#how am i not even in this fandom but getting into discourse

[kathleenkatmary]

I really think it depends on the situation. If there's already a conversation happening where people are disagreeing with each other and they're doing it respectfully, then yeah, I think it's okay to jump on in. If it's not being done respectfully then it's probably best to just not engage at all. And of course, if the OP has asked for opinions, or you know them to be someone who welcomes different opinion and enjoys engaging in discussion, that's fine.

But if none of those things are true... well, I think it still depends. If it's a pretty common opinion within fandom, I don't think there's anything wrong with going to your own blog and talking about what you think. But if it's one that's not particularly common where it would be pretty obvious who you were responding to, then it's probably best to just leave it alone. Unless their take is like, horribly offensive in a way that's bigoted or based in really hateful mindsets or something like that.

I do think, though, that if someone blatantly mistags something (like putting anti-ship posts in a ship's tag, or shippy posts in an anti-ship tag, stuff like that), then that person does kind of lose the right to being treated according to respectful fandom etiquette, and you'd be totally in the right to rip their garbage takes to shreds.

As far as whether to to use replies or reblogs... I have no idea. I've never really found there to be too much difference when it comes to this kind of thing. Replies are good for when you want to respond to something but you don't want the whole post blasted out for all of your followers. So I suppose if your mindset is something along the lines of "I want to respond but I don't want a bunch of other people on my side of the fandom seeing it so that it won't result in a dogpile". But I feel like if that's the thought process behind it then it probably is just best to not respond at all.

EDIT: I also think that it's really important to pay attention to how an OP has tagged something. If someone has been careful to tag things in a way that it was clearly only meant to be seen and engaged with by certain parts of the fandom, then I do think it's pretty shitty to respond to it. While I am generally of the mindset that if someone is putting something on social media they're putting it on a public forum and they shouldn't get upset if people reply in disagreement, I also think the whole point of careful tagging like that is to make it less public, and that should be respected. I do feel like it's worth taking the few extra seconds to go back to the original post to see how it's tagged before responding.

And in general I just have very little respect for the "well people are too sensitive these days and if they can't handle a little disagreement on an opinion they post then they're just too sensitive and trying to isolate themselves from any disagreement and that's just bad etc etc." Because we have no idea what's going on in anyone else's lives. What they do and how they act on tumblr is just a small part of who most people here are, and there's just no way to look at how they act on tumblr or engage with fandom and know anywhere close to enough about them to make those kinds of judgement. For all we know, that person might deal with disagreements and different opinions all day with grace and respect, and they like their fandom hobby to be the one place where they don't have to deal with that. There are all kinds of reasons that a person might not want to engage with different opinions when it comes to fandom, and in most cases you're probably never going to know enough about that person to know why, or to make some kind of "well they just can't handle anyone disagreeing with them so they shouldn't be posting online" assessment.

So many people act like this whole "people just can't handle others disagreeing with them" idea is like, THE big problem of fandom, or even just online discourse, but I think the biggest problem is how little respect people are willing to extend to others. People will come up with so many excuses to just not have to treat someone else with even just a little bit of respect, and to frame themselves as still being in the right.

i actually need to know people's thoughts on this because at least in my experience the answer to this has drastically changed since i was on tumblr in the 2010s and its driving me fucking insane

*im talking about fandom takes specifically. not someone being horribly evil about a real-life issue or or blatantly factually incorrect. literally just harmless fandom disagreements or differing interpretations of a text/character/etc.

[docsbestkissedoperative]

i love seeing posts about fandom discourse i've never heard about ever. like what do you mean.....

[metalcorebarbie]

i have come to the realisation that quite often when i have a hard time understanding some fandom takes and headcanons about characters it’s because i have a different way of approaching fictional characters and stories. i’m mostly interested in specific characters because they are like my barbie dolls that i want to put in delicious situations and watch them struggle through those situations… like sometimes it’s fun to be like ”he’s just like me fr” but most of the time? i don’t need to see all of my personality traits and struggles and traumas reflected in my fave characters. if i did i would probably read some self insert fanfiction. and to some extent? i get this need to do this but there comes a point where people are literally just forcing all of their personality traits to a character and at that point it just feels like actively misinterpreting the text and i will just end up finding it kind of baffling and little bit annoying tbh.

