#I’m seeing such a concerning trend in some fans of siding with racists and awful fuckin people

[russilton]

I can’t believe this has to be said, but it doesn’t matter if they’re being nice to your guy, it’s not okay to be praising one of the boycotted brands in the middle of a genocide???

The bar is so fucking low and you don’t get to be “non political” right now. That IS political.

[tog-resources-archive]

Hello fellow fan who has been here since the beginning! I come from the “other side” I suppose, in that I do think the top/bottom discourse is worth talking about. It has to do with the elephant in the room which I haven’t seen anyone touch on – self-identified top!joe fans (in contrast to simply fans who enjoy or prefer content where joe tops). I remember the original top/bottom discourse coming out of a more general conversation about trends in fic (1)

Thank you fan!anon for sending me such a long, detailed message! Never apologize for writing me an essay since I always seem to be writing essays for other people in return lol. Also sorry it took a while to get to! This required a bit of preparation. You’ve given me a lot to respond to. I’m going to be putting the entirety of the ask under the cut and the tl;dr because this one is very, verrrryyyy long. 

Tl;dr- fan!anon talks about the history of top/bottom discourse in TOG and the issues of racism in our fandom. My response: my own feelings on the history of the top/bottom discourse in TOG and the current state of it. General issues I’ve observed in this fandom and the current discourse. Also, we shouldn’t ignore fandom racism, but I don’t think we should be looking at it through the lens of top/bottom, AND I think we should be focusing on misogyny, homophobia, etc. in addition to racism. Not ignore one for the other. 

Bottom line though, don’t harrass people, block people if you need to, focus on what you love, support fan creation and let’s try to be a better fandom. 

Okay, time to dig in!

Hello fellow fan who has been here since the beginning! I come from the “other side” I suppose, in that I do think the top/bottom discourse is worth talking about. It has to do with the elephant in the room which I haven’t seen anyone touch on – self-identified top!joe fans (in contrast to simply fans who enjoy or prefer content where joe tops). I remember the original top/bottom discourse coming out of a more general conversation about trends in fic (1) wherein Joe was more violent, less empathetic, often not religious, more aggressive in sexual scenarios, and also most often topping. People asked the fandom in general to simply consider, if that is how they perceive Joe, to reflect for themselves about implicit biases that could be colouring that interpretation. The self-identified top!joes used that conversation as a starting point to argue that the above interpretation of Joe, (2) and writing/drawing Nicky as smaller, almost twink-like, demure, more feminine (or writing fic where he was de-aged) was justified by canon (if you recall the multi-day argument about the approximately 1 inch height difference between Marwan and Luca) and connecting those ideas to top!joe just “making more sense” to them. In the hands of a good writer (of which we are blessed to have many in this fandom!), which character tops in an explicit fic is of no consequence to me. (3) But the concept of top!joe has, in my mind, become so closely tied with those fans who, a) interpret these characters and actions in a way that seems influenced by racial stereotypes and tropes and b) use that characterization as “justification” for top!joe. All this when I thought we all agreed that position preference has nothing to do with personality? (4) If someone sees Joe as a very masculine, aggressive, dom-type character (which is a bit of a one-note characterization to start, but I digress), that shouldn’t be related to him being a “top”, correct? Yet that is the interpretation and connection that the top!joes themselves make. So that’s why to me, the top/bottom framework continues to have some value, eve though in an ideal world it wouldn’t: (5) because some fans connect what should be a neutral sexual position preference to an interpretation of Joe’s character, an interpretation which I think doesn’t do him justice. I understand if you don’t want to publish this but I’m hesitant to talk off anon due to how heated this whole conversation is. I also don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings or make them feel bad about how they are participating in the fandom, but I do think self-reflection in terms of how we engage is valuable. (6) And just to fully reiterate in case it wasn’t clear, my above points are specifically referring to who I think of as “top!joe only” fans as opposed to fans who enjoy or prefer content in which joe tops – only the former of which I am wary of. Anyways, sorry for this long message, and I hope I've been able to explain my reasoning. If we continue to disagree, thanks for reading this anyways and continuing the dialogue. Thank you also for promoting femslash events and content! (7)

