#in which i project my issues onto fictional characters

[triglycercule]

i want to headcanon the mtt having absolutely terrible hygiene and struggling to keep themselves clean (this MAY... just QUITE POSSIBLY.... only in the SLIGHTEST bit be projection) but i think it would be too gross and man EVEN I dont wanna think about that

also killer canonically smells good and i actually really LIKE that idea so oh shit there goes that idea out the window. horror and dust youre my only hope please let me make you smell bad for reasons you won't understand

[writingwithcolor]

Wouldn’t my writing be worse off if I forced in elements like diversity?

If you are asking this question, you have yet to challenge the “default” of your culture’s media. Consider that the majority of modern Western media fill their casts with white men, and when there are women or POC, they stick out conspicuously. Many people view adding diversity as tweaking some white man characters by toggling race or gender. But this assumes that “white man” is some default, standard character template.

If you feel pressured to include diversity in your writing, distance yourself from this pressure and ask yourself why you feel it. If you feel attacked when seeing campaigns for more diversity or criticism of all-white, uninclusive media, sit with the discomfort and ask yourself why those who are different from you say they need diverse media.

These are people whose voices and faces are rarely visible in entertainment. Despite this, they enjoy an adventure as much as anyone, and have become accustomed to projecting onto white characters. Yet, when the reverse is asked of white audiences to acknowledge protagonists of color, it becomes a difficult ask. These character choices are immediately questioned, discredited, fought against, and accused of being “woke” or “unrelatable.”

This resistance reflects a larger issue: the imbalance between audiences’ empathy towards the majority/“default” and empathy towards those perceived as Other.

By mostly reading about white people, they become easier to relate to. By the same token, if we are not reading media and histories from the perspective of POC, we end up with more people who literally fail to relate to POC. When we talk about hope-deficits, increased alienation and lower self-worth among marginalized populations, underrepresentation in media is a big factor. Imagine for a moment: never the beautiful princess in the tower, never the badass hero riding dragons; always the two-second sidekick.

People of color are people and want to be seen and treated as such. Not as a burden to devote your time to, but people who have a place in the world, fictional or no. Really, writing a world in your story that is all or mostly white is more unrealistic, more forced—after all, there are far more non-white people on Earth. Becoming comfortable with diversity requires unlearning White as the Default and POC as the Other. It takes setting aside feelings of pressure to emphasize, open your heart and listen.

Further Reading:

“Diversity has gone too far!”

Diversity is for everyone.

Children and the Myth of Colorblind Youth

Those who read about aliens learn to emphasize with aliens. Those who read about wizards empathize with wizards.

---

This Q&A is an excerpt from our General FAQ for Newcomers, which can be found in our new Masterpost of rules and FAQs. If you liked this post, we have more recommended reading there!

-Writing With Color

[messiahzzz]

thank you sm for the ask!! 💕 i’m glad you enjoy my posts and it is not a strange request by any means!

note: this is merely my read on gale’s sexual preferences/kinks. i don’t want to police anyone on their headcanons or claim they are “incorrect”. since the game doesn’t provide too much detail, many things remain up to interpretation. (and lest we forget fanfiction has always encouraged the exploration of dynamics that may not be present in canon.)

gale is a character who isn’t interested in walking the straight and narrow route. he is all about new experiences, favoring non-traditional means, putting his own spin on things, and the thrill of seeking the forbidden. the sheer romance of the uncharted and the unknown. he is enthusiastic in almost every aspect and possesses an infectious zest for life. in regards to his sexual preferences, this translates into an eagerness to explore, witness new sensations, and reach new heights together. while approaching the topic of sexuality with a generally playful, adventurous attitude.

if you’re looking for harder kinks, however — i don’t believe gale is the character for you. and in case it needs to be said again: there is nothing wrong with being vanilla.