[bonetrousledbones]

is it bad that i have been getting a little increasingly smug lately that i was right on the money in predicting 3 years ago that the next deltarune chapters would come out in 2025

[witching-by-the-willow]

at this point I'm starting to feel like I could graduate, get into residency, complete a superspecialisation program and have a whole ass career by the time Sarah Janet announces ACOTAR 5

[viridian-house]

Your prose is so unique and I just really want to know if there are any pairings you plan/want to ever write but have a hard time with (outside the naruto fandom as well)

🥺😭💕💕💕 thank you so much, you're always so kind!!

there's a ton of stuff I have ideas for (varying degrees of vague to decently thought-out plots). I've even written out decent chunks of a few, but am not happy with for reasons

ichigo/rukia: watched the first arc of bleach with my wife during initial quarantine and thought these 2 were so aesthetically complementary and CUTE with each other?? not confident writing them just because idk the source well enough (I know the canonical endgame couples though 🥲)

bakugo/uraraka: I can't nail bakugo's attitude, and my uraraka comes out bossy & outspoken. I have an easier time throwing eijirou in the mix and bc he suits them both very well (they're such a lil ot3 for me!!)

matrix/andraia: ummm kind of a deep cut with this one, no clue if any of my readers even know what they're from. a canonical power couple (and my pansexual awakening shhh) who honestly get done justice by the source, how can I compete with the hottest woman I've ever seen calling her absolutely jacked, emotionally stunted bf "lover" and him killing the big bad with HER WEAPON??? *chefs kiss*

ryoko/ayeka: another semi deep cut. I love the idea of them together but can never write enemies/rivals to lovers with any believability. had a dream once where ryoko was carrying ayeka bridal style.....they might be Fanart Only territory for me

ino/sakura: although I'm writing about them in one fic (and have a separate [smutty] one cooking), these 2 are hard for me. idk if you guys have seen that post that's like "came back from the codependent homoerotic friendship wrong" but that was a Real Thing I lived through lmao I didn't even ship inosaku until years after we'd stopped talking 😩

leon/ashley: they are simply Too Sexy for me to even think about attempting. I'll read other fics of them and have to put my phone down to take regular breaks like I'm doing manual labor they make me INSANE. but maybe someday I'll get there (I'm working on one that's just titled "sin" in my docs HELLO)

[littleapocalypsekitten]

So, I full-out re-read one of my old Fire Emblem fanfictions last night after running into someone here on tumblr who said they'd loved that specific old fic. @litlunacy Said same fic is on Ao3. I re-read reviews on both sites. (ff was 2 idiots, Ao3 gave me actual smart reviews). And...I sort of realized something about me and media in general... (Getting long, so read-cut).

One of the reviews there (Ao3) I'd forgotten about got my attention, a guest review by someone I'm sure I actually know, by the style of the review, they are definitely someone who flagged me down on tumblr and who became a mutual and who has PM-chatted with me. They're pretty interesting to talk to. Fire Emblem (all games) is apparently a special interest / core fandom of theirs and they've told me a lot about the lore across the franchise and the mechanics I didn't know. Appreciated, even as I've told them that I've only played a few of the games, and am really only fandom-focused on Awakening. (Fates failed to enchant me. Haven't played enough Three Houses yet. Nada on older games yet). In other words, I treat/have treated my Fire Emblem: Awakening fandom the same way as I treat my Elder Scrolls fandom (I've only played Skyrim). Anything I do creative fanwise will be centered "pretty much on the characters and setting of that game ONLY despite there being a bunch of lore." This is very different from when I do Legend of Zelda fandom work, since I've been a player of that series since I was a pup. Or with Trigun, oh, GOD, Trigun! (Two different animes for that one so far and the core-manga). Trigun owns my soul and if @litlunacy - who loves them some Libra from FE: wants more in the ways of gentle but fighting-capable traumatized blond men, may I offer you a Vash the Stampede in this trying time? Or, if traumatized priests in general are more your thing, may I offer you a Nicholas D. Wolfwood? Anyway, Guest Reviewer talked about the original Japanese iteration of Awakening and how there was transphobia in the story / Chrom being a jerk that was cut out of the English / American localization in a big way (and guessing who they are, they've talked with me a LOT about this). Libra was not trans in my fic, but faces similar social difficulties for reasons obvious to the character. I've kind of realized "I do not care as it is not relative to what I am doing" - in the way of "I go by the localization." If the English-language version (cleaned up of some of the original problematic stuff) is what I am "using" as my fan-base, THAT is the thing I am enjoying. I will readily consider the original a different story and ignore it! It's like, "maybe the original was problematic, but the thing localizers made of it is not or less so" so I'm enjoying the story that I know. (This is very different to how I approach Trigun, for instance, in which I MUST know all lore and translations back, forth and sideways, but that's only because it's my soul-core fandom). Fire Emblem? Less so. I love Awakening's characters, but I choose to love their English-language versions. If Chrom is a better man in English, so be it! It's like... I don't know, how "Samurai Pizza Cats" purposefully went off the rails in English localization and is, quite deliberately, a different show than the Japanese original (and the original creators freaking LOVE it)!

