#i know i am losing the war on parasociality!

[ugisfeelings]

i love being a fake fan i still haven’t watched s&b but i have seen literally every single cast interview and i think everybody should clap for a little crows spinoff so frederick james carter can stay employed or else ill burn down the basement that they run n*tflix in 🤗

[angstics]

if we are talking about who i think we are re: the microcelebrity thing, i think the way people either loved her and agreed with everything she posted or found her posts weird/distasteful formed some kind of life or death us vs them mentality about following or not following a certain tumblr user. combined with him being the face of the "gender wars" made it feel like people could attack/support him and be attacking/supporting a side in the "gender wars" (calling Any discussion a war is so unimaginably fucking stupid and imo the fact that people called it that actually made everything worse in itself because it absolved them of thinking about why people had differing opinions from them by assigning them a "pro-gender" or "anti-gender" laser tag team color. i swear to god that term is just some kind of double reverse hyper strawman to invoke when losing the idgaf war).

like, search his username on twitter. among other criticism posts there's someone who got suicide baiting anons after posting about her negatively, which obviously has nothing to do with her personally but does speak to the fandom atmosphere at the height of it all. around that same time i saw a recommended post with someone being genuinely cruel making fun of Other Trans People for discomfort with she/her pronouns and etc for gerard

disclaimer i am unlabeled gnc. her posts and all posts of that genre make me extremely uncomfortable, but people can obviously do whatever they want. i'm not trying to "support" one "side" or the other, i'm just trying to share the perspective people got when they didn't follow him or people who reblogged from him, so i hope this is phrased alright!

thank you for this!!! valuable insight phrased well. i failed to consider the nonsense drama that people involved her in, which heightened the parasocial relationships (both negative and positive). forgot about it bc i wasnt part of said drama. i just agreed with some stuff he said and disagreed with other stuff. diff tastes of queer joy. whateva 🤷 i mostly enjoyed her posting, so it’s “funny” to know even those who didnt want to see it had to go thru it. classic celebritydom. my mental health -> pedro pascal fandom

[oliviasmedia201blog]

Post 8 - Identification and Parasocial Relationships With Characters From Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

This is an academic article written by Alice E. Hall, and published in the Psychology of Popular Media Culture journal in 2019. This article includes a study on the movie Star Wars: The Force Awakens, where 113 participants took an online survey. Characters in this film like Chewbacca, Leia and Han Solo are characters that have been in popular culture for over 40 years, so it was a good film to do this study on, especially as this films main characters are new.

This article has heavily inspired my own research especially for the research essay. This article has done what I wanted to do and analysed a movie’s characters and how people engaged with them and how they felt connected, or who they felt most connected to. They focused on the effect of character engagement by using the concepts identification and parasocial relationships (PSR).

This article starts by acknowledging the complexity of audience’s connection with characters, which is why I am interested in this topic. They cite many other researcher’s ideas on the topic and is beneficial to my research to have ideas backed up by other authors.

In this film Rey is a female protagonist and Kylo Ren is a male antagonist who is ‘morally compromised’, this meant the film was good to conduct research on how gender effects the audience’s connection to characters (Hall, A. E., 2019, p. 88 – 89).

Characters that are seen as immoral or villainous are usually harder to identify with and have parasocial relationships, this is usually due to that villains tend to fail or lose in these hero vs villain films and therefore when the antagonist or villain loses there would be less enjoyment because of their loss (Alice, A. E., 2019, p. 91). This is not the case with all films.

The concepts of identification and parasocial relationships were well described and defined in this article. “According to Jonathan Cohen (2001), identification occurs as media is being processed and involves a merging of the perspectives of the audience and the media character or persona. Furthermore, audience members senses of self become muted as they identify with a character and experience the story from the character’s perspective. Parasocial interaction (PSI) was first introduced by Horton and Wohl (1956). PSI and PSRs have usually referred to a sense of having a virtual relationship. Audience members perceive media characters or personas as if they were someone they know, but do not lose awareness of their own identity.” (Hall, A. E., 2019, p. 89). This provided a lot of clarity, and I would like to use these definitions in my own words, while referencing these authors in my research essay. Parasocial interactions usually occur in the moment that the media is being viewed and thought about by the viewer (Hall, A. E., 2019, p. 89).

