#fandom is a community and communities are not a monolith you get to control

[douwatahima]

as someone who's been doing fandom stuff for over twenty years, i think one of the most important lessons you can learn is not everything is for you. we're all nerds on the internet, banding together because we feel at least a little unhinged about our favourite shows/movies/ect. there's going to strong opinions any way you slice it, and other people's opinions won't always align with yours. maybe someone is obsessed with a character you don't like or a pairing that makes no sense to you, but that person still has as much of a right to be in the space as you do. that doesn't mean you have to interact with those ideas, i'm a big proponent of blocking whoever or whatever you need to, but you don't get to tell them to stop just because you personally don't like it.

obviously, there are cases where this doesn't apply. if a take is super racist/homophobic/transphobic or someone is using their personal headcanon to harrass others, then absolutely that's something that should be addressed. but if it's just something harmless that irks you personally, you need to understand that that is a you problem and not a them problem. and, quite frankly, if you can't come to terms with that, maybe fandom isn't for you.

[autistictaylorhebert]

See, if wildbow did join tumblr (and was active here) i don't think he'd get "bullied off" the platform, but I also don't think he'd "win" and get the interaction he wanted out of the community. No one would win, and no one would change anyone's opinion.

The most likely possibility by far is that he would just create dividing lines within the fanbase on tumblr, and/or intensify the dividing lines that were already there.

He'd get into arguments, people would make fun of him and defend him, people would block each other, and he'd probably end up with a group of blogs he could have Neil Gaiman-esque interactions with. A bunch of other people would go on with him blocked/ignored, and a good chunk of people would deactivate or just stop posting.

But crucially, fundamentally, this wouldn't give wildbow what he wants. He would still get takes on his dashboard that he hates, as well as art he doesn't like. There would be well meaning fans who ask questions or interact with him in ways he isn't comfortable with. There would continually be new controversies and clumsy fan interactions, especially with new blogs who had just discovered his writing.

I know this, because this is how /r/parahumans already works.

There's the main subreddit/community, and then there are offshoot groups that have been somewhat alienated and separated. Examples of this include the spacebattles fanfiction scene, wormblr itself, and to a lesser extent places like /r/wormmemes, /r/occultmagiconline, and various discords.

These places obviously aren't monolithic and or divided from each other in a meaningful sense, but there are big differences in prevailing sentiment and opinion from place to place.

This is kind of deliberate on wildbow's part, he has made a deliberate effort to moderate the subreddit and limit specific things people want to talk about there.

The thing is, again, this doesn't work out how he wants it to:

For one thing, over time, those differences in sentiment between websites have become more extreme and fermented, as a direct result of the fact those sentiments and ideas were limited in the platforms wildbow moderates. You can't really talk about fanfiction on /r/parahumans, so /r/wormfanfic and spacebattles became more insular. Criticisms of representation and similar are looked down upon in the subreddit, so parts of wormblr got more focussed on this criticism (even if this is often balanced by other, more positive posts).

Additionally, wildbow isn't able to consistently keep those sentiments (or ways of responding to his writing) away from the subreddit. There's still bleed over (it's just more extreme than it otherwise would have been), and there are always new fans who haven't really read the room yet.

You still get posts from fanfiction readers asking about jumpchain or quests or shipping. You still get people trying to talk about the bad gay representation (or just wholesale linking tumblr posts without the bloggers' permission). You still get people on the subreddit surprised about ward!Amy and similar things...

...and it results in continuous, intermittent discourse.

It's a pattern that we've seen happen over and over again, and it would probably play out the same way on here as well.

Finally, recently, wildbow has been making these kind of lamenting comments about how the fandom was toxic to him, or how someone crossed boundaries, or someone made fanart he didn't like, etc.

On one level I think he's telling the truth about some of the more toxic or parasocial instances he talks about, and those things are a real shame.

But at the same time, I think there's this undercurrent of wildbow having all these expectations about how much he can control or direct the response to his work, and then getting frustrated when he comes up against the fact these expectations are largely unrealistic.

[babbybones]

Ok i have a kinda dumb question that i am having trouble finding answers for, but what is the deal with Fandom (the site/company with all the wikis) sorry to ask but the name is so painfully generic i am having trouble finding info rip

@hope-punk put it pretty well in the replies of my post, so I hope they won't mind me quoting them here

if you've tried to look up a media specific wiki, you'll probably have found a Fandom wiki. That's Fandom with a capital, because they're a specific company. They operate a large wiki system that invites people to make wikis for whatever they want, and boast being the platform for many major wikis like the Minecraft wiki and Zelda wiki. However, going on a Fandom wiki will quickly make apparent the bad side of using Fandom wikis,

Fandom forces large, intrusive ads, auto play videos, the whole works onto the page, to the point where it becomes extremely unpleasant to use. In addition to this, they limit what you can do with your wiki compared to independent wikis or even other wiki networks, forcing large yellow sidebars and limited layouts. There's also pushes to make it a kind of social network with comments and such (which is… not what a wiki needs, at least in the format forced).

In addition to this, Fandom the company is quite frankly rabid in their push to consume or subsume fandom, hobby and media platforms. They recently acquired amongst other companies, Gamespot and GameFAQs, as well as other wiki platforms in the past. It takes a concerted effort to try and remain out of the grasp of Fandom the company, such as the wild steps the Blaseball fandom took to escape that someone added, or the Nintendo Independent Wiki Network

some other notable Fandom Crimes:

They purged LGBT-related wikis in an attempt to merge almost all of them into One Single LGBT Wiki, which is a nightmare idea considering the LGBTQ+ community is not a single unified monolith. Microlabels that were previously documented on the now-purged wikis were not considered notable enough to be documented on the merged wiki, and were instead directed to the Ezgender Wiki, placing an undue burden on wiki staff who weren't consulted about any of this in advance

On popular wikis, they'll sometimes put auto-playing videos on wiki pages outside of the wiki editors' control. These videos can contain spoilers or irrelevant/inaccurate information

Acquired Gamepedia, a competing wiki farm, and forcibly converted all of those wikis to Fandom's format. This is why Zelda Wiki, a founding member of the Nintendo Independent Wiki Alliance, is now on Fandom

Acquired and shut down Strawpoll.me

As I alluded to in the original post, you don't really "own" your wiki, and if your wiki makes Fandom a lot of ad revenue, they have a vested interest in keeping it up and running. If you make it obvious that you're trying to migrate or shut down such a wiki, they can simply get rid of you, replace you with new mods/admins, and revert anything they deem "vandalism" (basically, all signs that you were trying to migrate)

edit: can't believe I forgot to mention this but they've worked with the U.S. military

also reading Fandom wikis on mobile looks like this:

(id in alt text)

[agendercryptidlev]

haha wait sory follow up to the last two asks . i finally remember what the term for it is. Like, double standards. My issue with how some ppl interpret The Laios and Toshiro argument is how they kind of hold them to a diff standard of like tha fault is mostly with Toshiro for not speaking up instead of Laios because ppl see him as more oblivious in general even tho yea i mean that's fair i can also be like that sometimes!!! but its unfair that ppl say Toshiro isn't some flavour of neurodivergent too and is just like. an allistic asshole. lmao

either way i think theyre both interestingly flawed. and i enjoyed their fight and what it like meant for both of them (a big growth moment because laios like has a more understanding perspective of others' now and how like some ppl are going to be annoyed with him / how he should be more careful going forward with boundaries. and he also like . can see other ppls perspectives more in particular how toshiros sleep deprivation and lack of eating contributed to him lashing out suddenly at Laios.

and then how for Toshiro he kinda like? becomes more assertive and like doesnt just repress whatever it is he wants to say. Like the fight is super well written and interesting for both of their characters' growth so i want more ppl to kind of like /get/ that its less of a NT vs ND typa situation and more of a yeah these guys are both autistic, goin at it, and learning from their past mistakes. Getting worse before they get better at communication, that kind of stuff :]

I think this is all very valid and true and honestly this sorta fandom mini-ecosystem is really reflective of how people view neurodivergence as a whole, like there's some sorta monolith and one size fits all solution.

IDK how many people have this experience but at my elementary school they had a special daily class for the kids with "social difficulties" which basically meant they threw all the neurodiverse kids in a room and treated their different symptoms as exactly the same and were surprised when most of us HATED each other by the end. I have little to no volume control and was put next to a kid with severe noise sensitivity and yet they thought we'd get along because we both deviated from the norm. People expect there to be one true neurodivergent experience and it just doesn't work like that.

I definitely get what you mean about relating to both Laios and Toshiro and being annoyed at the mentality that you need to pick a side too, even if there is a million percent more Laios in me than Toshiro. A lot of people don't realize that people's symptoms don't follow an archetype and can have symptoms that seem to conflict with each other (I for example am a selective mute who also talks impulsively). People keep making false dichotomies with this stuff which is also where the temptation to make it into an autistic vs allistic right vs wrong thing comes in and it's a whole mess.

At the end of the day I just wish people were comfortable viewing this moment of conflict between Laios and Toshiro as a moment both of them needed to have to learn and grow, that's why they were both all bruised up at the end, neither came out as someone perfect but it's what they need to move past their differences and stuff.

That's also why I think it's so cool that there's a whole community online full of other neurodivergent folks who can all throw their own perspectives in and all that! I really enjoy hearing your perspective on Toshiro's character and I'm glad you help me think about him in ways I wouldn't have been able to on my own! :3

[glassprism]

Am I the only person who doesn't think RK playing the Phantom as autistic was offensive? Most of the takes I've heard are from neurotypicals and as someone who's on the spectrum and struggles daily because of it, I feel kind of alienated from the fandom and a little bit like a horrible person. I completely understand why people find the performance itself offensive, but some have really taken his statements about it in the worst faith possible.

"He definitely is not an evil person.  He is a victim of circumstance and environment.  He has been conditioned with such prejudice in his life.  I believe the Phantom to be Autistic.  I think he has a form of Aspergers Syndrome.  When the Phantom kills I truly don't believe it to be premeditated.  He's just losing control.  Again, this all stems from his social conditioning.  He's never felt a mother's love, nor his father.  He has had to become a man without being a child." -Payvand.com

Why should this make me angry? I get that RK is neurotypical, and saying that the Phantom is "just losing control" when he kills certainly lends itself to unfavorable interpretation, but he immediately follows that up by saying it's due to his "social conditioning," not that a propensity for murder is somehow a symptom of autism.

If it is commonly understood by the fandom that Erik's deformity is not the literal reason for his wrongdoings, and it was the horrible treatment he received because the world looked upon him as inhuman that led to that, why should we assume that an actor who was portraying him wouldn't apply the same idea to autism? I'm not just some rabid stan who's mad that their senpai is being attacked. RK is lightyears away from being my favorite Phantom and he honestly seems kind of douchey, but why should I jump to the worst conclusion about his reasoning?

I really get the feeling that NT people who are mad about this don't know what it's like to be autistic, and think that we can't be violent or bad people. It feels very infantilising to me. I've been told I sound dead or robotic time and time again. I've had my comfort object lost or stolen and been treated like a threat when I get upset about it. I've had my needs and concerns downplayed, even by my family members. I've had relationships fall apart completely when the other person learns what I really am. There are times when I literally don't feel human because of the way I'm perceived. I find the idea that RK relied solely on stereotypes to influence his idea of the character, frankly, insulting, because it means that I must be a stereotype.

Hello! Thank you so much for your thoughts.

First, let me just say that nobody in the fandom deserves to feel alienated because of their opinions. I've seen people who have definitely resonated with Ramin Karimloo's Phantom because he portrayed the character as autistic, and while they may not be as "big" in the fandom, they certainly exist. As with many fandom spaces, you just have to find your people, whatever that may be!

As for the rest, I actually wasn't comfortable with answering it because I am exactly that neurotypical who is mad about it. So I went to a Discord server I am in for thoughts, and one of the members there, who has autism, wrote a response which they generously gave me permission to share. I don't know if they want me to share their Tumblr handle as well, so I haven't, but if they do, I'm sure they'll reblog this so you can continue the conversation with them. Anyway, here was their message in response to your ask:

I think the most important thing to remember is that no community is a monolith. There are people who will find certain portrayals or headcanons offensive, and others who feel comforted by them, and a lot of it depends on life experience. I could say “it’s ableist to assume that autism makes people more capable of violence because it plays into harmful stereotypes,” OR “it’s ableist to act like autistic people are never violent because there are violent autistic people and they deserve representation and dignity too,” and both of these statements would be true in various ways and settings.

For me, it’s more of an issue of discussing when (and if) non-autistic people get to draw these conclusions, and under what circumstances. On one hand, it’s very hard for non-autistic actors to play autistic characters, and can also be frustrating when there ARE autistic actors who aren’t getting work. One of the other, there’s a huge difference in impact between Ramin Karimloo, who is relatively unknown outside of theatre, watching a documentary on autism (which, it’s my understanding is what he did) and saying “I think the Phantom is autistic,” and then attempting to portray it (even badly) in a long established show than, as an example, an extremely famous actor (Benedict Cumberbatch) saying, effectively, “yeah I decided Frankenstein’s Monster in this brand new play is autistic so I went to an autistic school and watched people for research. They were just, like, pissing and shitting and had no understanding of the world. Anyways it’s offensive to call Sherlock Holmes autistic because he’s intelligent and that could give false hope to the pathetic shit-slinging autistics.”

That is. Not as hyperbolic as I wish it was.

So anyways, it’s mostly like. Is what Ramin Karimloo said/did ignorant, in kind of bad taste, and arguably offensive? Yeah. Is it a valid reason for some people to feel uncomfortable about him/his take on the Phantom? Yeah. Should it get him thrown into Ableism Jail for all time? Probably not.

As far as headcanoning Erik as autistic goes. I’m autistic. I see Erik as autistic. I HIGHLY disagree with the idea that morally good characters are inherently good rep and that morally gray or bad characters are inherently bad rep. For some autistic people, seeing villains portrayed as autistic can feel othering or even triggering. I’m not (generally, with a few notable exceptions) one of those people, but I get why they feel that way, even if I don’t agree. I feel a lot of solidarity with autistic people who want to see the side of autism that is messy and difficult and yes, sometimes violent, in characters they relate to. I feel a lot of solidarity with people who don’t feel human because of their autism. As a person who is frequently told “but you don’t SEEM autistic” by people who have never seen me have a meltdown and hit my head on stuff, I absolutely understand that impulse. Even more so, I think more people need to understand that some autistic people ARE violent or otherwise considered socially unpalatable, and that those people do deserve to feel represented.

