#The real fandom discourse

[jowithavianwings]

Odysseus hates Voldemort, not because he tried to kill a baby, but because he’s so damn incompetent about it.

Odysseus has been there too. But when he got a prophecy about a baby being his downfall, he yeets it out the window like the competent mf he is.

[vigilskept]

this whole idea in both the fandom and the games themselves that being a people attached to their past & a lost civilization is a failing whereas a celebration of the present is something to strive for wrt elven & dwarven culture is something that reads as fundamentally western & liberal to me.

[dunyun-rings]

I saw a post that said “Dragon Age discourse walked so that Baldurs Gate 3 discourse could run” and that’s absolutely false. Dragon Age discourse sprinted, foaming at the mouth, so that BG3 discourse could skip happily through a meadow

[myfandomrealitea]

The ability and right to choose is not exclusive to you.

If you think abortions are tantamount to murder, do not get one. But that is your choice. Other people have the ability and right to choose otherwise.

If you do not like piercings and tattoos, do not get them. But other people have the ability and right to decide what to do to their own bodies.

If you want to believe in a higher guiding authority and follow regulations by which to live under a religion, that is your choice. But other people are not obligated to comply with the regulations you have imposed upon yourself. Other people have the ability and right to choose how to live.

The ability and right to choose is for ourselves. It gives us the right to say I have made this choice for myself. Not I have made this choice and everyone else must comply.

[sunnemona]

☆every day i log onto tumblr and read the Takes Of All Time with my eyes

[rosetterer]

if you are mad that bucktommy is getting more attention than henren, you should be fucking furious that a non-canon mlm ship has been getting more attention than henren for YEARS

[mid-knight-black]

Do you guys realize that this is officially the “Buckley-Diaz” house? It is no longer a headcanon…the Diaz residence is now canonically the Buckley-Diaz residence 🫣🫣🫣

[somegurl8]

“People are writing this” “People are writing that” Actually let’s talk about what people AREN’T writing because we’re like 6 episodes into Judgement and I haven’t found a single fic for it on AO3. It’s been around since mid October and not a single fic. Why is there no love for Judgement

[glitter-stained]

Ngl it really peeves me when the debate about Jason's ethics regarding killing in the batfam mixes up the question of him being a moral character in regards to sticking to his own philosophy (aka compromising with what he thinks is right to salvage relationships, but also exploding trains to evade capture, killing random goons in a gang war, etc) and the question of him being a moral character in regards to whether his philosophy is right. And even with regards to his philosophy there is his philosophy on politics, crime control and harm reduction, and his ethical philosophy itself (utilitarianism, aka focusing on intended positive consequences of actions for the greater good rather than the action being fundamentally moral or immoral in itself). Those are different things. Those require different debates and should not be conflated together. I'm not even saying Jason is right! I think utilitarianism and deontology both suck and fail at providing sufficient guidelines for moral behaviour. ("Everybody still loses" like the nihilist clown says. The symbolism of that one scene is pretty cool on that regard.)

And I think some people at dc would very much like for you to make the connection that because Jason is harming civilians/killing unnamed goons, he is a bad person, and as such you don't need to examine the way his stance on moral philosophy (utilitarianism) opposes Batman's. But that's not right, they don't get to wiggle out of the fact that utilitarianism vs deontology is a complicated debate that has been going on for ages, that there is no clear-cut answer where Batman fundamentally comes out on top, they don't get to use the fact that Jason (in the era currently discussed) is a villain to saddle us with a false dichotomy of "well jason is wrong about stuff so batman has to be right" to avoid addressing the actual question. The traits of the people being tied on the tracks do not change the shape of the trolley problem. The traits of the person deciding to pull the lever do not change the shape of the trolley problem. It's still one lever, three people tied on one track, one on the other, do you pull the lever. That's it. Yes, bending the metaphor to address other questions (such as "who keeps tying people to the tracks" to question systemic violence or "how does my bias, my prejudice and empathy impact my decision to pull the lever depending on who is on the tracks") are interesting but that's not what the debate is about. If I wrote an essay about the trolley problem in high school and focused primarily on the nature of the people being tied on the tracks, I'd get a big fat zero with "off-topic" written in red all over my essay, so I'm not inclined to allow DC comics to get away with it.

