#BUT I do think a lot of it is kind of tangled into shipping discourse and so it gets sort of talked around

[essektheylyss]

someday I will actually manage to write out my thoughts and feelings on Caleb's character arc in a manageable format for tumblr and then it's over for you all

[jackoshadows]

There’s just so much dishonest bothsidesing in the discourse about Arya and Sansa in this fandom.

For ex. I saw this post on the tag that got a lot of likes and reblogs and I felt it was so disingenuous regarding what happens in the fandom as well as in ASoIaF.

At no point, have I ever seen any Arya fan on here say that Arya is better than Sansa because she is ‘masculine’. Quite the opposite - we have critiqued this characterization of Arya as being a misogynist take on what it is to be a woman and how characters should not be constrained to patriarchal definitions of femininity and womanhood. Arya thinks that the woman is important too. Arya is just like other girls. Just because she likes to learn sword fighting she is ‘masculine’? How utterly idiotic is that?

On the other hand, you know who is constantly harping on about Arya being ‘masculine’? Sansa stans:

I am not linking to the above post - suffice to say that it’s from a popular Sansa blog. I mean, look at the nonsense above - Arya is ‘masculine’ because her hair is described as a nest?!

We have also never, ever said that Sansa is worthless because she is feminine. Never. This is the gaslighting that is very popular in this fandom and used frequently to give the impression that Sansa is unfairly targeted and hated on because she’s feminine. When in actuality, readers have only ever critiqued her for actual flaws the character has - like her treatment of her younger sibling, her snobby classism, her idealization of beauty rather than the person underneath appearances etc.

It’s Sansa stans who continue to argue that Arya cannot ever be Lady of Winterfell because she’s not the right kind of women. It’s Sansa stans who argue that Arya will never find love, have a romance or be pretty because she’s not the right kind of woman (Has nothing to do with age considering 11-13 year old Sansa is shipped with every Tom, Dick and Harry). It’s Sansa stans who devalue Arya’s political education and participation because she’s not the right kind of woman. It’s Sansa stans who deny Arya is also kind and compassionate because she’s not the right kind of woman.

Book Jonsa as a ship - where they basically take everything from the Jon/Arya relationship in the books - exists because Arya is not the right kind of woman for Sansa stans.

So while Sansa stans argue that Sansa is better than Arya in all ways because she’s ‘feminine’, I have never seen the opposite where readers argued that Arya is better than Sansa because she is ‘masculine’.

This is true when Sansa is a Lannister hostage and Arya is on the run from enemies. Yes, it does not matter whether Sansa adheres to partriarchal notions of femininity and Arya does not - they are both beaten and threatened with rape and suffer hardship.

However, again, the above is being disingenuous by ignoring Sansa and Arya’s childhood in Winterfell. There is a clear difference in how Sansa and Arya were treated in Winterfell because one of them conformed and the other did not.

We see this difference in Arya’s low self-esteem and having low self worth. In Arya feeling like she did not belong. In Sansa and Jeyne Poole mocking Arya as being ugly and horse faced, in her Septa saying she has the hands of a smith because she could not do needle work properly, in her mother telling her that she had to be like Sansa in looks and behavior - making Arya question if her mother would want her back while on the run in the Riverlands.

“…my hair’s messy and my nails are dirty and my feet are all hard.” Robb wouldn’t care about that, probably, but her mother would. Lady Catelyn always wanted her to be like Sansa, to sing and dance and sew and mind her courtesies. Just thinking of it made Arya try to comb her hair with her fingers, but it was all tangles and mats, and all she did was tear some out.“  - Arya, ASoS

Sansa conformed to patriarchal ideals of femininity because she liked it, she was good at it and she thought it an indication of high class and stature (For ex. she thought Arya should have been a bastard because she was not good looking and behaved differently). Arya was unable to conform because she can’t fundamentally change who she is as a person. We are who we are.

As Sam says:

His eyes met Jon’s and darted away, quick as frightened animals. “I… I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t mean to… to be like I am.” - Jon, AGoT 

As Arya says:

Sansa was two years older; maybe by the time Arya had been born, there had been nothing left. Often it felt that way. Sansa could sew and dance and sing. She wrote poetry. She knew how to dress. She played the high harp and the bells. Worse, she was beautiful. Sansa had gotten their mother’s fine high cheekbones and the thick auburn hair of the Tullys. Arya took after their lord father. Her hair was a lusterless brown, and her face was long and solemn.- Arya, AGoT

As Jon says:

Lord Randyll couldn’t make Sam a warrior, and Ser Alliser won’t either. You can’t hammer tin into iron, no matter how hard you beat it, but that doesn’t mean tin is useless. Why shouldn’t Sam be a steward?” - Jon, AGoT

The Septa and Catelyn couldn’t turn Arya into another Sansa because one can’t hammer tin into iron no matter how much one beats it - one of the central themes of GRRM’s story.

Sansa was the favored, beautiful, eldest daughter of the Lord of Winterfell. In canon, in the text, she was not jealous of Arya or sad that Arya did not play with her. Her only problem with Arya is that Arya is not graceful and elegant and beautiful like her, that Arya played with the lower classes like the stable boy and butcher boy, that Arya picked flowers from the marshes and gave it to Ned.

All this is right there in the text:

Sansa knew all about the sorts of people Arya liked to talk to: squires and grooms and serving girls, old men and naked children, rough-spoken freeriders of uncertain birth. Arya would make friends with anybody. - Sansa, AGoT

Why couldn’t Arya be sweet and delicate and kind, like Princess Myrcella? She would have liked a sister like that. It would have been easier if Arya had been a bastard, like their half brother Jon. She even looked like Jon, with the long face and brown hair of the Starks, and nothing of their lady mother in her face or her coloring. And Jon’s mother had been common, or so people whispered. - Sansa, AGoT

Sansa threw back her head in disdain. “You? You couldn’t sew a dress fit to clean the pigsties.” Sansa, AGoT

“Hodor!” Sansa yelled. “You ought to marry Hodor, you’re just like him, stupid and hairy and ugly!”  - Sansa, AGoT

“I’m not like Arya,” Sansa blurted. “She has the traitor’s blood, not me. I’m good, ask Septa Mordane, she’ll tell you” - Sansa, AGoT

Sansa had once dreamt of having a sister like Margaery; beautiful and gentle, with all the world’s graces at her command. Arya had been entirely unsatisfactory as sisters went. - Sansa, ACoK

“Arya Underfoot. Your sister used to call you Arya Horseface.”  - The Prince of Winterfell, ADwD

Take this post on the tag that bothsides the sisters’ antagonistic relationship as being due to ‘different interests’ and ‘life philosophies’.

Arya being unable to conform and be good at sewing and singing and not being beautiful and playing with the serving girls is interpreted as her being ‘immature’ and having an ‘ego’...

So what would it take for the sisters to meet in the middle?

Despite Septa Mordane being a terrible teacher, Arya forces herself to spend time sewing, hangs out with Sansa and Jeyne enduring their taunts (Because she can’t change how she looks!), stops playing with whom she wants like the grooms and serving girls, stops hanging out with her father, forces herself to live up to Sansa’s standards of beauty and elegance and being delicate and sweet.

What would it take for Sansa to meet Arya in the middle? Nothing! Because Arya has no expectations on Sansa. Arya doesn’t want Sansa to change the very essence of her being in order for them to be siblings. Arya doesn’t want Sansa to look different or be good at horse riding for her to love Sansa as a sister. Just like Arya loves Jon as a brother despite Jon being a bastard. 

Sansa wants Arya to change and conform, Arya doesn’t want Sansa to change. This is important and the root cause and core reason for why the sisters have a contentious relationship. There can be no discussion or discourse on the relationship of the sisters without acknowledging this important aspect. Fans can go on overhyping the same few lines about ‘Sun and Moon’, however ignoring the discord between them and the why of it is just ignoring a large part of their story, themes and narrative arcs.

These themes are important for Arya’s story. That’s why Arya fans include it in their theorizing about Arya’s story and in discussions about the character’s current and future plot points in the series. That is not Sansa hate. Arya is the outsider, the outcast, unable to fit in because she can’t conform to patriarchal standards.

I’ve always had a soft spot for the outsider, for the underdog. ‘Cripples, Bastards, and Broken Things’, as the title of one of the (TV series) episodes goes. The angst that they have in life makes for more conflict, makes for more drama, and there’s something very attractive about that. My Game of Thrones is told by outsiders of both types. None of them fit comfortably into the society into which they’ve been born, and they’re all struggling to find a place for themselves in which they’re valued and loved and respected, despite what their society considers their deficiencies. And out of that, I think, comes good stories. - GRRM

Arya’s relationship with Sansa, Jeyne, Septa Mordane and Catelyn also resonates thematically with Hans Christian Anderson’s Ugly Duckling. It tackles issues of identity, loneliness, not belonging, bullying, feeling low and worthless. It’s about embracing and accepting oneself and loving oneself and Arya’s story is leading towards her being a swan raised among ducks.

And finally, analyzing the effect of the patriarchy on Sansa and Arya from a Watsonian and Doylist perspective is also not hating on Sansa for being feminine. From a Watsonian perspective, Sansa is the favored, high born daughter of the Warden of the North, who could do well in a court of Lords and Ladies. However, the patriarchy - especially in the North - restricting women into what they can and cannot do, means Sansa and Arya are denied the education that Robb and Bran receive.