[doodlingwren]

It's again that time of the week where I have to go and report the spam and/or porn bots from the tags I follow because every time I see one of their posts on my dashboard I die inside a little bit

[moe-broey]

My therapist hasn't killed me yet 👍

[oceanwithouthermoon]

the realization that tumblr does not work like twitter and i cant just vague post about random discourse or arguments otherwise people will wrongfully assume its about them has flipped my whole life upside down

[sandinmybed]

I get that people are upset but "recast will byers! from now on I'm drawing him like THIS instead!" and he looks exactly the same but with a smaller nose? that's not helpful and tbh it's just antisemitic. did we not agree like less than a year ago that removing actor's ethnic features in fanart is racist? at best this is performative and at worst it is racism

[oaxleaf]

I've always had a weird feeling about how the fandom tends to antagonize Basira in particular and I think I know why 👀. It's also the same reason why the listeners reinterpret Annabelle as the nefarious agent behind the events of Jon's life and not The Web.

the thing is that they both do have genuine flaws and faults. basira in particular deserves a lot of criticism for her actions. it's just that people tend to forget that this is part of what makes them good characters. and although i've seen a lot of love from the fandom towards them, it's also no coincidence that the two biggest canonical woc are the one who also have their actions misunderstood the most and whom the fandom tends to give much less grace or attention to the nuance of those actions. and honestly, i barely find anything annabelle did as particularly morally compromising. she was an agent of the web sure, but that's precisely what she was - an agent. i seriously doubt she had a large part in creating those plans or was even aware of the full scope of them all throughout

it's a pattern i'm so sick of seeing in fandom. i think the sentiments have cooled off a bit since i joined the fandom, or perhaps i've just curated it really well (i try to avoid discourse, because i find pretty much all of it to not be very constructive), but it's still something you'll find in pretty much every fandom you join. poc characters' actions and personalities often get deeply misunderstood, and female characters are villified or looked at far more harsher than their male counterparts. and if we're talking about women of colour? yeah, there's always a good chunk of people that refuse to engage with the canonical characters

[mikittalabs]

not me deciding not to reblog something cuz i made a passing remark related to fandom discourse in the tags. i like hearing about the discourse, i don't like commenting on it. getting into arguments online sounds exhausting

[ryin-silverfish]

One nerd's musing about Chinese religion and "respect"

-I try to stay away from fandom discourse, but, much like how you can smell the stench from a dumpster fire without walking into said dumpster fire, I've noticed something that seemed to come up a lot in western JTTW + adjacent fandoms: "respect Chinese religion".

-Usually as a reason for why you shouldn't ship a character, because of fucking course it's shipping discourse too.

-And my first reaction is "Man, you are taking Chinese religion too darn seriously, more than people who are born and raised in China."

-My second reaction is "I mean, most of us are atheist/agnostic by default anyways, with a good number of what I'd call 'atheist/agnostics with superstitions': people who said they were not religious, yet believed in Fengshui or divinations and burnt incense at temples for good luck."

-My third reaction: "But why do I get the feeling that when you mention 'Respect', you are thinking about something completely different?"

-Then I reread an essay from Anthony C. Yu, "Religion and Literature in China: The "Obscure Way" of Journey to the West", and the metaphorical lightbulb just lit up over my head.

(Everything below applies more to Daoism + associated folk religions, but by the time most classic Chinese vernacular novels were written, the blending of the three religions had become well and truly mainstream.)

(The conception of gods differs from dynasty to dynasty. What I'm describing here is mostly based on Ming and Qing ones; if you went back to Han or pre-Qin times, most of these would not apply.)

(I am one of the "atheist/agnostic by default" people. I just have an interest in this kind of stuff. I am also just one Chinese person, and an actual Daoist/Buddhist/Religion Studies researcher would probably have a lot more valuable information and perspective to offer when it comes to contemporary practices and worship. Like any people on the internet: take my words with a grain of salt.)

-Even in the past, when society was far less secularized, Chinese gods are not omniscient, perfect beings whose worship is a solemn, humorless affair. Some's worship are Serious Business, but that has more to do with the sort of gods they are and the patronage they enjoy, not godhood in and of itself.

-And even the ones that you are supposed to "treat seriously" are still very human. To use an analogy I've used plenty of times before: you respect and fear them in the same way you'd respect and fear an emperor's official, or the emperor himself, because if you don't, you are not gonna like the consequences.

-However, unlike Jesus, the emperor & his officials were capable of being temperamental, flawed, or an outright asshole, divine or not. Ideally, they wouldn't be, and if you were one of the "serious" believers——people who actually got an official permit, became ordained clergy, and went to live in a temple, you were unlikely to think of your gods in that manner.

-But it wasn't a complete, utter impossibility. The lower you go in the pantheon, the closer you get to popular religion, the less "serious" the gods and their worship become. By that, I mean general attitude, not sincerity of faith. You still shouldn't be rude to them, but, well, they are more likely to take a joke in stride, or participate in the "vulgar" pleasures of commoners because they weren't as bound to Confucian moral standards or religious disciplines.

-To stretch the same analogy further: you should still respect your village head, they could still give your ass a good spanking for being a disrespectful brat, but you were not obligated to get on your knees and kowtow to them like you would do in front of a provincial magistrate, the emperor's minister, or the emperor himself, nor did they have the power to chop your head off just because you were rude.

