#I’m beginning to understand why this fandom has such a problem with authors and artists MASS DELETING everything they’ve ever made

[genius--built]

yknow it is the internet and all, so I can’t really say I could’ve expected better. but the last drawing I posted was not intended to be ship art. I would’ve been up front about it if that had been my intent. I’ve gone and tagged it at the request of a few people, but this is not a blog where I will be posting stuff that should result in genuinely threatening asks, so I’d appreciate some civility. I’ve been here less than 2 weeks, you don’t even know me.

[chaoskirin]

I wanted to explain a post I reblogged to my @chaoskirin blog earlier, about why you can’t separate the art from the author when it comes to J.K. Rowling.

And to qualify this, I was a HUGE Harry Potter fan. I had doubts at first, but once I read the books, I was hooked. HP art, HP RPs, HP fics... You name it, I did it.

I’ve seen a lot of pushback against letting Harry Potter go, because “as adults, we should all be able to separate art from its creator.” (Paraphrased--but it’s always that argument.) The thing with JKR, though, is she refuses to be separated from her work. She has outright rejected the idea of “death of the author” and makes sure she’s integrated into the HP world so thoroughly that you can’t tear her out of it.

I know it’s hard to accept this. I’m sitting here thinking “should I really post this?” Because there’s a chance I’m just way off-base. But as an artist and writer myself, I can recognize that when my real-world beliefs go into my art, they only build people up, they don’t tear them down. Meanwhile JKR often used her work to write stereotypes and illustrate her beliefs in books meant for children. Cho Chang, goblins, lycanthropy as an allegory of HIV/AIDS, etc. And then there was the character stuff that happened outside the books: Dumbledore-is-Gay, the American School That Ripped Off Native American Culture...

Finally, there’s the use of her fame as a vehicle for her hate. Transphobic rants on Twitter, laws created with her blessing which seek to hurt trans people, attacking and near-bullying people who disagree with her, and getting away with all this because she has a blue checkmark next to her name. And this is only scratching the surface.

We could get into how people still love Charles Dickens and Rudyard Kipling, whose racist beliefs were “products of their time.” (which is a non-excuse to be fair--other people who lived during those times were very NOT racist, but that’s a digression.) But their beliefs don’t begin to compare with the real-world harm JKR has done.

Because if she’d written racist caricatures out of ignorance and then apologized when called out, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I mean, some people would. Twitter in particular doesn’t want people to get better--they want people to be perfect from the start. Which brings up a major problem with social justice champions--they paint everyone who fails with the same brush, rather than holding accountable those who STILL fail, while championing those who have learned. And that, in turn, makes boycotting people like JKR more difficult, which is the entire problem with cancel culture: If you cancel everyone, you make the world numb to real problems.

The point is, JKR not only used racist caricatures in her books, not only did she queer-bait and malign AFTER her books, not only did she write MORE stories with the same damaging rhetoric she’d already been called out on, but she continues to actively harm REAL people in the REAL world. As one of the most famous people in this generation, she has a platform, and she’s chosen to use it to hurt.

And her fans already gave her WAY more chances than they tend to give ordinary people who fuck up. It’s not like she went right from hero to zero. She’s had years to realize that she’s hurting people, and she just doesn’t care. Every time she’s called out on the bad stuff, she doubles down. She doesn’t even PRETEND to feel remorse.

I know it hurts. I know it’s your childhood. I know you really want to argue against this because disavowing something that meant so much to you is near-impossible. But please, I urge you to try.

Because she’s still active in her own fandom, and because she continues to regurgitate damaging bullshit which is actively hurting people, and because she has not and likely will never apologize for this, you can’t read her work critically while taking her out of it. You can’t be a fan of it without the understanding that she--and by extension, the books themselves--are harmful. You can’t continue to consume new material without supporting her. You cannot separate Harry Potter from JKR.

[dickstailcoat]

So, I’m finally near the end again of SNS 1 (who needs sleep anyways) and I already have thoughts when comparing it to later stories he has written, be it in the SNS series or entirely new ones. I’ll provide a more thorough in-depth analysis once my notes are organized and I don’t have to deal with my day-job, but here’s a huge observation that I already see in book 1:

Rob is way in over his head.

From the get-go, we see a feminist character who is not as inclusive as many readers would like to think or feel. Repeatedly, she body shames herself, as if this is all women think about when considering their appearances, and judges other women for their ideals. She defies expectations of women, yet bows down to a man, ignoring that strong pillar of her personality. She preaches inclusivity yet shuns other women in the story who are bound by society and literally have no choice. There is something strange about her, as if she is a hero, but not one who knows the depths of the problems she faces, or the consequences of what her actions might bring.

In layman’s terms: throughout the story, there is just something off.

Eventually, the plot dwindles into some far-off abyss (let’s be honest, since book 2, the plot has gone south), and we get a more and more superficial character who appears to be all over the place in her ideals and morale, and less and less a strong woman. As a consequence, we see that core pillar of her personality, being a feminist, disappear.

This is when as the reader, if you take a critical eye to it, you realize what that ‘something’ is. She reminds you of your brother, father, uncle, grandfather, boyfriend, husband, and male friend. She knows the issues exist, she sees them, she can critically assess them, she even constantly makes light of them, but she doesn’t truly experience them fully as all women do.

Now, I’m a clown myself who often tries to make light of situations; however, I know even I will break sometimes because being a woman sometimes really sucks. I know Lilly hasn’t experienced sexual assault like many have, but she has experienced restrictions and worry over what will happen to her if she doesn’t conform to the expectations. I’m living in an very open society, and I still feel anxious, nervous, and upset over that. I still sometimes feel sad because there will always be a man saying I can’t. This happens to her too – repeatedly – and she barely bats an eye. But, she is a female character, so why doesn’t she?

The reason for this is simple: Rob is a man, and can never fully comprehend the true worries, fears, and issues women faced now, let alone then when they were much more severe.

As you read on, you begin to wonder as a reader: whose voice is this? Is it the author’s or Lilly’s? It is normal for an author to put a little bit of themselves in a character, sometimes even more so! But there is a problem when it is a man doing it to a female character. We start to see the mix of ideals and experiences; we start to see the boundary where a male writer cannot grasp what women go through on a day-to-day basis.

That would be fine initially, perhaps, for any new author. Why should we limit artistic expression? But it starts to blur into the reader’s perspective as to whether Rob himself feels this way. Because in this story, it is one single ‘joke’, and is never dealt with - not once - properly. We don’t know for an absolute fact if he himself feels this way, he’s never made it clear! But it starts to look worse and worse as the stories go on and women are less and less powerful except when they are needed to bring the reader back in from the lost plot, as if to say “Hey look! I do care sometimes!”

The result is an author writing about inclusivity, but instead, it comes across as discriminative. We have a single flat tone, as if someone is pressing a C note throughout the story, and never progressing. I don’t know about you guys, but if Taylor Swift played one single note for her entire career, none of us would be listening. It stays there the entire time, a ruler-straighter tonality of constant comedy, turning and warping the inclusivity into cheap plot devices, and mental walls for the readers that he has to shakily try to break every so often.

With that in mind, after a few books the author’s ‘colours’ start to show if this continues.

I started this series way back in the age of the dinosaurs, and adored it. I still do! I have nothing against the stories themselves or characters, I love me a good Victorian romance, but my goodness – the way the subject matter is dealt with is practically insulting of late!

I decided to go back to SNS 1, and look at it critically, as if I’m back in uni trying to dissect Shakespeare. Worryingly, it’s already visible in book 1, and is excused repeatedly with commentary by the author using what I like to call ‘false empathy’.  An Instagram commenter recently mentioned that A/Ns are unprofessional, and I agree, I think they’re dangerous. It is better to be upfront in the Prelude or Foreword, or shameless about the fact that you don’t care (G.R Martin, anyone?) because this starts to add the author’s view. With Rob constantly trying to excuse things, it makes everyone question things more and more – although perhaps in light of recent events, this is a good thing.

The fact of the matter is, at the end of the day, “This was how it was in the time” is not an excuse to have the main female character constantly beat her appearance and dismiss other female characters whilst her own personality is diminished. It tricks readers into thinking a male author cares - but does he? Can he? Will he ever truly understand?

Probably not, it’s impossible.

However, this doesn’t mean he needs to stop, and that I despise his stories (okay, maybe a little bit 😉). It means he needs to change. It can’t be ‘this is what happened and this is how it was’. It needs to be this is how it was, this is what happened, this is how it felt, and this is it’s impact. It means he needs to read a book on feminism and issues women experience. It means he needs to ask women to gain a view as to how these things actually feel, and to gain insight into how it’s not something to make a 24/7 joke out of for multiple years. He needs to read up on how those who do not fit the particular ‘box’ of discrimination he is dealing with tend to not like it when you constantly make fun of it tactlessly. There are ways to go about it, you can be funny and deal with serious issues.

Instead, Rob has chosen (and I mean chosen, the OG fandom has been trying for years to message and help this get fixed) to continue on this flatlining path where the star of our story is turned into a joke and a male stereotype of women. It is a shame, because Lilly is pretty damn cool, but he conveniently plucks that core principle out of her as the books go on, until she is eventually a husk whose only purpose is to be funny.  

In case you guys ever wondered why the OG fandom stopped reading, stopped being active on the content, and why we only post memes and have turned these two into a running joke, but still keep original Lilly in our quotes, this is why.

[rainbowsky]

Final round-up of fan fic asks

I've gotten a few more interesting responses to the fan fic discussion so I'm going to round them all up here. This will be my final post on the topic until/unless there's a dramatic new development, or a particularly notable response I want to highlight. Thanks to everyone who brought their thoughts and experiences to the topic. I hope everyone at least feels heard.

The biggest piece of advice that I would like to offer is for everyone to focus on what they love rather than what they hate. If we all did that, the world would be a better place. Alongside that, I'd like to remind everyone to please support authors whose work you like. It's so important. Give them a kudos, give them a nice comment, recommend their work to others. You never know what kind of grief and harassment they are dealing with to bring you these great stories, and our support means a lot.

This is in reference to previous posts here and here.

Anonymous asked:

With regard to fandom and fan fic issue, my years of experience being part of very large fandoms has led me to believe that big accounts are v important in facilitating and enforcing the general consensus of the whole fandom. Unless there will be big accs who'll remind everyone of being respectful & just not being a dick over other's preferences, nothing will change.

This is also the reason why I think certain solo fandoms have adapted weird and twisted narratives as their general fandom story because no big acc has tried to police them & and say hey pls be rational. Whether we like it or not, in a place where how far voices, ideas, tweets, posts get heard is based on the number of followers you have, big accs will have the power and influence in creating/curating/shifting the narratives.

So, if you want to know why your/our fandom thinks like this in general, look at what big accs are tweeting/posting, look at what ideas & values they follow, look at their preferences or how strongly they react to certain situations. it's taxing and toxic for big accs given the nature of social media these days, but it's also the reality of system, the more followers/audience you have, the more influence you will have.

So to anyone reading this I hope we all practice more restraint and reflection before we post anything. Remember that words, no matter what medium you write it in, will always carry weight.

So true. It is easy - even for myself who spends a fair chunk of time answering people's asks - to forget that people can sometimes be impressionable and what we say can influence people whether that's our intent or not. I get used to thinking of myself as a regular guy just doing my own thing when sometimes my thoughts and words go well beyond where I initially posted them.