It’s only because Arya wants different things and does different things that she spends time with her father eating with his men, interacting with his men, listens to him teach his sons, and gains an understanding of the North. So from a Doylist perspective, Arya has the wisdom and knowledge that Ned imparted to his sons, to be a leader of the North.

This is not saying that Sansa is less than for her version of femininity. This is not hating on Sansa for the kind of woman she is. This is saying that because of the constraints the patriarchy places on what girls can and cannot learn, while from a Watsonian perspective Sansa got the happy childhood, beautiful and graceful and excelling in activities assigned solely to the Ladies, from a Doylist perspective Arya’s inability to conform leads to her making choices that could lead to her possibly becoming leader of the North.

This is a critique of the patriarchy in Westeros that puts constraints on what a woman can and should be  - this is something that GRRM tackles in Arya, Brienne, Cersei, Arianne, Asha and Daenerys’ stories, where these characters question and challenge the patriarchy in various (Good and bad) ways. It’s only by breaking existing societal rules and challenging the status quo that female characters can do what their male counterparts get so easily.

Like I mentioned earlier, these are all important plot points that GRRM is weaving into a larger story. The bastard, the cripple, the girl who can’t fit in with her peers, the exile, the dwarf - five central characters will make it through all three volumes, however, growing from children to adults and changing the world and themselves in the process. In a sense, my trilogy is almost a generational saga, telling the life stories of these five characters, three men and two women.

I ended up writing a lot here, but coming back to my point - Sansa fans need to stop bothsidesing and gaslighting the fandom on discussions of the character and the relationship between the sisters.

Again, no one, repeat no one is attacking Sansa for being feminine or liking songs or being good at sewing or having good manners. What is being criticized is her treatment of her younger sibling - that has no relation to Sansa’s femininity. Sansa liking romance songs has nothing to do with her mocking Arya’s appearance or wanting her to be a bastard or siding with Joffrey against her after Joffrey attacks her with a sword.

Don’t be dishonest. Don’t twist what people are actually discussing and saying on the tags into something else. If you don’t have anything to contribute, at least don’t lie and make up stuff.

[kingreywrites]

everyone talks about tangled discourse but i think the worst is the age gap discourse, especially when eugene was never confirmed to be 26 from the get-go 😭 y'all please, where did 26 even come from??

god yeah like. how do you get UPSET over a non-existent information? how do you go "what if he was 26? ....... oh no that means this relationship is bordeline abusive" without realising that the 26 comes from you and only you????

(ironically, it's kinda the same weird ass logic behind people who go "rapunzel and cass are sisters in my opinion.......... oh no that means this ship is incest" even though it's not how any of this work asfhsjs though there's a whole lot of other factors behind that but like, why get upset over info you practically made up 😭)

and like listen i know there's some kind of reason behind the 26 (some eleven years ago a guy who worked on tangled said he saw eugene as 26 and fanon ran with it or something) but if the number makes you upset to the point where you think people shouldn't ship these two, all you gotta do is headcanon him a different age!!!! it's as easy as that it's called making up shit with your imagination

[iamanartichoke]

I haven't watched any of the Loki episodes yet (I'm procrastinating) but I keep seeing vague stuff about some big chasm between how Tom sees Loki and how apparently a lot of fans see Loki. Could you give me some specifics? Other than Loki mentioning his interest in sexes other than female I've heard nothing that could cause this kind of discourse.

I don't know if I'm the best person to ask, as I know others have articulated it much better than I can, and who may feel more strongly than I do that their Loki and Tom's Loki don't align so much anymore. Not tagging anyone bc of reasons (but feel free to comment/reblog if you wish to talk about it).

But, I do know a decent amount, so I'll proceed to write five thousand words try.

My understanding overall, is that Tom has always spoken very eloquently about Loki as a complex, fractured character who was functioning from a place of deep pain as opposed to any real villainy or evil.

(cut for length)

He was never saying any of it as an excuse for Loki's actions but as an explanation of where Loki was coming from and how he ended up in that place to start with. This mostly refers to the 2011-2013 era Loki, before the "reboot." Because so many fans viewed Loki the same way - as complex, as broken, as coming from a place of pain - there was validation, I suppose, in knowing that the actor who played the character (and whose performance was largely responsible for the character being so enigmatic and appealing in the first place) shared this view.

After the reboot with TR, Tom seemed to lean more heavily on the "god of mischief" aspect of Loki - he'd often say that his job was to have fun bc Loki was always mischievously having fun. While Loki had always been funny in a snarky, sardonic kind of way, and the "mischief" he'd get into was always just for fun and relatively harmless, after TR he was more silly-funny or slapstick funny ("funny") and his mischief was framed as a little more malicious (such as using magic to trick and then stab Thor when they were children).

So it seemed like a big departure from the previous Loki that Tom always spoke so eloquently about, and I think it's notable that when promoting TR, Tom didn't really delve into the psychology of Loki much at all when he'd talk about the character - just the "fun." So there was that. At the time, people figured it was bc he had very little control or say in what the director chose to do with his character.

Now, though, Tom has a lot more creative control (although I don't think he actually has all that much, certainly not as much as some people think he does, tbh), but while he's once again talking about Loki's psychology and identity issues and trauma and whatnot as context and backstory, he also still seems to be leaning into the "god of mischief" parts and the silly-funny parts. The show furthermore has yet to address what Loki experienced with Thanos in between Thor 2011 and Avengers, has failed to address his identity crisis after discovering he is Jotun (a throwaway 'I was adopted' line doesn't really count), etc.

So there's a lot that Tom has spoken about in Loki's story that is very much not being included in the series. Furthermore, while Tom discusses Loki's complexity when doing press, he has also said things that imply he has an idea of humiliation being a core aspect of Loki, or that Loki is someone who constantly needs to be knocked down a few pegs, or that he thinks he's profound but actually isn't, etc. I know in the past he's also made comments about Loki's mental health and how Loki might go about recovering from it, but his perspective on that whole area didn't ring true to a lot of Loki fans who also suffer from mental health issues.

So all of these things together, to some fans, makes it seem like Tom's current idea of Loki - whether it's bc he wants to do something new, or has changed as an actor, or whatever the case may be - is still a departure from the 2011-2013 era Loki and, thus, does not align with their own interpretation of Loki. Hence, a chasm appears.

^^ All of this is for context, which I tried to give as objectively as possible. Now, as far as discourse about it goes, I can't speak to that very much. Nobody that I know is angry at Tom or "betrayed" by Tom or feeling anything negative toward Tom as a person. They are, however, feeling that they may need to re-evaluate how much of Tom's interpretation they put stock into as they engage with the character, and kinda where to go from here. But I can't emphasize enough that no one acts like this is Tom's responsibility or that Tom somehow did them dirty. I also can't emphasize enough that there's nothing wrong with Tom's version and he genuinely seems to be enjoying what they've created here, and that's fabulous. There's no wank about that, at least not that I've seen from my fandom corner.

So that's the situation from the tumblr side. However, because Tom has been the "face" of the Loki series all this time, and because he's been hyped up as having so much say and influence and ideas to contribute, a lot of people got the idea that the Loki of the series would be exactly the Loki that Tom wanted to play. And when, inevitably, the show went in directions that people didn't like (my understanding is that this is mostly coming down to shipping nonsense, which I'm not even going to touch), Tom was blamed. And that's where this "discourse" is coming from, as far as I know. I don't have any real first hand facts, but people are saying that Tom's been getting death threats on social media from fans who are outraged about the Sylvie thing, or outraged about how the bisexual component is being handled, or whatever. Since this is pretty much par for the course in fandoms, I believe it.

But it seems like the shipping nonsense has gotten all tangled up in the dissatisfaction in the aspects of Loki's story that aren't being told, and in the difference in Tom's comments about Loki now vs back then, and it just ends up being a recipe for discourse, wank, and drama. So to answer your question, the chasm between Tom's Loki and some fans' Loki is the result of ... *gestures at massive wall of text* this.

[contraststudies]

Thank you for tagging me, @tawnyontumblr​! I’m very bad at doing these writer meme things, so here goes nothing.

1) How many works do you have on AO3?

45 and counting!

2) What’s your total AO3 word count?

376,429. Holy moly that is a fuck ton of words (I only properly started posting on AO3 last May iirc).

3) How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

Four: Critical Role, Good Omens, Hades, and Kill La Kill.

4) What are your top five fics by kudos?

This list is bookended by two PWPs, which I find hilarious given that I seem to have misplaced my smut brain cell sometime in the last couple of months.

On The Matter of Traffic Violations (Good Omens, E)

“Officer Fell,” Crowley says, and leans forward, enough to give Fell a good view of his décolletage. He tilts his head in the way he knows people find deliciously coquettish, glad that he’d had the foresight to apply some mascara before heading out. “I’m so very sorry about this,” he says, looking up at the officer through his lashes. “It’s late, you know, no cars around… Didn’t notice how fast I was going, that’s all.”

[Or: Crowley flirts his way out of a traffic violation.]

Unbinding (Critical Role, T)

This is a great honor, Essek reminds himself, trying not to recoil as fingers run through his hair, working through the tangles. A braid is made of three strands, symbolizing the inextricable bond between the soul, the den, and the Luxon. A recognition of an achievement by the drow who bears it. With each braid, the soul is bound ever closer to its den and to the Luxon.

