#All Things Problematic

[shepscapades]

This one was a freaking doozy. If I keep talking i think i may be in trouble

[thisismisogynoir]

I love it when women hate men. I love it when women are allowed to vent to each other about how horrible and creepy men are. I love it when women form friendships with and prioritize each other over relationships with men(whether they're attracted to them or not). I love it when women put men dni in their bios and on their nude photos and on posts on their blogs. I love it when women refuse to mollycoddle and accommodate entitled male feelings with "but this doesn't mean I hate all men, I know a few men who are great, I love my father/sons/brothers/uncles/male cousins/guy friends" I love it when women complain about men WITHOUT "not all men" being a disclaimer. I love it when women avoid socializing with/refuse to be around/befriend/get close to men because they know men can't be trusted. I love it when women make "kill all men" jokes. I love it when women offer absolutely no concern or care for men's feelings and if their misandry offends men whatsoever because why should we, men are the oppressor class who have raped and killed and abused us and kept us as subjugated as second-class citizens for millennia, they regularly mistreat us and the women in their own marginalized communities still every single day and make this world so much harder and more awful for us to be in, and if we choose to hate them and not spare them any sympathy then so be it, and I don't just mean "men as a class" either, you can be a woman who doesn't want to have anything to do with any man on an individual basis and completely cuts off men from her personal life too and ykw I will love and fucking support you in that because men deserve absolutely NOTHING from us. If they're so tough and strong then they can handle it just like they can handle being lonely. If you are a woman who hates men, ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE A LESBIAN AND/OR A TRANS WOMAN, then just know that I love you. I love you, I support you, and you are safe here.

[ecoterrorist-katara]

Ka/taang: friends-to-lovers or the Friend Zone?

It’s almost axiomatic, in any ATLA shipping discussion, that Ka/taang is the friends-to-lovers ship while Zutara is the enemies-to-lovers ship, and that differences in shipping tastes can be boiled down to whether you prefer FTL or ETL.

My first ship was Percabeth. My biggest ship was Klaine. It took me until Mockingjay to let go of my Gale-and-Katniss-are-childhood-friends rose-tinted goggles and start liking Everlark. I started dabbling in ETL because of Zutara, but I’m incredibly picky about it (do not ask me how many Dramione fanfics made me irrationally, disproportionately mad).

All this to say: as a longtime friends-to-lovers enthusiast, I should theoretically love Ka/taang. But…

My difficulty with Ka/taang as a friends-to-lovers ship boils down to this: Aang and Katara’s friendship was always narratively framed as insufficient, because Aang liked her from the start and always wanted a romantic relationship. And imo that dynamic really colours their entire friendship.

I like to think Aang would’ve been a ride-or-die friend — the type to give up the Avatar State to rescue her, the type to commit ecoterrorism and help her get arrested, the type to make her a flower necklace to cheer her up — even if he didn’t have a crush on her, but I will never know that. We never got to see the pure friendship part of friends-to-lovers, because the spectre of the romantic relationship was always there. Before the last five minutes of the show, Katara’s feelings for Aang range from “plausibly interested” (The Headband, Cave of Two Lovers) to “doesn’t hate it” (Day of the Black Sun, The Fortuneteller) to “no” (Ember Island Players). Yet Katara’s eventual capitulation to reciprocation of Aang’s feelings was always depicted as inevitable, starting from s1 when the prisoners during Avatar Day reassured him that she’d “come around” because he’s a catch. It’s as if friendship, even one full of devotion and mutual love like the one they share, is not enough.

And that’s just totally antithetical to what I love about a friends-to-lovers dynamic. I love romances where characters value each other outside of attraction, when they see each other for who they are (this goes double for pretty characters like Katara, whose complexity and imperfections are just as important as her beauty and her care for others). I love the idiots in love sub-trope, where they’re obviously into each other, yet do a bunch of mental gymnastics to remain in comfortable denial (we got a little bit of this earlier in the series, but by s3 we were firmly in Aang-pines-and-Katara-deflects territory). In every friends-to-lovers story I’m simply obsessed with the confess-and-kiss scene, but the version we got in ATLA was ruined by the lack of reciprocation, twice.

Over time, because Aang was written as so insistent about his affections, Ka/taang went from a friends-to-lovers story to a Nice Guy Friend Zone “why doesn’t she like me” story. I mentioned Everlark earlier: I got the same ick for Gale in Mockingjay as I did for Aang in s3, where the woman is not interested yet he still badgers her about it. (And considering Gale is canonically hot, I don’t think the relative attractiveness of Aang is the issue here). But Gale’s insistence was presented as his problem, his lack of empathy, his self-righteousness; Aang’s insistence was just a part of his quest to get the girl.