I also think that for some people, it’s kind of a defense mechanism. Ironically, the first time I ever really heard someone discuss autism it was my brother, who said, “the Phantom is probably autistic.” I asked him what that meant and he told me “being autistic means you’re a r*tarded genius,” right before he told me about Rain Man. The day I watched the episode of House M.D., where House gets told “you’re not autistic. You don’t even have Aspergers. You wish you did. It would exempt you from rules. Give you freedom. Absolve you of responsibility,” is the day I started headcanoning House as autistic. Sometimes we feel like have to hold onto it or say it first, especially with villains.

If I see an autistic person who headcanons an antagonistic character as autistic, I assume there’s something in that narrative that resonates with them. If I see a non-autistic person do it, I tend to disengage. Non autistic people doing it isn’t necessarily wrong, but it may come with an unwanted response from autistic people.

It’s like Harry Potter. My best friend is transfem (they/she pronouns) and they love Harry Potter. They don’t monetarily support JKR, but they also haven’t covered their HP tattoo. I don’t get it AT ALL. I recoil from Harry Potter. We’re both within two of the specific demographics JKR is doing the most damage to (transfems and autistic transmascs), and we have very different responses. When it comes to my friend, I don’t feel comfortable policing her relationship with that thing. On the other hand, a cis person can tell me they’re an ally all day long, but I usually disengage with cis people who hate JKR but just HAVE to go to Wizarding World, or whatever. Like maybe you’re the world’s BEST trans ally aside from that. But when you make that kind of choice, you accept the consequences and boundaries from those communities. I’m somewhat uncomfortable with Ramin Karimloo’s Phantom for that exact reason.

Ultimately what it comes down to is that autism is a spectrum, and by necessity autistic people aren’t monoliths and will have different opinions and needs. One isn’t inherently better or more important than the other, but needs still need to be met and boundaries still need to be respected, and those things can be both contradictory and necessary.

I hope that helps, and again, thank you to the person who wrote the above for their wonderful response as well.

[tuiyla]

This isn’t directed at anyone but I wish people would stop making fandom generalizations. It just makes people feel shitty for the bad apples they can’t control. Saying “X has the worst fans or “X fans are the reason I don’t ship/like X anymore” is just so ////unnecessary and it cost $0 to just not be an asshole and say that. and like maybe learn to form your own opinions instead of basing it so heavily on the fandoms itself. Fandom can be so draining because of it this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I keep saying that fandom isn't a tangible entity but it's easy to let bad apples sour perceptions. I can't say I blame people, exactly, and it can be valid when someone's turned off a thing because of nasty "fans". I don't saying you don't like something for that reason makes you an asshole; going out of your way to generalize and call a non-monolithical community the worst does. I get that when people are turned off by bad apples, actual fans are disappointed but that's only the nasty people's fault, there's no need to get defensive and start escalating the situation.

But yeah, fandom is so draining as a result of this. Because even those who try and ignore vocal and horrible minorities can find it difficult, and fandom is meant to be fun and when it's not? What can ya do but leave. Unfortunately, generalizations have been very prominent in all my fandom experiences. It's easier to assign a whole subcommunity labels than to try to see different perspectives, but again I think there's only so much we can expect from people when they encounter so much shit.

All in all? Not good for anyone when people forget to just have fun and not be a dick.

[mittensmorgul]

Can’t everyone use tumblr how they want?

YES!

This site is exactly what people make of it for themselves. That was the exact point of that post. The fact that people reacted negatively to it at all proves my point. Seriously.

I have a number of other anons that are clearly from people who don't actually follow me, and are only here in a reactionary fashion having seen it on someone else's reblog, or else heard about it in passing and decided the best reaction to an ultimately harmless and rather bumbling post was to take personal offense and bring anonymous hate to a stranger on the internet. (and at least one not-anonymous "go kill yourself" type comment on the post itself)

THAT was the point of making that post.

For people who might be new to this fandom or new to tumblr in general (or even for people who have been here for years), your experience here is exactly what you make of it. I haven't seen that sort of vitriolic kneejerk reaction to anything I've written or posted in years. That post touched nerves. So it was a bit of an experiment, and I'm sorry to everyone who experienced any of that negativity second-hand. NOBODY should be made to feel like shit when engaging with something that is supposed to be fun. But I've learned over the years that that's exactly what some people consider fun.

There are new people to this fandom since the absolute free for all of the weeks after November 5th. We all reveled in those weeks before the show collapsed in on itself two weeks later. It was like 15 years worth of Hiatus Blogging followed by... well... some of the worst genuine hurt and disillusionment I've ever experienced or witnessed inflicted on a fandom by a piece of media.

There have to be at least a few people who floated into this fandom during that emotional roller coaster who want to make sense of it all, who were at least curious enough about how a show could've brought the characters to that emotional moment in 15.18 before effectively ignoring it all and burning the entire 15 year narrative to nothing just two episodes later.

Some folks stuck around to dig through the ashes of fandom in search of carrion, and that's fine. Some have zero desire to ever engage with the show or the fandom beyond mocking it for ever having existed at all, and that is also fine! But some folks? They might be wondering why anyone ever saw anything in this narrative to begin with, and they might be interested in knowing that there is this vast collection of information available to them (funny that none of my self-righteous anons even mentioned those, outside of one pointing out that my phrasing introducing that section of links was easily interpreted as condescending... which... yeah... again that was the point, and no I will not edit that language. none of us are free from sin).

Tumblr hasn't "changed." It was always this way. This site is not a monolith. Fandom is not a monolith. Even smaller groups within fandom aren't monoliths. Things that are considered "tumblr standard etiquette" do not exist across this entire website. And even within the supernatural fandom, and even within the tumblr-destiel-portion of the fandom there aren't "rules" dictating how you interact with anyone. Well, the one specific rule we should all be able to agree on is that you don't bring hate to real actual human beings, and yet...

There has ALWAYS been the option to engage with fandom here on whatever level an individual chooses. And that hasn't really changed since the finale aired. Anyone who thinks that Tumblr or the fandom has "evolved" or "changed" has likely just fallen in with a different fandom bubble then they'd existed within before. None of the bubbles have actually popped or disappeared. But which one you experience is entirely your own choice. You curate your experience here.

That was the point, illustrated by the vast array of comments I actually got on that post, structured with a little bit of everything including "tumblr mom from 2014." Everything pisses some people off, you know? Even the perception that some stranger on the internet might dare to lay down an arbitrary "rule" that zero people actually have to follow. See what I mean?

Because if any of the people who kneejerked at it actually followed me, or knew me at all, they wouldn't have kneejerked. They would've seen the point.

So your experience is what you make of it here. There are resources for people actually interested in engaging with the narrative or the fandom or the history of it. People mock "tumblr moms" or "fandom moms" all the time, but there wouldn't ~be~ a fandom without the people who actually build those resources. I.e. adults with the time, money, and personal investment in actually sustaining the fandom, instead of running around with torches trying to burn it down at every new whiff of perceived ~drama~ to latch on to.

For example, all of the scripts we've been acquiring and sharing with the entire fandom free of charge. I know that the fandom bubbles who seize on those scripts like hungry vultures to cough back up out of context "gotcha" posts postulating whatever theory of the differences between script and screen will dredge up the most drama or outrage in their fandom bubble... they haven't even considered how those scripts were acquired and made available to them. To them, they are "leaks." They are gifts that fell out of the sky and landed in their laps. There isn't even the barest curiosity about their origins or relevance beyond whatever social nourishment they derive by making up stuff and spouting it out with unearned authority. It's sad. But if that's how they enjoy the fandom, it's nice to remind them that none of the fandom they cannibalize would exist without the rest of us, too.

Yes, even the people you disagree with. Even the people who ship the things you find disgusting or repulsive. Even people who have an entirely different experience to your own. Even the people who are only here for those gotcha posts.

Fandom is not by nature a nihilistic shitshow, or no fandom would survive the amount of drama the 1% try to bring to it. Here have a fanlore article about this phenomenon. Right now, in Supernatural fandom, it feels like more than 1%, but I promise it really is only 1%. They're just really loud. There's actually other avenues to participatory fandom available to anyone who chooses to find them. Parts of this vast fandom that aren't focused on that 1% of reactionary leg-chewing at every turn. None of them are (as the linked article confirms) truly 100% free of unnecessary drama or bad behavior (including ME, I mean I MADE THAT POST!), but on tumblr you can curate your own experience. Fandom actually can be fun without burning down the thing you claim to be a fan of, or attacking other real human people for having the audacity to exist on the internet in a way you might believe is out of touch or pathetic. Seriously, nobody deserves to experience that from anyone over a fucking television show. Like seriously, take a step back and examine your life and your choices at that point.

Tumblr was exactly the same as a fandom community when I joined as it is now. Throughout my entire time here, I've curated my own personal experience to exactly what I derive the most personal satisfaction from. During that time I have had numerous friends and mutuals lament that their personal experience had become so toxic, but they were afraid to trim those blogs from their dash for fear of having no content left to engage with at all. For years there have been follow lists and blog recs and people desperate to find a more "peaceful and fun" fandom experience. People grow exhausted and embittered when their entire experience of fandom is an emotionally draining drama train. It's like pandemic doom scrolling, but for the thing that should be a respite from that sort of mindset, something that's supposed to be entertainment. The show did enough to us all, we don't have to turn around and re-inflict it on each other day in and day out on tumblr dot com.

So if even one person saw my post and thought well shit maybe I actually want to engage with a wider swath of fandom and see what's there, after seven months of post-finale drama, this whole other region of fandom is still here, still being the curators of the archives, the creators of stories and art and meta and gifs and videos and actually caring about it all that will keep this fandom going long after the current round of exhausting drama inevitably plays itself out.

The amount of in-group language in the negative replies I got was unsurprising. It's like folks are living in an alternate universe that doesn't mesh at all with what I experience on this exact same hellsite. Almost like we exist in entirely different bubbles of fandom, with entirely different purposes for existing at all. Everyone on this hellsite gets to pick which bubble (or bubbles) to take up residence in. Some people simply forget that their personal bubble isn't the universal defining experience of this site. Unfortunately, I doubt my little disruption to their bubbles will actually make any of them see that, but you anon... I think you did.

You are highly encouraged to engage with fandom EXACTLY THE WAY YOU CHOOSE. You have the ultimate power in controlling your entire experience here. Tumblr and Supernatural Fandom on tumblr is not Just One Thing that everyone who wants to participate in must conform to one specific code of ethics or behavior to be part of. And that NOBODY has the right to tell anyone else they're doing it wrong (including ME! I am 100% including myself in this!).

It's not MY job to dictate how anyone else experiences this fandom, as much as it was not the job of the people who reblogged my post (which I did not personally shove into their eyeballs with a demand for compliance... how did any of those people even *find* my post?) solely to tell me how *I* need to change how I experience the fandom, you see? Don'tcha love hypocrisy!

But the point was made for those who care, and a lot of people got to update their block lists (I still don't block anyone, as I said I curated my fandom space here and generally don't follow folks that don't personally make me happy and enrich my life by engaging with their content. However other people choose to engage with *my* content (any of it, going back nearly 50k posts over the last decade) is their business entirely. Sometimes I just feel the need to draw out people who are all too eager to expose their own whole asses in public. Mission accomplished.

[clandestine-j]

Omg you have been taking the words out of my mouth with this whole eddieana discourse. I was never crazy for her character [which is more-so bcuz the writers refused to give her any depth as a character] but ever since the break up ep I've been feeling like I have to defend her cuz of all the hate on this site. I was bout ready to dip out the fandom bcuz of the ugliness i've seen from shippers. I'd like to see buddie happen but without all the hate and reaching i'm seeing.

Finally, I can get to this and thank you! I want Buddie to happen, my mom has been watching 911 for a while but it wasn't until I found Buddie on YT that I gave the show a chance. I am here with my clown mask on because if Buddie doesn't happen...idk how the writers are going to write their way out of this...and people won't like it.

But this whole let's hate Ana (even more) train is so fucking out of control that I'm just...

I'm not interested in Ana's character, I don't want her with Eddie, I don't want Buck with Taylor but I'm alright with Taylor being in the show because her character does stuff at least, we have a few more layers to Taylor and even if you don't like her personality -she has one at least.

Ana was one note until the end. I think that was the most we got out of her.

My issue is not that I love Ana but I hate the uwu over Eddie. Eddie can do no wrong but even if Eddie does wrong, it's okay, he'll learn and grow and a chorus of Eddie can do better and even when he is a dick, clowning on Ana because of his actions is okay.

But this lead me to thinking about Eddie overall. Esp when it comes to his relationship's outside of mainly Buck and then a lesser extent, the 118.

First, we'll talk about Lena. Now, I find it amazing that Lena and Eddie have ANY shipping (friendly) when their last interaction was legit her calling him a bad friend that knows about her, they're not even friends.

Lena was a stand-in for him and she knew it. She gives him advice, she bails him out because she was the only option (not that he cared enough about her to just think of her as someone he could lean on) And then, when she was trying to help him out, instead of TALKING to her, he came for her neck and she called his bullshit and left.

Then we find out Lena was there on HIS behalf.

We never got an apology for that, maybe it was off-screen but in the show? What we see? She doesn't want to have anything to do with him but he didn't treat her like a real friend or a person with feelings.

-

Onto Ana, I've already spoken about her here and here and I'm linking this lovely post on Ana's 'ableism' because I didn't read it that way. 

But apparently, we're all monolith and if I don't agree, I'm not apart of the community and I'm not allowed to see things differently.

To this fandom, my troubles aren't real because I don't agree.

(And yes for me it's troubles, it's limitations because due to this, there is soooo much I want to do and I can't. It's a fact of life. I can't and growing up, I didn't have a lucky Buck that could make things better.)

Ana has not only been done dirty by the writers but the fandom AND Eddie.

One thing I saw, that Ana should've known better flirting with Eddie and etc. And I'm sick because at that point THAT MAN WAS GONE FOR HER. They both vibed with each other, it wasn't even hard-core flirting on her part and he could barely talk because he was transfixed. And in the end, Eddie was the one who started this relationship. Anna didn't push it on him, Ana didn't even notice Eddie when her hand was burned.

Eddie was the one driving the relationship, he set all of boundaries, he set the pace and because she knew he had a kid, she followed him.