I think it's important for us to be careful what we say, and it's equally important to be careful what we take from what other people say. Especially when it comes to big claims. Always get a second, third, fourth opinion and don't be afraid to ask for clarification if something doesn't sit right or sounds confusing.

It's also important to reflect on how our words and actions might affect other people's experience of fandom, and err on the side of 'live and let live' wherever possible. It's great to have our own preferences and to champion them, but we should try to do so in a way that leaves space for other people and perspectives.

The more unique perspectives and the more friendly, open dialog there is, the healthier the community will be as a whole.

There's nothing wrong with encouraging and guiding growth in the particular areas we are interested in, as long as it doesn't step on, oppress or attack those who are peacefully enjoying something different.

Anonymous 2 asked: bjyx fans attacking gdgdbaby for including zsww/lsfy dynamics in an event named bjyx then turning right around and attacking the zsww/lsfy event organizer for excluding bjyx? god, can you hear my facepalm and sigh of resignation and incredulity from over there? im genuinely not surprised that they're trying to drive an entire part of the fandom out by disgusting them (and me) with these immature tactics. i believe what im about to say next will sound quite bait-y and i respect your decision 1/?

should you choose not to post this. but i do know that it is not only me, in fact there are many out there, that is of this opinion. we just dont talk about it on twitter to avoid the potential mess it will bring lol. okay, here goes nothing. (do note that im talking about the majority here, not every single person is like this) so bjyx fans tend to be cishet females whereas zsww/lsfy fans are more diverse in terms of age and gender, and most of them are part of the queer community too 2/?

i would like to clarify that most of these zsww/lsfy fans are not dynamic exclusive (in the sense that they are friendly and interact with all ggdd fans) they just prefer to "identify" themselves as zsww/lsfy fans (on twitter specifically) just to form a distinction from bjyx fans who mostly are dynamic exclusive (as in; they do not consume non-bjyx content, and straightup refuse to interact with non-bjyx fans, often blocking them). as a result, id say that the zsww/lsfy communiy is way more 3/?

mature and respectful (after all, they're mostly queer people talking about a queer ship) whereas many problems in this fandom, such as the homophobia, adamantly insisting on "drawing lines" between dynamics, stem from the bjyx exclusive fans, comprised of cishet females who "may not know better". so, it is of no surprise to me that they're resorting to these immature tactics of calling gg unsavory names, and organizing retaliatory events with controversial topics in an attempt to "purify". 4/4

I trust that you have arrived at that theory through your own experience and observation. I haven't personally spent much time immersed in this stuff so I can't claim to have any real insight or expertise. If you say that's your experience of it, then at the very least that's how you've seen things up to this point.

I just want to say that I think we should always be careful about making assumptions about people's age, gender/gender identity, etc.

There are plenty of good reasons to avoid doing that; because those assumptions could be very wrong, because those assumptions are often laced with ageism, sexism, etc., because those assumptions - even when correct - might not be an accurate basis for the conclusions we draw.

But the primary reason I recommend avoiding those type of assumptions is because anything that enables us to clump a group of people together in our minds like that will tend to make them easier to demonize and dehumanize. They are no longer individuals who are each responsible for their own unique perspectives, they are now 'the X group' who is known for 'A B C series of easily attackable ideas or behaviors'.

If we attribute undesirable traits and behaviors to a group of people we feel opposed to in some way, that makes us feel more righteous and justified in behaving unfairly toward them, dismissing their humanity and warring with them. It's just risky behavior to engage in, even when it's well-intentioned.

There might actually be some truth to what you're saying. It could very well be that most of these people are young, inexperienced, heteronormative, etc. but if that's the case then we should try to use those traits to better understand and empathize rather than to better dismiss and discredit.

Just my two cents on that.

It can be really frustrating dealing with what feels like other people attacking us, trying to oppress us, etc. - especially when there are more of them than there are of us. In my experience the best solutions to that sort of problem are generally the ones that focus on what we are doing and want to do rather than what they are doing that we don't want them to do.

As I am always preaching, we can't control what other people say, do or think. The only thing we have any control over is what we say, do and think (and how we respond to what they say, do and think).

I have found in my experience that the moment I step out of a conflict mindset and instead step into a problem-solving mindset, everything starts to come together. I feel better, my outlook is more positive, I can begin to see solutions and allies rather than problems and enemies, and most of all, I become more focused on what I am doing than what others are doing.

So I would recommend everyone who is invested in resolving these conflicts focus on that. "How can we best showcase and encourage the types of stories we enjoy?" instead of "How can we stop these other people from doing things we dislike?"

Anonymous 3 asked:

Hello again! It’s anon #3 from the fanfic post. I really do appreciate reading your thoughts on various issues like this, so thank you for always taking time to write in depth. As for supporting without going to war, the simplest way has always been to just show appreciation for the creators, hype them up. Kudos are the easiest way on ao3 but comments in addition are great. This goes for all content—art, fics, vids..etc. Creators love to see and read how people react to their content. Sharing is also great, fic recs are very helpful, just be cautious with art and reposting though. Hope this helps a bit!

Thanks so much, Anon. I think this is excellent advice. And it's true that appreciation is great, but helping to expand the audience is also great. Recommending stories, pointing people to the pages/websites of artists we like (as opposed to reposting), sharing our own ideas and approaches, encouraging people to try new things... all of this helps build healthier communities.

And here's another one: WRITE! DRAW! CREATE!

I urge anyone with creative interests or talents to bring their voices to the community because we all can benefit from hearing from you.

Thanks again everyone for sharing your thoughts on this issue. I hope that over time we can all work in positive ways to improve the situation.

I think this subject has been well-covered now so I'm going to retire it for the time being. If anyone still feels they want to discuss it further please feel free to message me privately. Thanks.

[the-queer-observer]

The TOXICITY of straight dating culture: Do you even realize what you teach?

A few months ago, a straight teenage girl explained her crush to me with the sentence “He’s so toxic.”

I know a 17-year-old girl with a little to no clue of how a non-toxic relationship should look like.

I started noticing a certain pattern online and in my real life too.

Now it’s a time for my first disclaimer: I am not straight myself. Nope. Not at all. Perhaps that’s why I see through it.

To this point, all I have done about this is that I have complained to some friends, got over it and went on with my life.

Today, a girl, no older than twelve, has told me about her crush on a “bad boy” and we talked about him for a second. He really did seem like what the definition of a bad boy is for tweens.

I snapped.

And here I am, writing my first tumblr post ever on this very topic.

I want to make clear, this is not an attack on those girls. This is an attack on the society, what it taught them and what it failed to teach.

The youngest girl and me, we talked about music. She said she liked “dramatic” songs and played me some of her favorites.

Disclaimer number two: I did know both the artists, but I don’t actually listen to them. The closest to mainstream music my playlists get is Take me to church by Hozier, the rest being a wide range of songs, interprets and genres from pop punk to death metal and everything in between.

I was actually surprised. One of the two artists she played for me was Billie Eilish. The beginning of the song went:

Don't be cautious, don't be kind

You committed, I'm your crime

Push my button anytime

You got your finger on the trigger

But your trigger finger's mine

The second song was by Maroon 5.

It was even worse:

So what you trying to do to me

It's like we can't stop, we're enemies

But we get along when I'm inside you, eh

You're like a drug that's killing me

I cut you out entirely

But I get so high when I'm inside you

Yeah you can start over you can run free

You can find other fish in the sea

You can pretend it's meant to be

But you can't stay away from me

I can still hear you making that sound

Taking me down rolling on the ground

You can pretend that it was me

But no, oh

I am not going to argue about whether it’s appropriate or whether she understands the lyrics the way I do. It doesn’t even matter. She understands the drama in the song. She understands it enough for me to be concerned.

There are other songs like that. There is a whole culture teaching pre-teen and teenage girls, that “they can’t get away”, romanticizing toxic people and toxic relationships, blurring the lines of consent and guess what? The girls believe it’s the way it’s supposed to be.

I texted my girlfriend and we spent some time looking for straight love-songs, celebrating healthy relationships. None of them were mainstream, but we found things like:

That the world is ugly

But you're beautiful to me

Are you thinking of me

Like I'm thinking of you

I would say I'm sorry, though

Though I really need to go

I just wanted you to know

I wanted you to know

I wanted you to know

I'm thinking of you every night, every day

(My Chemical romance)

And

Desperate for changing

Starving for truth

I'm closer to where I started

I'm chasing after you

I'm falling even more in love with you

Letting go of all I've held on to

I'm standing here until you make me move

I'm hanging by a moment here with you

Forgetting all I'm lacking

Completely incomplete

I'll take your invitation

You take all of me now

(Lifehouse)

First of all: Those are 4 extracts of songs, chosen by me to demonstrate my point and they may or may not reflect the reality, you (the reader) see: those two songs might be just an exception, but in that case this post is still not canceled, because there is enough of other correlations and causation for me to have a reason to write this.

Those songs are “dramatic”, but the drama shifts from the relationship itself and its toxicity to the circumstances and environment. My girlfriend even recommended a punk song called Ne touche pas moi (Do not touch me), which is entirely about consent.

I am not explicitly saying that the songs she played for me are bad. It’s not for me to decide.

But all Billie Eilish’ fans I ever met were in the age range between eleven and fourteen, so I am supposing that’s her target audience. As for Maroon 5, I have no idea. However, music influences us. The girl is old enough to know what kind of music she likes and wants to listen to and with the peer pressure going on there, her parents do not really have a say in what she listens to and they are not to be blamed for this.

It’s the culture.

Toxicity is not a positive trait to look for in a potential partner. Even if he is a good looking one.

Enough of music.

Do you know who the toxic crush was?

Draco Malfoy.

One of the most famous of all characters in media, famously portrayed by Tom Felton in the Harry Potter film series.

Disclaimer number four: I have a problem with the books and movies and I also have some issues with the author.

Still, I see a fandom celebrating the love of Severus Snape for Lilly Evans Potter. Except it’s not love and it’s not a crush either. It’s an obsession. One that has become so iconic, the word “Always” is one of the main symbols of Harry Potter.

It shouldn’t be.

It should have never happened.

Draco Malfoy is quite the same thing. He is a racist, a bully. He is raised to be one, sure... That’s not an excuse. He doesn’t actually have a canonical redemption arch (not counting the deleted scene from the last movie and the Cursed child). If he came up to Hermione, acknowledging his mistakes, apologizing for his behavior, then maybe. Perhaps... That’s another story though. My point is, Rowling fails to actually depict problematic characters as actually problematic, they are romanticized by her, the filmmakers, the fandom and the wider audience.

Girls are taught to be the ones to make the redemption arch happen, irl or in fiction. They are supposed to date whoever is into them, regardless of whether they like the person back, and it’s unbelievably often I see them crushing on villains and problematic people like Draco Malfoy, because they are taught, he would change for them or that they could change him.

Toxicity is not a positive trait to look for in a potential partner. Even if he is a good looking one.

Those together result in a complete lack of knowledge of how a healthy relationship should look like. That’s the case of the third girl I mentioned. Being best friends with both her and her current boyfriend, I had three points of view on their relationship. It’s only been the past few weeks, not more than two month it has shifted to a more positive, healthy relationship.

It’s not the girl’s fault. They learn what a healthy relationship is the hard way, mostly after going through a toxic one(s).

