#He's so extremely POC coded ESPECIALLY Black coded like it's so weird to see and I don't enjoy it

[lunalycana]

Every time I'm forced to see Sonic depicted as a white boy my soul temporarily leaves my body.

[nekropsii]

Ok so hussie that SUCKS ass so much and he always came off to me from what he showed in his comics as a weirdo in so many ways. But like I never feel like i see this brought up whenever I talk about homestucks more questionable parts and I don't like that very much. U seem to talk about it a lot and I think that's good so I think it would be interesting to hear your honest unfiltered thoughts on the guy and everything that he's done

Ohh, boy. This is a doozy. Yeah, this is something I have a lot to say about… I try not to talk about Hussie too much, since they’re a bit of an upsetting topic, and I just don’t really like discussing real people, but… There comes a point where you literally have to acknowledge the Author when analyzing the Work. Sometimes, Death of the Author isn’t applicable in the way you hope it is, and sometimes, The Curtains Are Blue for a Reason.

That being said… Let’s get into this. I’m gonna be including a few links in this one, so here’s to hoping that it doesn’t break the post, and that it remains visible in tags. It’s an important discussion to have.

Content Warning: In-Depth Discussion of Racism, Mentions of Ableism and Child Predation.

Despite the fact that I prefer to analyze Homestuck from a largely Watsonian perspective, since Hussie isn’t very fun to think about, I cannot, in good faith, ignore it 24/7. In order to really be able to understand certain parts of Homestuck, you need to have some iota of cultural, racial, and sociopolitical awareness. This isn’t me saying “You need a high IQ in order to be able to understand Homestuck,” this is me saying there are certain parts of the story that are caked in stereotypes that a lot of Non-POC, especially Non-Black people, might not pick up on. Same goes for the Able-Bodied.

Hussie has proven themself time and time again to be a raging racist who is really, really weird about kids. Her writing is a double-edged sword- on one hand, Childhood, and the loss of it, is rendered beautifully in Homestuck in ways I haven’t quite been able to find in other media. The fearlessness and shamelessness in allowing the characters the make horrible mistakes and be flawed people as they grow up in harsh circumstances is an incredible thing to witness… But then there’s Hussie’s disturbing infatuation with Vriska Serket, who is a 13 year old girl, and his unabashed hatred for characters like Tavros Nitram, who is physically disabled, as well as Gamzee Makara, who is Black-Coded in a way that’s offensive.

Hussie’s bigotry is transparent. Let me use Gamzee in particular to expand upon this topic, because he’s… A pretty obvious choice when it comes to this discussion.

Gamzee Makara is a Dirty, Drug-Addled, Hedonistic, Unsupervised Mess of a child who has an Absent Father, Horrifically Violent Impulses, and a religious devotion to a Hip Hop/Rap band. While it’s undeniable that, from a Watsonian Perspective, Insane Clown Posse is a legitimate basis for a real, in-universe Cult, it’s also undeniable that- in tandem with the rest of his character- that obsessive devotion to those specific genres does not read well, as they’re historically Black music genres, and Black men are stereotyped as having a particular affinity for it. I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge how Gamzee’s character is largely treated as a joke, with him mostly being portrayed as significantly more stupid, bumbling, and useless than his peers- to the point where it’s a remarked upon thing in the text of the story- and that this, when taking in the context of the racism behind the rest of his character writing… Reads as a Minstrel Show.

This doesn’t even touch on the concept of “Chucklevoodoos” within the comic, which has its name derived from a real world, currently practiced, legitimate African Religion. It’s most often quite offensively boiled down to mysterious, spooky, magical nonsense, and as something that’s simultaneously unknowable (to white people,) all powerful, and primitive /lesser (than Abrahamic Religion.) The presence of “Jujus” as a set of mysterious, extremely powerful objects within the game of SBURB raises some red flags in conjunction with the rest of the things I’ve listed as well- it wouldn’t read nearly as poorly without the previously aforementioned extreme racism, and with said racism in mind, I can’t help but think that it also being associated with the Makaras while also being borrowed, once again, from African Religious Practices, was intentional. Don’t get me started on Kurloz.

