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archivalofsins · 6 months

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So, let's talk about Milgram fandom and isms. This has been a long time coming. Plus putting it in the dog cat post I was drafting up would take attention from the main point so here we are.

So, isms are thrown around a lot when it comes to Milgram's writing and the fandom perception of characters.

Now, I've done this too. I'm not immune I am only human as well. I've discussed racism, fascism, sexism, ablism and I don't particularly plan to stop doing so. Because these are all things that color my worldview and matter to me. I believe these things should matter to everyone. They are firm social biases that disenfranchise every person that lives on this earth and are worthy of being discussed.

Yet, I must be emotionally honest for a moment. The reason I discuss things and isms to the extent that I do is simply because isms are easier to understand and identify than the root problem would be. Because if I were to discuss what I believe the root problem to be it would hurt a lot of feelings.

Because when I discuss the use of these isms it is not in the context of Milgram the series but Milgram the audience. Something that I believe should be discussed in a civil but firm way. Because it is a firm judgement of many people, I do not personally know but have seen how their biases are displayed and from my own experiences have formed an opinion on that display.

I discuss it this way because the content in Milgram is very up to interpretation. It gives people what they take away from it. Nothing more nothing less. So, the opinions we form from what is presented does say something about the type of people we are. Milgram very seldom hard confirms anything.

There's evidence of what is or has occurred throughout the songs but Milgram doesn't look directly at the camera and go this is what they did you're right and give the viewer a little thumbs up. This is why all our opinions on information can remain so varied and voting can conflict in the way that it does. Despite the fact we're all working with the same information.

So, what's this thing I've been holding off on discussing under the guise of isms. Well, it's the big P where all biases come from-

Privilege

If you don't think you have let's take stock in check.

A. The priviliege to content for free and shared information.

B. The priviliege to judge others with no possibility of negative repercussion to oneself. Be it anonymously or openly.

Yet, in turn Milgram's staff has priviliege as well.

A. The priviliege of a large and supportive fanbase.

A fanbase is a very lucrative and helpful thing. Yet at the same time it can turn into a doubledge sword of sorts.

B. The priviliege of having the engagement that work hinges on.

If no one voted nothing would anything within Milgram change? If it was all 50/50 would it impact anything. An effect cannot happen without a cause.

So ultimately the fanbase and Milgram are in a very symbiotic relationship. However, the fans have more power than the staff in this case. If everyone just stopped voting one day would it still be Milgram? If the fans weren't having these discussions would this all still be going the way it's going.

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it. It does make sound but does that sound matter?

In the same vein it's important for individuals to take stock of their own personaly privileges to better examine their personal biases. It is a privilege to have the time to cositently vote on a character whether Innocent (Forgiven) and Guilty (Unforgiven) each day and feel entitled and secure in that judgement. It does say a lot that so many people have the time to consistently go online each day and decide to dogpile on fictional characters in the way they did.

To the extent of making a Kazui Unforgiven Shrine. To the point of this,

Amane was like seventy percent innocent on the day of her songs release. Something that had remained stable in consistency since the beginning of trial two. The fact that hers has gone down the extent it has we people couldn't even make a dent in Mu's goes to show just how hated these two are.

Like people really went on that website each day and voted them guilty pridefully. Comsistently in their judgement of them being wrong. That is commitment that is hater energy.

Without a single thought of, "Should I just mind my business? Don't I have better things to do with my time then make a fictional characters day worse?"

Yuno

Tear Drop

"Just shut it, will you? You know it all."

Futa

Second written interrogation.

Q.18 Do you regret anything?

No, it's them that did something wrong first if they didn't then they wouldn't be here in this narrative.

"I do. What was I even doing that stuff for in the first place?

What other people are doing doesn’t have any impact on me."

Not a single thought of, "Hey, is this too much? Should I lay off."

Mikoto

"Is this selfish? This isn’t too much is it?"

It's okay to vote for any reason though. Even if it's just for fun. Even if I just dislike. I don't have to think too hard about just,

Kazui

"Keep it simple."

If i like I forgive if I dislike I don't. That's all there is to it. Something like that doesn't say a thing about me as an individual. I'm not doing anything wrong.

"Should I show the forgiveness that I would want myself or those close to me to receive if they messed up? If they were in those circumstances..."

Voice trailer snippet

"How would they know...whether to forgive me or not? People can't understand what I had to go through."

First Voice Drama

"Prison guard you're human as well. So... I'll do my best. I'll figure out what kinda person you're fond of." - "Hm... Actually.. If it think about it, compared to those good for nothing police trying to catch me- Someone's who's definitely not in the wrong. Milgram just might be better for me."

It's Not My Fault

"Hey, what if- If I am a bad girl? Don’t hate me. Don’t even try to prove anything from “After Pain”. Hold on. It’s not my fault! You knew it, right?"

Nope, clicks guilty. Then instead of blaming the fans that are making the choice to do this everyday all by themselves the blame is shifted to the media. There are fans that abstain from voting you know nobody has to be taking advantage of the privilege to vote. No one has to consistently spend their time every day being critical of another persons choices fictional or not.

Like, people are choosing to be here and do that based on their assumptions about the work. I'm no different in that regard. I just have no ill will towards the content as it is because it's not the content that is the issue for me. I just don't like how some people interpret it.

Something that is a clear personal problem and something I do not have to seek out or interact with. Everyone interprets things differently, which should be rightfully respected unless their interpretations are actively causing harm to others. Which under these circumstances I have to state is not people voting anyone's favorite character Guilty in mass even if it feels like it.

Something I have to immediatiely follow with fuck that shrine shit though. Along with the fact that it is incredibly sad to have an in real time example of how easy it is to shift the vote from seventy to fifty because it highlights how widely dogpiled on Mu was this trial and Mikoto was last trial.

My next point is going to be a highly personal one. Based off of my experiences but it's funny to me to see people crying about bad representation so often. Because it highlights a certain aspect of privilege that goes consistently overlooked.

Not all media is about you and if you think it is that's a sign of privilege.

I was discussing this in private, but the way most fans discuss the writing of Milgram truly highlights how privileged a good majority of fans may be. Each time I see statements like this, my immediate response is to go huh most of the individuals who make up this fandom must have never been told,

"If you don't like how you're being represented then go write it yourself. If you don't like how we treat you as a customer then go make your own business."

To have the community they are apart of do exactly that in every possible field and be historcally undermined at every turn.

I just have to recognize that a lot of people haven't grown up seeing those like themselves represented in media as just one specific trope. That rarely ever overlaps with what your experiences are actually like. Then, when people like you do begin creating content of their own, watch them be held to incredibly high standards in regard to inclusivity. Simply because as a minority they should know what it feels like to not be included, so they should do better to be inclusive and represent everyone well. They have a responsibility.

No, they don't. People society routinely ignored don't owe anyone a seat at the table they fucking build. I feel the same can be said here. Yamanaka has consistently discussed overlooked and taboo aspects of Japanese society along with the issues that come from those. The way an artist creates does not need to be sanatized to any one person's specific standards or tastes.

Discussing such topics as the ones being handled here is going to rub many the wrong way at times. Because it is showcasing the aspects of society and the individuals within it that go routinely overlooked and shied away from. Expecting all representation to be squeaky clean and good is harmful. Take it from someone who grew up under the construct of black excellence or look up anything regarding the model minority myth.

There is no exactly right way of being a creator and no one's personal vision is going to please everybody. Creating something like that is actually impossible. Even when representation is heavily sanatized in order to be considered socially acceptable their will still be people who criticize it for being that. Because it doesn't leave room for individuals who don't fit into the norms of society to mess up or be flawed.

It gives this impression that it is on them to be the model citizen at all times or risk ruining it for everyone causing all progress to backslide. Because societies acceptance of your difference is no longer true acceptance but instead a trade where you keep bringing stuff to the table in the hopes it's good enough that they allow you to sit down.

At this point I really believe this is just a culture gap on my part but I did want to say something about it anyway. Not just because I'd personally been avoiding the topic of privilege since entering the fandom myself but to draw more attention to how the audience itself is a character in this narrative. Along with how a good majority of our behavior and reasoning has begun mirroring that of the prisoners in Milgram or Es'.

Because I believe that aspect of Milgram is very interesting! Whelp that's enough of that I'm going back to writing about the dog and cat thing.

#gunsli rambles

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jestbee · 1 year

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thinking about how this would be over if quackity made even the smallest of statements. but he’s just letting his fans dogpile dream as usual and completely ignoring dream’s attempts at smoothing things out

I doubt it would be over, but it sure would improve my opinion of him.

I understand not wanting to be involved in drama, I understand his wanting to keep his project untainted by it, but the fact is it's happening.

Whatever has happened, whoeber had what idea and when, we can not truly know for sure. Only they know that. But at least Dream has been civil and has told his fans not to send hate. It's not foolproof, and people still are, but at least he said it. He's right about that. People do need to stop. On both sides.

But Q hasn't even done that, he's stayed quiet because it's easier for him and honestly it's really affected my opinion of him as a person.

I'm not gonna stop supporting qsmp content because the other creators on there don't deserve that, and I'm not gonna be sending hate to anyone or judging anyone who is a fan of Q, but unfortunately I can't help but feel differently about him given how he's handled this. Even if he says something now, it'll be too little too late for me personally.

I'm sure Dream is a dab hand at ignoring people online these days, so a few salty fans aren't going to do him any harm, what makes me sad is that he clears cares about this project and once again whenever Dream tries to do anything there's always something negative that happens in return. He deserves a break.

In order to remain a little level on the situation, I will say Dream could have potentially re-thought his tagline. While he was *technically* right as Q had only ever referred to qsmp as bilingual in any marketing stuff prior to that announcement (there is a stream clip of him saying multilingual but that isn't how it was marketed, just an off-hand addition in a stream that's easily missed) and at the time Q hadn't announced his real-time translation, I think Dream using similar "first" wording was bound to end in comparison. I don't know what he knew before, or when he came up with that line, but the fact is that by the time Dream was ready to launch, Q had already launched qsmp with that similar wording and from a simple marketing perspective it would have been good to change his tagline just to avoid more comparison than was already bound to happen. It was similar enough that people can spin it as intentional, which isn't a good look even if it isn't true.

My curiosity wants to know how this all happened and who knew what about what the other was doing, but I doubt we'll ever get it. It all seems a little too similar to be entirely coincidental the way it's being spun, but I also don't think there is any malicious stealing going on. I think there's a world where it was something a little more nuanced, but I won't make any guesses as to what because we don't have the info and it's not going to improve things to have a bunch of fan speculation flying around.

I hope Q says something soon, I hope this doesn't cause a rift, but I fear the damage has been done.

Either way, at least we got SlutSMP out of it, which, let's face it, is the best thing anyway.

#jane answers #mc #smp discourse

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theycallmebecca · 2 years

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Drabble: The Littlest Red Sox

Here is another drabble for my Sugary Sweet Dad Collection. I have a prompt for one more Chris drabble that I’m going to post on Father’s Day, but my goal for the rest of this week is to write character drabbles.