WHY?

The sentence: “I always fall for the bad guys.” lacks the essential: “because the society taught me to” part.

It’s so common.

It’s too common.

It’s not even that we wouldn’t talk about it: we do. But you celebrate it. And that is not okay and that is the reason I am typing this.

Disclaimer number 5: The gender roles in this post are based off of my observations. I do acknowledge the fact that girls can be and sometimes are the toxic person in the relationship and that the lesson boys are thought is no way better (more freeing perhaps, but not right either) . It might not be specific to the straight culture either, but again, my observations were.

I was about thirteen, when I figured out I was gay and I had to learn everything on my own. How the relationships should work out, what is healthy and what is not... I had to learn on my own because the society failed to teach me anything. I am yet to decide whether that’s better or worse than teaching the wrong one.

[hilli98215]

I am confused. I am hurt. I don’t know what to think. This is a long post. A very long post that is personal but I’ve had it in my head for a while to write. You don’t have to read this. This post has no real meaning. It’s more of a rant of how I feel in the world of fandom, my experiences, and why this posts exists. 

Again, you do not have to read this. 

You have been warned.

DO NOT REBLOG THIS POST!!!! 

When I became an English major in college, I did so knowing several things. One of those is the fact I love literature and I love discovering why authors, creators, and artists wrote what became their most well known work.

Where am I going?

My first fandom was when I was in Junior High (about 13-14 years old) that I was a part of, meaning I read fan fiction and discovered fan art of, was either Naruto or Pokémon. To me these works were escapes of my real confusing life. Especially when I moved states and schools. I had no one. Through this, I discovered what I liked and didn’t like in the world of fiction and was introduced to fandom words/slang such as shipping, fan fiction, lemons (which I don’t think is used as often now), different types of writing, yaoi, yuri, and a few more I can’t remember. This also included the all important phrase Don’t like don’t read. This was when I was in my early teens. 

But I was in a phase where I could find what I found interesting and that was that. 

When I got to high school, I was still this awkward quiet kid with no friends. But I did have marching band so that was something. 

At this point was was interested in Ouran Highschool Host Club, Death Note, a series called Beauty Pop, Fullmetal Alchemist, and a few others. This was also around the time where I began writing fanfiction for OHSC and even began buying manga. Anyway, this was my introduction to fandom as a teenager. And this is before Tumblr.

All I had were my friends, videos on YouTube, and my own interests. No one really understood why I loved all these things. 

Then came the very first fandom I became fully obsessed in my sophomore year: a small series called Hetalia Axis Powers. I was completely invested in this fandom. So much so I wrote fan fiction, bought merch, and read a lot of fan fiction myself. I think it was because, at the time I thought it was because the art style was cute, the voice acting wasn’t half bad and it had to do with history. But this is where things got interesting for me and learning about fandom as a whole. 

As a teen, I hadn’t known about AUs and this series had a lot of them. From the usual school AUs to odd ones. I usually stayed in my bubble and kept up the mantra Don’t like Don’t read. 

But why talk about it?

Well, let’s just say a lot of the content later on became weird and new. I learned a lot about new terms like de-aging and ABO. But this leads to interest which once again let me know what genres of fan fiction I like. 

I continued on with this fandom for about 3 years. And what broke it was the drama and how people were finding a sudden moral compass for personified countries. I mean there are other problems with that show that I recognize now as an adult and didn't see as a kid but that’s for another time. But I quietly left because I was beginning to understand that the drama wasn’t worth a tv show.

I would say the next fandom I was invested in and loved and I think had the least amount of drama was Fairy Tail. Now I fell in love with this series because of the story, characters, and the welcoming fandom. Overall there was rarely any drama because I think we all knew that we had to be civil with each other and respect our ships. While I’m not part of that fandom anymore a lot of people on Tumblr and FFN were very welcoming. The main series kinda fizzled out but that was one of the few positive fandom experiences I had.

I was at that point in my life where I was in college, created my Tumblr and posted regularly to escape life. 

Coming off that fandom, I was part of the Yuri on Ice! fandom from beginning to the end. I mean it’s a sports anime that’s about men's figure skating and how it can affect athletes just to get a gist of it.

That’s when my experience with fandom became interesting because these characters were being paired in a way that made me feel like they can’t be paired with anyone else. Like, there was a pairing we were all cheering for to happen by the end. 

This is the first series I was highly interested in as an adult where the ages of the characters were defined. There were a few in their teens, some in their early to mid 20s, and a couple in their 30s. Now this was a historic anime for several reasons. The main being there being a gay relationship being shown in a positive light and mental illness being shown in a way that wasn’t patronizing and negative. I loved this show for those reasons. But I also quickly learned how people would take these characters (especially those with huge age differences) and pair them up. That was my first introduction to criticism of how ‘gross’ it would be for a 15 year old to be paired up with an 18 year old. But I saw a problem that made me second guess my thinking. When I was in high school, I knew someone who was a sophomore at 15 and dated someone who was 18. Why was there a problem? 

I knew if I voiced this that I would be shamed and told that I was disgusting. Eventually I had enough and left shortly after the series ended.

Then came the Voltron: Legendary Defender series. Oh boy.

Now that series came out while I was in college and I often viewed it in a critical perspective similar to one would a piece of literature because my major was in English and that was what I was taught. Like YOI I was part of this fandom day 1 because it was so different from the original Voltron series from the 80s. I loved how the fandom dissected everything in every episode. There were watch parties, analysis videos, and even skits at conventions. It was a fandom I knew I wanted to be a part of. But then there was fanfiction that I found odd and knew that I never wanted to read that. People were writing about topics that made me uncomfortable and I didn’t know how to deal with it. After a while, I questioned why I was forcing myself to read them in the first place. So, I stopped reading them. This was also around the time where I discovered AO3 and their amazing tagging system. Because if the tagging system was not there, I probably would have stopped reading fanfiction all together.

But then there was drama, shipping wars, morality wars, and I had enough. I was there until it ended and left quietly. Which is sad considering I loved the experience but it was ruined by what people thought was right for fictional characters. 

Now you may be asking “What was the point of this post?”

To answer your question, I don’t know.

I have loved reading since I was a kid. And when I got to high school, I had this AP teacher who told us something that has stayed with me to this day.

‘As a reader we are detectives. We want to know why the author wrote this book. We want to know what influenced them.’

I took that saying to heart and approach everything through a critical lens. Which is difficult in a fandom. It’s hard to have a critical approach to a series that everyone takes for a grain of salt.

I have been exposed to a lot of books and pieces of literature that have been considered controversial because of their content. When I left high school, I began to realize what genres of books I like in the YA genre and in literature. 

I experimented.

And when you think about it, that’s what you do with fan fiction and fandom. We are always experimenting. We are always finding what we like and don’t like. 

But recently I’ve noticed a new fandom term that makes me wonder where I fall in all of this craziness we call fandom. 

Pro-Fiction/Pro-Shipper

It wasn’t until last year I saw this word thrown around in a new fandom I am in. I tried to do some research but I couldn't find anything. Nothing. And then I learned it’s a new term in itself.

I won’t go into detail but it reminds of the ‘video games are violent so that makes so-and-so violent’ argument parents made when Mortal Kombat came out. 

Well you still didn’t answer the question.

And you’d be right. I saw a post from a follower that saddened me and honestly freaked me out. Why announce that you hate a specific group? It felt like a call out post without saying any names. A warning that states: Block me or out yourself. Or rather: Block me or else.

Do I identify as this? To tell you the truth, I don’t know. I think critically and see things differently. In fact everyone does. 

We are always going to be influenced by the media whether it be a movie, television, a book, or a video game. We will always love these storylines and characters. We will always take the messages to heart. We will always cheer for the hero and maybe the villain too. 

I do want you guys to remember this, make your own fandom experience. Block those who make you feel uncomfortable and make you feel like you don’t matter. You do.

You are your own person. No one can tell you otherwise. If you feel uncomfortable, then maybe you need to leave the fandom. Or find a space in the fandom that you can be yourself. Or don’t care what people think and do what you always do.

It’s all up to you.

[longitud-de-onda]

an open letter to the fandom:

fandom discourse is often extreme and can be terrifying to get involved in. how many people have you heard say, ‘i want to speak up about this but i’m afraid of the backlash’? i’ve really tried to avoid being a source of drama, and unfortunately that’s unavoidable in some situations.

i’ve made my fair share of insensitive mistakes (see: the headcanons about blm) and i know that i’ve probably hurt people in ways i may not understand (side note: messages about oh it’s okay, you haven’t hurt anyone are cool and all, but i believe there are people who are remaining silent). i apologize to those people.

if anyone has any grievance with me and want’s to be angry or try to make amends, feel free to message me. if you don’t want to reach out, that’s okay too. you don’t owe anyone who has hurt you anything. if somehow you’re on the list of people i’ve blocked, feel free to message on @ebrothemes, my theme blog, or even @haatari, my main for my other account. both should have messages open to anyone.

there are some probably controversial things i support in this fandom, which i’m not going to name because that’s not the point of this post. but i’m impressed by the creativity and the openness of people. i’m thankful to everyone who reads my stories. i feel uplifted by so many authors and artists, and i strive to uplift them as well.

but there are some things i don’t like in this fandom, including hate anons, the immature ways some people decide to have discussions, sexualization of people, disrespect of others’ privacy, and the quiet but present racism, homophobia, and transphobia.

the fact i’ve been scared to speak up about a lot of this because i’ve had experiences with older (in age) members of the fandom that have been so condescending and silencing, telling me how i should feel or react to things, should be really telling.

i’ve become quiet, silently unfollowing and blocking without explaining why or trying to confront people because i’m terrified that anyone could be the next person to tell me how to feel.

however, i think the main thing that bothers me is when people speak up about actual problems, there’s a lot of frustration that the fandom is “becoming toxic.” it’s not becoming toxic. it’s having discussions that need to be had.

and this part isn’t just about our fandom, it’s about all fandoms.

fandom isn’t an “escape” for the people who are affected by the problems in fandom as a whole. i’ve felt alienated as a woman in some fandoms, as a queer person in others, and as a enby in yet more. and the way neurodiverse people and diverse body types are treated, both as characters/actors/people that we celebrate, and the fans themselves.

and that doesn’t even begin to touch on the ways i see bipoc, and especially bipoc womxn, treated. there’s a lot of xenophobia and islamophobia present. those, i don’t have direct experience with, but if you actually watch how fandoms work, you’ll see it. it’s not invisible.

people who get frustrated with the “drama” and just want an “escape” have been ignorant to the fact that fandom never was an escape. it’s a creative outlet. it’s a place to talk about your interests. but it’s not an escape. it is a deep privilege to think it is.

so when people say things hurt them, you listen. when people call others out, you listen. when people call you out, you listen. you develop empathy. you try to understand.

you correct your own behavior. you learn.

and if that’s not something you can do, than you might have some bigger problems.

i don’t condone the harassment and bullying of anyone, regardless of what they have done. you can sure as hell call people out. you can sure as hell tell them what they’ve done wrong. you can sure as hell explain things. but there’s a line.

and it’s a line i’ve seen people cross too many times. in this fandom? i’ve seen it crossed by people on both sides of almost every single issue/drama/callout that we’ve dealt with.

if this post makes you feel attacked in some way, i’d think over the things that you’re doing. analyze yourself critically. ask a friend to be honest to you.

the reason fandoms die, develop bad reputations, or have people leave is purely based on how people in the fandom act. and i don’t see this fandom heading in a great direction.

i really struggle seeing how so many behave here. despite that, i’m not leaving. because, as i said, fandom is my creative outlet. it’s where i talk about my interests. i’ve met amazing people. i don’t want to leave.

x camila

[trilies]

an argument for AO3

So I’m in a conversation with someone who is kind of in the “against AO3″ camp, and they asked me a couple of questions. Namely, who wouldn’t be uncomfortable with pedophilia? Isn’t it sketchy that a beta website is asking for so much money despite reaching its goals?