Characters that the audience are familiar with and have been in past media are more likely to be connected to and have a parasocial relationship with (Hall, A. E., 2019, p. 89).

Stories that present information from a character’s point of view or perspective tend to influence a person’s identification (Chatman, 1990, as cited in Hall, A. E., 2019, p. 89). This is something that Guardians of the Galaxy 3 does with Rocket Racoon. This originally inspired my research as I was so emotionally connected to Rocket in this film and experienced identification.

The article explains the study further in depth, including the measures they took, definitions of key terms like parasocial relationship, identification, fanship, familiarity and enjoyment and appreciation. It also explained the results, where lots of t-tests and ANOVAS were conducted. This shows that the study was thoroughly thought out, and their results are likely to be accurate.

A key finding was that “PSR and identification with favoured characters was stronger when the character and the participant were of the same gender.” (Hall, A. E., 2019, p. 95).

“Some of the findings have the potential to speak to audience’s engagement with characters that are part of other transmedia narratives. They suggest that previous familiarity and engagement with a particular narrative world facilitates PSR with characters featured in those worlds.” (Hall, A. E., 2019, p. 97). In the discussion it mentioned that another outcome of this study was that older characters or more familiar characters had a higher rate of identification and parasocial relationships.

Hall, A. E. (2019). Identification and Parasocial Relationships With Characters From Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 8(1), 88–98. https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000160

[agent-cupcake]

Can I ask your opinion? So, I feel like everyone into 3H is in love with Dimitri, but I can't connect with him. I don't dislike him, but I feel like there isn't much to his personality without all his various mental health issues. It's hard to get a feel on what he's really like, so I end up just seeing him as a walking ball of trauma and not a three-dimensional character. Do you have any thoughts on Dimitri himself and how to separate him as a person from his psychological issues? Thanks!

Hmm, I guess my first thought is that everyone resonates with characters differently and so if you don’t particularly feel connected to him, that’s not wrong. Fictional parasocial relationships are very similar to real-life relationships, so it follows that nobody is going to like every character. I can’t say that a portion of my love for his character doesn’t come from his mental issues because that’s something I personally relate to and feel drawn to in others. That’s just who I am and how I build relationships. There is also something to be said for the unavoidable way mental illness informs a person’s behavior and character, it’s as much an aspect of them as being born with blond hair or losing an eye.

That said, I will do my best to explain why I think Dimitri is wonderful. Not in spite of his mental illness, but because I don’t think that’s all he is.

So, Dimitri is, as he says, a very clumsy person. This unfortunately extends to his social skills. He has a lot of very socially awkward tendencies and a general lack of self-awareness. This contrasts with his innate desire to please people, or at least avoid upsetting anyone. The thing is, Dimitri doesn’t always completely understand what upsets people or how exactly they might feel. His childhood isolation left him rather emotionally unaware and desperate for the acceptance and approval of others. That’s not to say he doesn’t try to understand other people’s feelings, but it’s not an intuitive process. He has a habit of saying kind of dumb or uncomfortable things out of nowhere, which is most likely his real feelings coming out in rather inept ways. He means well, but he’s just so dang clumsy.

The desperation to be included and validated I mentioned, I think, can be seen in the way he tries so hard to make the other Blue Lions see him as a peer and equal all the while keeping himself rather closed off from them. Dimitri approaches conversations as a means of focusing on the other person, trying to make an appeal to them rather than as an interaction where both parties could be seen as vulnerable. Of course, just like most other socially awkward introverts, he opens up when he feels closer to the person, but that takes a while. Gotta unlock the supports, you know? Although it’s not necessarily obvious, his incredibly stiff behavior (especially pre-timeskip) and the way he switches between overly formal and awkwardly friendly in his interactions with people as he tries to figure out how to socially and emotionally navigate relationships really gives me the impression of someone trying desperately to fit in without even the faintest clue of how to actually manage that. He also does his best to avoid social situations, which, mood. Basically, Dimitri’s a big dumb massive introvert trying to act like he’s not.