First up is the hot lawyer, Andy Barber. And it’s a drabble inspired by my niece and her tball team.

Becca’s Sugary Sweet Dad Collection Masterlist

Title: The Littlest Red Sox

Pairing: Andy Barber x reader

Rating: G

Warnings: n/a

Disclaimer: This work of fiction is not to be reposted, used or translated without my permission.

Usage Disclaimer: This work is for fans only. This author does not give permission for it to be shared, spoken of, referred to in any public manner (podcast, tv, online, etc.) that wants to either make a celebrity uncomfortable, mock fan fiction/fandom in any way, or the author themselves. Requests can be made, but it is unlikely the author will change their mind. If no response is given to a request then the answer is a solid no, not interested and the work cannot be shared, spoken of or even referred to, regardless of the manner or context.

Andy thought he knew what to expect when his 5-year-old twins, a boy and a girl, decided they wanted to play t-ball with their friends from school. The kids had been allowed to choose their own team name and, obviously, they chose “The Littlest Red Sox”.

After all, he had played t-ball as a kid.

A doting dad, he would take the twins to practice when his scheduled allowed. If he couldn’t take them, then you would, and sometimes, both of you went.

Nothing had prepared him for the hilarity that was their first game.

When they were on the field, all of the kids and the coaches were on the field. Some kids just sat down in the dirt and couldn’t be bothered. While others, like his daughter, went to the position the coaches told them to go to and didn’t move a muscle.

Then there were the kids like his son. As soon as the ball was hit by the opposing team, they all ran for it and dogpiled on top of each other wrestling for the ball.

“Mine. Mine. Mine,” Andy said under his breath, mimicking the seagulls from Finding Nemo. Not loud enough for the kids to hear, but some of the other parents around them heard it and laughed.

“Andy,” you scolded, elbowing him.

“I can’t help it,” he replied with a shrug. Looking at you, though, he could see you were just as amused as he was.

Comedy followed the team to when they went up to bat. The kids all successfully hit the ball off the tee, eventually. One ran up the third baseline. Another ran after the ball they’d just hit to field it instead of running to first base.

When the twins took their turns at bat, Andy proudly cheered them on while being secretly relieved that both kids had run to first base.

Since the kids were playing in a developmental league vs little league, every kid on the team got a chance at bat before the inning ended. There were no outs, not score and the game was only three innings.

Not wanting to cause a ruckus amongst their teammates, Andy waited until you were all in the car ready to go home before he asked, “Who wants to celebrate with ice cream?”

“ME!” the twins shouted with glee.

You shook your head and then said, “Count me in,” when Andy look at you.

#Becca’s Sugary Sweet Dad Collection #Becca's Sugary Sweet Dad Collection #Chris Evans #theycallmebecca #theycallmebeccawrites #Andy Barber #Andy Barber fanfiction #Andy Barber fanfic #Andy Barber fan fiction #Andy Barber x you #Andy Barber x reader #Andy Barber x y/n #Becca writes drabbles

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cutest-toddler · 4 months

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This is just a rant but idk if anyone will even see it so fuck it

It’s wild, aging out of the age regression community. Wasn’t something I thought would happen, but as soon as you’re an adult and do adult things, you’re suddenly barred from most of the community you grew up in. There’s a reason the age regression community is mostly minors and I do agree that the kink and agere communities should be kept separate for everyone’s safety. But it really sucks being caught in the crossfire, especially when the only people making fun little content are people that explicitly hate you. This is supposed to be a safe space but everywhere I turn there’s a reminder that I’m not wanted here, I’m too nasty and gross and adult but when I go try to find other adults there’s just,,, nothing. I aged out of the community at a time where there’s very little noncom content or activity and all the sfw kink stuff I can find is ddlg specific or otherwise too fem for my transmasc ass to feel comfortable or represented. I think most people moved to Instagram but I’d rather delete that fucking app than get more entrenched in it so that doesn’t help.

It’s not like the agere community is perfect, the obsession with pro- and anti-ship discourse and the way the community has always been violently anti-kink both shows the immaturity of (again, mostly minors) but also, more converningly, shows how a lot of chronically online and/or traumatized people are becoming more conservative and reactionary because the points are dressed up in social justice language. It’s honestly been harmful for my mental health for ages but the activity level of the agere community is what kept me here and overlooking the frankly disgusting parts.

This blog has been where I keep my regression resources for years now and I’m not giving it up or deleting anything but in unfollowing anti-kink or minor blogs or anything else that one or both of us would feel uncomfortable with that interaction I’m left with… nothing. No online community, no edits, no fucking stimboards cause apparently liking weird sex means you’re dirtying the whole place up by existing (you see what I mean about conservative mindsets?) and even random banners that state that your favorite character, specifically, would hate you for your “unwholesomeness”

The worst part is? I did everything Right. I found the kink community as a minor and respected their rules (because minors Shouldn’t be in kink), so I found the agere community and, for a few years there, would’ve agreed with a lot of the shitty anti-kink stuff being spread around (cause if you don’t you’re an Evil Accessory to Pedophilia!) and now I have to stand up and look around a rebuild from fucking nothing, once again. I haven’t even heard mention of dual-community littles in YEARS and it hurts knowing we used to have stuff but I just,,, missed it. There’s no more room for grey areas in this time of increasing polarization and the kids aren’t ok, they’re learning that sex is bad and immoral and people with kinks and fetishes are evil predators who can’t control their urges and desires or indulge in anything without their filth ruining any wholesomeness that was there before and it’s a losing battle to get in internet fights cause that’s never a good option, I’m more likely to be dogpiled than cause anyone to rethink their reactionary politics.

The only good thing to come of this is the fact that there’s a littles meetup I’m going to tonight and the beginnings of a little community where I live. My boyfriend actually sent me the fetlife link cause he’s heard all of this and more as he supports me and learns how to be a caregiver. So hopefully I’ll have less of a need for online community. But that doesn’t mean I’m not mourning what I’ve lost and feeling all the hurts that have added up over the years

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incarnateirony · 1 year

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Honestly during this spree of thought-blogging I gotta laugh at how bad these idiots buried THEMSELVES. They literally just shot themselves in the foot for years while screaming that everyone else was losing. They didn't just dump out the whole clip, they reloaded to keep shooting themselves a few times.

Dogpiling me? Started the revolution. Hate to break it to you, assholes.

So let's clear the air a bit. You guys spent ages hunting for Bronly Things to figure out who was collecting your receipts as a gallery that TPTB was subscribed to. I was not the originator of BT, but I'm the one that converted them from a parody account into those receipts and made sure they were handed directly to the writer's room, which ultimately transmitted to the cast, just like the mute lists I built for those same authors. Mute lists needed because they brought an author to tears IRL and I was subject to trying to fix it.

These are all holes they dug themselves, making themselves the active villains of creatives. Attacking crew and families, causing spite shipping, opening doors, getting themselves on security lists, and being so up their own asses they missed an entire section of fandom undermining them not just over the years like this, or like when I got kelios and vinnie security watchlisted, or all these little steps along the way, they missed the spinoff dev, they missed everything, and all they've done is further make themselves unattractive and prove how useless they are

jiminy cricket and they're still going, like they've made it very clear they're aware they lost but they're still fkin digging. 2po doxxing crotchy with gayle and co? Man I was gonna let the server idle and die and leave like I did with Slayers Challenge but no, you decided to fuck up again. Around and around we go. So anyway welcome to the #1 Winchesters server, entry is five dolla, get bent

Just bitching in circles online and burning millions of dollars while we're running circles around them for years from market testing to authors to talking to authors about the next direction to take the show alchemically or whatever and they're just screaming plugging their ears

Too late to catch me, asshats. Denial never spared you before and it won't suddenly work now.

youtube

#Youtube #aint about the royals #aint about the glamor #click goes the hammer #run when you hear that sound #don't need no cheers #world's gonna see it #gonna make it to the finish line

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lilyhoshikawa · 2 years

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You are working really hard to twist my words from “you can reblog posts supportive of trans women without constantly adding messages about making terfs mad, reminding trans women who are looking for actual messages of support of their continued oppression and the violent hate mob that wants them dead, and on top of that exposing your followers to the vile and hateful messages of an aggressive hate mob directing them to go past you and harass the trans women in your life when you could have just blocked them” to “durr hurr don’t be mean to terfs.” It turns out when someone unaffected by bigotry tries to start fights with hate groups that perpetuate said bigotry, those bigots aren’t gonna take it out on you, but the vulnerable people in your life. And this costs you nothing, by the way. I’m not impressed by self-proclaimed allies who run around poking fights with terfs and adding unnecessary terf-bait to trans womens’ posts, I’m just exhausted by them. You’re not gaining any actual political ground by arguing with terfs or threatening them or whatever. I don’t give a shit about terfs’ feelings but they’re not going to be stopped in any way by you insulting them, that’s just a way to make YOU feel better. Actual activism is hard, it’s about gaining political ground through social movements and doing the work to see change get done. Yelling at strangers on the internet is easy, and it helps exactly no one

Also, weird that this person seems really intent on talking about me as if I’m preaching TO trans women about how to act instead of being an exhausted trans women myself who has to be very careful online with who I associate with because any time my posts breach containment I get dogpiled by terfs. This person is out here fighting tooth and nail to tell “young queer people” that it’s okay to needlessly pick fights with terfs as opposed to like, actually protect the trans women in their lives, and I’m just curious how many non-transfems will see this and it’ll cause them to put their friends in danger. Because what’s the scary alternative if people listen to my post and don’t start fights with terfs? What political ground to terfs gain from that? Continue to do what they do right now, posting inside their little bubbles? Is your reblogging a terf manifesto post with your little comment dunking on them going to de-radicalize anybody in the post’s intended audience? Is adding “reblog to make a terf mad” going to make them so upset they change their cult mentality to be supportive of trans rights?

Also also: calling me “bud” is misgendering. I’m a girl

#this person reblogged my post twice to do this shit and I’m officially annoyed enough to talk abt it #but I’m not arguing with them beyond saying my piece #rambles #transmisogyny tw #ask to tag

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schnuffel-danny · 1 year

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https://schnuffel-danny.tumblr.com/post/703811669350121472/schnuffel-danny-this-isnt-directed-at-anyone-in

Good post, but I feel that something is missing. A lot of things, actually...

What is an "harmful stereotype" exactly?

Who decides what is and what isn't harmful and to whom?

What if what you consider a harmful stereotype is someone else's way true of being/this depiction brings them comfort?

If you feel like a creator made a harmful stereotype, what should be done about it?

Call them out on it (and risk forcing someone to out their own mental health issues in order not to be harassed)?

When is it calling someone out for causing harm and when is it straight up censorship?

Isn't it okay as long as the creator adds warnings or tags to avoid their work?

These questions brought to you by a trans man who was dogpiled and harassed for "harmful stereotypes" in his own vent art about his own trans experiences.