It is a lesson Essek learned long ago, but one he is never permitted to forget.

[Or: the story of why the Shadowhand wears his hair cropped short.]

No Church In The Wild (Good Omens, E)

The stem of the wineglass in Aziraphale’s hand snaps cleanly in two, but no one seems to hear it—every eye in the room is trained on the redheaded dancer sashaying to the gleaming silver pole, centre stage for all to see.

Oh, Aziraphale thinks faintly. Good lord.

[Or: the one where Aziraphale gets assigned to the red light district.]

abide gold with me (Critical Role, T)

“Okay, Cay-leb,” Jester says, stretching out the syllables affectionately. “You sit right here so we can watch you and Essek try an orange for the first time.”

The Primal Scene (Good Omens, E - a collab with @lookitsstevie​!)

Harriet notices that there’s a crack of light at the end of the hallway coming from the door to the library, and her mood brightens considerably. Perhaps the tutors are still here, putting together their lessons for the next day before they leave for the night. She leans down to pick up a piece of cloth that’s fallen on the rug. Her breath catches in her throat when she realizes what it is – a necktie with a familiar tartan pattern.

She nearly drops the tie in shock at the unmistakable sound coming from the closed door of the library. A sharp, quickly stifled moan.

[Or: Harriet Dowling accidentally bears witness to divine ecstasy.]

5) Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I try. I really do. My friends (and maybe some of my readers) know that this is difficult for me, mainly because any sort of recognition reduces me to a gibbering pile of tears. I’m working on it though, even if it does take me a million years to respond to anything on AO3. 

6) What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

God, which one do I choose. I have been referred to as an angst gremlin for a very good reason. I’m gonna go with The Remains of the Day, a Good Omens fairy tale AU I wrote loosely based on Bluebeard.  

7) Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you’ve written?

I HAVE. I wrote philtatos, a crossover of Good Omens and The Iliad/The Song of Achilles. It’s the only crossover I’ve ever written, unless we’re counting Variations of an Arrangement, which could loosely count as a crossover of the book/radio/TV versions of Good Omens.

8) Have you ever received hate on a fic?

I have not. And hopefully never will.

9) Do you write smut? If so what kind?

I do, and it’s usually of the angst with a happy ending variety.

10) Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Hm. How do we define stealing? Just kidding. The short answer is no.

11) Have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope!

12) Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Got one in the works for Critical Role!

13) What’s your all time favourite ship?

Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes was actually the first ship I ever really got into, and they’ll always have a special place in my heart even if I never wrote anything for that fandom. Crowley/Aziraphale from Good Omens of course, and more recently Caleb Widogast/Essek Thelyss from Critical Role.

14) What’s a WIP you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

Variations of an Arrangement. I loved writing it, and I still want to finish it one day, but it took a lot of brainpower to write and keep track of the plot and I feel like it’s beyond me, at least right now.

15) What are your writing strengths?

I… hmm. Judging by the way people are always yelling at me in their comments, I guess it’s that I can write stories that make people feel things very deeply.

16) What are your writing weaknesses?

I repeat words so often, it’s embarrassing. I use too many “-ly” adverbs. Also, I find myself using the same turns of phrase across several fics lmao.

17) What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

Language is a tricky thing. I don’t want to bore you with discourse. I try not to write dialogue in a different language (especially if it’s not one I speak myself) unless it’s absolutely called for, or if they’re just basic phrases and I’m 100% certain I won’t be getting it wrong. I have read fics where this was done very well though, and I’ve found that it really adds to the atmosphere in those cases.

18) What was the first fandom you wrote for?

It was for this old anime called Princess Tutu. I danced ballet when I was younger and loved it so much – I believe I was only twelve at the time?? But I think the fic may still be floating around on FF.net somewhere.

19) What’s your favourite fic you’ve written?

I wrote philtatos in a four-day fever dream. It’s not the most technically perfect fic I’ve ever written or anything like that, but I think it’s the one that reveals the most about who I am as a person. That is an incredibly cheesy thing to say, I know. I always joke that posting that fic felt like offering my still-beating heart on a silver platter to the void, but there you are.

For Critical Role, surprisingly enough it’s this ficlet I wrote called sinners, a small bite of Shadowdrei where I was parsing my ideas on Astrid and Eadwulf’s dynamic and where they stood when it came to Bren/Caleb and Essek. I didn’t realize how fully formed my thoughts were until I wrote that. Fascinating what your own writing will show you about the things that are in your mind.

Tagging with no pressure whatsoever: @naromoreau @jenanigans1207 @saretton @theseedsofdoom @musegnome!

[iamdeltas]

X, T and K?

X - top 5-10 characters who are yoUR PRECIOUS BABIES AND YOU WILL DIE DEFENDING THEM This depends a lot on what I’m focused on at the moment (also, not all my faves count. Generally if I feel like a fave character has enough fans to defend them or whatever, I’m not gonna feel like I need to defend them. For instance, Elsa. Does Elsa have her haters? Sure. But she’s also crazy popular, so who cares if a few people hate her? That’s why she’s not on this list, even if I do like her.) but here goes, not in order tbh, just off the top of my head: Kamala Khan, always my girl, I adore her so much and I saw a post one day talking shit about her and I wanted to throttle OP. Anyway. Kamala is the best. I cannot wait for her MCU debut. Cassandra, from Tangled: the Series. I adored Cass right from the start, and of course, right from the start, I saw people shitting on her for, IDK, daring to *gasp* not like Eugene, I guess? Wow. So yeah, I’ll die defending Cass, she’s the best, even if she made some bad choices in s3 but hey. Who hasn’t stolen an ancient powerful artifact and gotten manipulated by a demonic Eldritch being, amirite? Della Duck, from Ducktales. I adore Della, she’s such an interesting and complex character who has made her fair share of mistakes but is also trying her best. The whole discourse post-”Timephoon” really showed me that she’s a character I’d die defending as well because holy shit were people shitting all over her for... daring to ground Louie, her son, for literally causing a spacetime disaster because he wanted to make money. Sigh. Anyway. I adore Della. Anna of Arendelle, from Frozen. Oh, Anna. So many people just flat out ignore you in favor of your sister, which is so unfair. Anna is wonderful and determined and optimistic and honestly such a badass? Like that (sadly deleted) scene said, her love could hold up the world. (Fun fact, part of the reason I desperately wanted my brain to get off the Frozen traintrack it was, ah, frozen on from June 2019 to January 2020 was because it resulted in me fixating on how much people flat out do not care about Anna, which wasn’t a fun time!) I am very glad she gets to be part of the bridge with Elsa but am sadly unsurprised that people continue to ignore that and just insist that it’s only Elsa who’s the Powerful, Wonderful, Most Amazing Fifth Spirit. Anna who? Granted, the movie could have emphasized that it’s Elsa and Anna who are the Fifth Spirit, together, but still. 

