#because men are less likely to engage with fandom the way women do

[genderkoolaid]

hey about that ask and post about how trans lesbians dont have any real in to the community to start figuring out their identies i think your missing a bit of the point because yes trans gay men dont have an automatic connection either and mlm and fandom spaces are pretty bad about 'cishet women' consuming alot of mlm content or relating to mlm ships and characters but while theyre there they are kinda (probably in a harmful way) learning about queer identites at least hearing the words to look up and research on their own but thats a different thing to trans lesbians not even having a space to get that close to queer people if at all without being kept out of conversation about queer identies and so never or much more rarely having space to find out about trans lesbians or given space to relate to wlw or queerness

of course most trans men in either of these spaces are celebrated for coming out unless they find groups of transmen in fandom even but i dont think that makes these experiences all that similar i think we should appreciate these as diffrent experiences without lessing eithers impact

I mean. there are closeted trans lesbians who have an awareness of queer identities through their friends or through online communities from the perspective of an ally. This is not the same as being able to identify oneself with queerness and feeling that you are accepted as an insider in those spaces, but that feeling isn't necessarily handed to closeted gay trans guys being read as heterosexual cis women either. And still, it's not as if there aren't any "straight" "cis" "men" who have queer friends or engage in communities frequently by queer people.

And I feel that having this conversation on Tumblr biases us, seeing as this is The Website for "straight" "cis" "women" who get really into MLM shipping. What about gay trans men who aren't chronically online in that way? Who live their lives as "normal" straight cis women, and whose only exposure to transmasculinity is the vague concept of "butch lesbian becomes masculine straight man"? Outside of Tumblr culture, I do not see gay trans men being given much visibility, with the "ex-lesbian" narrative still having a strong grasp over how most trans men are perceived.

I just feel like this argument is working off a very specific and local-to-Tumblr idea of the experiences of a gay trans man. Like, there are (in my experience), more gay trans men active in Queer Tumblr than gay cis men, and the same is not true for cis lesbians vs trans(fem) lesbians. But if you go to the vast majority of areas, where gay cis men dominate, gay trans men are not always being given space or visibility.

[dollypopup]

We need to talk about misogyny in the lukola fandom, and how it originated in the rampant misogyny in the Polin fandom and just continued to grow, because unfortunately, the two deeply intersect, and there's been such a lack of nuance in so many discussions

interestingly enough, this is actually being exhibited in a lot of Luke Newton discourse. Not toward him necessarily, but to the women around him, in comparison to him, for better or worse, including Nicola. There's been a lot of discourse especially around Luke being 'jobless' in contrast to Nicola being 'booked and busy'. and even in rejection of that discussion, the defense becomes that she is an exception, because she is exceptional, and that of course others look less ambitious in comparison. And at first, I'm sure this LOOKS like it's praising a woman for her hard work and dunking on a man for what we imagine isn't.

but has anyone ever asked why Nicola is booked and busy, especially? does she want to be? or does she *have* to be?

I want you to think about just how many women over the age of 40 are getting major roles. How many love scenes you've seen that feature more mature women. How in Queen Charlotte, the focus was on a younger actress, how Violet's and Danbury's and Portia's and QCs actresses don't even have a kiss scripted.

How much of that is by design in the entertainment industry

Nicola, in many ways, is creating a recipe for burn out, but she works alongside wonderful actresses who are incredibly talented- and do not get the opportunities they SHOULD. Roles in the entertainment industry are largely written for young women in their 20s, young, conventional women. And Nicola KNOWS this. She's a businesswoman, and her craft IS her business. The clock is, unfortunately, ticking. This is a very insidious aspect of the misogynistic entertainment machine. Yes, Nicola is booked and busy right now- she's building her brand and trying to break out of the awful cycle of female actors getting a few big roles, and then get relegated to side characters or mum number 3. Should the entertainment industry write more roles for women over 40? YES!!! They should be major roles with poignant narratives!! But it isn't the reality we live in. She is actively fighting against the sexism of the industry she is living in, she cannot take a vacation.

Luke Newton, however, *can*. He has privilege as a man to take his time. Whilst Nicola's career is in danger of a downswing, Luke's is, by most statistics? Just beginning. Men continue to get major roles deep into their 30s, 40s, 50s. In fact, I think MOST male actors only build notoriety as they age. So Luke Newton has the privilege of TIME.

And let me very clear: I'm happy he can. And I wish Nicola could, too. Grinding ourselves to dust in the pursuit of the perfect capitalistic darling is only going to breed misery. The fandom is SO caught up in saying 'oh, look at how great it is that xyz has this role!' and 'booo he's unemployed and jobless etc. etc.' that we don't take the time to ask. . .why is it NECESSARY and in fact praise worthy to lick clean the boot of grind culture? Are we not all tired? Do we not all want downtime? Holiday? Vacation?

Luke Newton is doing what is healthy: he's pushing away from Social Media, didn't spend too much time promoting, disengaged from the fandom in online spaces but is still generous with his time in person, poured himself into his craft, did a hell of a promotion tour, and in the time between fitting and costumes and learning lines for Bridgerton Season 4? He's resting.

As. He. Should.

As *Nicola* should. Because she also pushed to continue engaging with a fanbase who she hopes will act as security for her as she ages out of the roles writers are pushing into the world. Nicola SHOULD BE ALLOWED HER REST!!! She should NOT be booked and busy!! She should NOT be grinding herself to dust for the sake of keeping herself in good light to become one of the few women who continue to be big names beyond her 40s.

She, however, can't. Not because of anything Luke Newton has done, he is not, as many people want to believe, a problem. He benefits from the system ALL his male coworkers do, and does his best to uplift the women around him, likely understanding the struggles of such having been raised surrounded by so many women, but he is not perpetuating the system or creating it. Instead of directing our criticism on Luke Newton, we SHOULD be directing it to the entertainment industry. So Luke Newton is on a break from a serial successful production he has a guaranteed role for: so what? He is afforded that privilege. Having downtime is not the death knell of his career as doomsayers are insisting.

The average age of an Academy Award Winner who is an actor is almost 50. The average age of an Academy Award Winner who is an actress is 37. (source)

Should we be mad? Yes.

Is this something to be mad at Luke Newton for specifically? NO. Many male actors take breaks and time in their career trajectory, because they know they have longevity. The discussion in this fandom is misplaced, and the root of that misplacement is twofold: sexism and capitalist worship. It isn't that Luke Newton lacks ambition and should be working harder- I argue he's doing what is best for him and most people in the long term. This is self care, and it's important.

No, the discussion is that Nicola is forced to work in a pressure pot because of the industry, and the fandom continues to praise her for it, all whilst turning noses up at those who don't or do not have to, and continuing to uphold the narrative that women must be a beacon of exceptionalism in order to curry respect. They continue to uphold her grind as a virtue- look how great it is that she's constantly posting, constantly engaging with the fandom, always auditioning, booked and busy- have you not asked if she would LIKE a vacation? she deserves one, same as Luke Newton.

What you're mad at is NOT Luke himself- but the patriarchy. What you're mad at is that women must be held to standards of near unreachable excellence. But instead of working together as women and having any actual discussion about it that's meaningful, it turns into a crock of shit that then shoves everyone in the backspray, especially other women.

The slutshaming misogyny that has been directed at Luke Newton's girlfriend- *yikes*.

Oh, A is a hanger on. She's 'poptart', she's portrayed with an ant emoji, she's 'toilet twerker', she's 'controlling him' or HE should control HER, she 'should be reigned in', she's jobless, she's an infant who needs her big strong boyfriend to take her social media away, she's not been 'claimed' (like luggage, like a THING), look at him, he doesn't feel ANYTHING toward her- not like Nicola.

Our good, darling Nicola versus that awful whore Antonia/Jade/Any Woman in Luke Newton's Circle.

This sexism is deep and pervasive- being angry he's dating her 'because she's thin'. Insisting she's a villain and everything she does is to 'rile up the fandom' or 'stir up trouble' or that she 'hates Nicola'.

