#fandom diskhorse

[smosh-potatoes]

My advice to fellow smoshers of the fandom from this Elder Millennial:

Do not give attention to trolls. That's what they want.

Let them in obscurity.

Trust me, I've been there.

Just block and move on.

Stay Smoshy.

[bonezone44]

I find it hard sometimes to have opinions on Fandom culture and trends because what am I gonna do? Be like, "hey friend! Loved your violent rape fic! But can you make it more inclusive so more people can feel violently raped, too?"

But then again, why not make your violent rape fic more inclusive? Women of all types can and do experience rape. And women of all types can and do have the right to explore the darker parts of themselves.

And then there's the use of the term "dark" which could be argued as being colorist because of pale-skinned Western cultures using skin tone to define non-superficial qualities of people. As if white=good and pure and dark= bad and wrong.

But i know of a lot of people who don't consciously make that link and replacing it with the term "evil" or "corrupt" doesn't quite fit either.

But I think "depraved" works as a good, general substitution.

But also!! I can have all the opinions I want and it still won't change the Fandom. People like to dig their heels in and be spiteful about things and I don't have it in me to argue.

All I can do is write my fic, share the fics I enjoy, be a friend to my friends, and keep trucking.

[greenapplespider]

I REALIZED THAT ROCHE /CIRI IS SHIT IN THE OPINION OF YOUR FANDOM AND YOU, AND THIS SHIP IS WORTHY ONLY OF HATRED AND HARAAS, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO LOVE IT

[cupcraft]

It is really interesting to me, and by interesting i mean so scary and baffling, to see how Dream's cultivated a fanbase.

To his fans, he is loyal to people that "dont care about him", he is "endlessly kind even though some people dont deserve it/arent receptive to it/are people who hate him", he is "helpless and doesnt know what he's doing", he is someone who "makes honest mistakes", is "mature in the way he handles controversy/situations". Dream has cultivated a persona of being loving, kind, loyal, mature and rational, but also equally helpless and in need of saving from a large fanbase. A lot of it stems from him being a white man, but it also stems from the way he's cultivated a fanbase within the power he has in parasocialism.

It is this that allows him to subvert controversy. Dream says or does something racist? It's "he already apologized so its okay", it's "he didnt know what he was saying", it's "ya'll are too sensitive", it's "all people do is want to victimize dream who is loving/kind/loyal/etc." Dream has grooming allegations against him and he admits to the messages being true and real and thus admits to flirting with minors and it's "dream is the victim". His twitlonger is on priv and it's considered "mature and rational". His initial horribly response is ignored because "of course dream would be upset :(! he just is so in need of our help and defense". And then there's the situations of doxxing that people bring up that dream has experienced things that are unjustifiable, but only as a matter of deflecting dream from ever being able to cause harm never as a point of empathy and importance in discussing that as an issue in itself.

It just really reminds me of many other cc's fanbases who continue to have a cc with issue after issue, cause harm after harm. It never matters. The consequences are ignored because those who allow the cc to get away with these things, dont think it affects them. And they dont care who it effects.

And that's the danger of it. To view someone in a position of power who can do real harm and has done real harm as infallible and incapable of anything harmful either due to viewing his heart as perfectly pure and kind or viewing him as helpless compared to everyone else, or to view anyone who critiques the cc as just blindly hating him stuck in an echo chamber of "he can do no wrong" is dangerous. it's dangerous for marginalized fans and fans who are victim to dream's harm or similar situations of harm because you are actively justifying and causing more harm in a cc's name who doesnt really gaf about you. To throw away all morals, ethics, beliefs, all for the sake of destroying people around you for one person. It's just i'm terrified for you too.

[hamliet]

In the context of fiction and media, everything is so sexualized especially when I think of shipping. Even ships with underage minors and adults are popular and why?? Fiction directly affects reality does it not? Why is it okay to show that?

Sexuality is a very normal, healthy part of human behavior. While some people are asexual and that is also normal and healthy, the majority are not. Most people like sex, find it fun and meaningful. All human experiences should be reflected in art (what else is art for?), so sexuality should be reflected in a lot of art.

Unfortunately, we live in a culture that paradoxically both idolizes and shames sexuality, and this is as prevalent among the fundamentalist religious as it is among leftist spaces. So when art ignores sexuality completely, or ignores certain types of sexuality (see, the female gaze, or queer expressions of sex) fans will create that art themselves--such as via shipping. Shipping is simply "there's a story to be told here" and that story may or may not involve sex (most often does) and even in some cases, be primarily about sex.