So....I did say in a previous post that I’m not a big fan of hearsay, and I’m sorry but… that’s kind of what you’ve given me. A lot of “this is what Top!Joe Only people have said” and “this is what the rest of the fandom has said back.” I have to ask, who are these “Top!Joe Only” people that are on the other side of this fandom war? Who are the people representing the “rest of the fandom”?  The only names I could really come up with myself are the Top!Joe Server mods as top!Joe only fans, and they haven’t exactly been active recently. Not to mention the Top!Joe server mod @karanoidandroid was the focus of the Art Theft and Bullying debacle a while back (here) which even if you disagree with her… that’s not the way you treat people. Full stop. 

But anyway, to break this down, you’ve said that top!joe only fans wanted to interpret Joe in a way that was “more violent, less empathetic, less religious, more sexually aggressive, and topping (most of the time)” and that Nicky is “smaller, more twink-like, more demure and feminine” and that the hardcore top!joe stans are using this interpretation as a reasoning for liking top!joe explicit fics (and for underage fic?)

Er, honestly, I’ll have to disregard the “less religious” comment in this one. Lucyclairedelune has talked about it very eloquently here. As for the rest, let’s say these opinions were expressed on tumblr in July, just when the fandom was getting started. However, after personally going through all the Explicit July fics, I gotta say, the overwhelming majority of writers are focused on romantic Malta sex vacations lol. 

From my personal observations (I started reading fic on ao3 in August), I’ve seen some stories that cater to very… specific tastes (mostly kinkmeme fics so I’m not going to touch that) and some that have…. been written in poor taste perhaps. But, honestly, the majority of fics (aka G, T, M rated) that I’ve seen? I would say that they were written with care and concern for the character’s portrayal. 

Now, some fans (usually older fans) are very focused on “your kink is not my kink” and other fans feel this is an inappropriate way to view “racist, homophobic, islamophobic, etc” fics. And I agree with that. If people are using kink to excuse racism, homophobia, islamophobia, transphobia, antisemitism, misogyny, etc, in fics: Fuck that. But I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding flying around when people react to ‘ykinmk”. This fandom likes to assume the worst of their fellow fans imo, and I honestly don’t think that when a person defends kink that they’re trying to defend racism. They’re trying to defend their kink community which, historically, has been attacked and misunderstood by the purity police. Look into the Livejournal, ffnet, and even the Tumblr purges if you don’t believe me. 

For the record, I don’t know anyone on tumblr personally. We’re all effectively strangers talking to each other on the internet, so I’m not going to make assumptions about people from stories they’ve posted on AO3 or the kinkmeme. If you want to talk about the issues those fics represent, that’s cool, but don’t harass people whose life stories you don’t know (and don’t vagueblog about them). (This is just a general statement, not saying this about you anon! I feel really strongly about this.)

Now you say, “some fans connect what should be a neutral sexual position preference to an interpretation of Joe’s character” and I hate to say it, but there are ALWAYS going to be some people who have awful opinions. Ones that are either truly terrible, or kind of in poor taste, or maybe you just don’t vibe with them. Personally, I don’t have enough time in the day to address every weird thing that a person spews on the internet. I won’t judge if you want to take them on, but, personally, I haven’t seen any recent militant top!joe only posts that are calling for racist portrayals. I see people referring to past conversations, for sure, but again, I can’t do anything with hearsay. 

And honestly, we keep bringing up the top/bottom discourse of early TOG fandom, and we’re just not the same fandom we were then. SO MANY people have left the fandom in that time-- a lot of big name (or simply well known) fans and a lot of MENA fans. Regardless of what “side” you’re on in this, we all lose by focusing on the positions, by dividing everyone by “top” or “bottom” or “switch” fans, and by bringing up what people said in July, or August, or September.  It’s exhausting, especially because I think a lot of people have done exactly what you said. Many authors HAVE self-reflected, they’ve thought about trends, the implications, and are contributing/interacting with the fandom as best as they can. Do I think we should stop focusing on self-reflection? That we should stop being careful about writing potentially damaging portrayals of our favorite characters? NO. Let’s keep at it! Let’s encourage others to do the same… but not with top/bottom discourse.