FURTHERMORE, he is a dork. An absolute goof of a person. Dimitri canonically thinks so-bad-its-good puns and jokes are hilarious. His own style of telling jokes is saying things that may or may not have contextual humor in a normal voice and then claiming after the fact that he intended it as such. Now, his supports with Alois are absolute factual proof of the so-bad-its-good humor, but might I also direct your attention to the scene before the battle against Miklan in Conand Tower (the event name is “Tower in a Storm (Blue Lions)”). Basically, Gilbert is explaining the history behind Conand Tower and Dimitri says, in an incredibly earnest voice, “You’re very well informed, Gilbert. Please, tell us more.” This is a joke. Supposed to be, at least. The delivery is somewhat emphasized, but not in a recognizably sarcastic way. Gilbert, who knew Dimitri very well when he was young, realizes it’s a joke after a second. But there are other things Dimitri says that I believe are his bad “jokes” and since nobody knows him well enough to tell, they don’t call him on it. There’s no proof, but his line in the Lord’s intro where he says, “And here I thought you were acting as a decoy for the sake of us all.” to Claude has to be an attempt at sarcasm. Dimitri is oblivious, but not stupid. In his Goddess Tower conversation with Byleth, when discussing the topic of wishes, he says, “Perhaps it would make more sense for me to wish that we’ll be together forever. What do you think?” In a completely normal voice. Following are two speech bubbles of “...” before he laughs and proclaims that it’s just a joke and that he’s getting better at telling them. Now, this is a two-parter because I see this as both his horribly awkward tendency to say things he feels without thinking too hard beforehand as well as his silly deadpan style of “jokes”. Granted, he does apologize. Dimitri’s got socially awkward zoomer humor. It’s endearing.

Here is a video of Dimitri hitting on Byleth pre-timeskip. I’m not sure how far it goes to endear someone to him, but the mostly awkward and occasionally smooth attempts of Dimitri’s flirtations are absolutely a highlight of his character. 

Now, this isn’t quite as cute as all that, but I think character arc and change do a lot for making a character feel more three-dimensional. Dimitri is hypocritically selfish. Although those are both negative terms, I don’t necessarily mean them as such, at least not in their totality. Both are things to overcome, which he does. And that’s why I feel like they’re a valid point of discussion when trying to explain the allure of his character.

The hypocritical part comes from the way he easily allows and forgives the flaws of others while constantly castigating himself for the same reasons. He says things that show an absurd amount of a lack of self-awareness. For example, he tells Edelgard, “Hm. You will prove a lacking ruler yourself if you look for deceit behind every word and fail to trust those whom you rely on.” All the while straight-up lying to and emotionally avoiding his friends. Dimitri also tells Marianne, when she is punishing herself for putting other people at risk, “What matters is that they came back safely in the end. You shouldn’t blame yourself for that.” Really, his C and B with Marianne is an exercise in hypocrisy. The standards Dimitri has for himself are incredibly, unattainably high. He’s setting himself up for failure in that way and, to an extent, knows what he’s doing because he knows that those same standards are too much for his friends and allies to meet. He wishes to take on everything himself. But, what I find so beautiful about this, is that Dimitri eventually realizes that he can’t do that. He is not strong enough to take on the weight of the world on himself, he comes to understand that it’s something he must allow himself to share with the people who care about him. He comes to realize that, as difficult as it is to accept, he is a weak person. Despite all of his introversion and inability to emotionally open up, he figures out that having a support system and allowing yourself to rely on people who love you is a necessity. Personally, I think this message is incredibly important in real life. Watching Dimitri come to that conclusion and argue it’s importance really rounded out his arc and journey as a person. Now, the relatability of this conclusion will differ, but I don’t think it has to do with his mental illness as much as it is a fundamental aspect of growth.

The selfishness is basically outlined above. Dimitri is selfish about his pain and secrets, purposefully and selfishly driving people away because he wants to keep the burden to himself. His vice is guilt and he indulges in the pain of it like an addiction. Hatred, too, is a drug. He thinks he needs it to keep going, even though all it does is bring agony to himself and others around him. Learning to accept and let go of these feelings is, again, something I think is important and a character arc that I really love, especially when you see him suffer as much as he does. Now, the execution of this is lacking, I admit. But that’s an issue for another time I think.

