting brutality of the wind, coupled with the fact that--as, again, the vast majority of the storm has been raging for hours by the time it “makes landfall”, and hurricanes draw power from the Eye being over the water--it now has hours upon hours of fully-fuelled destruction before it begins to weaken by being cut off from warm water. It doesn’t weaken, it just....keeps going. And the storm surge is present that entire time.)

I’m just gonna direct you to this NOAA diagram on how storm surge works.

The northeast quadrant is the strongest.

This isn’t a proper subheading it’s just something I rarely see people not from Florida acknowledge. 

No matter where the storm is coming from or what angle it hits at--the northeast quadrant is the killer. You do everything in your power to avoid being caught northeast of the storm.

In hurricane-prone areas, the threat is felt year-round.

All the major intersections? Our stoplights aren’t hung on wires from wooden poles--those blow down too easily. They’re bolted to thick metal pipes, “hurricane-proof”. Major roadways that are above floodlines are labelled as evacuation routes.

Things like that.

Hurricanes make their presence known long before the disaster begins.

You start to get “hurricane weather” days--days--before it hits. The sun is out, the weather is fine except for a...

Well, a constant, low-level breeze, with much less variation in angle and direction than usual, fewer gusts, but still primarily a natural breeze. And then you go outside and you look up at that cheerful blue sky and it’s already there.

They’re called cloud bands. You look up and the entire sky is just fluffy white clouds, racing at speed in one direction...

(The breeze, in those early few days, is light. Present, but light. The clouds are always, always racing as if before a gale. There’s a pervasive, eerie wrongness about this, looking up--the clouds moving much, much faster than the wind that should be driving them.)

A hurricane is not a thunderstorm.

This is the cardinal sin and the clearest, most common misconception. Hurricanes are not thunderstorms. In fact it’s actually very rare to have lightning or hear any thunder at all during a hurricane, compared to an average summer storm in hurricane-prone areas.

People often portray hurricanes as basically....the worst storm they can remember, but bigger, and badder, and worse. Hurricanes aren’t just big and intense, they’re....different. They’re something different.

Hurricanes are...quiet.

Except that they’re not.

You know when people talk about the wind howling? Think of the most intense storm you’ve ever sat through. Think about the sound of the wind.The way it whistles through leaves. Hold that experience in your head.

Now forget it. This is different.

Hurricanes don’t sound like that. Hurricanes are....

The sound a hurricane makes is a howl, yes. It makes palm fronds and grass steps and leaves whistle like a rapier scraped against a sheathe, yes. But you barely notice those shallow details, because the sound a hurricane makes is below that, stronger, more powerful.

Hurricanes moan.

Hurricanes are the entire world around you slowly and steadily fraying at the seams, and it moans, low and deep, agonized and hungry, and it never stops. Never. Not until it’s over.

Hurricanes are a world ending.

The storm passes, and the hurricane has only begun.

Do you think people stock up as heavily as they do, with generators and nonperishables and such, for--what, for a few hours of wind and rain, however alive?

No.

Because once the tempest is past, now you have to...exist.

You will not have power. If you were in a very, very lightly-affected area, you might have cell service. Most of your neighbors have evacuated. Many roads can’t be used because they’re washed out, or there are trees or power lines down across them.

It’s very common to lose water pressure. Common practice in hurricane-prone areas is to fill your bathtub with water before the storm--so that, when you lose water pressure, you can use a bucket to flush your toilet. Because those conditions, assuming you’re in an area that can be repaired and not rebuilt, can take weeks.

Weeks without running water, a flushable toilet. That gets grim fast. You brace for the storm. You prepare for what follows.

A hurricane is an eldritch abomination.

Hurricanes are alive.

Hurricanes are Old Gods.

Sitting through a hurricane is not like sitting through a bad storm or like sitting through a tornado, which is fast and unstoppable but then it’s over like it never existed save for the destruction left behind.

In order to get a clearer understanding of just how much the universe is vast, how much it does not, cannot, even notice you enough to want you dead because you are so small it would not comprehend you as possessing an existence if it tried--you would have to go to space.

And while the world moans around you and something out there, alive, growls at a frequency you can’t hear but you feel--you don’t cuddle for warmth during a hurricane. You just don’t.