You all do NOT know this woman. And I don't either!!! Maybe she IS a shit stirrer, maybe she is thriving in the drama.

But aren't most of y'all, too?

Polin fandom built so much off of putting down other women to uphold Penelope: Marina is a bitch who was TRICKING Colin and Penelope was just doing what she had to do!!! Of course she kept her secret from him, she was SCARED!!! Eloise is a privileged brat breaking the rules and putting herself in danger but Penelope is a rebel who is building her own success off of taking necessary risks!!!

Our good, Darling Penelope versus that evil whore Marina/Eloise/Cressida/Any Other Woman.

This fandom is predominately female. Most of us identify as women. And a lot of us are *mean* to other women. We uphold sexism in our fandoms, uncontested, as often as we please. But we frame it in criticism of a man and so that's okay- as if that in and of itself is somehow uplifting women, being tied to a feminist cause- but putting down other women in conspiracy theories and bullying them, as occurred to Jade, under the guise of 'oh I'm just criticizing Luke!' is disingenuous. It's an excuse. 'I'm mad at him for-' not being your fantasy.

And Nicola isn't, either.

The truth is, the people in this fandom don't have respect for EITHER of them, just in different ways. A pedestal is a pedestal is a pedestal, and no matter what, any human being will fall from it eventually. And this fandom has proven that when that happens, it will NOT be met with empathy.

Now think about who that will actually hurt in the long term.

A lot of people in this fandom have soul searching to do.

[deripmaver]

Which is worse, rape or murder? - Or, should Casca have died during the Eclipse?

Unlike most of my meta posts, this is one I'm making as a direct critique of a specific take I've seen. It's similar to my meta about apostle Casca in that regard, where I want to look at a specific idea and why I dislike it, as opposed to wanting to explore my thoughts on an aspect of canon. To be clear, this is only something I do if I've seen a take a bunch of times, enough so I know it's not a one-off. It's also not something I do because I want to engage in discussion with the people who've said whatever the take is, it's something I do in case other people who agree with me might be interested in a meta post that's more in line with their viewpoint.

I provide this disclaimer because, as I've said a few times now, the idea that it's the better choice to have Casca die during the eclipse is one that I just really dislike, and I make that preeeeetty fuckin clear. I can't control who sees this or who comments, but I did think I should make my stance explicit.

Berserk fandom is an absolute treasure trove of bad takes about rape and sexual assault. Considering the seriousness with which the manga takes rape, despite it's sometimes quite dodgy framing and portrayal, the fact that the fandom is Like That is fully a testament to cishet men's inability to consume media without turning into a brainless amoeba of toxicity.

I have to say, though, what shocked me the most was that this particular take, that Casca should have just died during the eclipse, was not from the dudebro side of fandom ('cause if she had they couldn't make their silly little "casca enjoyed it" jokes).

I'm coming right out of the gate with my opinion, which is a firm no, Casca should not have died during the eclipse, and the story would be weaker if she had. I'm going to presume during this analysis that the people who say this assume that her death would be instead of her rape, as opposed to her being raped and then dying, which would be... Horrific. Even more horrific than canon, lol.

I do have sympathy for some of the people who wish she had died, and in a way I understand, though I vehemently disagree. Some of the posts with this POV sound almost traumatized as they proclaim I wish she would have died, it would have been better. As this is something I've only noticed in the tumblr fandom side of things, where most people are women, I think this comes from women readers feeling furious and sick about one of the most vile rape scenes out there. In some ways its intentionally vile, in others - ie how grotesquely sexualized it is - it's unintentional. Then, of course, she continues to suffer in her disabled, infantilized trauma state. I hear these readers wanting to shout at Miura that he should have just killed her off rather than force her, and us, through reading that. It would have been kinder.

I have... Far less sympathy for others. There's a side of fandom that simply does not care about Casca (in a different way than the dudebros who don't care about her despite gushing about how she's peak tomboy waifu). It's amazing the veneer of progressivism these people put on as they say that Casca should have died, because she did not contribute to the narrative before the eclipse, and she certainly hasn't after. Going to get even spicier for a second and point out fandom's long history of wanting female characters dead because they get in the way of mlm ships, and how I think this is SOMETIMES simply another manifestation of it.

To be fully fucking clear, I do NOT think that being a grffgts shipper (censored so this doesn't show up in the tag LOLLLLL) precludes being shitty about Casca. I think tumblr's demographics, and those demographics' typical shipping preferences, mean that grffgts is naturally going to dominate. By simple statistics, most of the people whose opinions I hate are going to be grffgts shippers. Same with most of the people's opinions I like on tumblr tbh. I do, however, think it's prudent to point out old school fandom misogyny, and how I personally feel it's showing up in the fandom, and also point out that it pisses me off that Casca dying during the eclipse is at all presented as the least misogynistic outcome.

I'm also going to say now that this is firmly being kept in the realm of fiction. In real life, there are horrific discussions about how being a victim of rape defiles you for life, and that it's better to die without the "shame" of being raped than live with it. While I have to be blunt it's difficult for me to separate some of the discussion of Casca dying during the eclipse from that anti-survivor bias I see in real life just because ~we live in a society~, I in general think this sentiment is coming from a place of simply analyzing, narratively, which outcome is less misogynistic given how the rape in canon is portrayed.

Would it narratively have been better for Casca to have died? What about the impact of her death versus her current storyline?

First, I think I need to outline my interpretation of the eclipse rape. I don't think that the decision to have Griffith rape Casca was Miura simply being a misogynistic cishet dude who threw in rape for the hell of it. I also don't think it's OOC. Again, there's much to critique in how it's drawn, but not in the fact that it happened. Griffith, in his moments of feeling out of control and powerless, uses sexual advances to reassert his control over the situation - see Charlotte, or the wagon scene with Casca. A distaste for sexual violence committed by his enemies doesn't mean Griffith is incapable of wielding sexual violence as a weapon himself. In real life, there's a paradox where rape committed by political or social enemies is seen as the worst crime one could ever commit, while the mundane rape committed as a consequence of patriarchy is excusable and the victims should be blamed and shamed. Did Miura have the gender studies acumen to think about that when writing? I dunno, but neither does anyone who thinks he didn't.

I also think it's supposed to establish his actions during the eclipse as fully over the moral event horizon. Without it, it's easy to ask if ultimately, Griffith's decision to sacrifice his followers to a cruel death is justified to create a perfect utopia. With it, it establishes Griffith as acting fully on cruel, malicious impulse in moments of emotional turmoil, which puts his future utopia in jeopardy. I can't be the only one who sees Falconia as a ticking time bomb. Of course, this doesn't mean he needed to rape Casca, but simply that I think it was necessary to his character to do something that crossed that moral line. He could have raped Guts I suppose. Killerbambi has entered the chat.

While I think this might sound strange, I actually think it's immensely validating to have a character who is a victim not just of rape, but of rape committed by someone she already knew. That's genuinely unique in media on the whole, which plays into that paradox I mentioned earlier - in real life, the vast majority of assaults are committed by someone the victim knew. Having the story surround the continual, horrific trauma of betrayal, of having to watch the person who hurt you move on while trauma keeps you in horrible stasis is almost so realistic it's... uncomfortable. Painful. Hard to read.

There's no greater purpose to what happened to Casca. She didn't grow from it, instead she regressed.

Her general lack of agency post-eclipse is much critiqued in the fandom and like. Fucking yeah fair LOLLLLLL BUT ALSO... But also. Fandom on the whole can be so cruel about traumatized female characters, like there's no way they can do trauma "right." In Casca's case, her lack of agency is turned into a reason she should simply have been killed off instead, as though there aren't so many survivors who, while not as literally as she does, retreat into a shell of themselves and are frozen with trauma as the world begins to pass them by. Of course, the critique would be that she's not a real person, she's a female character written in a misogynistic way by a man, but I personally think this overstates Miura's issues with his portrayal of rape. To me, it presents what they think are his biases as justification for their own biases.