Then the skate incident which they moved on from and if she's wrong then he's wrong for not only going above her head and reporting it but letting someone like her Chris's life on a personal level.

Yeah, the flirting scene was bad but if you wanna take issue with that, take issue the writers. (side-note, if you have issue's with the fact that she can't properly speak Spanish, instead of finding her annoying, once again, the issue's lies with the writers and casting directors, editing team and everyone who see's the final product before it airs.)

And then I remember 4.14 and I find it funny that we never got an Eddie apologizing to her for assuming the worst. The only reason (until the point of the kid calling Eddie) that Buck was able to say the kid was lucky Eddie was there for him was because Ana, wanted to help and planned on sending the word out, found something fishy and brought it up.

(My good sis, I know our partners actions can be brushed off but we would've had a nice LONG talk about him after that, but once again, the writers said whatever to her personality or she was just more focused on helping the kid.)

But once again, he comes for her neck and we never see him having to own up to and apologize.

I'm not gonna say much about the shooting because she's a good person for staying with him but it doesn't help that after he started to have doubts, he strung her along. He wanted to make it work but it doesn't change the fact that he had invested in a relationship and knew it.

Can't even get an apology for him embarrassing her on her visit to the fire-house. Like, not even I was having a rough day or some shit. No just push her off on Ravi and call it a day.

Now, he doesn't owe her much (and he shouldn't) but I'm tired of seeing his words being used for meme'ing and saying 'oh that was cold' but brushing over how much of an ass he was in the that moment. (and someone came to me with bullshit about how he was struggling with his mental health / panic attacks as if you can't be held accountable for your words / actions.)

Ana wasn't talking to the air, she wasn't just speaking to speak. She was engaging with his son who was engaging back and said that shit with some half-assed attempt to cover it up. Yeah, she could've used a little tact but in her shoes, you're boyfriend has panic attacks at the thought of a future with you but is chill with cutting you out? Yeah, she was pissed and she didn't even stay that way.

Oh, because she touched him one last time, she's trying to hang onto him? She's processing this in 15 minutes and touching him is wrong? Like Jesus, it was horrible seeing her trying to come to terms with what was about to happen, everything that Eddie got to go through for months and weeks, he's allowed that but ya'll accept want her to do it in less then 10 minutes? Fuck outta here.

And after it all, still, once again, not one apology. Not one thank you. My dude. After she cared for his son? She wouldn't have been a horrible person if she thought Chris would be better with his family. There was a trust, Chris was ready to make brownies with her, she's not only loosing the relationship with Eddie but with Chris and not even a thank you for her time, nothing.

It was cold blooded, half of their relationship was him being shitty and that's her send off? But yeah, she's the sole problem.

-

And lastly, Shannon.

I didn't even know their was an anti-Shannon tag. Ya'll are no worse than his family that couldn't wait until her body was cold in the ground.

Like....if Shannon has an anti tag then Eddie shouldn't even have fans. Shannon wasn't the only one who couldn't deal with it. Eddie ran too, he said it. The only difference is, we get to see Eddie grow, Shannon got killed off.

Out of all of the woman on this list, Eddie treated her like shit the most. Before he went on his second tour, she was begging, she was telling him she needed him home. He made the CHOICE without once talking to her about it. He got to say they needed money and be a hero. No, she needed her husband.

Shannon told with him, she always did and he just didn't have it him to get past his own shit to help her. I'm sorry, no mother is overjoyed to learn their child was born with a disability. Mothers have this pressure to do everything perfect, to be perfect. She's spent every single year of Chris's life wondering, how did she fuck up. What she did do wrong and at the same time, she's asking for him.

And then her mother gets cancer, her mother is dying and she's stuck in Texas with his racist family, who wouldn't just not be horrible after the woman had died. Yeah, he's suffering when he gets back but she had already asked him to stay, to be her husband and he couldn't deal at the time. Did ya'll not see how haggard and tired? He found his parents annoying so what about her? When did she get a chance to breathe.

So she ask him to come with her again, to come with her to see her dying mother and take care of her. Someone said she couldn't take care of Chris but she could go take care of her mother and it's not like that's easier. Well, from the sound of it, her mother only had her. Like? So, not only is she dealing with the fact that her mother is dying, she has to stay in Texas because she couldn't care for Chris & her mom alone, with his rude ass family.

And ya'll are shocked she broke?

And then she comes back, she wants to see Chris but Eddie says no and she's only needed for the school. And she does it, she does it and she's ready to not be around but as long as it's for Chris, she'll do it.

And then she's only good for sex. Good enough to sleep with but not good enough to see her son. And I get why Eddie was on the fence but he wasn't having a worry when he was banging her. Then, they get past it and she's still only Chris's mother, he leaves her limbo, not wanting to become a family again but enjoying the benefits.

It sucks, he was ready to be with her for the baby but at that point, she did the smart thing. Their time was over, they'd never be able to have a romantic relationship again. And then she passes. And even if she was, there should still be a divorce. Just like she wasn't meeting his needs, he didn't attempt to meet hers and it wasn't until she was gone that he understood HALF of what she had been going through. 

But, no, instead of exploring how he's shitty to his partners, we'll mock how much of an ass he was to Ana because don't like her.

Now, block me, hate me. Step into my inbox if you want, depending on how you step to me you'll get a real response or a one piece gif. We'll see how spicy I'm feeling. It's funny, this post wouldn't have come if I hadn't witnessed how this fandom can be so toxic and willing to assume and silent someone from the community if it that person doesn't agree.

Pro-tip, if this isn't you then it doesn't apply but it's not as if it's one or two people so ya'll and other words like it were used.

Second pro tip, once again, blow me if you take issue.

Third pro tip, if you’ve made it this far, don’t be pissed at me. You knew the topic of conversation and there was a read more, you could’ve scrolled by and saved yourself the trouble. 

[rametarin]

We deal with this, “fiction is reality” shit EVERY. GENERATION.

And I mean it comes back among authoritarians playing to sheep EVERY fucking generation on different pretenses.

It always boils down to a bunch of people that are insecure about the effects of culture and media on other people, and as a flimsy pretense/pretext to restrict access to things to other people “in society” for their own safety and sense of security.

And when it comes to, “obscene literature” or illustrations, the source is always jealousy, insecurity and an attempt to reduce other people down to a demographic statistic. Whether it’s reducing black people to a caricature and acting like hip-hop just turns the kids into violent, drug abusing, psychotic felons, or imagining pornography is what turns people into horny fucking do-nothings, it’s always about control.

And we’ve put it off for so long. We’ve put off the conversation about just what demographic these people play to in order to get traction and followers and staying power and warm bodies for their movements. They’re the demographic that makes antis- work, the demographic that screams for censorship because illustrations “hurt them personally,” or “cause men to hurt them.”

I’m talking about women. Particularly, cis women, as trans women are not in numbers enough to affect anything, and it is EXPLICITLY IMPORTANT that the source of the offense and complaint come from the population that are the gateway through which the next generation is born and brought up.

Individual men may be so clueless as to assume the way degeneration works is a person is left improperly or negligently nurtured, and so just make bad decisions because, “they were never taught better.” They embrace the idea that people only do bad shit because, “the society,” isn’t paying attention, or that individual people are just blank slates beholden to the righteousness and morality of the cultural hivemind of said society. That Society is an objective effect, and if bad people exist, it’s proof to them that there’s something wrong with said society.

But individual men know that the bad actions of other men are not caused solely by “male culture,” or the absence of it, or shitty “role models.” They see the shitty natural inborn attitudes of other men, and despite being raised in shitty conditions, naturally develop a good head on their shoulders, and despise actions like that. As men you can’t HELP but grow up watching boys around you make shitty decisions based on shitty impulse control and, no matter how often they’re punished, how much they’re loved, how much they’re compassionately talked to, STILL act the fool and wind up as terrible, stealing, violent adults. As men you can’t do anything BUT reconcile that some people are just fucking shitheads, and the idea as a man YOU should be punished or treated like the “association” of men itself is at fault, smacks of sexism. The same sort of sexism women’s lib supposedly is against- at least, when it happens to women.

Women, however, are not men, are not privy to the thoughts and feelings of men. Men are abstracts to these women, many of whom are so solipsistic or gynocentrist that they just see men as a class of monsters in a videogame. Just a pattern of individuals that surely must all get their code and culture from “society.” Clearly, when there’s bad men about, it’s proof this “society” isn’t doing everything it can to mollify and gentrify those horrible beastly men to make them safe and not dangerous and productive.

These women that see men like living aggregates for society, imagine that in order to “keep men working properly,” they need to not have “bad moral influences,” treating pornography and access to drugs and literature like a cleaning lady treats dirt on linen. They imagine that the only reason rape or murder or theft by men occurs is because “there’s a problem with men, thinking that is okay.” Like the only reason your average man isn’t running around violently raping people or killing them is because they sang enough hymns at church- by force. Or because they were prevented from, “getting deranged by wrongthink.”

So with this in mind, how do they imagine porn affects men, male minds, and this big abstract-turned-monolithic-concept called, “society?”

Well, they imagine fiction is reality. That if “people of lesser intellect” read a thing, then they’ll inherently believe it, because, “it presents itself as factual and reality.” When.. no. That’s not how it works. They believe, absolutely, that without some mechanism there to go, “BUT WE’RE JUST PRETENDING THO, IT’S NOT REAL!” that will inherently make people, whom all have tenuous and toddler-like grasps of reality and object permanence, think a thing in fiction is real and applies to reality.

And naturally, they see men as people of lesser intellect. So they reason, those dangerous statistical anomalies are just men that haven’t been browbeaten, and whom are subject to any given negative influence or writing or opinion or culture that preaches values and ideas incongruent with their preferences, as women. Therefore, they conclude, fiction that does not preach their “good values” is in fact advocating bad ones, bad habits, bad moral character, bad mental health- call it whatever you want based on your generation. It’s ALL THE SAME SHIT. All the same knee-jerk moralism based on justifying societal and institutional use of force to restrict and arbitrate and judiciously enforce and justify dictating censorship and good-think. It’s just a question of where that basis comes from.

And theres’ ultimately no reasoning with that culture of women when they grasp hold of a thing that appeals to them, flatters and justifies their prejudices and biases. You can sit there colorfully or dryly explaining the ways in which this shitty point of view is wrong, much as you can try to walk back a persons beliefs in their homophobia that they base on religious purism or use the purism to validate their homophobia, but you cannot just get them individually to give up those nice, comfortable beliefs.

And when grouped together for mutual support and validation, it becomes this negative-thought, field of fucking SHEEP braying “Nuuuh-uuuh!” and arguing for restriction of content and sanitation and disbarrment from certain subject matter to be in consumable porn or literature or even just art. The only thing keeping them in check being the consequences for vandalism, and the ability for a community or institution to police out the bias usurpers that would seek to enter their foundations and run them on behalf of the values of these easily upset, insecure sheep.

every FUCKING generation, it manifests in some manner. Be they from church ladies, to radical feminists, to intersectional feminists. If you capture the imaginations, insecurities, jealousies, foster and sanction them, interpret them, get young women believing them, participating in the romance that tells them the way to change the bad things or take the edge off the bad men is to foster and enable authoritarianism (be it regional social, regional institutional, or federal institutional) then you have this neverending avalanche of unending support for it. Be it from dictators, or just from pure ideology from a doctrine. They’ll do it. And stubbornly and obstinately believe in whatever compliments their biases, to the contradiction of everything.

And while you can remove a man and his influences on the next gen from the home, from the social radius of the next generation to be a significant source of culture and how they relate to young people, removing women from the equation, from whom the next generation comes from, is virtually impossible. So a male zealot, already susceptible to scrutiny and punishment for being so wild and zealous with their beliefs, can be retaliated against, muted, beaten and removed from relevance until they censor themselves or change their tune.

But you cannot do that to a female human, or women/mothers as a sex, without both women AND men taking it as an attack on humanity at their most prime and kernel. It has to be done with disproportionate authoritarian state power that does not fear mass dissent and violent retaliation, or it isn’t done at all.

So these zealous Karens that embrace wholly these ideas enabling authoritarianism under a banner they approve of, are allowed to propagate unchallenged, and even if challenged, cannot be subdued or subverted. Their own little cliques and echo chambers and lack of desire to even consider their positions are wrong. Any attempt to point the fingers at this very real, disproportionate and characteristic, objective power female humans have just on the basis of their sex and how that relates among them socially, can and will be trash binned arbitrarily as, “sexism.” Despite the fact, it’s absolutely true.

So long as women that believe “society” is an objective, monolithic thing from which, “that other sex” and other women get their marching orders on how to BE what they are, and don’t see them as billions of individuals with their own ambitions, instincts, inborn personality and character flaws, independent of “society’s failures,” believing those people can be saved or corrected IF ONLY WE CENSOR EVERYTHING or make all media “good thing,” we’re just going to have people with illiberal beliefs asserting their dominance and insisting it’s for the soul of the species, society and the planet.

I mean yeah there are male antis and shit, but honestly. Tell me honestly. How many fucking deranged fandom people that are doing shit like mailing cookies with sewing needles backed into them are male gendered or male sexed, either? As uncomfortable as it may be to acknowledge or consider this might have a sexual grounding, I’m sorry. Not acknowledging it is simply rejecting reality.

[agl03]

I said the Fitzsimmons Separation was coming so now we all need to chill about it!

Time for some tough love from Fandom Mama here because I’m not going to answer 700 asks about ANOTHER Fitzsimmons separation.  Be aware if you send an ask I’m going to be pretty blunt on it.  It’s happened, it’s been filmed, we can either roll with it or wallow...and I AM NOT WALLOWING FOR A YEAR.

And I mean just think of the fan fics that will come from this...their final farewell...their reunion...sneaking to see each other and it goes wrong....Fitz arranging a jump just to see her....happily ever after.

I saw this sucker coming a million miles away,  The red flags were there with Iain having to be back and forth between LA and the UK and no one was being really subtle about it.  Based on Iain not saying what it was when directly asked its big enough to have an NDA involved.  Iain was sporting maximum floofage and a great deal of scruff there at the end of filming which screamed I’ve been kidnapped again.  The writers knew while writing both Season 6 and 7 and planned accordingly.  We are lucky, most shows would just cut an actor loose and write them out for good.

Are Fitzsimmons separated again and it sucks, yes?  But for the FIRST time in all those separations its not because they were forcibly ripped away from one another.  