You keep the generator running outside in the lee of the house where it won’t kill you all with gas fumes, connected via wires that snake around through a cracked door somewhere it won’t get blown open. You make sure it doesn’t run out of fuel, that it doesn’t get water blown into anything important. You use it to power a TV first--to keep the weather report on. You power lights second, if it’s a decent one. You can’t afford one powerful enough to run your refrigerator; you ate the ice cream before this started.

You play games. We’re human; it’s what we do. We play games in the face of our own helplessness. But while you play, you listen. You can’t not.

It’s always there. The world creaks on its hinges. You feel the edges threatening to dissolve. If you sit for a moment and are quiet, that ever-present moan is there, something ancient and powerful on a scale outside your comprehension. There is no cozy comfort of being bunkered down safe against the storm, not here.

There is no “safe” against this. You sit still and quiet and bear witness.

And when the sun rises in the aftermath, you’re surprised to find the world--even a wrecked and altered world--still exists. It shouldn’t. You were there when it ended.

And--and I cannot emphasize this enough--there’s no fucking thunder.

[bigskydreaming]

#when i read about tim i often kind of come to the idea that he's relatively self centered#and that can be both a flaw and a strength#but he doesn't often consider other people's feelings and circumstances#like when dick made damian robin he didn't really consider the situation from anyone else's view#or in his origin story#he doesn't seem to consider how dick would feel about hearing how tim was affected by dick's parents' death#or with the spyral situation#or in regards to him earning robin#and its pretty consistent in fandom characterization even if a lot of writers don't seem to be aware of it#its interesting cause i think its something i think he has in common with bruce#its honestly a surprisingly consistent thing from what i see#and it can be a strength to#it can absolutely lead to some confidence and self actualization#as well as being able commit to fixing something and working hard at it#because you believe you can and don't think anyone else can/will do it via @emenerd

Y’know, what’s interesting to me about these points is the fact that like.....Tim having tendencies towards self-centeredness is actually something that COMPLETELY makes sense and can be quite sympathetic in light of his backstory of having neglectful parents.

In an age of armchair diagnosticians eager to label anyone who expresses a controversial viewpoint while centering themselves as an example, as like, having a narcissistic personality disorder (and with the loaded implication that this makes them a bad person even if its true, instead of just....having a disorder, yay weaponizable ableism) like, it can be important to add in distinctions that even tendencies that share overlap with a lot of things born of entitlement, etc....aren’t always necessarily proof of that.

For instance, in Tim’s case, an overemphasis on himself and his own position in situations and arguments can very reasonably be attributed as a coping mechanism he developed in an attempt to acknowledge and address self-esteem issues he sees himself as having, DUE to parental neglect.

Its not that he thinks he’s the most important person in the room, necessarily, its that he spent so many years not even being considered a person in the room, that now he OVERCOMPENSATES on his own behalf, in an attempt to remind himself that no, his opinion and feelings and situations do matter.....and because he like most of the Bat-characters has a tendency towards hyper-fixating on a problem they’re trying to address, this can also understandably create a kind of tunnel vision. Where he’s so busy focusing on what he’s diagnosed as an actual issue he has that he’s trying to address or make up for, in order to build up his self-esteem....that he neglects to keep everyone around him equally centered in his interactions with them, and remember that like, they have their own issues and ignoring that to focus entirely on his own runs the risk of negatively impacting them in the exact same way he’s still learning to cope with having been negatively impacted in his development as a child.

None of this makes him a bad person, or is stuff that can’t be addressed and developed just by paying the appropriate attention to it and his interactions.

SO the issue I tend to more often have....

Is with how often in fandom and fanon we hear references to Tim’s neglect and emotional abuse and how this impacted him.....much in the same way we see Jason and Cass and Damian and Dick’s various forms of abuse and the developmental impact it had on them....

BUT there tends to then be a disconnect, IMO, because that acknowledgment of the WHAT of Tim’s neglect and abuse and the HOW it hurt him.....isn’t often followed up by an examination/awareness of how it also SHAPED him.....at least, not compared to how discussions/fics about say, Jason’s abuse tend to point out the latter as much as the former.

And this is a big part of my gripe with the ways abuse is centered and tackled as a topic in fics and fandom discussions, because its so often capitalized upon as a defense or shield for a character from criticism, stuff like that.....without ever actually EXPLORING the topic itself, or the FULLNESS of the impact it can have.

But only in regards to some characters.