Fiction is both shaped by reality and can shape reality, but that's not the same as saying it's a 1=1 mirror of reality where you can exactly correlate A cause with B result. Like, look up the anti video game movement of the 90s, the Satanic Panic and the way emo music was blamed for tragedies like Columbine, and ask yourself why people who like detective mysteries aren't murderers.

Yet, there is nuance here for sure. Like, I'll just bluntly state moral policing is a boring way to engage with art and fandom, and that goes beyond just sexuality. However, that isn't the same as saying take off your critical thinking hat, anything goes. Criticism is a very necessary part of fandom and engagement, and must be allowed (shakes fist at toxic positivity). But criticism as a field is designed to open doors more so than close them. It's a discussion more than anything else (note: discussing does not mean conclusions can't be drawn; they can). I have called out the real life implications of different stories before, and I'll do it again.

Me saying "moral policing stories is boring" also isn't me advocating for amorality. Not at all. Ethical questions posed by works can elevate a work to the realm of a masterpiece. There's a reason The Brothers Karamazov is considered top-tier literature. But ethics and morality are best explored not through statements, but through examination of what someone means when they say something is wrong or right. Fiction is a fabulous way to do this.

Let's use the example of minors and adults. Sad face, because "minor" in fandom can mean anything from "short person" (yes, really, I've seen that argued that someone who is short is "minor coded") to "17 year old" to "five year old." Shipping a 17 year old and an 18 year old is way different than, say, a preteen and a person their parent's age.

Like, in real life, people do not have a magical switch in their brain when they turn 18. An 18 year old dating a 17 year old is normal. It's not ethically dubious. An 18 year old (legal!) dating a 40 year old? Is ethically suspect to me, even if it isn't illegal. Ages are the best ways we have to protect children and keep them safe, but there's a reason most laws allow for an 18 and a 17 year old to date. At the same time, no one in their right mind would object to the moral statement "minors shouldn't date adults" (unless you're Matt Gaetz) with a "WELL WHAT ABOUT" because basic guardrails can't be built around exceptions, and the alternative is so horrifying that the guardrail exists for a damn good reason. But real life or fictitious, an 18 and 17 year old is not really sketchy.

Plus, I caution that the portrayal of a thing isn't necessarily the endorsement or "normalization" of said thing. Framing matters. A story can be used to powerfully show the pain of entering a relationship in which a young person is in way over their head. In fandom specifically, the shipping "story" people are interested in, regardless of ages or whatnot, might not be a happily-ever-after one, and might be a way to process their own abuse. I think there's a famous queer author who got "cancelled" for this, but she was processing her own experiences and framed it as negative, which is very sad.

There are other considerations too. For example, the medium of a story also matters. Film (and theater) inherently muddy the fiction and reality discourse dilemma in a way that written or drawn mediums do not: they use real people, so there are multiple layers in which this discourse can be discussed. Fandom and shipping, however, does not (on the whole) use these mediums.

I also know some people age up characters or de-age them to ship them at the same age, because they like the dynamic but do have ethical concerns about ages. I personally feel squicked out when there's a power dynamic like minor/adult (as in the paragraph above), teacher/student, or mentor/mentee, even if both are adults. And yet despite this I still like stories like Scum Villain's Self Saving System which are literally designed to provoke questions about shipping and fandom and morality, because they make me use my critical thinking and are aware of the problematic aspects of their works and precisely explore what makes it problematic, and what makes it not. SVSSS approaches it like:

A teacher who abuses his pupil enters into a relationship with him when they are adults, no grooming when kids. Sounds ethically suspect, right?

What if it's set in an ancient fantasy world where people fly on swords and live as immortals?

What happens to the idea of age (past a certain point in development) when you're immortal and stay physically young? (We don't have a real-life starting point for this.)

What if said teacher is literally no longer the same soul, but has been swapped for another soul?

What if the new soul is forced to be unkind under pain of not just death but soul obliteration?

What if age becomes speculative because the new soul isn't necessarily older than the pupil?

You see, there are a million angles from which SVSSS approaches this question, and ties these questions in with themes about individuality and presuppositions (essentially: see the individual more than the "type" of character). It's not mocking the questions. It's genuinely exploring them.

So, ethical questions can be very interesting in stories, and in terms of how fans interact with fiction as well. But not in terms of preaching, but in terms of interaction, in terms of making you question things--which is not the same as tossing aside all principles of morality.

[ayrennaranaaldmeri]

someone please tell me how to get to this alternate universe where the fandom apparently treats lae'zel better than sh; i would fucking love to go there bc it abso-fucking-lutely is not this one lmao.