Alex Danvers, from Supergirl. Still my favorite character on the show! I don’t think she gets bashed as much as mostly just ignored? (I’d say poor Kara gets the brunt of the bashing. It’s very sad.) Unless Lena stans get confronted with the fact that their fave is doing some highly Unethical Things, then they start pointing to Alex for some reason and start saying, Yeah Well, Alex Works For A Shady Government Organization, So Who’s The *Real* Bad Guy Here? (Me: ....it’s still Lena, but go off, I guess.) I guess I just generally relate to her overwhelming Big Sister-ness and the high pressure she puts on herself because what a Mood, amirite? I feel that whole, anxiety that your parents will be disappointed in you because I feel that every day! I also adore how dedicated she is and how smart she is (something the fandom and the show often seem to ignore...) Connie Maheswaran, from Steven Universe. She’s the best! And she was totally the MVP of Steven Universe: Future, telling off all the Gems for making Steven’s problems about them because that was the last thing Steven needed! She’s practical and smart but at the same time so adventurous and brave and willing to stand up to protect the Earth! It’s very admirable. Steven Universe, from... you know. I’ve always liked Steven but I think Future gave me a greater appreciation for this kid. This poor kid has had to grow up so fast and basically play therapist for his Gem moms as well as for Gems who literally tried to kill him multiple times. His compassion is so admirable but wow did it result in him putting himself last! I have a soft spot for these types of characters, the characters who care so much about other people that they forget to care about themselves. (Alex Danvers is in this category also.) I know some people got mad about his downward spiral in Future, but honestly the complaints just strike me as being mad that Steven dares to have his own problems as opposed to being the Happy Boy Therapist Who Fixes Everyone Else’s Problems And Has Zero Problems Of His Own. Martha Jones, from Doctor Who. Oh, Martha Jones, you’re a star. I had a group of college friends who I watched Doctor Who with back in the day, and they hated Martha. (Most notable exchange: one of said friends saying that she thought Martha was just “too smart” to be relatable. Said friend was a physics major.) I hope the Martha hate has cooled down now because Martha always deserves so much appreciation. She had to put up with so much in s3 (incidentally, I think about s3 sometimes and I wonder why the fuck 10 is my favorite Doctor. Honestly, he’s such a dick in s3. Martha Deserved Better.), and I’m so glad she was able to be one of the few companions in NuWho with a nontraumatic exit. I hope she’s living her best life, wherever she might be now. Ninth Doctor, from Doctor Who. Gosh I love Nine. Those same college friends who hated Martha also told me to skip s1, and I’m very glad I did not listen to them. I’ve always liked Jerks with Hearts of Gold, and Nine definitely is that! I just adore how while he had such a gruff and battle-scarred demeanor, he was so sweet and genuinely kind. He’s a puppy in a leather jacket! And not only can he be genuinely soft and sweet, but he’s also just so silly sometimes? Absolutely not what you’d expect from his general appearance but he can be quite a goofball! I love that for him! And while I may not like Doctor/Rose as a ship (honestly I just don’t tend to like Doctor/companion ships at all), his relationship with Rose was so sweet. I also just enjoy that, underneath all the weariness and the surface-level cynicism, he is actually very optimistic.  Twelfth Doctor, honestly, same deal as Nine. I’m very annoyed with people who dismiss him as being the Grumpy Doctor because he’s just so genuinely kind and compassionate? He might genuinely be one of the most compassionate Doctors I’ve ever seen. He even extends kindness to his worst enemies. There’s something really beautiful about that. Being kind, even when it might ultimately backfire on you and might not even work, because why not try? He’s just a punk rock grandpa trying his best, how can you hate that? He’s got some sick guitaring skills btw. He should join a band. (I know Peter Capaldi is in a band, so that just makes me want 12 to be in a band even more.) Sometimes I think there should be a band in the Whoniverse made up of some of the Doctor’s regens but then I get stuck on who’d be in it besides 12. Maybe 2 can be in it, with his weird flute thing. Anyway. His relationship with Clara was great (mostly because of how destructive and codependent it was lmao) but I just genuinely adore his connection with Bill. I’m always here for found family, and Bill being 12′s Earth granddaughter just warms my heart so much! Thirteenth Doctor, but actually the opposite deal of Nine and Twelve. I once saw a post saying that most Doctors can be split into one of two categories: grump with a heart of gold or charming goofball with a dark side. And, despite the two characters I just listed being in the former category, I think I tend to prefer the latter? Mostly because I see plenty of Jerks With Hearts of Gold but I feel like I don’t see as many heroic charming goofballs with a dark side. Anyway, that’s absolutely what 13 is, and I appreciate the layers that she has and am constantly annoyed at people who only see her surface level cheeriness and think that’s all there is to her. I really love it when characters Aren’t What They Seem and 13 exemplifies that. To borrow a phrase from a post I saw a very long time ago, 13 is so facile. She’s so physical, taking up so much space and constantly moving, but is so touch-averse. She talks so much and is very friendly, but is incredibly emotionally constipated and keeps even her so-called best friends at an arms length. She talks a lot about hope and compassion, but boy can she be hella violent and feral! Love That For Her. T - Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending, about anything at all (gender identity, sexual or romantic orientation, extended family, sexual preferences like top/bottom/switch, relationship with poetry, seriously anything) Oh absolutely. Off the top of my head: Cassandra is a lesbian. And that’s that on that. 13 is touch-averse! (Also stop yelling that she needs a hug! She doesn’t want one! It’s okay to not want hugs, that’s not a crime!) Alex can cook. Cooking isn’t even that hard?  K -Say something nice about someone in any of your fandoms Ooh, this is hard cuz there are a lot of people in any of my fandoms that I feel like I can say nice things about! Let’s go with Supergirl since I’ve been neglecting that fandom a lot. Uh. I adore @wizardofahz ‘s fics about the Superfam! I’m always craving more gen fic and she delivers! I love her characterizations of everyone, especially her characterizations of Alex and Kara. 

[who-gives-a-ship]

Let’s Bring Back Apathy

My URL isn’t just a great pun, it’s also how I honestly feel about a lot of shipping and fandom discourse in general. Who gives a shit what you ship? I sure don’t. I have some OTPs, but I don’t have any ships that I actually hate, just a lot I’m pretty apathetic to. And I think apathy is an important part of interacting with fandom.

Fandom is a thousand individually tailored experiences all at once. It’s a shotgun blast at a sea of small targets. Maybe some hit, maybe some don’t. Fan creators have this wonderful opportunity to create exactly what they want to see in the world without having to worry about stuff like investors or mass-market appeal. You want to tell a story about your favorite character dealing with your mental illness or your orientation? Go right ahead. Have a weirdly specific kink you want to make content for? Nobody’s stopping you. Any kind of unusual headcanon or art style or crossover you’re interested in? You are 100% in charge of this project and you can make it whatever you want. There’s no board of directors, no publishing company you have to please, nothing. And the result is a very diverse range of content.

Of course, one person’s trash is another person’s kink. The flipside of not having to appeal to everybody is, well, not appealing to everybody. We’ve all seen fan content that really didn’t appeal to us, the old fandom ‘cringe’ pictures of Sonic in various fetish situations and all the rest. That’s going to happen when you’re dealing with such an individualized range of content. The important part is how you handle the situation, and that’s where apathy comes in.

The standard fandom practice for dealing with something that doesn’t appeal to you is apathy. Things like ship names and tags exist so people have something to search to narrow down fandom into specific categories. Websites like Ao3 are built with this in mind, listing tags even before a story’s summary. Browsing fandom is sifting through chaos to find echoes of yourself. Everybody is looking for a very specific experience, for someone else like them. That can be in little ways, like a certain favorite character or OTP, or in very personal ways, like identity or kink. And there’s an unspoken rule that everybody is just as weird as everybody else. I’m looking for my weird kink and you’re looking for yours. We’re all in glass houses and nobody needs to be throwing any stones. The proper response to seeing something that squicks you out is to move along with your day. But at some point in the recent years, that’s been ignored.

The anti movement is about criticizing fandom for not providing the ‘correct’ experience, and that’s a fundamentally flawed premise. There is no unified fandom experience, just a whole bunch of different, highly individualized experiences. You want a sfw fandom? Well, there’s sfw spaces, but there’s plenty of nsfw spaces as well. You don’t like a certain range of ships? Great, stick to your particular tag, but they aren’t going away. You really hate a kink? You can blacklist it, but it won’t erase the community from existence or anything. So I can see how that’s frustrating to some people, especially when complicated stuff like morality gets tangled up in it. And that’s why apathy is so important. The ability to simply not care what other people in fandom are doing is essential to enjoying your specific corner of content. Otherwise, the glass houses kick in and we’re dealing with a fight that has no winner. Everybody’s weird and nobody has a true moral high ground. So you might as well stop giving a shit and be nice to people.

[uracilcherubs]

> Be the Hivecrasher Limeblood

Yeah, done. Though, does it really count as hivecrashing just because you don’t pay rent? 

Your name is CALLIOPE. You are a lime blood cherub of … well, if you’re honest, you aren’t quite sure how old you are. You’ve tossed around ages in the past, but – as you have also mentioned in the past – time has never really been your strong suit. The whole mess is hardly helped by the multiple sets of memories you have, each one from a different instance of yourself, each one living out longer or shorter lives. Things got…weird…in the Medium, and you try not to think on it for too long.

Suffice it to say, you are OLDER THAN HUMAN THIRTEEN YEARS OLD, and that WORKS ENOUGH FOR YOU. Better to roll with the punches and let the time players sort it out; though the age scale on Umbrage is even more fraught with complications, time travel, extended alternate universes and heaps of sloppy writing.

“i hope that wasn’t sUbtly laid bait for a compliment, “ you say to the open air. “i’m afraid yoU won’t find me an Unbiased critic – or a favoUrable one.”

Kind and sweet and lovable as you are (you chuckle softly at that), you can’t say you have much in the way of fond regard for the life you’ve led , or the unlife for that matter. No, looking back on things, you spent quite a lot of time moping around: moping on your meteor, moping in your session, moping in the dream bubbles, almost 15 times over. So much of your life has been spent moping, moping, moping,  playing the sad, second fiddle to your brother, who hogged more spotlight than any thief of light could hope for.

“we can’t help where oUr mUse takes Us – or oUr lord, as it were!”

You pull a hefty book from the shelf. It’s a new book, of sorts; a reprint of a tome you already own, polished and made new for a brand new audience in a brand new hardcover.  You flip through the pages, delighting at familiar passages. It’s a story you have mixed feelings for, and you can’t say you agree with every direction it took, but in the end it’s a story you devoted years to, and you are content with the fun you had along the way.  You snap the book shut, a look of realization sweeping over your face.

“oh ho,” you start. “perhaps…yes!”

You place the book back on its shelf and rush over to your desk. From a heavy drawer your pull out another book, one heftier and, you admit, a little more worn than some of your others, but one you’ve no less fondness for. You take no care pulling it open (leaving the mystery of its condition apparent to all), making a mad scramble toward its middle. 

You stop not at a fresh page, but one covered in notes and illustrations. A drawing of a large imposing adult cherub dominates the page, his false eye matching his false leg matching his false arm. You don’t particularly care for this chapter of your book—here is where the ties of your shared story really start to tangle and knot – but you can’t help yourself when a previously unconsidered angle dawns on you.

You begin to scribble in what little free space you have on the page, reading your work aloud to the room.

“perhaps, beyond a simple black infatUation, he collected so many serkets for their classpect!”

You scribble in a small sun – the symbol of light players everywhere – into the margin, replacing the center circle with an eight-ball.

“it would certainly sUit Umbrage’s ego, having so many light thieves in one spot…his ship would have made for a veritable narrative magnet!”