-On the other hand, the emperor would never visit a random peasant just to help them fix their broken plow or treat them to a nice meal, but your village head could, and your relationship would probably be warmer and a lot more personal as a result.

-Your respect for them was more likely to stem from the things they actually did for you and the village as a whole, instead of something owed to this distant, powerful authority you might never get to see in your lifetime, but could change its course with a single stroke of a brush.

-Now exchange "village head" for your run-of-the-mill Tudis and Chenghuangs and friendly neighborhood spirits (because yes, people worshipped yaoguais for the exact same reasons), emperor + his officials for the Celestial Bureaucracy, and you'd have a basic idea of how Chinese religions worked on the ground level.

-This is far from absolute: maybe your village head was a spiteful old bastard who loved bullying his juniors, maybe your regional magistrate was an honest, upright man who could enjoy a good drink and a good laugh, maybe the emperor was a lenient one and wouldn't chop your head off for petty offenses. But their general degree of power over you and the closeness of your relationships still apply.

-Complicating the matter further, some folk gods (like Wutong) were worshipped not because they brought blessings, but because they were the divine equivalent of gangsters running a protection racket: you basically bribed them with offerings so they'd leave you alone and not wreck your shit. Famous people who died violently and were posthumously deified often fell into this category——shockingly enough, Guan Yu used to be one such god!

-Yeah, kinda like how your average guy could become an official through the imperial examinations, so could humans become gods through posthumous worship, or cultivate themselves into immortals and Enlightened beings.

-Some immortals aren't qualified for, or interested in a position in the Celestial Bureaucracy——they are the equivalent of your hermits, your cloistered Daoist priests, your common literati who kept trying and failing the exams. But some do get a job offer and gladly take it.

-Anyways, back to my original point: that's why it's so absurd when people pull the "Respect Chinese Religion1!!1!" card and immediately follow up with "Would you do X to Jesus?"

-Um, there are a lot of things you can do with Chinese gods that I'm pretty sure you can't do with Jesus. Like worshipping him side by side with Buddha and Confucius (Lao Tzu). Or inviting him to possess you and drink copious amount of alcohol (Tang-ki mediums in SEA). Or genderbend him into a woman over the course of several centuries because folks just like that version of Jesus better (Guan Yin/Avalokitesvara).

-But most importantly, Chinese religions are kinda a "free market" where you could pick and choose between gods, based on their vicinity to you and how efficient they were at answering prayers. You respect them because they'll help you out, you aren't an asshole and know your manners, and pissing them off is a bad idea in general, not because they are some omnipotent, perfect beings who demand exclusive and total reverence.

-A lot of the worship was also, well, very "practical" and almost transactional in nature: leave offerings to Great Immortal Hu, and he doesn't steal your imperial seal while you aren't looking. Perform the rites right and meditate on a Thunder General's visage, and you can temporarily channel said deity's power. Get this talisman for your kids at Bixia Yuanjun's temple, and they'll be protected from smallpox.

-"Faith alone" or "Scripture alone" is seldom the reason people worship popular deities. Even the obsession with afterlife wasn't about the eternal destination of your soul, and more about reducing the potential duration of the prison sentence for you and your loved ones so you can move on faster and reincarnate into a better life.

-Also, there isn't a single "canon" of scriptures. Many popular gods don't show up in Daoist literature until much later. Daoist scriptures often came up with their own gigantic pantheons, full of gods no one had heard of prior to said book, or enjoyed no worship in temples whatsoever.

-In the same way famous dead people could become gods via worship, famous fictional characters could, too, become gods of folk religion——FSYY's pantheon was very influential on popular worship, but that doesn't mean you should take the novels as actual scriptures.

-Like, God-Demon novels are to orthodox Daoism/Buddhism what the Divine Comedy is to medieval Christian doctrines, except no priests had actually built a Church of Saint Beatrice, while Daoists did put FSYY characters into their temples. By their very nature, the worship that stemmed from these books is not on the same level of "seriousness" as, say, the Tiantai school of Buddhism and their veneration of the Lotus Sutra.

-At the risk of being guilty of the same insertion of Christianity where it doesn't belong: You don't cite Dante's Inferno in a theological debate, nor would any self-respecting pastor preach it to churchgoers on a Sunday.

-Similarly, you don't use JTTW or FSYY as your sole evidence for why something is "disrespectful to Chinese religion/tradition" when many practitioners of said religions won't treat them as anything more than fantasy novels.

-In fact, let's use Tripitaka as an example. The historical Xuanzang was an extraordinarily talented, faithful, and determined monk. In JTTW, he was a caricature of a Confucian scholar in a Buddhist kasaya and served the same narrative function as Princess Peach in a Mario game.

