#anyways i hate talking about The Fandom and discourse

[llitchilitchi]

sometimes I wish this site had a mute option

[akascow]

another g1v3 discourse rant :/

‘g3 is too childlike now’ need i remind yall theyre 15?? thats how 15 year olds act bro😭😭 if anything g1 was way too adult

also the show is targeted towards kids ofc theyre gonna seem childlike in the eyes of an adult

and the reason the fashion was ‘dulled down’ a bit is probably bc most modern 15 year olds arent obsessed with 2010s fashion that yall so desperately crave HAHA

[basket-of-radiants]

Ok hi!!!! I love all your takes on the characters and it's rlly interesting! I also think moash is a very nuanced and fascinating character. I'm kinda mad at him after he tried to convince Kal to k!ll himself but I think he's a great charcter with lots of depth and your pinned post was so interesting because it said so much about moash! Anyway sorry bye!!!

Hello!!! Thank you!! I apologize for inflicting that post on you, but I'm glad you read/enjoyed it! ty for letting me know <3<3<3

[tvuniverse]

Listen i just want to preface this by saying I don't even personally hate Tommy, but that's not really the point i want to make so here goes nothing.

The way a lot of people act as if it's impossible to dislike him because the characters have moved on so so should we, right? and that's the thing right here, as poc we're always being told to move on. We can't express our feelings, we can't hold grudges, we can't complain about issues without making it something more than it is, we always have to just... move on.

I know people are going to say it's just a show, it's not that serious, but the issues it touches on and the way fandom speaks on those issues are.

I've seen a lot of comparisons between Tommy and other mains, how each of them are flawed and have screwed up one way or another, and you're right, but it's still unfair to compare him to them. We've seen each of the main characters experience guilt, or be ashamed of their action, we've seen them apologise, put in the work to actually grow, and they have. There's not enough time in an episode for us to see that for side characters. In this case, Tommy didn't do any of the above and that's normal, he was a plot device to show some very real societal issues, and especially what people of colour/women might go through in the workplace, and once he served his purpose he didn't get much more beyond a few scenes where it seemed like everything was fine between him and chim/hen. It would be more appropriate to compare him to the buckley parents, (who appeared in more or less the same amount of episodes) like if people suddendly started saying no one is allowed to hate them because they got their redemption, their kids more or less forgave them, they more or less tried to be better parents. And yet it's still not enough for a lot of people, because how they treated their children, the shit they've said to them, hits a little too close to home for a lot of people and so no matter what the show says or does, they'll still be mostly hated by the audience, and that's more than okay. But if margaret buckley is your favourite character than by all means be my guest. And listen, i love this show, it's all about hope, and it means everyone gets a redemption arc, as short as it is (sometimes even just a sentence lol), but we won't always be satisfied with these arcs, especially if they don't feel proportional to the hurt the characters may have caused to our mains, so we'll all have different reactions to them.

I swear liking a morally ambiguous/grey character says absolutely nothing about you, but making excuses for them, antagonising people who might dislike them (for good reasons) or acting like suddenly triggers don't exist for people, does say something about you. One of my favourite characters is literally the worst person ever, an actual bigot, but i won't ever write essays about why people are not allowed to dislike him actually because he's my babygirl.. i very much understand why people would.

All of this to say, everyone will have different opinions about Tommy. Some might love him, some will be completely neutral or at worst slightly uncomfortable/bothered by him, and some will straight up hate him, and all of these are fine. Live and let live, love whoever you want to love, and hate whoever you want to hate, but please stop trying to dictate how others should feel, i'm begging. And this really does go both ways.

[arowrath]

that post has actually shifted my perception of stupid fucking PrObLeMaTiC MeDiA discourse forever i think i need to chew on the topic for like 8 hours and decide how i feel about it then

[darlin-djarin]

"yeah i don’t participate in fandom discourse lol" dude it’s not even discourse. people are just being straight up racist and you’re sitting there doing nothing.

