#often the ppl most angry with me in fandom like the same characters and ships. i can do without this.

[equalseleventhirds]

i don't particularly enjoy or care about ship poll tournaments, but i do think if ur ship loses in one you should immediately start calling it a rarepair. even if it's like #2 overall. not bcos it's accurate, just bcos it's funny.

[hintons]

it’s kind of a shock to me dal/pony’s never been a big ship in the fandom (tho rn i can understand why ppl are not quick to ship charas who frequently refer to e/o as brothers — musical) when they’re both well-defined as indiv charas and share lots of moments together on paper and on screen (many of which worth mulling over) and can fit into the tropes many ppl clearly enjoy in their ships! (for instance making pony love drawing curly or steve…)

there are a couple of things that prevents it from being a big ship:

a lot of people are young, it's their first fandom, and they get scared off by the age gap. when you're older or at least have more fandom experience, it's not as big of a deal. a lot of younger people currently treat it like it's like a ten year old and a twenty-five year old which is just not correct. and a lot of newer people are really puritan brained in a way that is a bit disturbing. there was a little bit of dalpony on ff.net but ff.net is very hard to navigate and almost all of those fics were varying levels of ooc. (and i ate it up anyway)

i want to be nice but there's really no nice way to put it: a lot of jally shippers are extremely possessive over their ship and over dallas. jally is treated as the de facto ship of the fandom and dalpony isn't like tim/dallas or johnny/pony — pony is instantly pegged as direct competition to johnny and it makes a lot of jally people angry. i think what makes them angriest is that it de-centers johnny from dallas' narrative in their eyes and it subverts the line they always cite from the novel that is very jally. they tend to act very entitled over jally being the "default" ship and a lot of them get loud and aggressive over the existence of dalpony in general so that's stopped a lot of people. (there's also the fact that a lot of jally fans are johnny fans more than they are dallas fans so a lot of them perceive dallas as a prize for johnny rather than his own separate human being)

a lot of people in fandom, again bc it's first fandom and there's a young skewage, can't write in character for shit to be blunt. so a lot of ships where it involves a developed character shipped with an undeveloped or totally non-present character appeals to them cause they can just self insert or because they can just write whatever and not be held up to the same standards. you can do almost anything with curly and not have to check back to canon at all about him cause curly doesn't ever appear until that was then, this is now and he's not significant. most of purly is "dalpony with training wheels" for me with how it's written and more than one dalpony person has said to me they used to be into purly and switched or became a multishipper.

the musical and the proliferation of "they're brothers! you can't ship them!" that's going through fandom right now is stifling a lot of shipping. i've seen the musical via a bootleg, it's the most out of character version of canon and it's the most de-queered version of canon to come up. people, as a consequence, are buying hard into "platonic only!" versions of canon to the point that there wasn't even a surge of jally after the musical. if jally can't even make it, dalpony won't. (and they had a nugget of dalpony in there)

some other things is that people tend to move on from this fandom within months of each other or they're here for a long time but stick into one lane or there's lots of breaks between. so there's not a whole lot of consistency in presence, either. i think i'm the only dalpony who's been here the longest with the most influence (i hate dallyboy as a name so i picked dalpony and here we are using it!) and the most fanworks vs. people who've simply drifted away, been bullied out of shipping it (happens often, unfortunately, even though i try to support as many people as i can while maintaining boundaries), or go to other pastures. (though i will say some major shipfics haven't been going on as long or consistently as say fits even for other ships. i think the last major jally fic that was completed was 2019.)

[madara-fate]

Hey Maddy to give us all a break from all thats going on in the world and your usual asks i wanted to send a fun question ask.

1. Whats your favorite anime of all time?

Mine has to be naruto because it was when i started to really get into anime and its nostalgic.

2. What anime was so hyped up to you but you ended up not liking at all?

Mine was One Piece ( dont crucify me lol) i just found the art style meh and its just too goofy for me overall i couldn't take it serious😭 ( almost stopped watching fairytail for this reason until it stepped up and if it didn't make me laugh).

3. What's your favorite canon otp (s)

My favs are sasusaku, ichihime, gajevy.

4. What a pairing you were kinda pissed never happened?

I was seething when they didn't make roy x riza a thing.. I mean that chemistry though..