-Does the presence of satire alone make JTTW anti-Buddhist, or its religious allegories less poignant? I'd say no. Should you take it as seriously as actual Buddhist sutras, when the book didn't even take itself 100% seriously? Also no.

-To expand further on the idea of "seriousness": even outside of vernacular novels, practitioners are not beholden to a universal set of strict religious laws and taboos.

-Both Daoism and Buddhism had what we called "cloistered" and "non-cloistered" adherents; only the former needed to follow their religious laws and (usually) took a vow of celibacy.

-Certain paths of Daoist cultivation allow for alcohol and sexual activities (thanks @ruibaozha for the info), and some immortals, like Lv Dongbin, had a well-established "playboy" reputation in folklore.

-Though it was rarer for Buddhism and very misunderstood, esoteric variants of it did utilize sexual imageries and sex. And, again, most of the above would not apply if you weren't among the cloistered and ordained clergy.

-Furthermore, not even the worship of gods is mandatory! You could just be a Daoist who was really into internal alchemy, cultivating your body and mind in order to prolong your lifespan and, ideally, attain immortality.

-This idea of "respect" as…for a lack of better words, No Fun & R18 Stuff Allowed, you must treat all divinity with fearful reverence and put yourself completely at their mercy, is NOT the norm in Chinese religious traditions.

-There are different degrees and types of respect, and not every god is supposed to be treated like the Supreme Heavenly Emperor himself during an imperial ceremony; the gods are capable of cracking a joke, and so are we!

TL;DR: Religions are complicated, and you aren't respecting Chinese religions by acting like a stereotypical Puritan over popular Chinese deities and their fictional portrayals.

[fevers-and-emeto-oh-my]

Throwing my hat in the ring here bc I've honestly weighed in on far more volatile discourse and i also feel like yammering about this.

Coming into 9-1-1, almost everyone I spoke to and everything I saw told me I would NOT like Tommy. He was rude, he was terrible to Buck, he called Buck "Evan," he walked out on a date, he made mean comments, etc.

I did take this with a grain of salt, because I rarely conform to fandom consensus on characters, pairings, plot lines, etc. (Destiel was my NOTP in SPN and I do not like Ada at all in RE, for example). I'm perfectly happy to have opinions that don't line up with everyone else's because I'm here to have fun for myself, not for anyone else. (Putting this under a cut because it got LONGGGG)

Then I get to 7x03 and see Tommy again for the first time since s2. and he is a BLAST. He's grown, he's not posturing or repressing himself. He oozes confidence off the bat and is INCREDIBLY fun (the MOUTH STATIC??? HELLO???). He has this dry wit that I fall in love with immediately ("well, unless you feel like swimming back, that's all we've got." "because we're flying into a hurricane. probably all gonna die anyway.") i am EXCITED. i am also reallyyyy confused, because THIS Tommy would have to do a complete 180 in personality or how he treats Buck for me to suddenly have the vitriol for him that's so common across the fandom.

7x04. I am smitten with how Tommy acts through the tour of Harbor--leaning reallyyyyyy close to Buck, the charming teasing lilt to his voice, his little smile. Eddie shows up and Eddie and Tommy become besties. I love this too--they would absolutely get along like a house on fire, and there's INSANE chemistry between Tommy and Eddie immediately. I don't personally like them taking a chopper to Vegas (my Eddie would never set foot in a helicopter willingly unless it was for someone he loved, like Bobby and Athena the episode prior) BUT they 110% fucked on that trip and I will not hear any arguments otherwise.

We're skipping over the buddie of it all bc this post is about Tommy. The kiss???? The fingers under Buck's chin???? (THANKS LOU) The SOFT look on his face the entire time???? I'm immediately sold. Bucktommy is immediately a new fave and I'm excited to see if I like Tommy more than or just as much as I liked Taylor.

7x05! The date. AKA instant desire to douse myself in bleach from second-hand embarrassment. I know this is where a lot of people soured on Tommy, but when I reached the end of the episode I honestly couldn't understand WHY it soured people so intensely and immediately. That date was a DISASTER for multiple reasons, but I don't think Tommy was WRONG for leaving. Buck was nervous the entire way through (implied by Tommy's line assuring him nobody was looking at them) and it's his first date with a guy, so who can blame him? His line about being an ally was uh. Yikes. But they had already eaten and were getting the check, so obviously dinner as a whole went pretty well considering the scene opens with them both content and joking around a little bit. Obviously Buck couldn't have foreseen Eddie showing up. And I don't BLAME Buck for losing his head and overcompensating--he's not even out to Eddie yet, not even sure what his sexuality means for him himself yet, it's totally in character for him to panic and stick his foot in his mouth.

