#also wee bit of fandom discourse

[sapphire-weapon]

Hiiiiii. My opinion might be unpopular and controversal even to some but i just gotta share this with you because FINALLY i found someone that is actually rational about how fucked up Aeon really is. I'm sorry i said it.

First, nothing wrong with the ship it's self, it's just that it ain't it. I personally realistically could never be able to picture Leon with any of the girls he's been seen with so far. I'm so fucking glad RE4R choose to shut it down or at least tone it wayyy down a notch than the OG.

It gives my wee heart some comfort knowing that i can enjoy self insert/reader/OC fics with Leon out there without constantly having to think of Wong at all times. What can i say? I'm a sucker for this man and i wanna be self indulgent and give him happiness he deserves. AND i'm grateful for everyone else that does exactly the same, regardless if it's just a fictional pixel.

Also, your little take on EagleOne is very cute and interesting, i love multishipping and whilst i personally never saw their interactions like that (sorryyy) i do like the creative theories people come up with in the fandom while remaining respectful to those around them unlike some shippers i know... But yeah, if it means anything, i just wanna say that i saw Leon's interactions with Ashley sincerely as this older brother that saw himself in Ashley like he was once in RC and wanted to protect that "innocence", maybe there's a bit of Sherry in there too. I think this is also something Capcom was going for too, one of the directors said i believe.

But all in all, there's no hope for these characters outside of fanfiction really, just gotta keep fighting the good fight.

what kind of relationship do you have with your siblings

i have to ask this question every time someone says they see leon and ashley like that, because it makes me feel like i just got an ask from alfred ashford or ruben victoriano.

people can be friends, man. if my brother (6 years older than me, so basically the same age gap as leon and ashley) put his hands on me the way and as often as leon did to ashley, i'd stop taking his calls and move out of the city.

i'm known for exaggeration and hyperbole, but i'm not being hyperbolic with this one. it actually sincerely grosses me out, as someone with an older brother. if you don't ship them, just let leon and ashley be regular-old friends, because the sibling shit is incestuous and weird with what their dynamic is in canon.

and i get that this wasn't the point of your ask, but like... you talk about respecting other ships but then throw "siblings" at me, when "sibling" discourse is only ever used to try to discredit ships and shame/ostracize the people who ship them. you do this while also infantilizing ashley (comparing her to sherry??? a 20 year old to a 10 year old???) and being patronizing towards me ("your little take"), and i just

i'm glad i could give you peace of mind as far as the aeon thing is concerned, but i find it so weird that your way of saying thanks is to go out of your way to try to be rude about a different ship.

[riddle-me-ri]

With various riddlers, what kind of dere do you think each one is? (Ex:kuudere, yandere,etc.) Arkhamverse Eddie is a definitely a tsundere.

A/N: okay okay so I had to go out and do some research for this one. Cause for the little bit of a year that I spent dabbling into some anime and manga, I thought there was only like four or five dere personalities, only to realize…there’s like over a dozen. So after some research, I feel like I can now appropriately respond rip. Also, some of these personality types depend on a romantic relationship while others don’t…I’m gonna try my best rip. These are my opinions based on my perspectives of both the personality types and the different Riddlers, feel free to agree to disagree but like I don’t wanna cause any crippling discourse adffghh please don’t come at me I’m just a wee anxious socially awkward nerd.

The Riddler’s Dere Personality Types (based on someone who knows the bare minimum):

Arkhamverse Riddler: 

So, I do full heartedly agree Arkhamverse Eddie has strong tsundere tendencies. We’re all painfully aware of his loud bravado and egomaniac antics in order to actually protect himself from getting hurt because he’s actually incredibly insecure. He’ll scream, rave, rant, insult, and treat anyone and everyone poorly in order to lift himself up. However, I do believe that if someone can see through his illusions of grandeur but still recognize the inherent brilliance of Ed and recognizes that for him (so he doesn’t have to constantly build himself up) he could be more open, just I wouldn’t expect it to happen over night.

Reevesverse/Dano Riddler: 

Dano Riddler was sorta hard to find a good match, I could’ve easily gone with fandom and been like yeah, he’s a yandere (which I can see where y’all get that from, and like if we’re following the storyline that he does/did love Batman). But again, I did my research lol. And from what I’ve seen in the film and the first book of Year One. I’m leaning more towards Dandere (aww dano riddler is a dandere sorry moving on…) Dandere’s are the quiet asocial types that avoid conversation when applicable cause they’re worried about causing conflict or make trouble. In Year One, obviously, we see him struggle interacting with people face to face, and every time he even attempts it, it seems to backfire. UNTIL he dons the Riddler persona and uses that as a cover to express his true emotions and motivations. 

Gotham Riddler: 

This will be mostly referring to Season 1 Ed, I have seen the show up until the start of Season 3, you girl got super annoyed at the Lee/Ed bullshit and it was hard to stomach. Petty I know, but for all the love and adoration of this Eddie…I sorta can’t stand this Riddler (I know blasphemy to love one but not the other, but it’s my honest opinion…stop lowering your voice you damn dunce) ANYWAY, like…at the start I think he’s more of a deredere (someone whose overall kind, sweet, especially to someone they have a crush on or love and sometimes overly energetic) but obviously as the show progresses it’s clear to see he also has yandere tendencies (murder solves everything *finger guns*)

BTAS Riddler:

While Gotham somewhat starts out this way, my husband is a deredere through and through and I’m not saying that purely from a favoritism standpoint. Judging more so by his demeanor in Riddler’s Reform, we actually got to see how Edward interacts with a somewhat general populous. He was seen to be extremely charismatic and eccentric, albeit also shy (when flirted with) and endearing. I believe this Ed would be overall courteous of others as long as they show the same courtesy, obviously that’s not always the case and therefore he goes to the extremes. He would be kind to a fault, he won’t let someone walk over him however (lookin’ at you Mockridge). 

P.S. if I was really playing into my favoritism, I would’ve given him a kekkondere (someone who full heartedly believes in love at first sight and wants to be betrothed asap to me BUT I didn’t I showed some restraint asdffg)

Zero Year/Capullo Riddler & Twojar Riddler:

So I’m gonna cheat and combine these two, TECHNICALLY speaking they are one in the same, storyline wise, so I figured it’d be safe to give them the same personality type even if there’s like a year or two distance between them and their motivations are…odd af sometimes.

For these shitheads I’m going with Kuudere but they also have Hiyakasudere traits. 

A kuudere from my understanding is your cool, calm, and collected personality. Which these two shitheads have shown, I mean you’ve gotta be somewhat confident to just waltz around with your shirt open. That and just about every panel of Zero Year Riddler is him with a shit eating grin, even as Batman got closer and closer. They’re also extremely analytical to a fault, twojar being the extra prick he is literally crafted a whole war just get Joker to laugh and Zero Year boasted to Batman all the different variations of plans he conceived before choosing the one that ultimately lead to Zero Year. Not to mention, this Riddler’s start has him as a tactician and consultant of sorts for various corporations. 

Where the hiyakasudere traits come in is if there’s someone that’s an object of their affections. Both of them would be chronic teasers and there’s no way you can convince me otherwise. Hiyakasudere, are pretty flirtatious  and tease their love interests on an almost daily basis as their way of showing affection. 

Gotham City Sirens Riddler: 

Much like Zero Year and Twojar, Sirens Riddler I also consider to be a kuudere, but for different reasons. 

This particular Riddler is an actual reformed Riddler (not just a ploy like BTAS albeit it’s sometimes debated if he’d actual go straight or not if Batman wasn’t there). He’s also probably one of the most self aware and is constantly having to combat his colleagues and the public’s preconceived notion of who he was. So he’s very cool and calm, despite being held hostage over live animals or jumping in to protect a possible victim from an oncoming bomb. He still stays rational and constantly tries to collect the pieces his fragmented mind as he questions if him changing is even really worth it. 