And my answer became so long... I figured it might as well become its own post. Please bear in mind that this is cut from a whole conversation.

But here it is.

------

No. It doesn't seem sketchy to me at all. Why would it? I know we make jokes about how much money tumblr has cost the various sites which purchase it like Yahoo, but there's some truth there: it's really expensive to host a website to thousands and thousands of people. It's why we see so many tumblr owners trying to shoehorn in ads or make people buy services, or why Photobucket tried to pull that truly atrocious bullshit a year or two back. Without image hosting capabilities (tumblr and photobucket's big thing), the strain isn't as huge.... but AO3 is MASSIVE. It is hosting literally thousands of accounts, millions of stories. That's massive on a server scale alone, ignoring all the other work they do. Yeah, it's in beta... but that's because it's trying to reach a goal of being as good a fanfic archive as they can be, and they don't believe they've reached that goal yet. Being in beta means they can better listen to their uses on shit like tagging systems and make those changes. Not to mention, again, they are INCREDIBLY transparent. If you are worried about where the money is going, you can go on the site and they have all their stuff up there.

As for the pedophilia subject matter.... Please give me a moment. because there's honestly a lot to say on that particular issue, if nothing else. This will take a while, so if you see this and there hasn't been a reply yet.... I'm still typing lmao.

To start with, of course people are uncomfortable about pedophilia. However, there are a lot of problems with how pedophilia is viewed or *used* as an accusation in the current fandom climate.

For example, in honestly EXTREMELY recent times, I was told I was "defending" pedophilia because I disagreed that a character (an immortal food gijinka) was "minor-coded" or "designed as an underage teenager". (As a note, an argument for this view was that the character's breasts were too small.) When I pointed out, hey, that's kind of a fucked up accusation to throw at a complete stranger, especially as I am a CSA survivor, I was told "You have to be lying about that, then, because a real CSA survivor would understand."

c o o l

That's just my personal experience that happened within a couple of months. Other people have talked about running into people who think that a character turning 18 means they're a pedophile for still dating a 17 year old. Or running into people who think a 40 year old dating someone in their 30s is pedophilic. Or believe that even SHIPPING characters who were not yet 18 was pedophilic if you yourself were over 18.

(Of course, you also have the kinds of people who try to use Moral Purity as a way to bash ships they don't like. I once saw someone try to claim that a popular mlm ship, A/B, was pedophilic because one half of the equation looked young.... when some other artists drew him... Of course, on the side, this person liked to also get angry that *their* favorite ship, a dude/chick ship composing of A/C, wasn't more popular. So. You know.)

So that's one half of the problem: the word "pedophile" being so warped that a lot of people now have no idea if the person using it has a genuine concern or if the accuser is trying to smear someone who doesn't ship the same thing. FFnet and Tumblr have gone with the "burn it all down" approach, which hasn't actually helped anyone and is, to boot, sloppily moderated. So we know from history, from experience in cases like mine, that it doesn't help in that area.

The other half of the problem is... How far is too far?

This is where "anti" culture begins to find similarities with the whole Warriors for Innocence thing. If you completely and blindly block an entire tag, or anyone associated with it, you have to ask: who are you hurting? Warriors for Innocence hurt actual rape victim, and queer folk, and a whole lot of others. Far as I can tell, anti culture is on the route to the same thing, because I have yet to see appropriate answers to a lot of issues.

If one says "anything with underage sex in it is bad and should be banned", what about fics that tackle it in a serious manner? The young adult novel "Speak" deals with rape of an underage girl and how she works through that mental trauma; are fics with stories equivalent to that allowed? Do fics with underage sex have to focus purely on how it is Horrible And Bad to be allowed? Does only a chapter have to be allowed? A paragraph? An author's note? A tag? Or are we allowed to never explore dark subject matter?

Is fic with underage content in it only horrible if it's someone over the age of eighteen who writes it? Can a teenager write smut (terribly written as it may likely be) between teenage characters? Can a teenager write smut between a teenage character and an adult character? For the record, i did in fact, over the summer, run into someone who said that teens/minors "shouldn't even know about NSFW", which is asinine to me, because Abstinence Only is a terrible thing to put in schools, and somehow worse in a way when you try to put that into effect in fandom. If the answer is 'yes', what are you going to do, demand to see people's birth certificates in fandom?

(As a note, I think this is a terrible message to put into fandom for teenagers because I believe it will inevitably lead to self hatred and a warped view of sex. If you make the extremely simplified black-and-white statement of "teens and sex should never go together ever in any way", that's going to mess up teens who are starting to experience arousal in their bodies. The message, whether intended or not, ends up as "NSFW things are bad, which means my brain which thought NSFW thoughts is bad, and my brain thought those thoughts because my body had these feelings". )

(This is bad for any average teenager. This will be especially worse to CSA and rape victims, along with queer youth who, in a lot of places, are still struggling with their bodies and/or feelings because the world is still pretty damn queerphobic.)

Speaking of CSA and rape victims, what about those of them who write/read underage ships or dark content as a way to cope with what happened or Just Because? That's a thing lots of us do, especially those of us who don't look like the Perfect Victims people can use as an excuse for whatever crusade they're waging. I've heard anti types go "Well, it's an unhealthy way to cope" or claims that CSA/rape victims who write such dark content are "just as bad as their abusers"... But are they psychiatrists/therapists? Are they the psychiatrists/therapists of *those specific people*? Will you moderate this kind of content by forcefully interrogating CSA/rape victims to out their trauma to a complete stranger? Will you demand to speak to their therapists? Over fanfic?

When I was a teenager, I wrote all sorts of stuff. I wrote dark dub-con fic, because I liked to explore those dark feelings in the process and the aftermath separate from myself. I wrote a fic with a fairly young teenage girl (what age was kh2 kairi? who even knows, I sure didn't) falling for a MUCH older man built like a brick shit house so that there was never any doubt to him being an adult, even giving him her first kiss, because they were my favorite characters, I wanted both of them to have a moment of happiness (that i promptly ruined but hey), and, *in this fic*, I knew it would be alright. I knew the girl would always be in control, she'd be the one making moves, that the guy was nonthreatening and kind and protect her and work alongside her.

(and then I began the process of killing him off in the next paragraph through him saving her life, but, like. Drama (tm), baby)

This was all good for me. At an age where I was young, vulnerable, and figuring out weird shit like arousal and romantic feelings, it was *invaluable* to have a space where I could explore all of that while relatively safe from actual danger, even if the stuff I wanted to explore was a little messed up. This whole thing against AO3 wouldn't have helped me, and I'm pretty sure it's not helping a lot of other people too.

There is an issue with underage people and sex stuff- not just in fandom but in culture at large. We have Hollywood dressing up young girl actresses in super slinky or revealing clothes. We have schools saying girls basically should never wear shorts, and capitalism fucking this up further by only selling SUPER SHORT shorters. We have media of all sorts giving us adults, whether in real actors or character design, in the roles of young people. (See: "how do you do, fellow kids") We should probably take more care about fandom spaces, so that people of all ages don't feel pressured to engage in sexual shit they're not 100% game for or into, or just have it shoved into their faces without consent. It's a complex issue... and it's not stuff that can just be 'banned' and have that fix it.

AO3 has on its plate a very complex problem that will, if we're all honest, never have a perfect answer. It has given us the best that can possibly be asked for. It obeys the law by not having actual child pornography on it (aka visual proof of actual real children, defined by us law as such), which is closest to "objective" we can get at the current stage in humanity and state of fandom. It has a very comprehensive and moderated tag system, so that people can post warnings along their fic so that people don't stumble onto shit they don't need to, and so that people can moderate their own reading experience to some degree.

If some people aren't comfortable with AO3, that's fine. However, most of us are getting annoyed not with those people, but with the people who just blindly say "AO3 supports child porn and is probably stealing money" (statement simplified for the purpose of this post). It shows an ignorance of the fandom history that lead us here, no understanding in either AO3's practices or how expensive it is to run a site, and no consideration for how complex this problem can really be. It would be great if this was a black and white issue, if there was an easy answer as just "banning" certain kinds of content... but there isn't. And that's where I am.

[thickenmyblood]

do you ever wish the fandom knew how to hype up someone else's fic? NOBODY talks about any of the other amazing wip fics out there and it's discouraging to want to write anything when all i see are "wtsioa is the BEST fic" like wow okay... why should i bother trying

Hi! I understand your frustration. WTSIOA is not the best fic out there by any means. In fact, if I had to describe it, I’d definitely call it a first draft. From plotholes to grammar mistakes and typos... my fic has it all. 

I think it received a lot of attention for a number of reasons, most of which have nothing to do with my talent or the fic’s quality. 

I started posting it in May when we were all stuck at home, looking for ways to distract ourselves. 

I was (until very recently) posting once a week, which was awesome for some people. 

It’s a canon-divergent fic with Auguste in it. I’ve found that that’s the kind of fic people in this fandom seem to like the most for some reason?

Having said that, it’s not as popular as you may think. It has a lot of comments but most of those are mine (I reply to every single comment I get on that fic). People talk about it because it’s a WIP and there are a lot of cliffhangers, but also because a lot of people (Sophia, Heather, Kass, Gab, Rose, + a lot of other wonderful, amazing artists) have drawn fanart of it. To be honest, I don’t know what makes people want to create art based on this specific fic (none of my other works has ever gotten any fanart, sadly) and I don’t know what drives others to read this WIP and not others BUT...

I love reading other people’s works, especially WIPs. On discord, people talk about other fics all the time! I rec other fics all the time as well. For example, one of my favorite fics of all time is The Mannequin Gallery by marrieddorks (a WIP!). One of the first fics I ever read and loved is Heart by Heart by melancholicpie (also a WIP). I’m currently reading Beg my broken heart to beat by VeretianStarburst and Linger by xlydiadeetz. I’ve put together two fic rec ‘masterlists’ ft. a bunch of awesome WIPs (here and here).

The problem with WIPs is that not many people are willing to give them a shot because of the crippling fear that the author will stop updating. I agree with you on that—it would be nice to see more people including WIPs on rec lists and fandom discussions. But at the end of the day, I guess you have to be the change you want to see in the world. If you’re passionate about other people’s works, let them know about it! Make silly posts about a fic you’ve been reading. Make memes of fics (I don’t know why it never occurred to me that this could be a thing?) and share them with your friends/post them online.

There’s no such thing as the perfect fic or the best fic ever. I’m sure plenty of people have read WTSIOA’s prologue and noped out of it. I’m sure I’ve lost a lot of readers along the way. It’s fine, but not because my fic is “popular” or because I have all these people creating content related to my story. It’s fine because I’m writing the story I want to write. When I first started posting it I didn’t magically get 100 comments per chapter (that doesn’t even happen to me now, 23 chapters in). Recognition and popularity are nice, but they’re fleeting. You have to ask yourself why you’re writing. If you’re writing because you want others to love your work... that’s not it. You’ll get hurt, you’ll become bitter and disappointed when you don’t receive the attention and feedback you crave. 