I don't blame Buck, really, I have empathy for him. BUT I also don't blame Tommy. Tommy is comfortably out, we don't know what his last relationship was like, and no matter how much he UNDERSTANDS what Buck did, it still had to hurt to be there and basically be outright friendzoned in an effort to be hidden. I don't care how you spin it, the situation absolutely sucked for both of them. People get really really mad about the closet comment, and it's not a moment I particularly enjoy from Tommy, but I understand why he said it. That kind of dry poking is in character, and I truly don't think he MEANS to OUT Buck, I think he's just hurt and lashing out a little bit (which, for what it's worth, we have seen EVERY character lash out WORSE than that). If I was Tommy, I would have left after dinner instead of going to the movies too.

People get really mad about Tommy leaving Buck alone on the street. When I first heard that he did that and how MAD people were about it, I was picturing Tommy pulling over in the middle of nowhere somewhere and leaving Buck stranded. That would have also made ME mad, so it was what made sense to me as what had to have happened.

And then.....Tommy just.....got his own Uber? And left Buck on the well-lit, populated street literally in front of the doors to the restaurant? After being really honest with Buck that he likes him, but he's not sure Buck's ready to be out with a guy yet. People also didn't like that but I thought it was fair? It wasn't Tommy telling Buck Buck's feelings. It came across more to me as Tommy looking out for Buck and speaking from a place of experience as a gay man much further along into his own journey. He doesn't say it but from what he said about being under Gerrard and coming out when he went to Harbor, I'm sure TOMMY had his own growing pains just like that.

Honestly, I think a lot of the anger about leaving Buck on the street comes from the fanbase having a lot of women. If Buck was a woman and Tommy left him there, then yes, I would not trust Tommy as a love interest at all because it would mean he wasn't at all concerned for fem!Buck's safety. But if I take me being a woman out of how I look at it, it's not really an issue? Buck is a cis white male, he's broad, he's 6'2". It's not impossible for him to get attacked, of course, but it's significantly less likely, and he's standing on the sidewalk directly in front of the restaurant doors. Buck's also a perfectly capable adult; it was their first date. Tommy had truthfully no obligation to take care of Buck, and Buck has a phone and his own agency. He can get himself his own Uber.

At this point, I'm more intrigued than anything by fandom's gung-ho hatred of him, because Tommy hasn't done anything black-and-white undeniably egregious. I watch the rest of season 7 and I love him the whole time. He genuinely cares for Buck and while I had anticipated hating that he called Buck "Evan," I actually loved it. Lou gave it such an affectionate inflection that it's very endearing, and his use of "Evan" feels natural and sweet, not the forced-intimacy awkward that I was expecting considering that's how it felt with Ana calling Eddie "Edmundo."

I get to 7x09/7x10. People don't like the "enjoy it while it lasts" comment at the awards ceremony. I get to the dinner scene where they talk about fathers and the 118 as a family and Tommy says "god, I hope so" to the idea of Buck having daddy issues. Both of these things have been pointed out to me as horrible moments.

Neither line makes me hate Tommy. The daddy issues one I find exceptionally fun. At this point, and as I watch s8, I am more or less convinced that fandom hates Tommy for three different reasons: he's not Eddie, they don't understand his sense of humor, and they don't trust Buck to look out for himself.

I will be the first to say i ADORE buddie. AND bucktommy. And buddietommy is the FIRST OT3 that has INSANE chemistry and subtextual backing in canon. Every scene where the three of them are together, the three-way chemistry is off the charts and they fall naturally into what really feels like a poly dynamic, PARTICULARLY in Masks where they're two boyfriends tag-teaming teasing and taking care of their third boyfriend, Buck.

But like I said, I think fandom's hatred of Tommy comes from the fact that he's NOT Eddie. Buck is bi in canon, hooray! Except....they give him a boyfriend that's not Eddie, disappointing buddie shippers. Buck has romantic scenes with someone that's not Eddie. Buck kisses someone that's not Eddie. Etc. To me, people hate Tommy so much the exact same that they hate Taylor and Ana (every love interest tbh, but Taylor, Ana, and Tommy get the most hate and bashing), because none of them are EDDIE.

I also think the fandom doesn't understand Tommy's sense of humor or how he shows affection. It's fanon that Tommy is Italian. I totally adopt that headcanon, because in MY Italian-American family (AND on my Irish/Scottish/French-Canadian/Portuguese family on my mom's side) do you know how we show love? We break each other's balls. We tease the shit out of each other. I tell my dad he's so full of shit his eyes are brown. There's a written list on the inside of the cabinet of the words I have pronounced horrifically wrong. My dad's cousins have the SAME dry, deadpan delivery that Tommy does.

My friends and I ALSO have this kind of humor. It's ALSO how we show love to one another. I have never read a single line of Tommy's as being malicious or rude or as him not liking Buck, because to me it's CLEAR that he's joking and being affectionate. (And also, the fandom puts words in his mouth....Tommy did NOT call Buck gross in Masks. Buck SAID he knew Tommy THOUGHT he was gross, and Tommy DENIED that and tried to explain himself. Also Buck's line "my own boyfriend won't even kiss me" is followed immediately by Tommy saying "that's not true.")