What I mean is like....we see a lot of focus on Jason’s childhood abuse, yeah? And this often is then connected through headcanons, meta and fics to various aspects of Jason’s characterization as a teenager, and as an adult as well.....with a tendency towards anger or violence, abrasive personality, etc. Don’t get me wrong, its usually presented as such in a SYMPATHETIC light, especially when raised by fans of Jason themselves.....but his abuse is very much present and centered in fics and discussions as something that not only impacted him and made him suffer, but something that actually shaped him to varying degrees as well....with a lot of focus then in fics of him as an adult, like, paid to him going to therapy and unpacking his childhood abuse in an effort to WORK on these aspects of himself that make his present day life harder or less healthy than he’d like it to be. The issue of how his abuse lent itself to various behaviorisms is raised in order to address various byproducts of his abuse as FLAWS that he seeks to eliminate, in order to make himself happier and make himself someone that people want to be around more.

And again, don’t get me wrong - for the most part, this is a GOOD thing. The caveat here is just a personal dislike I have for how often these narratives smack of a kind of saviorism, and act like it was only through the grace of Bruce and becoming part of the Batfam that Jason’s ever afforded the opportunity to better himself as a person. I dislike the hell out of this because it not only pairs all too well with a lot of classist shit, it feeds into the singular narrative we’re so often presented with by media about abused kids: the myth of the victim being destined to become a victimizer, it all being an inevitable cycle. The reason this myth is so easily perpetuated is the exact reason I’m so critical of the saviorism in a lot of abused-Jason fics.....people can very easily fall into the trap of assuming that abused kids are likely to grow up to be abusers because they never have anyone to TEACH them that abuse is wrong, or to lead by healthy example. 

The harm of this perception is that it kinda throws under the bus every kid who never lucks out and gets a Bruce Wayne style savior swooping in to not only save them from their abusive environs, but TEACH them that they deserved better and that abuse is wrong. 

Because its like, uh, the thing is, plenty of abused kids who never get a personal mentor or savior figure are fully capable of figuring out for themselves that they deserve better and that people hurting them is wrong, because it makes them feel bad and they don’t like that? 

Many abused kids don’t grow up in a media vacuum where they simply have no access to glimpses of lives different from their own.....we see kids having happier, healthier family lives on TV or in books and are able to figure out that society overall thinks that’s what family is SUPPOSED to look like, and its ours that is the aberration? 

The very fact that we’re taught or have it instilled in us by abusive parents that like, we’re not to bring up instances or examples of our abuse to teachers or friends, that its a SECRET, is like, usually a dead giveaway that there’s something WRONG with it that we’re being instructed - and enforced with abusive consequences - to keep from alerting others to....like, this is basically a blaring siren to a lot of us that no, what’s happening to us ISN’T normal and acceptable, and that’s literally WHY the parent we’re afraid of is so insistent on us keeping the facts of it hidden? 

And so like, tons of abused kids figure out for ourselves the difference between right or wrong, based off nothing more than our own feelings about things and a desire to not be like the people who make us feel miserable - like, never underestimate the power of spite to like, keep a kid from growing up doing the same thing to others that was done to them, lol. 

But point being, lots of kids never get a Bruce Wayne figure to take them away from their abuse and also teach them that they never deserved it and how not to pass the hurt forward by doing the same things to others. And its kinda condescending as fuck that we so often see narratives that take it as so obvious it barely merits commenting on, that like, ‘of COURSE abused kids grow up to become abusers if they don’t have someone else step in and show them a better way’....mmm, no. Fuck that. But you get what I mean.

So like, its a mixed bag. Its a good thing, to see Jason-centric stories that show him addressing his childhood and seeking just a more fuller, happier, healthier life for himself. Its a less great thing to see this narrative presented as all encompassing, with it never being raised that no, Jason actually could figure out he deserved better and how to treat people in ways he’d want to be treated even without a billionaire guardian angel.....NOT because the narrative wherein someone helps an abused kid figure out what was wrong about how they were treated is like, NEVER valid....but rather it just becomes a problem when looked at as a data point against the larger tapestry of fandom-wide works....and noticing that this specific narrative is pretty much the ONLY one raised or treated as valid. With it just being ASSUMED to be the natural course of events and characters, rather than just....the direction society overall has their perceptions of abuse steered towards due to a singular and constantly reinforced abuse narrative shown to us in media.

And the way this all plays back into my point about Tim and what took me down this road in general.....