Time and time again, I see survivors discuss feeling validated by Casca's trauma response after being assaulted. Even the parts of the rape scene that I vehemently dislike, such as the hyper-focus on Casca's body and the physical reactions she's having, I've seen more than one person say they felt validated because they too had an unwanted arousal response during an assault. I'll still critique the scene, but regardless of if this was Miura's intention, its impact is clear.

I'll again plug this article by Jackson P. Brown, How Berserk’s Casca challenges the myth of the “Strong Black Woman.” Just to show a quote from it:

All of the action of the story after Conviction Arc is in service of restoring Casca's mind. During Conviction Arc and after, Casca has groups of women who love and protect her, with women as her source of safety. Guts is single mindedly focused on bringing her back, putting his body on the line again and again to protect her and restore her. I wondered about including Guts here because I'm sure I'll get some anon about the Beast of Darkness, which again fair LOL. I have complicated feelings on that, but mostly I think the importance the narrative puts on her mind and her protection is touching, and I think this outweighs how the negative things apparently mean that she should have died.

Her story and trauma, despite its flaws, is shockingly realistic and validating to so many people. She's also a key narrative component post-eclipse, and not just ~for Guts' manpain~ or as a helpless plot device, her story is her own. I've written about Elaine as a character and what she represents, but in brief, Casca doesn't disappear after the eclipse. Miura wrote Elaine with these moments where Casca comes to the surface, and while I wish we had more of her POV I think you can look at how she's coping from how Elaine reacts to the world around her.

I also think it's necessary to have Casca at the Hill of Swords. There's Guts, who Griffith torments in the way only a bitter ex can, and Rickert, who doesn't know what happened the day of the eclipse, but I think Casca is the key component in that scene that cuts through all of Griffith's posturing and Guts' anger. She is there, making the real, human cost of what Griffith did during the eclipse unignorable in a way that no other character could. It's one thing for Guts to be furious with him and Rickert ignorant, it's another to have someone who loved him so innocently and dearly trembling just at the sight of him. Let's not pretend that the depth of betrayal in this scene would be the same if you swapped her for, say, Judeau.

It's funny, Miura is quoted as saying that his initial reason for keeping Casca alive was to provide Guts an ever-burning flame of vengeance, an eternal reminder of everything that he lost during the eclipse. What's wound up happening, on a meta level, is that Casca provides the reader a constant reminder of what happened during the eclipse. As more and more focus is given to her PTSD with her revival, the cruelty with which Griffith acted (and continues to act) becomes harder and harder to ignore. It becomes more difficult to push it aside as just bad, misogynistic writing.

And also, quite simply, I like narratives about trauma recovery, and therefore I'll always find Casca's story worth telling despite my frustration with a lot of it. It's absolutely wild to me that for how often I see the fandom complain about her being "fridged" they think it would have been better to see her ACTUALLY fridged, no chance of coming back at all, just dead to fuel Guts' revenge arc. Would it really be better to have her be just another dead girlfriend? Really?

That's really what it comes down to. I like Casca as a character, and I want her to have lived. The people who wish she had died, many of them simply don't like her as a character. Not all, particularly in that first group I mentioned at the start, but many. Everyone has their preferences of course, but I don't think I need to respect when someone thinks a character has so little influence on the narrative that they should have just died, especially if that character is Casca.

If Casca had died during the eclipse, it would not have been a good death. It would not have been brave, or triumphant, or worth anything for her as a character. Judeau died to protect Casca, but even his death was not brave, it was just sad. That's the whole point of the eclipse.

To have Casca die that way would be a disservice to her as a character, far moreso than to have her struggle on as a traumatized victim of sexual violence. That's genuinely what I believe.

[raiseyourbarkid]

when i first started watching 9-1-1, i was so excited to join the fandom.

s3 had just finished airing, so there was already plenty of fan content available, and i hurried over to ao3 and started reading the fics with the most kudos.

one of the very first ones i read involved Hen reaming Buck out for rescuing someone who didn't have a chance of surviving afterward. it felt oddly familiar, and then i realized—they basically copied the speech Gerrard gave in Hen Begins when she saved that woman in a landslide. they took the abuse that Hen endured because she was black woman, and gave it to Buck. took the words out of a racist misogynist's mouth and put them in Hen's, made her the abuser, just so Buck could be the victim.

that was one of the most popular fics at the time. that was my introduction to the 9-1-1 fandom. and unfortunately, it set a precedent for what to expect from it.

one of the next fics i read involved Buck's relationship with his father. this was before Buck Begins aired and we learned what his actual backstory was, so people liked to invent tragic backstories for him. nothing wrong with that in itself. except as i read this fic (another of the most-kudos'd at the time), i started to realize—they hadn't invented a backstory for Buck. they'd just stolen Chimney's and given it to him. because apparently the story was more tragic or meaningful if it happened to Buck instead of the asian man. (and as i recall, Chimney was made out to be a real jerk in that fic, too.)

and so it continued.

after that introduction, i always stayed on the fringes of the fandom. i still read some fic—obviously, not everyone was like that, and there were a lot of really good fanworks! but i didn't really engage beyond that. as i read more fic, another pattern was emerging: the fandom's treatment of women.

9-1-1 is far from the only fandom to have this problem. in several fandoms with popular mlm pairings, there is a lot of mistreatment of female characters, especially ones who are viewed as a "threat" to the pairing. but the way people reacted to these characters—namely, Abby, Taylor, and Ana—was somehow astounding to me. obviously none of them were perfect people—what character is?—but i couldn't imagine anything they'd done warranting the reaction i saw from fans. i had liked them as characters for the most part! i didn't see those romantic relationships working out in the long term, but i didn't see that as a reason to hate them, much less reach the levels of loathing the fandom seemed to. you'd think these women were cartoon villains, the way fandom portrayed them.

honestly, it had been YEARS since i'd seen a fandom with such bad misogyny, if ever. and somehow, i was surprised again. i'd foolishly believed that fans had been getting better about that kind of thing, about hating women over a ship. so many other fandoms managed to be kind to the women involved with the men they shipped, why was it so hard for this particular fandom?

and now all this.

Buck's finally in a queer relationship, but it's not the one people wanted, so the response is to be hateful and homophobic towards the other character involved? in what world does that make sense? how do people rationalize that to themselves?

i'm just exhausted. i'm realizing now that this fandom has never felt like a safe space and maybe never will.

in over 20 years of being in fandoms, i have NEVER been in one that was so determined to be hateful. and over a show that's predominantly about love and the power of human connections? it's downright baffling.

[canichangemyblogname]

Not sure how I feel about the deleted scene drop. I understand 100% why they originally cut it— it’s kinda a useless scene (they would cover or already had covered the same narrative bases in other scenes) that would have thrown the pacing of the episode in a very short season already not renowned for it’s fantastic pacing (y’know… because it’s so short). Plus, imho, the dialogue (writing) comes across as… out of place (if that’s the right word). It’s a bit of an awkward scene. But maybe that’s because I think “shovel talk” (as other fans have called it) over a 34 y/o man is a bit cheugy and I’m also not enjoying the “mother of the 118” role that ABC seems to want to box Hen into (I’m also begging y’all fans to stop calling black women and queer people “sassy”).

I also couldn’t figure out if Tommy was playing dumb or actually that dense, so, at first, the scene seemed— at least to me— like a 180 for a character that has otherwise been portrayed as competent and perceptive. (EDIT: I’ve been leaning toward “he was playing dumb” over “he’s really that dense.” Also, Tommy *does not* strike me as the type to “play dumb” to avoid a question, especially from someone he has a good rapport with, as some fans are suggesting; he strikes me as the type to approach a goofy situation with an old friend with some dry humor. Doesn’t mean my first reaction wasn’t, “🙄 Don’t play dumb, now.”) However, his dialogue did provide some comedy and levity 🤷‍♂️, and I do agree with analyses that paint the whole interaction as a back ‘n forth teasing.