You smile at your work and close your unabridged journal, returning it to its place in the desk. You don’t really buy the theory for a second, and you’ve maintained a healthy skepticism of post-canonical word of god, but themes are fun to bring out, even if they’re happy coincidences and even if you just made them up just now.

“bUt i think that’s qUite enoUgh reflecting on the past,” you say, to yourself this time. “we woUldn’t want to get too self indUlgent.”

Anyway.

You stand from your desk and stretch, extending your wings out as you look around your room, which contains a great many deal of your INTERESTS, almost all of them revolving around a WEBCOMIC YOU CANNOT DISCUSS WITH YOUR FRIENDS. Lovely posters line the wall, looking down on figures and plushes you might have abused your powers just a little bit to secure. But  not everything in your room treads into the realm of metatextUal discourse; the walls beam a bright blue, with painted white clouds lazily drifting here and there, all above a carefully (carefUlish!) tiled floor of your design.

It was a thrill, getting to build your own room.  For a brief and chaotic moment, you were able to imagine yourself a troll, out on her own and building her very own hive. And what a hive Callie Ohpeee would live in! With all the books she could ever dream of reading, and divided into hallways of shining gold and striking purple, with free balcony access so she could see the stars and admire the constellations,  and maybe, perhaps, feel a bond with the long-forgotten ancestor she would never know, and-

Ahem.

All that to say, though you didn’t quite follow the design documents of your…fictions… it was a joy being able to put your own direct spin on your living space, just like you were a real troll girl. Though, you recognize, if you were a real real troll girl, you likely wouldn’t live long enough to build your hive palace – barring, of course, all the unculled spinoff au’s where Callie lives long enough to incite a rebellion and lead the lowbloods and forgotten castes into uprising and…okay, look.

You know how this sounds. You do! It is not just for their clumsily written narratives that you look back on your Callie Ohpeee adventures with a grimace. A limeblood messiah rising up and swaying the oppressed into freedom is just less problematic when you’re a naïve cherub who has yet to meet any of the several dear friends who actually lived on Alternian soil, and would take some exception to your…generous interpretation of its actual, real world social dynamics.  It’s just something you had to grow out of!

You’re just grateful it’s an idealism you managed to put a clamp on before you were ever able to enter on a loving treatise about how romantic it would have been to be born on Alternia proper, with an actual lusus and getting to actually navigate the quadrants and…ugh. Okay, that’s enough of that. 

You see what’s happening? All your old fan fictions are coming back to haunt you, and all you wanted to do was think about your cool skaia-inspired room. And it is a very cool room indeed, IN YOUR HUMBLE OPINION.

But despite your best efforts, you fail your attempt at an elegant segue, and your embarrassing trollsona just keeps haunting your think pan brain. You close your eyes and frown as you look back on the life and times of miss Ohpeee. You were so absorbed in your own fantasy version of Alternia, where you were a hero, and didn’t have a hateful brother ruining your life, and you weren’t chained in a small room, and you weren’t ug

You give your head a shake and politely but firmly ask those thoughts to leave. You have, as previously mentioned, spent entirely too much of your life moping, and you are very well not going to let some long-standing insecurities intrude upon your narration anymore!

“and besides,” you say, a smile creeping on your face, “what part of that is fiction anymore? i am very mUch a hero, my brother is qUite dealt with, this room is notably chain-free – and, dear brain, yoU seem to have not caUght onto the fact that we are wonderfully fashionable these days!”

You breathe out the negative feelings with a sigh and give your body another stretch. You take a few more breaths, but the last one slips out as a grumble. Even with the old thoughts shown the door, you find it harder to shake off the discomfort crawling up you, from clawed foot to horned skull. You cannot ignore how aware you are, in this instant, of your own body – the sharpness of your claws, the toughness of your skin, the broadness of your shoulders; the way your cheeks curve out in almost, but by no means exactly, the way the rest of you doesn’t.

You let out another sigh, and while the discomfort doesn’t leave you, you successfully shoo out the heated comments from your brain – commentary you pointedly decide not to dignify with narration. Your smile is somewhat labored, but still sincrere.

It’s been a process, getting to where you are now, and you think you’ve got a long way to go before you can say you’re done. And, perhaps, maybe you’ll never be done – but you know that you aren’t planning on stopping anytime soon.

“i’m sUre i’ll be alright,” you say, and you very much mean it.

[gffa]

OKAY, I’m going to respond to a bunch of this and probably do a whole lot of navel-gazing, as well as work really hard not to feel guilty about kind of publicly melting down a little bit.  But @forcearama was kind enough to reframe something important for me and I realized that sometimes struggling through this stuff in a public way can be helpful, for showing that other people go through a lot of stuff and can still come out of it. Warning for a whole lot of navel-gazing and is probably only really interesting to like a handful of people, but also maybe if you’re struggling with feeling like fandom is worth it, that you feel like you’re just constantly dodging people throwing shit at you, that you recognize they have the right to dislike or like whatever they do, but sometimes it gets really hard to reconcile that with your own place in fandom, then COME SIT BY ME AND WE’LL COMMISERATE ABOUT IT.  Because it’s a hard struggle, but one that I think will help us understand ourselves better, if we use it that way. Also, like, a buttload of replies.

I’m at a difficult place in my fannish life at the moment, because I’m struggling between “I just want to hang out with my friends and talk about our stuff together and be silly and/or cry about feelings!” versus “if you want a happy place in fandom, you have to build it yourself”, which means reaching out or establishing your corner, like “hey, I wrote a bunch of Obikin fic recs if you want to check them out!” versus “once you put that out there, you have to deal with antis”. I’m struggling with recognizing that you can’t control the way other people act in fandom (nor should you!), you can’t really even stop them from trying to argue with you about stuff you’re not interested in arguing about.  You can block them, but if you’re running a public blog, you have to deal with people publicly checking it out, even if it’s to the point of creeping on your blog for a long time, so long as they’re not harassing you, you have to put your big nerd undies on and deal with it or not put yourself out there VERSUS that I am still just a single person looking to enjoy my fandom with other people who enjoy it in the same way. Which normally I’m good with!  If someone who hates something I enjoy is stalking or hate reading my blog, well, that’s their choice and I’m just going to continue on posting about the things I love. But sometimes that does get hard because we’re all human.  Sometimes I feel really Watched because I’ve established a presence on-line (it feels conceited to say that, but I think it’s true, any time you write a lot of meta about things that have a lot of both pro- and anti- fans for it), sometimes I just get exhausted by all the negativity, sometimes I get tired of how we’re arguing over made up space stories when real world political stuff is so completely horrible. Sometimes I just get really upset that we should be able to set boundaries for ourselves and that the way each person wants to interact with fandom, however they get enjoyment out of it (let’s set aside that I’m clearly not talking about spouting actual hate speech, obv.) but that’s not always respected. Sometimes I use spite as a motivation to continue on, like, “OHO YOU HATE MY JEDI HUSBAND?  LET ME TELL YOU ALL THE WAYS I LOVE HIM, ALSO HERE ARE SOME GIFS OF HIS HANDSOME FACE.” and that works great for awhile!  But there are days where it fails and what am I left with then?  An attempt to be positive that doesn’t always feel rewarded? But I guess that’s when it’s most important to continue being kind and to continue enjoying what I enjoy for itself.  And that I shouldn’t feel guilty about stumbling with this sometimes, because we all stumble and the important thing is to step back and look at ourselves and what we need to do, to weigh in our minds what’s worth it, that we need to look inwards to find the balance of what we can let go of, what we can live with, and what we need to walk away from for our own health.  We have to look at ourselves and understand what we want to accomplish as a larger goal and weigh that against how we treat each other and how we present ourselves and what’s best for us in the long term. We have to decide where the line is between being passionate about something that’s important to us, whether made up space stories or real life issues, wherever you land on the gamut, and being respectful to others, treating them in a decent way.  And learn to live with, fight back against (and how you do so), or walk away from that fandom is not going to always draw those same lines as you are going to. And I think understanding these things about myself will let me get back to being chill (look, just because I scream in caps and flail about how much I’m crying over fictional characters, that doesn’t mean I’m not chill!!!11!) and hopefully being warmer and friendlier again. This probably seems weird and out of left field, but it does all tie together in my mind, especially with the whole aspect of “So what’s the aim of this blog?” that’s been on my mind lately.  Which seems silly, I know!  But, as mentioned, I’m from the school of fandom that firmly believes, “If you want a fun corner of fandom, you’re going to have to do the work to build it yourself.”  But that comes with a lot of complications and a lot of navel-gazing to figure out how to deal with them and stumbling sometimes. So, if you’re like me, and you sometimes just get fed up, you look back on the last couple of weeks of your blog and it’s not quite what you want it to be, that’s okay.  You can take a deep breath and refocus yourself.  Or if you know who you are already and are just tired of whatever in fandom, you can also come sit by me and kvetch about it for awhile until you turn to happier things again, because I think it’s important to show that, yeah, sometimes we get into moods and that’s when we reach out and hear that other people are going through a similar feeling and you know you’re not alone. Realizing you’re not alone, that you can rise above the murk of your own feelings and the tangle that is fandom, is helpful to me.  Hearing from people who say that I’ve made them smile or been a positive person to hang out with or that they like my fic recs or that I can give them feelings is so, so kind and sweet of you.  That I can reach out and say I’m feeling like I want to just leave this goddamned hell pit of a fandom sometimes and realizing that puts you in a difficult position because what do you SAY to that?  “No, I don’t want you to leave!” is guilt tripping the person who may need to do so!  But it also puts me in the position of, “Well, if I don’t leave then it looks like I was just fishing for attention!” But I’m human.  Sometimes I’m going to talk about how I’m considering leaving, because I genuinely was, and if it was an attempt to reach out for some connections to other people, to get reminders that I’m not alone either, then maybe it wasn’t perfectly handled, but I can suck it up and sheepishly say, yeah, I fell back down that depression hole again and it makes me act that way sometimes, I’m working on not doing it so much, but it happens.  Maybe I can be an example to show others that they’re not alone in how you’re going to trip sometimes, but you can climb back out again, you can find your way to feeling it’s worth it again. And I can get some navel-gazing time out of it and this will be one more step towards understanding myself and my feelings and that’s worth it, too.  It’s something I can use to exorcise my frustration from the last week or two and remember who I want to be and what I want to do. So each and every person who reached out and listened to me, who took time out to say something kind, who simply just cared, I want you to know that you’re doing the lord’s work to help people.  And that if I can provide even a smidgen of something good to this fandom or something kind, then it’s because people exactly like you have helped me along the way. AND NOW A BUTTLOAD OF REPLIES.