(Wikipedia may not be the most detailed source ever, but it serves its purpose to prove that this is an actual thing, and I’m not just talking out of my ass here.)

It’s disheartening, but unsurprising, to see a fandom that seems to pride itself on a sense of Acceptance, Awareness, and Diversity be unable to grapple with the fact that the creator, and the source material they’re working with, is inherently bigoted. Pointing out that the Racism and Ableism in Homestuck exists is not at all something people should shit the bed about, and it’s not a conversation put on the table purely to tell people to stop liking Homestuck; Critical Enjoyment of media does exist, and you can be aware that a piece of work has some deep, deep issues and still enjoy it. I would know- I’m literally an Alpha Troll-centric blog.

Shifting gears here, but Hussie’s ableism is well known- ranging from things as obvious as early Homestuck’s liberal usage of the R-Slur, (though that was quite normalized online during the period in which it was used, and I’d argue that that’s partially a product of its time,) Tavros’s horrible treatment due to his disability being something that was supposed to be viewed as “deserved,” Tavros’s disability as being something that needed to be “cured,” and Terezi’s Pseudo-Blindness, to things as obscure as the way Hussie handled Horuss Zahhak’s canonical Systemhood.

Also, though it’s not in the vein of bigotry, I need to expand upon an earlier point… Hussie’s obsessive, unabashed attraction to Vriska Serket, who is a 13 year old girl, is a significantly more openly discussed topic, I feel, but I’ll go over it still. Andrew Hussie has what is functionally just a Self Insert within the comic, bearing their name and their- at the time- exact image. This Avatar of himself even shares the role of being the Writer of Homestuck, and the line between what is an actual reflection of Real World Hussie and what is just a character is extremely thin, and extremely blurred. That said, a decent portion of people took Hussie’s Avatar as near purely a character- but his attraction to Vriska was a genuine thing. Hussie’s Avatar takes every opportunity he can get to physically stalk Vriska, and sexually harass her. The stark age gap between the two of them is, if I recall correctly, remarked upon in the comic, and Vriska’s disgust and discomfort is seemingly supposed to be a part of the joke.

There’s a lot I could talk about here, but I’m not currently equipped enough time, mental and emotional energy, space, or words to tackle everything cleanly in one post. The start of the web is there, the foundation is built, but I can’t adequately weave it all in a single day. I hope you understand. There’s quite obviously more to be said, about Meenah’s use of AAVE, Damara’s aggressive over-sexualization paired with her speech patterns, the running theme of Child Predation, so on and so forth. A lot of my thoughts on Hussie aren’t kind. They really aren’t a good person, no matter how much any of us wish they were.

[villainous-queen]

Hi i love your blog so much!! I'm a huge fan of toxic romance/problematic ships too so it's really fun seeing other people have similar taste. Anyways i was wondering do you have any recs for villain x heroine ship with a poc heroine? I've been thinking about this and there's a lack of poc female leads in dark/problematic romances.

Do you think race plays a part in making creators more hesitant in writing stories with them? Because i feel like there would definitely be more criticism if a heroine was poc and the villain white. Would love to hear your thoughts!

Thx a lot. Happy to be of service ;)

I definitely think that race plays a part in villainous and problematic portrayals of relationships. I’ve mentioned this before but most of the time “villains” are either white or sometimes Latino, very rarely do you encounter black villains. “Heroines” on the other hand are almost always white. If we think back to the beginning of film even we can see this. Just look at Sessue Hayakawa! He was a Japanese actor in America during the 1910-1920s. 

His "broodingly handsome" good looks and typecasting as a sexually dominant villain made him a heartthrob among American women during a time of racial discrimination and he became one of the first male sex symbols of Hollywood. [Wikipedia]

So sexy! But thanks to racism (and the later 1930s Production Code) he wasn’t allowed to be depicted in a romantic relationship unless the woman was Asian as well. So instead he was typically depicted as the villain. In the 1915 film “The Cheat” he BRANDS a woman! Reportedly women screamed (in a good way) when it played in theaters!