Let it be known that I don’t think racism is a topic we should disregard to focus on other things. Honestly, I would be happy if people gave some of the energy they have for “top/bottom” discourse to talk about the portrayal of Nile Freeman or Lykon or Copley or Quynh… the other POC representation in TOG that usually gets ignored. You may interpret this as me going “but what about??” and that’s fair. I just think that we talk about Joe ALL THE TIME in this fandom. There is an avalanche of conversation and content for this man (who I love, don’t get me wrong) and it just feels really disingenuous (to me) to talk ad nauseum about racist portrayals of Joe, but then to ignore Nile Freeman and wlw fics when Nile is the rare Black Female Action Protagonist and Andy/Quynh is an extremely rare interracial canon lesbian couple. And I’ve been trying to use my blog here to bring attention to this, think of me what you will because of that. (Again just a general statement anon! Not directed to you XD)

And from what I’ve seen in this fandom (and many others to be fair) is that we care about racism SO MUCH…but only when talking about how a man has sex.  It speaks of a lack of intersectional understanding of these topics, disregarding the misogyny that IS ALSO inherent in fandom, and disregarding the homophobia of overfocusing on the top/bottom dynamics. BUT I’m not asking you to ignore racism; all I’m asking is for you to focus on the other issues too. 

Bottom line though… the discourse is not what it once was.  A lot of people, on whatever side, have left the fandom, or have taken a break, or are vocally tired of “top/bottom” discourse. Personally, I think we should talk about racism… but not through the lens of explicit mlm fic sex positions. Let’s talk more about race, gender, sex and sexual orientation, but not in a way that divides the fandom, in a way that makes people sick of being here, in a way that kills our content creator’s passion. Honestly, I think it can be done! But only if we work toward that goal together. 

I would like to focus on encouraging events in our community, such as the ongoing Old Guard Big Bang 2021 event and the upcoming Femslash Fortnight Spring Solstice Edition event. If anyone is organizing other events, let me know and I’ll hype you up! But as for the rest, I’m tired, you’re tired, we’re all tired. Let’s try and work harder to be a kinder, more inclusive fandom in the future, for everyone’s sake. 

[whitecap-bay]

To whom it may concern: My recent post has been getting a lot of negative responses (albeit rightfully so). I was angry last night and I had to express my feelings somewhere and in doing so I didn't do a very good job at it. People have brought to my attention all the awful stuff/comments/hate some Reylo shippers have said towards content creators/John Boyega himself and other POC in the Star Wars fandom. Like I said previously, I am new to the Star Wars fandom and it bothers me to see such disconnect between fandoms over ships. I guess that is to be expected no matter what fandom you're in. I want to also apologize for coming off as aggressive and saying some displaced things. If you don't want to read it I understand.

What the title should've been: Stop telling people what they should or should not like! (Applicable to any fandom and their respective ships!)

I initially made my last post because I wanted to address something that has been pissing me off for recently. Over the last couple of days I have seen an increase in negative comments towards Reylo and people who ship Reylo. The hashtag Kylo was at the time trending on Twitter and there were a lot of people actively making displaced tweets about Reylo and especially towards people who create art about it or simply those who ship it. I have had 2 people this last week comment on my Reylo art post about how toxic the ship is.

I got the sense that FinnRey shippers actively searched the Reylo tag just to come in and leave comments about how we shouldn't ship Reylo. I have seen this happen on some content creators Instagram pages and it really made me both sad and angry. There seems to be a lot of division in the fandom. I never sent hate to anyone for whatever reason. I always try be as respectful as I can when making comments. The last thing I want to is to dehumanize people. It's easy to type up hateful comments behind a keyboard towards a stranger on the internet because you disagree with them.

I am now aware that some Reylo fans have shown truly disgusting, antisemitic and racist behavior. It's not other people's job to educate me, it is my own, and I hold myself accountable for not having taken the time to educate myself on just how vile some Reylo fans have been and I hold myself accountable for generalizing/making assumptions about the fans in the FinnRey tag.

