#Speaking Off the Record

[bixels]

The idea that uni protesters are "elitist ivy-league rich kids larping as revolutionaries" on Twitter and Reddit and even here is so fucking funny to me if you actually know anything about the student bodies at these unis. Take it from someone who's going to one of the biggest private unis in the US, 80% of the peers I know are either from the suburbs or an apartment somewhere in America, children of immigrants, or here on a student visa. I've heard about one-percenter students, but I've never met one in person. Like, don't get me wrong, the institution as a whole is still very privileged and white. I've talked with friends and classmates about feeling weird or dissonant being here and coming from such a different background. But in my art program, I see BIPOC, disabled, queer, lower-income students and faculty trying to deconstruct and tear that down and make space every day. So to take a cursory glance at a crowd of student protesters in coalitions that are led by BIPOC & 1st/2nd-gen immigrant students and HQ'd in ethnic housings and student organizations and say, "ah. children of the elite." Get real.

[braxiatel]

Just once I would love to see someone writing the dadsuma trope bring up the fact that he and Ren were convicted of crimes against the server in season 4

I know that most of the time he gets used as the father figure on the server in fanon because the artist needs someone to be a voice of reason, and fair game, but I just think he deserves to have a “I’m not going back to jail!” Moment that will baffle and confuse Grian or Joel or Gem or whatever (slightly) younger hermit he is being a father figure to in that instance

[thelastharbinger]

undefined

Tenoch Huerta on why the idea that “hard work always reaps its rewards” isn’t true. Talent and hard work alone doesn’t guarantee entry into certain spaces (you’ll always be sidelined even when you’re included), but it will determine your longevity once you force your way in.

[the-final-sif]

what is your opinion on the situation?

I've been at work all day so I haven't been able to sit down with stuff fully, it also seems like Caiti is planning to release a statement later today with more information I think? So I'd like to get her response there, but based on what I've seen so far I think I fall more on the side of "people made some dumb choices and should learn from them" than anything else.

Consent is messy and it gets messier when people start lying or are drunk. In this case, both Caiti and George were drunk. From what I understand, either Caiti had a 21+ wristband from the vidcon party, or her friend group did and assumed since she was drinking with them, she was also 21+.

Honestly, when it comes to the matter of underage drinking, I don't think it's even remotely fair to place blame on Dream/George for that. The blame there lies with Caiti deciding to drink while under 21, and on her friends, Ghostie and the other person present who were both over 21. Unlike Dream/George, both of them knew Caiti and knew exactly how old she was and were letting her drink. They were also letting her drink with no one sober and no one making sure she got home.

Now, Caiti is 18 and also I'm not a goddamn square, I'm not gonna stand here and be like "oh no drinking at 18 clutch my pearls" but like, if people are going to blame other people for that situation, that very much lies with Caiti's friends who knew they had an underage person drinking with them. I feel like people are weirdly assigning blame to Dream/George for not like, iding every person they hang out with (particularly if she had a 21+ bracelet at vidcon, which would mean she already got IDed). While completely avoiding placing any blame on the people who 100% knew they were taking an 18 year old drinking without a doubt.

Putting that aside, from my understanding George's side is he believed at the time that she was having fun, and the most they did was cuddle on a couch with other people there. He believed at the time that everything was cool, and that she later decided she was uncomfortable with what happened.

Honestly, I don't really think that's an unfair reading. At this same party, her best friend was there and from Ghostie's own words, she also didn't realize Caiti was uncomfortable until several months later when Caiti told her. If her best friend didn't notice she was uncomfortable or see anything wrong, then I find it hard to think anyone else would pick up on it.

There's certainly risks taken here that I wouldn't have taken. I think that George needs to do better with checking for consent and maybe vetting the people you're hanging out with. Although I also understand that doing a full background check on everyone you ever meet is an absurd requirement and if, at the time, they trusted the person that they actually invited, I get how that shit happens. Per consent, given that he was also drunk, I get how it may've appeared to him that he had consent. I do think it's still something to work on, but I'm also perfectly aware that in real life, people are often going off vibes and social cues, and sometimes those don't mash.