Is that disconnect I was talking about, lies specifically in HOW Tim is often acknowledged and regarded as an abuse survivor due to his emotional abuse and neglect......with this abuse and its impact on HIM often taking center stage, much the way Jason’s abuse and its impact takes center stage in his narratives.....

BUT with a key difference being that while a lot of Jason’s narratives go on to denote the specific ways his abuse helped SHAPE him and his interactions with others, and raise and address the ways in which he can better himself and his relationships by unpacking all of this openly....

Most of the stories about Tim’s abuse/neglect tend to just STOP at the awareness of its existence and impact on him. Never taking it that one step further to examine how those specific forms of abuse could have additionally SHAPED him....in ways that sometimes negatively impact those around him and his own loved ones, even if this is completely unintentional on his part. The difference, the disconnect, lies solely in how rarely its ever acknowledged that Tim’s own upbringing can and does play directly into how he interacts with people later on in life.....and in ways that he’s fully capable of addressing and bettering himself so as to be happier and healthier just in his own life, and in his relationships, as someone others want to be around.

Aaaaand once you actually examine or consider WHY there’s this discrepancy between the full ramifications of Tim’s abuse and that which various siblings of his underwent, when there’s full agreement that what he did go through absolutely can be termed abusive as well....like, its the implications of what about Tim makes him more naturally resistant or whatever to being shaped by his abuse in ways that have actual negative impact on others in his life, whereas the same isn’t true of say, Jason.....that’s when the red flags start to go up for me, and the unintended subtext starts to get Less Than Stellar, IMO.

Anyway. Just food for thought on the subject of Tim, his upbringing, the various impacts this had on not JUST him but also on how he interacts with others, and ways in which all of this compares and contrasts with how the subject of abuse is raised and depicted in regards to other Batkids.

[itsclydebitches]

Why do you think so many can't see that RWBY's writing isn't that good? I get why people enjoy the show despite it's poor writing. I'm not talking about that. I mean people who really do think it's such a well put together show that is only getting better and better.

I honestly think a lot of it comes down to how you watch the show. I’ve spoken extensively about how many fans tend to re-write RWBY’s scripts as they watch, overlaying scenes with their preferred interpretation, filling in that gap with a headcanon, assuming that this random detail is a pointed allusion/reference/symbol/etc. and then just... ignoring the rest. Everything that doesn’t fit into the concept of “RWBY is a fantastically written show” is either changed, justified, or if you can’t manage either, ignored. This is particularly easy to do if you’re a younger viewer, simply because you may not have engaged with and thought critically about enough similar shows to spot where RWBY is faltering. After all, a Hershey bar is the absolute best chocolate ever and will remain the best chocolate ever up until you get the chance to try, say, a Belgian chocolate from a skilled chocolatier. It’s all a matter of comparative reference. It’s also just easier to get emotionally caught up in the characters you adore when you’re a kid, pre-teen, or teenager. I say this not as a means of dismissing everyone who fits those ages, or to make claims that everyone supporting the show must be younger, but simply because that used to be me and I have experience with that exact phenomenon. I can clearly remember being ten, twelve, fourteen, sixteen, even eighteen years old, absolutely immersed in my favorite media and defending them with a passion as only a young fangirl can. I didn’t yet have the experience or the education to spot a lot of those problems for myself and the few times they were pointed out, I recoiled at the mere idea of someone saying my favorite thing was bad. I didn’t yet have the emotional maturity to separate a critique of something I loved from that love itself, so any attack on the story felt like an attack on my taste, my intelligence, even my identity. And a lot of that was pre-social media era. So now, combine that emotion, that passion, and that limited experience with a fandom who is able to get buddy-buddy with the creators. RT very much presents themselves as friends of the fans, whether that’s responding to someone’s tweet, referencing theories in Q&As, or giving explanatory rundowns on reddit. Now, in 2021, a critique of a show can feel both like an attack on the fan and an attack on the creators, people who are no longer just a face on the back of a book cover, or a celebrity you saw interviewed on TV once, but someone you “know.” How dare you say this doesn’t make sense when the explanation I personally made up is so well done? How dare you criticize the show I’m so emotionally attached to? How dare you say anything that implies the writers I feel like I’m pseudo-social media friends with aren’t geniuses? All of which is wrapped up in not recognizing that the knee-jerk response “How dare...” is a problem all its own. 