[musical-chick-13]

Always very funny (read: annoying) to me how frequently people will say something like, "Oh, I love fucked-up fictional relationships, I love TOXIC ROMANCE, I need my ships to have Problems™ that would make even the most stoic adult cringe in shame" and then vehemently reject literally any fictional romantic dynamic that involves a woman being horrible.

[gojonanami]

i love how the mood here undulates and change

sometimes, i can almost feel new people coming in and bringing their energy with them

i've got to say though – i'm really grateful that this is overall a happy space & i hope that we are making this a comfortable space for you, sab

i really hope you view this as a space where you can relax & take your mind off of things

(also – absolutely loved chapter five & i absolutely adore 'the ethics of relationships' series xxx)

I’m so glad because I feel the exact same way babe!!! this place is so so happy and nice and peaceful— it’s definitely an oasis for me and I hope it can be for all of you as well.

you guys definitely make this such a wonderful place to be and I am grateful to every one of you so so much

thank you bb I love you so much 🥹💕 for this message and also for enjoying the series. I appreciate you so so much

[coldvampire]

not playing bg & don't really have any interest in it + even if i wanted to my pc would Not appreciate it lmao but from the posts i have seen so far abt some of the dumb shit people are starting in the fandom makes me glad i'm preoccupied w other stuff fdgfhg

[pissfizz]

On one hand toya tenma hc is one of my favorite things ever and it’s very important to me but on the other part of me is coming to hate it bc fans are so insufferable about it

[maryse127]

I hadn't been in a fandom with severe shipping discourse since the Reylo days of the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy but oof some people are straight up mean about that FF Game Awards trailer being focused on a certain ship. The og game being more than 25 years old probably means this discourse has also existed for that long but Why Are People Like This? Been blocking left and right. As in I have also blocked people supporting my preferred ship because I can't stand mean gloating and attacking people opposing it.

[rat-rosemary]

rat, with all politeness, i dont think q needs therapy. I think something happened behind the scenes between the two (Dream and Q), and Dream upset Q over something that may not be entirely QSMP related--QSMP/USMP may have been the straw to break the camels back. Strong disclaimer, I dont think Dream is abusive/evil, this is just my real life example to illustrate why someone ghosts. It is an extreme--- I cut contact/went no contact with an abusive parent--they took to social media for a year straight with massive posts about how much they loved me, how they dont understand why I did that, how theyre very sorry and support me in everything. They refused to take "i do not want to speak with you, unless you can respect my boundaries" as an answer. Constantly they overstepped. Id tell them "here is why im mad" and they would turn around and say "i dont get why theyre mad?! I apologized?" Or "those reasons arent enough!" Many times other people contacted me on their behalf with claims they were dying/sick. They were not. Some of my parents friends would stalk me/insist I must be mentally unwell.

I dont think Dream is remotely doing that. I think hes a normal, if flawed, guy. However, I empathize heavily with Q. People don't get no-contact. They think its about cruelty. Its about "no matter how much we communicate you continue to not hear me/disrespect me. For my own health, i would like to stop this relationship." Its a last resort for when you tried everything.

I dont know what happened between them, but Im squicked by Dreams refusal to accept Quackity does not want to talk. Its my own personal bias/experience and it bothers me people assume Q's crazy/cruel, because Ive been there. I feel Dreams pain, but I think he might have missed the bigger issue at some point.

But its all speculation. I just ask politely dont label that action crazy. Youre welcome to not reply, i just noticed youre very much trying to see all sides.

Yes, if Quackity didn't want to talk to Dream anymore I think that's fine

But the thing is, he didn't have to talk to Dream to help manage this situation! He could just have made a tweet saying "hey guys, this is not okay, back off" and it would have been fine!