I cannot agree however with people labeling me as a fascist and a racist. I know myself. I'm always actively trying to do better and put out positivity in the world and fight for what's right. I guess people decided to put me in a box and label me as a fascist and racist for enjoying Kylo/Ben/Reylo. I personally believe that that is flawed logic. I have not shown any racist/fascist behavior, not on the internet and certainly not in my personal life, so why do you assume that this is what I am? By that logic, anyone who doesn't ship Poe x Finn is automatically a homophobe. That doesn't sit right with me. By all means, call the actual Reylo fascists/racist fans out! They deserve to be exposed. What they are doing is terribly disgusting and I will never ever think that that is an okay way to treat other people. It is disgusting and vile. I will always stand by John Boyega and how he was ripped off by Disney. He was pushed to the side. Degraded to simply being the guy who yells after Rey. They did him really dirty! This is the most major flaw about the movies. Finn and Rey would've been an enormous step towards representation (of biracial couples) in Disney, but also Finn and Poe would've been an even bigger representation as the first major Disney gay couple, both being people of color, and being main characters in a big franchise. Oscar Isaac actually wanted that to happen but Disney said no.

Finally, I always think there's a difference between fiction and reality. As someone who loves literature, it breaks my heart seeing how people equate a certain love for fiction with how people are in real life. Fiction simply works. I still stand by my belief that we are allowed to interpret a work of fiction in our own ways. Some people refuse to listen to each other, causing even more division and dissent. I can only hope to see a world in which we can have respectful debates and conversations about anything in particular, God knows we need more positivity in this world.

Out of respect for those who asked, I am not going to tag FinnRey. Which seems a bit redundant because they won't see this post. I just wanted to share my thoughts, regardless of who may or may not be reading this post.

If you made it this far thank you for reading and have a good day.

[oumakokichi]

If you don't mind a slightly more controversial ask, I've seen some very different views on how the topic of religion was handled throughout chapter 3, especially in relation to Angie and Shinguuji. I don't have any strong opinion, but how do you feel about it?

I don’t mind trying to answer this! Actually, this is areally interesting question, and I definitely can give some opinions on it. ButI feel that it’s important for me to note that I’m not Japanese, and as Chapter3 does deal with quite a lot of both religion originating from Japan (namelyaspects of Shinto, and Buddhism which is not native to Japan but which has alwayshad a foothold there), as well as Japanese views on religion as a concept, myopinion on this particular topic should be taken with a grain of salt probably.

While I do know some historical contexts between religion inJapan from what I’ve studied in courses, I’m certainly not an expert. And Ifeel it would be unfair of me to make a judgment or sound condemning when thisparticular topic especially is notsomething Kodaka was intending to cater to a western audience with. This iscertainly something I would say an actual Japanese person would be bettersuited to talk about, since they would have much more knowledge and experiencewith religion in Japan than I myself do.

With that in mind, I’m happy to at least give my personalopinion on the matter a little bit. Spoilers for Chapter 3 will follownaturally, so anyone not caught up to that point shouldn’t read past this!

In my opinion, the portrayal of Angie’s religion as a wholewas a little…well, it’s tied to a lot of things. Religion in Japan is vastlydifferent from the very specific idea of religion that people in the west,particularly people from the United States, tend to have. While there arecertainly footholds of Christianity in Japan, most are Catholic only, and I’dwager that Protestant Christians are not very common at all beyond foreignmissionaries.

While Shinto and Buddhism are both very, very old religions whichhave been present in Japan for a long,long time, it was only really when the surge of western imperialism in theearly to mid- 1850’s hit and Japan saw the ways in which the U.S. and Europeannations carved China up like a steak that they finally decided it was in theirbest interests to open their doors to western trade and influence, lest theysuffer the same fate.

What followed marked the start of modern Japanese history aswe know it, and a long period of uncertainty and doubt between being forcedinto following the trends and cultures of the west, or trying to adherestrictly to very traditionally Japanese ideas, including everything fromfashion to weaponry to music to (you guessed it) religion. I won’t go too muchmore into the historical aspect of this, since there’d be far too much to talkabout, but basically, Japan saw a hugeinflux all at once of different religions around this time, and there came asort of marked idea of foreign religions that, to some degree, still sticksaround even in Japanese media like anime, video games, etc. to this day.