5. Do u have a pairing you hate?

For some reason i didnt care for Mine falling in love with tatsumi in akame ga kill it felt random.

6. If you could bring one anime back that's ended which would it be?

I kinda wish they did Tokyo Ghoul again and end it different.

7. Whats your number 1 most hated trope in anime and fandoms?

I cant stand in anime when the main character is always some child of prophesy or later finds out is a god or something.. And in the fandom i hate when ppl give a pass for one character (even in a separate anime) but condemns another for the same things.

Im curious to see your answers🙂

1. What's your favorite anime of all time?

Code Geass. I don't think it's as rewatchable as many other of my favourites, but my god for that first time watching... No other anime had made me feel so much, so deeply, and so quickly. "The Zero Requiem", to this day, is still one of the best endings I've ever seen.

2. What anime was so hyped up to you but you ended up not liking at all?

I don't think I've ever had an anime that was really hyped that I didn't like at all, but there was one that certainly didn't live up to the overwhelming amount of hype and praise that it had received, and for me, that anime was Steins;Gate. I mean I liked it, but my goodness it just isn't as good as most people say it is.

3. What's your favorite canon otp (s)

I gave a list of my top 30 ships ranked during this post ^_^

4. What's a pairing you were kinda pissed never happened?

Honestly, I don't think I've ever been angry that a ship never happened. I've been disappointed, but not really angry. Examples include Zuko and Katara (Avatar: TLA), and a whole load of other ships where they weren't explicitly confirmed, Like Roy and Riza, and Armin and Annie (their mutual feelings were canonically confirmed, but they weren't explicitly shown to be in a relationship).

5. Do u have a pairing you hate?

Not really, I have pairings that I'd prefer, not really pairings that I hate.

6. If you could bring one anime back that's ended which would it be?

I can't choose, but my first thought was to redo Naruto with a different studio, one that wouldn't let their personal preferences seep into their work as often as Studio Pierrot did.

7. What's your number 1 most hated trope in anime and fandoms?

This is a tie between damsels in distress, and violent tsundere girls who physically abuse the male protagonist for no justifiable reason, and suffer no consequences or comeuppance, because female on male physical abuse is apparently "funny". It makes my skin crawl.

[hematomes]

Just saw your post about editing characters to be black, and just want to say that i totally agree and it's been bothering me a lot lately. The attitude the fandom have toward things like race and LGBT is... Really. Really. Toxic.

People attack artists for drawing keaya "too white" and even saying stuff like "he is not black enough".

Attacking other people over "straight ships" and claiming that everyone that ships them is homophobe (and pointedly looking away when other point out that the characters can be bi).

It's... Disgusting. It's the reason i don't want to interact with most of the fandom and i am also SCARED for the release of sumeru, if it's going to be based somewhat on Egypt/middle east. I can already see the angry posts of " the characters don't look black enough, mihoyo is racists!" when in reality... People here aren't as dark as other thinks. :/

(I do want to ask something if it's okay - even if a character is white, not asian or poc, and someone edits them to be black - it makes me super uncomfortable. Am i the only one?)

ALSO, IM SO SORRY FOR THE LONG RANT , IT'S OKAY IF YOU DONT POST IT, JUST WANTED TO SAY THAT I LOVE YOU AND YOUR BLOG, AND HAVE A GREAT DAY

ya ya ya i agree! tho i also want to point out something that is extremely obvious but not saying it could backfire and i don't want that: the opposite happens just as often. that goes for all the toxicity; people invalidating a ship bc 'they're straight!!!' or 'they're gay, don't be homophobic' is the same kind of stupid and pointlessly mean. let people headcanon what they want as long as it's all legal and consensual and shit smh

also, YEAH, BISEXUALS BRO. the bi/pan/omni erasure is so fucking strong in some fandoms, like a character has to be either gay or straight but god forbid they're attracted to multiple genders. but sadly it also reflects the biphobia etc irl, lots of people (both in and out of the lgbtq+ community) are sooo biphobic lmao i cannot understand why

as far as sumeru is concerned, im kinda worried too. especially since all the npc we've seen from sumeru for now are light-skinned lmao. at least cyno exists, and he's gorgeous <3 i hope people also remember that we'll get natlan in a few years, and i think this is where we'll get the dark-skinned characters!