The dinner scene after Bobby's heart attack made sense to me. Tommy gave Buck space to say how he felt (and i think the "your dad is alive" line came more from a place of Tommy NOT having a parental figure in a captain. I don't think that was meant to be dismissive, I think that was a misunderstanding) and honestly, if MY boyfriend made a joke about daddy issues during that conversation I would have loved it. Sometimes humor is the best medicine.

That also rolls into my last point--people don't trust Buck to look out for himself. The fandom loves Buck, for good reason, but they also baby him. Buck is a grown man. Yes, he has abandonment issues and PTSD. He probably has anxiety and he definitely has ADHD. But...none of those things mean he can't speak up when people do things he doesn't like? People get so annoyed with the daddy issues line and with Tommy telling Buck to put the screen away like it's dismissive or infantilizing.

First of all, I have (undiagnosed) ADHD. Sometimes having someone outright tell you "okay that's enough of that, go [do a task or transition to something else]" is HELPFUL. Tommy was literally sleeping on that stupid most-uncomfortable-looking couch just to be downstairs with Buck, he clearly cares about him. When you care about people, sometimes it means a little tough love. It wasn't infantilizing when MY irl friends would be like "you've had enough to drink" or "i'm making you dinner." Sometimes we ALL need some of that decision-making taken away from us. And also? Buck doesn't listen to Tommy. In the morning they talk about Buck staying up too late. It's not like Tommy got mad and took the laptop and FORCED Buck to bed.

Second of all, with the daddy issues joke. I love Buck. I do. He's one of my favorites. And yes, Buck can successfully hide SOME of what he feels. But that man is an open book 90% of the time. His heart is on both sleeves and his pants legs. If you say or do something he doesn't like, he's NOT shy about showing it (which we just had confirmed AGAIN in 8x09). If the daddy issues joke BOTHERED BUCK, his face would have fallen. He would have gone quiet. He would have left the table. Even if he didn't say it to Tommy in the moment, there would have been some indication that HE PERSONALLY had an issue with what was said. Instead he's giving Tommy a little smirk and intense heart eyes the whole time.

Not to mention, BUCK BRINGS UP DADDY ISSUES. He STARTS IT by saying "So maybe we both have daddy issues," while one of his eyebrows quirks and he gives this little almost shit-eating grin. If you're going to be MAD at the daddy issues joke, you should be mad at BUCK if you're gonna be mad at anyone, because he STARTED IT.

I won't get into how I feel about the breakup bc it's not relevant to this post really, but yea. I personally love Tommy, Bucktommy was Buck's strongest relationship imo (only a touch stronger than Bucktaylor), and my personal belief is that Tommy gets far more hatred than he deserves. (Talking about his growth from the Begins episodes is also a different post, but he grows DURING those episodes and also is clearly a better person from what we see in s7/8)

[hell-fm]

As someone who is NOT touch-averse and moreso sex-favorable or sex-neutral (depending on my hormone level) and still discovering themselves when it comes to what my needs and wants in life are even though I am in my mid30s, I find The Ace Discourse around Alastor very stressful and unhelpful.

How both ends of this discourse talk about it and choose to portray Alastor feels very black and white to me, when that doesn’t reflect my experiences of romance and sex at all. And by this I don’t mean that theres a valid way of doing it and a nonvalid way of doing it. I think it’s more about how I would love people to understand relationships the way I see them and to explore the literal grey areas there.

I guess at some point we as a community need to spell the problems out, so I’ll try..,,

I think the biggest issue here mostly is that plenty of ppl who are ace and even sex-repulsed irl feel attraction to fictional characters and in many such cases that character is Alastor, they want to see him fuck or get fucked. So they like sexual and romantic content with him and try to write him to be demiromantic or sex-favorable or both or whatever else… and that is very valid and fair, because that does reflect the reality of many aroace people. Sometimes people completely erase the nuances there for the sake of smut and romance and I do not particularly like that, but I also lowkey just don’t care? My personal mantra after many years of being a messy fandom bitch is don’t like don’t read. People who like sexual and romantic content with Alastor often say they experience harassment from others who are lowkey just homophobic but use the fact that Alastor is ace as a reason to verbally attack them or threaten to dox them. The claim here is that those people are always allos, which I don’t think is necessarily true. However, I definitely have seen allos do this.

Other aces who are sex-repulsed even in fiction see Alastor as sex-repulsed and romance-repulsed ( I don’t even think theyre wrong at all, that is a very accurate observation from what you see in canon) and get annoyed because so much content with Alastor doesn’t reflect that at all. And that is also a very valid thing to be upset about! It is very unfortunate that Alastor is one of the few ace characters that fans get at all and he happens to be the most shipped guy. I understand why that is annoying, upsetting and feels unfair. I just also think that to claim the problem are allos and this is how allos mistreat ace representation not only erases aroace ppl who are Alastor shippers, but also conflates fanmade, transgressive content with the show. I just don’t think it’s healthy to get mad at people for liking the blorbo differently, especially considering that the ace spectrum is actually fairly wide and thus includes many, many different forms of handling sex and relationships and there simply isn’t just one way to represent it.