@laventadorn said:

i feel you, friend; yesterday i unfollowed a long-time mutual bc they posted shipping discourse calling shippers like me “gross.” and i was like, wow, really? guess what i’m not gonna read anymore. but then i found a great discourse-free blog that posts stuff about bb8 and porgs!! so idk; this is just a commiseration comment bc people lose sight of what’s important, which is treating real people well and enjoying stuff about fake people together. (½) (2/2) and as we all know, it can be REALLY hard to hold onto your enjoyment when there’s a constant storm of garbage whirling around and maybe throwing random old fast-food containers at your head while you’re just minding your own business. when things are extra garbage-y, it becomes even harder to remember the love… but those people can just go be horrible in their corner and we’ll just do our best to ignore them, like any creepy people we meet IRL.

I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with that, too.  ):  I’m generally pretty live-and-let-live with opinions on stuff, that’s something I’ve always been able to make peace with--sometimes it’s harder than others, when something really matters to me, but I have the strong belief that people come to fandom with different viewpoints and experiences and their way is their way, my way is my way.  Which isn’t always easy to hold onto when you’re feeling bombarded by the rest of fandom. And sometimes we’re going to stumble or just feel down about it, but I think that’s when it’s most important to double down on what you want out of fandom, to continue being happy because there are going to be people like me out there who are trying to quietly get over something that’s been building for a couple of weeks and they’ll see you feeling the same way and it’ll just let all the steam out of that feeling, because, oh, hey, yeah, it’s not just me. That, in five years from now, I am going to remember this conversation far more than I’m going to remember whatever was sending me off-kilter.  I’m going to remember every silly or hilarious piece of art, I’m going to remember the fic that made me cry or squee or both.  It can be hard to build a corner for yourself that doesn’t feel intruded upon, but that’s when you just keep building it all the more, because that is what you’ll remember five years from now. (Looking back to five years ago, to ten years ago, those are indeed the things I remember.  It gets hard in the moment, so let us all reach out when we need to, talk about it when we need to, but then be like, well, okay, I feel guilty about melting down in public, so you know what?  I’M GONNA LIVEBLOG THIS HILARIOUS STORY and the people you want to enjoy something with will light up at that.  ♥)

@ kirahnanase said:

Please don’t live us!

Aww, you are very sweet, thank  you for the kind words, it does help to go, okay, shut up, brain weasels, you’re not winning today, because there ARE kind people out there!

@albaparthenicevelut said:

I feel you, I’ve been seeing a lot of kind of heightened rhetoric about shipping lately and it is Tiring. Also, some of the well… rage is a little creepy. I get to hide because I’m not a big blog so people who read my stuff are generally just people who want to read it but I do sometimes read this stuff and feel angry and put off and kind of worried.

I genuinely don’t want to judge people who are angry on tumblr, because I understand how addicting it is, as well as they may be coming from experiences that I don’t understand.  Or maybe they just honestly enjoy being the way they are or feel they have to or something else that I’ve never thought of.  But, for me, anger is something that really stole a lot from me, I was angry for so many years and it cost me so much, relationships that I’ll never fully get back, years of misery and a lack of self-understanding that I can’t undo. We can’t change other people, it’s hard to navigate the same waters as some of the more vicious and mean-spirited people, which makes it tempting to take our ball and go home.  But there are others like us, who we can just hang out in our corner and have fun with.  It may not always feel like it, but I think we are building that and welcoming new people to it whenever they want to come and have fun with us!  Maybe we can’t change as much as we’d like, but we can build our own space and that’s so very, very worthwhile, too.

@forcearama said:

OK but if you leave you have to at least tell ME where you’re going OK because I WILL BE REALLY SAD IF THEY EVER GIVE US A KENOBI MOVIE AND I HAVE TO GO THROUGH THAT WITHOUT YOU.

I’m pretty sure that if I actually tried to leave, you’d physically drag me back because, look, ONE OF US has to go through the entire Obi-Wan tag every day to reblog all the gifsets and graphics of his swooshy hair and stupid handsome face, and you have kids, so you need a partner in crime.  I NOW UNDERSTAND THAT I AM NEEDED.  XD

@evaceratops said:

I really wish the block feature made it so people straight up /couldn’t/ see your posts by any means, but. :/

I really, really wish this, too!  But, to be fair, if they were truly intending to harass a person, they could just make a new blog or check it while logged out, so I’m not too fussed about how tumblr’s block feature works.  (What I’d REALLY like is to go back to the Livejournal/Dreamwidth style blogging.  *wistful*)

@super-happilydancing said:

To quote Obi-Wan “You must do what you feel is right of course”. But to quote Rey “Don’t go”. Hope that helps 🤗. Jk the second one is my selfish reasons, I love your blog. ❤️But you need to take care of yourself first and foremost. 💗💗💗

I can’t lie, it always feels good when people say, “NO DON’T GO.” even though I don’t think that’s what I was fishing for.  (I like to think that if I need that, I can say it more directly.  Idk, maybe I am backsliding, but I HAVE DONE ENOUGH NAVEL GAZING FOR ONE DAY.)  Sometimes hearing that people want to be selfish to ask you to stay can be really meaningful, especially when your stupid brain weasels are telling you that nobody likes you or wants you to be around. (I think this has a lot to do with how I’ve been kind of wound up lately, so I’m probably not as easy to talk to.  I AM GOING TO WORK ON CHILLING THE FUCK OUT AGAIN, I PROMISE.  XD  ♥)

@turnipshepherd said:

So this is genuinely not meant passive-aggressively, because you have to take care of yourself and do what’s right for you!! But I want you to know that (even though I’m not good at interacting with other tumblrs) I love your blog and it’s a bright spot in my day, and even if you decide to leave SW fandom tumblr, I will always appreciate you having been here! (I particularly love your fic recs, those are sooooo good!!)

This isn’t at all passive aggressive and I want to convey how much it means to me that you said this, especially if you feel like you’re not good at reaching out, that you’d do it anyway (as someone who has trouble with this as well) that’s incredibly touching.  That I can provide some brightness to your day is doubly so, when I’ve been feeling like I’ve been failing at that recently, so while “Thank you for the kind words!” feels inadequate, I want you to know that they are whole-heartedly meant and absorbed and make a difference.

@shadowsong26x said:

I don’t have much to add to what other people have said (basically, I will miss you if you go but absolutely do what makes you happy first and foremost), so… <3 that, basically, from my mostly-lurking corner <3

I struggle with finding the balance between, “I WANT TO LEAVE THIS GARBAGE FANDOM” venting of genuine feelings versus trying to untangle the knot of how I need to look at things to be able to stay, so I greatly appreciate the support and sweetness of your comment while I work through this!  I think, more than compliments, it’s the kindness that really makes a difference with me.  *hugs*

@annavalkyrie-blog said:

Sorry you feel that way!! I know this hell site can be icky sometimes. But I just wanted to say you’re a valued member of this community and I always love reading your thoughts on the Star War. You make me smile! If you feel like you need to leave, you’ll be missed!

This hell site is definitely icky a lot of the time!  But I just have to drag myself back up out of this depression pit I’ve fallen into and use it to examine myself again and figure out what I want.  And getting such a sweet comment, knowing that I could make you smile, that there’s such light in this fandom, really does do so much for me, thank you.  ♥ AND FINALLY, jesus, I’ve been trying to put this into words for like three hours now, I fell down a depression hole and I’ll probably need another day or so to climb out of it (the queue will keep running, though) but people reaching out when I was stumbling are the good eggs of fandom, are the kindest people that I want to keep hanging around and keep trying to add something to make your days brighter, too.  I want to be there, however I can, when any of us struggles with whatever.  And I’ll probably fall back down this hole again at some point in the future, I’ll probably have to ask for your patience again.  That’s how this brain weasels slash hell hole thing works.  But I have a thing I want to liveblog on Sunday or Monday afternoon and you can believe that I will always be lured back by how goddamned married Obi-Wan and Anakin are (and how much I want to throw Padme in there for my OT3, JUST LET ALL OF THEM BE HAPPY, I clearly haven’t cried about that enough yet ^_~) and how I want to flail with people. I’ve probably been more worked up than I realized over the last week or so, so I’m going to try to relax and work out the final kinks and be cheerful and silly to interact with again.  (Unless you need to crab about fandom then COME TELL ME because, look, I LOVE gossip and also turning that into “well, yeah, this fandom sucks, but also have you considered this hilarious thing, too?” when we’re ready for it.)