What I think is happening now is a swing back of the 1930s Production Code. We’ve gone too far the other way and now we aren’t allowed to depict non-white people as villains, except Latinos. I can also point directly to the demonetization of “Mexicans” and the racism still expressed towards those of Latin decent as the reason why we are allowed to depict them as villains. I think generally a lot of people are still uncomfortable with “mixed” relationships and I think just on that fact we generally get less of it. Then add to the fact that some people are uncomfortable that the “vulnerable” are being menaced, so although white heroines are much more common when we do get non-white heroines I suppose being menaced by white people makes people uncomfortable. I know various TV series and films get criticism for making another “straight white male attractive killer” such as Joe Goldberg from Netflix’s You or the weird amount of flack the film “Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile” got for hiring Zac Efron as Ted Bundy because Zac Efron is “attractive” when Ted Bundy was seen as attractive in his time?? That was one of the points of the film?! Still I think the trend is from a desire to show “positive” depictions of non-white people the same way people are reluctant to create negative portrayals of people who happen to be under the LGBTQA+ rainbow. The public wants “strong female” characters, especially strong non-white female characters. I think people forget that “victims” can be strong as well? Still, overall I think people want to just avoid race as much as possible and just make everyone “white” just to avoid any implications. I want to see more non-white villains and heroines! 

Anyway, off the top of my head I recommend Stay (2017), Shadow and Bone (series) and From Dusk Till Dawn (series). Stay (2017) has Devin Books as “Claire”, she has a bit of a mixed ethnic heritage but it includes Mexican and Native American. Her co-star “villain” is white. Shadow and Bone (series) has Jessie Mei Li who is half English, half Chinese; her co-star is English/White. From Dusk Till Dawn (series) is a little odd since I’m including it for Santanico Pandemonium who is played by Eiza González who is Mexican. Santanico was both a villain in the series and later was revealed to be a victim of various bad people. Does she really count? Idk but I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel here. She has various “romantic prospects” (even women) but technically the villain is also Mexican/Latin but I ship her with a white guy (not my OTP but whatever) so idk either. Of course you can always try non-English language shows and films. Again it seems that we only have Latin actors for the most part? It’s hard to think of African American actors for this? Urgh. We need more black actors in this genre!

My followers, anymore suggestions for “villain x heroine ship[s] with a poc heroine”?

[ravenhilarious]

Harry Potter character personal headcanons - Golden & Silver Trio

Harry

Race: White mother, Asian father (common headcanon is that he’s Indian, and really, I like that headcanon) Sexuality: Bi bi bi bi bi (and that’s pretty much canon, given his reaction to meeting Bill and Charlie, as well as the amount of detail he keeps describing Sirius’ hair and Cedric’s face, and of course we know how much he fancied Cho and Ginny) Ship(s): There’s Ginny, of course. They’re pretty much soulmates.  I also like him with Luna, since they understand each other in a way many people don’t.  I also like the idea of them in a poly relationship, where they all love each other equally. In an AU where Ginny and Luna are married and not into polyamory, I’d probably ship him with Neville, but I don’t think Neville is into guys, so... Nope ship(s): Draco, Snape, Voldemort... you name it. I’ve also seen fanart for Harry and Hagrid... and McGonagall... and even Buckbeak. Yeah, ma boi deserves way better than that... Platonic ship(s): Ron and Hermione. He’s like a brother to both of them, but they’re definitely not siblings to each other...  And Ginny, Luna and Neville will all be his platonic soulmates if they aren’t dating. Oh, and I love the relationship he has with Fred and George. He’s basically their adopted lil bro, and that’s really cute. Disability/ies: It’s basically canon that he has depression and PTSD in the fifth book, and I don’t think any of that completely disappears like, ever. In order to reach the “all was well” ending, he must have gone to some kind of therapy, and I hope he did so after the war. I don’t know whether his “saving people thing” is an actual mental illness, but I’ve read on tumblr that it often appears in abuse/neglect victims.