as for white people being edited, for me it can be the same thing if we're talking about poorly edited features, over someone else's work. it's still wrong, but not as much bc for asian and other poc characters there's also the underlying notion that black poc > other poc, which is not really the case for white ppl bc they're sufficiently represented for it to matter... less? it's poorly worded im sorry but it's like 8am and im brain dead. at least in my opinion, but yeah i get what you mean. i wish there would be more genshin ocs rather than fucking edits tbh

don't worry about the long post <3 i can understand how it weighs on one's mind bc it's literally what happened to me (sounds a bit dramatic but yk racism pisses me off so), so feel free to rant about it it's all good! also thank you bby i love you too, have a great day 🤍🤍🤍

[wangxianficrecs]

You guys, we get a beautiful canonical gay ship, which - how rare it even is? and y'all are already making up scenarios how to include wq into the ship? I guess this is why we can't have nice things. Why not just watch like 99% of other show that contain a het ship if you want one so bad? Poor wq being the scapegoat to ppl's unrealistic characterization is not only utterly OOC for her and Wangxian but also disrespectful to their canonical characterizations.

I think one of the best parts of fandom and fanfiction is that... it’s about people matching together characters who MESH, for whatever of a myriad of reasons, with a complete disregard for gender.  In our current media culture, most often the characters with the best chemistry/histories/etc. are male because our current culture doesn’t even bother fleshing out female characters beyond that of sexual objects.

So, the question is:  am I reading fanfiction because it is GAY, or am I reading it because it is explores the relationship and chemistry between the two characters that most intrigue me?

For me personally, the answer is both.  (I am not a fan of het sex, generally, because I am female, I am asexual, and I am uninterested in self-insert.)  The story in question explores two incredibly damaged people in a bleakly hopeless situation who are doing their damnedest just to keep from drowning... and in a dark moment, they find a way to draw comfort from each other.  Frankly... their genders don’t matter to me?  Would it be any different if Wen Qing were trans?  Would that make it more okay?  If it were always-a-girl-wwx?  What if it were Fourth Uncle?  Wen Ning?  Granny?  The story is simply about two human beings in a terribly unhappy place.  They are not in love, their relationship has no future, they are both very aware of that fact.  It is up to the author to make this pairing into something that I find believable and relatable.  In this particular case, the author did.

But listen, just like I told the other anon:  THE INSTANT you realize a fic is going somewhere that makes you feel uncomfortable, angry, attacked, negative in any way... leave it.  This is a very important life skill.

Some people want to look into corners that other people don’t.  That is okay.  It is the exact same okayness that allows you to peek into the concept of two people having a romantic homosexual relationship instead of a bro-ship.

Fanfiction, as I see it, is inclusive.  It’s not gay-only.  It’s a banquet, and you’re allowed to walk around with an infinitely big plate, loading anything you want onto it and avoiding the things you dislike.  Your dislike of a dish, however, doesn’t invalidate it for others.

Evaluate yourself.  Are you completely invested in your OTP?  Does it hurt to consider them with anyone else?  THIS IS FINE.  You can be that way.  (I usually am, actually, it’s VERY rare for me to accept anything else, and it usually has to sneak up on me unexpectedly.  Which is why this blog is 95% wangxian.)  Know yourself, understand your boundaries, and do not be ashamed of guarding them.  Just understand that other people may be or want something different, and that’s fine, too.

AO3 is not megalithic public media.  It’s not Hollywood, it’s not Simon&Schuster.  It is not an economic machine, and it doesn’t have the same influence over ALL of culture as CW, HBO or I-don’t-even-know-what-else-is-out-there.  I think that people are having a real problem lately with this distinction.  YES, demand that Hollywood, etc. stop portraying het-only couples, and DO demand that they watch every line of dialogue for racism/sexism/etc.  They shape our culture and make billions while doing it.  AO3, however, is where people come to hide.  It is VERY private.  No one makes money.  Each person who creates is doing so, on their own, from their own living rooms.  There is no $100M budget, nor is there a team of 1k people involved in a creation.  It is an entirely different thing.  If you don’t like what this one, single, unique, individual person is saying, then move along.  They are not beholden to you, nor you to them.