To be clear: I do not need an answer to all these questions, but I do think it's important to remember that you cannot look into another person's head and see what they were thinking when they made something, and decide whether or not they should be forced to alter or erase their art for your own comfort.

I feel like you're putting words in my mouth, nowhere in the post do I advocate for callouts or harassment. I only ask that people be mindful of the fact that sometimes even fictional scenarios can parallel real world mental illness and stereotypes around it. That's it, that's the whole post. What people post is ultimately not up to me and I'm not going to go out of my way to seek out content that makes me uncomfortable. I never assume people create fan works in bad faith, and I don't believe anyone else should either, the post isn't calling anyone hateful or ableist - sometimes people just don't know where certain tropes may have come from. I don't even tell people to completely avoid all potential stereotyping, I just ask they don't get too swept up in it. I really am not going after anyone and I absolutely realize sometimes people's work isn't going to be all sunshine and rainbows, mine isn't either! In this case what I meant by harmful stereotyping is, for example, when portraying Plasmius as a separate consciousness from Vlad it gets blamed for all of Vlad's actions - Vlad was a completely rational and kind man until his mind 'split' and the voices in his head started telling him to kill people. I think it's pretty understandable that someone who has alters irl might see this and think "Oh hey, this kind of makes it sound like this person thinks all alters are inherently evil, that's upsetting." Does the OP actually think that? Probably not, but the way they write this scenario that bears striking resemblance to to irl issues seems like they've only seen this type of mental illness portrayed in a negative light before. I think people create to tell interesting stories, and sometimes to do that they take aspects from works they've seen that (unknown to them) may have been made in bad faith. I really hope you didn't send this ask with the goal of starting an argument, I'm not here to fight about opinions online, I'm here to post mediocre art and unfunny shitposts. All I stand for is unrelenting kindness, not harassment and witch hunting. I don't ask people to look for art to get angry at, I ask people who create to do a little bit of research on dissociative disorders before they integrate a direct parallel to them into their work. I obviously can't know what someone's real world experience with mental health may be, but I hoped that the wording of the post made it clear that it wasn't meant for people venting about their own mental health, but for people who don't experience dissociative identity or similar issues. English isn't my first language and I have problems that make communication through text incredibly hard. I understand that people will not get my intentions fully from one post as they cannot see into my head, but I hope this clears things up a little. This is the last thing I will say on that issue, thank you for reading.

#I'm really hoping this wasn't a purposeful bad faith interpretation of my post

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hardestgrove · 2 years

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feel free to ignore this is a vent so yeah

this fandom makes me feel so freaking guilty about being a Billy stan and shipping mungrove. I can literally make an entire book about all the tiktoks and posts I've seen about people bashing Billy stans because billy is racist and what not. (I am black myself) and honestly, I don't see anything wrong with billy yet people make me feel so guilty for liking his character. Don't even get me started on mungrove I really like the ship but people have called me disgusting for shipping it because billy wouldn't like eddie. i dont even know what to say anymore

i shant ignore bc i wanna send you love and support. cause you deserve it.

i've got a long ass post or two about how ppl talk about this shit and how their whole dogpiling on billy stans is just wildly ignorant to how these kinds of things like ??? work??? like if you're walking in with the assumption he's racist that's not??? fucking baked in???? to his dna???? and their behavior is the kind of thing that makes people double down on their shitty beliefs if they have them so like, they're REALLY not helping ANYONE. it's just performative bullshit at the expense of real people's well being.

in my book mungrove is THE ship of the show any they never got screentime in the same fucking season LOL and no screaming dipshits are gonna change that. same with my liking billy. dacre put a beautiful job into breathing life and depth into what was going to be the most embarrassingly basic henry bowers rip off and if they lack the fucking brainpower to respect that then i don't got time for em.

there's a huge amount of eddie stans that are truly vile to everyone who's not a rabid steddie stan i mean they're fucking coming after chrissy and grace too and literally trying to incriminate her with doctored screencaps to make her look racist. these people are just disgusting as people and they think they can get away with it bc they're a big group and they're in the "moral right" when really they're just 00s yaoi fans by another name who violently hate women who "get in the way of their ship" and can't stand anything with more depth than what their stereotyped shit allows and don't like competition.

personally, as someone who's been seeing this shit online since i was like, 12 in the 00s anime geosites era i just block, delete and ignore. either they grow the fuck up or they don't and in that case i hope they get so toxic their accounts get deleted bc they earned that.

i hate that you feel like this bc fandom and shipping and shit is supposed to be FUN we are all sitting on the carpet of someone's bedroom making our barbies kiss and planning out their silly little adventures and giggling about it. some people just fucking can't stand the idea of other people liking different shit then they like it's wild.

my next mungrove content is gonna be dedicated to you (assuming it's not something like vermillion bc that's yikesy and i don't wanna put ur metaphorical name on that bestie lol) cause you're cute and you have GOOD TASTE and you DESERVE IT

but ur gonna have to literally type in /tagged/mungrove into the url bar to find it when i do bc my blog is glitched out of the tags atm lol kill me 💀 unless you wanna make a request in which case i will happily take it and make you a nice thing!!!!

also i'm working on a mungrove story where billy is friends w/ benefits w/ a girl named jodi who's mixed race and then he gets with eddie bc they were ~falling in love~ for like months lol and remains besties with her. (and plot twist! she's eddie's half sister! they didn't know that before lol) and like i didn't set out to win at "piss the psycho antis off" bingo but lol i'm now even more determined to finish that story!!!!

#answered #I'M AGGRESSIVELY SENDING YOU GOOD VIBES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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i-want-my-iwtv · 3 years

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I hope the rumours of Louis being a brothel owner aren't true, but if they are I can sort of see why they're going for this route? I mean, with a black Louis they can't have him being a slaver anymore, so maybe they're trying to find something that is also morally reprehensible for him to be.

TL;DR: My kneejerk reaction was to be saddened, and I don’t like that this is starting up, and will continue to fuel, fandom drama. Ultimately, if we want peace, we’ll embrace the fact that the existence of this adaptation doesn’t take away from the existence of the books, and it also doesn't mean we have to acknowledge it.

It makes me wonder whether AMC wants us to make a storm about this. We’ll see...

After all, what makes this adaptation any more important than the graphic novels of the ’90s, the graphic novel Claudia’s Story, movie!IWTV, or movie!QOTD? In fact, many fans here on tumblr consider VC to be a trilogy only!!! and don’t accept the majority of the PUBLISHED CANON so what makes anyone think we have any obligation to swallow this AMC adaptation as some kind of gospel?

I see movie!QOTD as a buffet of ideas carried in an official fanfiction work, and I don’t accept as my headcanon the various things it changed about the books that I didn’t particularly like, such as merging Magnus and Marius (which, IMO, effectively made both characters more morally reprehensible). I accepted the things I did enjoy, like casting a Black/POC actress to play Akasha. I see this AMC adaptation as a buffet of ideas, some can be taken, and some not, it’s just another official fanfiction work.

[Anon, I need to catch other ppl up on the information, too.]

Deadline.com informs us that in the AMC adaptation for Interview with the Vampire, Jacob Anderson has been cast as Louis. I'm not familiar with him, but it looks like he’s a successful actor, from Game of Thrones and other things, he’s also joining Series 13 of Doctor Who. I’ll have to check him out from an acting standpoint!

Aside from his talent as an actor, this is by far the most controversial thing that's happened in VC fandom recently. I've been thinking about this for a few months now, talking about it privately online and offline, still gathering my thoughts. So this post is not engraved in stone, it’s initial thoughts on this.

I’m glad to see ppl talking about it and I’m sure we’ll have more public discussions. I’m trying to discuss it very carefully, but also, this is an entertainment blog, my opinions are mine alone, and I’m not looking for dogpiling on anyone, I have no obligation to respond publicly or privately to anything. Plenty of other ppl have differing opinions on this. So take all of the following with more than a grain of salt, I’m not being salty, I’m providing the links to the little info we’ve seen pulicly, I’m giving my initial thoughts, and I’m also trying to add a little levity because ultimately, again, this is an entertainment blog, and I try to add a little humor to help with such serious topics, humor can help ppl talk about controversial things.

-----

The casting of a POC/Black actor (I’m sorry I don't know the preferred terminology, let me know if you know what Anderson prefers) confirms at least one part of theilluminerdi articles that stated that Louis’ race will be different from the books. I didn’t post about these before bc I wasn’t sure how reliable theilluminerdi’s sources are (and I'm still not sure), but this was one major aspect that theilluminerdi announced before Deadline did, so now seems to be the right time to share those articles. For now, you can go check them out yourselves rather than have my reposting of the information, trigger warning: mentions of sex workers and race in the changes to the canon story of Interview with the Vampire.

>>>theilluminerdi articles from May 21, 2021 and July 15, 2021:

www.theilluminerdi.com/2021/05/21/interview-with-the-vampire-amc

www.theilluminerdi.com/2021/07/15/interview-with-the-vampire-amc-2

^Meme of Dr. Ian Malcom from Jurassic Park reads: “Your writers were so preoccupied with whether they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

I’m using that meme with a little levity here, clearly an AMC adaptation of vampires in which the producers/writers have chosen to change the race of a main character (arguably the original protagonist of the series) isn’t in the same VICINITY as the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park that broke out of containment and killed visitors to the park, but John Hammond’s intention for the creation of that park was very good, as I assume this race change was intended. Time will tell.

“But with this place, I wanted to show them something that wasn't an illusion. Something that was real, something that they could see and touch. An aim not devoid of merit.”

“Creation is an act of sheer will.”

- John Hammond, Jurassic Park

Race is a more complicated subject than ever, so for AMC to make this bold change, I hope they have POC and Black writers on staff and are handling this very carefully. Even then, no racial group, including POC and Black people, are a hivemind, disagreements are bound to happen in the writing room, whether in good faith or bad. People have different intentions and motives, compromises will probably be made with the story in many ways, we all know how it goes with collaborations; the end product is a shared vision among multiple creators. This could be a potentially controversial adaptation, I don’t know whether they’re aiming for that or not, but with the elements it has so far, it seems to be headed that way.

Here's a comment by "Angellus" on the 5/21 article. It's undeniable that there's going to be the accusation of racism thrown at anyone who has any negative view of this change, regardless of their reasons. I find it unfair and narrow-minded that any negative response is automatically assumed to be coming from a racist point of view. To say that changing Louis' race is unequivocally an improvement fails to take into account how that change has a Domino effect on all of the other parts of the story. Not the least of which is that, if he is still a slaver/slave holder/plantation owner/(insert your preferred term) that adds a whole new racist element to his owning Black/POC people, even though, apparently there were Black/POC plantation owners.

Not the least of which: How will this change impact his relationship with Lestat? Particularly when Lestat has the added issue of being described in those articles as having “mind control abilities” and “insistent that he gets what he wants and when facing rejection,” a terrible combination in terms of consent, even in a relationship of the same race, let alone invoking Caucasian/white dominance over Black/POC people, AND Lestat being the catalyst to Louis’ questioning his sexuality:

Lestat is insistent that he gets what he wants and when facing rejection, petulance can quickly turn to ruthless rage which causes frenzied acts of horrifically brutal violence. Lestat also has mind control abilities. Lestat initially infuriates Louis, but this soon turns to fascination which leads Louis to question his religion and sexuality.