[sparrowmoth]

🍄🍦

Thank you, hun! <3

🍄 ⇢ share a head canon for one of your favourite ships or pairings

Someone brought this to mind today, so one of my favourite headcanons since reading King of Scars and realizing exactly how powerful Grisha can become is that Jesper does not give up on life when he almost inevitably outlives Wylan and his mortal friends and family, but rather aspires to a level of power so intense that it's akin to godhood, and through that power, reunites with everyone he loves.

This is something I'd really like to explore in a fic one day... some day.

🍦 ⇢ name three good things about a character you hate

okay but nothing about this says I have to name them so I'm not lmao

critical to the plot

clearly intelligent

sympathetic history

and if you're thinking "but that could be anyone" well yes correct <3

[amarriageoftrueminds]

something i truly do not understand about smbcky and to a lesser extent, smstve shippers is how they so clearly prefer the stucky dynamic genuine love for each other and prominence in the story their emotional core being each other to the point that non-shippy general audiences call BS when newer entries try to downplay their relationship

but then they don't ship that but instead lie through their teeth abt what stucky in canon is and pretend that their preferred ship has the stucky dynamic

it'd be so much tolerable if the diehard SmBck shippers were honest abt what they are and stop acting like it's a soulmate/fated lovers ship and admitted that it's more of a meme/dudebro/"haha they hate each other it's funni" joke ship, which is what gen audiences did when their show was airing, gen audiences treated it like a meme cuz the narrative never gave it more depth than a bunch of glued-together buddy cop tropes and banking off audiences being invested in the IRL actors' public on-camera personas

those shippers would be much happier if they were honest abt what it is and isn't instead and wondering why romance-lovers prefer the dynamic that actually treated the emotions and feeling with depth and sincerity instead of the dynamic of 2 cishet dudebro hwood actors who think their jokes are hilarious but you can never tell when the joke even happened or not happened

Tbh I don't really know how smbcky shippers ship them because I don't see it! (Got it all blacklisted or filtered or w/e and tend to block those posts when I see them and move on. Hard pass from me.)

So I can't really comment on whether they habitually make up bullshit about stucky or downplay it, because I'm simply not seeing it! 🤷‍♀️

I guess stucky occupies a bit of a unique situation, in terms of shipping, because shippers can lean hard into it's canon romanticism and 80+ years of comics, without needing to steal from other canon ships.

(Like, I've never seen or heard of stucky fic with Bucky in Peggy's scenes, or Natasha's, or Sharon's, because none of them have the same profound place in Steve's life or the same profound lines so it would be, if anything, kind of a downgrade??)

Whereas the MCU canon definitely is trying to downplay and cannibalise stucky to feed other ships, in just the way you describe.

(And thereby inadvertently admitting that the writers don't actually rate the existing-canon as romance, for example. Putting Peggy in Bucky's scenes in WhatIf, while completely deleting Steve and Peggy's original scenes, which were supposed to prove they're a couple! Tell me you think stucky was legit without telling me...)

Most jarring to me was WhatIf, where they had Bucky casually bumping off zombie-Steve, with zero sign that this was his best friend, the only living person who's known him since he was a child, someone he'd sacrificed a whole limb for TWICE etc etc etc…

But was then expected to be upset over bumping off zombie-Sam?

H u h ?!

It was so obvious and cack-handed an attempt to shove down one in order to raise up another, that it was just... cringe? 😬

Maybe that's the origin of this, if you what you say is happening in sambuca and stvesam shipping, is really happening. They've swallowed the 'shit on stucky' coolaid the Rat is peddling and now they're doing precisely what the Corporate Overlords want? 🤔

Kinda sad to think about... 😥

And as for this 'copying X ship dynamic to fit Y ship while ignoring Y ship's canon as if they never liked it anyway' phenomenon...

I have definitely come across a similar thing in stucky fanfic too, actually!

I've seen Bucky's personality (and even physical description) overhauled and replaced with a sort of James Charles-esque, Darcy Lewis Tony Stark hybrid.

Which leaves me thinking, 'but if that's the kind of person you think Steve would want, then you don't actually ship stucky, you ship Steve/Darcy, Stny, etc?'

So it wouldn't surprise me if what you say is true, Anon, because I've definitely seen that ^ similar thing elsewhere with Bucky.

And yes, you'd think, if the 'dramatically romantic co-dependant burn the world for them childhood soulmate' dynamic is the one you're after, then you can't actually like the Sambuca dynamic?

(Cuz if you're not a fan of 'buddy cop dudebros who hate each other on sight are forced into proximity and bicker to the point of becoming an annoyance to the other characters', then why are you here?)

It's an especially odd choice to cannibalise another ship's canon for fanon when what is in canon is a lot of queerbaiting you could draw on instead!