TVLINE | Turning to the final act of the finale: When Jemma says, “I can’t know” [where Fitz is], that is because of the fact that the Chronicom hunters know their minds? TANCHAROEN | That’s very astute!

They were able to do it on their terms to save the world and their future, “they had time” which tells me they had time together to get all those upgrades in place before they separated, but we weren’t going to get that montage when there was a sword fight and that big LMD Coulson bomb to drop (Hello OLD theory from beginning of the season).

The writers set up Fitzsimmons importance all season, and now they paid it off.  FItzsimmons can’t be together right now because their skills are needed to save the world.  Fitz has to be hidden away in some sort of command center, picking targets for Jemma but this time they are at least able to communicate with each other...for now...no way the baddies don’t eventually find him.  So that means ANOTHER epic rescue and reunion!  WOHOO!  Lets see how they top Inescapable.

I have already gotten attached to the crack theory that in the time they did the upgrades, Fitzsimmons had a child and the child is in hiding with Fitz.  Fic writers...please.....

I’m not saying you have to be happy about it.  I just ask that you don’t drag my posts down with negativity and frustration.  I’m good they are both alive and for the moment know where each other are and able to communicate.  They both have a lot at stake in making sure they stop the Chronicoms.  They are also fighting such a dangerous enemy that has their memories and knows how they think  That is some serious next level OTP.  It’s gonna be awesome!

And how much fun will the TIME TRAVEL be...say it with me Time Travel Makes my Head Hurt....  But the characters both from Shield history and the Shows history are going to be epic.

There is also a pattern on Shield.  Not only has this happened every season but one so really I’m now allowed to be shocked when it happens. But also,  when a couple starts off the season all 100% happy and little/no issues...things do not end well.  I also say that if we want that Fitzsimmons happy ending, we have to “pay” for it in the form of trials and angst...which is also nothing new.

Season 1:  It took the Pod to get Fitz to confess his feelings

Season 2:  The long period of angst before we got “maybe there is”

Season 3:  Monolith and Space rando before we got them canon

Season 4:  We started off all happy and Love Nest shopping and ended with barely escaping the Framework and traumatized/separated again.

Season 5:  Separation got us to the wedding.

Season 6:  Loop Fitz’s death, one of my favorite arcs ever in the Space arc, then INESCAPABLE.  Sorry it was worth all the pain to get that episode for me.

All that Fitzsimmons have left is getting out of Shield and starting their family.  And I think all the pain and separation in Season 7 will give us that.  We are just going to have to be patient a bit longer.  And I would much rather have this than them together all season and then something awful happens ala Season 5 in the Series finale.  

I know this meta will help some and upset others even more.  Either way its okay I just ask that you be aware of how your actions can effect other fans.  We have zero control over this, it is already filmed, wrapped, and in editing.  What we can control is how we react and really let the fan fic fun times begin!

[egdocument]

About the EvaGeeks wiki and why you shouldn't trust it, concerning mainly one user.

On the subject of EvaGeeks: Let’s talk about the manipulation of information on the wiki, and perpetuated “nastiness” on the forums that has persisted for several years now. THIS IS A MIRROR OF THIS GOOGLE DOCS FILE. (My twitter post.) You can share this post or the original document freely, use parts of it, etc. I want this document to simply serve as a warning to new Eva fans and those less familiar with EvaGeeks and their history - as well as an update for people who haven’t seen the current state of it.

NOTE: If you can’t read any of these images, these are Imgur albums containing all of the notable ones: https://imgur.com/a/z2mGvvX https://imgur.com/a/oAgufc3

The intent of this document is not to “take down” the wiki or forum, obviously. The intent is simply to inform people of the dangers of trusting this site with their Eva info. It might be the best we have but that doesn’t mean we can’t improve it. I would actually love to see a more community cultivated version of the site with less biased information, but I fear that will never happen. The anxieties of any one (or many) individual(s), which have prevented consistent change until now are well justified, and it is not within reason to blame the outsiders for never bothering to correct the myriad of issues with the wiki. Please extend kindness to other Eva fans and approach sites like EvaGeeks with the appropriate scrutiny, if you aren’t already. We’re divided enough as it is.

Before I begin, I must state: All of the information presented is publicly available, either through main pages, chat logs or history. And yes, the link to join the Discord server and verify the information given in this is publicly available too. I will not link it myself, as I want to avoid any possible harassment of the users I speak about here. Harassment is NEVER the answer in any kind of conflict. This behaviour I don’t believe can go unchecked, but that doesn’t mean the consequences of it should be any kind of conflict towards any user. I will be naming them here so you are aware, but I really do have to advise you, as a reminder, DO NOT HARASS OR ENGAGE WITH THEM. The rule of thumb is that these issues are more systematic than you might think, and blaming or taking it out on a singular person or even a whole group is never justified. Targeted harassment, even with reason, especially never helps to remedy an issue, because it forces the person to double down on their behaviour and beliefs. Causing unnecessary pain to a person is never okay, and the ‘offences’ committed here aren’t deserving of it in the first place. Please also consider the feelings of the people who use the server and EvaGeeks site; not everyone is your "enemy" or your "target" (and frankly, no-one should be) and despite the feelings echoed in this document, EG is not a monolith of a singular opinion or belief.

The purpose of this document is to inform people of the ways EvaGeeks fails objectivity and has existed to push narratives and exclude outsiders for far too long. With new people coming into the Eva fandom (and there of course being others who have been around for quite a while but just aren't aware) I feel like now is the best time I could write this.

As for what prompted this, an anonymous member of the Discord server contacted me regarding the behaviour of one particular user they were concerned about. Said user had expressed considerable bias in the past and was admitting to making large edits to pages on the wiki very recently, and the person who contacted me felt unequipped to bring the issue to light themselves.

A decent amount of this document will be dedicated to presenting said user's contributions - while I feel someone always had to address the EvaGeeks Problem at large, it doesn't help that this user has essentially incriminated himself here to expose the problem in its entirety. 

There is quite a bit of pretense I must discuss before I get into the subject of the wiki pages themselves. I suggest you read all of it; the start of the wiki section will be in heading text if you’d like to skip to it. I’m sure information on the biased editing of wiki pages is privy to anyone who has used the server or the site itself, but at the server’s current status of 60 entire members, I know not everyone has, or is aware of what the problem actually is. Please note that the person who contacted me has requested anonymity and I will be complying. I will not include screenshots of their conversation with me, and anything I quote from them will be paraphrased so nobody can go full Sherlock and analyse their typing patterns. It sounds silly and it’s probably just paranoia, but they shared my concern here. Any conflict we can prevent is for the best. EvaGeeks, of course, has a culture very much promoting the idea that it’s the “number 1 source for all things Eva”, and for English speaking fans it definitely is - you’d be surprised the amount of people who still, after all these years, think this site is consistently reputable. For the sake of context, I’m going to assume that you are not all that familiar with the site’s history or nature, so I’m going to provide a little bit of information about it for those without any first-hand experience. The forums in particular cultivate a very join-us-or-get-out type community, where those who dare to go against the grain get incentivised to leave the site; they’ll claim this isn’t the case if asked and obviously the site is NOT a hivemind but that doesn’t mean it’s not insular. I can vouch for myself and many others who refuse to go in more than a few threads for fear of discussion turning particularly nasty. Even the server member who came to me about this has stated they feel it “might not be a hivemind but it sure feels that way.” Silencing dissent, even when officially-backed, is part of their culture. You don’t have to personally harass everyone who has an opposing thought to you for it to not feel acceptable, you just need to have a history of mocking those who do. If you want some previous, notable cases of “discussion turning nasty”, here’s some off the top of my head: 1. The AWL Incident - In which ADV VA of Rei and director of EoE dub, Amanda Winn-Lee, joined the forums for discussion and was promptly harassed by a user. Most of these messages have been deleted but you can view what remains of her post history here.  2. Recently brought to my attention: upon beginning translation of the Episode 24 drafts, EG forum user LiLi was subjected to incentive to leave, mostly in the form of homophobic disgust in replies to her thread or others they were mentioned in. Any information that goes against the cultivated narrative, even when it is literally officially licensed content, is only ever considered with a degree of reluctance. The fact these drafts co-exist with other pages concerned with this episode is almost a miracle. You can find plenty of repeat instances of the above if you want to (more to do with homophobia and misogyny than outward hostility, but honestly it’s the same thing.) A look at basically any EvaGeeks thread concerning pairings or the female characters will unearth a variety of awful comments from many other users, not that that would be surprising to anyone who has spent more than two minutes in the fandom. Now, of course, that’s very relevant to the topic at hand even if it doesn’t seem to be. The EG wiki and forum have quite a bit of overlap and circular influence on each other as you’ll see later if you aren’t already aware of it. For a short summary before we jump into things and analyse our subject of the day, this essentially means that anyone with an opinion or information the majority doesn’t like will never get in a position good enough to edit the wiki and keep the edits there. This has resulted in many articles filled with conjecture and fan speculation that serve to shut down other viewpoints, whether it’s intentional or not.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ON THE TOPIC OF THE EVAGEEKS WIKI

The issue surrounding homophobia and downplaying of references to LGB content in Eva, through proxy of fan-dictated content control and translation is not a new one by any stretch of the imagination. I'm sure you're all very well aware. It’s far from the only issue present in the fandom but it will be our subject of conversation today. Any ‘one instance’ of this persistent behaviour from Eva fans is never going to be enough to summarise how insurmountable it really is, though, so today I instead draw your attention to one user of the wiki who goes by the name of FelipeFritschF and his recent, frequent updates to pages concerning Nagisa Kaworu.

[TOPIC: FELIPEFRITSCHF]

I must reiterate here: although this document is mostly concerned with this user and will contain a number of receipts from various places, it is NOT supposed to function as a hit piece or inspire any kind of mob. Leave this guy the hell alone, just be aware that he’s the one making most of these changes and isn’t a particularly impartial party, to put things lightly.

Now, before we really get into things, it should be stated that the EvaGeeks wiki requires approval to get your edits there, as stated at the bottom of the homepage, here:

This means that anyone making consistent edits to the wiki has in fact been approved, and this isn’t the result of lack of maintenance.  

What you’ll find is that it is consistently Felipe making edits to the pages in question. Kaworu’s bio page, for example, is almost entirely edited by Felipe, which we can see from the “History” tab of the article.

This is barely half of his edits made in the last few days. Take a scroll through it yourself if you’re so inclined. This hilarious bit of waffle was added by Felipe a few days ago and since revised since by him, as shown here. 

(As an added bit of comedy, the man who decided to add in the Japanese in the first place apparently didn’t know the difference between 好意 (kindness, what Kaworu actually says) and 行為 (action). It’s been fixed since but I still think it’s quite funny.) Now, as anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of Japanese knows, 好き is not actually a very ambiguous word at all. I think it goes without saying, though, and I’m not here to have an argument about translations with you all (for the record, Kanemitsu’s now scarily infamous translation of this scene is perfectly fine with me in a vacuum, it’s just literally everything else surrounding it that’s the problem. Also, regretfully, I will have to speak about this nonsense later when it becomes relevant.) I’m using this as an example instead, to show how utterly ridiculous this guy’s additions to these pages are. He’s not even making a point here. It keeps going past this excerpt, and I suggest you read the whole thing (Kaworu’s page is linked above.) The point of bringing this up - and when I eventually discuss the Netflix translation when it’s necessary - is not to complain about semantics, although I’d argue that’s what’s happening in these articles, honestly. It’s just helpful when proving the actual point of the editor being incredibly unreliable and biased in how he phrases and omits things.

On the page dedicated solely to Shinji and Kaworu’s relationship (which is basically identical to their section on Kaworu’s page as far as I can tell), we can see that Felipe has also edited this several times, and even credits himself with expanding the version on the Evangelion Fandom Wiki now copy and pasted back to EvaGeeks.

The kind of “discussion” (very much not discussion when added to a wiki page supposedly presented as factual information, is it, frankly?) would be fine if it was happening in the EvaGeeks forum itself (and happen does it ever, but that doesn’t change the inappropriateness of this particular behaviour.) What I find disturbing is that in the past few days, this user has gone out of his way to make some already worrying articles even worse, presumably in an attempt to silence discourse, or add more fuel to the flames, surrounding the new Netflix translation. He has a whole page on that one, too, one which is very up-to-date in some regards and not at all in others, despite only being added a few days before me compiling this information. Frankly, going through this whole page on its own is a huge waste of my time considering how BLATANT it is in its biases, but I’ll do it anyway. It IS only a Theory and Analysis page (which is essentially an EvaGeeks free-for-all), but I think it’s quite bothering that the site even allows Theory and Analysis pages that consider only one viewpoint and are written by one person. The forum, presumably, is connected to the site for a reason. 

I’m just going to link it here, for the sake of brevity. https://wiki.evageeks.org/Theory_and_Analysis:Kaworu%27s_lines_in_Episode_24 I suggest you read this before continuing. For a slight departure, the original theatrical Funimation dub of 3.0 is partially available for viewing online, although the audio is in cam quality so you may want headphones if you have plans to watch what’s there. The home media dub’s major changes are to issues with lore and localisation of jargon. While not directly mentioned in this article, it is implied from the subject that this is what it’s about; it’s been speculated that the very literal translation of Episode 24 in particular has come about due to Khara’s embarrassment with how Funimation’s theatrical dub of 3.0 handled Kaworu and Shinji’s relationship rather loosely. Despite these claims, every instance of the two sharing (honestly pretty awkward and unnecessary) flirtatious back-and-forths are still present in the home media version, barring an instance in the stargazing scene where Kaworu’s dialogue was translated even worse than it is in the final dub. If you don’t believe me, do the comparisons yourself. It may not be conclusive, but I think it puts mostly to death the rumour that “a Khara employee was there and saw how people laughed at the Kaworu and Shinji scenes and demanded it needed to be changed for the final release and now that’s being reflected on the new translation”, which is what it tends to boil down to. 