[pokemon-au]

[Meds, Lin, Kin and Lorn belong to @filthy-alien-meat]

Aoi introducing Kin to Cery: "Kin, meet my girlfriend/big sis Cery. You may address her as Ceryneian. 'Cery' is mine. So you cannot use it."

“....ceryninium..cermunin..” CANT SAY IT....it’s difficult..

"Hmm... Then you can call her Lady Bisharp. Isn't that right, Cery?"

“Eat your ice cream” *gives him a smol head pat.*

“>:o your girlfriend is a warrior...I’ve seen her ribbons of valor..” 

Lorn is a very impressive "little weed" from Sprout Tower. He hopped ship and done a bit of traveling. He likes to fight and he's adamant. Lin, his mentor tugs him back from ridiculous opponents he thinks he can handle like "no no little weed..."

"You wanna go!! YOU WANNA GO!!" And starts pinwheeling his little leaves. LET HIM FIGHT

Meds cannot understand why she is BOTHERING...since clearly he's going to evolve into something with even less limbs. If he grows up he can just swallow Meds whole and whip like his sensei. I imagine he becomes heavy like a roly-poly toy that can't be knocked down.

Lin calls him "little weed". Unlike Kin and Aoi who like to poke fun about their mentors he would not stand for it.... That's when the Riolu tie this nerd to a tree.

Lorn can best Kin in most situations just cause he's a freaking noodle and uses others weight and moves against them so idk what he'd do against someone like Naga. Lmao Naga not sure how to feel about beating a piece of grass in battle....

Aoi thinks Lorn is cheating cuz he can't land a hit. In the end he'll dig and pull Lorn's root feet down and trap him in the dirt so he can kick him with fire. Aoi please. (!!!!!! CLEVER kin would be most impressed)

Lorn's sneaky too, has the powder moves. He's stubborn about using them though; he wants to hit stuff, not throw fairy dust at things in order to win.

He knows Leech Seed (gets Aoi all tangled up and gives a tiny evil cackle)

Lorn is probably a smart little bugger but a major snipe, he will rat you out, brag and cause unnecessary discourse but in Lin's eyes he's a perfect little weed.  If he saw that fence art, he would be all ">:O Ohhhh....i'm tellin'"

If they drew one of Lorn, he would cry. AND KIN WOULD HAVE A PANIC LIKE..."ahhh that was a bad idea, why did we do that, it was MEAN....no no no...." FRANTIC WIPING OF CHALK. Aoi's like "Aw it's just a joke, Lorn. Don't be a baby." This is when Don would usually smack him with his leaf hand if he was around.

If Don and Kirby ever cross paths and have to battle, I think Don is infinitely more experienced but Kirby could put up a tough fight. He's outmatched though, since Don has not missed a single day of training in his life (well, except for the rare occasions when he's sick)

Zion and Don are the kind who will insist to work even tho they are sick. Aoi will fake illness to sleep in. Naga will help him sometimes with enough pleading.

Meds: "Or you could just...NEVER GET SICK????" (Has never experienced a virus ever) Kin probably gets the sniffles but nothing more than that, not with that brutal diet he's on.

If Kin does get to the point of immobility due to training and his limbs are all bruised and torn up, Meds does take care of him and shows an uncharacteristic tender side, so if Kin became very ill he would handle that as well, if it got serious he'd address his trainer. You can only do so much on the mountain and while it is possible to make cures from whats there he just isn't that inclined...

There's a time Zion was ill and Aoi was looking after him. As Zion is laying in his futon, he beckons to Aoi and gives him a pat on the head, telling him that he's a good boy; and I imagine Aoi looks very touched at first, looking tearful and all...but then he grabs Zion's hand and goes "Are you going to die?! QAQ" and he recieves a withering glare.

He IS A GOOD BOY. If Cery catches wind of Aoi being sick at some point, she just kicks in doors...WHERE IS HE?! She can't be stopped, it is futile. Her precious darling baby is SICK. The evil would just be radiating off her for the entire household, how could you let this happen. She likes pampering him, they aren't together all the time so it's A-OK.

Aoi likes to hold Cery's hand. He loves her!! So much!

Aoi quite enjoys the treatment and attention when he's sick so you can be sure he plays it out more dramatically and longer than nessecary even after he's recovered. But Don always figures it out and puts him back to work. He has a lot of training to catch up.

Meds lets Kin make a full recovery, probably has to make him STAY PUT until he's healed although he can appreciate the determination.

If Don met Kin he's gonna shake his head and wonder why Aoi isn’t more like Kin. Now that's a pupil!

To be fair, Aoi does try to take as many shortcuts and slack off as much as he can. He does his best if you tell him there's a prize in it for him. MOTIVATION!

I don't think Meds would ever ...get sick but if Kin ever saw him lose and get hurt, his whole world would be ruined. He holds him in such high regard anything that tainted that might break his spirit. It's a very fragile dependency I guess, it's terrible.

Meds is legendary as far as Kin is concerned. I bet the boys like to compare and boast that each of their mentors can defeat the other no problem.

Kin would brag that his master has attacked humans :I SEEN HIM DO IT....THEY WON'T BE COMING BACK EITHER!

Aoi's kind of uncomfortable about that bit of information. He thinks Kin is playing it up to sound dangerous and cool.

Kin would have that very unsettling truth to his words, he's too genuine to lie or even try to make something up. "He attacked them,wouldn't tell me why.....I don't think I was supposed to see."

"I think thats why the humans put up signs on the trees....i can't read them all that well but I think it's a warning" He'd trail off, not thinking much of it, he sees them every day...sometimes a new one would be posted.

Aoi is uncomff but doesn't want to be one upped so he's like "Yeah...well...Don can beat up bad guys too...! Burglars are too scared to come by." (changes the subject)

"Don is cool :3..."

"We have signs back home too...!" (thinks about the signs he drew and put up in the garden in hopes to keep pokemon out) "It says KEEP OUT. PRIVATE PROPERTY" ("get your own goddamned veggies")

!!!!! Kin would be impressed that Aoi can read.

Aoi is suddenly very smug. (proudly) "Heh, I can also write" "I wrote the signs actually" (does not mention that his were rejected and replaced)

He makes a grandiose show of "COME! LET ME SHOW YOU HOW TO WRITE YOUR NAME (in kanji or something)" and waxes poetic on education that he's heard a thousand times but never cared for until this very moment.

All of Aoi's haikus would go right over his head, WHAT DOES THIS MEAN??? ...who is this Cery that you love so much...? He is not very artsy or creative to say the least if he can't say it with his fist then .....well.

Lin can probably read and write, she will insist that Lorn know how to as well.

Kin has no experience with people, the ones that have seen him give him weird looks because he's BRIGHT ASS YELLOW but it's never anything he would call positive.

Aoi believes if you hurt a trainer that looks after you, you're a bad Pokemon.

[dragonbearer]

Incest, Legally and Socially (there’s a difference)

Some intense thoughts on incest, its legalities, and what it means in real life with @breakiitdown​. It’s been an absolute pleasure working this out with you and I feel pretty damn good about this whole discussion. Tons of respect for you for being willing to discuss this with me and holding my hand when I got stuck. This’ll be going into my overall discourse folder.

Some editing done for clarity’s sake. Be warned: it’s LONG (2300 words of chat)

breakiitdown

Can I ask, do u support incest irl? cause I’ve been seeing a lot of arguments for shimadacest saying since it’s not legal in japan it's alright to ship it, though most people are uncomfortable on explaining if they believe it should be legal or not

dragonbearer

If it's between two consenting adults, I don't see a reason why I should intrude on their personal business.

But if it's between people with a severe power differential, then no.