Writing, in my opinion, is something you should do in private, quietly. For yourself. I only ever write things I would like to read, and so should you. If you’re passionate about your work it doesn’t matter how good or bad it is, how many likes or kudos it gets. You won’t care about those things because you’ll be happy that you’ve created something. 

Life works in mysterious ways. I don’t know why people hype up my fic so much when I’ve made some atrocious mistakes (such as spelling beard like bread and making Lazar an innocent cupcake in the beginning), but hey... maybe the next fic that will get all the hype is your fic! You just have to write it, post it, and wait. 

Right now I’m part of a “book-club” thing on discord where we discuss fics once a week (not WIPs, sorry) but I would love to try and include WIPs in other areas. I enjoy making posts ranting about things, so maybe I could do that (although I don’t know how much attention that would give anyone considering I have 2 followers and one of them is my mom). I will continue to rec WIPs and I will try and find the time to comment, leave kudos, etc. on the works I enjoy reading. If you have any other ideas, you can send me another message or just tag me in any posts you would like me to see. 

If you want a more “philosophical” answer to this question, I answered a similar ask a few weeks back. I’ll leave the link here for you to check it out if you’re interested! I hope this long rant made sense, and I hope you understood what I was trying to say. If you want me to check out any particular WIPs, you can always send me a name/link anonymously. 

Let’s end this on a positive note:

[weaselbeaselpants]

Hazbin/Helluva are hated for the exact same reason they’re loved:

Before I begin I need to repeat something and that’s that you please, kindly, DO NOT BOTHER ANYONE WORKING ON THE SHOW WITH THIS POST. I don’t care if you’re a fan looking for their opinion or a “critic” looking for their response. THESE PEOPLE ARE WORKING HARD, THIS IS NOT A CALL OUT POST IT’S JUST FAN DRIVEL LEAVE PEOPLE ALONE OKAY?!?!?

okey

Here are the facts of the matter:

Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss are independently produced cartoons made by a bunch of people juuuuust breaking in on the animation market, and/or internet famous artists having fun with the world they’re producing. The creator, like her style or not, is inspired and VERY passionate about what she likes and what she wants. Everyone working on the show is really into it and their work. It’s such a self-made fandom it was technically a fandom first and a product second. Fans feel like they (and technically do) have a say in how the show should be run and what the characters should be.

It is popular enough to attract attention online but not overblown by the mainstream media.

On the positive side all those things mean:

It’s crew is tight-nit and very passionate + stick up for each other and their projects. It’s basically a giant colab. Whether they were preexisting fans/friends of Viv, the people working on it got to work on something they liked and with people they liked.

The animation community is super pumped and excited for them be they fans of the animators or just people who like cartoons and monsters and stuff. They’re positively skeptical and in on the hype cause they want to see more fluid adult animation and more indie projects take off (also 2D)!

It’s fandom LOVES the characters, concept, and story. They are more invested in what the characters could be rather than what they actually are, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing; to love something based on the concepts presented and use it to make AUs, hypotheticals and what not. Cringe all you want at the Onceler fandom (you can) but it is impressive to make all that material from so little!

They’re both edgy and insensitive based on their subject matter alone. And yet, the creators and fans DO intend for the show to be a net-positive: there IS supposed to a be representational aspect to it’s design and it’s audience. Brandon Rogers, the modern John Waters, is a pure shock-humor artist; an example of the sincere but not TOO serious risque nature these shows should have, and BOTH attract a pretty happy and excitable LGBTQ fanbase who hate bigotry.

The creators directly talking with fans means there’s again a sense of togetherness to the whole production. That the creators tell people to ship what they want BUT NOT TO BULLY is really cool + important.

As an aside, they can only say so much and Viv is at this point not 100% of Hazbin or Helluva’s creation. It’s other people speaking for or with it now. Neither pilot is a singular idea and musing of one person anymore, they are stand alone products and they are not immune from critique or favoritism.

Buuuuuuut, there’s a flipside to these things as well:

Beyond NDAs (as an aside, a lot of productions have these I don’t think it’s amoral that Viv had this) the crew is tight. When they hear how a site that they’ve heard through the grabevine hosted the guy who sent Viv rape porn*, even if the critique is from a user who hates that guy, THEY AREN’T GONNA HEAR THEM OUT. And they shouldn’t. They are tired and don’t want to be involved, at best (or want to move on from past drama) and biased towards Viv, at worst. They stick out for each other in the business and also who are you gonna stan if you were in their shoes? A person you don’t know on a forum you’ve seen post creepy shit OR your friend who paid you, promos you, talks to you and you like to work with?

Ask yourself honestly what you would do if someone said:

“hey I’m from [4chan/Kiwi, ED, Tapatalk, Reddit, ect]. I’m sorry for what happened but just so you know-”

I so get the crew just straight up blocking on sight. I don’t CONDONE it, but in a postGamerGate world I understand it.

AND when it comes to accusations made against the VAs, a producer, or one of the artists, and ESPECIALLY the creator - people are gonna just handwave it away convinced, it’s just whining or has alterier motives + again, friends stick together and choose sides...like Brock Baker’s :B

It’s popular so it’s gonna get love and hate. I know critics are not gonna like to hear the later, but it is true. It feels cathartic to dunk on a property when fans are crazy and you feel it’s overrated/bad. People feel good dunking on this mishandled, problematic clusterfugg cause they know not as many people are watching and unironically liking, say, Alfred Alfer ----- (please don’t look that or Emily Youcis up. Here’s the tvtropes page. Do not look beyond this point PLEASE)

Likewise, the clout surrounding the show is biased and detracted form being too mean as well. Everyone can tell there’s a kind of toxic mess under the covers but no one wants to deep dive or prod the details of something people are working on and liking so much, especially not when the loudest detractors are asshats like P.K. Russel.

A lot of merch has been sold and produced WELL BEFORE the rest of the shows or the finalized series/designs have been laid out. If nothing comes of either show it will be bad having all this merch hyping something that doesn’t exist. If it does but is so radically different than the vision in Viv’s and fan’s heads (these are both PILOTS, I’ll remind you) it’s gonna disappoint. I just know it.

People were writing Hazbin fanfics and AUs before the pilot was dropped and have made sequels to both before we have even a clear picture of what the ending is gonna be. People are in love and writing for a franchise they don’t know. They know the idea of it and the version of it in their head, but they don’t really know it.

The fandom can not take criticism. This is bad. Everyone is a critic and inside every critic is a nerdooo ~ ((critics do have fandoms and everyone will like something problematic for reasons)) Fans want to criticize but they’re scared of being ostracized from the fandom and kicked off of forums/servers, which has happened to two underage fans already. **

The fandom feels entitled to their ideas and to the creators’ attention. If it were any other fandom it is sooper cool that creators allow people to ship as they please, but not one that’s currently still in development and whose finalized characters haven’t been figured out. The babies have been sent into the battle field at only a few months old alongside veteran ship/canon/entitled cartoon fandoms like Steven Universe and Rick and Morty. It’s like the scene from mother! where the crowd dismembers and eats the baby.

Viv and has a serious influence on these people so even when her and a bunch of fans/artists are just gabbing about stupid memes on twitter, this invites a slew of onlookers to attack these people***. Despite the influence you can have or say to stop this behavior, it’s waaaay harder to put a stop to it than just saying “hey guys be nice” (Anyone else remember the inner-drama of Brony fandom? Like chuds would even take the word of the AskMolestiaMod to heart when their one goal was to take down the dreaded Essjaydoublewes that threatened their rape jokes).

Fans also have no boundaries. Sea also; Lincar Rox.

Being a netpositive doesn’t mean everything you say or do is devoid of critique. If you make vulgar/shocking adult content it will have fans and it will have detractors regardless of the positive intent. As I’ve said earlier, the problem with Viv’s works isn’t really the content but the context and the presentation. You can say Angel Dust is an inspiring character all you want. To some people that’s absolutely true but that does NOT absolve the fact that the it’s a cis woman writing and glamorizing an abused crossdressing gay man. People are gonna be offended and the creator needs tougher skin about this be it satire, parody, or drama.

*back when they were fixated on Zoophobia, there was a guy on Bad Webcomics Wiki/Tapatalk for the comic who posted art of Viv’s decapitated head getting raped by Angel Dust as a “joke”. Oh! and he also took the complaints the wiki had and made Viv and ED page. The rest of the forum was not happy but yeah that happened. The forum itself is the same as any reddit thread and NOT a hate site, but yeah um Viv has every right to quit after that, sorry.

The evidence is linked here in this google doc, which is why I linked it. (tbh I sympathize with the author but I don’t think it’s their place to say when Viv should have let the world known about the harassment porn )

**the underage fans who were bullied/blocked/demonized by creators are frootrollup1, for doing redesigned fan art, and StarVader from the Tapatalk/BWW forums, who was targeted and blamed by fans for Lincar’s shit. I’m not linking them for fear of their safety.

***The meme and twitter thread that went off the rails is one you’ll have to scroll down a bit through @gamergirluprising‘s post to see.

Okay that’s all.

---

[bladekindeyewear]

Andrew has a post over here (or rather, “a message Hussie sent to the Perfectly Generic Podcast”) detailing his thoughts on the Epilogues, how he thought people would feel about them, and why he made them the way he did.  Interesting read-- here are my thoughts as I was reading:

Wakraya -Today at 4:34 PM

Pst pst :3 We just got a statement from Hussie on the Epilogues if you ever feel ready to check that out

BlastYoBoots -Today at 5:00 PM

ooh

yeah if there's a link?

Wakraya -Today at 5:01 PM

https://www.reddit.com/r/homestuck/comments/cuywff/the_homestuck_epilogues_bridges_and_offramps_new/

BlastYoBoots -Today at 5:02 PM

yeah I was like "there's a HARDCOVER version?!??" trying to google what you described

Wakraya -Today at 5:02 PM

Oh yeah it just got announced recently, and this is what Hussie said about it, sent to the PGP people just a bit ago

BlastYoBoots -Today at 5:03 PM

collapsing the bubble, yeah... he understood all this pretty well

readin further

"it's heavily implied to be a piece of bridge-media"  --definitely, so why... there couldn't possibly be a follow-up, could there? ...

"Our continued attention is the very property which incites new problems," -- yeah, I definitely understood that as a theme of the Epilogues... but it also felt like a slap in the face to everyone invested in those characters for that exact reason, and torturing us like that should give way to SOME kind of more settling payoff to offset it, right? right andrew?.....

"But "implied" is all it was. There was no immediate announcement for followup content, and I'm not announcing anything here yet either. More time was always going to be necessary to figure out what to do next, including what form it takes, the timing, and all those questions." --okay yeah that's... SANE.  That's MORE sane than the follow-up to Homestuck it seemed to be implying, the creation half to the destruction half.  Because as much as it seemed to be implying that with those ending sections, I really couldn't imagine a continuation to such a ridiculously saturated story as FEASIBLE; you couldn't possibly loop in anyone who wasn't into the first body of work in the first place.  But... then why leave so many of the characters in such dire straits, unsatisfied, their happiness jeopardized even after the lesson was imparted about how our looking in damaged things?