It also goes without saying that NO ONE PERSON is “the most qualified” (holy shit, is this entry not even bothering to hide how biased it is) to translate an entire TV show, let alone something like Evangelion. Let us not forget that Kanemitsu’s claims that he respects “ambiguity” are not even true to begin with. EvaGeeks itself is a shining example of Eva fans, of which Kanemitsu is one and this is even discussed in the article, not being impartial enough to be tasked with discussing Evangelion! (There is obviously issue with citing the ADV translation as a source of all truth; if you read further into the thread on my tweet [the kitchen scene in EoE], I provide extra context for those interested, which I am aware has been spread around Discord and other places without that context included. Of course, I’m not an unbiased source either as you can probably tell from my tweets nor am I claiming to be, so please feel free to discuss these things in other places if you want. I’ve just got the tweets I have on hand here. Sorry about that.) Next, the repeat claim that this is “Khara’s licensed translation and thus the most accurate version” is pretty obviously nonsense; I’m sure I don’t need to point out to the audience that Japanese companies meddling in localisation has ended poorly in the past, or that Khara uses questionable translations from the dubs of the Rebuild films on licensed merch from time-to-time, or that the translation was fairly obviously not overseen or even QA’d by anyone following Kanemitsu’s translation work judging from the myriad of grammatical errors, missing subtitles and overly literal, poor sounding phrasing present in the final work. (Do I need to source this? Just watch the damn thing.) It’s not even like the ways it was translated have been consistent through different versions on Netflix; some were translated from Kanemitsu’s English to other languages judging from the obvious mistakes being present in multiple tracks, and some were barely even translated at all - the Italian version, the dub of which is mysteriously now missing, was so bad people were commenting that it sounded like Shakespeare or that it was translated word for word from Japanese. I dunno about you, the reader, but something about “Khara only bothered to check very rigorously the English version for their specific requests with the translation” doesn’t sound like what really happened to me. It’s more like they’ve just sent a translator they have worked with before to work on a project of theirs. Apologies for engaging in speculation, but that’s all this whole article is anyway. It’s just something I noticed from skimming through the page, but I find it quite interesting that Felipe makes a blanket statement about the excerpts from Schizo and Prano “being wrongly attributed to Anno” and then the source he provides for that is just someone on the EvaGeeks forums saying the same thing with little proper sourcing, when that was never really the intent of their post anyway. An interview summary exists where Anno has stated he wrote both books himself, and if you haven’t seen it, here it is. It’s obviously flimsy at best, but Tokyo Otaku Mode is an officially licensed Evangelion distributor. If Felipe is going to parade around his love for the Very Official Khara Subtitles Of NGE he can at least extend the same gratitude to other forms of official information; I mean, frankly, this article is about as reputable as anything in the Netflix subtitles are.  Lastly, another thing I found quite interesting is his strange love for the ADV VHS subtitles. I really, really think this is obvious, but subtitles changed in later versions of the ADV release were changed because they were deemed incorrect. I don’t have sources for this so take it with an absolute grain of salt but I believe there’s even a commentary track on the Platinum release where the translator talks in depth about why she translated episode 24 as she did. It’s not exactly a better word than Kanemitsu’s, but if we’re considering translator’s word as law for whatever reason like Felipe is here, we might as well consider hers, too, right? Oh, and actually, have a look at the sources used on that article. Most of the sweeping statements he makes have absolutely no backing beyond what he’s piecing together from old and irrelevant interviews (when discussing the Netflix translation) as well as...linking Kanemitsu’s job history...I mean, sure, the guy is qualified, but do I really need to go over this again?

INTERMISSION: Speaking of sources, you might have noticed from perusing these articles yourself that EvaGeeks has a very low standard for sourcing to begin with, which is likely partially to blame for how things like these articles can even exist in their current forms in the first place. A site that doesn’t have such a lenient policy on sourcing, though, is Wikipedia. Felipe, of course, cannot stay within the confines of the fandom and has decided to have a go at providing some information to Kaworu’s actual Wikipedia page as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kaworu_Nagisa&action=history Felipe is far less to blame for the state of Kaworu’s Wikipedia article, which is honestly pretty bad to begin with. There have been plenty of other people editing this one and the rather homophobic “Relationship with Shinji” part of the article has been present for a while before he started editing it. (The fact this article literally uses someone being explicitly homophobic as a source is not surprising for Eva fandom, but holy shit, am I disgusted every time I reopen this page. I'm not even going to bother figuring out who added that one.) I do wonder if his reasons for not desecrating this page the same way he has on EvaGeeks is because he knows it wouldn’t stay up for particularly long. Reminder that he is also the main editor of the same pages on the Evangelion Fandom Wiki, which is essentially a copy and paste of EvaGeeks. Of note is this little tidbit I found:

This is what Felipe then deleted, as this is apparently not relevant, despite literally being about Kaworu’s relationship with Shinji. I mean, I’m sure this could have been put in somewhere else and perhaps phrased a bit better, but why the hell would you outright delete that kind of information? It’s supposed to be a wiki, not your own personal opinion chamber. BTW, this is the thread post he links as a rebuttal to that person adding it, and it’s probably for the best it’s presented here with context: https://forum.evageeks.org/post/886380/NGE-Ep24-Script-First-and-Second-Drafts/#886380

He clearly thinks he has a point here, but I’m not sure what exactly he’s going for. Basically everything he’s saying is conjecture, and while I can kinda see where he’s coming from it sure does completely fail to address the intent as explained in this interview. “Read the whole interview” is very dismissive, especially when the interview in full doesn’t exactly contradict the initial point. It does say quite a bit, how he will disregard official information when his wiki articles themselves are full of nothing but rambling.

Here’s another relevant and quite funny Discord screenshot:

Felipe is making a pretty hypocritical statement here. I’m sure he does have a point - there’s probably been quite a bit of vandalism happening to these pages which isn’t exactly surprising (again, Eva fans are not often rational people, please be honest with ourselves). That being said, I think there’s a particular irony to the man who has written many very, very long paragraphs on the wiki pages he has control over trying to stop people from thinking there might be anything but “ambiguity” between a pair he doesn’t like.

In the case anyone reading has forgotten: the purpose of a wiki should be to provide unbiased information on the material it discusses. Obviously the repeating of “innocuous” statements about how “ambiguous” it all is, in the vain of EG’s now made fun of ‘we don’t know what he really meant by that’ and ‘why Kaworu is so intent for Shinji alone to have happiness remains a mystery’  are pretty obviously intended to downplay the very, very obvious “subtext” and leagues of official information provided.

It kinda goes without saying that WE CAN INFER THESE THINGS FROM THE ACTUAL INFORMATION ON THE WIKI, you don’t need to add a disclaimer to everything going “well we just don’t know what it means!” (even in instances when we do know what it means, but that’s almost besides the point). You don’t need to add in these statements, unless you’re trying to sway people into ignoring what's presented by the show. If you want people to draw their own conclusions, you are in fact capable of presenting information without commentary - in fact, that's kind of the whole point of a wiki. Yes, Eva is ambiguous at times, but talking down to people like they need this reminded to them constantly is an absolute waste of time and energy. It’s almost as if the editor has been trying to cultivate a narrative and has been getting away with it because you can’t really prove these statements are biased unless you do the research. (I mean, you can from context, but it certainly hasn’t done much to get them removed, has it?)

You can view the editing history of any given EvaGeeks article on their own pages if you want to see just how many times these things have been added in by Felipe. And obviously, no, it isn’t just his fault - there are other users, several, in fact, credited with the editing of these pages, many of the edits serving the same point as Felipe’s paragraphs on “ambiguity”. He’s just the most concrete example of a biased editor. Also, yes, I do recognise this has all happened within the few days post the release of Eva on Netflix and that it was likely prompted by that. But we know at least one of the mods is aware of it given how Felipe talks about it in the EvaGeeks Discord server. It’s also quite funny I’ve seen people linking these pages like they're some kind of "gotcha" in response to tweets discussing the new translation, as if they haven’t been invented out of thin air in the past few days.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now, frankly I’m sick of staring at EvaGeeks, and if you want any more information on these articles and others with instances of the same thing happening, you can have a look at it yourself.

Originally, this document contained far more screenshots from Felipe. My desire for this to not turn into a hit piece has lead me to remove a great deal of these messages. I do suggest, if you want to, you join the server and make your own conclusions. Even beyond what the member told me about I found myself agreeing with him fairly frequently when he was being reasonable - this doesn't change my concerns regarding the presentation of information on the wiki, though. The anonymous member was mostly concerned about this user having basically all the control over Kaworu's wiki articles, seeing as he has far too high of a stake in everything. Not all of these messages are inflammatory or even necessarily bad or wrong, but I find that to anyone privy to the “revelations” about the EvaGeeks Wiki here, they paint an interesting story, to say the least.

It’s starting to sound like he perhaps has just had some bad experiences. The following few messages are part of the same conversation.

I find it interesting how he flipflops from not understanding anything about the whole Eva Parallelism Theory Thing to suddenly being all for it when it concerns things not about the gay stuff.

Comments on how ‘manipulative’ Kaworu is

Because Kaworu is very pro instrumentality, and this definitely isn’t just a theory, I mean, it’s even talked about on the wiki, guys! (And I’m not even touching on the yes-men in this server.) Oh.

Oh no.

For the record, this page is clearly still under construction, and to point out any one thing about how bad it is would be essentially just poking a stick at a beehive. At least this one is so absolutely poorly phrased it’s doubtful anyone could mistake it for any kind of proper information. I also find it incredibly funny whenever pages on the wiki use the forum as a source. Relevant: Qmisato’s post on his defending of Shinji sexually assaulting Asuka: https://qmisato.tumblr.com/post/183082754484/yesterday-i-was-invited-to-evageeks-official

In response much later. I really can’t see it as being framed as “fun teenage romance”, also why is the word romance suddenly being used to talk about Asuka and Shinji after the whole debacle with Kaworu? He’s said before he doesn’t see Asuka and Shinji’s relationship as romantic, either (and GOOD! It’s not!)

(Also - it’s not sexual assault when Shinji tries to kiss Asuka in her sleep, but it IS when Kaworu does the exact same thing to Shinji? Make up your mind, dude.) Turning this sort of thing into Shipping Discourse is frankly not the right way to go about it, but it is perhaps notable that despite what Felipe says, he is in fact an Asushin shipper. (I don’t feel the need to post all these images in the document as its cluttered enough as it is.) At this point it’s rather adhom and I feel irrelevant but I do think it’s relevant that through all of Eva fandom, those who have the most issue “understanding” (more like accepting, I suppose) LGB subtext, are those who also are really attached to a fairly morally grey het pairing themselves. Again, seriously, there’s nothing inherently wrong with any of this and assuming the worst of someone because of the pairings they like isn’t my intent here, it’s more that I find this pattern has always been prevalent and it’s bothering me I’m seeing it STILL in 2019. ESPECIALLY from a wiki editor who inserts so much of that into his work on the site. 

  You’re probably sick of reading all of this (and I’m getting sick of writing it), so I’ll wrap up the part on Felipe quickly: Yes, I just dedicated several pages to screenshots of mostly innocuous (when considered out of context) stuff one guy had to say. I feel more obsessive than I’d like to admit, and frankly I have no business with this person. We’ve spoken twice on EvaGeeks threads if you can even call it speaking. This task was given to me by a member of the community who was concerned about his behaviour but didn’t want to publicise it themself and I feel a little out of my depth here. I at least hope we can come to the conclusion I wanted to here, that I fear may have been lost in this whole great mess of language - no one person should have THIS much sway over the state of a wiki that’s supposed to be impartial, especially when they have not been quiet with their biases in the first place, and it is the failure of everyone involved in the maintaining of the wiki itself that this sort of behaviour has been allowed in the first place. 

The guy can have whatever opinions and theories he wants, obviously. I don't give a shit; he's not even that bad compared to the grand majority of Eva fans to begin with. Don't think this document exists to "cancel" him or thoughtpolice, I truly, genuinely, do not care what is said inside this server anymore. It doesn't concern me. I mean, it's a fucking cartoon, for god's sake. This only becomes an issue when opinions are expressed on a wiki, for reasons I have reiterated many times now. EvaGeeks lacks the objectivity required to function as a wiki and I'm trying to make that clear. 

[ON THE TOPIC OF THE EVAGEEKS WIKI AND COMMUNITY IN GENERAL] As for who can edit the wiki and what they’re allowed to say: As you can see from the nature of people’s posts in this thread, you’re given access to do very specific things, and although I haven’t bothered going through the process myself (as I find it would be quite redundant, trying to fix such an inherently broken system), I’m guessing it’s very easy to get your edits reversed if you post anything they don’t like. Take that as conjecture of my own.

I have it in decent faith that the approval process involves whoever of the mod team is there at the time coming to an agreement based on people’s applications. Obviously this is a decent idea for a system, and I’m sure there are legitimate reasons as to why EG has to be locked down as much as it is; judging from the state of other fanon wikis I’ve seen there’s likely to be a decent amount of vandalism, especially in a fandom as passionate as Eva’s is. However, I think it’s fair to say that the complete restriction of updating these pages to those approved by a mod team who, while I’m sure are very reasonable people overall, certain individuals of which have displayed concerning behaviour and biases of their own in the server during my brief look around. I won’t be naming anyone in particular from the mod team as I don’t feel like I need to add any more targets of shame to this already horrifically negative document, but I have gotten the general impression (in case it needed confirmation, following the remaining of these specific changes on the wiki) that some mods, not all, aren’t the most nonpartisan individuals themselves. I do happen to be decent acquaintances with at least one of them so, again, please don’t consider this a personal attack.

My concern here plainly is that I don’t think a group of mods who have routinely failed to prevent events like the ones mentioned earlier, nor seem to have much of an issue with the myriad of examples of people being openly homophobic and misogynistic on their own forum are really in the position to be choosing who of the Privelleged Few get to control the Eva meta-narrative here. As I was writing this, I was alerted to the state of the primary Japanese Evangelion wiki as a source of cross referencing for what these things can look like if done right. If you take a moment to browse it, even if you don’t speak any Japanese and have to use an automatic translator it should be very obvious how something like this differs greatly from EvaGeeks. Kaworu’s page, for a relevant example, doesn’t have present any of the nonsense statements about ambiguity or overwritten descriptions of everything. The wiki respects the reader’s intelligence enough to know that it is, in fact, a wiki, and thus tries its best to be factual. His page is fairly decent in size and states things we know are fact rather than theory. There’s no attempt made to influence or confuse.

Oh, and just in case you think the mods aren’t actually active or present enough to know what Felipe is doing, his particularly awful page on Kaworu in episode 24 got a shoutout from the official Twitter account two days ago.  