Ron

Race: White as a toilet paper roll Sexuality: Straight, but bi-curious. He had a huge obsession with Viktor Krum, and he did wonder for awhile whether that was “a gay crush”. Eventually, he figured out that it was “just” an idolization. Big ally tho. Ship(s): Hermione! They were like made for each other, and I have a really hard time imagining them with anyone else, and I can’t see any of them being into polyamory either. That being said, I could definitely see him with Luna, if I have to pick someone else. They both saw potential in each other that no one else really saw, and I think they’d definitely entertain each other. But I think he needs someone mature and serious, like Hermione; they balance each other out more. Nope ship(s): Like with Harry, anyone who was mean to him. Draco, Voldemort... and any of the Weasleys! I’ve also seen him paired up with McGonagall and Dumbledore, and that was... strange, to put it mildly. Platonic ship(s): Harry. Definitely Harry. And Luna (if he doesn’t date her). Neville, too (I wish we had seen more of their friendship in canon, especially in the movies, where Ron was often a bit condescending to Neville, which he really wasn’t in the books... oh well, I’m going off topic) Disability/ies: Canonically arachnophobia. I also think he has some kind of anxiety or depression, a bit milder that Harry’s obvious trauma, but he is SO insecure during the series that he can’t be classified as neurotypical.

Hermione

Race: Black father, white mother (that white mother is Jewish, btw. You can’t have a Nazi-coded villain without making at least some Jewish characters, especially if said characters are part of in-universely oppressed groups) Sexuality: Token Straight Girl™. I like to picture her as demisexual/demiromantic, but judging by the instant crush she had on Lockhart, that seems pretty unlikely. Definitely an ally, tho. Ship(s): Ron, Ron, Ron Weasley. Like I mentioned above, I just can’t picture them with other people. But if I have to, I could see her with Neville. They were very close friends, and if she never befriended Ron, I could definitely see them growing to love each other. However, in canon, they seem more like brother/sister-ish. Nope Ship(s): So, so many. Like Harry; Snape, Voldy and Draco are no-go. But Bellatrix, Pansy Parkinson and (for some very weird reason) Greyback (yes, I’ve seen it...) are all wrong in their own ways. Platonic ship(s): Harry and Neville. Sort of McGonagall too, in a way. Disability/ies: Ocd, social anxiety of some kind. Could be on the autism spectrum as well. Screw that, I’m autistic and I like her, so therefore, she is autistic too.

Neville

Race: I think he’s white. Pretty sure he’s described as pink-faced and blue-eyed at some point (but if people wanna headcanon him as poc, then let them) Sexuality: Asexual. As I mentioned above, I don’t think he’s into guys, so a heteroromantic ace? Also, I don’t think he is comepletely cis, either. But whether he’s a binary trans dude, intersex, non-binary... I could see it all. Ship(s): While we never really saw their romance in the book, I think he and Hannah Abbot would be really cute together. There’d be lots of fluff. Probably gonna write some fanfic of their relationship someday. In an AU where Hermione didn’t date Ron, I could see Neville/Hermione, for aforementioned reasons. Nope ship(s): Fortunately, I have yet to see ma smol bean Nevy in problematic ships (a bit weird, considering he’s played by Mathew Lewis, whom lots of straight girls find hot – I’m surprised I haven’t seen fanart of him with Draco, Bellatrix etc.) I hope I’ll never do! But yeah, Draco and Bellatrix are definitely nopes. Platonic ship(s): All of the Core Six™ characters. Harry, Hermione, Ron, Ginny and Luna... he has a great relationship with all of them in canon. Disability/ies: Probably some kind of anxiety. 