"For now I think it was alright to just let things simmer for a while, and give people an extended period of time to meditate on the meaning of the epilogues and why they involved the choices they did. But regardless of anyone's conclusions about it, I can at least confirm that it WAS designed to feel like a bridge piece since its conception."  ...I'm not, uh.  ENTIRELY.  sure. that Andrew understands.  how paralyzingly invested we are in some of these characters.  :neutral_face:

"Is it this way because an epilogue SHOULD be this way? No. It is this way because I thought that was the most suitable role for an epilogue to play in the context of the weird piece of media Homestuck has always been."  Fair... but that was the impression the end of Homestuck gave us in the first place, right?  Art and message over our feelings.  That's been the strength AND curse of Andrew's work.  His relentless artistic integrity.  He's going to give the message he wants to give even if it kills us.  :c

this mulling over how he played with "Intermission" is fun, spelling it all out and how eagerly he wanted to play with and subvert those tropes...

Wakraya -Today at 5:14 PM

Oh, keep going

You're going to like the end I feel

BlastYoBoots -Today at 5:15 PM

yeah all this is gonna go up on my blog if you let me

Wakraya -Today at 5:15 PM

Absolutely! :p

BlastYoBoots -Today at 5:16 PM

"So now the label "epilogue" has been toyed with in a similar way, and also in a manner which exposes an apparent flaw with the label. Or actually, just by using the label "epilogue" at all, it seems the story is admitting to an apparent flaw." --So how were those who DID interpret the ending of Homestuck as not addressing stuff that needed to be addressed supposed to interpret it, though?  Those who needed a more explicit explanation of why Andrew was seeming to "toss aside" so much of what they cared about as stuff that "didn't matter"?

He knew those people existed... hence the outcry!

you can't deliver a message to those people with a mocking thrust, you've gotta be, hm... more delicate about it? IF, that is, you feel an obligation to those people in the first place

and I was never sure whether Andrew DOES....?

hmmmmmn

"It's already an unhinged implementation of the label before you even read it, which means it's probably time to get nervous about whether it satisfies your expectations about what the content existing under such a label should provide."  Yes, you knew people were gonna get super nervous even before they cracked open the cover... and then you DELIVERED, rather intentionally, on some of their worst fears.....?

"My feeling is, there's almost no choice but to turn the conventional ideas associated with epilogues completely inside-out, because of the inherent contradictions involved with crossing the post-canon threshold and revealing that which was not meant to be known."  Yes, and I understood Andrew was trying for that.  But... um....... what about satisfaction?  You gonna give us ANY comfort after that's been dealt with, that lesson imparted?  Why throw all our feelings by the wayside after you've communicated that overall lesson?

"By deploying it as mock-fanfiction, and including other authors, I'm making an overt gesture that is beginning to diminish my relevance as the sole authority on the direction this story takes, what should be regarded as canon, and even introducing some ambiguity into your understanding of what canon means as the torch is being passed into a realm governed by fan desires." --Yes, I've read that really good tumblr post I won't bother linking  (EDIT: because I can’t find it, or where I commented on it, it was probably in discord; could someone link that to me? the one that talked about how this epilogue posed as Fanfiction and took on those trappings but could never BE that, and how it was their opinion ((though not mine FYI)) that Andrew didnt understand that?) that expresses how the author's intervention into this "territory" ruins the effect that this sort of work is supposed to have, and how it can't be judged as similar, but given the stuff that Andrew was TRYING to get across -- the sort of, "freeing fanwork from the vestiges of canon" stuff and the other lessons he's alluding to in this very Reddit post -- he didn't have much choice in terms of presentation framework.  Could it have been presented more elegantly, less fanon-hijacky?  Sure, he ain't perfect... Could it have more explicitly endorsed other interpretations of so-called canon as more valid than this, or AS valid?  Absolutely, but he's never been one to spell things out for us so plainly... Ah, but could it have ended in a way to give those of us so nervous about the work more SATISFACTION, less grief?  THAT is an entirely DIFFERENT matter that I hope he answers as this post goes forward.... readin readin'.......

"If the epilogues really prove to be the bridge media they were designed to feel like, then I expect this trend to continue. The fanfiction format is effectively a call to action, for another generation of creators to imagine different outcomes, to submit their own work within the universe, to extend what happens beyond the epilogues, or to pave over them with their own ideas."  True, but... gosh darn, Andrew, you coulda been more explicit with that.  Especially with the potential pave-over-ability of it all.  Expressing that a lot more explicitly would have gone to help smooth over a bunch of that one tumblr post I mentioned's concerns. :T

"It's also an opportunity for people to discuss any of the difficult content critically, and for fandom in general to continue developing the tools for processing the negative emotions art can generate."  Yeah, I... have to admit, I'm not as good at dealing with negative content in media as I should be.  And that's definitely part of what is making the fanbase feel stabbed in the heart, yeah, but..... again, it feels kind of as if Andrew does NOT understand how irrationally attached so much of the fanbase is to these characters and how irrationally overinvested in their happiness, and all of this feels kind of callous.  :frowning:

Wakraya -Today at 5:27 PM

He's very aware of how powerfully a lot of people feel about it, with all he's gone through with the Fandom. He really is just like this isn't he?

BlastYoBoots -Today at 5:27 PM

"fandom is something which can develop better skills as well. Skills like critical discussion, dealing constructively with negative feelings resulting from the media they consume, interacting with each other in more meaningful ways, and trying to understand different points of view outside of the factions within fandom that can become very hardened over time."  Hmn!  That's...... true, yeah, but wow did you take a HAMMER to it instead of a scalpel

yeah

Andrew's always just

well it's like I said isn't it?

He's got that artistic vision, and even though he knows he's in an interaction with the fandom and shapes things to it by the design of the story, he is N O T compromising that artistic vision

even if it feels like a punch to the gut to us

immersion therapy :frowning:

not sure I can say whether that's right or wrong!  only that it hurt XD

Wakraya -Today at 5:29 PM

X3

It hurts, but he does understand.

Perhaps precisely because he understands, he pushes us to our limits

He doesn't matter if he loses part of his audience in the process- He wants to showcase a message.

Painful as it may be, that's kind of admirable in a stubborn way.

And when he delivers happiness, he does it in spades

BlastYoBoots -Today at 5:30 PM

yeah, he never cared about losing support because he said what he felt was necessary

Wakraya -Today at 5:30 PM

And if it is something actually like

Problematic

He does backpedal and fix things up

BlastYoBoots -Today at 5:31 PM

"But I don't see why it can't be an objective to try to improve fandom, just as creators can improve their work."  --and he was DEFINITELY, DEFINITELY trying to improve the way members of the fandom treated a WHOLE BUNCH of different affectations of the Homestuck fanfiction in the community.  that was something kind of admirable and insane throughout the epilogues... on the deeper scale, how he used the Roxy arc in Candy to at the end put the reader to task with "HEY!!! How do you know this wasn't how Roxy would canonically act in this situation? You don't know the inside of her head! ALL SORTS of stuff is valid!  You can't use those reasons to point at certain fanfiction and call it BAD."  And I do love that.  With a more insane surface example, the dog dick stuff. Jesus.  XD

"So now I'm looking to all of you on the matter of where to go next." --oh SHIT.  :X

Well, there's a problem.  XD

fuck, you can't just ASK us what we want XDDD

"Wherever the most conscientious and invested members of fandom want to drive this universe, as well as the standards by which we engage with media in general, that will be the direction I follow."  mother FUCK

well, now the pressure's on.  god help us all XD

time to post this

[dogsliampaynedoesntinstagram]

Hi ! I was wondering if you had any thoughts on Bitch Media’s take on the WS mv? I’m sorry, I’d link the article but I’m not sure how to do it in an ask 😩 the title is ‘In “Watermelon Sugar,” Harry Styles Centers Women’s Euphoria’ x

Anon 2: Hi ! I was wondering if you had any thoughts on Bitch Media’s take on the WS mv? I’m sorry, I’d link the article but I’m not sure how to do it in an ask 😩 the title is ‘In “Watermelon Sugar,” Harry Styles Centers Women’s Euphoria’ x

*************

My first thought was ‘oh dear’ and then my second was ‘try and be generous - you too wrote about how the art that brought you joy was actually feminism in your 20s (although not for money)’.

There’s a lot of nonsense in that analysis - the way she makes up a potential criticism of the video ‘impenetrable mask of innocence’ and answers it with what the models said about consent.  As if creating a good behind the scenes vibe, eliminates all problems in the work of art. And by using nonsense jargon like the potential problem ‘soft boy aestehtics’ - she can ignore such basic things as ‘the women are in swimwear and Harry is fully clothed’ and ‘women’s pleasure is focused around Harry and the camera - they don’t even look at each other’.

It’s infuriating to me that she quotes an analysis of music videos that says:  “Compared to male artists, female artists were more sexually objectified, held to stricter appearance standards, and more likely to demonstrate sexually alluring behavior.” And suggests that Watermelon Sugar is the alternative. When the women in Watermelon Sugarvideo are more sexually objectified, held to stricted appearance standards and more likely to demonstrate sexually alluring behaviour than Harry.  She makes a fundamental category error when she suggests that because women are experiencing sexual pleasure they are not being objectified and hypersexualised (particularly when compared to the man in the same video).  (And I’m not even going to respond to what she says about Kiwi, because it makes no sense and just made my eyes roll).

But for all I think it’s a badly argued piece, it’s noteable that this author is not alone.  There’s a lot of evidence that the video does speak to some women.  While I might side-eye some of this commentary (and mutter under my breath again about the Rita Ora song ‘Girls’), I think it’s also interesting to think why the video might have got this response.  While I think the existing meaning people give to Harry is part of the answer, I don’t think that’s the only thing going on.  

And I actually frustrating thing about that article, is that she doesn’t try and answer the question of what it is about the video she’s responding to.  In fact she explicitly waves away that question - satisfied with saying: ‘ There’s something intriguing about Styles singing about sex while wearing a crochet tank top and pink-painted nails and something encouraging about Styles, given his influence, presenting the idea that women’s pleasure isn’t secondary during sex.’  But I’m going to try and answer that question - what is the something?

************

The first minute of the video does really emphasise wome’s sexual pleasure, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that both of the specific details she gives are from that section of the video.  Two things about this - the author of the post suggests that the models aren’t performinng for the camera.  I strongly disagree - a lot of this has quite strong female pleasure for the male gaze vibes.  But notably - they’re not performing for Harry - he’s not even in the frame.

Instead he’s by himself - eating watermelon.  Now obviously eating watermelon is a metaphor, but this first set up I think sets up expectations in some important ways.  Firstly Harry is being his usually charming, hammy self, there’s an element of fun to it all.  Watching the video a few times I’ve come to think the moment where he spins the watermelon as quite important, it makes sure that the whole thing isn’t too literal - and giving women viewers an opportunity to choose how much they identify with the watermelon.   So this first segment represents women’s pleasure, has a sense of joy, and also sets up space between Harry and women’s pleasure.  I think that space is crucial, because it allows a lot of space for viewers with different experience to engage with the video.