I also think that Caiti's friends have been pretty shitty throughout this. They take no responsibility for having let an 18 year old drink and then ditching her. They are absolutely milking drama out of this shit and they have a weird obsession with blaming Dream for shit he had no fault in.

As for Dream, I don't think he did anything wrong here. Full stop. If Caiti's best friend didn't notice that she was uncomfortable or unhappy, it's insanely unreasonable to expect Dream to have managed that. He was also drunk and hanging out with people, and he had no way of knowing Caiti was underage. None of that shit was his fault, and his statement seems very measured and reasonable. People are trying to blame him for things that he had absolutely no part in, and the UK group are absolutely trying to pull that shit.

Overall, sounds like several people involved made dumb choices, I hope they learn and grow. Otherwise all of this honestly sounds like shit that should've been talked out privately and not tossed to the internet for speculation. Human beings are messy and will fuck up sometimes. This feels like a case of miscommunication and people making risky choices that left people with some hurt.

Again, I may change my mind with further evidence presented, but that's how it feels to me.

[butchmartyr]

i love just making shit up wholesale, like actually bro the fact you see trans women say “don’t be fascists about kink” and immediately assume she’s talking about any of this “loli” bullshit is so fucking telling, literally just “well she’s a trans woman talking about sex so certainly she’s evil!” but nobody cares ofc ofc why would we ever think critically or with nuance about anything when we can just hate on random trannies for no coherent reason and act like it’s moral and just, that’s so much easier

[writer-room]

Lloyd’s the kind of person to be completely silent while everyone is horribly singing Bohemian Rhapsody only to belt out the line “I sometimes wish I’d never been born at all” in perfect pitch and then fall dead silent again as he went back to like, reading a book or something. send post

[akkivee]

ALSO!!!!!! HAPPY FIVE YEARS ANNIVERSARY TO THIS ICONIC INTRO!!!!!!!💜💜💜💜💜💜💜

[allthegothihopgirls]

I love the asexual Bruce Wayne agenda and I totally agree with it. What I want to know though is how Bruce (asexual queen that he his) deals with his hormonal teenage boys?

Cause like Bruce never got the sex talk (I mean his parents died when he was young, and the family Buttler is Not giving his former employers son the sex talk) and that’s fine by Bruce. Cause he’s never felt these ‘urges’ that everyone talks about. Honestly, sex is overrated.

But, Batman prepares for everything. And one thing that people ALWAYS stress about parenting is having to give your kids the sex talk.

I just really want to know about the hijinks like;

Bruce: *Standing forlornly in front of a ‘Sex Ed’ PowerPoint* So, I understand that you probably have no desire for these… urges. That everyone talks about. But the parenting book (and society) decrees that to be a good parent, I need to give my children a proper education on sex.

Dick: *Very much not asexual* Yeah, no thanks dad this really helps!

Bruce: *Bewildered* How???

although the idea of bruce uncomfortably giving his version of a 'talk' is amusing, i don't think he'd give one at all. none of the boys would really give him any reason to, until he gets to tim at least (he's like, the only one i haven't fully projected my asexual agenda onto at this point).

dick's always been very responsible, so when he starts dating, maaaaybe bruce has like, a single thought contemplating whether or not to sit him down, but i think he'd get off with a "you know that you should always treat a woman right, yeah?" whether dick's actually dating women is up for debate but you get the point and a pat on the back. i believe that bruce operates predominantly under the 'if they have questions, they'll ask' mindset, so he trusts that if dick needs an answer to something, he'll come to bruce. (or just source an answer elsewhere)

i do also think that if anything, alfred would be the one to pull bruce up and ask if he'd adequately informed the boys of things 'one on one' (because he KNOWS that he hasn't). and even then, if bruce were to actually sit dick down, he wouldn't get so far as an introduction spent dancing around the topic because bruce is himself, mortified, before dick stops him and says that he doesn't have to give him this talk, because "wally already did" (much to bruce's disapproval).