I am not quite sure if I did much to change your opinion, but this is all I can think of for now. There is probably a lot more than I’ve left out because I think about Dimitri far too much to be healthy. So, I’ll leave you off with some honorable mention aspects of his character that I think are super fun:

Pre-timeskip Dimitri has his hair tucked behind his ear. He can lift a wagon by himself. In the DLC, when faced with an impossible-to-open gate, it was not muscle man Balthus who said he couldn’t open it, but twinkish teen Dimitri. He’s not really smooth with one-liners. Like, at all. Notably, when attacking Manuela post-timeskip, he says, “Perhaps I should have appeared before you holding a bouquet of flowers, rather than the weapon that will end your life.” Adding to this, at one point, Dimitri fucked up a pick-up line so badly the girl came after him. Areadbhar has a mitten on it in the Azure Moon final picture. He breaks everything. His Crest activation ability even supports this, using twice the durability of any given Combat Art. One of his post-timeskip counselor messages is, “I lived in the slums for a long time, and I saw how the people there suffered from poverty and the ravages of war. There must be something I can do to save them." His room in the academy is right next to Sylvain’s, meaning that for almost an entire year Dimitri was a single wall away from hearing whatever nonsense Sylvain was getting up to. Dimitri is the only Lord that takes the throne and doesn’t abandon his people in some form or another.

And, finally, he is pretty sexy. And that’s all that really matters, isn’t it?

[jcmorrigan]

Do you support anti-harassment and pro-shipping?

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: This is an issue I’ve been monitoring and grappling with for a long time, and I feel like while my core philosophy has been the same for a while now, the nuances I’ve held shift every so often. I don’t identify as an anti. I just don’t. I think shipping things - be it incest, adult/minor, or one of the many flavors of abusive - is an ENTIRELY separate issue from wanting to do that IRL. I think sometimes people just want to write taboo topics for various reasons. Because the topics themselves are taboo and that’s interesting, because they offer methods of coping, even because some people are kinda into projecting upon the person on the losing end of the power dynamic and being dominated and kicked around, since that’s not something you should really chase in real life (unless it’s during a roleplay with a network of safewords).

There are many ships I think are gross, but I don’t want people to stop shipping them because I don’t like them. I don’t like ships that involve anyone under 13 with anyone over 18. I don’t like ships that involve anyone under 18 with anyone over 30. (Aging up is a whole different matter; if you write the younger character older and legitimately have them behave the way you think they would as an adult, it’s all good.) I REALLY don’t like ships where a character is either confirmed homosexual or only shown onscreen to be attracted to the same gender in a big-deal reveal sort of way (if the character has crushes on many genders or the creator uses Word of God to say they’re bi/pan, it’s fine) and the ship involves putting them with someone of the opposite gender (shipping them with enbies is fine). And no, I don’t think it’s a double standard that I sometimes like to do same-sex ships for characters who are coded very very straight. But this is all to do with my tastes and beliefs, not with what I think the rest of you all should do. If you like something that falls in my personal no-no category, then go ahead and do it. I’ll decide how much I want to interact with you, and that says more about our potential chemistry as a unit than it does about you as a person. And if you have boundaries yourself - if age-gap ships skeeve you out - then that doesn’t make you a bad person or even an anti! Just block as needed, talk to friends if you feel betrayed by them, and recognize what it is you don’t like and that you don’t have to like it.

Selfshipping? Do what you want. Again, I might personally have reservations about shipping with somebody too young (I actually perceived my own main f/o as in his twenties when I first watched his source, then saw Word of God say he was NINETEEN actually, even though that invalidates many many jokes about how he’s bad at adulting, so I just said “fuck it” and he’s at least 24 to me because that makes more sense and is more of my comfort zone). But what I like shouldn’t dictate what YOU do. I might give you a little side-eye if you’re shipping with somebody young, but I don’t know your reasons for doing so and I don’t have the right to judge. I might distance myself from certain situations if I’m feeling skeeved out. Or I might not feel skeeved out depending on how it’s handled. I also again would raise a brow if you’re selfshipping with an opposite-gender gay character, but same principle: you have your reasons, you shouldn’t stop because some rando (me) has an issue with your ship, and if I have a problem with how you handle it, I’ll just peace out on my end and not make a deal out of it.