A lot of people say Zutara is a female fantasy, whether they mean it in a positive or pejorative way. Nobody says the same about Ka/taang, even though women definitely have friends-to-lovers fantasies too. A good friends-to-lovers story reminds me of all the times when I was an idiot before getting together with a friend I was actually head-over-heels for. Ka/taang reminds me of all the times when I was not interested in a friend and they didn’t respect my preference. Friends-to-lovers is a delicate balance, maintained only by unerring mutual respect and unconditional care for each other, and it can veer into Nice Guyism if the writers aren’t thoughtful about why this dynamic is so appealing. Which is exactly what happened with Ka/taang.

[goingpheral]

I’ve seen a lot of people calling dnp the least problematic youtubers and I would just like to say: do NOT icarus us please we are filled with hubris and that never ends well so DO NOT accidentally manifest their downfall I am begging

[artbyblastweave]

Funniest thing I've seen recently, and not funny in a ha-ha way, more funny in a "the endless entropic void gnawing at my will to live" way, was somebody asking around for alternatives to Neil Gaiman, in the light of Neil Gaiman's ongoing fall from grace. As though what we're currently sitting through isn't the collapse of the carefully curated "Good Guy Neil" image that caused people to parade Gaiman as the same kind of preferred progressive alternative to, say, Rowling. As though we won't be in the same goddamn situation in a few years or months, with some number of the new progressive sci-fi/fantasy darlings- not all of them, to be clear, but at least some of them- when their impeccably-curated marketing implodes in on itself and they're revealed to be the same kind of sex pest or abuser. Can you not see the wheel to which you are strapped. The game of human pinball you are condemning yourself to with this mindset. Maybe you do see, and you're just resigned to taking it one soul-crushing disappointment at a time, one "I never would have guessed" after another. I mean I think we all need to get resigned to that one way or another, sun's gonna go out before it stops happening

[aleksanderscult]

Leigh Bardugo should become universally criticized just for the fact that she presented a victim of persecution and his actions as worse and more important to deal with than the genocide that takes place in that world.

She really said: "It's not the genocide we should worry about. It's that man and his efforts to stop it".

And people applaud her for it instead. Wow. You're all seriously fucked up.

[lordgrimwing]

just saw a post saying Charles Edwards is 'too old' to play Celebrimbor. That is entirely wrong.

[justalittleguest]

Why is the spiciest, vilest, sinisterest take on Horror him being a cannibal. Girl that’s NOT his toxic trait. He’s so much worse.

[okwhatsgolngon]

fly high creloise 2024-2024 🕊

[anistarrose]

there's a type of tumblr funnyperson who's never posted explicit hate/exclusionism towards asexuals and other a-specs... and yet, they like to make up a guy. where the type of guy they always make up undermines any trust a-specs might've otherwise had for them. for example, a common post format is making up a hypothetical tumblr user's bio that's obviously just so cringe, according to the sensibilities of everyone reading — wherein the implied joke is how we've all seen someone in the wild who's cringe like this, right?

these posts always feel the need to slide some a-spec microlabel in there. a lot of the time, it's specifically an ace-spec microlabel plus "heteroromantic," especially if they think that the guy they're making up is trying to be a real special snowflake. to round out the "cringe," they usually pepper in at least one element from the set of: neopronouns, a namedropped mental illness, and a piece of media that's targeted at children/popular for tumblr to hate at the time.

then a zillion people reblog that post, all agreeing haha that's so cringe, and a million a-spec people (and nonbinary and autistic people) shudder — because are they the butt of the joke, to the people reblogging it? or are the people reblogging just laughing about a different element, like a comically long DNI or something, which has distracted them from noticing the fact that OP clearly associates a-spec identities with "cringe"?

if any a-spec people point this out about OP, or ask a reblogger if they support ace people, they are inevitably accused of overreacting — which is great for the aphobes, because they get a new "cringe" a-spec person to point and laugh at. it's just such a nasty cycle, and even people who wouldn't consider themselves aphobes aren't great at noticing and interrogating it.

[emahriel]

as my good friend and i like to remind each other:

don't yuck people's yum. if you do so, at least keep it in the dms. no point in making people feel absolutely miserable for liking a certain thing, for having an oc you don't like - whatever it is. people constantly hating just for the sake of hating truly sour the fandom experience on social medias. there's a problem if the only way you feel better is by making others feel like crap.

and you, who shares the things you love online, who creates original characters and talks about their ships - know that you will never be able to please everyone and that's okay. don't let it stop you from sharing what you love, if it brings you happiness then keep doing it. you don't owe anyone anything, if what you like somehow upsets people, they can very easily just block you and move on. it's really that simple!