Young Justice Riddler: 

I feel like once I explain this personality type, i-it will just make sense to you guys…

A Hajidere is “for someone who’s really shy or nervous around their crush.” Also “they have trouble confessing to the one they love and may often blush or faint at the sight of them making the first move.” 

Do…Do I need to say more? I know this is mostly purely fanon based on what little we’ve gathered from the three episodes he was in…but c’mon…that’s on point.  

Telltale Riddler:

Now this, asshole. 

This absolute stick in the mud asdfjk

Basically, a hindere is someone that’s extremely haughty. He carries himself proudly and with no pretense. Just imagine Arkham Ed, but actually is secure. I had a tough time deciding if Telltale would be a hindere or a tsundere, but a tsundere is described as being capable of kindness and affectionate. I don’t see that with this Ed, purely because of how far he’s gone in his deranged but damaged mind. However, hindere’s aren’t totally without hope, they can have a soft spot for a particular someone, but it has to be an absolute miracle for it to work. (plus i’m just trying to break up the monotony of my answers rip, plus we only get so much out of this one cause well…iykyk)

Hush (DCAU) Riddler: 

Bare in mind for this Riddler it’s only for the Edward BEFORE the stupid twist again ifykyk. 

Based solely on the mannerisms seen during the middle of the film, I can see him also being a hajidere if there’s a love interest involved. 

I’ve always seen this Riddler as an extension of Young Justice, if he actually made it out on his own as he got older, and continued to make a name for himself (and he did although found himself somewhat of a laughing stock). Albeit was still pretty dorky, until he decided to used that assumption people have of him to his advantage later. 

He’s able to hold conversations just fine with other people like Batman, other Rogues, GCPD. Those don’t really matter too much, Batman maybe a little more than others. However, when it comes to a crush, this poor man’s dead to rights lol

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Okay, I think that’s my final take…I don’t even wanna admit how many drafts, look backs, and edits this took. Again, totally based on my opinions and outtakes, clearly this isn’t an overly analytical or proper research paper of any kind. This is purely just based on the vibes when reading their stories or watching their performance and taking a pinch of fanon into the equation to fill in some gaps. 

Please don’t come at me. Please don’t fight me rip, I’m tired lol. 

Thank you

[denimbex1986]

'In the end, Peaky Blinders got the send-off it deserved. The sixth season paid tribute to the late Helen McCrory, rounded off the ongoing war between Tommy Shelby and brother Michael – we can talk about how convinced anyone was that Tommy wouldn’t win, but anyway – and landed on a final shot of Tommy doing Tommy things having realised he wasn’t actually dying after all. It was a plot! Possibly involving Hitler!

There were some loose ends that never turned into much, like that whole storyline with the American bloke who stabbed a guy in the knackers and then melted away, and it might have been nice to get to know wee Ruby before she carked it. But it did most things it needed to, and did them while having one eye on the long-promised film too.

Now though the Peaky gears are creaking into motion again. There was the not particularly cryptic statement from showrunner Steven Knight on the 10-year anniversary a couple of weeks back. “It hardly seems believable that it’s 10 years since Tommy Shelby first rode that black horse through the streets of Birmingham,” Knight wrote. “The phenomenal global success of the show is down to the brilliant and hard work of the loyal team that makes it happen. Ten years on and the story is not yet over. Watch this space.”

And, if you’re on Instagram, you’ll perhaps already know that Paul Anderson, who played Tommy’s brother Arthur, has started his own Peaky-themed Instagram broadcast channel called ‘By Order Of…’ and administered by Anderson and his digital manager Nav Salimian. (Salimian also appears to have founded a clothing brand making some quite – ahem – zhuzh-y suits.) The channel isn’t really doing much breadcrumbing at the minute, just a picture from Anderson’s grid of Arthur lighting a gigantic cigar, then a contact sheet of headshots, and the message “Wishing you all a blessed day” with a saluting emoji. It’s cryptic.

Rounding off a series then coming back for a one-off story is a very, very hard thing to pull off. Usually these things need a few different factors to click if they’re going to work. Most obviously, it needs a reason to exist. Plenty of TV series have farted out a movie for the sake of it, and Peaky really shouldn’t be one of them.

It also needs to run pretty hard on the heels of the main series. That’s partly because of the third thing the movie needs: a motivated fanbase who are going to razz up the whole enterprise. To anticipate it, interpret it, and possibly get into arguments with other fandoms over it.

The fandom aspect is the bit that now makes a show or movie feel like it’s actually happening and has some purchase in the world. But the Peaky fanbase is quite different to the ones that follow Succession or Game of Thrones or The Last of Us. There’s an enthusiasm in those fandoms for drilling right down into characters’ psyches and mining the information we’re given from camera moves, editing choices and production design to navigate how each individual character is feeling and reacting to what’s happening in the story-space.

That is not the experience of being in the Peaky fandom. By and large, it’s not one which tends to produce fan theories or take apart scenes frame by frame; it’s more vibe-based TV fandom, and one more inclined to follow the story wherever it goes rather than throwing around counterfactuals and second-guessing what Knight has in mind.

Most Peaky fans seem happy to sit back and be taken on a rollercoaster ride, albeit a rollercoaster ride which is 30 per cent slow-motion. It’s actually quite a pleasant throwback to the way in which people used to discuss TV and film before the Redditification of fan discourse. It is not serious business. It’s people posting pictures of their ‘BY ORDER OF THE PEAKY BLINDERS’ mug or some quite derivative artwork of apes wearing three-piece suits captioned ‘Monkey Blinders’, plus occasional innocent enquiries as to why Tommy was having seizures if his tumour wasn’t real in the end.

The reason I raise this is that even those relatively chilled-out fans seemed a bit perturbed by the ponderous pace of the middle of the last series, and consider the whole thing pretty much cauterised. The Peaky kids who were introduced in season six aren’t being weighed up and played off against each other in feverish previews of where the film might go. There is no Duke Shelby hive. The idea of Tommy Shelby going to war – he’d be about 50 by the outbreak of conflict, so he ain’t going to be parachuting into Market Garden – was a popular one, and a showdown with Sam Claflin’s Oswald Mosley at the direction of Tommy’s occasional M figure Winston Churchill seems the most likely route into that.

But these are not things that anyone in the fandom is really talking about at the moment. There’s no real whirl of excitement or speculation right now. And Peaky Blinders really needs that to crank back up again if it’s going to make this movie, which we’ve known about for absolutely ages now, land with the impact which really befits it.

It’s got Cillian Murphy as its lead, for heaven’s sake. Drop a teaser. Leak a behind the scenes snap. Let Knight be a little bit indiscreet about it in an interview. Give us a crumb of something soon, before the last of the momentum runs out. Because if this is the last we ever see of the Shelbys and the Peaky Blinders gang, they ought to be swaggering into the sunset.'

[sparklephrenic]

MAINLY ART — PARTLY DISCOURSE ...

HELLO!!! Boom ... the names Elliott (or Koko... or Satanick...)

I am crit-inclus , crit-fic (Pro-critique, pro-fiction) , and anti-hara

My art often covers dark topics or cute girls, as well as a lot of ship content. u never really know what you're gonna get here...

I am multifandom and multiship . I also have a ramble/hyperfix blog so i can ramble about said fandoms and ships (@sparkletism)

New to tumblr. Idk how this works. Im figuring things out as I go.

More active on twt than I'll be on here by a long shot but yk !!! Im trying my darndest

Thats all ... humor me a wee bit if you may I am new to this

[nostalgia-tblr]

Okay I am actually going to Discourse now, about that bit in that Thor film. I went to IMDB for the exact quotes!

"You know, it all makes sense now, why you favored Thor all these years, because no matter how much you claim to love me, you could never have a Frost Giant sitting on the throne of Asgard!"