Obviously this quick, meandering response doesn’t even begin to touch on all the reasons why someone might defend the writing, or even do anything to prove that it’s actually bad (always a subjective opinion). But I’d say the fans’ relationship with the crew, limited experience with well written media doing similar things that RWBY is attempting, limited experience with analysis/how to test the cohesion of a story, and the sheer importance that RWBY as a franchise holds for many people all probably play a part. Interestingly though, for some RWBY has reached a point where even that instinctual desire to defend the show isn’t enough. This is the first volume I’ve seen where a significant number of fans are going, “I used to defend the show, but now...” That reaction is likely due both to the declining quality and the fact that these problems are now extending to fan favorites. Volume 6, when I got off the “RWBY is great” bandwagon, didn’t have as large an impact because the fandom as a whole didn’t care for Ozpin, so the writing problems connected to him were reframed as deserving for an “evil” character. But now, in Volume 8  — particularly the finale  — the favorite MCs are getting done dirty too, so even die-hard fans are pausing and entering the “I hope this volume was just a fluke” stage. It’s easy to come up with those explanations/ignore various problems when the characters you’re emotionally attached to are soaking up all the good parts of the volume. But with the bees still not confirmed, Penny dead, Watts dead, Jaune getting attention again, Maria forgotten, Yang taken out in one hit, etc... anyone whose interest relates on any of those aspects (and others) is suddenly wary post-episode 14. The stuff that we’ve said for years is a problem is now, suddenly, a problem for the parts of the show bigger chunks of the fandom are here for and that gets people to pay attention. 

[marianbyron]

okay but like. i feel like most media these days ends up falling short of its potential somewhat, because pretty much everything is ultimately a commercial endeavor where the end goal is (at least partially) to turn a profit. and so there’s a fear of taking creative risks, or a budget that restricts what you can make, or a time crunch, and so on. so you get mostly watered down versions of whatever creative vision the project started out as.

and then you go to fandom for an alternative, because there is good stuff there and it’s recognizable, but that wasted potential is noticeable, too. except fandom has fallen into this collaborative interpretation where there’s almost always a “widely accepted fanon” based off of the headcanons of a handful of popular creators. this combined with the fundamental misunderstanding of critical consumption of media (something i’ve seen a few posts criticizing lately) where the alternative presented to ignoring a media’s flaws is just performatively ripping it to shreds while still consuming that content leads to even MORE watered down versions of the characters and concepts than you started out with.

and like. you start out with a concept that’s at least somewhat watered down from a potentially really interesting idea from a professional creative who knows how to write a story. and then a bunch of people who enjoy that recognize that something is off, that this could be better, and try their best to turn it into what it could have been! except popular fandom mindset has led to a fundamental misunderstanding of exactly what is off here, about what that missed potential is exactly. because rather than thinking about what the creator might have intended, or reading between the lines, or making new connections, etc, people either ignore or bash the “bad” aspects without really thinking about any of it.

i think one of the biggest contributors to this mindset is the like. “my story now!”, death of the author type reaction, especially towards media made by shitty people. you can’t like... ignore the intentions of the author when you’re thinking about media and still have it be faithful to the original thing. you can change things, yes, but it should be based on actually thinking through the issues and why they’re problems, rather than a surface-level band aid approach. like, sometimes a creator’s prejudice is so intwined in a work that you can’t just functionally ignore it. or even a bad story decision! like, you have to sort of think about why they made that choice to find a good alternative!

i also think there’s a mindset of like. every fan creator thinking they’re smarter than the professional writers? and a really weird trend lately of saying that subtext isn’t real...? yes, a lot of creators will make choices that aren’t like, the most revolutionary thing, or aren’t what you wanted to happen. that’s because of the financial motivation i talked about earlier, and also because taste is subjective. sometimes what you want to happen and what the creator wants to happen are both decent alternatives, you just have different taste. neither of those things means that the creator isn’t smart, or that they’re incapable of weaving a good story. when you’re thinking about the author’s intentions, you also might also make connections that the writer didn’t intentionally put in there. great news! this is called critical consumption of media. it can be fun!!

and like... this has gotten long and unruly and it’s just a portion of the thoughts i have related to this topic, and i’m not saying writing fun silly headcanons or soulmate aus or whatver is like. bad. i enjoy that content too! and i’m not saying that you have to write long analyses of every work of fiction you like. sometimes you just want to not think too hard about stuff, come up with headcanons about your favorite characters for comfort, write some tropey fanfiction, and that’s chill! i just wish some of the widespread mindsets in fandom that contribute to a lot of this were... not so pervasive. i think it’d lead to a much more diverse range of fan content.