[seerofmike]

i feel like a huge portion of kpop fans are gay fetishists attracted to the idea of quote unquote feminine men and thats why theres so much bullshit

YES okay. okay let me rant for a minute. let me preface this by saying i am NOT a kpop shipper at ALL. this is going to be long so i’ll put it under a’ ‘read more’ because i’ve been holding it in for TWO FUCKING YEARS BABY!

being mlm in boygroup kpop fandom is literally so exhausting. 99% of the people who ship real life human men from boygroups are fetishists and i will tell u why

obviously we all know of a ship in a fandom where the characters' personalities are twisted to fit the heteronormative view of "top" and "bottom" --one character is hypermasculine (top) and the other one is feminine (bottom). there are typical traits associated with both. the ‘top’ is scary or mean or angry or serious while the ‘bottom’ is emotional or bubbly or shy. while this is egregious, at least its fictional characters. their personalities can be simplified or exaggerated and it doesnt cause any real life harm.

im going to define what i think of as a fetishist: a non-mlm person who overly sexualizes gay men/men they think are gay/gay ships, and forces them into heteronormative roles for their own pleasure. its not even limited to cishet women. plenty of non-mlm lgbt people do this too and its like disheartening. so anyways

enter the kpop fandom

i may be incredibly biased here because one of the most affected members [of bts] is my favorite kpop boy, but oh god is the ‘personality change/simplification’ thing AWFUL here. i do not go out of my way to find fanart or see fanfic threads, but being in the bts fandom, u will inevitably see it and i REALLY wish i didnt

so anyways. my favorite boy ever is hoseok. he is sweet and hardworking and very passionate about dance and he can be serious when needed, but ultimately he tries to be very lighthearted and will consistently laugh or make jokes or do something funny when the other members feel uncomfortable or awkward (mostly during english-speaking interviews). he kisses the members on the cheek a lot/hugs them a lot/cuddles them a lot [this is important for later okay]

of course, theres a lot more to him because he is a multi-faceted real life human being, and i don’t know him personally, but that’s a general idea of what he’s like, okay?

SHIPPERS will have you think differently. some video got popular on youtube ""proving"" that hoseok is a sadist (which is just clips of him jokingly playfighting with the younger members), and the video depicts him as secretly mean and serious, and shippers will use that to say "hoseok is a total top!" and then most fanart or imagines or fanfic threads you see are top!hoseok, using this imagined 'hoseok is a sadistic dom' narrative to fuel their fiction, because SOMEONE has to be the top, so they twist him into this hypermasculine mean person (and probably feminize the 'bottom' of their ship but more on that later)

EXCEPT it is not just fiction. this narrative bleeds into REAL LIFE. you have new armys who dont know anything about the shipping scene, and yet somehow the narrative of hoseok being a secretly mean, sadistic person has already made its way into them. in real life, hoseok likes rainbows and wearing nail stickers and putting glitter in his hair. yet people in the fandom will say shit like "hoseok hates femininity" "hoseok would never wear [thing] because he's a dom"

sometimes on twitter you have ppl like me who say uh actually you guys are really weird and this is fetishy and in real life hoseok is very nice and not sadistic at all, you will UNDOUBTEDLY get comments like "omg hoseok isnt cute/nice when will yall learn he’s secretly like [x] and [x]". you could post a video of hoseok with a puppy titled "wow cute" and u will get like 2 clowns in ur comments going 'hoseok isnt CUTE hes a sadist’ . i wish i was joking but i am not. they will do this for EVERY action hoseok does. he cannot blink without people twisting it into a sexual thing

[also, side note: its funny that, since hoseok is one of the least popular members and therefore one of the least shipped members, he is often the odd man out among pairings, and is assigned 'the straight one' by default, and 9 times out of 10 people who assign him 'the straight one' do all this 'dom daddy hoseok' shit.

which just goes to show that this is indeed a matter of heteronormativity.]

so anyways arguably the most popular ship with hoseok is with yoongi, sope. this absolutely happens to other ships probably but im just using them as an example because i see it the most, being a hobi stan

yoongi is very calm and thoughtful and kind and sometimes appears to be cold/having a bad attitude but its just because of the way he speaks, which is very bluntly. again hes a multi faceted real human and i do not know him personally but thats generally what hes like.

god the fandom. treats him SO BAD. so horribly. he's shorter than hoseok. he's shorter than hoseok and people will exaggerate that literal 1 inch height difference so bad and people will turn his whole personality into shy and blushy and In Love With Hoseok, so in love with hoseok that ‘he gets sad’ when hoseok doesn’t kiss him/hug him/or whatever and IT BLEEDS INTO REAL LIFE.