^Screencap reads: "I love how racist everyone is in the damn comments, this doesn’t pervert the story you’re all racist and it’s disgusting. I’m looking forward to it, I hope you keep crying your salty racist tears asswipes."

It makes me question whether Angellus truly believes what they wrote, if this is an ideology, or a troll. I would suggest their use of the term “pervert” is correct though, pervert means: “alter (something) from its original course, meaning, or state to a distortion or corruption of what was first intended.” That’s what this race change does, factually. Although, in this context, “distortion or corruption” carries a negative connotation. It would take a lot to show how this change does not meet the definition or “to pervert,” though.

I hope the rumours of Louis being a brothel owner aren't true

I agree 1,000%, I was hoping that these were just rumors. But, aside from the race change, if this were the only change, I find Louis being a brothel owner to be equivalently morally reprehensible to being a slaver/slave holder/plantation owner/(insert your preferred term). Ideally, they’d change his career to something that doesn’t involve benefiting from the bodies/labor of others in any morally reprehensible manner.

I mean, with a black Louis they can't have him being a slaver anymore, so maybe they're trying to find something that is also morally reprehensible for him to be.

He might still be a slaver. Who knows. Being morally reprehensible as a mortal man didn’t seem to me to be crucial to the story, but they still could have chosen something better. It seems to me like they want a brothel so they can have eye candy for an audience who want to see sex workers, maybe full frontal nudity.

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What also gets my attention is that Anne and Christopher Rice have not yet posted publicly about it, which leads me to believe that this change wasn’t their choice. They take every chance to brag when they’re proud of something, every chance to crowdsource about casting ideas or which VC books Anne’s fans liked best, etc., and in this case, as of Aug. 31, 2021, (and to be fair, maybe I missed it), I haven’t seen either of them post about this on the official VC FB, Anne Rice’s FB, Annerice.com, Christopher Rice’s FB, or christopherricebooks.com. If it had been their choice, I think they would have gladly trumpeted their credit by now, but maybe they’re waiting to do it in a specific venue. Time will tell.

#vampire chronicles #interview with the vampire #louis de pointe du lac #race #racism #tw race #tw racism #tw sex worker #jurassic park #memeything #ian malcolm #anon #ask #anne rice #christopher rice #long post #iwantmyiwtv has opinions #Jacob Anderson #vc casting

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goth-bunny · 3 years

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I hate to say this, but I no longer feel at home or safe using Tumblr.

Within the past 3 years, it's caused me a lot of anxiety and caught the unwanted attention of bigots, even to the point that I constantly had asks flood my inbox and my personal posts reblogged and mocked.

In 2018, I was targeted by T_RFs, in 2019 I was dogpiled by wh_te supremacists, and in 2020 I was stalked, harassed, sent death threats/suicide baits, and nearly doxxed by a transphobic anon who couldn't take accountability for a simple mistake, to the point that they had to target my main Twitter account.

All these events have made me more anxious and apprehensive when it comes to socializing with others on this website and the lonliness is overbearing.

I've been on this website for 10 years (this blog for almost 7) and I've learned so much about myself and other people through this platform. I've made long-term friends and acquaintances. It's safe to say this has been my home and safe space when it comes to sharing content and being out and accepting about my own identity as a nonbinary bisexual on the spectrum, but in recent years...I feel like I can't even vent about small things on here without anons coming into my Inbox and tell me that I complain too much on my own blog.

I don't want to be on Twitter all the time because of its notorious userbase. Facebook isn't exactly the best place for it and I've also had some negative experiences there last year, what with some self-absorbed member of our pagan group insulting me when I told them I was trapped in a family that doesn't always seem to understand me, and an artist around my age who was exposed for defending child abuse materials and harassing minors.

I feel sad coming to think of having to leave this website since it helped me form my own thoughts and grow into my own person instead of having to rely on my own parents and their weekly Sunday church visits all the time.

Even though I started off ignorant and naive when I joined, I laughed at the nonsensical humor posts, I listened to personal anecdotes, I learned more about the world around me and beyond, all without having to leave my country.

I soon learned that the relationship I got into when I was 18 wasn't exactly how I pictured it, and I never had the chance to explore my identity fully until I was 21 and I had to break up with my ex for being stubborn and lacking compassion for marginalized sectors at the time, as well as being transphobic when I came out nonbinary.

I've learned that a lot of the tics and habits I had is commonly found in others on the autism spectrum and it gave me a new understanding of why I act and think the way I do.

I know I haven't exactly been the kindest last year, and I haven't been as open as I hoped. My poor mental and emotional health impaired my judgment and critical thinking, costing me a long-term friendship and the trust of some others. However, I did repay the people who commissioned me when I said I couldn't be able to do them due to my mental health. That is a reason, but not an excuse for how I acted. know I've done something wrong and I would like to apologize. I know it may seem like I haven't changed much, but it's hard to be open and honest when your words and actions can be twisted online and that ill-willed folks might be watching my every move.

What's next for me?

Well...I'm not sure.

I'm currently thinking that I might take an indefinite break from this website, even if it breaks my heart. Or start anew on a new blog and live quietly, even if it means giving my comfort space.

If you reached the end of this post, thank you for taking the time to read it. I know I don't seem like it, but I appreciate the mutuals and followers I have, even if I don't know you very well. You make my life less lonesome and I hope you have wonderful days ahead of you.

And I'm sorry if I've ever been petty or unbearable at times. Even if it was about little things like preferences, maybe I shouldn't have been too much of an ass and actually just said what I meant. I'm still learning how to accept my shortcomings and bad mental health days without having to resort to memes. Wisecracking can only get you so far and some things are not worth poking fun at, especially if they're treading on more sensitive issues.

P.S. I don't think I will be turning on anons for a long time. If you want to say something to me, whether good or bad, please be open and honest with me. I appreciate it.

#Jun speaks.doc #long post /

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rovermcfly · 3 years

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I think leaving the @ out is more of a precaution so people don't go send bad stuff to their account, and if they absolutley want to they would at least srtuggle a little

if you can only post sth by leaving out the @ bc otherwise the person would be harassed you probabably shouldn't post it in the first place. They're still a whole ass person whose face you're spreading online without their knowledge, and possibly gaining sth from it, that's not okay.

Either way, 9/10 cases I see it's good and funny content being shared with a deliberately cropped @ bc ppl are fuckwits who don't wanna give credit for some reason, so that argument barely matters cause it's mostly funny, meme-y content and very often art and creative stuff.

I only rarely see cases where not including the @ to avoid the person getting dogpiled is the right thing to do. Maybe 1/10 cases of coming across a cropped tiktok.

So sure yes sometimes ppl leave it out for that reason. More often than not ppl are fuckwits tho.

Like people know posting online has consequences. it's not a tumblr or instagram or whatever user's responsibility to decide whether that person can or can't take it if ppl went to their account to be mean. They post their face with the words they choose and they can very well decide for themselves if they can deal with the feedback and take appropriate steps if they can't. They can even limit share-ability to ensure things are in their control. don't just spread ppl's stuff without their knowledge or consent.

#using ''you'' in the general sense #I'm not accusing anon of being a fuckwit #also on tiktok itself that matter is slightly diff but I'm talking abt ppl who take tiktoks and put them on other platforms without credit #rover rambles

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reylo-solo · 4 years

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I have thoughts.

About what happened last night and on nye. If I don’t write them up somewhere I may explode. Don’t read if you don’t want to. I just need to vent. Also I’m on tumblr mobile and it’s still not letting me insert a read more break so I apologize if this clogs your timeline. :/

1. Arrogance. It reeks of pure “I’m famous and can do/say whatever I want” arrogance. Sucks that I thought he was better than that. Disillusionment to the extreme on my part.

2. How is he gonna put out an ad he did with a company, the slogan of which is to “put down your phone” and enjoy life, then turn around in 24 hours and upload something so immature and inflammatory? That’s quite contradictory. I wonder what the company he did the ad with thinks of that? If he keeps behaviour like that up he’s going to find himself losing brand deals and job opportunities. Any director worth their stock knows fans build an empire. How’s it going to look when they see him harassing a group of fans just for a little ego boost? I get a feeling the words “don’t you know who I am? I was in star wars!” may end up being something of a common refrain in the future if that’s the case.

3. He knew what would happen, because it happened on nye. He knew he’d get people upset, get antis and even people with no clue about any of it riled up and shouting “racism” in his name, thus making him trend on twitter. And all the noise made on that platform would flush out the truth: that it all started bc he made a gross misogynistic joke that people didn’t like. It wasn’t specifically reylos that called him out on it either, it was rightfully unimpressed and uncomfortable women, but it’s the shippers he decided to deflect with.

4. Because he did this, and because the truth got drowned out by a bunch of people using us as scapegoats, reylos are being blamed for being racist towards him and Finn since the casting for TFA was announced, when anyone who was actually around at that time knows the racism came from old, white male fans, who said there couldn’t be a black stormtrooper. (And I have to ask - how can reylos be at fault for this particular instance of nastiness when ‘reylo’ as a ship wasn’t even a thing yet? We only had the trailer! We didn’t even know these characters yet! Make it make sense, luv). Don’t get me wrong, though. The racism he faced and has faced through this has been truly awful and unjust. But it wasn’t specifically reylos spewing it, which is somehow what many people seem to have taken away from all of this. The fact that he has done nothing but push this false narrative rather than turn the mirror on the real problem (i.e. the older generation’s “fandom m*nace”) is...haunting to me. It feels spiteful. It feels cruel. I’m sat wondering why. Why use your 1.5 million follower influence to harass a group of people shipping two fictional characters online, when you could put that influence to good use for, idk, a charity against cyber bullying perhaps? Or some other cause he supports? It’s baffling. Almost as baffling as the fact that no one else who’s feeding into this with any kind of public influence cares to look behind the curtain.

5. That being the case, celebrities and other news outlets with large platforms are reporting that we’re a toxic fandom based in racism and bullying. Continuing to spread that toxic narrative that he built to deflect from his own mistake. And why? Because we’re a fandom largely comprised of women, to be sure. We ship a pretty gentile (and canon) enemies to lovers couple. And because we’ve been dogpiled and attacked for four fucking years as it is so he likely knows we can get defensive when wrongfully accused or targeted. This enlarges the conversation; it makes it trend. This inflates his ego. This is why we should not engage.

6. Lastly, I must have been following the right people on all platforms these last four years, because I have never come across a reylo who was racist towards him (or anyone else for that matter) and wasn’t immediately called out and exiled from the fandom for it. That says something.