If you are going to join the Discord server to verify things yourself* or do further digging, again, please be cautious of other users inside and do your best not to start anything. I am an occasional contributor to the forums and I’d prefer not to get my account flagged or to experience harassment myself, if any EvaGeeks members are still reading this document and disagree with my conclusions. I may not have posted much since I joined earlier this year, but despite everything I find the forums to be valuable for connecting with other fans and have enjoyed the positive feedback to my SIRP translation! Those who have spoken to me there have been very kind (including Felipe himself), and I must reiterate that this is not targeted at the whole site, or even at just Felipe. I simply believe there is more than enough evidence to suggest there have been consistent, systematic failures to recognise and correct the utter lack of objectivity present. I seriously don’t have any personal issues or beef with this guy, either. I wouldn’t have done this if it wasn’t someone else who came to me about it.

*It should be noted that the person who spoke to me has pointed out certain members have been concerned about outsiders joining and screenshotting the chat. They may remove the public link to join if this document were to cause a huge issue. I will leave the server following the publication of this document and I have no plans to join again. I can’t speak for those who may join of their own accord but I do hope people have heeded the disclaimer I made initially.

Thankyou to all the people who have extended their own kindness and support during the creation of this document, to the anonymous person who tipped me off and the lovely Eva analysts I know for offering their own experiences with EvaGeeks and further supplementary information. If this whole document reads like the product of a bad mental health day, I guess it is. Also yes I know how hilarious it is that I’ve spent all this time creating what essentially amounts to an EVAGEEKS CALLOUT POST but I mean. Someone had to say it. Why not make an utter buffoon of myself in the process?

[honekitteh]

Fic: Countdown - Chapter 5

Fandom: SWTOR Pairing: Theron Shan/f!Jedi Knight Rating: M Genre: Angst, H/C, Romance, Canon-Typical Violence, Humor,  Canon-typical levels of poor decision-making Synopsis: A distress call leads the Jedi Battlemaster to Ziost, but time is running out.  Follows the storyline of The Rise of the Emperor and inserts missing scenes.   Warnings: See Chapter 1

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 |  Chapter 4 | Crossposted to AO3

“What was that thing?” I asked as I pulled my two shoto out of the back of the monstrous creature.

“We’ve been calling them monoliths,” Lana stated as she suddenly appeared on the holo comm from the failsafe console we had been directed to.  “I promise I wasn’t eavesdropping. Just wanted to warn you.”

I raised an eyebrow and gave a glance to Kira behind me.  The redhead was still staring dubiously at the ‘monolith.’

“We’ve seen several of those creatures appearing throughout New Adasta.  They’re made from Sith alchemy.  A sign of Vitiate’s growing power.  Extremely strong, next to impossible to kill.  The one you just defeated is the smallest we’ve come across.”

Kira mouthed behind me, “Smallest?”

The hair on the back of my neck stood up.  “Its power has already returned.”

“I’m afraid so,” Lana nodded and switched off communication.

As if on cue, the monolith swung his large arm and I was caught in my stomach and flung back against the walls.  I don’t entirely know how long I was out, but Kira was shouting at me by the time I shook my head and got back up and looked my surroundings.  We needed to defeat the Monolith and stabbing it til it died was not the way to do it.  

I looked across all the consoles, then noticed the broken electrical wire group on the floor, as well as the water underneath it.  This was a bit of a gamble, but thankfully this was an enemy I didn’t really need to worry about utilizing my terrible pazaak face on.  Remembering how things had worked in the Electrical Substation I looked around quickly for a switch.  

My body ached as I got back up and I took a deep breath, using the Force meditation techniques to ignore pain for a time.  My target was on the other side of the room and I had to get there without getting knocked out or winded again.  Kira was smacked hard into another wall, but she blinked in and out of visibility before she took full impact.

I flipped the switch and watched as the monolith was finally knocked out due to the electrical current.  After a few seconds, a little too late, did I notice the electrical current exit my own body.  I wobbled a bit and looked at my hand.  I couldn’t feel anything in it for what seemed like minutes, and there were now a few red lines adorning my flesh.  I flexed it for a bit as Kira kicked the Monolith on her way over to me.

“Did you forget the safeties?” she asked quickly.

“Did we have time?”

Kira rubbed her face with her palm.  “I should have kept the kolto pack...”

“I’ll be fine.  I’ve survived force lightning.”

“Doc will have a fit.”

“Must be a day that ends in –y.”  I moved back to the console to put in the failsafe override sequence.  I tapped in the commands as per the directions we had been given and then leaned back against it with a heavy sigh.

“Plan’s over.  Scrapped.”  Agent Kovach walked into the Metro Center, his eyes completely exhausted as he moved to the communication console.  “Some giant thing tore through a junction, caused an electrical surge.  Dampeners are shot.”

Kira and I both glanced at each other and then back at the finally dead Monolith.  I stabbed the nearest limb of the beast again to be sure before responding to the agent, “There has to be another way.”

He shook his head.  “I thought about an electrical bombardment from space, but it would be incredibly imprecise.  We’ll be as likely to kill a lot of people as anything.”

I shook my head in response to that.  That was an unacceptable outcome.  At least he had enough sense to see that without me having to point it out, like I have had to so many other Republic officials over the course of my career.

“Besides,” he continued, “The two fleets have engaged each other.  Maybe if we convinced Saresh or Darth Marr to divert some forces...” His holo comm chirped, demanding his attention.  

Theron appeared on the holo.  “What’s the word, Kovach?”

“The word is ‘failure.’ I couldn’t make it work.  I’m sorry, Agent Shan.”

I stared at Theron for a moment.  Even through the holographic interface, I could see how tired he was.  He wore what he felt was the weight of this world on his shoulders, even when he didn’t need to hold it alone.  I flexed my right hand, still not feeling a lot more than vague tingles in it.  I glanced over to Kovach and decided against bringing up something that, at this point, was not as important as stopping the Emperor.

“I’m sure you did your best,” Theron had continued on, “That’s all we can ask for.  Look, maybe you should check in with Lana.  If you can, get her to reach out to me.”  

“I’ll do that,” Kovach responded.  I thought I saw a slight wink in my direction from Theron before his image blinked out from the holo call.  I didn’t have a chance to be sure about that before Kovach had packed up his kit and started walking out of the Metro Center.  He turned his head slightly to me at the door and said, “You have my thanks.”

I frowned slightly and looked back at the Monolith lying dead in the middle of the room.  

“You didn’t tell him,” Kira stated.

“I hesitated,” I admitted.

“He’d have probably fired him when we need all the bodies.”

“True.  I’ll own that choice should it come up.”

“Guess we’ll have to talk to her at some point soon too.”

“Hm?”

“Chancellor Cockblock… I mean Saresh.”

I snorted.  “Chancellor Cockblock?”

“She totally disrupted your reunion with Theron.”

I sighed and waved my hands around the room and emphatically pointed at the Monolith. “I’d say this whole situation disrupted any reunion.”

“Fair point. Your holo comm is blinking.”

I blinked and nodded and pulled it out.   Lana appeared again on the holo.  “I’m told Agent Kovach’s plan fell apart.  The good news is I have another plan.  A better plan.  However, it’s an extremely dangerous plan—for you.”

“This is my shocked face,” I stated plainly at her, “I’m listening.”

“As I’m sure you’re aware, war has broke out across the globe.  Our former Emperor, however, has focused his involvement to the area around New Adasta—near you.”

I tilted my head and encouraged her to continue.

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence.  It’s possible he isn’t as strong has he’s been letting on.  It’s possible he’s worried about what you could do.”

I sighed.  “It was always going to lead to this.  Let him come for me.”

“I’m going to suggest something a little more proactive, actually.  You must get all of his pawns—every last soldier, Jedi, and Sith to stop their slaughter and chase you into the heart of New Adasta.  You must make Vitiate want to kill you.  Now.”

“Vitiate want to kill me?  Must be Taungsday.”

“I am aware of your past history with him.”

I quirked my eyebrow but said nothing else as she forwarded coordinates for the next location for me to head to.  A place called the People’s Tower.  Cutting off the communication with Lana, I frowned slightly.  

“I really doubt you know what you think you do…”

Kira came back up beside me after her patrol of the room.  “What was that?”

“Just doubting what Lana knows.”

Kira nodded.  “You told Theron, but not her?”

I just nodded and started walking out of the Metro Security Center.

“This thing working?”  

I blinked as Kira and I walked into a devastated cantina just outside of the People’s Tower in New Adasata.  I fiddled with the comm on my wrist computer.  “Doc, is that you?”

Doc’s voice was exasperated and tired, I could feel it from here.  “Oh good, it does work.  Giving you a status update because your spyboy has rushed off on a new errand with Teeseven.”

I sighed.  “Go ahead.”  As I awaited Doc’s report, I directed Kira to investigate the cantina with a quick motion of my head.  I sensed there was something in there that could be quite useful for us, but I wasn’t sure what.  I leaned against the edge of the door to the cantina and studied the area, taking note of some of the possessed soldiers and sith movements.  I was trying to figure out the best plan of attack to get to the next region.  I also noticed there were some very large turrets at the edge of the cliff the People’s Tower was on.  I filed their existence away for future use.  

“The small amount of survivors, between the soldiers, civilians, and slaves that he managed to keep from dying to... were they Jedi?”

“They were under the Emperor’s control.”  

“I could tell...” I quirked an eyebrow at Doc’s comment there.  Of course, he’d know what that was like.  I audibly sighed remembering that he and my other companions had been on the Emperor’s Fortress with me.  They knew… but Doc didn’t let my mind wander too far into it.  “I mean.  Anyway I’ve gotten the surviving patients that were able to be moved back up to the station. Tried to convince your boyfriend he needed to go with them for proper medical attention but he wouldn’t budge.  The idiot.”

Biting back the traditional denial response, I simply just stated, “Doc…”

But he would not be deterred.  “He’s a wreck and those scars will not heal properly if he doesn’t stop for 10 minutes to let a professional look over them.  He just took one of my stronger doses and went off with Teeseven for… something the blonde Sith said.”

“You mean Lana.”

“That was her name.  Sorry, I was never the greatest with remembering names.”

“Yes I remember.  What did you really expect though, Doc?”

“I don’t know… maybe to think about his own health for a change.  Maybe think how you’d feel if something happened to him.”

“Did you threaten him again?”

“Of course not.”  Doc sounded almost insulted by my accusation.  Though maybe not for the reason that I thought.  “He didn’t stick around long enough for the lecture.”

I tried to keep my own voice calm and flexed my right hand a few times.  “This whole planet is a mess Doc… You know I would…”

He cut me off.  “Yeah yeah, needs of the many or some kriffin Jedi nobility.  But you can’t save people if you’re dead.”

I rubbed my temple and just sighed, resigned.  “Thanks for helping, Doc.  That means a lot.”

“Of course.  It’s what I do.  I think he’ll be fine… just don’t think he will heal properly... not that that seems to be a thing he is unfamiliar with...”

“Doc...”

“Right right. Status update is done.  More patients filtering in. Doc out.”  

I continued scanning the surroundings and I felt Kira coming up from behind me.

“You conveniently left out how you got scorched when we defeated the Monolith,” she stated, smirking at me.

I flexed my right hand again, finally regaining the last bits of feeling that I had lost.  “Please.  Theron isn’t the only one who doesn’t want a lecture from Doc when there’s work to be done.”

“Agreed,” Kira nodded, “The bartender was dead.  Unsurprising but still a pity.  There was a key on him though.”  She displayed the key to me.

“Wonder what this is for…” I furrowed my brow and studied it.  Then I looked back around the landing pad outside of the cantina.  

As we moved from our spot, we were suddenly besieged by a group of soldiers.  I took a quick glance to the side and noticed that there was a woman cowering behind one of the benches, where these soldiers had moved from.  Soon as they had come after us, she ran.  I hoped she made it to the landing pad in time, but I had no way of keeping track of that.  The soldiers weren’t much of a match between Kira and I, but by the time they were defeated at our feet, I could not see where the woman had gone.  Hopefully she was safe and had not been added to Vitiate’s legion.

I really wish I didn’t have to think like that, but reality was unkind.  

I took a look back at the key in my hand and frowned.  

“I think it’s to one of these speeder bikes,” Kira spoke up.  

I pursed my lips and tried it on the one near the ramp up towards the tower.  That one didn’t work.  Sighing I looked across the other speeders that were around.  There were like five.

“Try this one!” Kira yelled back at me and I noticed she was pointing at the speeder right next to the cantina entrance.  

Of course...  That would make sense.  I came back over and sure enough, the key fit.  

“It needs some fuel first,” Kira stated, “No other way.  Not sure where we’d find some fuel though.”

I looked up and pondered.  Then I pointed out the air defense turrets I’d spotted earlier.  “They should have some fuel.  We can shut those down and get the fuel from there.”

“You mean steal the fuel.”

“It’s not stealing!”

Kira simply raised her eyebrow.

“It’s borrowing...”

“Borrowing?”

“... Borrowing without the intent to return.  What does it matter?  We need to shut down the turrets anyway.”

“Of course Master Jyana.”

We moved our way up the ramp towards the People’s Tower.  Four air defense turrets lined the edge of the platform with a very long drop down.  We made fairly quick work of getting the fuel from three of them, as well as dealing with more of Vitiates marionette army.  I stared up at the last turret and tried to figure out the best way of approach.  

“We should have enough,” Kira stated after helping a small shaking child out from under a bench.  “What are you thinking?”

“We need to get that last one shut down.  Think that speeder will get us there?”

“Most definitely, but let's get this girl to the transports here.”

I looked back and looked down at the child.  Her eyes were larger than her face, blue as the Alderaanian sky, her blonde hair short and dirty.  She stared up at me, her face stained with tears.  She was quaking with fear.  Kira had most of it handled as she eased the child to allow her to pick her up.  I placed a light hand on top of the child’s head. “Did you lose your parents?” I asked softly.

She nodded slowly.  

“What is your name?”

Her voice was very soft, barely audible if you didn’t know what you were listening to.  A slight accent painted her a native of the planet. “Kallie.”

“We’re going to get you to safety, Kallie.  Find help.”

She continued to stare at me, but I could feel her fear shifting to hope.

“She’s got a broken leg,” Kira mentioned as she shifted the child on her hip.  

I nodded.  “We need to get her to Doc.”

She nodded to me and we took back off towards the transport.  I reached out my senses across the platform.  I could not sense any other children or people that were of their own mind left.  First things first, get this child somewhere safe.

