#Reddit Nonsense (TM)

[olderthannetfic]

Okay asking because I genuinely want to know: does anyone else absolutely hate when people include real brands/websites/etc even if it's a modern setting? I feel like it aggressively dates the fic instead of letting it be more timeless. Also fic fully is my escape, if I have to read that a character has an damn iPhone (tm) I can't stand it lol

--

It often bugs me, but it really depends on the details.

I think the reason it bugs me is less that the fic will be dated and more that the fic will be dated and the author doesn't appear to know.

Like... there's this one BTS fic that is complete self-indulgent nonsense where JK read Bandom fic on LJ at the height of that fandom there and had a crush on an older teenager who was his favorite fic author. And then NJ walks into his tattoo parlor right when some emo song is on. I wasn't in that fandom, but I was on LJ in that era and remember the fans. This BTS fic cracked me up.

Was it about very specific cultural references? Yes. Do I think Korean dudes would have cared about these exact cultural references, either the bands or the LJ community? Absolutely not! But I also know the author knew exactly what they were doing. Same with that BTS fic about knitters and crocheters that mentions subreddits. The author is well aware they're transplanting their own hobbies onto unlikely characters, but the parody of bad reddit behavior is spot-on, so I don't care.

The times it really annoys me are when it feels like the person isn't paying attention to how brands and specific businesses build a sense of place and is just slapping down names without thinking about it.

For my own original writing, I try to make up as much fake shit as possible because then I can control the cultural associations better and have fewer problems with getting a real life detail wrong through insufficient research.

[yarns-and-d20s]

I'm a fandom old.

I just left this comment on a Reddit post. Thought I'd drop it here. Just to have extra access to it.

I've been around the block in fandom. There's always been holier-than-thou types, but they were... tamer.

I started on the peripheries of fandom in the late 90s, and then I was in a fandom that didn't have fanworks. I got involved, fully, properly, at 18 years old, in 2000, in the Due South fandom. I have the very distinct honour of being the reason a separate mailing list, "Due South After Dark", had to be created. I wrote a fic that involved either handcuffs or a blindfold. Some people were SO OFFENDED by this tiny bit of mild kink that it caused an uproar.

But it was kind of just pearl clutching. I wasn't called a monster or suicide baited or anything like that. In fact, a lot of the offended parties didn't even talk directly to me, just around me and about the fic itself.

And that's the flavour that sort of stuck with a lot of fandom drama for years. The shipping wars of the early 2000s were shockingly tame, and there was also a lot of--to use an antiquated term--wank about slash shippers; the first time I saw the "fetishisation" accusations dating back all the way to the early/mid 2000s.

I do remember that there was a small contingent of Harry/Hermione shippers who accused Hermione/Ron shippers of liking "abuse" because Hermione and Ron bickered (not unlike Han and Leia or Elizabeth and Darcy). One of the big things is that a lot of this was not actually targeted. It was people pontificating on their LiveJournals without calling out anyone by name. Not that there wasn't a lot of arguments In the Comments(tm) and whatnot.

The first time I ever saw the term "SJW" was actually in fandom, some years before I started seeing it in "mainstream" online discourse. It was in the late 2000s, and it was used by left-leaning fanpeople against other left-leaning fanpeople. Right or wrong, it was a term levied against a certain type of, and I'm not going to beat around the bush, middle-class white woman in her late 20s and older. To be clear: fandom, especially when involving middle-class white women, has long had problems with racism, misogyny, homophobia, etc. But this specific type of fan, the "SJW" type, held to their convictions so hard they would drive people out of fandom. This is when things started to get targeted. When individual fans would get called out not for behaviour (eg, MsScribe, Victoria Bitter) but for what they made. For their fic. One young person who wrote a thoroughly misguided SPN AU (I don't remember if it was RPF or FPF--she wrote the characters as aid workers in maybe Haiti?) was driven out of fandom over that one fic; there was no atoning for it. There was no ability to learn why she shouldn't have written it. She was just a monster.

I can see these threads all converging and leading to, for instance, the Voltron: Legendary Defender shipping nonsense and the demonisation of one pairing over the other on moral grounds. I can see it coming from the Due South ladies who were offended by handcuffs and/or a blindfold, from the Harry/Hermione shippers saying that Hermione/Ron shippers were okay with abuse, from the specific callouts by white women towards people who wrote things unthinkingly and out of ignorance without having the opportunity to make amends for their grievous misdeeds in fic.

I can see how it leads to this thing, where we have people telling folks to kill themselves because they like a pairing with a 5-year age gap. Saying it's immoral to ship two characters because one of them is "autistic-coded" and therefore a child even though the character is in their 20s, it doesn't matter, that's pedophilia somehow (hey, Critical Role fans). Painting people as monsters because of a video game where the main characters commit murder and cannibalism and incest and it's not the first two things that are a problem.

The antis make everyone out to just be monsters, even the people who don't even like the taboo and dark fics, they just don't believe in censorship, harassment, suicide baiting, etc, over fucking fanfic. It's become "with us or against us". It's... terrifying. Especially because it's targeted against oftentimes vulnerable people who don't have, say, studios and publishers and tons of money to keep them safe. They go after, y'know, AstarionsGirl292 and not George R R fucking Martin. Well, I think they went after Tamsyn Muir? But she ain't GRRM, is she?