Ginny

Race: Just like Ron, super duper white. Sexuality: She gives me a queer vibe. It’s common to headcanon her as bi, and well, so do I. Ship(s): Harry, of course.  And Luna. Luna as the soft flower gal, Ginny as the smol energy bomb, both wanting to protecc each other... I love it! Like I mentioned above, I mostly ship them in a polyamorous relationship. If we say that Harry and Luna were together and not into polyamory, I would ship her with an oc; a butch lesbian quidditch player she met while playing professional Quidditch. (I do think she dated that “oc” for awhile before marrying Harry, but idk) Nope ship(s): First of all, Voldemort. That ship is creepy af, okay?  And any of her siblings is no-no, too.  Platonic ship(s): If she didn’t date Harry or Luna, then they’d both be platonic soulmates for her. I like her protectiveness of Neville, too. And I love her friendship with Tonks! I know we didn’t really see them interact in canon, but I’d love to see her befriend Colin Creevey.  Disability/ies: None that I can think of... she could have some mild ADHD, but I don’t know enough details about ADHD to argue for my case.

Luna

Race: Pretty sure she’s white. However, I’ve seen some gorgeous fanart of a Latina!Luna. Sexuality: Pan pan pan. Falls in love very easily, but respects it when people don’t like her back. I once read a post about her being a trans girl, and honestly? I could see it. I especially like the idea of a very tall and lean Luna Lovegood, but extremely soft and girly fairy princess on the inside. Ship(s): She did marry some dude called Rolf in canon and had kids with him. However, I don’t know enough about him to ship them, tho he’s probably pretty cool. But I do think they broke up at some point, but remained friends. I also ship her with Harry and Ginny, like I mentioned above. And Ron, if he didn’t date Hermione, also like mentioned above. Nope ship(s): Any ships where she has to be some Manic Pixie Dream Girl to some evil guy, especially if he’s much older than her. She deserves so much better than that! Platonic ship(s): Harry and Ginny, if she doesn’t date any of them. Ron and Neville. In an AU, I like the idea of her befriending Snape, as long as he isn’t mean to her or anything (and she has to call him out for the way he treats Neville, too, bc I don’t think she’d be okay with that) but if they start dating, then I quit Disability/ies: Autistic af. I’m Autistic, I identify with Luna, therefore, Luna is Autistic. No, but seriously; the way she speaks directly about her thoughts and feelings, doesn’t mind being alone (even enjoys it sometimes) and seems very passionate whenever she does something are very clear signs.

[angelsaxis]

Spoilers for King’s Cage but I have Thoughts and I want to know if anyone feels the same way.

For real though like. Mare’s introspection is so BAD sometimes. Let a 17/18 year old just talk like a normal teenager. Not everything is existential. Part of the reason people don’t like mare is because of how redundant she can be (especially towards the end of RQ/all of GS OH BOY)

And I feel like Cal isn’t really even present in these books. Like yeah he’s Mare’s love interest but he doesn’t read like he has much of a...personality. To me. Like sometimes it feels like he’s just There. He definitely goes through character development but everything that happens is mostly wrt how much people hate him and I feel like KC would have benefited 

I can’t even see Cal’s “betrayal” as what we’re meant to see it as--bad, horrible, and a dirty thing to “do” to Mare. It didn’t even seem like to me that Cal was in any position to decline the crown. They both acknowledge that Mare has problems and needs help, but then why do they both seem to think that they could make the relationship work beyond that? They have their opposite sides with Cal’s inherent ties to the throne (whether he wants them or not) and Mare’s inherent repulsion by royalty, especially because of the shit she took from Evangeline and Maven.

If they hadn’t split up over that, it would have been over Maven, and I think I honestly would have preferred that as a plot point. The two/VA spent the entirety of their being together in the last parts of the book kind of dancing around the subject of Maven and what exactly will happen once one of them gets their hands on him. Mare wants him dead, clearly. Cal doesn’t, clearly. But all we get is Mare going “lmao he wants to heal maven and it’s probably not gonna happen” and then nothing afterwards.

Guaranteed if they had talked about it instead of avoiding it, they likely would have broken up over the fact that Mare wants to kill Cal’s brother and Cal just can’t bring himself to hate him. That’s a fight that I would have preferred, honestly. 