initially, i see gale as a switch, who gravitates more towards assuming a dominant role, due to his ever-present desire to give and to impress. i do think he enjoys giving up control, yet you still have to actively convince him to let himself go and be spoiled for once. his first focus will always be to fulfill his partner's needs and drown them in his all-encompassing love and adoration. i also believe that gale will grow more comfortable with being the center of attention, once their relationship has reached a point of total security (and he had ample opportunities to show in just how many ways he can wow them). gale is not a strict dom, nor a sub. in his ideal relationship roles would be discarded entirely, deeming them too restrictive in his expression of intimacy with a trusted partner. it’s all about variety and ridding oneself of the shackles of the worldly, after all. melting into one perfect whole, not knowing where he ends and his partner begins.

gale: we are all sensual vessels. illusory magic lets us sail farther, and feel more deeply.

gale: [..] i could use the weave to make us feel sensations beyond reckoning.

based on what we know about gale, these could be some of his kinks:

lots of praise (this is non-negotiable), sensation/temperature play (waxplay, electrostimulation/all the many perks magic has to offer), sensory deprivation, light restrictions and bondage, the occasional roleplay, katoptronophilia (self-explanatory), altered mental-states (hypnosis, psychedelics), orgasm control & denial, body worship, olfactophilia and given his propensity towards verbosity: narratophilia and some very inventive dirty talk. as for my own self-indulgent take: due to the recurring emphasis on hands during his romance, as well as his being the main tool in how he shapes and navigates the world: quirofilia.

nodecontext: flustered, standing in front of his romance partner in bondage gear. not necessarily uncomfortable with the bondage aspect, just trying to stay focused.

now, what are gale’s hard-limits?

gale, after the player received loviatar's blessing: your hide, your choice. not quite my cup of tea though.

while projecting your own kinks and fantasies onto fictional characters is fine and well, disregarding and ignoring the source material (and the character's stated boundaries) is another matter entirely. fanon!gale is rather ooc and very different from his canon portrayal, which is something that tends to irk me. although this remains a common fandom phenomenon.

personally, i don’t see gale as someone who enjoys pain of any kind, be it giving or receiving (with the exception of spanking and light choking, if a certain mood strikes. although it is kept mostly playful). contrary to what fandom may claim, having self-worth issues, being loquacious, emotionally expressive, and vulnerability-seeking (as well as being commonly perceived as arrogant and insufferable) doesn't automatically equal having repressed masochistic tendencies. he could be convinced to dip a toe into sadism, but only upon his partner’s insistence. although i doubt he himself would find enjoyment in that.

the same applies to degradation/humiliation. i doubt that a character who is still very much struggling with inherent self-worth issues and a general feeling of being defective/not worthy would derive sexual gratification from being degraded. yes, it can certainly be healing for some, but gale doesn’t strike me as someone who would find particular enjoyment in that. quite the contrary, actually. nor would he like to do the degrading for that matter (he would vehemently refuse. all he wants to do is sing your praises.) gale wouldn’t enjoy being leashed and/or collared in any way either. the prospect of being tied up or restricted is rather intriguing, cause it serves to center one’s vulnerability while also allowing for more intense sensations. anything that taps into the puppy play/slave territory tho? he would find it demeaning… and, quite frankly, silly.

gale is also not a voyeur, nor a cuck. the entire scene with the drow twins leans way too much into dub-con territory for my tastes. the only way you can get him to participate at all is by rolling a persuasion check with DC 25. in every other dialogue option, he immediately (and explicitly) declines. even if you do manage to pass the persuasion check, he is still very hesitant about participating.

gale: i might enjoy watching you tangled up with the drow, as long as i was five paces back.

he then immediately runs from the room, because sending a simulacrum in his place was the only way to somewhat remove himself from the situation while still being able to please tav. because of course he wants to please and clearly this is important to tav so he might just… have to discard his reservations and... just go through with it?!

gale: well i suppose it would do no good to back out now. let us begin this little anthropological study, if we must.