ANY time hoseok or yoongi do ANYTHING together at ALL, people will ALWAYS push the narrative that hoseok, being the mean sadist he is, is 'hurting' yoongi for not returning his undying love or whatever. hoseok did a vlive where he made bracelets for all the members and he considered putting a cat charm on yoongi's but ultimately decided not to because he was having difficulty and oh my GOD sope stans twisted it into 'hoseok HATES yoongi, yoongi would have been so happy, he would have worn that all the time, hoseok isnt affectionate he hates being close with other people after all :(' which is LITERALLY not true because hoseok gives all his homies good night kisses but okay! whatever fits your narrative!

PEOPLE ACTUALLY HATE HOSEOK BECAUSE OF THIS. BECAUSE OF A SHIP. BECAUSE OF THE MANUFACTURED NARRATIVE PUSHED ONTO HIM BY FETISHISTS SO HE COULD FIT INTO THEIR HETERONORMATIVE ‘TOP’ ROLE. not to be all wahh wahh hoseok is one of the least popular members BUT THIS IS LITERALLY A CONTRIBUTING FACTOR.

everyone """headcanons""" hoseok to be a top so they will make him a MEAN HYPERMASCULINE person. everyone """headcanons""" yoongi as a bottom so they will make him a SOFT UWU HYPERFEMININE person. shippers are literally pigeonholing the two of them into fujoshi-esque roles for jack-off material.

anyways this all boils down to: gay fetishists will do anything, ANYTHING, to twist characters or real life fucking people to fit their heteronormative view of top and bottom. top=mean and masculine, bottom=soft and feminine. hoseok is a real life human being. yoongi is a real life human being. they both have real life human personalities, and yet shippers twist their personalities into the opposite to fit their narrative, to the point where nonshippers will genuinely view the two of them as something theyre not.

you have tons of armys that theorize that hoseok's happiness is just a mask he puts on to hide a cruel nature. on twitter. on youtube. in fanart and fanfiction. you have tons of armys that truly believe that, despite literally all the evidence, believe he hates being cute, he hates being happy, he hates the members, and hes secretly a dom daddy fuckboy who wants to bend yoongi over a table. hes a real life human being and fetishists doing their fetish thing has real life consequences.

the same is true for bottom!hoseok stans: they overexaggerate his more cutesy personality traits and he does have a 'feminine' figure i.e. he has a rly small waist but they will overexaggerate that as well and give him huge hips and its disgusting but dom!hoseok is far more frequent with far more devastating consequences so i used that as an example but they’re both bad.

people who """"headcanon"""" [like actually headcanon/firmly believe and not just joking or lighthearted] that members are gay will force these types of roles onto the members. if someone genuinely believes that like, yoongi is gay/bi/whatever, and then try to force this subby soft uwu persona onto him, they have no respect for gay people. they dont. gay people are simply objects for their fantasies. their view of gay people is so one-dimensional and so driven by fetishists’ ideas that its actually disheartening.

and god bitches will deadass be homophobic yet still ship real ass human idols. not just for bts specifically but all boygroup fandoms. sometimes when you search up an idol's name, [idol] gay will be trending--whether it be because of people saying "im gay for him" or whatever, and a LOT of cishet people will try 'clearing' the searches because being gay is bad or something. people normally ‘clear’ the searches if something like [idol fat] or [idol ugly] are trending, which im telling you so you know the context that people only clear the searches when bad things are happening.