In short: I’m glad Star Wars is over because I’m tired of being a scapegoat just because I ship two fictional characters in an online fandom space, where it should be safe to do so but apparently isn’t. I’m tired of the bullying and the death threats, and it still isn’t enough to get people to leave us alone. I just want to read and write fic about these two fictional space nerds, and reblog art of them, and talk to the friends I’ve made bc of it all in my own space, where I’m not inviting anyone who doesn’t like reylo to look at or engage with reylo. That’s it. So for someone like him to come in and act that way, with his platform and his connections...it makes me sick. I’ve lost all respect for him. Not that it means anything to him, clearly. Just sucks.

With that out of my system, I continue my day reblogging great posts and writing fic. (Side note: Please don’t reblog this post - I don’t need unwanted attention brought to it. No matter what we say or do, they will not listen. They will not relent. And I don’t have the energy to deal with it rn. I may end up just deleting this later anyway, but I needed to say it somewhere and twitter is REALLY not the place, for so many reasons.)

#fandom wank #discourse #venting #long post #fandom drama

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katandabbieslife · 4 years

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The Long Awaited Update, maybe, if anyone still reads our stuff...

So, it’s me, Abbie, who dropped the ball this time and not Kat. I promised you guys an update about why we were gone all summer and that did not happen. To explain it, completely, I might need to go back Winter break 2 years ago. It was right around the time we started this blog. Kat and I were both full time students and working to pay for food and bills. We both let our jobs know in September that we’d need winter break off to go home for the holidays as a lot of employers in college towns expect. We were both told that would not be a problem and we made plans, book flights because they’re much cheaper when booked in advance. We were set! Wrong, we were both screwed. Schedules came out for the weeks of winter break and Kat was scheduled for 2 days that first week and then scheduled for Christmas Eve, and the day after Christmas. Kat went to ask if it was a mistake and her boss told her no, that it wasn’t a mistake and they couldn’t spare her for two weeks. She explained we booked our flights in early October because we were told she’d be off. Kat explained she needed the time off to visit family and they told her they couldn’t do it. Kat told them she was already told she’d have to time off and was going home to visit family at which point they told her if she was a no call no show, that they’d have to terminate her. She broke down in tears and went back to work. Over the next couple days, she kept begging them to give her the time off. She talked to co-workers to try to get those days covered and several said they would do it. They just had to convince their asshole manager.

Just as Kat was seemingly ready to get her situation finished, mine popped up. My schedule had me scheduled for a full 40 hours for both weeks. I was beyond shocked because I never worked over 32 hours and usually only 28 hours. I went to ask why I was scheduled for a full 40 hours and the bitch told me “Oh, you only work a short schedule because you’re a student, and since school is out for these two weeks, we had some of you kids want to go home to family for the holidays and we need you to cover some of those shifts since classes are out.” I threw my schedule down on the desk and said “Yeah, some kids wanted to go home for the holidays, I was one of them, I put in for this in September and you said it was approved, what the fuck happened?” and she just blankly stared at me. I asked when some of the other put in for the break and she was like last month, and proceeded to tell me I should ask for time off 3 weeks in advance, I pointed out I asked 3 months in advance. She gave me a shitty grin and a chuckle and told me to get back to work. I refused and told her we had flights booked for over two months and they were non-refundable (not sure if they were or not, just said that to hopefully change her mind) and she told me, I hope you didn’t pay a lot, it would suck to lose all that money for something you can’t use. I told her “I’m not going to lose money, I’ll go to the labor board or small claims court since these were booked AFTER you approved my time off.” She told me to stop being dramatic. I explained I would be going home for the holidays one way or another. After arguing with both our respective bosses, we were finally told we’d get the time off. We thought it was all settled. We left, we had a great holiday, we came back to school. We stopped by both of our places of employment to get our schedules and Kat was told she’d been replaced. She came out in tears and I comforted her and explained we’d get her another job. She calmed down and we drive to my shithole job and I get my schedule and I’m scheduled for 3 hours one day, 5 hours another and only have 5 total days scheduled in two weeks. 16 hours for 2 weeks. I raised hell and it did me no good.

Kat started her job search and I worked my few hours while filing out applications Kat brought home for me since I was looking for a new job too. Our parents knew what went on just before break and they weren’t surprised when we had to call them for extra money for bills and rent. As some of you know, My mother is an attorney and my Stepdad(Now Dad, he officially adopted me Aug. 2018) owns a small chain of like 30 or so sporting goods stores in my home state. Kat Parents own a huge Horse farm/Ranch made up of three original farms combined to make one large one. Our families are doing nicely. By this time, almost a year into our relationship, our parents were already friends and talking on a regular basis through texts, Email, and phone calls, I figure initiated by my slightly over protective mother because she feels responsible for my abuse at the hands of my biological father. Anyway, they are all friends and talk often. Mom told me to get a list of our rent and average monthly bills together and call her tomorrow. And in the meantime, Kat’s Parents put money in her account and mine did the same. I called mom with the rent and average bills and I expected her to be putting a budget or something together because “moms love that shit” right? We talked for a bit and then she said she had some phone calls to make.

She called back a couple hours later and she told me to put it on speaker phone and I heard her asking “Katherine, are you guys there?” and we heard Kat’s parents chime in and say “yes, we’re here.” We all said hi and Kat and I were looking at each other like “W.T.F.?” Mom started by telling me I needed to go quit my job immediately after the phone call, Kat’s mom told Kat to tear up any applications she had filled out and to never mind finding a new job. Again, Kat and I looked at each other like “W.T.F.?” Mom and Katherine(Kat’s mom) both started telling us how they couldn’t believe how much trouble we had just trying to come home for the holidays and how upset they were when, at first, they didn’t think they’d get to see their girls for the holidays. They were glad when we finally got to come home but they expected we’d face some kind of retaliation for taking the time off. They were a little shocked at what actually happened, they thought it would be the opposite and we’d get the hours dogpiled on us instead, causing our schoolwork to take a backseat. They both wondered that if we got new jobs, would we get too many hours to handle both work and schoolwork? Or would we go through the same trouble next holiday season? Would we get to enjoy summer break? At which point they collectively decided to pay our bills, our rent, our food, and we’d get a small bump in our monthly allowances. My allowance was guilt money from Mom anyway. Most of it goes into a saving account anyway, I also get money from stud fee’s from my German Shepherd Franklin. Usually around $500 a month sometime more (if he gets lucky, if you know what I mean? : ) Our parents were paying for school anyway, our bills did not add that much more in comparison. We just had stipulations. Every break, we have to go home to visit at least for a week unless we’re granted a reprieve. This only applies to Thanksgiving, Winter, and Summer breaks. All other breaks are short and we’re free to do with as we please. Because of comments I made to my mother about how much cam girls make online and how I bet Kat and I would make bank doing the cam girl thing, we were told “Absolutely no porn!” If they ever found a single picture of either of us online, a nipple, a lip, a butthole, our agreement would be null and void and we’d have to get jobs and all money would be pulled except for tuition, of course. (Way to go Mom, take all the fun stuff away and leave us with Work and School only! LOL) Anyway, we agreed, we wouldn’t do Porn. We also have to keep our grades up, which wouldn’t be hard since we wouldn’t have to worry about reading chapters on breaks at work, or getting papers written before our shifts. Everything seemed great. We agreed. Without having to work a part time job after class, I used the free time in the evening to pick up a few more classes each semester and have since taken classes from (8am to 7:30pm) 3 days a week and (8am to 7pm) 2 days a week, assuming the classes are offered, and luckily they have been. Those extra classes allowed me to double major and earn two bachelor degree’s this past spring, when I was only on track for one degree and only a few classes short of my second which I had planned on earning the end of this current semester, but my schedule worked out and the classes were offered during my new found free time.

Skip ahead to December of 2018 and you have stories of my Birthday Party, our Holiday party, and that’s where we left off. Through spring semester, things got hectic again. I loaded my schedule to get as many classes done as I can and with any luck, I can graduate early.

Our lives were also changed last year when we went home for winter break and I can’t wait for that chapter to start. Some of you know we’re both engaged with full blessings from both my family and hers, and we’re planning on getting married in June. One year of dating, and then 2 years and 3 months of engagement until the wedding. We’re still as happy now as we were on day one, if not happier. Kat’s mom corners us every chance she gets with wedding planning. We’ve already decided on getting married by our favorite lake on their farm, but the details are what Momma Katherine loves to obsess over and I love her for it. Ok, on to the life changer. I wrote about Kat handling the purchase of the farm northern property line of her parents property. The days leading up to arriving back home for winter break were filled with Exams and Kat making contract changes with my mother, the attorneys advice. She and Kat talked as much the week before we went home than she and I since summer break all combined. Mom helped Kat make changes and Kat emailed it to her parents attorney to make the changes official. Kats parents had been telling us they were going to take us out to celebrate when we got home and were just told we were celebrating the new addition to the company and the plans for that part of the property. Ok, well, the life changer will not be in this quick little update since the original draft of this was 28 pages long and over 22,000 words. It kind of bled into everything above then into Winter break 2018/2019. I found my Word document that I journaled in during break, just as I do with stuff I think I will write about later. So, we have this update that will hopefully explain a few things about us, and I will follow that up with the posts about last year’s winter break. I have my word files from the spring and summer too so those will be written up when I get time. For now, here is a chance to learn a little more about us. If you’re still around reading our ramblings, thank you for your patience, if you’re new, enjoy what’s been posted already and please, do not hold us to a schedule. We don’t mean to be liars by saying we’ll be posting soon and not posting for months, it’s just that life and schoolwork take precedence over Tumblr posting. I hope you understand. -Abbie

#lifechanger #bisexualgirls #collegelife #farmlife

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irinapaleolog · 4 years

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DISCLAIMER: This article is intended for educational and research purposes only. It has been published to shed light and correct understanding on the escalating issue of hatred of women online. By extension, this article also aims to inform readers on right-leaning and left-leaning internet hive minds and their negative influence on culture, politics, and society.

T/W: This article contains mentions of sexual assault, violence against women, suicide, incest, racism, anti-semitism, sexism

If you’re a woman who is active in an online, women-dominated fandom space, then you’re well aware of everything this article is about to tell you.

You’ve read every death threat.

You’ve gone through the sometimes graphic — but always malicious — anonymous message or tweet explaining every way in which some person you’ll never know would like to harm you.

You may have been banned from a fan forum or had your messages wiped from a Discord channel by a bot or mod who decided that your thoughts and your words as a woman were not allowed around here.

You’ll probably remember all the times your sexual identity, your race, or your religious affiliation was questioned and erased.

You have read every time the latest hive mind online has labeled you a sexist. A racist. An abuse apologist. A school shooter. An inbred. A Nazi. A mental case. Inhuman.

You probably know somebody whose had their information put up on Reddit threads or 4chan forums or alt-right YouTube channels for everybody to see. The aim? To determine if maybe they could find ways to hurt that individual in person or — at the very least — make their life a little harder.

And of course, you know all too well that all the threats, lies, bullying, defamation, doxxing, and dehumanization is driven by the internet’s systemic fear over women enjoying media made for them, on their own terms, and on their own time.