I just personally find the whole “What are your intentions” thing kinda passé and cliche.

So, I’m a bit torn because the scene did also give us:

a second confirmation that Tommy is not pressuring Buck into anything Buck doesn’t want, like a certain subset of fans insist.

confirmation that they’re “taking things slow,” something we know Buck does enjoy. Buck wants his romantic partners to show that they’re also serious about him. He has gone out of his way with previous partners to slow things down or choose people who seem serious about dating. He didn’t have to ask Tommy to slow down like he did Abby or Taylor.

“He’s in ketosis” << literally laughed my ass off, but justice for my man, Buck; he loves carbs. (Joking aside— this is totally in character for Evan “fitness nut” Buckley, who casually talks to men with tape worms in their ass about the best low carb pasta options.)

another confirmation that they’re fucking, and fucking nasty. “I’m letting him set the pace, and I’m just trying to keep up,” is a fantastic precursor to the “God I hope so.” Tommy Kinard— your jokes about keeping up with a younger man are truly unmatched. (EDIT: Yes, I know the line wasn’t inherently about sex, you dorks, and that it can also be a reference to how Buck has seemingly sped run the “pre-dating” phase of his and Tommy’s relationship.)

more confirmation that Buck is into Tommy, and that he shows Tommy this, too.

Edit: I’m also torn about having a less than enthusiastic reaction to the scene because at this point, Tommy is like the Star Wars sequels. There are valid critiques of his characterization, his past, and how he’s been written, but because there is a large chunk of the fandom that cannot argue in good faith and has the most ass-backwards things to say about queer men, I spend more time defending the character from terrible takes than engaging with the source material the way I’d like to. I’d really like to just say what I think without having to fight through bad faith arguments.

[writing-for-life]

“M/M Ships Smash The Patriarchy”—But Do They?

Little disclaimer first: I don’t have a problem with m/m fics or art, quite the opposite. I’m a bisexual woman, I can find the idea of m/f, f/f and m/m interesting and yes, sexually arousing (each for different reasons though). And I’m saying this so explicitly because the idea that women need to engage in mental gymnastics to justify m/m ships is relevant to this post.

So please don’t take this personally if you like m/m, especially not if what I write very obviously doesn’t apply to you. This also has nothing to do with shipping m/m as a queer person, because the context invariably changes in most cases. This post is exclusively about the “justification” of m/m ships as something that “smashes the patriarchy”.

With that out of the road:

I’ve seen so many posts stating that m/m ships are removing “the whiff of patriarchy from fandom”. That the same dynamics would be problematic in a m/f or f/f ship, but they’re less “harmful” in a m/m ship.

And yes, of course women have been bearing the brunt of these objectifying dynamics since the beginning of time, totally true. But here’s the thing:

a) Problematic dynamics are okay to explore (not necessarily to condone, they are two different things) in fanfiction; it’s happened for as long as fanfiction (no, fiction) exists. We could go off on a whole tangent about what’s “problematic” (or not) in fiction now, and I’m not overly keen on that term, but it’d lead too far because we’d need to talk about a lot of stuff that’s not really the topic of this post.

b) Problematic dynamics don’t magically change because you apply them to a m/m ship, especially if you’re a (straight) woman heavily projecting onto characters. If there’s an age gap, it stays an age gap. If there are power imbalances, they stay power imbalances. If there’s violence/objectification/whatever else going on IT STAYS THAT. The mental leap from, “Men in m/f relationships are often, either consciously or subconsciously through what society condones, the perpetrator in that particular dynamic,” to “that’s why it’s not a problem in m/m relationships,” honesty baffles me.

So my question is:

If you want to remove the “problematic whiff of patriarchy from fandom”, but you are ONLY and EXCLUSIVELY centering two MEN in your fics, art and what you consume, are you really doing that? Where are the protagonist WOMEN that are written or portrayed in a way that isn’t patriarchal?

Too much of a stretch?

Why bring in “the patriarchy” (or whatever other justification) instead of just saying you like the idea of two men getting it on, and that you project on at least one, if not both of them? And I know many women are honest about this, so this is obviously not aimed at them.

And I’m not writing this in a vacuum—there are endless posts about exactly this, and quite frankly:

It is actually patriarchal and misogynistic to deny women the right to just feel horny when they read about/look at two guys fucking. Without justifying it in any way, or making it about something that feels performative (“We like the m/m ship because we’re queer-positive feminists”. Please…). That, right there, is internalised misogyny:

Women don’t need to morally justify their horniness. They don’t need to justify whatever they’re into and turn it into a performative event. They’re just allowed to like it as is. The end.

Why not just like what we like while still critically engaging with the question whether some of what we read and create is potentially fetishising gay/queer men instead of calling it “feminist and queer-positive”?

Because let’s face it: Straight women who ship m/m don’t like gay men because they’re gay. They like them because they project a straight woman on a gay persona that has nothing to do with actually being gay (just like most lesbian porn never had anything to do with being created for lesbians, or f/f relationships in books written by men were always serving the male gaze, but it’s easier to holler about that, right?):

At least one of them is the guy you fancy (sometimes both of them are), and sometimes one of them is (at least partly) you. It has always worked like that and always will.

But back to the main topic of “smashing the patriarchy”: We are talking about fanfiction and fanart here. YOU create it. It’s not the adult entertainment industry making billions that throws it at you. You are the CREATORS and CONSUMERS. You get to CHOOSE. And yes, that choice can absolutely be a m/m ship if that’s what you want. Again, there’s no problem with that.

But if your main argument is that you want content without the stench of patriarchy, how about actually centering women in it, at least from time to time?

[arizonatea-and-nikolatesla]

Hazbin hate and bigotry

(This probably is rambly because it’s almost 2 in the morning and these are half asleep thoughts)

Maybe this is just a me thing- or maybe this is glaringly obvious, but it’s so strange to me that a lot of the fandoms that get the most hate are ones where non-conforming people make up a lot of the fandom.

Steven universe and Hazbin Hotel/ Helluva boss are the first things that come to mind. Women, LGBTQ+ people, and neurodivergent people are a huuuge part of the fandom. Do they do some questionable and problematic stuff sometimes? Yeah- but what fandom doesn’t?

Things like Fnaf, Star Wars, etc. that have a large male audience are rarely treated the same way. Even though they used to be considered “uncool”, you were just nerdy or a little weird if you were into them(especially if you were a dude). Now a days people generally would think you’re a dick if you’re making fun of people for liking these things.

There were way weirder cartoons on back when Steven universe was airing. There are weirder things on now- the boys, Rick and Morty, both shows I do enjoy, but If their audience didn’t have a large amount of members that were/are cis men- they’d also either be ‘weird’ or at the very least not as well liked.

Even shows that are popular- think shows enjoyed mostly by women. Twilight, the vampire diaries- they’re generally considered cringy by people who don’t enjoy them. And men will make fun of women for enjoying it- this is less obvious than my previous examples because a lot of women who are considered “normal” like these shows. That doesn’t stop them from getting made fun of for liking them, or judged- mostly by men. A lot of the hate I see for something like twilight outside of men just calling it dumb is actually well structured analysis of the books and movies, not just bullying.

I don’t think I’ve seen many shows that can get away with marketing to young adults who aren’t men. They are either blasted on the internet like the people who like them are some kind of cringy freaks (Steven universe, Hazbin hotel, etc), or they fade into obscurity or get canceled (inside job, tuca and birdie).

If something is weird- it has to be for men, or it’s suddenly a crime to enjoy it.

P.S.

This is also seen inside fandoms that have become more socially acceptable. When people are nerdy in ways that aren’t necessarily ‘cool’ or generally accepted they are often bullied by not just other people, but people in the fandom. Honestly even when more diverse people get INTO fandoms some fans go crazy. “Omg girls and gay people like Star Wars?! They’re ruining the movies!” By simply existing or posting silly little fan art videos on TikTok because they’re enjoying their media and not just letting their eyes glaze over while they watch a movie.