The portrayal of Angie and her religion does make me alittle…er, uncomfortable, namely because I feel it is a very Japanese take on “foreign”religion at large, and it does feel pretty stereotyped. I do like Angie quite alot, and I feel her Religious Student Council was very fun in that the conflict it offered to the group was aboutforcing them all to stay inside the school, rather than trying to force theirway out, but it’s pretty telling that the game never explicitly states whereAngie is supposed to be from, or what her religion is.

My guess is this is also a sort of result of her in-gamepersona likely being made specifically to cater to Tsumugi’s very otaku-likeways of thinking in terms of “trope” characters, including the “weird foreigngirl,” and that there is therefore a slight degree of Kodaka attempting to makecommentary on this sort of thing.

But it’s also just a side effect of lack of research andKodaka being unintentionally racist himself, because the fact of the matter isthat this dark-skinned girl gets made into the “weird, quirky, foreign islander”just because she is dark-skinned, andher religion is never specified, and also has elements mentioned at thebeginning of “blood sacrifices”…yeah, it just makes me pretty uncomfortable.Moreso considering Angie herself is probably also Japanese and might not evenbe foreign at all, but was only portrayed as such on the reality show becauseshe “looked” foreign.

As for Korekiyo, while he himself is definitely uncomfortable because of the incest factor, incrediblyenough I don’t really find the portrayal of religion with him to be theproblem. Korekiyo is extremelytraditionally Japanese: by virtue of being a cultural anthropologist, hisentire talent and life is basically dedicated to studying various cultures allacross Japan and the world over, but there’s no denying that his personal areaof expertise and interest lies with very, very traditional Japanese history.

He’s meant, as far as I can tell, to be a sort ofrepresentation of someone so enthralled and caught up in the traditions of thepast, including some left better off untouched like traditions of torture,binding, etc., that he’s sort of…uninterested in the present or future.Everything about him is concerned with things that happened in the past. Evenhis inability to move past his sister’s death without taking the lives ofothers is, in its own way, sort of commentary on the fact that he literallycannot think or live or see in the present like a normal person at all. Hisspeech habits, interests, and personal preferences all lie in the past.

And considering Korekiyo is a Japanese character written anddeveloped by actual Japanesecreators, I feel like if this is any sort of religious commentary at all, it’saimed towards Japanese religious beliefs and therefore not really something awestern fan can quite view from the same lens. Korekiyo’s spiritual beliefs inthe afterlife aren’t the problem; his problem is his creepy, inexplicable fascinationwith his sister, which for all that I still find it incredibly awful anduncomfortable that Kodaka ever slipped it into the plot, was at least nevertreated as excusable or forgivable or “funny” by the narrative.

There is plenty of room to judge Korekiyo for being ahorrible human being, even if there are aspects of his character which areinteresting on their own, or things which could have been done better with himif only Kodaka hadn’t included this kind of sloppy writing, but I really don’tfeel as if religion was the main issue with him at all.

Basically, it all comes down to the fact that I thinkChapter 3 was something of a clash between “foreign” ideologies and religion,represented by Angie and her widely spreading religious cult which left no realroom for argument and which people who refused to join were nonethelesssubjected to rules and regulations as if they were a part of it, and “nativeJapanese” ideologies and religion, represented by Korekiyo, who was too far back in the history and culturewhich he studied to look or behave rationally anymore.

It wasn’t the best-written portrayal, and there’s certainlya lot of things about it that could have been done better, but I thinkunderstanding that this is a specifically Japanese game written by a Japaneseauthor and intended, mostly, for a Japanese audience will help most people tounderstand that this was probably not intended as an attack on religion atlarge or on people who are fervently religious themselves.

I hope I was able to get my thoughts across, and I reallyhope nothing I wrote comes across as offensive or disrespectful. It’s reallynot my intention to talk over actual Japanese people, and if I at all cameacross as doing such in this, it’s okay to let me know! Thank you for askingthis question really nicely anon, and I hope I provided a decent response!