The issue here is getting into The Discourse about it, because it wont lead anywhere. Hence why people usually recommend that everyone stays in their lane, which I think is the startest thing you can do. At the end of the day it often seems like semantics to me anyways. One group claims *they said drawing Alastor smut is wrong because he is ace, but ace people can fuck!!!* and the other group claims *Claiming that it’s wrong to say this character is sex-repulsed because some ace people fuck is stupid!!!* and I think both are right. I just think you need to agree to disagree on this one, my dudes. Theres literally no way around it.

However, interestingly what oftentimes falls flat here is the most underrepresented form of aroace realities in fandom, which is the *somewhere in between*. The Alastor that I rarely see in fanfics or fanart, the one who fucks not for sexual pleasure, but to gain something. Or to be entertained. Or out of a masochistic of even sadistic desire. Or to form bonds, to maintain a relationship.

Point 1: sex-favorable doesn’t necessarily mean demisexual. And this is where it gets tricky.

I feel like many aces who maybe are younger, or have always been aware of being ace and/or who grew up with the identity labels maybe can’t imagine sex to be anything but something you consent to with great enthusiasm and desire for sexual pleasure. Many people who are so indifferent to sex or even repulsed by it consider this the only valid form of consent, because that is the line they would never cross. The problem just is that this is not what it’s like for many sex-favorable aces.

Point 2: Sexual attraction is not the same as a libido. You can be ace and not feel sexual attraction, but have a functioning libido

The reason why Heat/Rut works so well as a trope for aces who ship Alastor is because sometimes that is what it feels like for us. Hormonal fluctuations causing your body to seek out sexual stimulation while you personally really wouldnt know who to go to for it, because arousal is just a bodily reaction to you, not something that you want to happen. This might be confusing for many allos, because they also have a concept of difference between attraction and libido, but it’s important to point out that aces experience NO attraction. Or in the case of demisexuals, just very little attraction. Many aces experience attraction to concepts or if they are sexually experienced, they might have physical Pavlovian responses. But there’s no day to day attraction to people in the same way allos experience it.

Point 3: sex-neutrality and the problem if seeing sex as either inherently positive or inherently negative

Something I find myself relating to the most is a very neutral relationship to sex and I feel like that it something I never be talked about online. Not in fandom, not on Instagram. It feels like being a unicorn because if you are not either avoiding sex like the plague or enthusiastically consenting, you are not able to consent to sex somehow.

Idk if this has to do with people either never having had sex, or only having bad experiences or being a young allo and not understanding that sex is more than just plap plap plap uhn uhn SPLOURCH, but there’s a lot of reasons to have sex with someone CONSENSUALLY without it being about sexual pleasure. In my personal experience, I found the physical connection during sex very unique and powerful, it feels like a very neutral way of connecting to someone. It is very hard to explain with words, but I think it’s mostly about trust building and getting to know your partner physically in the most intimate way possible. Especially aces who arent aro often say this is why they have sex. It’s not something they need, but it’s about counting freckles, smiling at each other and feeling skin and just intimacy in general.

Having peaked into a few texts about psychoanalysis makes you realize that both allos and aces have sex for many reasons other than just sexual attraction.

In less romantic cases, ppl have sex because they enjoy the power dynamic, sometimes it’s to get your mind off of other things or because it’s a means to an end. Maybe even because you enjoy the vulnerability. Some people have sex because they think it’s just what you do, even if you technically don’t have to do it. And none of these scenarios happen nonconsensually to these people, because they just don’t think much of it and sex isn’t a big deal to them. That is the Definition of being sex-neutral. It’s also why some sex workers are ace and only find this out about themselves when they stop sex work and realize they don’t really miss having sex at all, but also don’t feel particularly bad about having done it.

Point 4: Aces love kink

I could write an entire essay about being ace and BDSM, this is still one of these topics where theres so much ressources online and people still get surprised when you tell them about it, but I already spend a lot of time on this post and would like to either never talk about this or maybe make a big post sometime in the future when people least expect it.

But just so you know: BDSM isn’t about sex, sex can play a role in it and does so for many people, but especially no-touch domsub, bondage, sadism and masochism can be activities that happen without sex being ever a part of it. Not even an afterthought.

I have read quite a few fanfics where any of these 4 points were explored with Alastor and I think it would do good for people to consider these options more for cool and interesting dynamics that are more unusual, especially considering the specifically weird flavor of Alastor. But at the end of the day people can write whatever they want and it’s not my business. If this post reaches even just one person and they feel like they gained new insights, that’s a win for me!