[never forget that time 'jungkook gay' was trending and bitches were like "lets clear the searches!" but their pinned tweet said some shit like "sub jungkook x dom jimin coffee shop smut au thread 🌈". bitches also be like i cant be homophobic i ship taekook]

and hoseok and yoongi arent the only ones affected ! we could get into why namjoon and jin (another popular ship) are often assigned 'dad' and 'mom' respectively, or the fact that gay fetishists not only twist members' personalities to fit their ship narrative, but will also force tropes onto them i.e. taehyung/jungkook shippers who will literally demonize jimin and call him a slut or say that he's trying to 'get in the way of' of taekook or 'steal' taehyung/jungkook but thats a whole DIFFERENT rant baby! racism/asian fetishism is also definitely a present factor in all of this but this focus was primarily on gay fetishism and heteronormativity.

oh my god i could also get into the severe transphobia/trans fetishism in this fandom too but this post is already long enough as it is

tl dr: gay fetishists will fetishize real life people and it has actual real life effects and we should ban straight women from shipping mlm

[alluraslion]

OKAY SO. i found your blog and im so glad bc finally someone who shares the same opinions! im asian, the whole reason i got into voltron was bc of shiro. and im so disappointed that the writers are probably going to replace him with keith, i mean how often do you get asians in leadership positions? amd not to mention shiro was missing for so much of s3, and i.was so mad that fandom wasnt being as angry about it as they are about keith being gone. and everyone keeps praising voltron (1)

for makig the show about keith because hes “east asian” SHOW ME WHERE. listen id love if keith was east asian (the only thing better than 1 asian character is 2 asian characters) but theres literally no canonical evidence that keith is asian. heck, i didnt even know keith was “”“asian coded”“” until interacting with fandom. casual voltron fans probably think keith is white. every keith stan pats themselves on the back for being “"progressive”“ and a ”“champion of diversity”“ for liking keith (2)

all while ignoring the ACTUAL, CANONICALLY CONFIRMED east asian character. the voltron fandom is so transparent, they dont care about asian rep at all. this fandom has made me, an asian, absolutely despise the asian keith hc. amd you know what? im pretty sure the voltron writers will never confirm keith ethnicity and ill have to live with ”“keith is asian coded so its perfectly okay to sideline confirmed characters of colour like lance, hunk, and allura for him!” till this show ends.(3)

also shiro doesnt get sidelined in the show, but his treatment in fandom is nowhere near as good keiths. keith joined the bom and everyones crying over their “"poor baby keith uwu”“ while ignoring the fact that shiro got tortured for a year and has possibly bee n cloned. and ive seen so much hate for shiro, because he was ”“"mean”“”. just say you hate asians! stop using my ethnicity to defend liking and hating all other characters for a (possibly, and very likely) white boy! (4)

OKAY so much of this ask is just… pure mood like… you hit so many nails on the head!! like keith being asian would be great but to just anyone watching? unless they suspect broganes being canon on their own, KEITH IS SOOO WHITE???  a fandom wide headcanon being largely accepted doesnt make it canon. i got into voltron because i was sick of fandoms that prioritized and glorified white boys and voltron was largely advertised by fans as having a nonwhite cast (aside from pidge) and i was like well…. no white boys lets go take a look!!! and for a long time despite no canon confirmation i really just assumed keith was ofc nonwhite when…. we don’t know, and where other characters have clearly been shown/coded their races, we all act like keith is a mystery when to the average viewer he… really isnt. like its insane. in the exact same damn situation!!!! in another fandom that prioritizes and glorifies a white boy!! pointing at keith and collectively saying “hes asian” doesnt make it canon anymore so than putting a shirt and shoes on a dog makes it a human. we’ve done so much work for advertising voltron to other like minded people looking for diversity its insane lmaooooo….

and youre so right abt people being so much more upset abt keith being gone than shiro!!! finding just regular shiro stans is so hard bc most of them are weirdos that either ship him with kids or just straight up fetishize and abuse him and its so awful… everyone acts like you have to ship him w someone to like him and thinking of him as a character is halted beyond that. 

like white ppl def get “well i like keith and hes not white so im not racist!!!” cred and try to use it when thats like. not how it works. its insane. and im not trying to call out ppl who hc keith as asian and create content w that in mind? i like keith a lot and i see him as nonwhite too but up to a certain point i just wish we’d be more critical, of ourselves and of the show, for being so keith centric without really remembering that his race isnt confirmed… and that to a lot of watchers it probably isnt even a question. 