SO. According to fandom, all of this can be taken as The Facts. As is the one about Loki being "no more than another stolen relic, locked up here until you might have use of me." The one about being a monster we all recognise as being the worst-case worries of someone who's just had his origin story suddenly and unexpectedly replaced with a new one and he's scared and upset and feels betrayed by his loved ones and all-in-all he's just having a shitty day. It is also assumed that every attempt Odin makes to dispute these Facts is him trying to cover for his own crimes. And then Odin falls asleep because ???? and so that means he's DEFINITELY lying.

But.

BUT!

What makes these things true? Can't the rest of it be based on fear rather than actual facts? Wouldn't that, y'know, fit perfectly with the emotions of the scene? And in plot terms if Odin does manage to reassure his anxious son then there's no rest of the film, is there? What a useful coincidence then that Odin has just fainted and is unable to talk Loki out of assuming the worst about everything!

Odin (and Frigga!!) doesn't have to have ACTUALLY favoured Thor but if there was ever a moment where wee growing-up Loki thought he did (which is pretty much a given, surely?) then it's going to suddenly come back to him now and OH LOOK there's a reason for Thor to have been the favourite so that means it must be true! It makes sense that he would be, so he must be! Right?? And apparently Odin has told Loki that he loves him, maybe even often. It might have been a lie but he did say it, he showed that kid some form of affection but now the kid is grown up and in existential turmoil and at this exact moment of course he doesn't believe it.

What I mean here, obvs, is that it's a bit odd for everyone to have just gone along with this rant and taken the angst-ridden fears of someone in the middle of an emotional crisis as being Objectively True Facts. And so Odin must be lying now and then and forever. He's a bad person, his son said so while crying his eyes out and refusing to accept any comfort from him! PROOF!!!

tl;dr - If I have to say "it's a mistake to assume that Loki can and should always be taken at his word" one more time...

[trerti]

Honestly I kinda like how the collective narrative of the users of this site has calmed down a lot in the past 10+ years. I’ve been on this site since 2010 (not as a active user most of the time, I like to observe) as a wee Gen. Z kid and watched some Gen X and Millennials progressively change and morph from being very young and passionate to more chill and calm. And yeah it’s because the population here is aging blah blah blah but it’s an interesting shift now more than ever from what I’ve seen because you can literally see the exhaustion and maturity shift set in the user base of everyone here in the changes for discourse, fandom dynamics and political/societal from here so rapidly. It’s really fascinating to me. I grew up from the millennials progressing from posting poor quality gifs in long drawn out fandom posts and commenting “if you’re not angry at this (insert large scale societal issue) you’re not paying attention” on every other (insert bigoted whatever -ism/ist term here) critique post and obsessing over random white boys/men to becoming basically the primordial soup progenitors for fandom culture and progressive politics.

Now that I’m at the point of the beginning of my adulthood, I’m glad to have seen and experienced what I did. It’s still so weird to see the shift from 2014ish when everyone started to be emotionally exhausted with the way their all lives were heading collectively that is was literally tangible in the way that intersectionality is incorporated, and then started to be applied in social/political discourse became the foundations for online behavior today for a lot of ideas and humor concerning all online spaces, like YouTube comments to Pinterest posts reels. Like, it was a very VERY USA oriented white fandom men space focused space where there was young and fresh 20 year old something (usually, on the surface cis and straight oriented) millennials were just obsessing on the same 3-4 major fandom things at a time or so was into a very admittingly prominent site for gender and sexual orientation terminology and concepts development that are now being practiced and in use are implemented on a societal level. I feel like I’ve aged x2 fast too just being here lol.

Now I mostly just see millennials and a vast majority of the more older gens blogs chilling and just focusing a bit more on living in adulthood in the strides they wish they had earlier and (usually) cheer on and encourage Gen. Z youngsters and slowly raising and preparing Gen. Alpha as of now. Gen Z is just mostly geeking over the aesthetics, trends and terminology/concepts now, especially in identity politics laid down earlier from others in discourse in our identitys as adults. Aka; Cancel culture and policing is the same hurdle we have to face head on and navigate as a generation for the next one to come after to work, tweak and improve on a societal level.

Of course the echo chambers here and the discourse are still annoying here and there but I feel like now more than ever I see a lot of settling? happening now. It’s very chill; like the tones and way people talk changed, lowkey it’s kinda a nice even if there used to be and still is strife in certain spaces I guess.

I’d argue being on here is the most tolerable concerning the younger gens here being discreet (as in I don’t see younger people always focus on output here and more so relaxing and not engaging in large fandom wars or whatever like I’ve witnessed before, it’s only be very slight if not tedious buzzword identity policing and gatekeeping callouts but that’s as far as I’ve seen) and just focusing on creative content, and gaining inspiration in lieu with Tiktok and Instagram and Twitter as the main avenues for content content (ironically as there was a great migration in 2018 to Twitter due to policy update and back here on tumblr for the same reason Lmaooooo) being a whole thing… also to be fair the UX of this specific platform is actually nice because you have the ability to actually extend and spell out our own coherent ideas about things as need be compared to the other platforms where content creation forces the users to be hard pressed to not be able to flesh out and materialize their ideas and posts aside from Reddit or something.

Also? To see blogs that are like 10+ years old and scrolling though the older posts of like, idk a blog dedicated to providing insight into Wicca or a set interest etc. for a subject you are researching and have those same popular older posts (‘the president stole my shoe laces’ and ‘do you like the color of the sky?’) be in its ye olden archives when you search for something accidently is really entertaining to me. I can see why everyone here lowkey kinda remanences and cringes at those times, it’s truly iconic in every way possible before and after if you were there lol.

[angelanimedesaray]

Are you still doing the writer's truth or dare game? :) Here are my emojis: 🥤🧃🍬🍦🧩 🌸 I hope it’s not too much! Haha. Feel free to ignore any you don’t feel like answering

Yes I am, and I don't mind at all!!!! I love that there's so many, hehehehehehehe. The only drawback is this post is gonna be LONG since I write so much in my answers, I'm gonna need the keep reading bar hahaha

🥤recommend an author or fanfic I love.

Okay, so before I went on hiatus, @dingdongitsbees was writing a Levi x Reader Hunger Games AU called "Black-eyed Susan" that was AMAZING, like, I had to walk away and take a breather for a bit from the equivalent of Catching Fire cause it was just SO GOOD and the EMOTIONS WERE SO HIGH and I was flipping out over the potential parallel fates to certain characters, but it was so beautifully done, and the characters were rich and made sense and the lore was woven in so wonderfully and UUUGGGHHHH IT WAS AMAZING!!! I don't know if it was finished though cause life got busy and I went on hiatus, and I'm kind of afraid I'm going to pick it back up and discover it is unfinished, sooooooo SORRY IF I JUST RECOMMENDED AN UNFINISHED FIC I AM SUFFERING WITH YOU!!!

🧃share some personal lore you never posted about before

Okay, sooooo not to inadvertently trauma dump a wee bit in a roundabout way, buuuuuuuutttttt...my fic Through the Looking Glass? I was SUPER nervous about posting a lot of those earlier chapters because a lot of Reader's childhood experiences I provided from my own experiences, sooo it was kind of like exposing a nerve to enrich a story/character and praying no one struck it. But it worked out beautifully and it was mostly my anxiety getting to me there worrying about what people would think about those spots specifically, since I never really got anything negative about those bits--frankly I don't think I've seen a single negative comment on that fic besides "PLEASE COME BACK WE MISS YOU AND I NEED TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT AND IF THIS GETS RESOLVED--" That kinda thing hahaha, which has been a bit of a relief.