In terms of other characters, though, I genuinely liked Evangeline’s POV, and to a lesser degree, Cameron’s. But then it just made it difficult to go through Mare’s POV because unless she was interacting with Maven, it was just boring (except for the brief positivity of her going to Piedmont)--and her narration is aggravating as hell. There are so many fragments that could flow more smoothly as sentences and everything is written like it’s meant to be quotable.

I’m not upset at Maven’s being bi (and I’ve noticed that people are all ok with Maven being bi but enraged at Evangeline being a lesbian lmao). It makes sense because Thomas was brought up in RQ and there’s every possibility that Maven did actually love him, but used “friend” For Reasons. 

Evangeline’s being a lesbian was...tough, to accept though. She’s just been such a vile, antagonistic character for so long that I haven't’ found a single other lesbian that’s actually okay with her (kind of randomly) being gay. It just makes it look like she was made into a lesbian for Progressive Points and not for any real concern for LGBT+ characters--although I do like the fact that Rafe is clearly gay lmao. 

As a random note, Cal and Mare’s first time was so dumb lmao it was raining and they were covered in mud and sweat. Mare probably has an infection now tbh.

Farley’s character change was kind of fast though, and I can’t help but think that it was directly related to her being pregnant. I like that she’s less petty and unnecessarily antagonistic now (there were some points where I really couldn’t stand her) but she’s done almost a complete 180 and it’s a bit weird to see her trying to hug people.

Cameron’s character progression came off as more natural, and I’m glad that she, Mare, and Farley are all getting along better now. Too bad she still comes off as just an angry black girl. 

And speaking of black people--or POC in general in this book--primarily, I’m glad that there’s more both foreground and background characters that are not white. It’s still extremely noticeable that all the Silvers are heavily white coded and the Reds are all heavily nonwhite coded, though. And Mare’s race lowkey changed? She’d gone from what could be called “regular white” to “golden brown” and “brown” (while the rest of her family conspicuously remains white). All of the other nonwhite characters wouldn’t even fall into the “black” category because they’re generally described as being dark but having completely straight hair, so it’s clear they’re meant to be vaguely ethnic and left at that.

Victoria Aveyard clearly has a fetish for oily/shiny black men. Like. It’s so painfully obvious. She can’t ever say someone has dark brown skin, it’s “deep black. Super dark. DARK DARK DARK with SHINY SWEAT and SHINY REFLECTIVE SKIN” lmao it was so awkward at one point that there would really be two presumably black princes that have “blue-black skin” and that Cameron would constantly be pointing out that she’s dark (newsflash: we don’t think about how dark we are all the time lmao).

In the end I think I just want more Maven/Mare interaction, but with a POV that’s from Maven’s POV. There’s so many things that he acknowledges about himself--the fact that he’s more obsessed than he is in love, the fact that Mare doesn’t like him, the fact that he knows how he’s expressing his love isn’t healthy and it’s entirely a direct result of his mother’s manipulations--that would make for a really interesting narration to me. 

[elizabethrobertajones]

Hey you, during the course of this season i Have seen more and more people leave the fandom or grow disinterested in spn, and im confused why that it. I get why maybe s12 wouldnt be a fave season but if I look at the wank and bads of the previous ones (destiel fiasco in/out the show s9, charlies death Dean cruelty to Cas in s10, Dean/baby love interest s11) s12 didnt really do much that would drive people away en masse I feel? Yet it seems like more people left it :(

Heya! :D

Idk, maybe it was that more vocal people drifted off? I always feel like people’s attention spans are usually only a few years or so. I mean, I feel like I’ve been in the fandom a Long Time and I’ve only been here since the end of season 9, so really this is only my 3rd hiatus, and coming up to 4th year watching with fandom, on a 12 year show I’ve been watching for nearly 10 years, for the most part as a moderately casual viewer… I think I clock up about 5 years major interest and then drift, based on me vs several other things like how invested I was in LotR or Harry Potter or Animorphs, or whatever (to go back in time to my pre-teen interests :P) and it’s not a bad thing and I still love 2 of those franchises and have engagement in them but back to being a casual fan (if “religiously watches LotR at Christmas” is casual allowing for cultural/social stuff, but I’m not composing Legolas/Aragon smut in my teenage journal in secret code any more :P) 