[luckthebard]

Continues to be baffling to me how much of the CR fandom refuses to understand that, by the end of C1 (and frankly way earlier in that campaign than many people realize) Vax’s vow to the Raven Queen was totally voluntary, important and meaningful to him, and not something he wanted a trick or lawyer to “get him out of.”

I guess it surprises me to still see this because an intense disagreement about this was perhaps the biggest point of contention (and indeed one of the most interesting parts) of Vax and Keyleth’s relationship. I loved the disconnect they had about it as characters and that they stayed together in spite of it. (It’s part of what made me such a fan of Vaxleth as a romantic story.) But the Vax side of that disconnect they had about faith and fate and the gods seems to have been totally lost in the fandom memory of the campaign.

Vax does not see his service to his goddess as something he would need “rescuing” from and he would resent the assumption. De-orbed Vax would probably first go back to his duty and service, because that was meaningful to him. Breaking the rules a few times to try to save Keyleth doesn’t negate that, it’s just on-brand for a character who wore his heart on his sleeve and often made brash decisions to protect people he loved without thinking it through.

[elf-trash]

casual reminder to the dragon age fandom that criticism of a game isn't an attack on you personally if you are a fan of said game. also, it's very possible to have a nuanced take about these things. e.g. "i liked the queer representation but not some of the politics displayed in the game" etc. if someone says the game's writing displays some questionable neoliberal ideologies, that doesn't mean they're calling YOU a neoliberal for liking it. if someone says they found certain aspects of the game to be islamophobic, they're not calling YOU an islamophobe because you enjoyed the game or didn't see a problem. and so forth.

as has been pointed out, EVERY dragon age game has these problems to varying degrees. there are things they've handled very well in each game (esp for their respective times) and things they fumbled. discussing and critiquing the places where the storytelling fails doesn't invalidate the good things nor does it make you a bad person for liking any of the games. this applies to all media btw, not just dragon age!

and finally, criticism of a piece of media you liked is not inherently bullying nor is it some organized campaign to tear down anyone who enjoyed it and/or the creators of said media. publicly disagreeing with a public opinion posted on a public website where opinions from the opposing side are actively invited isn't bullying. this is the fandom discourse website. if you post fandom discourse and it leads to more fandom discourse, then idk what to tell you!!!! obviously harassment is never okay, but we're talking about a piece of media that none of us had a hand in making. no piece of media is perfect or above reproach nor are criticisms a personal attack on its fans or supporters (or even creators). are some criticisms of the games rooted in bigotry? sure! does that mean all critiques are coming from that place? absolutely not, especially considering a fair amount of the criticism is coming FROM queer POCs.

anyway, this got long and i know the dragon age fandom has quite literally always been Like This and i've been here since origins came out so this ain't my first rodeo. but let's please try not to lump every take we disagree with and paint it all with one extremely bad faith brush!!!!

[theweeklydiscourse]

God forbid you ever criticize the lack of consequences Bakugou experiences in MHA, or suddenly you’ll find dozens of Bakugou stans pouring into your mentions to make a speech about how cruel you are for forcing him to eat cement. They’ll act as though “consequences” inherently involves throwing him into the dungeon or putting him in detention for 100 years and then moan about how him facing consequences would only perpetuate a cycle of abuse/discrimination.

Listen, it’s not really that much of a consequence if the “consequence” in question isn’t directly connected to his current or past bad behaviour. “Oh but his scars!” “When he died that one time!” “His guilt for getting kidnapped” None of those are related to his bullying, and in my opinion, that makes them insufficient as consequences in an arc about changing for the better.