So yeah. I put a lot more of myself in Through the Looking Glass than I normally do for fics. I think more than I ever have for a fic before. Which makes sense since that fic was born from my, I just wish I could pluck Levi up out of that world every now and then and just TAKE CARE OF HIM and give him LOVE AND AFFECTION AND CARE. And I'm relieved and very glad that it worked out well. <3

🍬post an unpopular opinion about a popular fandom character

IIIIIIIIIII don't know????? I mean, I don't pay attention to fandom discourse or whose "right" and "wrong" over opinions enough to know what an "Unpopular" opinion would be, which makes this a bit difficult to answer. I know of a few of my opinions that might deviate a little bit??? Or where I have an EARLY ON fandom opinion that I just kept carrying because I loved it so much???

I knooowwwww that there's still back and forth every now and then about Erwin vs Armin for the serum, even now, but I've always been of the opinion Levi made the right choice in choosing Armin. It took some thought to come to a decision myself, but I think Armin was the right choice for multiple reasons, and believe Erwin was ready to rest and that was a great respect to give to Erwin--its complicated, and something that I know I'll address in AT LEAST one fic, so I won't go into the complexity of that, here.

Hange Didn't Have a Pointless/Shock Value Death. The fuel tanks were damaged by Floch and they needed time to fix it enough to escape and her going to fight the titans headed their way bought them the precious few seconds they needed to escape, otherwise the colossal titans that Hange killed would have crushed the plane and everyone there before they could take off and without her actions the entire world would have been destroyed.

Speaking of Hange, and considering I just used she/her pronouns and I know most people use they/them, I'm gonna also add in this little opinion I've held tight to since I FIRRRRSSTTT joined the AOT fandom. I know a lot of people use they/them pronouns in stories and posts about Hange nowadays, I've used she/her pronouns for FOREVER because when I first FIRST joined the AOT fandom a looooonnngggg time ago, 1) I'll admit I just always assumed she/her, female, she was always female to me, never really had anything to make me think otherwise and I didn't NOTICE any lack of referring to Hange as she/her because I, myself, tend to default to they/them a lot to refer to people, even when speaking of a singular person I'm familiar with, so I thought nothing of it until I started getting into fandom spaces and there were people asking about Hange's gender (Cause this was still pretty early on in the fandom) and then 2) here on tumblr and over on twitter I saw a few discussions/headcanons/fics and such that identified Hange as a transwoman, and I really loved that, and it really stuck in my head, so I kept that headcanon and kept using the she/her pronouns. I get a little self-conscious about it every now and then when I realize just how few people use she/her pronouns with Hange and use they/them instead, but I got really attached to she/her transwoman Hange early on and don't want to relinquish her. So yeah. That's why I use she/her more often than they/them for Hange. Though I try to use they/them when referring to Hange on people's posts that use they/them instead. Sometimes I forget, but that's what I try to do. She/her for my spaces and stories, they/them on other people's posts where they use they/them for Hange.

🍦name three good things about a character you hate

uuuuuggggghhhhh whhhhyyyyyyyyy fiiiiiiiinnnneeeeeeee--

(I surprised myself actually with how quickly I came up with this, which makes me feel a bit better about appreciating a character for what they are even if I DESPISE them)

Floch is certainly dedicated/devout, I'll give him that. And he certainly developed and came a long way as a character. And he was fully ready to fight and die for what he believed in.

🧩what will make you click away from a fanfiction immediately?

Listen, I will check out just about anything once, but the thing is, the characters from the universe have to be in character. And i don't mean, write them as well as the original creator, we're all going to have different flavors/tints on the characters when we write them in our styles. It's when the character is so OUT of character that I can't recognize them AS that character that I click away. At least for the main ones you're focusing on. i can forgive more OOC characters that are playing a side character or temporary character to the plot. But the characters the fic is focusing on has to be recognizable as themselves.

Also Mary Sues/Gary Stus. I really don't like Mary Sues/Gary Stus.

🌸do you have any pets? if you do, post some pictures of them.

I DO YES!!!! I HAVE LITERALLY HUNDREDS OF PICTURES AND SOME VIDEOS!!! I AM A FUR MAMA!!! <3

BEHOLD THE TWO YEAR OLD FLUFFY ORANGE GREMLIN MY MOTHER FISHED OUT OF A TREE, ANDERS, WHO TERRORIZES MY "COWARDLY INSIDE, FEROCIOUS OUTSIDE" OLDER GERMAN SHEPHERD WHO WAS A RESCUE AND HAS BEEN WITH ME SINCE COLLEGE, STREAKER

[hairenya]

The most stupid concept in American politics is constitutional originalism. Like it would be funny if it didn’t do so much damage to the nation as a whole.

You’re telling me the constitution (which has amendments btw, I can’t stress enough how it has amendments) can only be interpreted to mean what the framers originally intended in the exact words it’s written in and can never be changed. Notice how these people always seem to think the framers would agree with them even when we have letters explicitly to the contrary. But even done in good faith it’s still a stupid concept. Tell me you’re incapable of independent thought and problem solving without telling me. Did you also ask your mom’s permission for everything as a child? Do you need your dad to give you advice on whether or not to eat a grape? Like it’s such a cowardly cop out for people who are too afraid to take ownership of their own opinions and responsibility for their own rulings.

“But the founding fathers”- I hate to be the one to tell you this but they’re dead babe. That’s how the passage of time works. They are d-e-a-d dead. Jefferson is scrubbing a toilet with his toothbrush in Hell. John Adams is getting drunk with the angels. Alexander Hamilton was most recently reincarnated as a squirrel and Ben Franklin won’t stop sexually harassing people via mirror writing at seances. Do you want us to Ouija board them every time there’s a court case? If so Hasbro better release an updated version with caller ID so Dick Cheney doesn’t hide in the vents pretending to be the voice of god to spark a war again. For people who constantly yell about dead people voting, you seem to think we should let dead people make policy.

Of course, they get around this by claiming the constitution was “divinely inspired”. Okay main character syndrome. I don’t think you should take governing advice from a guy who flooded the earth because he had a temper tantrum but it sure would explain a lot. If we’re going to base our government on a narcissistic autocrat who doesn’t tolerate dissent, may I suggest Stalin instead? He doesn’t have quite as high a death toll as God (he’s only human after all) but at least we’d maybe get healthcare out of it. Plus while I realize it wouldn’t help the country any, putting dead leaders in glass coffins would be personally beneficial to my morale. “Jesus is love”- No sweetie that’s Shrek but okay sure. I’m down. Let’s base our government on history’s most controversial hippie. Oh sorry, not what you had in mind?

The worst part is that this idea that the constitution can only mean exactly what it explicitly says nothing more or less with no room for common sense, critical thinking, or interpretation has been expanded to apply to almost every text. It trickles down. When the people in charge of educational policy can’t read between the lines, you get an entire generation who struggles with the idea that not everything has to be explicitly stated. That you can interpret things without spoon feeding. That an author not having a footnote disclaimer decrying the actions of their character as immoral does not, in fact, mean they condone irl murder.

[veliseraptor]

The whole ‘here’s two canon bi characters’ who are a version of the same person instantly followed by a no-homo for both of them, with each other of all things, didn’t bother you? It’s just…the timing of it, the sheer speed of the straight-presenting ship. They go out of their way to state she was born female too, so that people don’t have to deal with an actual sex shifting Loki. I just wanted a sibling dynamic so they could go terrorise Thor :(

not particularly, no.

would I have preferred a sibling dynamic? yeah! am I not really into the idea of a romance because I was just hoping to get a show without a romance? yeah!

but I don't actually feel like this is particularly biphobic of marvel in this case, not to mention that sylvie's being bisexual is implied but not confirmed so let's not give disney too much credit here.

like...look, frankly, we were never going to get a m/m or f/f romance in this show. We Just Weren't. honestly I'm stunned we got any kind of bisexuality confirmation at all.

this doesn't feel like a gotcha to me, it feels like the entirely unsurprising outcome of a situation where there is a male and female lead in a TV show working together.

and as far as timing goes - this is after the mid-point of the season! there are only six episodes! if they were going to introduce a relationship at all they had to do it now or there wouldn't be any room for it to develop. (would I rather this meant they didn't do it at all? yes, always! but nobody asked me and that has fuck-all to do with the genders of the participants in a romance, tbh.) optics maybe not great? sure, but as far as overall pacing in the series as a whole goes it feels like this in narrative terms makes sense as a placement for their relationship development.

not gonna lie! there is also a wee part of me that's like 'oh yeah. cause being bisexual is only valid and/or real if you're in a same gender relationship, that sounds familiar' about this whole discourse. just a wee bit. I mean, "straight presenting" is sure a hell of a phrase in this context, imo.

and not a wee bit that is like. oh boy this is where the ship war really happens in Loki fandom because previously there was no canonical romantic relationship for people to fight over but now there is, I guess. fun! love that. this fandom needed more shit to fight over, for sure, and of course we're gonna bring social justice rhetoric into it.

like...look. I don't care if people don't like Loki/Sylvie as a pairing. frankly I don't much myself! but I think claiming it's regressive/biphobic and that's why is a little, just possibly, facetious.

but you know. that's just my irritable, jaded two cents.