A lot of this comes from the fact that I have mega OCD and I already try to moralize everything I do and hyper-analyze my choices to make sure I am being a Good Person. If I try to follow the “rules” to make my ships palatable to everyone, then I start worrying that any deviation makes me unforgivable. The vast majority of ships in my deck are squeaky-clean and have no problems, but sometimes I’ll get, like...Ventus/Papyrus, where Ven is 15, and Papyrus is in age limbo but I always thought he was at least 18, and then I don’t want to spiral into a moral crisis because I really think it would be cute to put the anime boy with the skeleton and I think they’re both asexual anyway. Or when I aged up Zevon from Descendants in order to make him make more sense as Yzma’s son, and then I had to give him a ship with an adult and I found one I really like (Kamdor from Power Rangers). And this is not even scratching the very complex issue of “The writers of this piece of fiction were ACTUALLY horny for incest and I can see the subtext for it and now I gotta figure out what to do with this mess because I like the series and I do want the characters to have partners who will treat them right.”

That said...up until recently, I looked up to the more extreme proship community, even so far as to kinda be more of an “anti-anti.” But as time went on, that...didn’t seem to fit. I’ve unfollowed a few of those blogs now because first of all, proshipping as a “political party” seems to come with some things I don’t believe in, such as forming a parasocial relationship with AO3 or saying that freedom of fans to ship what they want means the creators of mainstream media should be allowed to portray whatever they want and that being “critical of media you consume” is an automatic dogwhistle for bullies. More importantly: I have at least one friend who I know leans more anti, and I value her a lot and I think it’s valid for her to have her boundaries. After a while, the things that anti-antis did to protect themselves from bullying started to feel a little bit like bullying right back. I can’t really call myself a traditional proshipper anymore, even though I’m definitely not an anti. But I don’t want to be an “anti-anti” either. Because actually, I USED to be an anti on a different social media platform long before Tumblr, and though I can’t tell you exactly why I was that way, I can understand what it’s like to feel that strongly about things that gross you out and want to get them out of your face. I don’t want to say I’m against a whole bunch of people who are probably as varied in intensity as proshippers are.

At the end of the day, what I want is for us all to CHILL OUT. Can we please, PLEASE just focus on having fun in whatever way that comes - problematic ships or no - so long as people IRL aren’t getting hurt? Can we respect that there are probably a LOT of people with OCD on social media who spiral easily if shamed too much (which is probably how the anti movement rose in the first place - I’m sure my anti phase was fueled by my secular scrupulosity)? Can we not assume that people who ship weird age gaps are Actual Pedophiles, which is an entirely separate issue? (Listen...I grew up in the Age of AkuRoku. I hated AkuRoku. But if all the AkuRoku shippers turned out to be pedos, well, the news sure didn’t cover it. I’m saying the majority of them didn’t. And it’s been a decade.) Can we not spread the fear of being cancelled or that having a certain fictional preference will ruin a budding friendship? Can we communicate with one another in private if a friend says or does something that makes you uncomfortable, such as shipping something that makes you question their moral stance? Can actual legitimate creators of media not take sides in the goddamn pro/anti war, thereby making groups of their fans feel alienated from being welcomed by the source? Can we just have fun PLEASE?

Also, just...stop fighting about Reylo. That’s the dumbest thing to fight over and we managed to somehow get the actual SW crew in on that dumbass fight. Some people like Reylo and some people hate Reylo and THAT’S IT. WE’RE DONE HERE.

It sure says something that I worry, before hitting the Post button, that this might ruin some of the relationships I have or inspire a mass exodus of the followers whose names I come to like seeing in my notifications. But it’s ultimately better for all of us if I’m honest.

[dreaminyourvoice]

Yoko Ono was in a relationship with interior designer Sam Havadtoy from at least 1981 until 2001. 