[bereft-of-frogs]

Hi, hope you don't mind me asking this, but I saw a post about your two fandoms, and I just wanted to ask, do you think there is the same arguments across both fandoms just in a slightly different context, or do you think a lot of discourse is specific to the fandom itself? Do you think it's inevitable that in large fandoms, discourse occurs? I'm only in one so I genuinely don't know. Thanks.

Hi! This is a really interesting question.

I think the base elements of discourse will always be present in a fandom that grows sufficiently large. allow me to postulate a few categories of universal discourse:

- the various iterations of purity culture, whether it’s ‘how dare you find the villain character compelling!’, or ‘this content is too violent/sexual won’t you think about the hypothetical children’! No amount of tagging your work 18+ will save you from the crime of hypothetically traumatizing imaginary children. the P word will probably be thrown around (you know what I mean)

- there will be the ship wars, with the added recent development of desperately looking for ways the other person you don’t ship your fav with is morally bad, overusing terms like gaslight/abuse/manipulation/etc, so as to paint your rival ship and all its shippers as ‘problematic’ and morally in the wrong, character bashing, etc

- the people who seem to actually hate about 90% of the canon but stick around for the fanworks and just constantly rag on canon as it’s released and think anyone (also with an added ‘...and this is why it’s morally wrong!’ for the same reasons as above ship wars)

- the people who aren’t in the fandom at all but sort of flit around the edges just to flaunt how much smarter they are than the people who actually like it. these people just want to pride themselves on not liking something that is popular, and are incredibly annoying about it.

But I feel like each big fandom I’ve participated in has had at least one unique discourse element. Les Misérables has the war against the untagged Modern AUs. Star Wars has the, sigh, ‘the Jedi were secretly the actual bad guys all along and you’re a bad person for liking them’ discourse I refuse to ever participate in again. I don’t think any fandom has achieved the levels of cult recruitment that Harry Potter has. (What is it, 5 cults now?) I’m sure there’s some mess going on in Lord of the Rings somewhere, but I’ve been fortunate enough to avoid it.

Marvel I think is interesting because it’s so large that there are multiple factions, all with unique points that people argue about. Even in compared to Star Wars, which is also large and with many factions. But I think also the difference might have to do with time scale: MCU discourse has really only had 10 years to cram it all it, while SW has developed over the last 40. There’s been a higher concentration of course, with the recent Disney acquisition and all the problems that entailed (lol yes understatement of the decade), but I think because it’s all been so stretched out we only see one significant cycle of discourse at a time, whereas in the MCU they’re all happening at once. Constantly. Which can get exhausting.

I think my personal position in the two fandoms discourse is interesting. I have the general Star Wars discourse ban that dates from when the sequel trilogy anti stuff was getting really bad, and I found myself stuck in a sort of weird position on it...but since then I think I’ve found myself a niche where the discourse is more minimal and easier to avoid, excepting that one big sticking point that I refuse to discuss because the sides are so entrenched it’s useless and also frequently gets to a point that’s just fundamentally upsetting to me, so I just don’t do it. I have had some issues trying to avoid character bashing of some of my favs, because it’s gotten sort of bad lately and spilled over into the AO3 summaries/tags which I really hate...but then I just go back to doing whatever I want and not really caring about what anyone else thinks lol.

I don’t know why I feel more comfortable publicly commenting on MCU discourse. I think maybe I’ve just been more consistently participating in it over the last few years. I don’t know. I also just find it really interesting to break down sometimes, like when I made that post about the fandom and conspiratorial thinking, and if we were headed towards something like TJLC. It is an utter mess right now (like seriously especially the Loki side of the fandom, good god what a dumpster on fire we’re all hanging out in) - which also means it’s a lot harder to avoid, so I think maybe my coping mechanism here is to set an emotional distance by commentating and unpacking it, whereas with SW it’s just utter avoidance.

So yeah, the tldr: yes, I think once any fandom or piece of media gets sufficiently large and popular there will be certain points of discourse that inevitably crop up, and it’s interesting because one can be in multiple fandoms and have completely different responses to and ways of dealing with discourse.

Thanks for the ask! It was thought-provoking. (and apologies for the delay in answering!)