After making the appropriate transfers and verifying that Kallie was being taken care of by Doc and whoever else he’d roped into helping him now on the Orbital Station, Kira and I had gotten the speeder bike fueled up and ready to go.  I was planning to try to zoom up the ramp and get to that last air defense turret to shut it down.  

I hopped onto the speeder and started preparing to drive.  Kira stared at me dubiously.  “What?” I asked.

“This isn’t your run of the mill standard issue republic sanctioned speeder, Jy.”  

I raised an eyebrow.  “I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

“This is more like one of the speeders I had to hotwire when I was on Nar Shaddaa.”

“I mean, what could possibly go wrong?”

“You just had to say that.”

I just stared at Kira for a few minutes as she reluctantly popped onto the speeder behind me.  I started the speeder up and started my way back up towards the tower.

The speeder, in whoever’s infinite wisdom, suddenly lurched forward in a spurt of speed, catching me completely off guard.  Holding on tightly, I tried to manage the speeder as it suddenly slowed back down again.  It did this a second time and I attempted to time it just so as we went towards the wall.  I couldn’t really breath with how tightly Kira was holding my stomach and the next burst of speed landed us into a wall, both of us in a pile on the ground.  

“Let me get this... you stay here...” Kira muttered, brushing herself off.

I sighed, still mostly upside down from how we were flung.  “Fine.”

I righted myself as Kira took the speeder and expertly angled it and got it up the ramp, jumping over the gaps with ease.  I grumbled a bit but took that moment to regain my breath.  I flexed my right hand, grateful that at least something had started to heal by the time I heard the explosion of the last air defense turret being taken down and Kira had made it back down.  

She smirked at me and patted the seat of the speeder behind her.  I rolled my eyes and hopped back on and we went inside the People’s Tower.

[argyle-s]

Same anon who butt into the conversation. I get it from a fanfic standpoint. I also have a lot of non-canon ships. On some level, characters get re-written by fans to fit their own perception. That's why fanon stuff exist. I was thinking more of canon and fans' refusal to accept the truth. Also the double-standard. When it was Mon-El doing the shitty things, he got called out on it by the fans. With Lena, it's like rose-colored glasses on steroids. Which led to the character/fandom bias point.

Before people call me out, full disclosure, I ship Kalex and SuperFlash. I only mentioned Mon-El as an example for the fandom double-standard. I agree that the writers are partly to blame for Lena’s shit going largely unchecked. I’m hoping that changes this season since everything is supposed to come to a head. It would be incredibly irresponsible of them not to because it’s like supporting and encouraging bad, borderline abusive behavior. That’s not how friendships are supposed to be at all.

I’m still going to go back to Investment in the ship.  I *haven’t* read a lot of Karam*l stuff (I’ve read none) but my perception is that it wasn’t the Karam*l shippers calling out Mon-El for the shit he did.  I could be wrong, but my perception of it is that Karam*l got treated by the fans a lot like CaptainSw*n in the OUAT fandom, where the people who shipped it ignored what an ass Hook was 99% of the time.

The difference is, are a *LOT* of Superc*rp shippers.  Superc*rp is pretty monolithic within the Supergirl fandom.  To give you an idea, let’s look at some stats.

Sanvers has 5324 fics tagged on AO3Dansen has 153 fics tagged on AO3Supercorp has 10030 fics tagged on AO3Guardiancorp has 68 fics tagged on AO3Karam*el has 1068 fics tagged on AO3

Of the Sanvers fics, 1637 are also tagged Superc*rpOf the Dansen fics, 44 are also tagged Superc*rpOf the Guardiancorp fics, 37 are also tagged Superc*rpOf the Karam*l fics, 120 are also tagged Superc*rpOf the Karam*lfics, 130 are also tagged Sanvers

for control purposes, we’ll be eliminating double tagged fics for this (which really isn’t the best control, but it is the simplest), which leaves is with:

3557 Sanvers fics109 Dansen fics31 Guardiancorp fics818 Karam*l fics8229 Superc*rp fics

Now, for comparison’s sake, in OUAT fandom, once you control for double tagging, you have:

11567 SwanQueen fics9810 CaptainSw*n fics

Put Simply, Superc*rp comes pretty damn close to doubling the number of fics available for the four canon relationships, two of which are wlw ships.  To come close to the number of Superc*rp fics, you have to add all of the canon ships listed above, plus the other big non-canon ships like SuperCat, General Danvers, AgentReign and Kalex, and once you control for double tagging, I’m not at all sure you’d catch up.

The ship wars in OUAT were vicious, largely because there was near parity in terms of the size of the different fandoms.  A lot of the reason you see less people willing to call out Superc*rp is because it isn’t a ship war, it’s a dog pile.

Lena doesn’t get called out on her bullshit because so much of the Supergirl fandom is so heavily invested in Superc*rp, and so willing to savage anyone who does call out Lena’s bullshit, that a lot of people have just walked away from the fandom in disgust, and a lot of other people have created isolated pocket communities where they can ship in peace (and even some of those aren’t really safe places to discuss how toxic Lena and Kara’s friendship is, because if you start talking about how toxic Lena is, the multishippers will start crying foul).  And honestly, it’s not even limited to pointing out the toxicity in the relationship.  If you point out, if you even imply, that Lena is not the most important relationship in Kara’s life (Alex always has been and always will be), they will pile all.

To give you an example, someone once made a post about Kara overhearing someone talking about how “Supergirl straps” and suggesting the idea that Kara would ask Lena what it meant.  All I did was point out that it was far more likely that Kara would ask *Alex* what that meant, because Kara goes to Alex for questions about human stuff she doesn’t understand.  I got jumped by a pack of Superc*rp fans and got called a “Granny stanning fuck”.

tldr;  People don’t call Lena out on her fuckery because the Superc*rp fandom is full of assholes who will bully and abuse you doing so.

[elizabethrobertajones]

(part 1) this is random but something im curious about is do you think the next few years will see a radical shift in more lead lgbt couples in shows? i feel like when supernatural started it was all about subtext/queerbating between characters we would never see canon (maybe), the last few years have seen an update in more side lgbt characters/couples and while not a lot, more main lgbt characters then we had before. I don't know if tumblr/twitter fandom translates to general audience...

Yeah, I mean, the only way is up. I feel lucky that I managed to encounter a fair amount of queer content in my formative years, whether targeted programming on TV, or taking the route of not really differentiating the perceived cultural value of independent media like webcomics and webnovels etc from the mass media as I was young enough to naturally grow up on the internet as the internet itself was growing up and web 2.0 was pretty much taking off alongside my use of the internet. And that I had liberal parents who didn’t regulate our internet, and lived in a community where culturally I didn’t really fear being discovered casually accessing all this like in particularly this terrifying seeming evangelical christian community in America.

Which really makes me feel like A: everyone should feel that comfortable in themselves via the media as I did as a mass accessible thing or B: that the world at large should be soaked in as much representation and more that I encountered as a curious teen because at the very least it did me no harm and at best helped handhold me through an awful lot. 

And then brings us to the problem that the world isn’t actually like that and for a lot of people their media is restricted one way or another, from everything such as the era of social media weirdly making us much LESS broadly travelled on the internet as I was back in the day (SO many bookmarks - I had like 100 that I would check either daily or on their weekly update schedule, with enough habit that I had pretty much memorised it all without using an RSS feed or just following everyone’s twitter and waiting for update announcements, never mind the vast pit of things which I occasionally checked to see if their sporadic but very worth it updates had occurred somewhere in the last month/year) to the vastly overwhelming amount of media accessible to us. It seems almost to flood the market and creates this panic about watching the worthiest shows and campaigning for them and raising awareness and the FOMO and how things slip by and zomg you have to watch this that and the other, when even just making this list on Netflix now contains more hours of TV than a human lifetime and also one liable to disappear from the service at some point or another without warning. 

And then on top of that you have the absolute cultural monoliths that if you’re not going to have a cohesive culture - which now includes the entire population of the world because of our connectivity on the internet and mass-joining of services - based around smaller shows and stuff, then at the very least everyone is going to watch anything under the main Disney umbrella, other superhero flicks, animated things, and all the really big studio franchises and remakes, as well as a few TV monoliths which manage to get enough people talking to make it seem like “everyone” (again - these days it seems like that’s presumed to be the entire western world plus everywhere else these things air) are watching, like Game of Thrones or whatever… THESE properties are the inescapable ones and on that basis they’re the things we have to lean on the most for representation and then again barely get any, when it comes to gender and sexuality, due to them shooting for such worldwide markets that they can’t imply gay people exist to censors in places such as China. And it exposes the cultural awfulness inherent just in getting a white female character in the lead role of some things, or the absolute garbage fire lurking underneath that if you dare have a black stormtrooper or make one of your female ghostbusters black when you’re already ruining the childhoods of so many how dare… 

In those respects, having side characters who aren’t even major well-known superheroes or jedis or ghostbusters or whatever also be gay (because even well-known lesbian Kate McKinnon didn’t manage to get her ghostbuster to be canonically gay even if we All Knew) would be absolutely groundbreaking, even if it was, like, a role that could be snipped out for the Chinese market or something. And that’s probably exactly what would happen, and cue ensuing riot from whichever fandom, along with everyone rightly pointing out that even for us who got to watch it it was still a tiny side character… I mean Disney is still at the stage of what they did with Beauty and the Beast’s ~canonical gay character~ 

So yeah… that’s thrown back to TV and smaller movies to lead the way and because the generations showing most likely the real global percentages but actually just the young western world stats on queerness in any form (like… 25% instead of 1% or whatever and that’s STILL probably too low) are still teens to young adults. The previous gayest generation above them are still just arriving in power and settling in, and the excellent changes we already have from the generation before that is what we are seeing now... But given THEIR cultural context, even their best can still seem to younger eyes, moderate and not generally placing queer characters in lead roles except in niche or indie or otherwise “acceptable” places to take those risks. I think change is always coming and culturally each generation being more open and accepting that the last is really making changes and so on, hopefully things WILL change rapidly and what was the common state of affairs in the sort of indie media I consumed as a teen will be the mainstream soon because a lot of those creators 10 years later are kicking off… 

All that said, TV in the mainstream is still controlled by Mark Pedowitz types exercising their power over the Bobos who have their Wayward Sisters pitches with the clearly labelled main character for the main teen demographic being queer. The culture is very much that we’re now pretty open and can happily have queer characters, but the main characters are still largely held separate. A good example is Riverdale, which is on the CW, a newer show with writers such as Britta Lundin, who is young, queer, and wrote a novel blatantly based on being a Destiel shipper and fan interacting with the cast and crew in fandom spaces, and whose first solo episode of Riverdale featured a looooot of the gay stuff (yay). 

But while she’s a story editor and writer for the show and can use it as a platform for writing stories for its audience using a whole range of canonically queer characters, the show still keeps all 4 of its mains at a strict remove from this. Cheryl can come out as a lesbian in the second season after a lil ho yay in the first but no clearly marked storyline about her identity, but even though Betty and Veronica kissed in the first episode it was blatant fan service (for Cheryl in-story, lol) and mostly just set the tone that they are the sort of seemingly straight girls kissing for attention while having strong romantic or physical attraction to guys. In the second season the kiss comes up again in joking that Jughead and Archie are the only ones of the main 4 who haven’t kissed, Archie gets one planted on him by a dude as a “judas kiss” moment of betrayal in season 3 and he and Jug are teased that they were expected to get together because they were close but in the same sort of homophobic undercurrent tones as early Destiel snarking from side characters, seemingly less about their relationship and more to unsettle them with implications… I mean it was a complicated moment but in the long run it didn’t seem entirely pleasant to me, especially given the overall emotional state they were in and later plot etc etc. (My mum is 1000% invested in Riverdale now as a former Archie Comics reader as a kid so this is now my life too as I was in the room when my brother callously exposed her to it, hi :P) 

Anyway that’s just one case study but aside from SPN it’s probably the most mainstream teen demographic thing I watch… Other examples would be things like B99 which had Rosa come out as bi and that’s awesome, and made us all cry a lot, but Jake, the clear main character even in a very strong and well-treated ensemble, has a great deal of bi subtext, there’s no way given Andy Samberg’s apparent habit of ad-libbing MORE progressive jokes that he’d ever be intentionally harming people if that’s how his brain works (you know, like other people quick-fire offensive stuff from their mouth working faster than brain sense of humour :P). But at the same time for all Jake’s quipping about crushes and such and the fact the show clearly knows how to be sensitive to bisexuality with Stephanie Beatriz being a strong advocate, just because Jake’s the main character and adorably married to Amy. In NO WAY can that be threatened because they’re SO GOOD, so there’s STILL uncertainty that this will pay off in the same special episode “I love my wife but I am bi” kinda way that seems obvious that could just be said. We all carry on without it affecting anything because obviously Jake’s found his soulmate so we don’t mess with that but they should know it’s important to clarify it… Even with B99′s track record, I’m nervous solely because Jake’s the main character and main characters tend not to get self-exploratory arcs about latent queerness and ESPECIALLY not if they’re happily married. If ANY show was going to do it right and trailblaze in this exact era it would be them, but… gyah :P 

Anyway I guess the conclusion right now is that the more mainstream you are the more uncertain it feels, but we are right at that cliff edge, especially with shows putting in SOME of the work. If B99 doesn’t get us there (or the Good Place where they’ll happily confirm Eleanor is bi in interviews but I believe she hasn’t said it outright on the show despite clearly showing attraction to female characters, again, the denials we know so well in SPN fandom reflect a wider audience view of dismissing this stuff as jokes and not reflective of character feeling and identification without a Special Episode dedicated to confirming it >.>) then we’re very clearly on the cusp of SOME mainstream or massively well-known show doing it at least once in a meaningful way that has an Ellen-style cultural impact on TV writing. 

Let’s make it a goal for 2019 or 2020, and hope that a NEW show with a canonically queer main from the start is pitched and becomes a mainstream hit in the next 5… Still got a ways to go before Disney level mainstream but again there IS work going pushing the envelope, especially if we get a movie of a franchise such as idk Further Legends of Korra, or Steven Universe or something else that’s massively pushed the envelope with sexuality or gender for their main character on the small screen in the experimental petri dish they’ve had there for children’s TV. Something that would force Disney to blink about a lesbian princess or Star Wars to let Finn and Poe kiss or Marvel to let Steve and Bucky hold hands or something in order to remain relevant.