[emi1y]

omfg weird question but CAN you talk a bit about the inner workings of the gravity falls fandom c.2013-2015???? i was too young to actually like be involved but like then AND now it just looked like... a Ride

omfg yea i will try my best, it's 4 am tho so no promises on how coherent this will be;;

i wasn't on tumblr while the first season was airing bc i was a wee fifth grader so i did not witness first-hand what people were like at that time. i got on tumblr when i was 12 though, before the second season started airing, and it was Prime Time for all the AUs that people made while they were bored during the break between seasons

the biggest one was reverse falls which was basically a role swap between gideon and mabel+dipper, so they had cool blue outfits and pendants and i guess they were evil?? and gideon was a litle boy like dipper. and also bill was swapped for some reason into will and he was blue instead of yellow and sad all the time. i dont know much else about the Lore, just that i was very into the aesthetics of it all

also. gross but it was super common to see people shipping bill and dipper and when people started calling that out there was a Huge drama topic that came up around ~not shaming people for their ships~ which was a source of discourse that lasted pretty much forever.

then when s2 started airing i got to be a part of the fandom puzzle solving in real time which was really fun. it was supper common to post audio clips reversed to find hidden messages and at the end of each episode you would all race to plug the end credits image through different decoders so you could be the first person to post the solved message. every time a particularly lore heavy episode dropped we would all go buck wild. a tale of two stand Especially.

also its not common now so it feels worth mentioning that there was a huge group of people who shipped bill and ford. and. wow this is embarrassing but i was in fact among them 😔 in my defense i was 14 but. yeah. when that one backstory episode about fords history with bill aired there were a bunch of amvs made for billford and i know what you're going to ask and yes i Did make one myself. and yes it Was set to panic at the disco's "lying is the most fun". unfortunately.

and then uhh final memory, after the show ended there was a real life scavenger hunt for the bill statue that was pretty wild. there were flash drives hidden around the country with coded and stuff and they led to destinations around the us and i wasn't involved in it since i was 15 lol, but it was very exciting to see when new information was discovered, OH and at the time we didnt even know what the end goal was. some people fully believed that it was a wild goose chase and there Was nothing to find. i think the statue ended up being in seattle? but yeah that was cool

ok the end those are my big bullet points for what left the largest impression on me lmao

[aotopmha]

Take Sasha off your profile pic. How dare you defend what Isayama did to her. Consider this your one warning, bitch.

You know, I usually delete messages like these, but this is a very concise example of why I have grown to dislike fandom, but also perhaps an example of my least favourite aspects of Tumblr specifcally.

1) It always ends with personal insults and even threats. This is over a fictional character.

2) A lot of Tumblr can't handle when a story isn't completely wholesome and always positive or when characters make mistakes or are wrong (while the story understands and is considerably more mature about it) even if they claim otherwise.

In this case, I think a lot of people seem to want to make Gabi a lot less complex than she is to show that her character didn't just kill one of their faves and they don't like it, but that she is also actually a bad character. I understand genuinely just thinking her character is one-dimensional and unnecessary, but a lot of posts like these don't come across that way.

This happened with Erwin's death, too, with Eren and Mikasa's characters being generalised, as well, although its Levi that made the final choice.

I feel this actually exists everywhere, but Tumblr has a very specific, willfully ignorant reaction when it comes to stuff like this.

They can't handle something that deviates from the norm and doesn't hold your hand even if it's just for a little bit, even if it's just for a wee tiny bit.

I know that for a lot of people that's a coping mechanism to deal with their shitty lives and there is nothing wrong with liking positive stories - if handled badly, darker stories can just be straight-up bad, too. I think it's okay if you just think that AoT just isn't effective as a story anymore, for example. Each to their own.

I feel like this isn't even what this anon thinks, their message seems to be more about being angry about a character they love dying.

It has always been like this in fandom spaces to some extent, my problem isn't even seeing a story I like interpreted in a way I don't agree with.

I think a story doesn't have to explain everything it does directly to the viewer and part of consumption is using your brain to put things together. I think a lot of the internet is bad at looking at the context. I think a lot of the internet is bad at reading framing and nuance. I think reading comprehension is dreadful in internet discourse in general. People want complex characters, but when they actually get them, they are "irritating" and "confusing". All of this irritates me, but this is also only my personal perspective and what I value in stories and analysis. All of that not jiving with me is okay.

But these days whenever I go to any tags or to look up posts about a series I'm interested in, a lot of them are about actually attacking people.

If you like x ship, x character or x story you are a shitty person.

I think this infantilizes people and presumes you are the one Speaker of Truth on what Good Storytelling is, what is Morally Right and Wrong and that everyone who consumes the story sees the exact same positives and negatives in it as you do.

Once again, I think there is nuance to this, something the internet, again, just has problem with in general - you either completely love something or completely hate something, there is nothing inbetween.

Stories can send harmful messages - I despise stories that have pedofilic relationships, promote fascism and downplay how hurtful sexual harrasment and assault are, but they are also stories and as long as you acknowledge and talk about the problematic elements of a story and what other people might find problematic about it, I think consuming it is fine. Simply consume responsibly.

Now, if the author might support harmful behaviour with the money they make from the story, that is a little bit different.

Many, many indications have surfaced that J. K. Rowling supports TERFs and basically most of the additions she has made to Harry Potter lore recently have had very unfortunate implications.

Author of Rurouni Kenshin, Nobuhiro Watsuki was discovered to own child pornography.

These are very direct cases of giving money to authors that are harmful.

But then there's stuff like Hajime Isayama making those couple of tweets and posts around 5-10 years ago, nothing else surfacing in that time and the story itself clearly contradicting those ideas.

I think in either case, the more direct or indirect one, is a pretty personal choice.

Do you believe the author has grown out/can grow of those views or not and stop doing what they do?

In the case of a shitty author, I think consuming the story without giving them money is okay. This is tougher with stories that have huge staffs.

How do you know in general if there is a nazi among a staff of hundreds or there isn't, for example. It's a pretty complex situation that everyone probably has to suss out for themselves.

But all of that complexity seems to matter less and less as time goes on in fandom.

It's more and more about putting people in their place and insulting them because of a piece of media.

I was impulsively angry like this towards differing opinions when I was younger, too.

What I really recommend for anyone to do is that if you feel angry like this, write it all down in a separate post and look at it a little before you send it to anyone else. Acknowledge why you want to send a message like this to someone else and whether you really feel that way or you're just really angry towards what they think.

I got three messages with this kind of speech pattern and yes, I spammed inboxes like this when I was younger, too. I just really needed to prove that opinion wrong.

I will actually say thank you for the ask because it helped me put these thoughts out there, but I also want to promote the idea of thinking a little before replying.

I genuinely think many people are just really overwhelmed with emotion rather than genuinely hateful when they send messages like this.