One of the main criticisms of Yoko Ono that I see is that her relationship with Sam Havadtoy is proof that she ‘never loved John’ and thus, she’s a cold, cruel woman who had no qualms about instantly moving on from his death. I have some thoughts on this. 

To begin with, I’d like to highlight how little we actually know about Yoko Ono’s private life, particularly in those years just after the death of her husband. As this New York Times article points out, Yoko’s life in the Dakota is largely private, by design. A lot of the information I see thrown around comes from Fred Seaman, the ex-personal assistant who pleaded guilty to second-degree larceny in 1983 after stealing family photos and diaries, and who went on to settle a civil lawsuit brought by Ono in 2002, while offering his apologies to her and Sean.

So, the beginning of Yoko’s relationship with Havadtoy is muddled. It’s unclear whether it became romantic before or after John Lennon’s death, but they were certainly together by 1981. Personally, I’m not a believer that monogamy neccesarily equals love, so even if they were together in 1980, I don’t think that can be used as ‘proof’ that John and Yoko were in a loveless marriage at the end of his life. Because songs like Woman, Dear Yoko and (Just Like) Starting Over make up the bulk of Double Fantasy and speak to a deep, if everchanging, love. Interestingly Yoko’s own Every Man Has a Woman Who Loves Him includes the lyric “Why do I roam, when I know you’re the one?” - read into that what you will.

Either way, I see some people are a bit freaked by the idea of the relationship happening within months of Lennon’s death. I admit to initially being a bit thrown too, but Lisa Carver makes a salient point in her book Reaching Out With No Hands: Reconsidering Yoko Ono. 

“I don’t believe in the existence of sluts, any more than I believe in the existence of fairies. That would assume a woman should be dainty and modest. Yoko was neither; nor was she asexual; nor did she do widowhood with the Joneses’ propriety any more than she did anything the way anyone else believes she’s supposed to. I think there’s some unspoken rule you wait twelve months after a murder to start doing it again, right? What kind of rule is that? Whom does it benefit?”

Yoko’s song No, No, No on the album Season of Glass deals with what Carver bluntly calls “widow sex”- it’s a number that is Yoko all over. Building new-wave instrumentals blending with gunshots and sirens and screams, as her voice slides from girlish and reedy to spiky and caustic as she chronicles the warring parts of her following Lennon’s death. Her devastation and trauma vs her desire to be held, to be comforted, and yes, to have sex. 

“Let me take my ring off No, no, no, yes, yes, yes Don’t do it, (do it!) I can’t do it I’m seeing broken glass when we do it!”

(Yoko’s installation named A Hole, a bullet hole in a pane of shattered glass)

A decade after John’s death, her and Havadtoy gave this telling interview to the LA Times, it’s especially prophetic, as the continued presence of John alluded to by both of them would according to Carver be the reason their relationship ended. It’s hard to compete with the dead. 

“Q: In “Season of Glass,” you wrote, “Goodbye, sadness … I don’t need you anymore/I wet my pillow every night/But now I saw the light… .” What was the “light” of your healing?

Yoko: What healing? That’s another thing most people don’t know, but the widows of the world will know. Losing a husband is something you can’t shake. It’s not just a feeling of missing him. It’s something more that could never heal. His loss will always stay.

Q: Since 1981, Sam Havadtoy has been your companion; has he also been a father figure to Sean?

Havadtoy: I help him when I can. We’re friends, and I love him, but how do you adjust to losing your father?

Yoko: Sam carries a lot of it. Sean is not a person who openly shares his feelings. We’re talking about a child who has survived incredible loss and the threat of another loss, and betrayals as well. So he’s very self-protective.

Q: There are reports you and Sam are secretly married.

Yoko: I am not married.”

To conclude, I think there’s a tendency in fandom spaces to cultivate these parasocial relationships with public figures, where we start to view their personal lives as very black and white entities, where people are either precious unproblematic cinnamon rolls or evil villains, where friendships are either thriving or over, where love is either happily ever after or non-existent. The truth is always more complicated. It’s also something we will never fully know.