as for jason, dying isn't great for a guy's love life. as i pretty much said previously, i don't think bruce would approach anything until it was absolutely relevant (when the boys are already in a relationship). so jason not getting a chance to really date before he died, means that bruce never had the opportunity to talk to him about it. i also believe he'd assume that jason already knows, with the crude jokes he makes, and the kind of people he grew up around on the streets. and obviously, by the time he comes back as red hood, he's too old to 'not know' and it's just presumed he knows his stuff.

i think tim might cause him a little bit (a lot) of trouble though. it definitely scares the shit out of bruce when he finds out about steph getting pregnant by her ex. it prompts him to fling fully into action mode to prevent tim ever being in that situation. that'd be the first time he's properly spoken to one of his kids about it, lots of emphasis on protection and what NOT to do.

however for any other talk pre-steph, i really do think he'd try to palm off the responsibility onto dick (he's very thankful that he's got kids old enough to do it for him), asking him to talk to tim. bruce would probably pull out all the cards "i'm too old" "he'd think it was less weird coming from you" "i don't know what you kids get up to, he's better off hearing it from someone who he can relate to" "i don't want to traumatise the kid" etc etc.

i do think the whole steph situation would be a bit of a reality-check for bruce though, and he'd have the realisation "that could have been any one of the kids" and he would be on his toes for a bit. especially with the amount of girls tim is rumoured to have relations with. him getting with bernard would be a big relief for everyone bruce i think.

once again when he gets with bernard, bruce is 100% palming off the responsibility of having that talk, onto one of his other kids. most likely jason. this is getting super far into my own personal headcanon territory, but literally none of them are straight to me, and i think jason would be the most 'comfortably' gay (mostly just his lack of care about the subject, being percieved as open-ness). bruce would 100% ask dick to talk to tim if it weren't for how private he tends to be with his love life in adulthood. (even getting him to just have the general 'talk' with tim was pushing it)

i don't think he'd ever talk with damian, the league definitely taught him (although objectively). i do think out of all the kids, he'd be the one to have questions though, mainly about the romantic aspect of relationships, as he struggles to wrap his head around the concept of 'love', (which really tests bruce's parenting abilities) i do think dick (having the bond he does with damian) would go out of his way to have a talk with him as he got older though.

as for cass, i don't think she would have ever been taught, with her irregular upbringing, as well as not going to regular school and all. but girls are new in the batfamily, and bruce doesn't want to touch that conversation with a ten-foot pole, so he calls diana in to do it for him.

final note, i also really do think a large contributing factor to bruce most likely never approaching the subject out of his own free will is just how private they all tend to be with their love lives. like i can see dick telling bruce that he's dating someone (as a teenager), but apart from a name and how he knows them, he's not really giving much else away. jason on the other hand just completely leaves it up for everyone else to figure out on their own (it lives entirely in my head that he's like this with his family, but is super close with his partner's family, which is a shock to everyone). if anything, tim's the only one who ever wants people to know about his relationships, for them to 'meet the parents' (bruce) etc etc. it probably all stems from bruce himself being a pretty secretive guy.

[me-sploh-rada-imas]

mic'd up jure highlights from sea star festival last year

[diddlesnap]

katniss and johanna sketches while i try to nail down designs

[thelastharbinger]

undefined

Tenoch Huerta makes the case against “politically incorrect” humor.

[For context: the person who spoke before Tenoch was talking about growing up with comedy that would be considered offensive or non PC on television in which gay people were often made fun of and women were hyper-sexualized, but how he never applied that stuff to reality, as his defense towards Simpsons/ South Park-esque humor. Tenoch will then have a few things to say about this.]

[transarchivist]

the trope of "podcast Must have some sort of framing device" is fun- especially when it's subverted

[dumb-flip-flappers-captions]

i know i haven't said anything on this blog for years but. one of my friends sent me this tweet like a week ago and i haven't stopped thinking about it since

[not-poignant]

Out of curiosity, when did the, 'fanfic doesn't need to adhere to canon, everything is valid and good, don't give concrit unless specifically asked for' attitude become the norm? Genuine question.