P.P.S.

This is of course not to say these shows or some of their creators don’t have flaws- obviously they do. However people often magnify these flaws in order to have a ‘non-bigoted’ way to make fun of people who don’t fit into their world view.

You’re not a good person if you bully neurodivergent teenagers off the internet because they like something you don’t. Do some self reflection. You can not like something and just choose not to engage with it.

P.P.P.S

The leopards will also eat your face, btw. (For those of this who it applies to. You know who you are.)

[franollie]

do you personally think that fandom brings up misogyny unnecessarily and even when it has nothing to do with the issue at hand?

like some people get up and arms if you don’t ship batcat or brutalia (you’re not obligated to like anything for any reason) or if you ship bruce with someone else this topic will come up for whatever reason even though when there are actual instances of blatant misogyny in fandom and it’ll go fully ignored by these same people.

a point of bruce’s romance is to establish that he can’t really be endgame with any one person so i personally ship him freely. i don’t know why fandom is so obsessed with tokenizing certain shippers as certain prejudices when i’m sure that they genuinely have never interacted with said shipper one on one in their entire life

sorry for taking so long on this i have a LOT of thoughts on the topic

ok so in short: yes, i do think fandom loves to cry misogyny.

that being said, fandom operates in a blatantly misogynistic way (see how in large fandom favors men over women regardless of whether or not that man had more or less screen time than the woman). misogyny in fandom is a very real thing, but it is more a fandom as a whole problem than an individual problem. the only way the problem of misogyny in fandom can be solved is by actually engaging with the women in whatever franchise you're enjoying (writing for them, making art, reblogging art, writing metas, etc). show them the same amount of love that you show other characters

with that in mind, it is also important to note that sometimes you just don't gel with a ship or a character. i agree that people are drawn to certain dynamics and relationships, and you are allowed to ship what you ship. let's take the brutalia/batcat v bruharvey/batjokes because they are similar in dynamic (batman and one of his rogues). it wouldn't be fair to call a bruharvey or batjokes shipper a misogynist just because they don't ship brutalia or batcat. now, if they ship batjokes but hate talia for killing, then you could play the misogyny card. really it's just a matter of how you specific people interact with characters. i think a better example of this is superbat v clois.

i'm gonna try and stay as unbiased and objective as possible because superbat fans scare me lmao but a lot of the criticisms for superbat are about how it ships these characters at the expense of their relationships specifically with the women in their lives. to be even more specific, clark's relationship with lois. it isn't fair to say that "all superbat shippers are misogynist because they ignore lois" because i don't know why every superbat shipper ships superbat. maybe superbat is nostalgic to someone because they grew up reading justice league comics or the world's finest comics, maybe they haven't read or watched that much stuff with lois/clois in it, maybe they just think the idea of superbat is fun, who knows what the reasoning is. the problems really arise when they begin to change lois's personality and character to fit their ship whether it's by writing her as some bitchy ex of clarks or as a "girlboss who doesn't need a man and is superbat's biggest shipper uwu".

i do think when it comes to comic book fandoms in particualr there is another added layer of fandom superiority when it comes to shipping where there are the "correct" ships and the "incorrect" ships. but that's a whole other topic for another day

just to reiterate: fandom misogyny is a very real problem (look at the top 10 ships on ao3 for the past 5 years and that becomes abundantly clear) but the only way to combat it is by actually creating and sharing works positively featuring the women you like.

[carlyraejepsans]

It’s not a bad thing to address the problems and complexities the problems and issues that female characters AND THEN acknowledge the problems and complexities of the male characters who are connected to them.

IT IS A BAD THING when you hold those same (female) characters up to a double-standard or attempt to attribute their faults/flaws to their identity, which is unfortunately more common than most would like to admit.

Misogyny (like all forms of prejudice, supremacism, and systemic bigotry) is more than just a negative attitude or a bad argument. It’s a parasitic symbiosis in which one community of people profits off of the unequal treatment of another.

You can still be a “friend” to a person of a particular group and still be harmful/toxic to the group they’re a part of because seeing someone as a “friend” doesn’t mean anything if you don’t see them as an equal.

P.S. It always irks me whenever someone thinks that they’re making a character more complex and nuanced by ignoring the complexities and nuances of another. I’ve seen ppl do that to Toriel AND Asgore, although I have noticed they do it significantly more to the former than the latter.

P.P.S. And don’t even get me started on what this fandom has done to Chara.

P.P.P.S. Forgive my little temper tantrum, and I’m sorry if I misread/misinterpreted anyone.

if you're bringing up misogyny in the context of fandom communities and the way they approach the text specifically, i think you're oversimplifying things by defining it as just "one group profiting off of another." an overwhelming percentage of fandom is, in fact, comprised OF women, at least on the story/character analysis/fiction writing front. you can't really say they're profiting off of female characters being ignored over male ones. by that logic, female characters should be uplifted more than anyone else in fandom spaces, and yet that's far from the case.

this is because misogyny isn't just a cultural system of oppression, it's literally baked into our cultures. our customs, our instincts, our sense of shame and justice and morality. those double standards aren't a conscious decision to oppress, it's an instinctual mental mechanism reinforced by habit and custom. it's something that feminists have spent (and still spend!) an insane amount of time unwrangling and breaking down. and a lot of people just... don't apply that kind of analysis to their own behavior. women in the story are just instinctively less sympathetic. less pitiable. less justifiable. less interesting, or "not complex enough to care about".

i do have a theory that this attitude is also tied to 1) a personal unwillingness by female fans to engage with their own oppression in a space dedicated to a hobby (ie: basically just escapism) and 2) fandom's popularity largely deriving from being a space to express sexuality and engage with erotica/archetypes that appeal to the reader, and the vast majority of fandom users are either straight or attracted to men (ie: the people making fancontent think men are hot so the more men the merrier. girls who?). but that is not always the case, and very often those attitudes go right in hand with misogyny and act as a shield to it, so it's only a small mental note in the corkboard of my brain.

[blushydrangea]

im here to ask u ur thoughts in the... pj controversy ehhekekfke i wanna say smthn abt but like i feel as if i dont grasp the whole thing yet so i chose to shut up rn

hi love! under the cut so the people who are tired of discussing this topic can avoid it.

it's a long one!

i know everyone here has likely come across the tweets pj made, but as an archiver at heart i feel the need to break everything down. screenshots aren't mine.

on the 18th, pj made a tweet about fellow drag queen and artist chappell roan, questioning the authenticity of her love for drag. most people (me included!) thought she was trolling, which unfortunately didn't happen to be the case. plane appeared to be under the impression that chappell was mean or cold towards drag queens she invited to her shows, something she allegedly heard about in boston and, according to some people on reddit so take this with a grain of salt, was debunked. she followed her tweet with another, ironically saying "i love chappell roan". the first tweet was then deleted.

after several people accused plane jane of trying to gatekeep drag from women & having an unfair opinion deeply rooted in misogyny, pj released a notes app screenshot on the 19th. however, going against the purpose of most notes screenshots, hers wasn't an apology. instead, she chose to call out the hypocrisy of people attacking her because they were calling her a man (it's important to note that pj hasn't directly told us what her ood pronouns are afaik).

she made some more shady tweets after that and argued with stans on social media but i don't feel like including these, so the last update we have was this apology pj made for her fandom.

before i speak my mind on this, i just wanna say that i am willing to discuss this as long as people are polite, any aggressive messages i might receive will be promptly deleted.

to be honest, i didn't like what she said. being a person with a platform and, let's be real, several crazy stan accounts who follow her word like gospel, it was wrong in my opinion to call a growing lesbian artist (one of the very few we have, at that) performative for her love of drag. someone who also engages in the *checks notes* performative art of drag. there isn't much of a "bag" to be secured by pretending you love drag, as it's not that mainstream, and i can't help but wonder if pj would have the same criticism were chappell a gay man instead of a lesbian woman.