The consequences I would actually like to see could be as simple as: Izuku feels sad/mad because of what he went through, or certain characters reflect on how Bakugou’s past impacts their perception of him. More introspection on the victim’s end is needed, Bakugou doesn’t necessarily need to be pilloried for the arc to be satisfying.

[tommyscurls]

Saying Tommy would be at January 6th and photoshopping him into Jan 6 pictures with that hat

[imaginariumwanderer]

I'm probably biased in my negative view but....People who arrived for the ship after ep 7 just seem to be really allergic to the messy and 'unpleasant' (to them) parts of the ship, to the point where implementing the canonical unhealthy parts of the relationship makes the audience raise eyebrows and wonder where it came from (FROM CANON !!! IT CAME FROM CANON, WHAT DO YOU MEAN-). Unless you follow specific people who still remember the intricacies of the ship + how many layers this dynamic has, sdvn became an amalgamation of many popular mlm ships that are just people wishing to project what they like onto them; a sad sight

Ughhhhhhhhh I rlly don't want to complain since at the end of the day it's just fans having fun n doing what fandom is for, expanding on canon while adding their own flair into it. BUT buttt it get to a point..... Nowadays whenever I *do* look, I can barely find content that touched on half the complexity that make this ship so good in the first place. Don't get me wrong I love wholesome content of my ship as much as the next guy, I love fluff as much as angst!

About what you say about fans being allergic to the messy parts of the ship, I've seen some/ have talked to oomfies who complains about fans babying smilk n making vani more aggressive than he should be, up until the point where all their character traits have been switched. The majority are jokes like "haha what if pv is a mean fucker?" "what if smilk is a pathetic weak widdle baby?" but it has gotten so widespread that peps actually are treating it as their canon personalities. I'm guessing this is due to an attempt to make the ship "healthier"? It doesn't work for me, it just goes full circle but with the roles reversed. Till this day the majority of the fandom still believe truthless recluse is "evil" vanilla, even though he's just understandably withdraw n depressed after what he went through. I used to yell about this a lot in DMs and now I'll say this in public too RECLUSE IS A VICTIM trying to make him "equal" to smilk somehow is ignoring a large part of his character and I'll stand by that. #justiceforrecluse

"Sdvn became an amalgamation of many popular mlm ships that are just people wishing to project what they like onto them" yeahhh yeah, yup, again I know people are just having fun, I will never stop anyone from enjoying themselves. As someone who have shipped them since ep 2 I'm quite passionate about shadowvanilla you see... Both shadow milk+pure vanilla are such amazingly written characters, their dynamic is so important to me. I'm not pointing fingers but with the way some shippers treat these two... I wonder if they only like the shell of the characters and the content inside doesn't matter.

[utilitycaster]

In the end, it is extremely vindicating to see the various accusations levied re: why people don't like Campaign 3 because like, in the end, most of the people who do like campaign 3 are desperately insecure people who cannot live with the idea that someone else doesn't love the thing they love. Like yeah, if it makes you feel better, sure, call me a stupid jesus freak centrist edgelord who isn't a Real Punk (who also apparently only wants feel-good liberal endings), and who only cares about stories where you can ship two men; you can conjure up an image of me sitting slack-jawed on a couch, face covered with cheeto dust, pointing at the TV and going HAHA LIGHTNING GOD GIVE BIG LIZARD A BELT. It won't make you feel better, is the thing, because you've decided total fandom consensus is the only thing that will ever make you happy, and so long as a handful of people are like "Campaign 3 isn't very good and I don't think Bells Hells are very good people within the context of that world, and outside of that context I don't really care about them" you will be miserable.

[glitter-stained]

Hey guys when we make criticism of the (very criticable) RHATO vol1 can we please not phrase it as "Jason getting Dick's sloppy seconds" please and thank you can we please not do that