(eg. them rolling through a field for comedic 'lol they're doing gay stuff!!' relief, 'now give us money like you did w/ stucky!!' Annoying, yes, but extremely useful from a shipping POV! No different than destiel or johnlock, when the writers were in on it but had no intention of following through. The fans didn't let that stop them!)

Maybe it derives from a sense of a stolen opportunity? Because FATWS absolutely could have been the 'emotionally resonant ship-establishing show'.

But instead they went with 'Mackie being sarcastic was hilarious in junkets so let's just have him throw casual abuse at Stan so we don't have to bother to do our jobs.' Gave Stan one (1) Emotional Scene and Mackie Zero (0). (While also, funnily enough, shitting on all of Bucky's backstory as if it didn't matter, while not even bothering to mention Sam's at all.)

And finished with a lazy insult; a montage, so that they don't have to bother actually showing them becoming good friends, in the six fuckin hours that they wasted on What FunnyNaziGuy Thinks. 🤬

I think also, Bucky stans seem to be more able to see the flaws in that show, because they never regarded it as 'his' (since he's not being made Captain America, sidekicking remains his gig etc.) Whereas Sam stans did see it as his, so they feel as if they're being disloyal and shitting on one of the few pieces of black rep available by criticising it (and double-down on refusing to address any issues about it.)

So perhaps Sambuca shippers who come to it from a Sam-stan POV almost can't criticise the crap they were given (eg. Mackie Yells at Stan for 6 hours + Nobody's In Character). Emotionally, it's much easier to criticise, eg. skrull Steve from Endlame, and pretend that shit was IC and he and Bucky haven't been It in Steve's films or Marvel's Batman & Robin in the comics for 80 years. 🙄

Definite ship-envy going on, though what the hell there is to envy in the way MCU treats Stucky I don't know!

.

tl;dr: haven't seen it personally but it wouldn't surprise me since that's what the MCU itself is doing and rarepair shippers are in dire straights anyway, poor sods.

[dappy-dappernette]

The Hetalia fandom has genuinely done some fucked up shit but hey at the very least we haven't accused someone of faking their CSA and randomly accused people of being nonces because they don't like our ship (at least not yet)

[sisinorth]

How does it feel to know that you've bullied countless people out of the TF fandom? You have a reputation, people talk about how scared they are to stand up to you. It's gonna catch up to you someday. You're a sick person and you should feel ashamed

Dude… all the people I’ve ever called out before are related to one of two things: scamming artists and writers in the fandom out of promised pay for their labor, or uh for litterally being TFcon and banning “crossdressing” at cons and not communicating with artists.

For the first, I’ve provided proof via spreadsheets and investigations of Kickstarter activities that involved misallocations of funds. If you wanna read that callout, which by the way I was asked to write by members of a project who did not feel safe publicly calling it out themselves, its here(thread):

And the other one… the TFcon one, is here (thread):

Though I’m guessing by “bullying” you mean blocking people or privately talking to my friends about someone when they were a fuck to me.

Idk how to tell ya this bud but that’s not really the same thing as bullying. If someone put you up to saying this to me, uh maybe take a moment to think about how they treat others around them and if it’s really the kind of behavior you think is worth sending cringe anon hate over. Usually when I’m mad about something like someone was a dick to my friends I try to do something with a positive impact that helps my community or friend group. Like making a gift for someone, or making a public VRchat avatar for folks to enjoy. Or drawing some vent art then talking about my feelings. I hope you find a healthy outlet for your misplaced rage, and take some time to reflect on what’s actually bugging you feelings wise. I’m gonna go make a quest version of that Mirage model so everyone has a chance to twerk with him if they wanna lol.

Ps: find someone cooler to be afraid of. I spend most of my time drawing weird stuff like overlord with a big butthole and robots with balls. I’m slightly flattered that you find me intimidating, but like really I don’t have much pull in the fandom. The fact you came to my tumblr where i get like zero engagement kinda speaks to that. When I speak up about things it’s usually because I’ve seen my friends or someone I care for being hurt, or in very rare cases someone has violated my privacy. These are all very easy things to avoid doing.

[hoseeok]

I understand why it happened but it’s so funny to me as a multistan to see people ignore completely the impact successful bts comebacks like bst and fake love and boy with luv had on the following years of the kpop industry. It’s like bangtan can only be presented reluctantly as a part of a bigger movement, never a group that itself created ripples. On one hand it’s to remember the previous great groups that did make bts success more likely to happen but still. You watch 2018/2016/2019 kpop bangers compilations and bts is not there like the relative people collectively decided to erase from memory. The only time I see people promptly use bts as benchmark is when it’s time to talk about westernisation and English singles

[local-fire-dumpster]

Logically speaking I know that fandom drama and toxicity exist everywhere regardless of country but that language barrier is such a blessing sometimes. No ship wars,no calllouts,absolutely nothing but me and the japanese artists who pop up on my twitter timeline every so often. Oh so you are saying that something big is going down? I wouldn't know, I can't read.