I was active in fandom back in the LJ days, when sporkings and comms viciously mocking Mary Sues were the norm, but then I sort fell out of fandom spaces for the past (checks notes) fifteen years holy shit. The current attitude seems diametrically opposed to what I remember fandom being like (kinda shitty, it was 'cool' to be an asshole back then), and I'm just curious as to when and how the shift happened. I mean, I assume it was a gradual thing, but is there anything in particular that stick out to you?

(Also, because tone doesn't convey very well through ask, and I don't want to leave you with a poor impression-- this is by no means a defence of the 2000s attitudes, nor an aspersion on the current ones. I'm genuinely only curious about the evolution from one to the other; I hope that comes across.)

Hi anon!

TL;DR because my response got LONG -> Anon this existed before Livejournal as an attitude, in fact modern fandom was literally born out of being not canon compliant (*waves aggressively to Spirk shippers*) and this existed on Livejorunal too and there have always been big pockets of fandom that really frowned on sporking even there, like that was not cool when I was on LJ, unless you were a certain age, or in certain spaces in fandom.

But also AO3 was its kind of final death knell re: making it cool to bully 13-16 yo writers (who were largely the victims of sporking) and killing dreams, which was born out of meta happening on LJ and in other places about like... not trying to make people miserable for writing a free fic out of the love in their heart that someone else didn't like or think was good enough.

Anyway, the longer version of this under the read more!

(For everyone else, welcome to some of the uglier aspects of 00s fandom!)

So there was actually criticism around all the stuff you mention 15-20 years ago as well. I was also on Livejournal during that time and there was a pretty big proportion of people in certain fandoms who recognised even then that like... setting up communities to mock say, Mary Sue writers, was actually a pretty weirdly cruel thing to do to people who were providing free labour and the literal only 'payment' they could get in a kind of energy exchange was people just not being complete dickheads to them.

So things were already changing, especially in many LJ communities and awards communities. There were a lot of big debates over whether concrit should be asked for, and a growing movement of authors who said they welcomed constructive criticism for example, instead of assuming it should automatically apply. There was also a lot of meta around the function of fanfiction and whether it should even be 'good' by published standards if the author was just doing it for themselves, and for fun (esp if they were just going to get punished for it by folks who were elitist, judgemental, grammar purists etc.)

Things really changed around the time of AO3 (2009-2010 - literally around 14~ years ago, you may have just missed the big change anon!), Strikethrough and the Dreamwidth exodus. There was a massive swing away from leaving concrit unless the author specifically asked for it, and fandom became a lot more generally able to recognise that a lot of labour goes into fanart and fanfiction and that paying with public criticism is shitty actually. Also people were just more able to recognise that like most fanfiction writers aren't trying to become professional writers and many don't want to be.

(I would actually say things changed around the time of fanfiction.net too - rude comments there were definitely noticed and could create some pretty forward 'hey why are you doing this on something you literally don't have to read' responses from fellow readers - idk what fic sites you were on. The small indie fic sites where you could often only comment via email for example, definitely drew a lot more critical attention than sites that tended to have public comments).

The 'fanfic doesn't need to adhere to canon' literally exists since the very first Spirk slash fic in modern fanfiction in the last few decades. Literally, as soon as you write Kirk/Spock, you're not adhering to canon. Our fanfiction 'ancestors' literally paved the way for a legacy which is about not adhering to canon in order to see the world/s and thing/s you want to see, be entertained by, by turned on by, or enjoy, from the very beginning. You may not have been in slash circles anon, but the foundation of queer same sex fanfic is in many ways the foundation of fandom. But yeah, this is literally where fanfiction started! As soon as you're shipping characters that aren't canon for fun (or for whatever reason), you're making it pretty clear that you want stories different to canon, and you have to change things to often keep those characters in-character.