misogyny is real and it's present in all of us, we were all raised to see women as less than. pj is white and male-presenting with her makeup off, she isn't incapable of misogyny because she is gay or a drag queen. therefore, it rubbed me in the wrong way to see her voice out the same beliefs i've heard from other gay men before – that women deserve to be questioned whenever they exist in drag spaces. i don't agree with the sentiment that pj meant women shouldn't do drag, as she never said that. though she honestly reminded me of those men who ask me very specific and tricky questions about the tree of gondor or whatever when i tell them i love the lord of the rings. are you a true fan?

her notes app statement was what pissed me off. she was really immature imo, ofc she's only 26 so there's room for growth, but twisting a situation you inserted yourself in to seem like the victim based on... people calling you a cis man? come on. it was a self-centered statement made by someone who seemed to refuse to take any criticism on this subject matter. i was very disappointed she chose the "but you are wrong too!" route instead of apologizing to the people she hurt.

her apology to her fandom was... fine, i guess. it served to show me that she seems to be comfortable living in her bubble.

do i think she's a bad person? no, i don't. but i do think she had a misogynistic take and doubled down on it because she refuses to admit she was wrong. i'm staying away from her for the time being, i'll probably get over it eventually but rn i don't wanna see her face all that much. no judgement whatsoever to people who forgave her and are still posting about her, it's your blog, do what you want <3

[semi-imaginary-place]

oh look fandom hates when I speak the truth again so I'm just going to repost this everywhere.

Most people do not understand Claude, and the loud ones especially misunderstand his character. Claude was never slutty meme frat boy. Joe Ziega made this worse. Things have actually gotten better after Hopes as Claude in Hopes is in line with Claude in Houses just overt characterization instead of implied.

The Marianne support is especially interesting because Claude for all his charm is sooo clumsy at interpersonal relationships. He knows he hurt Marianne and doesn't know how to fix it so the best he can come up with is to make the relationship transactional, he learned one of her secrets so he gives up one in exchange. He has leverage and vulnerability over her so he gives up some of his secrets and becomes vulnerable for her because in his minds that helps make up for things, makes things fair again. 

Claude's like an onion many layers. He's been hurt by people too many times to be vulnerable with others but he also likes people and genuinely wants to help them which leads to this contradicting behavior of wanting friends and to be loved and understood while also being terrified of genuine emotional intimacy. Also, like Claude always hated Rhea he implies in Houses he'd rather have her dead and Fodlan would be better without her.

For Felix I get into details later but I saw a weirdly high proportion of Felix depictions in fandom being trans or asian like higher than any other character Even the actually brown characters like Petra or Dedue or Claude had less non-white "screentime" in fandom than the canonically fantasy European Felix (Petra in general is woefully underrepresented in this fandom), which was paired with a lot of transphobic and racist stereotypes. And then there's the disturbing prevalence of homophobic stereotypes when Felix shows up in fandom. 

Felix is like a magnet for homophobia, transphobia, and racism. Fandom disproportionately )like more than any other character I have seen) makes him every gay, trans, and asian stereotype under the sun (why people race swap him I will never know). And what's worse is that these people think they're woke leftists without ever examining their own bigotry and start crying screaming sending death threats when confronted about it. Sis do some self reflection on how the way you ship really is just latent fetishizing of gay, trans, and brown men. 

And you know it's controversial because I get downvoted into hell every time I say this by people who lack media literacy, won't self reflect on their own subconscious bigotry, and won't accept the truth. Which just means I should say it more.

fe3h fandom often tacks on a lot of bigoted stereotypes onto Felix instead of engaging with his actual in game characterization (well that last part is a problem of fandom in general but I digress). For example in gay ships Felix tends to more often be the submissive, bottom, feminine, trans, or non white partner. All of which is fine but starts getting suspicious when all these traits are conflated with each other and even more suspicious when this is contrasted with Felix's partner (I think Sylvain and Dimitri are the most popular ones?) which is usually a dominant, top, cis, and white man. Again nothing wrong with any if this but suspicious that this seems to be the most common (by a large margin) characterization in fandom. To break it down it plays into classic right wing talking points that how in same gender relationships one partner is the "man" and one partner is the "woman". Again fem/masc pairs are fine its in combination with the rest of the stuff. Next is the classic transphobic talking point about how transmen aren't real men or as masculine as "real" men, which is the justification for corrective rape. Next is the classic racist stereotype that asian men inferior to white men by being more feminine (aka lesser, because racists also tend to hate women) and less masculine than again "real" (white) men leading to being pushed out of most career paths and only allowed lesser jobs like laundromat. And again nothing wrong with any of these traits individually or in combination when when it happens every time with little variation and all people can do is parrot right wing bigot talking points, these something fishy.

Oh hey I forgot the misogyny. Like a lot of this loops back to (what I presume is) internalized misogyny in the authors and artists, because all the points I talk about above in some way intersect back to the basis of misogyny that female is bad. And it isn't which is why I'm always confused why the (female dominated) fandom clings so hard to misogyny. I noticed in fanfiction before I just stopped and blacklisted the whole thing is that Felix tended to be written differently than the other men which connects with the observation that fandom makes Felix the "woman" in gay pairs.

Anyways yall need intersectionality, a history lesson, media literacy, and self reflection (because everyone carries bigotry within them, we live in a society it's unavoidable. It's not the choice of having no bigotry or not, it's the choice of being aware of it and actively counteracting it, or not and having it leak through).

I don't have any problem with shipping or shippers. I don't understand the appeal most of the time but whatever, I'm mostly neutral about it, doesn't bother me when I see it (although tag so I can blacklist if it personally doesn't jive with me). What I CAN potentially have a problem with how it is done however if someone it just regurgitating bigoted stereotypes without any sort of meaningful contribution to the discussion.

(Sometimes with like really out of character stuff like different personality, different setting, shipping two character that have never interacted in canon, I think these people just want to write original stories but are cowards, but whatever do what you want. )

[bengiyo]

So I’ve got some thoughts wracking around my brain and I’d love to hear your thoughts. Apologies ahead of time because this is long.

Some background: I’ve been watching BL for about 2 years, consuming content from BL fandom on Tumblr for about a year, and listened to you & Nini’s pod since it came out. So I know a big trend and exciting push is workplace BL and more adult BL characters and relationships. I think it’s really interesting that so many in the fandom favor this trend because I struggle with the presence of the typical BL tropes in stories with queer adults because I see many of the tropes as inherently childish I guess? I mean I think as we all watch BL we have to hold a suspension of disbelief watching two adolescent or fully grown men live out these silly tropes (e.g white towel bath, tripping and falling, etc. (we all know’em by now)). I think that’s why I typically lean toward high school and even college settings because it’s easier to imagine characters in that age range engaging with these types of tropes.

I think the same goes for certain genres too. For example: I had a hard time enjoying KinnPorsche because tonally it was hard to reconcile one scene of rampant violence/death and the next scene Kinn & Porsche walking in the park engaging in all the silly tropes. The romance orientation of BL (to me) does not mix well with Mafia or horror genres because the presence of these tropes create such a weird tonal shift throughout the narrative.

I think I primarily have this trouble with Thai BLs (maybe also Taiwan they just don’t produce nearly as many shows so less to compare) because 1) the specific campy thai style of acting and 2) the fact that Thai BLs pack so many of the same tropes in their shows.

Now all that being said: I’m loving Law of Attraction and I’ve been thinking a lot about why it works for me. So far I don’t think there have been nearly as many tropes as some shows but I also think the melodrama of it all helps too. I mean both Charn and Tinn are very archetypal and Charn is almost a caricature of the archetype. It’s ridiculous and highly entertaining and still works as a BL for me.