Anyway the season 8 bubble of fandom could be deflating about now - that’s long enough for people to feel they’ve given the show their full attention and it’s still going so it’s getting tiring. That’s the major feeling I get - people are exhausted and we had a baby boomer fandom around season 8 so that ~generation~ of fans is now reaching the natural end of its attention span in a very human natural way. But there’s a ton of new or newer fans who are still enjoying the heck out of it, and the fandom’s still huge and full of people with a commitment to the show or ships. And some people don’t work like that and are loyal from start to finish or commit to TV shows fully to see them to their end. I would dump a show I was getting bored of but come back to watch the end later in a big marathon to find out what happened, but Supernatural hasn’t given me a reason to get totally un-invested until that time… I suspect a lot of people will watch the entire show ONE DAY but don’t want to do fandom and give it all their leisure time any more either.

[under a cut for meandering rambling]

But yeah I think you’ve named some pretty big mass exodus moments (I would like to clarify “Dean/baby” is “Dean/Amara-as-an-infant” right? Because Dean/Baby totally was a thing in 11x04 and it was GLORIOUS :P) and I feel like I DID lose people from my dash all through the time I’ve been watching. Heck, I hit up fandom right after 9x18, and started following people, and that was the JIB of “we don’t play it that way” so I immediately was following several abandoned blogs and I’d barely even started to get to know the landscape :P I feel like people HAVE been jumping ship the entire time and I remember most of those instances as sadly clearing several favourite people off my dash or turning them into different fandom blogs that I eventually unfollowed out of confusion… 

I don’t know, I think people leave when they want to leave because as long as you like the core of a thing and it holds your interest, you can forgive or ignore or scowl at but hold out for better the bad bits and problematic parts. I’m sort of weary of them killing all the women and PoC but I’m still at the stage where I identify it sucks, but I still care too much about the main characters that I’m sort of stuck on this ride with them. 

(I have 2x21 paused on the screen next to me right as Sam meets all the special children, aka introducing Lily the lesbian who dies horribly as a disposable red shirt to show how awful this situation is, and Jake, a black guy whose power is being super strong and to fall to Azazel’s manipulation, kill Sam, and then get killed with extreme overkill by Sam. In the same season he set the cops on Gordon, also a black man who was really aggro and cruel, but in the next season becomes a monster and Sam kills him also one of the most brutal kills he has up there with Jake. Basically, the show’s always had some issues and if we carried on watching all the way to season 12, well, apply self-reflection, but at this point if you’ve been watching as long as I have, you just kind of accept the show sucks at certain things, and for ME personally it’s not kicking off the sort of weariness that others felt about Billie and Alicia and Eileen being killed off this season)

… I don’t really have a point, expect about the demographics of fandom during season 8 getting to the end of their interest now. I don’t think EVERYONE who did will leave, and we’re getting fresh blood all the time, but I think that’s just part of the nature of being in fandom. I don’t think season 12 is particularly bad from my experience, although some pretty high profile bloggers have gotten exhausted - again, they’ve been maintaining blogs and producing content since single digit seasons so they’ve contributed a LOT to the fandom and there’s a fatigue about contribution as well… 

That’s partially why I meta and gif and write fic and occasionally make random shitposts… I don’t want to burn out because any one of those things on its own can get pretty boring, even writing fic. Or especially, idk, as a writer I tend to bounce around projects, so this is keeping me weirdly focused on writing my original fiction on one side of my brain and fan fic on the other and it seems to be a better way of splitting my attention… But I digress. :P 

I know how to manage my own brain to some degree but I have a lot of time to contemplate and self-reflect on why I’m in fandom and what I get out of it, and mostly I just conclude I’m bored and house-bound and I’ve found a few tried and tested things that get me some positive attention in a non-weird rat with a pleasure button way like people running hate blogs or something… But I know my own head and that I can get bored of stuff so I marathon a lot of other shows and think about other things than fandom stuff as much as possible and just let this be the gutter my brain drains into when my attention span is too shot to hell to do anything else and I just want to slump over a keyboard and do the easiest activity I know bar playing Animal Crossing for hours. 