So yeah! That's been there for decades. Idk what circles you were in on that front! While it was fairly common for a while to criticise characters for being OOC (Out of Character), imho, a lot of folks started to recognise that they literally weren't paying for what they were criticising, and they could just walk away and potentially not like...blast the fanfic. Some folks started to recognise more that people were writing with ESL, or were teenagers (some 40 yos in fandom realised they were mocking literal 15 year olds in their proto-podcasts and websites and realised actually that's just...mean? Really mean? Not the way to nurture new generations of fanfiction writers. Definitely in no way encouraging), or were writing for themselves, or writing for like one other person, or writing for fun, or writing for free, or writing for personal reasons etc.

'Don't Like Don't Read' wasn't just about political stuff, it was also about just walking away if you feel the urge to slam a fanfic in the comments.

I've been in fandom for around 2.5 decades anon, and there were so many spaces that were not actually as shitty or mean-spirited as the ones you were in? Or ones that at least had a lot of different thoughts etc. Like, sporking (mocking/bullying badfics and sometimes the folks who wrote them) was disapproved of by a lot of people in fandom even while sporking was at the height of its popularity (the Fanlore page goes into more detail about this). It might have just been the fandoms you were in, or the people you were hanging out with (and that might have been dependent on your age or just if you were around people who wanted to be 'cool' back then - in the same way that being an 'anti' is cool among certain crowds today. It's possible to spend years in certain crowds and never get an image of broader fandom for example - we can all end up in spaces like that! I know I have.)

When I started writing fanfiction (which no one will EVER find lmao), generally giving positive comments was normal. Constructive criticism was actually pretty rare and there were already fanfiction aggregate sites that generally disapproved of it in their Rules of Conduct. People were encouraging and polite. And this was around 20 years ago on Livejournal and private indie fanfiction websites.

I would actually say there was never exactly an evolution from 'one to the other' because like thousands of people in fandom already believed this and argued in defense of supporting fanfiction and transformative works via accepting that people are labouring for free and that not everyone wants to become a 'better writer' etc. - the meta was there on Livejournal in the 00s. There were communities where sporking was seen as hip/fun, and communities where it was literally banned or at the very least, super frowned upon.

There were meta fandom communities where sporking was the subject of discussion and you know eventually in a lot of those meta communities, that's where a lot of folks decided actually that calling out the fanfiction of 16 yos as 'cringe' or 'badly done' maybe said more about us as human beings and what we wanted fandom to be, than it did about the actual fanfic itself. By the time AO3 came around, people built it with this in mind.

To this day on AO3 it's mostly considered appropriate to say you want concrit in your author's notes, and to otherwise assume as a reader it's never welcome if it's unsolicited. That started during the LJ era. And it was talked about at great length. There's obviously going to be people who disagree! But for the most part I'm a big believer in compassion and 'not everyone is here for the same reason' and 'they literally gave this to us for free and it's meant to be fun' (like yourself! What we do/think/argue 10 years ago on LJ is sometimes different to what we do 10 years later lol, I used to be against trigger warnings pre-AO3! Times change a lot :D )

So yeah, this was definitely something that was around before you and I came to fandom, and it was something that continued to grow as an attitude during, until finally it kind of won out on AO3. But yeah fandom as we know it was born in people literally not being canon compliant to make some gay dreams come true (Spirk shippers bless them all), at a time when there was no representation.

Even in the earliest days of fandom where comments could only happen via email, one of the earliest phrases authors used were things like 'flames will be used to roast marshmallows.' For those reading who don't know, flames are hate comments, critical 'this fic is bad because' comments etc. Except you emailed them directly to the author, because there was no place for comments on a fic.

And this started because authors in part got death threats for writing gay stuff.

So you know, from the very beginning, authors in fanfic have by and large had a very low tolerance for criticism / hate over something they're doing for free and making no profit out of, when they're changing/altering the canon as they please to create representation (or hotness lmao), that is literally a labour of love in a world of very little representation. From there, things have just grown. The whole 'flames will not be tolerated' existed even before Livejournal did.

Honestly there are still people who love sporking and you could probably find groups and Discords dedicated to that even now (actually you literally can, there's a Dreamwidth group for it), it's kind of wild but it started to get cool again. Just like 90s clothing :D (Which is also wild because I can just take that crap out of my closet and wear it again).