We’ve experienced countless cycles of this outrage, ranging from comic book heroes to k-pop. One of the most recent iterations, however, is driven by a desire to see two fictional space wizards kiss in a galaxy far, far away.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with what it’s like to be a fan of “Reylo” in the Star Wars fandom, well, it looks a bit like this:

All of the screenshots, located above, catalog a small sample of the four years of hate sent to “Reylos:” fans who are interested in the canon romantic dynamic between Rey and Kylo Ren in the Star Wars sequel trilogy. These fans are predominately women.

And, no, let’s get this out of the way: These hate posts, while directed towards fans of a fictional pairing, have nothing to do with fictional characters. This hate has everything to do with policing and punishing women for collectively enjoying fiction in a way deemed incorrect by various political and social agendas. The end goal is always the same — bully these women until they become silent.

Defining a “Bullying Hive Mind:” The “Alt-Right” vs “Antis”

The ways in which bullying hive minds reach this end goal are dependent on the political alignment of the cyberbully. Either they are pursuing an agenda dictated by alt-right circles or one dictated by factions of the progressive left, both of which gained internet popularity in the early to mid 2010s.

Most people — whether it’s because you’ve kept up with the aftereffects of the 2016 election or because you’ve spent anytime on YouTube as of late — are familiar with the alt-right. This group leans male and is driven mostly by insecurity, overt misogyny, and a sense of ownership over what they think are “male-dominated spaces” being overrun by women. It’s another example of extreme conservative thinking: what was mine should stay mine and anybody who thinks differently than me needs to get out of my way.

Arguably the biggest example of alt-right hate and harassment online is Gamergate, an anti-women bullying campaign that first arose on 4chan. The movement’s aim was to push women out of gaming journalism, game design, and gaming fandom by sending death threats, rape threats, stalking women, and dehumanizing women to their peers.

The event bolstered the anger, insecurity, and sexism of young men into an online hive mind that continues today, most notably in Gamergate’s successor “Comicsgate,” which orchestrated the attempted sabotage of Captain Marvel’s release.

These people are not hard to find. They parade their ideas on Reddit or, increasingly likely, on monetized YouTube channels. Their tactics often include spreading misinformation using false “evidence;” discrediting women’s interests by reducing them to “mental cases;” dogpiling; and doxxing.

In Star Wars fandom, this right-leaning group refers to themselves as “The Fandom Menace.” The group was created by former Comicsgate supporter Ethan Van Sciver, who goes by ComicArtistPro Secrets on YouTube. He frequently uploads videos — clickbait title and all — with common alt-right buzz words like “SJW.”

The Fandom Menace was formed in response to The Last Jedi — a more inclusive, forward-thinking addition to the Star Wars franchise that was inspired by the writings of Robert Bly, a leader in the mythopoetic men’s movement. The focus on feminine power and multiple women with complex character development and speaking roles within the film — in addition to the death of Luke Skywalker — powered this hate group to see Star Wars under Disney as “feminist propaganda.” They were driven by the belief that Disney was attempting to erase men from the Star Wars fan community. This led to several targeted hate campaigns including one that ran actress Kelly Marie Tran off of social media.

Where the alt-right works to monetize their hate through public YouTube channels, left-leaning circles are less well known to the general public. Reactionary left-leaning circles that operate within fandom spaces tend to skew younger (mostly generation-z and late millennial) and are predominantly women. They rose in 2015 with the onset of Tumblr and in response to the changing dynamics within “shipping” fandoms. For the uninitiated, “shippers” are groups of people within fandoms who center their attention around a specific relationship within that fandom (e.g. Rey and Kylo Ren).

In online spaces, this reactionary, left-leaning group is better known as “antis.” This name was given to this group after they became known for demonizing, demoralizing, and/or dehumanizing any individual in a shipping fandom who they deemed to be promoting “problematic” content through the fiction they consumed.

Anti harassment campaigns follow a consistent pattern where genuine concerns about real-world injustice are misinterpreted and applied to fictional properties in an attempt to create a 1:1 comparison and exert power over another (often marginalized) group. They start by leveraging performative accusations around real world issues such as sexism, racism, homophobia, sexual assault, and gendered violence against fictional characters deemed by the group to be representative of these problems. The guilt-by-association of these characters is then applied to the people who like these characters, and a general warning is issued: “stop supporting them, or else.”

When this accusation is ignored, it is then weaponized into bullying campaigns that aim to belittle and discredit women through dangerously shallow and irrational pearl clutching. The motivations and levels of participation in these harassment campaigns vary, but they tend to move from one large fandom to the next, focusing on whatever pop culture character will award them the most clout.

As one of the biggest current pop culture “ships,” Reylos have drawn the antis’ ire on both Twitter and Tumblr since the ship’s inception in 2015. The following accusations have been leveled against fans of these characters since 2015. These accusations include:

That Reylos support real life abuse by wanting a romantic pairing between two characters who begin as enemies in an epic myth.

That Reylos are racists because they support a romantic pairing between two white characters.

That Reylos are sexist because Reylos write sexually explicit fanfiction between the “pure” heroine and the “bad guy.”

The importance of these causes and people’s ability to engage with them in good faith is recklessly diminished by blaming valid, real life concerns on women who are enjoying a fictional pair of characters from a film series. It disregards the fact that the women shipping these characters are not a homogeneous group in either their identity or their background. It erases the abuse that some shippers have experienced first-hand — -abuse they should not be forced to out on the internet in order for their shipping to be seen as socially acceptable.

When the Left Leans Right

Launching targeted harassment at any group of women celebrating an enemies-to-lovers ship won’t gain antis clout among their peers. As mentioned previously, Reylo is specifically targeted because it’s arguably the biggest ship in one of the biggest franchises in the world. This means that while Emma Watson said that the enemies-to-lovers dynamic in Beauty and the Beast is about “inclusion and love,” that classic Disney film is old and it’s been done. There is no longer a large, activated community around it, and, as such, there is little incentive to bully the women who enjoy it.

Once antis do decide to bully a ship, however, one of the main accusations leveled at followers of enemies-to-lovers ships is that what they are supporting is “dangerous” to society. To antis, symbolism and subtext in fiction are bypassed in favor of literal and often severe interpretations of a story’s greater meaning. This means that, theoretical little girls and grown women who are unable to separate fiction from reality are put at risk of harming themselves and others because of what they see in fiction.

The irony of this is that a group of mainly women confidently trying to convince other women that they must be protected from complicated romantic dynamics in fairytales is taken from a page in the American conservative playbook that is still used today. For decades, American conservatives have used popular media to scapegoat real issues in society that are easier to pass off as a consequence of the media our society consumes rather than what our society actually teaches and perpetuates.

For example: In 1948, psychiatrist Frederic Wertham began to publish magazine articles and books that claimed that comic books led to juvenile delinquency. While he had no scientific evidence, his writings caused a societal outcry that led to an investigative Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency. Here, conservative politicians demonized comic book writers and the comic book industry, declaring that “this country cannot afford the calculated risk involved in feeding its children, through comic books, a concentrated diet of crime, horror, and violence.”

The subcommittee eventually lead to the Comic Codes Authority — a comics industry created code that put restrictions on the art their creators could produce. The code stifled the industry for almost a decade.

Around the time the subcommittee’s investigation was coming to a close in 1955, the pearl clutching continued on television in a special news report entitled “Confidential File: Horror Comic Books!”

More propaganda video than actual news report, the narrator speaks over several young boys alone in the woods reading comic books. The narrator states:

“When I was a boy and hung with the gang we did a lot of things, we roasted potatoes, we went on expeditions, we tipped over garbage cans now and then, we wrote nasty remarks about the teacher on the sidewalk, but we never spent an afternoon sitting around like this, reading.

What a wonderful thing this would be if they were reading something worth while, something that would stimulate their desires to build and to grow. But they’re not reading anything constructive…they’re reading stories devoted to adultery, to sexual perversion, to horror, to the most despicable of crimes…

One of the wonderfully appealing things about children is that they haven’t yet come to the age where reality and unreality are divorced. The emotional impact of something they read in a comic book may be much the same as a real life situation they would witness.”

The news report goes on to show young boys stabbing trees with a knife and almost killing their friend with a rock after reading horror comic books.

This same outlandish, conservative mindset is what we see today in left-leaning anti culture. The difference now, however, is that these ideals are being regurgitated and repackaged for young girls as each generation of women gains more power within a patriarchal society.

For girls, the preoccupation is not around whether or not they will commit violence, but rather, who they will have sex with and how they will be treated as they grow within a historically male-dominated culture. The idea that women will get themselves into toxic, abusive relationships because they consume hyperbolic myths and fairytales instead of the real consequences of imposter syndrome, insecurity, and the restriction of women to explore their worth in society is no different than what conservatives said about boys in 1950s America. They asserted that boys would become violent psychopaths because they consumed multi-colored panels depicting fictional, exaggerated violence instead of the real life wars our countries waged, fear mongering on the news, or the pro-gun culture surrounding them daily. Both thought processes are damaging to the growth of our societal beliefs.

In fact, the fear and discomfort of women exploring sex within their own spaces is something that is threatening to groups on both the left and the right.

John Boyega’s New Years Eve Tweet: What Caused It and Why Did it Blow Up?

All of the screenshots above were taken within 4 days following a blow up on Twitter involving Star Wars actor John Boyega, a few sock puppets, and whole load of serial anti and alt-right accounts.

If you’ve been on Twitter this year, chances are you have noticed John Boyega trending. The 27-year old actor (best known for his portrayal as Resistance hero Finn in the Star Wars sequel trilogy) gained traction on Twitter New Year’s Eve when he posted a tweet of characters Rey and Kylo Ren fighting (as they do in a movie entitled, well, Star Wars) with the caption “Star Wars Romance.”

To anybody who had never touched fandom Twitter, the tweet appears harmless enough. However, the tweet was successful in doing exactly what it intended and exactly what lurking hate accounts who successfully orchestrated the bullying barrage wanted the tweet to do. It galvanized a hoard of antis and alt-right trolls and their following to — by their own admission — bully Reylos.

This particular incident began with Twitter user @crogman, a sock puppetnow going by the name of @solo_sebes. The sock puppet account appeared on Twitter in mid December 2019 and quickly entrenched itself in a community of Reylos by retweeting and posting Reylo-positive tweets and joining in on post The Rise of Skywalker discourse. The account was also quick to energize antis of the Rey/Kylo dynamic.

Now that the sock puppet is embedded deeply enough into the Reylo community that somebody within that community would see controversy on their timeline between @crogman and Boyega, @crogman tweeted at the Star Wars actor, “bro you’re extremely disgusting and gross also fucking disrespectful…you cannot be this jealous of adam driver dude as a black woman im fucking ashamed that someone like you represented us in star wars.”

The comment was included with a screenshot of John Boyega on Instagram writing “@heyfabrice it’s not about who she kisses but who eventually lays the pipe. You are a genius.”

Boyega’s Instagram comment was in response to a fan suggesting that Rey (played by Daisy Ridley in The Rise of Skywalker) was now available after her canon romantic partner, Ben Solo (played by Adam Driver) died saving her life.