[decepti-thots]

i try not to hold too many prescriptive fandom "rules", but my pettiest is that if someone's argument relies upon invoking death of the author and i cannot tell if they have actually read Death of the Author within a paragraph, i just move on. sorry but life is too short to listen to people whose understanding of that essay and its responses came to them through seven layers of internet telephone and fandom diskhorse.

[yinyuedijun]

i will personally cast a spell upon all your weird freaky puritan haters that makes them only able to speak and type in mario noises 😌 love you and love your work!! you write truly incredible stuff and im a huge fan of bluebird 💝💝💝

- mario.mp3 anon

MARIO.MP3 ANON HELLO LEGEND !! thank you beloved that means a lot to me 🥺 god it is so funny imagining the text of every weird censorship diskhorse post being spontaneously replaced by mario noises fhgpdjslshsjsks 💀 imagine how good the fandom experience would become

I hope you know what a gem you are and also IM SO GLAD U LIKE BLUEBIRD !!! if I can get my pc built by tonight I'll update it 😭

[fourspiceblend]

My two cents on some totk diskhorse that's been going around.

Everyone is criticizing the sage segments of totk and the fact that you can sequence break certain important parts of the story which diminishes their impact, I think we can all agree the whole "player freedom" aspect should have stayed in botw and we deserved a proper linear story for this game. I'm honestly miffed that they kept it considering how that was THE appeal of botw and this game was supposed to go in an entirely different direction, I myself never actually cared for it since I'm here for the story first and foremost and all the decade-long whiny gamer bellyaching about SS being "too linear" always felt blown out of proportion to me, SS has many flaws but its linearity worked IN ITS FAVOR and not against it (but I guess that's what happens when people get their video game opinions from "gaming journalists" and youtube gamer streaming bros instead of thinking for themselves and not regurgitating "fandom accepted" takes). Botw right now has very few aspects that haven't been upgraded in totk and that might make people go back to it instead of playing this one, a very big factor that could have helped the game keep its longevity and uniqueness was for them to scrap the whole freedom aspect for this game and made it so that the player could still freely explore in this game but was still locked from certain key story moments if accessed to early. And with botw being all "you don't even need the master sword or memories to get to the final boss you can just beat him naked with a stick" a lot of us were very paranoid totk would be the same so we scrambled to do every quest possible even if out of order just to make sure we didn't miss anything (even though you ACTUALLY need to get the master sword in this game!). And before anyone misinterprets me this is NOT a "totk bad akshually" post like I still enjoyed the game, but it was SO CLOSE to being perfect and its one big flaw was a huge fumble that I'm still salty about. (also, not enough Sonia screentime.)

[cranesofibycus]

post-pandemic diskhorse cr2 was... really something else. one of the reasons i'm enjoying c3 so much is how relatively chill it is.

people that weren't posting and reading around there really don't understand how every week, every episode, you flinched everytime something shippy happened in the stream. if you were active, your mind was already "oh no..." and getting ready for a bunch of discourse. every month a big thread surfaced with insane interactions, and bad takes flew all over the place.... like terrible, terrible takes. liam and matt having to come and tweet telling people to chill. plus the sudden cr2 ending announcement, the massive blowback, even brian getting fired.... 2020-2021 were terrible times in general, so i put some blame on that, but jesus man, i don't miss it at all.

Yes to all of this. The hiatus content that the CR team and the fandom were creating and putting out was actually so wonderful and such a source of joy for me, and then the moment the campaign returned it all went downhill fast.

I don't want to overanalyze strangers' behavior on the internet, but a part of me felt like people were rapidly losing control of their own lives and circumstances and were desperate to regain some of that control by shouting at each other (and in this case also at creators) on the internet. You could kind of tell that people needed an outlet for their genuine, real-life anxieties and frustrations, and when the CR that returned from hiatus didn't match up with the CR that everyone had quietly and collectively curated in their own minds over the course of a few quiet months in 2020, it was an easy target for all of those pent up emotions.

And it continued into 2021 with the end of the campaign. I've gone on record saying that I wasn't over the moon with the ending, either, but the way people insisted on dropping bombs on their way out of the fandom is something I've never really understood. It was wild.