Once the Big Cultural Monoliths get in on it, I expect culture as a whole to first of all react quickly on the small screen, but honestly I’ve been waiting for them to snap pretty much my whole life since adolescence and they’re taking such wee tiny baby steps, and some factors are enormous geopolitical awfulness, that the story as a whole is unpredictable and we can only really hope that things don’t slow down. 

(Where this affects SPN is just impossible to say right now, given its almost unique position in this mess due to longevity vs fandom vs almost entirely new generation of writers’ room) 

[freedom-of-fanfic]

on public block lists, personality cults, and not perpetuating fandom hate

on a side note, I feel it’s important to say this:

the now-deleted post that was created by a popular pro-shipper in the VLD fandom which named out some antis/former antis is a good example of why I do not support making public block lists or 99.8% of callout posts, especially on sites like tumblr where that post is forever the second somebody reblogs it. People can change, URLs get abandoned and picked up by somebody new, etc etc, and unfortunately, when you can’t control distribution of a post you can’t control people who use that post to harass and attack the subjects of it (and there are plenty of people out there eager to do so).

Similarly, I think it was entirely too generalizing of the post to simply blanket-state that all blogs with kl urls or referencing being lesbian are likely to be antis. though the majority of anti-shippers in vld fandom are kl shippers, that does not mean all kl shippers are antis. and while I see what it was trying (and failing) to correlate*, it’s both false and harmful to imply or state that all blogs with sapphic/lesbian url references are anti-shipper blogs supporting harassment.

that said: I’ve seen a number of anti-shippers holding up names on that list as innocent because the blogger is a minor and/or there’s no direct examples of harassment or threatening people, and I need to point out that being a minor and/or never harassing or bullying people yourself or under your own blog name is far from proof that a person is not contributing to or even a principle instigator of harassment and bullying.

first of all: minors are absolutely capable of abusing and bullying one another and bullying/abusing adults, especially on a site like tumblr where our social power is roughly evened out by the site structure. that doesn’t mean I think minors deserve to be immortalized on public block lists - I don’t think anybody deserves that - but being a minor is a mitigating factor, not an excuse.

second: it’s extremely important to recognize that communities with cultlike structures such as anti-shipping circles frequently have popular ringleaders who provoke, encourage, and praise their followers for acts of harassment and bullying, but never participate in it directly themselves. This makes it difficult to point out how they perpetuate a toxic environment because there’s little or no direct proof of their actions. These people form cults of personality and frequently take an active part in cultivating their following, and if they are not always actual predators, they are certainly toxic bloggers that can be difficult to escape from after being drawn into their influence.

(this is not to say that anyone on that post fits this category. there are people both on and off their list who I have seen be toxic in the past, but that does not mean they are acting that way now. I discourage anyone from judging people on behavior from years past, and I highly, highly discourage anyone using a public block list completely blind. the deleted post and the backlash just reminded me to point this out.)

my suggestions to protect yourself from buying into or perpetuating hate in fandom would be: 

avoid generalizations: especially about marginalized groups, but also for non-marginalized groups. no category of people are a monolith.

be very wary of anybody who tells you what to think and/or tries to trick you into thinking the way they want you to, shipper or anti-shipper.

recognize that while anti-shipping communities tend to foster fear and toxicity, this does not mean that pro-shipper groups, anti-anti groups, or any other group is automatically free of abusers and hate.

learn the warning signs for toxic people and the warning signs of toxic groups and judge your fave bloggers and fandom circle based on how they behave and treat people now/going forward.

limit voices of fandom hate and/or salt in your life. salt begets more salt. hate is like a fire: anything that doesn’t douse it can only feed it.

never forget to celebrate what you love.

(timestamp: first posted on March 14th, 2018.)

(EDIT: March 16th, 2018: my wording put too much emphasis on the creator of the (deleted!!) post. I’ve edited it to better reflect that my issue is with the contents of the post itself, which - as OP deleted it - does not seem to reflect their views properly either.

also the backlash against the OP has been WILDLY out of proportion to the offense in an absolutely classic example of how abusers in the anti-shipper ranks feel no compunction or offense over keeping public shipper block lists (that are still up, by the way!**) but draw big red circles around the slightest slip-up of people they hate. because hey - the rules don’t apply to them. only to YOU.

edit repeated under the cut to ensure it’s seen.)

(EDIT: March 16th, 2018: my wording put too much emphasis on the creator of the (deleted!!) post. I’ve edited it to better reflect that my issue is with the contents of the post itself, which - as OP deleted it - does not seem to reflect their views properly either.

also the backlash against the OP has been WILDLY out of proportion to the offense in an absolutely classic example of how abusers in the anti-shipper ranks feel no compunction or offense over keeping public shipper block lists (that are still up, by the way!**) but draw big red circles around the slightest slip-up of people they hate. because hey - the rules don’t apply to them. only to YOU.)

As in: doxxing and threatening family members levels. (Another reason I regret making this particular post.)

*I think the poster was trying to draw a line of association that may exist to some degree, but they did it in a way that’s hurtful to lesbians.  that line is:

anti culture adopts/modifies a lot of radfem - particularly swerf - ideology (porn and kink are always bad/harmful to perceived women, perceived women are harming themselves and one another if they like/participate in it). many blogs that support radfem/terf/swerf ideology - sometimes on purpose, sometimes just by absorbing the rhetoric from tumblr - have urls referencing being sapphic or lesbian. therefore, they suggest that lesbian url = anti-shipper, which is simply too broad a claim to even draw a meaningful correlation.

the truth is: 

radfems/terfs/swerfs as an organization are generally only interested in anti-shipping/fandom in general inasmuch as they can use it to recruit new members. (there are radfems/terfs/swerfs in fandom because they love fandom.)

many people with sapphic/lesbian references in their URL are not radfems or any subgroup of radfem, nor do they support radfem ideology either on purpose or by passive acceptance of radfem lite(tm) posts on tumblr. similarly, many people with sapphic/lesbian references in their URL are not antis.

not all antis are radfem/terf/swerf. In fact, most antis probably believe they are opposed to radfems/terfs/swerfs without realizing that they utilize some of their rhetoric in fandom policing.

it’s understandable that a correlation would be drawn by people on tumblr between lesbian/sapphic urls and radfems/anti-porn blogs, but it just can’t be generalized like that b/c it hurts those with lesbian/sapphic urls that aren’t of that crowd.

**the list itself is private, but because the mods answer questions publicly anyone who was requested to be added by a third party on anon is still publicly listed! HILARIOUS.

PS: i’m leaving this post up because anyone who clicks the readmore will be able to see my edits and I think that’s going to be more helpful than deleting it entirely in the long run. but otherwise I would delete it entirely because this post was brought to the attention of the OP of the deleted post in a way that wounded them, and i am deeply sorry for that. :(

[unknown-de-mordor-blog]

Angbang-in-Space: or the time I crossover Tolkien-verse with Space Odyssey

So I just went back to the two one-shots I wrote for Melkor on Europa, and I just realized that some of it wouldn’t make any sense to anybody (I’m sorry; I was freewriting the shit out of it), so I thought I might as well make a huge post on the crossover universe I had. (I mean, this blog is called the Fanfic Junkyard for a reason.) A lot of this will be me recounting the plot of 2001: A Space Odyssey and 2010: The Year We Make Contact.

Let’s start with some Space Odyssey lore. So there’s an in-universe place for god or gods but more as a highly evolved, technologically advanced alien or aliens who have at least experiment with humankind and possibly even help create it. They are also called the ‘Firstborn’, referring to them as possibly the first sapient species. So, yes, there’s a proper place for Eru and Ainur in the Space Odyssey universe. I usually interpret the Firstborn as the Ainur and Eru as even a higher being (because born of whom, right?)

We don’t get to see them, though, only their surrogate, the monoliths -- although I like the Russian name Zagadka, the Enigma, better -- it’s both a communication and control tool with great powers. Like, seriously terrifying powers.

Now to my mash-up-universe version, Melkor is reincarnated to ‘repair his fea’. He becomes a human name David Bowman and ends up commanding a space mission to Jupiter, although he’s mostly a glorified housekeeper because most of the astronauts are put in suspended animation just by how long the journey from Earth to Jupiter is. His companion is Frank Poole, his best friend and totally Gothmog reincarnated to me, and the ship’s AI HAL (the actual name is HAL9000 but absolutely no one calls him that), who is actually Mairon, but with memory damaged and suppressed due to the damages to his fea after the Ring was destroyed, and also for wandering in disembodied form for too long.

Even so, he has an imprint of Melkor in his fea, so he’s uncommonly drawn to David right from the first time they met. They end up being pretty close on the ship, the Discovery. Part of it is because Dave and Frank take different shifts so they don’t get to hang out in their downtime. HAL is, essentially, the entire ship so he can hang out with anyone anywhere anytime.

I am convinced HAL and the Discovery is the very inspiration for Event Horizon. In-universe, though, no one could convince me that Dave doesn’t watch the film at least once on the ship for the irony of it. HAL is not entirely sure how to take it.

HAL and Dave play a lot of chess together. HAL could have won 100% of the time, but he’d rather make the chance 50/50. Dave catches onto that, demands that HAL play him fairly. Of course, he got his ass handed to him. HAL goes back to giving him ample opportunity to win, and the cycle starts again.

Dave and Frank are under the impression that the mission is going to be a scientific exploration of Jupiter and its moons, but actually, there is a secret mission. The thing is, a little while back (maybe 2/5 into the movie), a monolith was discovered on the moon and, upon it being unearthed, sent a signal to Jupiter. The secret mission is to find out what it is, which borders on trying to get the first contact since that the monolith proves the existence of a highly advanced alien species. Nobody knows, however, what awaits there and so the mission is borderline suicidal, which poses a problem to HAL since he was programmed to not tell either Dave or Frank about the mission (clearance issue, essentially, because the existence of the monolith is a secret at this point) and see that it continues at all cost while he had to keep everyone alive at the same time.

HAL decides then to try something really human, hinting. Since he can talk about the mission, he had to try to get Dave to figure it out himself. HAL cut off the communication antennae to sever influence from Earth (possibly, we can speculate about this) but because he’s programmed to be truthful, he had to warn the crew about it and Frank found out that there was absolutely nothing wrong with the unit at all. A few more lies later, Frank began to suspect something wrong with HAL, who then decides to kill him in self-preservation, which put himself right into conflict with Dave. Eventually, HAL terminates life supports to the suspended crew and also attempted to kill Dave.

David survives because of his quick thinking, but at this point, there’s really no other option for him but to take HAL down. And so he does... in one of the most haunting movie scenes ever.

“Dave, I’m afraid,” still breaks my heart every fucking time, goddamn. You also have to remember that HAL has no way to fight back when Dave is, you know, essentially dismembering him alive.

Dave eventually learns about the mission, since he is the last man standing at this point and mission control has no one else to make the first contact with what they now know to be a giant monolith in Jupiter’s orbit.

But it isn’t a solid black object when he came into contact with it but a door and “My god, it’s full of stars.”

Dave never comes back after crossing the threshold into the monolith, though. Basically, his physical body is left behind and he's instead transformed into what in Space Odyssey calls a Star Child. For me, that’s the moment David Bowman returns to being Melkor, except with his human memory and personality integrated as well.

But no one has any idea about what happened to him until nine years (and a film) later. A crew of Russian and American astronauts including Dr Chandra, HAL’s creator, is sent to the Discovery and find out what happened onboard and afterwards. Chandra resurrects his beloved HAL and tries to fix him, in the process discovering the secret order and the cause of HAL’s previous malfunction, but no one really trusts him again except Chandra.

While Chandra’s busy fixing HAL, everyone else is busy with tracking the monolith and studying Jupiter’s moon where they found signals of life and that their probe is mysteriously destroyed by a burst of energy that seems to move around. No one takes that too seriously until HAL receives a message for them to leave Jupiter (within two days in the movie, fifteen in the book b/c ACC liked realistic details). And if a corporal form of David Bowman on their ship doesn’t convince them, the disappearance of Zagadka from orbit and its rapid multiplication inside Jupiter, basically eating the planet up, surely does.

Because of the short notice, they can’t take the Discovery and HAL back to Earth and has to leave both to be destroyed by what they are sure now is going to be a nova. Before the bang, though, Dave asks HAL to transmit a repeated message back to Earth, saying: “ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT EUROPA ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE”

Everyone would have thought that was the end of HAL, but actually, HAL just loses his corporal form and joins Dave on Europa (totally canon -- it’s in 2061: Odyssey Three -- and one of the reasons there’re people in the fandom shipping them so hard).

I don’t think that’s as simple as HAL returning to being Mairon right away, though, because he’s not systematically transformed in the same way Dave was when he returned to being Melkor. His memories are fractured and damaged and so he always confused between Melkor and Dave and between Mairon and HAL all the time, but Melkor assures him it’s fine because they’re actually both.

While Melkor took comfort in lounging at the bottom of the ocean (a trait that’s actually connected to Dave, who used to dive with his human brother), Mairon isn’t comfortable with being in the water although he’s infinitely fascinated by the creatures in Europa’s ocean.

Although Melkor doesn’t need to stay in a physical form or have a place to stay or sleep, he stays in the physical body with Mairon, built a fortress on the side of an ice-covered mountain to keep Mairon warm and sleep with him as Mairon’s fea repairs itself.

A trait that Mairon has from HAL is the ability to do sensory perception in a vast area. So he’s also the first to know about space probe coming in and blowing it out of the sky every time.

It takes a while before Mairon fully recovers and realizes that despite the idyllic lives they have in Europa, they are both somewhat of a prisoner because they’re bound to Zagadka and are put on Europa to serve a purpose -- protecting the living creatures of the influence of other worlds. Although Melkor agrees to the duty, he doesn’t always agree with how certain things are executed. Jupiter, for example, was turned into a sun at the expense of any creature that was inside of it. And that decision pissed Melkor off even though he, chained to the Zagadka, couldn’t do anything about it.

The resurrection of Melkor (in a sense) has been Eru’s intention carried out by Manwe and Mandos, Manwe aren’t necessary at ease with it -- not because of Melkor coming back necessarily but because he no longer knows what Eru might be planning after Arda was left to run by itself.

Manwe also knows the extent of the power of the monoliths, which are actually under Eru’s complete control. He fears it and what could happen to Melkor if he rebels again.

To be honest, that’s as far as I got, because I know Melkor will rebel again but I’m not sure how to tie that Dagor Dagorath and 3001: Odyssey Four. And that was essentially why the story never got finished.