I would still be a little squicked irl but I wouldn't really have a position either way.

 breakiitdown

ye like tbh I see incest between cousins as something that probably wouldn't be that bad but between siblings its often difficult since they’ve had to grow up together and social conditioning can start at such a young age and what not but

dragonbearer

The sibling incest part is sticky for me imo

dragonbearer

But all the parts of incest that are bad - force, rape, molestation - would be bad between any two people anyway

Incest on its own isn't necessarily a bad thing - just what it can be accompanied by

breakiitdown

yeah that’s why ppl don't like when adopted people get together either generally speaking cause of the growing up thing and the slow social conditioning that would/could occur even from smaller or seemingly innocent acts that could manipulate someone into liking them,,

That’s why in general the idea of incest to me isn’t?? Bad per se but

dragonbearer

You mean grooming?

breakiitdown

Like if two ppl were separated @ birth then fell in love and happened to be siblings it would be fine but I think the thing of growing up together

YEAH

I knew there was a word for it I just forgot it

dragonbearer

True, but I think grooming falls into power differential too

Which is a bad thing in any relationship

dragonbearer

I mean - it's unlikely

Incest between two siblings that's completely healthy and consensual

Very, very unlikely if they grow up together

But intellectually, in that case, then I can't see a viable reason it would be wrong

dragonbearer

and since I can set the terms of a fictional ship in any way I want, I can just be like "ok but in THIS au what if the incest was perfectly healthy and happy"

And 3 years, imo, for siblings isn't that big of a difference

Ofc genzo still has its issues, but I write it for that reason, not bc I want to make something happy and healthy

breakiitdown

ye I feel that just recently seeing all the arguing that incest should be fine instead of saying "it's fictional and who cares" has been... hmMMm

dragonbearer

I'm arguing against the concept that incest itself is a bad thing

It feels like trying to say sex is bad bc ppl can be raped to me

dragonbearer

Incest =/= abuse

breakiitdown

I mean I think in general incest between two people who grow up together will probably end up in a unhealthy way but there's a few cases where that’s not true

dragonbearer

bc the whole "attack the shippers" thing starts with slandering the basic morality of ppl for shipping something incestuous

Not for anything else - just the incest

bc if u start attacking unhealthy dynamics in a ship, practically any ship in the fandom is under fire

breakiitdown

But in your rules you also say you don’t support incest irl

dragonbearer

As in, I don't endorse it happening

I wouldn't tell ppl "yo it’s okay if u kiss your sis"

But

I don't like blanket statements

dragonbearer

And something like "I don't generally support real-life incest but if you're happy, healthy, and consensual then it's your life and I hope you find yourself satisfied with your choices because I want people to be happy" is a bit long

I realize in real life, incest is *usually* unhealthy

Not always, but usually

But I won't vilify people for committing incest, I will vilify them for whatever crime they committed

Am I making sense?

breakiitdown

ye but I think its ok to say that in most cases incest esp. in cases where they've grown up with each other is normally abusive just like in most cases you'd consider physical attacks abusive even if that's not always the case

dragonbearer

Yeah

I said that

breakiitdown

but you said you didn’t think it was abusive I mean I think its chill to call incest as a whole an abusive thing as an idea and in most cases, but that doesn’t mean all cases are actually abusive

dragonbearer

I’m confused now

breakiitdown

Like the exception not the rule

Ye me 2 tbh like u don’t think incest is abusive except for most of the time?

Not even like u specifically I’ve just seen this argument before and never really understood it either

dragonbearer

Let me try to equate it to something else

For example

Relationship between a subordinate and their superior

This is discouraged in most places of employment bc of how it can be abused

But that doesn't mean that every and each case of it is abusive and thus should not be treated as such

I see the topic of incest in the same basic guideline

It can and has been abused, many cases where it happened is abusive

dragonbearer

But that doesn't mean incest IS abuse automatically

breakiitdown

ye but people still call that general act abuse like if someone told me they were in a happy consenting relationship in either of those that'd be cool but I don’t think the whole act should be rewritten to someone that’s not abusive because of the few cases

dragonbearer

Well, a lot of legislators agree with you, which is why incest is illegal in some places

But in others, they don't

And the question is "why should incest be illegal?"

And you know, a lot of the abusive potentials are brought out

But that's already illegal anyway

Child abuse, statutory rape, sexual molestation, etc. etc. is illegal in most countries

Which can cover the cases of incestuous abuse adequately imo

But making incest illegal catches those few ppl who ARE non-offending and places them under legal scrutiny

dragonbearer

Grooming is already considered child abuse anyway, and we all understand why harming a person in that form is bad

But if we were to illegalize incest, there needs to be a reason

And when prompted for a reason for why incest, not abuse, JUST INCEST is bad, ppl trip up on the question

The article I linked on that post explains the concept p well

breakiitdown

ye like I agree that it should be legal and everything but I also don't think it’s necessary for people to say that incest as a whole is non abusive cause even with the boss and student thing it’s something that’s generally not allowed but not illegal because people consider that dynamic is abusive but that doesn’t mean every relationship holds abuse within it

dragonbearer

I prefer to say that incest on its own isn't abusive, but can and usually leads to abuse

Which, to me, is an important differentiation

I grew up debating and that kind of wording is super important bc they change how situations can be taken

I think you mean that I think incest is non-abusive

I think the concept of incest is, but not the practice of it

dragonbearer

On its own, cut off from any other concept, it's simply not harmful

But reality is complicated and tangled, which is why incest is rarely on its own

And thus is usually harmful

breakiitdown

tbh I’m confused like incestuous relationships that involve living and growing up together normally lead to aspects in a relationship that are abusive but it’s wrong to generalize incest relationships as abusive? If that’s what u mean?

dragonbearer

Yes

That is exactly what I mean :D

breakiitdown

I still feel like that’s making the exception the rule for all incest relationships like I get that some incest relationships can work out but when referring to incest as something that’s abusive is that like ?? Bad 2 do

dragonbearer

bc

It’s not the incest itself that is abusive

I mean

dragonbearer

If an older man groomed his daughter and sexually abused her, that's a crime

If an older man groomed his neighbor's daughter and sexually abused her, it's still a crime

One is incestuous, one is not

But the basic crime is the same - abuse

breakiitdown

But that situation still happens very regularly with siblings since when they're both kids and one starts to feel sexual attraction they could still groom them into thinking that sex is normal between the two of them since they live and grow up together it's not always like the power imbalance between them

dragonbearer

Ahhhh okay

So it's like

One party convinces the other party to engage in something despite reluctance, right?

Or generally leverages them into it, somehow

dragonbearer

That’d be coercion

dragonbearer

Resulting in dubious consent

breakiitdown

yeah like that normally doesn’t really need 2 include a power balance in order to work cause I know in that situation it’s a good example but for family relationships it’s sort of more common since it's something that’s not escapable and constant

but I mean if they live together it could just start as small things that may be considered platonic that then lead into more sexual things that the person who is interested tells them it's normal and that’s just what families do and they believe them because over a period of time that's what they've been shown

dragonbearer

Man, I hope no one checks my google history bc the amount of research I'm doing on the topic is getting higher and higher

dragonbearer

http://www.pandys.org/articles/siblingsexualabuse.html

This is pretty good

Apparently

Child psychology studies say that

Incestuous actions between siblings/cousins/whatever is pretty common

"Sexual behavior between siblings that is not age appropriate, not transitory, and not motivated by developmentally, mutually appropriate curiosity" and studies have defined the dynamic u described as such

So it's still a form of abuse, regardless of actual power

breakiitdown

Ye like that’s the only reason why I don’t believe incest is always wrong is because those situations don't involve influence over someone when they're a child n what not in most cases

dragonbearer

So ye, that's p much all I have on the topic

Does this explain my thoughts adequately?

breakiitdown

idk like I get that cousin relationships and what not are in general not abusive but I’m still sort of confused on why you don’t consider sibling relationships in general abusive

Like I still know there’s exceptions to all but is it just because u don’t want to like let the few think that their relationship is bad

dragonbearer

bc I object to the idea of blanket statements

As in, saying that every case of sibling incest is bad, abusive, and should be illegal

breakiitdown

Isn’t saying incest isn’t abusive a blanket statement as well

dragonbearer

Which is why I said incest isn't abusive unless ________

Just imagine like a big list

With a ton of different sections of cases where it IS bad

cutting away all the abusive parts until the few non-abusive cases are left

Incest does not mean Abuse

a.       Unless ______

a.       In situation X

                                                                          i.      Example A:

breakiitdown

I mean I don’t think it should be illegal but the general concept of incest and what it holds is abusive just like w the teacher student thing it’s not illegal but a lot of people consider the general concept of it as a teacher abusing his power over a student even if that isn’t the case in 100% of cases all of the time

breakiitdown

Wait is it illegal I don’t even know I just assumed it wasn’t because that’s lame

dragonbearer

But the thing is

breakiitdown

Ye but ppl still feel comfortable calling that abuse like

dragonbearer

It depends on the country

some places it is, some places it isn't

But I protest against "most people think"

bc a lot of that comes from this knee-jerk GROSS reaction

breakiitdown

Ye I’m just crediting the TV shows and movies I watch I don’t have a source lmao

dragonbearer

A lot of the "this is how things are naturally" and "society says so"

I mean, not to equate lgbt ppl with incest but

Once upon a time

Being homosexual was a horrible abomination against humanity and you can tell what I thought about that, being bi myself

dragonbearer

So I don't think about what most people think, because most people work off their initial, society ingrained rules

And not look deeper into the whole concept of why something is morally wrong besides the first feeling of disgust

breakiitdown

I mean I don’t think we should say incest relationships are horrible abominations against humanity but I still think it’s reasonable to tell people using your position as a family member to initiate relationships within your household is abusive

like I don’t think it’s disgusting but @ the same time I don’t think ppl should be encouraging ppl saying it’s not abusive if u want to convince your kid to kiss u like,,,,,

That’s why it’s so hard to have relationships in families because there’s a certain position of power u have regardless if u want it or not as an older brother or father or sister or whatever

dragonbearer

I get u

But I think I got where we're divided now

Legally, I think it's better to say incest isn't abuse UNLESS certain conditions are met - in a legal case, innocent until proven guilty is paramount ESPECIALLY when judging a incest case (as opposed to a case of abuse)

But socially, it's better to say incest is abusive UNLESS certain conditions are met - because socially, just staying away from incest is for the best and the criterion of healthy incest is incredibly narrow

breakiitdown

YEE

dragonbearer

*high five*

I feel like I made a breakthrough