Ok all that being said (I’m sorry this is so long) specifically with workplace/adult Thai BL: I see it going one of two main ways to continue to work (for me at least) while they also try to explore different settings, genres, and stories. Either 1) LoA route where it’s very dramatic and the characters are more caricatures and it’s not to be taken too seriously (but it’s still fun and entertaining and has some good themes) or 2) they phase out a lot of the tropes and depict more realistic queer characters in adult relationships. If they go route #2 wouldn’t that just lead to inherently more queer shows? From what I understand many define BL by the inclusion of these tropes and centering the romance in the narrative but I just can’t see how these aspects can continue to exist in more adult oriented stories? Do you think new tropes will emerge in these “office BLs” that will make it continue to “feel” BL without it feeling queer? Don’t get me wrong I’m queer and I love that it seems to be going in that direction but I’m also interested in the history/origins of the Thai BL industry and how they will likely try to continue to please their original base (cis het women) with more mature stories and settings without losing the essence of BL and moving more toward queer shows. Would love to hear any and all your thoughts. I’m thinking so much more about these topics hearing you and Nini on the pod so thank you for fostering these conversations!!

There's a lot going on here, so I'm going to try to pull out some specific things to interrogate.

I know a big trend and exciting push is workplace BL and more adult BL characters and relationships. I think it’s really interesting that so many in the fandom favor this trend because I struggle with the presence of the typical BL tropes in stories with queer adults because I see many of the tropes as inherently childish I guess? I mean I think as we all watch BL we have to hold a suspension of disbelief watching two adolescent or fully grown men live out these silly tropes (e.g white towel bath, tripping and falling, etc. (we all know’em by now)). I think that’s why I typically lean toward high school and even college settings because it’s easier to imagine characters in that age range engaging with these types of tropes.

I'm entering my mid-30s. I'm a bit burnt out on the high school and college stuff. I also work in an office tower as part of a large bureacracy. You'd be surprised how much petty office drama looks like the same shit you dealt with in schools. I also like the notion that even adults can enjoy some of the silly first moments. I dont' like the idea that either we settle down with the first boy we met in high school or college or we just don't exist.

Also, there are lots of tropes entering BL from the genre-blending that I think some viewers just don't recognize. Part of why Korean BL is so important is because quite a few viewers are versed in the narrative structures and story beats of a typical kdrama, and their commentary has been interesting as we get more Korean offerings. I often find that people miss out on the cues in Japanese shows because they didn't grow up on Japanese media like I did.

For example, I was commenting to NiNi last night when we were recording for Tokyo in April is... that one of the things I like so much about second chance romance in BL is the different built-in presumptions compared to straight people. When straight people have a second chance, it's usually because one of them broke up with the other. The relationship ended because of their internal problems. In gay second chance, the relationship was often taken from them by homophobia. In Our Dating Sim, internalized homophobia made Wan run away. Same in Individual Circumstances or The Promise. In Tokyo in April is... the boys are separated by their parents. Their relationship ended against their own wills, so the reunion and second chance is different because of their queer context.

Re: KinnPorsche: The romance orientation of BL (to me) does not mix well with Mafia or horror genres because the presence of these tropes create such a weird tonal shift throughout the narrative.

I don't know. History3: Trapped exists. Tropes are storytelling tools built upon familiar beats that audiences recognize. The pinky touch doesn't belong to BL. It grew out of queer media as a way for boys to privately have a moment of intimacy. Tropes are not inherently good or bad. What matters is how they're used. Do they support the narrative and themes, or do they get in the way?

A lot of folks do not like the Blushing Maiden trope. I am variable. It matters how it's used. I think it makes sense for Pharm in Until We Meet Again. I think it makes some sense for Minato in Minato's Laundromat. I don't really like it in Heartstopper 2. Elle gets a Heel Pop in Heartstopper 2, and it's what she deserves!

As for a mafia story, putting a romance story in a crime drama often is used to ramp up the sense of tragedy because the romance can't succeed inside the rules of the crime world.

specifically with workplace/adult Thai BL: I see it going one of two main ways to continue to work (for me at least) while they also try to explore different settings, genres, and stories. Either 1) LoA route where it’s very dramatic and the characters are more caricatures and it’s not to be taken too seriously (but it’s still fun and entertaining and has some good themes) or 2) they phase out a lot of the tropes and depict more realistic queer characters in adult relationships.

I don't like binaries like this. If you had asked me at 15 when I started watching Degrassi and then sneaking around to watch other gay shit if we'd have what we call BL now, I would not have believed you.

As for Laws of Attraction, I don't know that calling the characters caricatures is accurate either. They're behaving under the surreal rules of a lakorn, a telenovela, or a soap opera. There are exaggerations in the characters, but they all make sense and are obeying the rules of their world.

As for the question about BL getting more gay, @absolutebl has covered this already. Audiences do not care about gay people. Some of the conventions of surreal BL or the bubble are why they signed up. People did not watch POSE, they do not watch stuff like For the Boys, I haven't seen anyone on Tumblr talk about Sort Of, we didn't get an explosion of new gay shit after Moonlight or Call Me By Your Name. All I wanna say is that they don't really care about us.

I think there is room for BL to genre blend and play with broader romance or dramatic themes, à la La Pluie or Moonlight Chicken. However, I'll remind you that folks don't always like that (see I Promised You The Moon).

I think the biggest thing to recognize is that, while BL does have some of its own tropes from origin yaoi or modern Thai BL, BL shares a lot of DNA with romance as a whole. Don't get lost in the sauce of the classification war. Watching BL to check off boxes about what's recognized or not as the primary goal feels like a distraction.

Besides, if you're enjoying Laws of Attraction, that show has done nothing new. It's literally just using familiar lakorn and romance beats. Humans have been telling stories for at least 20,000 years. It doesn't have to be new to be good. It just needs to be done well.

[showmey0urfangs]

i'm all for analyzing the fuck out of the show and would even say i rarely encounter anything that i would necessarily consider "overanalysis," just personally, because to me all interpretations are valid to some extent. like why not read into it like that if doing so creates added meaning to you if that makes sense? though of course there will always takes i disagree with or even find downright "wrong." what is beginning to piss me off though is how homophobic and gender essentialist some analysis in this fandom is beginning to feel. i'm not saying all of it is wrong or invalid but i can't be the only one who thinks people are taking it to such an extent that feels weird. acknowldging the show's commentary on patriarchy or louis being gender nonconforming is one thing but the number of people who seem very comfortable constantly referring to a gay man as "basically" a woman is getting weird to me. initially i was relieved to see people address the same subtext i was picking up on but at this point it feels like some people are engaging less in good faith analysis and more in feminization kink that's toooootally relevant to canon trust me guys

Hi there. I too have noticed this new trend for fans (usually women) to jokingly refer to queer or queer-coded men in media by feminine terms (babygirl, mother, referring to their "pussies" etc.) I'm not sure if it's a kink like you said or if it's done for some other reason, but I agree that it can sometimes become insidiously homophobic and devolves into trying to fit queer men into antiquated heteronormative roles.

It pisses me off when I see fans treat Louis like he's the sad frigid housewife and Lestat is the manly man, wolfkiller, protector and provider, who goes off on adventures and has multiple conquests while Louis sits at home crying and knitting by the fire.

I think a lot of this comes from the way Anne herself wrote their dynamic in the books after IWTV —where btw, Louis is the wealthy and business savvy one and Lestat depended on him, at least financially, but somehow by the time we see them again, Louis's broke, living in a shack with no electricity and wearing dusty clothes, while Lestat is a billionaire and a rockstar. 🙃

By disregarding Louis' storyline to solely focus on Lestat's , Anne left fans to fill the gaps with their own headcanons and apparently, that's what most of them came up with which...yeah.

We also see Claudia also call Louis a housewife in episode 5, but she did it in a moment of anger and obviously knew how hurtful it would be for him to hear that when he had spent his entire life grappling with his own sexuality and trying to comfort to a more "socially acceptable" image of masculinity — ❝the stern landlord, the deferential businessman, the loyal son--❞

To me, implying Louis is "less of a man" because he is more sensitive or less sexually aggressive is textbook homophobia, not to mention misogynistic because it implied femininity or feminine traits are less than, a weakness.