I think truly hateful people are the minority, but as I said, before you click that button, try to stop yourself and think a little, however tough it might seem.

[truxi-twice]

this was a response to a different post, but the OP did say they wanted to end their involvement in the discourse, and I don’t want to make it pop up in their notes or anything, but, just...going on the whole “The Beetlejuice fandom is MEAN” thing

I guess what makes it so hurtful is that a year ago, Beetlejuice was the first Good Thing I’d found in a long while--I was so excited that one of my old fandoms was rising out of the snow, like daisies, and with such a wonderful musical. It got me drawing again. But now I’m just legit considering blacklisting it, even though I love so much of it, because..it’s hurtful, and at a time when I’m just trying to find Something Good And Soothing. Like I said in the other post--when I’m just scrolling through the tag and looking at wonderful art and fic and headcanons, and then in the comments or in the piece itself, there’s just something MEAN and vicious...it just pulls me up short.  Asking that your work or post not be tagged as a ship? Sure. Saying you don’t want to see discussions or posts about a ship on your feed? Absolutely. But slandering folks? For shipping or for even just being *neutral* about a ship? Or talking about them violently?  Like, if we’re going to be upset about violent art about an actor (and...yes, I think that’s fair. Like. wtf) then...think we should also be upset about violent statements or art regarding other fans (which I have seen. A lot.)

This isn’t a new thing.  This was something I slammed up against like a brick wall over a year ago. I think it’s been around since the musical started becoming A Thing.

Honestly, I don’t know when “antis” became a thing folks defined themselves as. It never seemed like a good idea to me, because a group defining itself by its negative opinions about things just inevitably leads to trouble. It means that instead of just enjoying the parts of the fandom you love and spreading that positivity, there’s always got to be some little bit of negative.

I wish we could just bring back terms like “squick” and have done with, instead of actively making fandom spaces unwelcoming to folks new and old. No one has to like anything.  I get why folks hate the ship--especially with the musical having Lydia come off much younger than she does in the movie (in the movie she was 17, and seeing her when I was a wee kid, I thought she was So Grown Up).  

I also get why folks like--it’s worth remembering the fandom olds were growing up with Buffy and Twilight and loads of YA about Relatable Teenage Girls falling in love with Sexy Supernatural Guys. Like. Y’all.  This has been a whole THING and for a long time.  Not as much of a Thing now, but it was a pretty common teenage fantasy when I was a kid.  (Like, hell.  When I was 14, I kept writing embarrassing self-insert fic with Xellos, the immortal and ancient demon from Slayers. And let’s not get started on just how many of my crew of theater kids were ALL ABOUT Spike/Buffy. And don’t forget Labyrinth! So much Labyrinth fic out there) Having that ship doesn’t automatically make someone a pervert or a predator. (The discussion of “look, shipping is not morality and folks ship things knowing full well that they’re not healthy relationships because the whole ‘forbidden/taboo’ thing has a long history in sexual fantasies as well” is a WHOLE NOTHER DISCUSSION that I’m 1. too tired to get into 2. too bad at wording good to get into 3. too ace to get into) The idea of merely having a ship being a value judgment of someone’s moral character as a person is just...beyond weird to me.

 It’s also worth remembering that other folks did not grow up with that. Or have their own reasons for hating the ship. That’s what tags and warnings should be for--I think fandoms should generally try to tag things they know other fans don’t want to see or want warnings for but likewise, there doesn’t need to be such vitriol against shippers--who, again, were usually *younger* than Lydia when they first fell into the fandom, and were doing typical teenage/pre-teen projection.

A friend of mine has talked about how the more wholesome a piece of media is, the more unfriendly the fandom can be. And honestly, Beetlejuice the Musical? Wholesome af. It’s just about family in such a great, heartwarming way. Who doesn’t feel all warm and fuzzy at Lydia going from feeling like she has no one to realizing she’s got two sets of parents and a weird brother/uncle/pet? 

So I guess this is the trade-off.  But.

I just wish in general we could be nicer to each other.

...this is a lot of ramblings, and I might delete it later, but it’s just been eating at me all DAY because I’m so tired of it. And because it really just upsets me so much to see folks saying this is a problem with the shippers when it’s a problem with the WHOLE FANDOM.

[above-beneath-betwixt-between]

So mama just needs to get her Far Cry 5 grumbling and Jacob theorising out of her system, excuse me...

So I hate jumping into fandom discourse, because my opinions are worthless, but the nuclear ending of Far Cry 5 100% ruined it for me. Like, loads of people are all over it because of the bunker and ooooh Joseph but it’s just way too predictable?? For a game that’s got some pretty unique things to it, to have it go out in such a cliche way as having the whole ‘they were right all along!!’ was upsetting. 

Walking away, and the ending that creates, was frankly the single most satisfying thing I’ve ever experienced in a video game, no joke (dont @ me.) The ‘only you’ theme with Jacob was so interesting and although, more and more people are becoming a bit jaded with the switch from practise runs to the run where you actually kill Eli and the whole shebang, I’m still personally pretty enchanted by it. And the notion that the song would come up in the end was the furthest thing from my mind as it was playing out, so it was a tasty lil wildcard at the end. 

And just on the whole Jacob thing (who’s my favourite out of the Seed siblings), I was thinking about Jacob’s health especially considering his stint in the Gulf. So this was kinda prompted by someone who made a post about Jacob’s skin and someone else who mentioned how breathy he sounds sometimes, and it had been playing on my mind what that was, like, its a weird array of things?? But then it kinda half clicked with me, maybe Jacob’s got at least some manifestations of Gulf War Syndrome? Like, it’s a controversial syndrome in itself but it would explain Jacob’s weird collection of complaints that he has and would also encompass his PTSD which is solidly confirmed. But then one could, in theory, expand this idea of him having this syndrome out to explain more about Jacob. Where you see John wrestling the deputy and others a bit, and Joseph kinda prowls around a whole bunch, Jacob seems a wee bit more physically limited or stunted in comparison to his siblings - could possibly chalked up to the joint and muscular issues sometimes associated with it. It would also explain why his forms of control are less physical when he clearly has physical force behind him in his stature.

But then again, I dunno??

[brianwilly]

I'd like to talk about Call Me By Your Name for bit.

If you're not aware -- and I gotta say I'm kinda envious if you're not -- there's been a wee bit of discourse surrounding this film.  Not an overwhelming amount, and even then thankfully very little of which has reached mine dashboards, obviously because everyone I follow is such a boss! or whatever

But it’s still there, and because I’m such a nosy prick who lives in tags, I’ve had the opportunity to glean a lot of the dispute on both ends.  And so, I’d like to talk about it, this thing that...by essence is going to be very controversial to try to talk about.  Especially on here, this site so known for being so very, ah, passionate and implacable about the issues it has taken to heart, mostly for the good, sometimes less so.

Specifically, for anyone still unaware, the issue is that the film’s story is about a romance between a seventeen year-old boy and a twenty-four year-old grad student who visits his house for the summer.

And the first thing I'd say, which is what most people would also probably say first, is to please watch the film (or read the book) before forming any strong proclamations about it one way or another.  And try not to watch it with a...miserly eye, being on the constant alert for any ammo you can use to fuel whatever blog post you're gonna write after the fact.  I've done this myself before, and it's an inept, feeble method of critique; confirmation bias is a thing that exists, and if you're going in with the sole intent of finding every bit of toxicity and harmfulness you can in this storyline, then that's truly all you'll end up finding.  Instead, try to watch it for the simple fact of watching a story unfold, of wanting to know what happens, of allowing yourself to experience what these filmmakers and actors are trying to convey.  After which, if you still dislike what you've seen?  At least you'll be better able to articulate why without having to rely solely on sound and fury.  And then you can call the cops on me, ‘cuz they’ll obviously prefer well-reasoned allegations of pedophilia-apologism as opposed to half-baked ones!