Boyega’s comments upset some fans on Instagram who found that his comments suggested that a woman’s worth in romantic relationships — fictional or not — was a prize to be won by the man who gets to have sex with her first.

The sock puppet account inflamed a situation that would likely have stayed on Instagram. While antis correctly identified that the account was fake and was indeed blackfishing, antis incorrectly claimed that the account was created by Reylos to justify a group of white women attacking Boyega on social media. Instead, the account was clearly a plant meant to goad the actor into directing hate at Reylos.

This is proven by the fact that the account under its new username attempted to instigate hate towards Boyega’s co-star Daisy Ridley in the comments of Reylos’ posts shortly after New Year’s Eve.

Additionally, @crogman was not the only account never associated with the Reylo community that was used to inflame the situation with Boyega. User @FaberLima1 tweeted at Boyega under @crogman’s tweet writing “you are paying mico and only worsening your image. Better stop (and erase while you have time).”

Boyega responded to this tweet with several laugh emojis.

The account @FaberLima1 at the time of this screenshot has 6 followers and no tweets past December 25th. Like @crogman, the account posts Reylo-positive posts utilizing popular hashtags within the fandom including #BenSoloDeservesBetter, a hashtag created by fans of Ben Solo to express their dissatisfaction with his character’s ending.

Also like @crogman, the account was created in July 2019 yet has tweets only traceable in December, signifying that the account has been nuked perhaps multiple times.

Shortly after @crogman’s tweet to Boyega, antis began to push common anti-Reylo accusations. This included accounts who had never actively bullied Reylos. For example, user @sxidey posted several tweets accusing Reylos of “sexualizing Rey,” “harassing John”, and giving “money to the military.”

The latter accusation is a common left-leaning talking point against Reylos who support Adam Driver (a former marine). This particular comment was a reference to a Gofundme started by Ben Solo fans on Reddit. The Gofundme is raising money for Driver’s charity, Arts in the Armed Forces.

The account, however, had only had one recent mention of Reylo two days earlier on December 28th. The account itself is also new, joining in October 2019.

It’s possible that the account is simply a new anti account on Twitter. Regardless, the listing of anti accusations against Reylos almost at the exact time of @crogman’s post reveals the motive of inciting hatred against members of the Reylo community.

Another account, @itsjoey56138220, was also inflaming the situation early on underneath @crogman’s tweet with accusations that Reylos were racist.

Unlike @sxidey, this account has a history of inciting hate against Reylos with outlandish conspiracy theories including one theory that Reylos were created by the alt right who caused “ex Twilight bitches” to make the ship popular. The account has also claimed that Reylos are racist because Reylo shippers want a “whites only romance.”

Boyega, in response to users including two sock puppet accounts with no association to Reylo — and encouraged by anti accounts sewing seeds of hatred across Twitter — finally took to his own Twitter account to tweet:

The tweet, which currently sits at over 190k likes, caused tens of thousands of hateful, targeted tweets towards a group of fans made up predominantly of women and girls. It also resulted in several hate videos by alt-right YouTubers totaling hundreds of thousands of views, several hacked accounts, and the suicide baiting of a teenage girl.

The New Years Incident By The Numbers: How Boyega’s Tweet Set Off The Left and Alt-Right

Following Boyega’s tweet, reactionary users on both left and alt-right Twitter felt further emboldened to hate on a group of women they had been discrediting, dehumanizing, and sending death threats to for years. For myself, the event presented an opportunity, albeit an unfortunate one, to track these groups’ behaviors and quantify them. Ultimately, I had the goal to break down how these incidents are organized to hate on women, whether for purposes of clout or their desire to purge women from fandom spaces.

For this analysis, I took a sample of tweets that contained the word “Reylo” (the search pull also included its plural form “Reylos”) from December 31, 2019 (the day of Boyega’s tweet) to January 3, 2020. After cleaning the accounts to the best of my ability of “pro-Reylo” tweets, I was left with 25,012 tweets that contained negative and neutral comments about Reylos and the Reylo dynamic. I sifted manually through about 7k of these tweets to find key themes, which I verified utilizing a text mining analysis of the tweets.

I emerged being able to quantify the following key themes:

Hate, Trolling, Cyberbullying

Abuse, Toxicity

Racism

Sex, Sexualized, Objectification

Mental, Psychotic, Unhinged

“Hate” received the most individual tweets at ~2.2k tweets and received ~31.4 likes per tweet on average. Tweets containing themes “abuse” and “racism” received a slightly higher avg like count at 38.7 avg likes and 35.4 avg likes, respectively. These themes, along with tweets dealing with “sex” were all mentioned over 1k times.

What this suggests is that a smaller number of accounts with a wider reach were posting more substantive tweets with a focused agenda, while tweets containing “hate’ keywords were more likely to be lobbed out by anyone, including accounts with very little reach.

Tweets mentioning the theme of Reylo fans being “mental” cases had less tweets at 602 total tweets. This theme was pushed strongly by the alt-right circles involved as opposed to leftist circles, which dominated the conversation on Twitter. While this analysis does not focus on the alt-right’s reaction on YouTube, Twitter was used as a place to spread YouTube reactions created by notable Fandom Menace members.

Keyword Group: Hate

The “hate” keyword group quantified tweets containing any mention of trolling, cyberbullying, or hate towards Reylos. The fact that “hate” reveals itself as a top keyword provides further evidence that this event was viewed as implicit approval to bully a group of fans consisting predominantly of women. Anybody involved in sending Reylos hate were, by their own admission, the bullies and were cheering John on for “trolling” women and “putting [women] in their place.”

“Reading Reylo hate to cheer myself up”

“I don’t like Finn’s character either, but I love how John is putting Reylos in their place.”

“Seeing John Boyega troll the Reylos is the greatest way to end 2019”

The clear agenda to send hate towards a group of women and teenage girls was further validated by the fact that the incident was received positively by all sides of the political spectrum, from “progressive” antis to members of the alt-right. The members included the Fandom Menace and alt-right leader and Pizzagate supporter Jack Posobiec.

Both groups took advantage of the situation utilizing the same tactics they typically employ. The alt-right took to YouTube and Twitter to discredit women among their followers by using buzz-words such as “SJW” and “Twilight.” “Twilight” — which was mentioned 103 times in association with “Reylo” between 12/31/2019 and 1/3/2020 — is often used to describe any piece of media enjoyed predominantly by women.

The goal is to degrade women’s interests among their peers by pushing the narrative that Reylos are silly girls consistently preoccupied with the same trivial, valueless media.

Examples of tweets from the alt right include the following:

“John Boyega ripped the Reylo’s a new asshole. You haven’t seen this many acne riddled fatty Tumblr Girls lose their shit since Twilight ended.”

“My thesis: Reylos and most of these Neo Star Wars fans are just ex Twilight fans and self hating beta male cucks who attached themselves to the franchise like parasites. Next they will glom onto whatever film series is hot and continue their rot.”

“StarWars was so great before Disney. Now its plagued by psychotic Reylo fans, Tumblr freaks, representation-screeching SJWs, radical feminism activists, ex-Twilight fans, &wine-guzzling Disney-fan mothers caked Karen. &these are the people they’re now targeting for their fandom.”

On the other side of the spectrum, long-time anti accounts spearheaded the harassment of Reylo shippers, leveraging Boyega’s tweet to bombard Reylo shippers with hate messages. This included viral tweets from accounts with a history of anti behavior across multiple fandoms, along with multiple tweets from accounts with history of targeting Reylos.

For example, Twitter user @Iovestour tweeted, “oscar isaac going off about disney’s blatant homophobia & john boyega telling reylos to fuck themselves all within two weeks i love men men are my friends.” This tweet has more than 48k likes. You’ll be hard pressed, however, to find any tweets by the account past November 2019, even though the account has been active since March 2018.

All tweets made under the account’s former name “blinkapologist” have been deleted — a trait uncharacteristic of your normal Twitter user just looking to share their opinions and maybe curate the news. Past tweets (to which blinksapologists’ tweets and replies have been deleted) reveal a pattern of anti behavior including a history of going after individuals supporting fictional characters the anti finds problematic, utilizing extremist parallels to real-life events.

A reply to @Iovestour in June 2019 reveals the user had allegedly called victims of the Holocaust Nazi supporters. The accusation appears to have been said to supporters of Marvel character Wanda Maximoff.

Along with antis with history across multiple fandoms inciting hatred against Reylos, this event also revealed itself as a targeted harassment campaign due to the frequency in which some accounts tweeted at or about Reylos.

Boyega’s tweet caused some anti accounts within this sample to tweet over 50 times about Reylos in the span of 4 days including sadgeorgelucas1, who tweeted about Reylos ~100 times, drhorotiwtzfine, who tweeted about Reylos ~75 times, and saltandrockets, who tweeted about Reylos ~65 times.

This is not abnormal. Several of these top accounts were also consistently bullying Reylos. The accounts highlighted in red in the chart below are anti-Reylo accounts that were also included as mentioning Reylo frequently between December 31, 2019 to January 3, 2020. This includes once again drhorowitzfine, who has mentioned Reylo negatively ~1,150 times between 2017 to 2019. Other top anti accounts include winniethepoe1, who tweeted about Reylo ~320 times from 2018 to 2019 and ~25 times during Boyega’s New Year’s Eve incident.

Of course no harassment campaign can be waged without finding ways to make the people being bullied look like they were worth being bullied. One of the two main “arguments” thrown against Reylos included the predictable anti accusation of Rey and Kylo’s “abusive” relationship poisoning the mind’s of women and girls. Since Reylo shippers had made the decision to create transformative works and discuss a fictional romance found to be impure by the antis, Reylos could now be cyberbullied in real life for their morally reprehensible decisions.

Reylo is also referred to as “abusive” because some still try to stretch the narrative that Rey and Kylo’s relationship is incestual, and therefore Reylo’s are promoting incest.

The idea that the relationship is incestual goes back to a 2016 fan clash over who Rey’s parents were. Many fans wanted Rey to be a Skywalker or a Solo, which would make her related to Kylo Ren, the son of Leia Organa and Han Solo. The event involved Reylos being frequently lobbed with accusations of incest, and they were at one point banned from discussing Rey and Kylo’s dynamic on a popular Star Wars forum, Jedi Council Forums.

Another common theme was that Reylos were “toxic.” This theme was mostly fed by alt-right circles and originated with a post by Fandom Menace supporter Dataracer117, who has a history of harassing Reylos.

Dataracer117 has a history of voicing his contempt for Disney and their “radical feminist propaganda.” This is most notably seen in his involvement in Comicgate’s attack on Captain Marvel. This included digging up screenshots by fans of Captain Marvel who spoke out against the sexism being aimed against the film, accusing all the accounts of being “Captain Marvel bots.”

Like the Captain Marvel incident, Dataracer117 posted a tweet with screencaps that Reylos were allegedly sending death threats to JJ around the time of Boyega’s tweet. Despite Dataracer117’s history attempting to devalue women in fandom communities and despite the screencaps being debunked by the Reylo community, the screencaps gained traction around Twitter, YouTube, and in media publications including Buzzfeed. They were further used to create the narrative that Reylos are “unhinged.”