When praising the video, she really does focus on the begining.  She even says that Harry is not the focal point, when he obviously is - even in the begining the editing links the women’s pleasure and her desire - and when a man is literally surrounded by women (and clothed while they’re in swimwear) he very definitely is the focal point.  She then says the women are performing for themselves and for each other. And obviously, my objection (besides the one I’ve already mentioned about how they don’t look at each other) is that this whole analysis ignores the camera and how central what the camera is doing to understanding music videos.  But that’s not the point of this analysis - the point of this analysis is ‘what is it that people are responding to?’

The women’s pleasure may be for the camera, but I can see why she’s arguing that it’s not for Harry’s gaze.   It’s really notable that Harry only looks at the women he’s with to make eye contact with them.  And I think for might be quite freeing for some people.  To see women have sexual pleasure around a man, and not have that claiming gaze.

Ultimately what I think this all suggests - is how starved women are for representations of sexual pleasure and joy.  It totally makes sense that for a lot of women what is in the Watermelon Sugar video is more important than what is not.  Women’s sexual pleasure, with some joy and space around it - is a really rare thing.  And the fact that Harry gives that both within the music video, and to watchers of the video, is again really significant, because it’s so rare.

I do think that there is a really deep denial among Larry fandom about how central being a fantasy to women who are attracted to men is to Harry’s pop stardom.  It’s really core to what he’s doing and even more important to his success.  

[incarnateirony]

Optimism, Nihilism, Absence, Realism.

Alright, so I’ve got time for some real talk here.

By the title you’re probably expecting a meta, but that’s not really what this is. It’s time for a rare post laced with enough negativity to break my mold, but more congealing thoughts I’ve been banging on about in the background since I came to tumblr into a set of realities on my thoughts on the show at large.

Before this begins, this is absolutely not an invitation to come to my wall and start crowing and screeching about your ship, your characters, bagging on the authors or anything else. If you can understand the difference between constructive conversation, and prim word laced unbridled and pointless cynicism and complaining, you’re welcome to engage, but don’t mildew up this post.

But it’s about time we talk about the elephant in the room with the show. And despite this fandom’s gong banging, it isn’t Andrew Dabb. It isn’t MuH dEStiEl. It isn’t muh poor baby (fave char)

It’s SingerBuckLeming.

And I mean, in a way that’s obvious, and I really don’t think everybody has really, truly, wrapped their heads around it because they’ll still come yelling about Dabb whenever anything goes wrong.

But Dabb isn’t the one that’s been obsessed with a psycho dark godbaby story; Dabb’s the one that tried to at least craft it into something fruitful for TFW and subvert it into something more than burning bibles -- it’s SingerBuckLeming trying to relive the Lois and Clark fantasy they were denied.

It’s not Dabb that decided to hard push the AUverse story and all its attached splendors. The idea started as a one-off intro idea for Wayward, but it had to be pushed off a year, and Leming admitted to snaring the idea and, summarily, attaching it to their evil godbaby and making it their plot point.

It’s not Dabb that has an honest to god boner for Mark P and can’t shut his mouth up about him, that’s Eugenie too. It’s not Dabb that obsesses over half crocked characters like Asmodeus and Donatello. It’s not Dabb addicted to big shiny CGI and super saiyan powerups.

You’ll notice how many of these ideas are enmeshed into one giant ball of fuckery that, somewhere along the way, Dabb has tried to groom into having some sort of substance but there’s a very clear line going on here.

“How does this relate to my ship/my favorite character reeee”, why? Because with the amount of weight being tossed around via advantageous nepotism and a different core cluster in the author room quite clearly on a different creative page than everybody else, guess what -- everybody else gets railroaded.

And at times, yes, some presentations are becoming stressed and stretched. They only way to even bring any sort of emotion to the content is by retreading or exaggerating emotional roads, especially at the end of seasons. A season starts strong, and poetic, and then somewhere around or right after episode 14 everything starts fucking falling apart, often with one or two disjointed episodes in advance but strong character driven arcs. Traction and motion are lost. Poetry starts falling into pieces. Superpowers and over the top manpain become the leading thing.

This happens every year, and this year is more vivid than last. I do remind people that the last time we had SingerBuckLeming throwing their weight around on decisions so hard they double-directed-and-wrote an episode was Dark Dynasty, which the rest of the author room was uncomfortable with, even argued about, even lost author heads in the aftermath of. Guess what - we just got our second episode like that. The attempt to work into this weight-throwing by the rest of an author room tends to turn into a lack of cohesive storytelling. S10 turned into a rapid degredation into a benny hill chase for a book. This year - well, shrug.

That’s not to say I agree with every piss and moan about characters being “OOC” as often, in this fandom, the fandom’s idea of “OOC” ends at “things I don’t personally like”. There are differences between OOC and just not really... belonging in the moment. Because they’re often things the character has in their range of potential action, but whether or not the story is cohesively meshed in a way that’s worth a damn is a WHOLE other topic.

And this has just gotten worse. As the writing room gets newer and younger and SingerBuckLeming age older and older -- some of you may have remembered my panic attack realizing BuckLeming were being seated in position to become the next showrunners and Bobo had been bumped back. At the time, even meta bloggers I trust held different opinions that, frankly, I considered daydreamy “Oh don’t worry BuckLeming only handle this but all of the emotional stuff goes through Dabb co” but no, once BuckLeming get their hands in enough of that, the rest ends up on a railroaded crash course everybody is trying to write around to deliver as better than a doggie doo bag.

And I think, honestly, J2M know that. I’m sure a huge amount of their decision was indeed about family time, but the real question is, looking at this show that SingerBuckLeming have been aggressively railroading off a damn cliff while everybody tries to compensate, is it really WORTH negotiating more family time, do they really WANT to wait for it to crash out, do they really WANT to let Eugenie Leming run the show out of gas in the middle of a desert with hew new, bestest idea once Dabb inevitably leaves and she and her baes get full reign to make the endless Lucifer clone fleet and their godbaby powers all going super saiyan? Is that what they want their legacy to be, or would they rather go home, and be with their family instead of propping this up as it continues to veer to the left?

I keep praying SBL disappear for the final season, kinda like Singer buggered off in S11. And it’s kinda sad, because I do recognize that without Singer we wouldn’t have the show at all but somewhere along the way, he lost his nut, he lost his directing skills, he lost common sense and he let his seniority get to his head, probably in tandem with bringing his wife back in and getting to be a power unit which is just WOEFULLY unadvised to be honest.

This is so far beyond how anyone’s ship or favorite character is treated. It’s about the internal war in a writing room that’s as clear as plain day that’s causing a deterioration of the show that Dabb has DESPERATELY been trying to curtail into SOMETHING of note only to catch shit from people who can’t do a little bit of common denominator searching into events even before his showrunning time that just keep getting louder.

Right now I’m at a point where I’m just begging for cohesion and emotional worth from the final season. For something that BuckLeming aren’t just throwing off the cliff like a sacrifice to their new, bigger, dumber idea once S14′s Jack Course reaches its cap. And honestly, I’d hope that’s everyone’s primary concern rather than circular bitching about whatever element they’re hyper fixated on because this is an issue that spreads well and far beyond whatever singularity you choose to scream about. And most people just blind sweep in rage at the first name that’s easy to pick out that they feel is responsible. But this has been going on. FOR YEARS. It’s just getting louder.

I try to not be negative about the show in general. I do appreciate Dabb, Berens, Yockey, Merecuda, and to some extent Perez (though I still hold he’s the least artistic of that bunch.) I’m still in love with Sgriccia and Wright and Showalter. I still love this crew. But I’ve never been shy about pointing out BuckLeming problems and at this point, it’s just THE problem, to whence nobody is even realizing where they need to set their sights and complaints at. Everything else is an emotional or continuum casualty in their fuck offs to the new shiny idea. Or, in cases of the Lois & Clark godbaby, their old AF tarnished idea.

Some people may remember me saying that without Dabb converting Jack into being a TFW mirror for catharsis, Jack’s only individual arc is that of a villain, and here we are swinging around full force with BuckLeming sinking in, waiting to see how Dabb may subvert that in the final episode. 

“I’m losing faith in Destiel” “I’m mad about Sam/Dean/Cas” “This plot is dumb” ultimately all fall down into the same goddamn railroading that habitually, like clockwork, louder each year, fucks up the end of a season and I just want them to disappear before the final season, but I doubt I’m going to get that. Maybe, just maybe, they can be staved knowing they won’t need the new ultimate escalation to carry on the show yet-again. Fingers and toes and arms crossed. 

That said, this vivid repeat of S10 author room shift should also, hopefully, give at least some potential hope to meta authors who at least remember that S11 was recoverable and was in fact recovered, and also had final season plans afoot. It was on the table, at least, in thought in early concept, just not without the true bang announcement to promise it through. So I’m going to hold out some hope that this is going to shape up fine in the end.

But don’t expect me to humor your bitter bitching about your ship or favorite character of choice. You wanna bitch about the strokes Singer seems to have had that have stripped his directorial gifts, or Eugenie’s obsession with SSJ archangels and Mark P, by all means. They’re major culprits in everything else being flattened on the way with an author room y’all are bitching at trying to make it at least vaguely cohesive.

I’m a natural optimist experiencing distinct nihilism at the absence of any sort of respect for the show or J2M going on with SBL right now, and as ever a realist looking at it in the frame of what’s going on beyond our surface level issues, and what I can hope to maintain to roll back around to the optimism part. Ouroboros. Hopefully ending at the start of the journey and not to loop back through the nihilism by next season.

Can they just retire? Please?

Dump Mark P. Dump Donatello. Hell, dump Jack at this point with as much as they’ve fucked that off again. Dump the AU. Dump the Drama Coffin. Dump the instaboop angels. Just dump all of their dumb ideas and let the final season roll out without the resulting tire fire of all of their ideas and suddenly, the show is infinitely cleaner. Don’t think this is all their bullshit? Literally follow their episode impact in reverse the last few years before you come at me. It’s literally all their bullshit.

I really don’t give a shit about fandom drama around Mark P’s opinions. I get it, but I don’t care. What I care about is his unwillingness to look at his character and refuse a contract for any sort of integrity, doing literally anything to pull a goddamn paycheck out of milking this show. His character, formerly one of the most inspiring renditions of an overshadowing idea of good and evil and biblical scale, has turned into a toddler throwing tantrums on the floor of mcdonalds, begged for redemption that underscores the entire point of the hero’s journey, splattered in remnants of Hallucifer that wasn’t even the original character, and just won’t go away.

And antis can say what they want about, say, Misha or Castiel, but his character at least has a solid direction, and growth, and a real hero’s journey. It’s not just vomit splatter on the wall of whatever he can be niched into like Not!Lucifer. Mark S at least had the dignity to leave when he saw shit degrading for his character.

Oh yeah a lot of that was BuckLeming too. The plotholes in Crowley’s story he called out were BuckLeming, who summarily pitched Rowena. And I love Rowena and Ruthie and wouldn’t undo it for the world but GODDAMN am I glad Yockey basically adopted her. She was turned into something past their basic dumb ideas and, as of yet, BuckLeming has yet to unravel that like they’re proactively doing with Jack after Dabb and co put so much effort into him.

Like literally the fandom’s collective bitchfits have a very common denominator and nobody’s willing to suss out why.

SingerBuckLeming seem to have had a collective stroke and still think they’re creating for Lois & Clark in the 70s and not Supernatural as made manifest into absurdity by 13.23; and several people like Mark Pellegrino refuse to have the basic decency to say, you know what, pass. I had my show here, it’s been good. They feed it. But it still falls back to SingerBuckLeming in the end at the heart of it. 