The next thing I say is going to be a bit of a...melodramatic diatribe about queer experiences.  Bear with, please.

When you're a queer person living in certain situations -- whether you're a child, teenager, or adult -- much of your entire identity is based on the need for repression, for secrecy, for hiding.  Every bit of affection, desire, or attachment you have to someone of the same gender, which is something that'll happen near every day of your life, is something else you'll have to learn to smother.  Everything about what you're feeling is confusing and yet you don't believe for a second that there is anyone you can trust to share these confusions with or to experience these desires with.  This pain of repression and confusion is something that the film version of CMBYN does hint at, but that the original book actually explores in broad, vivid detail, some of which I'm going to quote mostly verbatim for just how truthfully it paints these anxieties.

"What never crossed my mind was [...] that someone else in my immediate world might like what I liked, want what I wanted, be who I was. It would never have entered my mind because I was still under the illusion that, barring what I’d read in books, inferred from rumors, and overheard in bawdy talk all over, no one my age had ever wanted to be both man and woman— with men and women. I had wanted other men my age before and had slept with women. But before he’d stepped out of the cab and walked into our home, it would never have seemed remotely possible that someone so thoroughly okay with himself might want me to share his body as much as I ached to yield up mine." *** "Perhaps the very least I wanted was for him to tell me that there was nothing wrong with me, that I was no less human than any other young man my age. I would have been satisfied and asked for nothing else than if he’d bent down and picked up the dignity I could so effortlessly have thrown at his feet." *** "They worried for me. I knew they were right to worry. I just hoped they’d never know how far things stood beyond their ordinary worries now. I knew they didn’t suspect a thing, and it bothered me— though I wouldn’t have wanted it otherwise. It told me that if I were no longer transparent and could disguise so much of my life, then I was finally safe from them, and from him— but at what price, and did I want to be so safe from anyone?

There was no one to speak to. Whom could I tell? Mafalda? She’d leave the house. My aunt? She’d probably tell everyone. Marzia, Chiara, my friends? They’d desert me in a second. My cousins when they came? Never. My father held the most liberal views— but on this? Who else? Write to one of my teachers? See a doctor? Say I needed a shrink? Tell Oliver?

Tell Oliver. There is no one else to tell, Oliver, so I’m afraid it’s going to have to be you…" *** "[...] another part of me knew that if he showed up tonight and I disliked the start of whatever was in store for me, I’d still go through with it, go with it all the way, because better to find out once and for all than to spend the rest of the summer, or my life perhaps, arguing with my body."

Now, I'm not saying this stuff to grind for sympathy points or to be needlessly depressing, and I should probably sidebar here to make it clear that, in spite of the quoted passages above, neither the film or the book are as remotely fixated on these sorts of oppressive life experiences as it might seem; quite the opposite, in many ways.  But I'm still saying this stuff to contextualize a lot of peoples' mindsets and experiences going into a story like this, and of the social foundations from which this story was conceived.  Because the fact remains that when you're a queer person living in certain situations, this repression and confusion is your reality as you know it.

And this sort of reality...a disease, really...is something that will eat away at you day after day, week after week, month after month after year.  This is the sort of toxicity that can actually scar someone's identity, if not ruin them outright.  And as for romance?  It's not even just a matter of your options being limited, it's as drastic as you never being able to show your affections, and no one will ever return those affections even if you show it, and you'll probably never be able to tell anyone any of this.  It's not simply a matter of not having someone in town that you can get your rocks off with, it is a matter of having to hide so many important parts of yourself, a matter of feeling so alone in many of the ways that matter most.  And none of that is even going into the shame you feel in yourself, in your own body, for just being wrong somehow.

Queer Tumblr is such a place of liberation and celebration for the most part, and that's a good thing, but I feel like it's easy to forget that this liberation and celebration comes about specifically as a shelter against the repression and shame out there in our real lifetimes.  And I feel like we can be so fiercely, indiscriminately protective of our younger generations -- precisely because there is so much genuine danger out there to have to protect them from -- that we might miss the danger in seeing only danger and scandal and malice where there might instead be something important and cathartic and affirming in this story for anyone -- queer or straight, young or old -- to experience.

Bluntly: I'm not saying that seventeen year-olds should be pursuing twenty-four year-olds, and certainly not vice-versa.  But given all that above, is it really so difficult to imagine why many viewers might not be so quick to disapprove of the relationship depicted in CMBYN?  Is it so hard to imagine why it is not so vile or perverse for a seventeen year-old to have someone who understands his loneliness and alienation to assuage those vicious anxieties?  That this seventeen year-old deserves the chance to explore and express his identity with someone in a caring, compassionate manner?  That any sort of inherent harm that a difference of seven years might potentially do them might indeed be more than balanced out by the virtues of getting to experience the sort of love and companionship that only comes from total honesty and understanding between partners...something that they as queer people in their situation might have never thought possible.  That the freedom to love and be loved in this safety of this validation is a gift and not an onus.  That the appeal of this story is not about how cool or sexy it is for seventeen year-olds to be sleeping with twenty-four year-olds, but about how both of these boys -- and by inference every boy like them, every girl like them -- deserve the chance to not be repressed, to not be shamed.

And if I may be a bit of an asshole for a second.  I look at the culture of Tumblr and I am persistently inundated with favored pairings that are born out of animosity, out of antagonism and toxicity if not outright violence.  I have seen so many instances of fictional characters wholesale harming other characters both physically and verbally and having those things be called romantic by scores of thousands of likes and reblogs.  Look up maybe any fandom in the search bar and chances are good that some of the most popular pairings are gonna be the ones most shrouded in dysfunctionality.  Heck...even the ones that are ostensibly "the good examples" of healthy functional vanilla romances tend to be constantly punctuated by stretches of jealousy or dishonesty or manipulativeness or other such sorts of crass relationship issues in order to drive drama.  So many creators' ideas of what make a fictional relationship appealing -- or even a non-fictional one -- often feel like trying to air all the dirtiest laundry you can find in that household and calling that romance.  And let's not even venture for now into the dark boiling abyss that is the queerbaiting issue.

Now...'nother sidebar...I'm not saying that the romance of CMBYN is a perfect one; there are certainly issues of insecurities and miscommunications that afflict this relationship as well, and all that these sorts of things entail.  I also don't wanna blow this whole film out of the water like it's some sort of immaculate remedy to all the ills of film and literature and the evils of the world or whatever, which is just gonna lead to disappointment if you do watch it.  I definitely do not want to undermine anyone’s legitimate concerns over the issues inherent in age-gap relationships.  Liberation is nice, naiveté is not.

But, again...is it really so difficult to imagine how people can look at this story, borne so thoroughly out of care and validation and respect between two people for whom those things are not readily-available, and be engaged by its content instead of repulsed by it, finding it vastly preferable to what usually passes for steamy pairings nowadays?  Is it so unbelievable for people to be engaged by the goodness depicted in Elio and Oliver's courtship with each other, to not throw complaints of harmfulness and toxicity at something so marked by its distinct lack of harm, even with the seven years’ difference between them?

I'm not saying that seventeen year-olds should be pursuing twenty-four year-olds and vice versa.

But man, do I ever wish that more stories ought to be taking more cues from the way that this one does it.

[transbcyfriend]

For the homestuck asky, EVERY question 🔫

CARL I OWE U MY MCFUCKIN LIFE

1. Do you have a chum handle? What does it mean?

i don’t! i mean i used to have pesterchum installed on my computer when i was like, 13, but i don’t remember SHIT of what it was. probably something embarrassing.

2. Is your username homestuck related/have you had one hs related?

my current one isn’t, but i used to have one w/ dirk in the title

3. Do you call your s/o a matesprit?

i … i haven’t heard of anyone doing this since middle school. nah

4. Do you call your best friend your moirail?

see answer to 3

5. Are you “kin” with any characters or commonly called a character?

answered!