[vardasvapors]

even more tenuous meme replies

simaethae

replied to your post:  

             more meme replies                

   you say that but f!maglor suddenly realising she has the worst crush on elwing is kind of distressingly appealing to me, someone talk me out of this >>;    

gurguliare replied to your post:                  more meme replies                

   sorry simaethae but i only ever suggest garbage ships i secretly want, WHO WOULD talk you out of it   

thelioninmybed replied to your post:                more meme replies                

   not I!    

simaethae you’re out of luck. Everyone in this discussion is a useless enabler, including me. Dooooo iiiitttt.

(what would f!Mags admire most about Elwing, I wonder? Her ability to say “lol no” and slam the door in ppl’s face? Ironic how this sindarin-human princess has a quality Maglor unfortunately did not inherit from her own father! ....wait no this is going to a weird place....*_*)

thelioninmybed replied to your post:                   more meme replies                

   this is amazing, now I’m really really angry about fandom reactions that don’t even EXIST   

   just the POTENTIAL for wank   

lol....I have occasionally, while writing meta, wondered “what if someone has interpreted this scene/character/relationship in X godawfully stupid and clueless way?” and gotten offended about it, even when that interpretation is not even a thing that actually happened anywhere in the fandom :D Like that “someone is wrong on the internet” thing, but pre-emptive!!

(though in my defense, it’s usually because the situation I was writing about reminded me of a real discourse that did happen with other characters in a different fandom).

thelioninmybed replied to your post:more meme replies

Can we cut this gordion knot of wank by making Maedhros female too? What if the twins were girls, would everyone drop the matter entirely?

Well tbh, if everyone was a girl, there’d probably be only about 1/20th as much fic or meta about the issue in the first place :)

actualmermaid replied to your post:                 more meme replies                

   FWIW I have chosen to take on that balancing act, because I hate most portrayals of that relationship (both the uncritically positive and uncritically negative ones) and I need to do it right dammit. And also because I hate myself apparently    

this is fantastic, I would so read this!!!!!! Yeah, I get caught up in my salt over the uncritically positive stuff, but that’s mostly because it’s so often said in the same breath as bashing or slighting the victims or minimizing or marginalizing the attackers, not because I dislike the positive elements themselves. And to be honest...while I do feel more sympathy for the people who are uncritically negative, because the sort of victim-blaming shit that the positivity-side lauds can strike waaaayyyyyyy too close to home or reflect RL issues too nastily to feel like ‘just fandom,’ I also find the uncritically negative interpretation to be kind of...bankrupt of literary merit? if that makes any sense?

I mean, I’m not huge on revisionism just on principle -- if a fact like “he cherished them, and love grew between them, as little may be thought” is stated, I’m gonna take that as fact, and not some kind of deceptive or misleading bullshitting like “it actually means there was only a tiny bit of love between them!” or whatever. (Actually, this is also why I dislike “oh but ELROS hated the Feanorians!” interpretations too -- apart from like, in actually interesting premises like Lion’s worst-babysitters series). But also, IMO saying that the relationship was uncritically and uncomplicatedly negative is just.....flattening out a complex and intriguing story element with a ton of potential into a boring and pointless irritant that contributes nothing of value to the characters or themes of the Silm. And...why would you want a story to be less interesting? Why would you want a story to have less richness in it, less material for people to enjoy in it? If M&M and their interaction with E&E are one-dimensional and boring, that’s...not a good thing? I really don’t get that attitude at all either :(

[yoursalwaysfics]

ok question have you seen this "killing stalking" thing thats apparently the Hip New Problématique thing on tubmlr bc i havent actually looked at the manhwa itself (prob never will) but i took a gander at the tag and ive seen glimpses of the fandom and all i have to say is Wow but like. in a bad way. (also apparently ppl are comparing it to yoi?? idgi??)