That's why Dream has been so insisting with this whole thing. Because he and his loved ones are in very serious danger, bad enough to get the police AND the fbi involved and Quackity could have helped to make it better by just making a quick comment or a single tweet telling his fans to stop

I absolutely agree that people don't get how hard it is to go non-contact with someone, and I'm sorry you had to deal with that, but Quackity didn't need to be in contact with Dream to do something

Because the people he needed to talk to are his own fans, who he is in contact with

(Also, I'm kind of saying it sounds like Quackity needs therapy because from everything we have been presented with, it sound more like there was something bothering him that he refused to communicate to his friends and it grew until this happen. But hey, I don't know because he refuses to give his side of the story!)

[daenerys-targaryen]

ok i'm going back to my cave some of y'all are too intense about things and i'm just here to vibe

[ostentenacity]

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[theultracharmingladynoire]

tumblr let me finish my tag rant challenge

[sarasade]

One of the most generally useful things to come out of Hbomberguy's plagiarism video and Todd in the Shadows' similar video on misinformation is how they bring transparency to the internet phenomenon of "I made up a guy to get mad at".

Seriously, I've seen people make up a lot of stupid shit on the internet over the years and it's often just a manipulative attempt to paint a group of marginalized people in a bad light.

That's the TL;DR version of this post. 

ANYWAY here is the long version

Those videos are mostly about James Somerton's plagiarism of other queer people's work. However I'd like to talk about that 20-30% of Somerton's original writing- and oh boy. It's mostly about complaining about White Straight Women and misgendering well-known trans creators such as Rebecca Sugar and calling Becky Albertalli a straight woman while it's pretty common knowledge that she was forced to out herself as bi because she received so much harassment over "being a cishet woman who appropriates LGBT+ stories".

One thing that irks me especially is how in his Killing Stalking and Gay Shipping videos Somerton brings up how straight women/ teen girl shippers exploit gay men for their personal sexual fantasies. This gets brought up several times in his videos.

Being all up and arms about Somerton being a "White Cis Gay Who Hates Women and Queer People tm" is not that useful because the kind of rhetoric he's using is extremely common in fandom and LGBT+ spaces on Tumblr, TikTok and Twitter. We really don't need to bring Somerton's identity to this since he is in no way an unique example.

It's hypocritical to make this about an individual person when I've seen A TON of posts, tweets and videos where queer people talk about these Sinister Straight Women who are supposedly out there fetishizing and exploiting queer men. It's pretty clear to me that this is just an excuse to shit on women and queer people for having any sexual interests. At worst these comments are spreading misinformation about BL, a form of media that has been excessively studied by both Asian feminists and Asian queer women.

This all sounds really familiar and I think it's good that people are calling it out as what it is: misogyny and transphobia. I'd also point out the potentially racist motives behind being this hypervigilant about Asian media.

People can absolutely be misogynist regardless of gender or orientation. I really don't know why we need to create some kind of made up enemy to get mad at. I actually think it's almost sinister how "anti-fujoshi" people call Slash shippers and fujoshi misogynists or claim that they have internalised misogyny while being dismissive about women's interests and creative pursuits under Japanese obscenity laws, China's censorship, book bans in American schools and various other disadvances that are part of being a queer and/or female creator.

I think we shouldn't be naive about the bad faith actors who want to turn queer people against each other. For example Fujoshi.info mentions anti-gender (TERF, GC etc) movement using this kind of rhetoric as well.

Anyway if you want to read more:

- about the false info around BL fandom fujoshi.info

-There is the scholar Thomas Baudinette who studies gay media in Japan. Here is a podcast with him and the scholar Khursten Santos

-James Welker is a BL scholar as well. Here is a podcast interview about the new international BL article collection he edited.

-I've already talked about this Youtube channel by KrisPNatz and his great Killing Stalking video that actually engages with the themes of the manhwa

- There is also HR Coleman's thesis DO NOT FEED THE FETISHIZERS: BOYS LOVE FANS RESISTANCE AND CHALLENGE OF PERCEIVED REPUTATION where she interviews 36 BL fans and actually breaks down why fetishization has become such a huge talking point in the fandom discourse. Spoilers, it's mostly about young queer people and women being worried that they will get judged and pathologized for their interest in anything sexual.

-Great podcast about Danmei and censorship with Liang Ge