6. God Tier?

knight of heart!

7. Do you make HS fanart?

i haven’t in a rlly long time, but i rlly want to! i’m thinking i’ll end up doing some soon for a late 4/13 pic

8. Do you make hs fanfiction?

don’t remind me i was just a kid

9. Do you roleplay homestuck? where and how often?

i used to! i rlly wanna do it again, but everyone i know who wants to rp hs just wanna do it for the smut :/

if i could get an rp partner who just wanted to for fun tho, i’d b down to try my hand at it again!

10. Do you cosplay homestuck characters? Who and where?

GOD DON’T REMIND ME

when i was but a wee lad i cosplayed as dave bc he was my fav, but that was it

i’d lov to cosplay the signless at some point tho, i like his design

11. Are you apart of ask blogs?

nope! i debated it, but i was never confident enough in my skills as rping a certain character outside of private rp

12. Are you in any homestuck groups?

nope!

13. Favorite character?

tbh i’d probably say dave, since he’s … the most relatable to me personally? that and i love his rambles when he just spouts some random shit and goes off on a billion tangents at once. i also rlly like karkat, roxy, kanaya, and mituna!

14. Least favorite character?

caliborn.

i can appreciate him as a character, but he’s…yeah. y’already know.

15. OTP?

i lov rosemary a hella lot, but i also like davekat!

16. NOTP?

…y’know that’s a good question. i don’t rlly think abt ships a lot, just homestuck as a story itself, so. never rlly thought abt it. i’m gonna have to mull that over.

17. BROTP?

nepeta/equius, hands down.

18. Do you want homestuck to just die already?

nah – it’s a rlly good story, tbh. sure it’s confusing if you don’t keep tabs on things and engross yourself in it, but it’s really well done.

19. Are you following up with hiveswap? Do you play? Watch YT videos?

i am! i mean i haven’t seen anything going on except for the troll reveals, but ye – i need to catch up on the playthrough i’m watching (jack’s). i’d play it myself, but i’m staying on a budget.

20. Tell us how homestuck has effected you in real life?

it’s made me really rewire how i go about telling my own stories, tbh – that and it made me rethink comics and how interesting they could be without being just “sunday funnies.” i grew up with shit like archie comics, nothing that really strung together (not to mention something as long as homestuck is), but it made me change my view on how good and serious one could be.

21. Have you met anyone through homestuck?

i have! i don’t know ‘em anymore, but they were a chill group.

22. Have you left the fandom before?

nah – i’m just kinda off to the side of the fandom in my own little bubble, i don’t really get too involved in discourse or w/e to rlly feel the need to leave

that and it’s had my interest for too long for me to leave

23. How many times have you read through it?

5! 3 times on my own, and 2 times reading it to other people.

24. Did you ever skip intermissions/dialog/animations?

god fuck no that’s extra content i could scarf down r u kidding

25. Opinions on the fandom?

i haven’t really mingled much with the fandom to really have an opinion on it – i remember when i was a kid it was really wild and people feared having the homestucks show up, but the people in the fandom seem to have calmed down, and i can fuck with that, so i tease the idea of mingling in. i probably won’t tho, i’ll prolly just stay on the fringes of it hangin in my own space.

26. Opinions on the comic?

get ready

the comic … is honestly, i mean considering it literature, the best piece i’ve ever read? the characters are all really diverse in their views and thoughts, every one of them have different aspects to them that make them unique (john being very aloof when he wants to be, dave’s rambles, rose’s entire personality aside from her interest in psychology, etc.), and they’re memorable in whatever they do. they have their own quirks, their interests, their morals and – i really like how the characters are into genuinely bad things. it’s not like “oh yeah this character likes x and x,” and the things they’re into are neutral or good in nature, it’ll be like, “oh yeah this character actually loves horrendously terrible movies,” and i can appreciate that.

that, and i like how they’re unaffected by “purity culture” – in a lot of media i see today, all of the characters are usually mad acceptable, but homestuck doesn’t really do that. like fuck, take caliborn and doc scratch, they’re hella problematic but i like that – having characters that aren’t acceptable, whose actions are…disgusting, really, but still portray them without having to spoonfeed the reader that they’re not okay. i think a lotta shit i see nowadays misses out by not having characters that have gross views and actions like those two.

i also really like how complex it is. like you get media that shows video games like sao (which don’t even get me started), and they’re…lacking, they’re not like how a real life game would be with all the little events within its code and all the sidequests and yada yada yada. they feel bland. but with homestuck, it’s rich, it’s interesting, there’s always something going on (and it’s limited in time). that and it’s concepts – the way it does its own version of rpg classes, its perma-death aspect, how the players can vastly change things with small actions in a butterfly effect, things like that.

i could go on, but i just really like the worldbuilding, characters, and story, it’s rlly good

27. Do you favor the trolls, humans, or carapaces?

i think i like the trolls the most, but the humans are a close second!

28. Favorite moment of all of homestuck?

either the penis ouija scene, [s] collide, or [s] game over

29. Least favorite moment of all of homestuck?

whenever there was a hiatus

but beside that, tbh there’s rlly no moment in the comic that i disliked!

30. Tell us a homestuck based story.

one time, i tried doing a fanventure.

i’m gonna stop that story there because it was embarrassing and i was an overexcited 15 year old.

31. How homestuck related is your blog?

not really? i reblog quite a bit of hs related content, but otherwise it’s just kinda here and there y’know

[discoursecatharsis]

Where did the ants get this kind of mentality? How did this come about? It's odd that I'm noticing this behavior recently...

I have no idea, my friend. The first time I noticed people using “ant1-(ship)” tags was back during The Legend of K0rra. But people had like... genuine criticisms of the writing and pacing, so I could understand that. 

But now it’s people falsely calling ships abusive or pedophilic and “if you ship this, you’re bad and i hope you choke” and I dunno exactly when or how this crap started.

I think it was a mix of a lot of things, probably. People demanding more representation. Fandoms getting that representation, but it not being “good enough” or “it could’ve been better.” And now people will only accept absolutely “pure,” perfect representation. And anything that could potentially be slightly problematic (like an age gap) is just completely unacceptable and is bad representation and how dare you support it regardless of its possible issues. Which has turned into entitlement for a lot of people. 

In the case of the v0ltr0n fandom, it’s: “I ship characters A and B, I want AB to be canon! ...wait why is character B getting canon moments with character C instead?? That ship isn’t the one I want, therefore it’s bad and I’m gonna call it pedophilia and a power imbalance and oh they may be related so it’s incest too. And everyone who ships BC is a pedo apologist... in fact anyone who ships C with any of these characters is disgusting. Also the show creators are queerbaiting us with AB.” 

Or in the case of the y0i fandom: “Ship X is canon and perfect and beautiful and I want everyone else to see it! ...wait, why are some people wasting their time creating and consuming context for ship Y? Why support Y when we already have the perfectly, healthy ship X in canon? Ship Y is bad because it’s pedophilia and it sexualizes character C who is a minor and he barely even knows character D. And ship Y is also bad because it’s starting to take away attention from ship X and I don’t like that.”

I’m not familiar with the specific shipping discourse in the St//ar Wa//rs fandom, but I’m certain it’s similar across all fandoms. Ants prefer one ship over another, so they jump hoops to make that other ship look bad, instead of just saying “eh it’s not my cup of tea” like a normal person.

I’m sure there’s other factors that come into play. I see a lot of people refer to ant1-shipping as “baby’s first social justice experience” which is like my favorite term ever made. And it’s true, this may be young people taking their new, shiny “social justice” crusade a wee bit too far, and applying it to fandom and ships when it’s just unnecessary. 

I’ve been meaning to go through my blog and categorize all the good explanations/analysis posts about ant1 behavior I’ve reblogged, so if/when I ever do that, I’ll let y’all know.