Other people with busier lives and actual jobs and energy and limbs that don’t just randomly stop working when they do anything for more than 5 minutes and so on might not be casual fans but they make a certain space in their life for fandom and get out of it what they need but it’s a high quality demand thing so if their carefully allocated me-time isn’t rewarding them like it should it’s totally their right to go find another OTP to amuse themselves with a fandom producing stuff they want to see and a media source that’s giving them what they want immediately and in a way they don’t have to “look for scraps” as some people were saying about Destiel in season 9, 10 and 11 while things were thinner on the ground.

And as one of the too-much-free-time fandom contributors, I’ve got an enormous luxury to stick out things people who don’t have time for being jerked around or over-analysing to find what they want to see have… Although I’ll try and pass on my thoughts for the people with less time to think them to try and help them enjoy themselves as much as possible :P Anyway I think a whole range of reasons happen that people might get fatigued of the show especially as lives change and people blogging enthusiastically one day might get a job or a new relationship or a dog or SOMETHING and just not spend quite so much time online and then discover they don’t NEED to spend so much time on fandom, and drift naturally… Then try and find some reason on the show they’ve stopped watching, but often it’s just that things look worse after time away when the spark has started to fade because it’s not being nurtured in the same way any more. 

And 12 years is a LONG ASS TIME to be invested in something, so I think in general the fatigue or changing interests is all over the place and we might see it more and more as people drift… People who might watch it all as a catch up one day maybe a year or two after the show ends, but just don’t have the patience to stay in fandom and put in that energy over and over and over. 

Also the show is in a really weird place where it has some of the best writers it’s ever had in Berens and the newbie writers, and Dabb’s doing some fascinating things with the plot, but Buckleming are the executors of the story, in several interpretations of that phrase :P And there are people who skip MotW and find them unimportant or would judge the season on the plot, not the heart of the story… It’s a pretty precarious place, quality-wise. I think season 11 and 12 are a proper like, silver age revival of the MotW (with Nancy Won and Robbie giving last season a massive boost) where I think those episodes are really innovative and interesting, and the writers are being allowed a lot of freedom to play on THOSE canvases, but while the character development and *reasons* for the story have been fascinating and important, obviously 5 of the plot episodes this latest season were Buckleming and crucial to watch to know wtf was going on, even though the writers of those episodes seem to have such a terrible problem with hating the audience (literally, it’s in their scripts and off-screen comments), the genre, second drafts, common human decency towards characters and understanding why they’re important, pacing, you name it… :P So the show literally has 2 faces these days and depending on which one you see when you think of season 12, probably defines how you feel about the show as a whole and all that. I treat the plot episodes these days as a necessary evil between episodes written by people who actually like the show and care about it and its characters (see also: my non-stop sobbing about 12x22 since it aired)… But seeing the other face can really cast a cloud over the show and I’ve seen it make people wonder why the other writers even try. (I mean Perez did an incredible salvage job on Crowley in 12x15 only for it to immediately get yanked away again the next time BL wrote him and I think only they really got to play with him for the rest of the season, meaning all that work to make it seem important and thematically relevant that Perez had set up in 12x12 and messed with in 12x15 ended up being for nothing and Dabb had no time to do anything deep with Crowley, because 12x13 turns out to be the big Crowley & Rowena farewell episode, except for how it flubbed the entire premise of Grand Send Off Episode a la 7x10 or something despite all the ingredients being there…)

I am just rambling now so… Gonna hit post. Hope this makes sense :P This is just my interpretation of how people are feeling/how fandom as an entity seems to work, so it’s pretty subjective and others might feel very differently especially people who have been in negative echo chambers while I’ve built myself a reasonably positive one plus SENSIBLE and CONSTRUCTIVE wanky criticism that doesn’t go off the deep end :P