This narrative inflamed alt-right accounts, and they began to frequently frame Reylos as mental cases. Discrediting women is nothing new (in fact you can easily read about it in this essay on Western puritanical conditioning against women in the 17th century), and is to be expected from a community who dedicates their time to driving women away from their online spaces.

The second accusation that was used to fuel harassment against Reylos was the claim that Reylos were racist against Boyega. They claimed that Reylos’ harassment of the actor led women to be upset with Boyega over his Instagram comment. This led to harassment on his Twitter — which remember, was started by a sock puppet account not associated with the Reylo community.

While racism is a prevalent concern that needs to be addressed within all fandom communities-and questions over inherent privilege due to one’s community are something to be examined-no support was given to back up these particular claims about the Reylo community during this incident.

This is not to say, however, that isolated incidents have not occurred outside of this specific accusation within the Reylo fandom, as they would within any large and global group of people. However, these incidents are statistically insignificant to the population of people who discuss Reylo positively on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis (which, according to the sample number of accounts who have discussed Reylo between 2015 to 2019, can be quantified at over 40k individuals. The true number is dependent on how many accounts — currently almost 70k — discuss Reylo negatively within the sample).

This particular accusation of racism has several layers to it and I would like to break them down separately.

“But Reylos Read Explicit Fanfiction”

The first part of this is that the nature of Boyega’s Instagram comments allowed antis and alt-right circles to attack Reylos on NSFW fanfiction and fanart written and drawn for and by women. It also allowed antis to draw more criticism around the ways in which Reylos analyzed The Last Jedi, a film with many allusions to the writings of psychoanalytics including Sigmund Freud.

After the release of The Last Jedi, the Reylo community, who had written long form meta analysis on the Star Wars saga since 2015, wrote lengthy metas about the symbolism in the film. Much of this symbolism was reflective of Rey’s sexual awakening throughout her journey in the movie.

Antis took issue with this and saw this as “sexualizing” Rey’s character. They asserted that women exploring sexuality through the lens of a fem-gaze narrative written for women was appalling, degrading, and out of line.

For anti and alt-right circles, the Reylo community’s openness to discussing sex in Star Wars through meta, fanfiction, and fanart by women (and generally for women) meant that Reylos could not take offense to Boyega’s questionable comment that suggested to some of his fans that Rey was a sexual prize to be won. The narrative antis spun was wholly unable — and unwilling — to separate women discussing sex in their own communities as different from men offering their sexual “jokes.”

This justification for bullying Reylos felt eerily similar to “she was wearing that, she asked for it.” It’s a highly socialized sexist line of reasoning women deal with daily and one that was readily accepted in this incident.

2. “But Reylos Ship Rey With The White Character”

Since 2015, Reylos have been accused of racism on the grounds that Reylos did not prefer Rey to be in a romantic relationship with the black male protagonist. This claim is presented without any evidence to back up the accusation.

Furthermore, the people who ship Rey and Finn (known as “Finnrey”) have done little to celebrate this pairing and act as a fan community. In fact, they have consistently acted more like a group that seeks to find ways to activate hate against Reylos instead of create content for their ship.

The two data visualizations below show every user in my sample who has tweeted the word “Reylo” between 2015 to 2019 vs every user in my sample who has tweeted the word “Finnrey” between 2015 to 2019. The gray in these charts represent the number of accounts who have only ever tweeted about their own ship. The purple represents the overlap — that is the accounts who have tweeted at least once about the other ship.

The first observation is that the number of users discussing “Finnrey” is small in comparison to the number of accounts discussing “Reylo.” Finnrey was mentioned by 7,780 accounts while Reylo was mentioned by 69,484 accounts.

As mentioned, gray = accounts who have only ever tweeted about their own ship. Purple = accounts who have tweeted about at least one other ship. So, in this case, out of the ~7.8k accounts that tweeted about Finnrey, ~60% of accounts mentioned “Reylo” at least once (4,665 accounts total). This number represents only ~7% of accounts who have ever talked about Reylo.

This data is supported by other statistics comparing the two ships. For example, on fanfiction website Archive of Our Own, the fic tag for Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren has ~16k fics. There are another 12k fics in the tag for Rey/Kylo Ren. The fic tag for Finn/Rey has under 2k fics.

3. “Reylos Have Bullied John Since 2015”

The most damaging false claim to come out New Year’s Eve was that Reylos had been attacking Boyega (and other Star Wars actors) with racist tweets since 2015.

It is very true that the actor has received heinous racist attacks. Most notably, the actor was attacked on social media following a #BoycottEpisodeVII hashtag that was started by two 4chan trolls in an attempt to get racist Star Wars fans to take the bait. It is well known that this hashtag was the work of racist alt-right accounts.

Since the hashtag, other attacks have been levied on Boyega. One of these attacks included a surge of outcries against him by The Fandom Menace, after a tweet posted in June 2018 stated: “If you don’t like Star Wars or the characters understand that there are decisions makers and harassing the actors/actresses will do nothing. You’re not entitled to politeness when your approach is rude. Even if you paid for a ticket!”

The Fandom Menace took the opportunity to bring their anger over Boyega’s comments to Twitter and YouTube, much like Comicsgate did when Brie Larson spoke in favor of diversity.

Reylos, however, are now being blamed for these attacks without any supporting evidence. They are also being blamed for the harassment of Kelly Marie Tran. The actress was bullied off of social media by alt-right trolls on her Instagram page, along with antis who saw her character kissing Finn as “sexual assault.”

You will not find any evidence linking the Reylos back to the targeted harassment of any Star Wars actors over the years. Predictably, however, you will find that the people who used this accusation to their advantage admitted that their own motive was bullying.

For example, Twitter user @notlipglosse tweeted “the way this man waited until he got his last star wars check so he could freely make fun of the racist stans who have bene harassing him since 2015 %@&@*!?!?!?” This tweet (at the time of the screencap) gained ~92.2k likes. A tweet posted on December 19th, however, reads “the way we’ve been bullying Reylo stans and calling them delusional and they won…,” further supports the data that this incident was about inciting hatred towards a group of fans predominately made up of women.

Another example is from user @irisckp. Shortly after Boyega’s tweet, the user tweeted “NOT THIS REYLO AND HER MUTUALS ACTING LIKE JOHN BOYEGA HAS BROUGHT SOME TYPE OF OPPRESSION WHEN HE WAS RACIALLY ABUSED BY REYLO’S FOR YEARS. HE HAD EVERY RIGHT.” Again this tweet was presented without evidence that Reylos had “racially abused” Boyega.

The tweet is referring to a livestream from a young woman in the Reylo community who candidly expressed discomfort over the false accusations and bullying. The livestream was taken by antis and used to further bully the young woman.

This bullying eventually descended into suicide baiting that resulted in the woman’s account being deleted. However, this did not stop antis from pushing the woman to kill herself. It also did not stop them from telling the teenager’s father, who had gotten involved in combating the harassment, to “live tweet your reaction when you find your daughters lifeless body dangling from her rooms ceiling fan.”

After @iriscpk’s initial tweet, the user admitted that they had “never seen Star Wars” (like a portion of antis bullying Reylos that night) and that “Reylo” is used as an umbrella term for their unsupported accusations of racism against Boyega.

The tweets again reveal that viral tweets making accusations against Reylos had no merit, and were not based in any evidence they had seen with their own eyes. These users were looking to be involved in the latest conversation despite the lack of evidence or knowledge and despite the real harm being done to the community the tweet targeted.

This supports the hive mind behavior behind this cyberbullying attack. There was no concern for any person hurt. There was no concern for the misinformation that was being spread. And there was no concern for the very real issue of racism in online spaces.

This was only ever about a group of women getting hurt and, hopefully, getting off the internet altogether.

Why This Matters and What This Means for Art and Society in The Digital Age

If you have gotten this far and you find this article absurd, you should. This much vitriolic hatred, ugliness, and anger over women analyzing and creating media for a romantic pairing in a Hollywood blockbuster is, to put it mildly, overblown. Unfortunately, it’s the reality. And it’s a reality that has even deeper repercussions if not addressed.

I wrote this article not only in a hope to correct the misinformation against a group of women in the Star Wars fandom, but also to address a larger issue of what it means when these hate campaigns are so readily accepted by the general public, by journalists, and by other fans.

The internet will continue to evolve as it already has. It will evolve into an ecosystem that will touch every single moment of our lives. It is a future that will be as brilliant as it will be terrifying and when we are so willing to demonize a group of women with no evidence but a tweet with a lot of likes, it shows that we are not prepared.

We are living in an age where art is being dictated to what a few executives read online, or what a data analyst may write up in a report. We have seen how Disney has made a movie based off of fan service easily found in Reddit threads. We have seen Paramount shift the schedule of an entire film to redesign a character after apparent outrage. We have seen Disney remove James Gunn from a major movie project following a targeted alt-right campaign to get him removed. And we have seen this with Warner Brothers choosing to green light their films using AI.

This pattern is concerning in part because we are willing to create art via algorithm. But, it’s also concerning because, unless these algorithms are properly coded and taught overtime to understand hive mind mentality, the machines that churn social listening data will be regurgitating intelligence corrupted by organized and hateful groups. These groups aim to restrict freedom of speech, diversity, and meaning in our art for the sake of political agendas laking any evidence, any substance, or any valuable goal.

I also wrote this article because it is not only our art that is at risk, but the ways in which we communicate as human beings online. The ability to see individuals — namely women — as inhuman or as less than with no second thought is something we should all understand is a problem. We have a deep inability to question what we see on our Facebook feeds, our Twitter timelines, or in our Instagram photos . We also live in an age where entire governments are being overturned by algorithms and social media ads. We are quick to blame Facebook and Cambridge Analytica and YouTube for this, and yes, while, those platforms have a responsibility of their own, we need to realize that it is our responsibility as well to always question what we see and search for evidence if it is not provided to us.

This example of bullying women in an online community is not necessarily synonymous with political elections, but it still presents yet another moment where people are failing to believe hard evidence over buzz words, sensationalized headlines, and clear, often spelled out agendas.

Until we learn not to react to everything we see, and listen to the people around us who come with facts, this type of behavior will continue, this type of behavior will get worse, and this type of behavior will impact us politically, socially, and culturally as we become more and more integrated as a digital society.

On January 10th, John Boyega posted a video to his Instagram account showing himself mocking tweets by women in the Reylo community. He did not blur out the names. These women were specifically targeted. The event created ~50k tweets continuing to bully women. Media outlets including Forbes, IGN, Cinemablend, Esquire, and The Wrap picked up the story. They all applauded the video.

In response, Reylos trended #reylolove — stories about how women in the community had positively impacted their lives.

They also created a charity event for anti-cyberbullying charity Cybersmile, which you can donate to here.

#star wars #the rise of skywalker #harassing #John Boyega #reylo

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