Not enough for you? Still think it has nothing to do with J2M or Mark Sheppard’s choices? Don’t even just listen to the scalding tea, look at the post-engagement between Jensen and Mark S.

They need to go away.

[ann5654]

Hi, I don't want to start anything, but i think that you have been fetishizing (male) gay characters. You only ever repost about gay characters and are only present in fandoms that have either canon gay characters/ships or strongly suggest them. I scrolled through your blog and it just caught my attention that is all. Maybe you should consider this and see what you have been doing wrong.

Hello Anon,

I hope that what I'll tell you makes you understand the how and why of what you seem so concerned about.

But first things first:

I do not and never will think of any gay male character/ship that you can see on my dash as someone I think of sexually and would never, ever force another sexuality on them

I am not only ace, but I have great respect for these characters. I sympathize with them. I can understand their problems. Homophobia, the fear of coming out, toxic families that cannot be seen being less than perfect.

I understand that. I assume you are most concerned about my recent re-fascination of the Dragon Age character Dorian. Whom I will use as an example for the next part.

Dorian is canonically gay. He comes from a difficult family situation. He finds confidence in his appearance and humor. He is strikingly brilliant and goddamn intelligent. He managed to get not only a canon relationship if you romance him, but also a canon relationship if you don't. He's growing throughout the game. He shows that sometimes distance is needed to heal from a toxic situation. He wants to bring his corrupted homeland on the right path.

This is what makes me like him so much. And not in a fucked up sexual version, but in the "I want to drink good wine and talk shit about other people with him" version. I understand him and his problems. His humor makes me laugh, which is what makes a character, really any character, likeable. I think of him as someone who would be a great friend and close confidant. I admire his ambition and his intelligence.

As you can see, when I listed what I thought about him, I did not once refer to the fact that he looks good. What I do not deny. He's a very handsome character. However, that is not why I like him. Hell, he could be a bald egg and I would still think of him in the same way. Not at all in any sexual sense.

This is the same with most characters that I repost stuff about. And if they do not fit that particular category, I simply admire their relationship. I am in a great and loving relationship myself and I am happy, when I see a character that I simply adore in a relationship that makes them happy. Simple as that. I do not much care for the sexual aspects of any relationship, real life, canon, headcanon or whatever. If they are happy, I am happy. It's the same for you is it not? When you read a book and you get all those fuzzy warm feelings when the characters that danced around each other finally get together. Nothing sexual here, there or anywhere.

But why do you not feel the same for lesbian or heterosexual female characters, you may ask yourself.

The answer is simple: I do not know of any lesbian or even heterosexual female characters that I understand as much or like. I can hardly name a lesbian character that I actually know or a heterosexual female character that gives me the feeling of "hey, those are my struggles". I find many woman aesthetically pleasing and I can tell when someone is fucking hot, but I still do not want to see them have sex or have sex with them.

Example 1:

I adore Carol Danvers (Captain Marvel). I think she is badass and, as shallow as it sounds, looks great. Yet, I cannot sympathize with her. My own most prominent struggles are not hers. She is not prominent enough in my watching/re-watching nerd list for me to have a solid opinion on her character. I saw her in like two movies and a few one-liners in the marvel comics I've read. Which does not make her, aside from what I've mentioned, a character I care more about than many other characters I come across.

Example 2:

Bill Potts from Doctor Who. Probably the only lesbian character I know enough about to say, hey, she's pretty neat. She's likeable, because she makes me laugh. But I don't really know much of her background and ambitions or better, I cannot name them, because I've watched her season exactly once and never got into her "lore" so to speak. I like her, tho. She's a cutie that can put up with the Doctor's shit. But as you can see, I don't really have a solid opinion on her character.

Example 3 (more detailed):

Isabelle Lightwood and Clary Fray. Both are great and important characters in the TMI universe (I'll go with the TV show here, because that's most prominent in my mind at the moment). I, and god save me that I'm saying that out loud, do not particularly like Clary. She's too stubborn and reckless for me to say, yes, that's a character I like. I do not share her mindset. I do not share her humor. I do not sympathize with her at all. I never lost my mom, I never found out my dad's a genocidal maniac or that my brother is a demon. In short, I do not vibe with her. Many do and I can see that if you yourself are more the heads on approach personality, you would understand her reasons and characteristics. I do not.

Izzy is a strong woman. I admire her for her empathy towards Alec, but her struggles are once again not mine. Needless to say, I can see people shipping them (Clizzy), but I admit that I do not care for them as a ship. I don't love it, but it's also not a NOTP for me. I am just not interested in them as a ship. You can put it in a fic and I will not care. They are good for each other in the fic, well, good for them. They should be. Clary is with Jace and Izzy is with whomever? I don't care. Because I do not particularly care for their characters.

I think what you have raised as a concern, is the worst anyone could ever think of me. As I have mentioned in the beginning, I respect these characters. A whole fucking lot. I see my troubles and problems solved in their plotlines and it makes me happy to see that they can be happy. I think of them as characters that would be great friends. I honestly would like to know how you came to the conclusion that I fetishize them. As far as I know, I have never given any indication that I see them in a sexual maner. I repost art and writing, but mostly because I admire the work the artist/author has put into it. I repost text posts because they make me laugh. And because most people are not asexual there might be one or two posts that have some sexual aspects in them. But non of these should be in a fetishizing manner, I am sure of that. And not and never would I repost anything, because I get off on it (which for me, is just not my cup of tea at all. While it may be for others, to whom you should turn your attention to then, if this is concerning for you).

That you "raised this concern" is, as much as you might not want it, starting something. You think because of that phrase, I might not feel awful. You think it does not make me feel horrible for sharing that I like a character for the sake of sympathizing with them. As I stated, what you, and let's name it as it is, accused me off is the worst thing I you can make me think about myself. I have not once seen these characters as something sexual. I do not care for sex at all. Yes, a fetish must not be sexual, but what else could you have meant? I don't think it is wrong to admire a character who is intelligent and shares my humor.

I hope you see and understand my point now, because I really don't know how to explain it more clearly or state it more vehemently than:

I do not think of them in any sexual manner, in any fetishized way or similar.

[randomnumbers751650]

I’ve been thinking of the comparisons between Tolkien’s legendarium and Nasuverse. A bit of spoilers for FGO.

I don’t really think anyone can ever top J. R. R. Tolkien in building a fictional universe. When you start looking down the rabbit hole of his legendarium, it goes deep. From constructing not only a language, but a family of them, Tolkien managed to create such a sublime fictional universe. Even though his focus is primarily British - his objective was to write an epic of the British people and it evolved to, essentially, build the great part of the foundation of fantasy literature.

It was the project of a lifetime and he couldn’t complete. It had so many influences, from the stories from Beowulf, Nibelung, Kalevala, obscure lingustic references (I read Tom Shippey’s book Tolkien: Author of the Century, and he analyzes a lot of them, and show how important it is to worldbuilding, like the difference between speech of kings and elves), to the trauma endured in the First World War. Even after his death, we haven’t seen everything, Christopher Tolkien didn’t finish organizing everything yet.

The thing is that I don’t think it’ll ever exist another human being that can combine both creativity and passion to create worldbuilding, almost to the point of obssession. Tolkien was a product of his time, but he still managed create stories that still resonate with people from the entire world (even in spite of this Anglo-Saxon focus of his work - I wish there were more efforst like Tolkien’s one to other cultures).

“Good artists borrow, great artists steal.” This phrase was said by famous artists like Picasso (does it, though?), and it means to be aggressive when the issue is creativity and try to one-up previous artists (note that it doesn’t say “great artists plagiarize”). There are a lot of authors that borrow from Tolkien (the isekai bubble in anime uses the same pseudo-medieval D&D-inspired world, that also has influence from Tolkien), but the few that tried to do the same thing as him (in a lower intensity), but the ones that steal are few.

Among the ones that steal is Kinoko Nasu. Although I’m new to the Nasuverse, I’ve always knew who Saber and memes (”People die if they are killed”), but I never got into fandom until Fate/Grand Order. Although the gameplay is simple and intuitive, I really enjoyed the story. Sure, it’s a bit wonky in the beginning, but singularities like Camelot, Babylonia, and Temple of Solomon, besides Shimosa and Shinjuku made me wonder: this waifu-based gacha game shouldn’t have a story this good and yet it is that good - Temple of Solomon specially, with all the servants who fought against and for Guda join together to fight the demon pillars, Mash and Roman’s sacrifice, to punching Goetia in the face and the eucatastrophe that is Mash holding Guda‘s hand and escaping.

Thanks to a friend that is more well-versed in the Nasuverse and I think it shows how Nasu invested a lot of creativity and passion on it. While Tolkien had a focus on stories of epic times (what Nasu would call the Age of Gods), Nasu initially focused on urban fantasy (and I think it’s where his writing is more solid), to a complete world of magecraft, with its own rules and how they are in conflict with modern thought due to the concept of Mystery. But Nasuverse isn’t just about servants - what is a fundamental concept in one work, it might be a detail or not even mentioned in other (like Kara no Kyoukai).

The idea of Mystery in the Age of Gods is a really neat way to understand mythology, and it covers even the distant future like Notes. or attempts to meld magic and technology like in CCC. The rules are consistent (but quite bendable) and permeates Nasu’s work, even when they seem unfair, especially for the modern viewer who might think “why don’t they use magic to solve every problem” (the short answer is that popularization of magic would only leave to its extinction due to operating on Mystery).

And yet, the Nasuverse is held back by the amount of problems and editorial interferences. This is especially terrible in FGO because there is lots of evidence that the editors (Takeuchi) want to push for sexier designs (like Jack and her not pants, Raikou and her balloons, Boudica looking like a bad porno actress in the first ascension, and let’s not talk about Abby) just to selll to unsavory preferences. And this is present in early works, like why the twin maids exist in Tsukihime and the legendarily bad sex scenes of the VN. Also bad writing, such as from Agartha.

That made me thinking of another reason why we surely will never have another Tolkien: capitalism. Being closer to a Catholic traditionalist, Tolkien disdained capitalism (conservatives have a critique of capitalism, for example, Edmund Burke warned Adam Smith that he ignored the social costs of the industrial transformation, but Smith ignored him). Tolkien didn’t care about selling LotR merchandising, or writing characters to pander to certain people. It was a work of passion, not profit (so much that he only published a small part of his legendarium, that includes The Hobbit and LotR). But, today, capitalism is so pervasive that it’s nearly impossible to dedicate so much energy to this without thinking of merchandising and stuff.

The Nasuverse is a large and profitable franchise, but it makes me wonder what Nasu could make if he didn’t have such editorial issues (granted I heard he’s kind of a doormat and that is why there is so much of this pandering - I read that Nero was supposing to be a cruel dictator possessing the girl, but he liked so much the VA’s voice that he changed his mind and, although I hear she was good in CCC, in FGO she’s annoying and shilled and Septem was a waste of time), because I can see there’s a lot of dedication, “stealing” from Tolkien, in the sense of creating a unique world to tell stories of the triumphs and tragedies of mankind.

Still, both Tolkien and Nasu have lots of known and compelling works, and I applaud their dedication to worldbuilding, and I wish I could make a better analysis of the Nasuverse, because I find it fascinating.