But yeah it also sounds like you may have been in some pretty crappy pockets of fandom! When I was on LJ in the 00s I avoided those places and still got to experience fandom across multiple fandoms (mostly NCIS, Captive Prince, HP, Profiler, The X-Files and some others) and communities.

I was super active in some fandom communities and saw a lot of meta happening, and my view during the early and late 00s was that sporking was largely pretty frowned upon after a very brief (like 3-6 month) era where it was cool for only some folks, and then everyone (including some - but not all - of those folks) was like 'heyyyyyyy hang on a minute.' It was something that the bullies did, and enjoyed, and otherwise folks kind of stayed away from it, especially once they learned people were becoming too scared to write fics, which is the inevitable outcome of mocking/bullying folks and fics that have been made purely out of love for something.

Like, publicly making a spectacle out of what a 13 yo (they were often teens - and it's kind of sad how many 40 yo women were doing the sporking :/ ) wrote out of love, just for fun/clout was not considered cool by everyone even back then, because like, a lot of us saw that as killing new generations of fandom (some folks who sporked considered it a win if a fic or account got deleted, this is not based behaviour), not actually creating good writing, internalised misogyny (Mary Sue hatred and self insert hatred), etc. It's hard to explain because I do really think we were in different corners of fandom at the time, but I don't know anyone personally from my time on Livejournal who actually liked sporking as an idea or enjoyed it or enjoyed listening to it or reading articles mocking fic.

I knew about it from very lively 'is this okay' 'actually no it's not even if it's just for fun this is trying to hurt people and saying 'it's just the fic' is not going to be the bandaid a teenager needs to understand why older folks (generally) in fandom are mocking them for being new at a skill' discussions on LJ in meta fandom communities. So this is how much I could be in fandom and not be a part of it and also have like a wildly different experience to your LJ experience!

I think if I'd been a teenager during that era it would have seemed a lot more appealing (in the same way that many teens are antis now before they grow out of it), and fuck it if I was a more bitter person who was just around people who liked to make fun of what other people created, perhaps I would have enjoyed it too, I can see a lot of reasons why a person would fall into that in LJ -> but I was an adult on LJ trying not to be mean to people or what they were creating, so yeah I was maybe just in very different spaces! (Don't get me wrong, I have my giant fucking character flaws, but I was very scared of people hating me so like I didn't want to do things that would make that happen, lol, and also I was scared to put up fic myself during the era of active sporking. I know for myself that sporkers didn't just scare away writers of 'badfic' - they...intimidated a LOT of people).

Before AO3 I was on FF.net, posting fics on LJ, posting on Schnoogle, gossamer, and a couple of other archives. So I don't think my experience was that 'narrow,' I just think I wasn't around like... anime at that time or other places where it might have been happening. I also avoided like...Draco/Malfoy where CC drama was happening and I know sporking was popular in that specific arena / pairing for a while as well (er, as well as anything to do with Mary Sues).

So yeah! That's about where that is. Generally gatekeeping fandom is just seen as not a great thing to do to people, and that creates other kind of beliefs that are generally upheld as being more inviting/nurturing. After all, if someone truly wants to get better at writing, they can ask, or do courses, but as we all know, everyone has to write some bad stuff to get good at it, but not everyone wants to be good. Folks are in fandom for different reasons. I'm rambling now so I'm going to finish my lunch! :D

[butch-bakugo]

It still blows my mind that no body wants to own movies or CDs. Like I don't like not owning any movies or shows I like and wanna rewatch. Maybe I sound like a boomer but I'm not planning on paying for Netflix for the rest of my damn life just for this one movie I love that their hosting. Imma go on the internet and get the DVD.

We really shouldn't allow these streaming services to kill DVDs and CDs. We should not let them kill physical media. They want you to not have a physical copy, so that when you stop paying, you don't have access to the product your paying for. Buy more CDs. Buy more DVDs. Buy a damn VCR. I mean shit, a fucking Xbox or playstation can play any DVD, blue ray or not. Your car has a radio for a reason.

Don't let them kill physical media. Because if or when the cards fall, you'll be left with nothing.

[glacialswordsman]