Ideally, I would love to see less of this type of narrative—especially in Loustat fics and other fan works of them. But I'm not the fandom police, so it's to each their own ig. 🤷🏾‍♀️

[bybdolan]

I watched Obviously Queer's video about the rise of mlm media yesterday, and while I think it was pretty good and insightful as a whole, I do feel like sometimes the women* and nonbinary people writing mlm fanfic and novels are let off the hook a bit too easily, if that makes sense. I myself am a writer of mlm stuff, and also not a beliver in strict Own Voices policies (duh), but I find it noteworthy that mlm-heavy fandom spaces tend to circle around very specific kinds of mlm works – namely stuff that was made with a non-mlm audience in mind – outside of the works they produce, which obviously colors their writing. (Look at the immense popularity of stuff like The Song of Achilles and Red White Royal Blue.) I like to think that it is universally acknowledged that when writing from a perspective that isn't your own, you should do research to try to be as accurate and respectful to the experience as possible, but I feel like that sentiment is not really Big when it comes to writing gay men. Part of me wonders if that is a result of the combination of the idea of "Own Voices" (understandably) mainly being used to critique writers who inhabit less privileged perspectives and insert their prejudice into their works while wanting to check progressive boxes, and the fact that people for some reason assume that gay men are the most privileged group within the LGBT+ community (as if you could make broad sweeping generalizations like that – i find this idea deeply troubling). People don't seem to feel the need to engage with mlm content that is actually aimed at gay men in order to better understand the experience they are writing. And it ... shows? Just because you yourself are queer doesn't mean that you automatically 100% understand the experience of people who are queer in a different way than you are. You are not immune to reproducing harmful stereotypes in your writing.

[deadboydetectives-confessions]

I'm the anon who doesn't read much fic anymore. Tbh I've shared a lot of my frustrations here already in other asks and gotten pushback, which makes me even less interested in reading DBD fic, because it just feels like I'm out of step with fandom everywhere: here, ao3, even other tumblr spots. I also submitted a long rambly ask that hasn't been published yet that was me kind of pre-mourning how I'm drifing out of the fandom because the vibes are just not working for me, which came up after I tried to find fic to read yesterday.

But since you asked, generally: I like long, plotty fic that doesn't sideline the women and I'm bored by short fluff, especially if it's very traditional romance vibes. I am invested in the queerplatonic-ness of the Edwin and Charles relationship and fics that sidestep that to center solely on traditional romance usually disappoint me.

The sidelining of the women is the first thing I ran up against in the fandom and is kind of my white whale. A lot of fics that do include Crystal, Niko, and the other female characters don't do them justice and flatten them: Crystal is mean. Niko is a shipper. They are foils for the boys to figure out their romance. It's nothing I haven't seen in other fandoms and there are definitely fics that do center them, but I think I've read them all.

I enjoy fics that try to engage with the world and fill out gaps in the show: exploring side characters like Kashi and Angie, for example. I also like when fic engages with key aspects of the show, like the fact that Charles and Edwin are ghosts and what that means for them. Or that they are dual-aged (old men and perpetual teens at the same time) and what that means. A lot of fic tries to get around what was established in the show, whereas, in general, for this fandom, I'm here because I like the show and want more of it. I'm not looking for anything that feels like a wild departure. My ideal would be lots of casefics, but that's often a hard find in any fandom.

I usually enjoy kink and smut, but gotta admit the NC-17 fics in this fandom have yet to hit for me. I prefer my smut to be based in what I think that character would find hot and the vibe I get is that the smut in this fandom is fueled on what the writer finds hot and then backtracking to try to make it work for the character. In some fandoms that backtracking works for me, but it hasn't worked for me yet in this fandom and often comes across to me as being wildly OOC and fanon. (Dom!Edwin: looking at you.) It doesn't help that I don't find either TCK or Monty sexually appealing. (Jenny on the other hand.) This fandom also just has weird puritan vibes even within smut fics that I can't put my finger on. It's like some fics are going "look at us being naughty and writing porn" when it's barely R and the kink is blink and you miss it.

Anyway tl;dr: I like long plotty fic that includes in a significant way or fully centers the ladies; engages thoughtfully with the premise show; and doesn't hew to traditional romance tropes. I've been successful at finding fics that hit one or two out of the three, but finding fics and authors that routinely work on all three levels has been hard.

.

[my-mt-heart]

How do you stay hopeful for Caryl after all these years? I definitely shipped it & while I like the characters it just feels like AMC is too cowardly to make it happen.

As an aside, how do you also deal with all the noise of the fandom? Not just anti-Caryl people but people who grow so protective of the ship that they throw other actors’ stories and work under the bus. The racism I’ve seen directed at Danai & the downplaying of her talent or her chemistry with Andy has soured me to so much of the fandom as a black woman.

Sorry, if it feels like I’m dumping randomly. I’m new(ish) to the fandom & what I’ve seen is almost enough to make me want to run away. I really enjoyed the main show (for a time), loved TOWL & I’m excited to see Carol back and to see how DD continues. Carol really grew on me & scared me a lot along the ways, just like Rick did. I think the two of them experience the greatest changes in the show. It just feels like the excitement is constantly at war with not wanting to interact with what sometimes feels like a hateful fandom across the board.

AMC isn’t the biggest hurdle. Almost all of the EPs on Caryl’s show are white men with the same limited perspective and that was the case on the flagship show for a number of years as well. I trusted the writing for S9 and S10 and I know there’s a real possibility of a pro-Caryl showrunner joining the spinoff, so that’s the hope I’m hanging onto. I can’t embrace the “just friends” narrative because it undermines the writing, the actors’ POV’s, and a large number of fans’ POV’s. It’s not a creative choice, you know? It’s rooted in misogyny and ageism and hate, which doesn’t sit well with me. Either they deliver the payoff that’s long overdue in TBOC or I can’t keep watching. That’s where I’m at unfortunately 😔

I’m sorry your experience in fandom has been so volatile. It isn’t okay for anyone to stoop to racism in order to win an arbitrary competition. That’s the underlying issue with TWD fandom. Andy, Norman, and JDM never have to “earn their place" on the show. They’re all leads, right? But Danai, Melissa, and LC—the women/woc—are constantly being pitted against each other. Why? I can go deeper into this later, but I’ll say now as a general observation that I think fans of these actresses and the characters they play speak from places of pain, albeit very different places, and some of them think they have to tear down, silence, and invalidate others in order to feel seen, heard, and validated themselves. They’re mistaken. I wish more fans could celebrate the women’s individual strengths without ranking them and without trying to justify racism or ageism or misogyny in order to position them as "less than," but more than that, I wish AMC/TWDU would encourage healthy interactions between fans of different talent/characters. They don’t. Michonne’s, Carol’s, and Maggie’s relationships with each other should have been developed and celebrated a lot more on the show. Seeing them root for each other would’ve encouraged their fans to do the same. The social media accounts promoting them as equals would allow their fans to view them that way and treat other fans as their equals as well. Danai, Melissa, and LC should also have more power/opportunities on their shows because more representation for women/woc behind the scenes means more impactful stories for women/woc onscreen that will resonate with more viewers.

You asked how I deal with the noise. It depends on the circumstances. If the official accounts do something problematic, which has been happening a lot lately, I’ll say my piece where they can see it in the hope that it leads to more thoughtful engagement with/thorough research of their audience(s). Otherwise, I have to put up safeguards because, as a human, I get overwhelmed if I’m surrounded by too many things I find hurtful. I don’t bother answering hostile anons because the arguments will just keep going in circles, I’ve changed my settings so that hateful voices can’t spam my comments, and I block fans who try to bully me. Those are just some examples. If you’re new(ish) to fandom and want to test the waters, Tumblr is probably a safer place to start than Twitter. Hopefully you can connect with other fans who respect your POV and vice versa. When the hate gets too loud, it really helps to have fandom friends to talk to about it.

Reach out anytime 😊