*deep sigh* okay, so here’s the thing… (this might be a longer answer than you bargained for, but it needs to be said)

yes, I’ve seen it (I’m usually willing to give the latest bandwagon a shot just to see if it’s something I could also be into). I just finished chapter 12 today. KS is a train wreck, but not necessarily in a bad way (aside from the extremely obvious). it’s gruesome and horrifying and makes your skin crawl and your stomach turn but you can’t look away. it is definitely not for the faint of heart. that being said, it’s not bad. as a story, it’s intense and draws you in (if you can handle the heavier parts). the characters are incredibly flawed but incredibly well developed and written. the art is also very interesting (and I really like it tbh). the style is really bold and a big step away from what I usually see in manhwa.

but it absolutely is not comparable to YOI and should not be.

yoi gave us so many things that a lot of people have been frothing at the mouth for, namely beautiful animation, music, and a healthy, open, unfetishized same-sex relationship. 

a lot of people looking for the next big thing to ship (looking at all the fujoshi out there) jumped over to KS for the wrong reasons. the main characters in KS (Yoonbum and Sangwoo) should not be shipped. the comic makes no excuses or tries to cover up the fact that their relationship (and I use that term very loosely here) is incredibly unhealthy and abusive and manipulative. it is not a romance. it’s not even tagged as one. it is an unapologetic psychological horror. there is literally no redemption story here. if there is any justice, it will end badly with one or both of them either dead or in jail.

that’s mostly what I wanted to say about it, but I’m going to add one more little bit about mental illness depicted in KS, and this can totally be skipped over because it’s just my observation and personal opinion on the subject (this is mostly just if any of you have read or decide to check out KS, because I see a lot of people questioning and confused by some behavior that, to me, is very understandable, so it’s just a bit of perspective):

in chapter 1, we find out that Yoonbum has bpd (borderline personality disorder). this is a disorder that I also have. I knew the basics of KS going into it and was immediately put off because bpd is often portrayed horribly and all I could think was “fuck, yet another perpetuation that we’re crazy and/or dangerous” and I really considered quitting the series right then and there. but I continued on (mostly out of spite) because I wanted to make an argument that this was not how bpd actually is. 

I wanted to be angry at it, I wanted to hate it, but as I kept reading it…I couldn’t. because as horrible as it is, it’s really spot on. it’s an excellent depiction of the darker side of mental illness that lately we try not to talk about by basically saying “not all mentally ill” when the fact is…yeah, absolutely not all, not even most, but some. Yoonbum and Sangwoo are what can happen when two very disturbed and damaged people come together and have their personalities play off of each other with terrible consequences for literally everyone involved. it’s rare, but it can and does happen. there’s plenty of recorded history of it involving serial killers.

and about Yoonbum’s bpd: again, I wanted to be mad about how it was portrayed, but I just couldn’t. for those not familiar, bpd basically boils down to a mood disorder that results in unstable moods, behaviors, and relationships. it usually comes with an intense fear of rejection and abandonment (real or perceived) in addition to the mood swings. there’s also often a big problem with either idolizing someone or completely devaluing them (and sometimes swinging between the two with the same person). there’s a lot more to it (and if you’re interested, you can read a little more about the basics here) but with Yoonbum, when it comes down to it, as much as I wanted to say “that’s not how it is”…I can’t. the author obviously either has/knows someone with/or did a lot of research on bpd, because if I’m being completely honest with myself, if I didn’t have a partner who was as aware and supportive and understanding as I do, I could easily see myself ending up in a situation similar to Yoonbum (hopefully minus the murder).

bpd can wreak havoc on your personal relationships. I have very few people who I can call my friends because most people can’t deal with my instability (and I don’t blame them at all, it’s a lot to ask someone to accept). a lot of my familial relationships are shallow and strained because people just don’t understand why I act the way I do, despite my best efforts to be “normal”. you feel worthless and will look for anyone to validate you and give you some sort of purpose (I know from personal experiences, most of which were very bad and did much more harm than good). so I really lucked out to end up with someone chill enough to not only help ground me but also someone who pushes me to find purpose in myself instead of in him/other people.

it’s very easy for me to relate to and understand Yoonbum because I could have very easily been him. he’s not innocent in this. he’s not 100% a victim here. very poor choices on his part put him in a situation that is now out of his control. but I will say, as someone who struggles with and fights against similar thoughts and feelings, sometimes it is extremely difficult not to act on the sudden impulses and irrational thinking like he did. and seeing as he apparently had none of even what support I’ve been able to find, I’m not surprised at all by any of his behavior.