It's a helpless feeling, seeing fandom get to this point. But I can untangle it. And it sucks.

[flintandpyrite]

Ok so I’m reading the mystery flesh pit novel and it is really fun but…oh god…the medical knowledge.

“I got hiv

And then I took the medication. (The one and only. You know, the hiv medication. The medication that treats hiv.) and I was allergic to it.”

“Guess I’ll die. Or go looking for a cure in the form of a mysterious cosmic horror buried in the earth’s crust? Idk maybe both ¯\_(ツ)_/¯”

PSA: if you suspect you have HIV, please go to see a medical professional and get referred to a specialist. And if you suspect you are allergic to your medication please consult with said specialist before discontinuing the meds and haring off on a doomed suicidal journey into a cosmic horrorterror composed mainly of flesh. There are usually many options for treatment (in the case of HIV, upwards of 100 drugs) and even if you are somehow allergic to ALL of them, mitigating efforts can help you take them without dying.

[archived-brokentoys]

@folcire​ / giving me dat good rant:

Heres the tea; first up theres too much to say in notes but I was there from the begining of G0tham + the g0tham fandom to the end & I went through all the horrid horrid discorse and the idiotic behaviours of fans & the writers nonsense on their offical twitter account as well. So heres the bomb shell: Ed was not a well liked character in G0tham until he struck up a relationship with Oswald.  After that his populairty inceased a little directly along with the EdxOswald ship, however, Eds populairty didn't peek until he legit had a homophobic melt down toward Oswald. Theres a lot of debate about this but the truth no one likes to talk about is that the Writers and his actor INSISTED that Ed absloutely WAS NOT GAY which made his behaviours toward Oswald incredibly awful given if he was not gay or bi ("Ed is in no way queer" was the actors actual words on the subject ) because suddenly the fandom couldn't actually excuse Ed's behaviour by claiming it was simply "internalized homophobia", bc Ed being not gay/bi made it just Homophobia TM. However the "Nygm0bblep0tters" held onto this idea of Ed having "internalised homophobia" to the bitter end & the writers gleefully. Queer baited & were just all around aweful until the end too! So back to the point, Ed got mad popular when he went full homophobe & a lot of very homophobic fans considered him a hero 'saving' them from the 'gay cancer / gay agender' while idiotic slash shippers woobied him as that poor babu with interalised homophobia. The season 3 plot was HORRIFIC and destoryed the show. There as never & probably never will be anything more reildicious & homophobic on screen then that season long shit show. No, not even supernatrual gets close. I legit cant even rewatch season 3 bc it is HORRENDOUS. anyway. deep breath. There u go.

God. GOD. Like... I KNEW there was a reason the show gave me major bad vibes. For the most part, it was the writing which felt a little ableist to me. But golly! Let’s mark down ableism AND homophobia. I didn’t actually know this? Because as said, I’ve no actual context to the scenes that I saw. I just knew Ed rejected him and then Os killed his girlfriend and then Ed shot him. Yay, what a wonderful ship! Am I right? Which I was confused why so many people shipped them before... but now... NOW I’M ULTRA CONFUSED. Don’t get me wrong at all. I don’t mind the Os and Ed ship! Hell, if an Os manages to whoo my Ed, I’d ship it! But in the context of G0tham verse? It was always so... Weird to me. Like if they were treated as a problematic ship, I wouldn’t mind. But people would just ship them as if they’re very in love and as if it’s healthy and as if it’s cute. When like. They’ve done such horrible stuff to each other and from the sound of it NOW, it’s just awful. 

Anyways! Now you’ve REALLY turned me off the show! Like GOSH. I can’t even find the words to say?? Other than. I’m just not really surprised. Like I SOUND surprised, but I know I shouldn’t be. It doesn’t surprise me coming from a show like this.

But I guess I wanted to say one thing is that I’ve noticed that there are legit fans who seemingly love him outside the ship. Because I saw a Reddit thread on discussing which Ed is better, Ark@m verse or G0tham verse... in which damned near everyone said G0tham verse and I just... couldn’t believe it. I guess because Ark is what made me REALLY love Ed’s character, it’s what really introduced me to his character, and it had a lot of cool things about his character which I take a lot of inspiration for my own portrayal. People talked about how much better he was in G0tham. But then again... those people probably never really bothered listening to the patient files or doing most of the riddles, because lots of them... criticized him for things that were already explained in the game. (For example; there were a couple of people saying his hatred for Bat makes no sense. Even tho... the series literally gives SEVERAL REASONS as to why he hates Bat so much and why it’s personal. And many others thinks he’s written to be intentionally stupid/pretending to be smart in it, which... I also don’t think, but I can somewhat understand why others WOULD think that.) OKAY, I’m really getting off-topic but. Even on YouTube when I saw history about Ed’s character, everyone in the comments were like “G0THAM DID ED THE MOST JUSTICE!! I NEVER LIKED HIM UNTIL THAT SHOW!!” Which again, is funny... because after everything I heard? And now after what you told me, I just... do not like the sound of Ed’s characterization in G0tham.

P.S. I hope you don’t mind that I put numbers in your reply, I just don’t want this to pop up in the tags!

ANYWAYS x2, Edward is mentally ill, suffers from OCD, and he’s also bisexual. I declare this.