[i-dreamed-i-had-a-son]

Broke (2016): BBC Sherlock is a phenomenal piece of media and anything that seems like a flaw just hasn't been fully explored yet

Woke (2020): BBC Sherlock is an incredibly flawed series run by an egotistical writer, it never deserved the hype and is actively bad on so many fronts (especially representation)

Bespoke (2024): BBC Sherlock is flawed and bogged down by increasingly poor writing, which many fans refused to see while it was airing, leading to hugely misplaced expectations (particularly for the final series), AND it has the seeds of some compelling characterizations and portrayals, some genuinely solid performances, and touches--albeit imperfectly--on complexities that are still being discussed today (particularly as it relates to the relationship between Sherlock and John). The huge cultural impact of the show has created a massive pendulum effect in its public perception, leading to most people today remembering a caricature of the show (whether positive or negative) rather than appreciating its nuanced merits and failings...that being said Season 4 sucked

[butwhatifidothis]

I need the people who look at posts talking about Wyll's treatment in both the actual game and especially the fandom and respond with "but i don't like him and I think he's boring" to know that shutting the fuck up is 100% the better option 100% of the time. Him being the only origin character to not have at last 10 hours of content and the existence of mods that literally whitewash him and his dad - among everything else wrong with how Wyll is treated - are not suddenly okay because you, personally, as an individual, don't find him interesting, and your personal individual feelings about him are irrelevant to the issues surrounding his treatment in the bg3 community at large, so like. Stop barging in with your unwanted, unhelpful opinion

[kiwiaok]

I’ve seen a few opinions about aftg that went somewhere along the lines of ‘I love those characters bc I love problematic characters’ but I was wondering. are they really problematic? aren’t they just human??

I mean a few of them killed people. that could be a problem ig, but the rest? what is so problematic about them? I think they’re just human and imperfect and complex. is it problematic to be human? to be contrary and swung by your emotions, sharp-edged yet still fragile sometimes? to make mistakes? is that what being problematic means to some?

[captain-hen]

The most insane for me is when people who stan tommy uses what taylor did to bobby to hate on her. Like, okay that was absolutely fucked up, and I'm not a fan of her either, but i feel like if you still use this reason even though bobby was fine with her after (even inviting her in his house), then maybe there's something you should hold against tommy too (no matter if hen and chimney look friendly towards him) ??

the funny thing is that hen and chimney are...pretty lukewarm towards him, actually. you have chim who only contacted tommy like twice when he needed his help and didn't invite him to his wedding...you have hen who, in 3x16, was very emphatic about not being friends with any of the guys who used to work at the 118 when she joined; and even tommy makes a crack about not getting her christmas cards. not saying they hate him or anything! i think they're fine with him, honestly. but it's not some great friendship like people like to pretend, sorry 🤷🏽‍♀️ and yeah, i definitely think it's weird that all the female love interests, taylor included, have gotten so much shit for much less. i still remember that one person who tried to say that tommy being brought back was better than lucy, because lucy made "a terrible first impression" on the audience. worse than the guy who was introduced as being part of the white man status quo who was complicit in racism and misogyny? hm.

[elftwink]

can i say something. about the way you people talk about dungeon meshi. i find it extremely... interesting how headcanons about laios being nonbinary are framed exclusively as a way to shoot down other people's headcanons about laios being transfem. like you are aware when you have a hc that a character is nonbinary you can just... say it... and you don't need to preface it with "well i don't think they're transfem BUT".

and also i think its interesting that i never actually uhm. see anyone discussing their nonbinary laios hc in literally any detail. obviously i can't read anyones mind but it comes across to an audience like you saw someone hc laios as a trans woman, got irrationally irritated about it, found a 'progressive' and 'trans friendly' way to shoot it down, and then proceeded to continue treating him like a cis man in every post, meta, fic, etc, only ever bringing up the fact that you think laios is nb when someone else thinks laios is a woman. almost like you don't actually think that at all, and keep the idea around exclusively because transfem hcs make you uncomfortable for reasons you refuse to interrogate.

i don't think this is necessarily intentional on anyone's part, but i do think considering the discussions we have been having about transmisogyny on this website its not unreasonable to ask (especially of fellow tme trans people) that you have a long hard look at the way you respond to things like transfem hcs. while obviously fandom is #notthatdeep, it does not bode well for your ability to make room for your trans sisters for things that actually matter if you can't even do it regarding gender headcanons for anime characters