i am aware that fandom uses the fact that his “orb lit up in telltale excitement” as a justification that persuading him was the right choice, as well as confirmation that he was secretly into it and “just needed a little push" to explore his desires/get out of his comfort zone. that implication alone is very suspect and goes straight into the sort of logic abusers often use. you can be physically aroused by certain scenes, images, or sounds, even while being visibly uncomfortable with the presented scenario. it is a natural response that you can’t often control. which is what he is showing throughout the entire scene: discomfort. he was coerced into this situation, without any prior discussion or an opportunity to talk about his boundaries. furthermore, this is what he has to say if you approach him after the threesome:

gale: ahem. i hope you're not here to ask about our recent, erm, activities. i'd rather those were consigned to the footnotes of our romance, if it's all the same with you.

since he is strictly monogamous, any arrangement involving another person is also a no. he made this rather clear when tav sought him out after receiving halsin's proposal. him being monogamous isn't solely rooted in his trauma, it isn't something he has to “overcome” in order to heal, nor does it mean that their relationship is any less fulfilling. call him greedy, stubborn, or old-fashioned, but he cannot comfortably agree to that.

[vexingwoman]

hi sorry (one of the previous wumph anons): this is completely random and there’s no need to answer this but… you said you got a lot of anons on the topic. What was the general consensus on the whole phenomenon among them?

Just to contextualize this ask: I recently mentioned how the whump community (known for romanticizing the extreme anguish, torture, and trauma of fictional characters) has an abnormally high amount of members who identify as trans men. And more interestingly, that almost all the characters whose anguish this community romanticizes are male as well. Many radical feminists have subsequently discussed why this might be.

I can’t say there is much of a consensus at all. Most theories I received as to why this community almost exclusively romanticizes the anguish of male characters were vastly different, and at times, outright contradictory. However, here are the most common ones:

-It’s a homoerotic fetish. This is an obvious and uncomplicated conclusion to draw; most members of the whump community are simply girls who fetishize male homoerotic dynamics. This effectively explains why the whumpee, the whumper, and even the caretaker are most frequently all male characters.

-Readers have too much compassion for female victims. Many radfems expressed that female anguish is too reflective of reality—especially considering most whump themes are forms of abuse that, outside of fiction, females are the primary victims of. The result is an uncomfortable degree of realism in which female readers may involuntarily project themselves onto the victimized female character. Therefore, replacing the victimized female character with a male helps to dilute the degree of realism and create a necessary distance between the reader and character.

-Readers lack compassion for female victims. Other radfems including myself feel that whump consumers fixate on male victimization because female victimization is expected, eroticized, and trivialized—meaning, female-coded anguish is only recognized as horrifying and emotionally compelling when experienced by a male character. Essentially, female victimization titillates the audience, but male victimization is treated rightfully as a horrific and traumatic incident. Thus, the appeal for male victims is an obvious conclusion; only then is trauma and violence treated as it should and only then is the victim truly treated as a victim.

-Male victims are an intriguing reversal of gendered expectations. Self-explanatory. A handful of radfems stated that seeing a male character in a vulnerable, victimizing, or compromising situation might be an intriguing reversal to the assertive and combative male character archetype. This is a convenient answer, except that it fails to explain why the abuser (or whumper) in these scenarios is still male and not female, considering that a female abuser would also constitute as an intriguing reversal of gendered expectations.

-Male characters are generally more compelling. Again, some radfems have stated that male characters are simply better written, but I find this another highly convenient yet fallacious theory. In my opinion, this is an oversimplified analysis in which female readers fail to consider how deeply, unconsciously, and invisibly their internalized misogyny actually runs, and instead choose to project that internalized misogyny onto the author. I elaborate more on this here.

-Male victims are vicarious revenge for misogyny. This was the rarest and most conflicting answer. Only three radfems expressed that seeing male characters in victimizing situations operates as a form of imagined revenge for either the male character’s machismo or the machismo of real-life men. This is unconvincing not only because of the obvious fact that female readers adore these victimized male characters, but also because the main appeal of this genre appears to be sympathizing and rooting for the male victim. An anonymous asker articulated the issue with this theory quite nicely:

In conclusion, it’s a highly controversial but fascinating discussion. I’ve enjoyed everyone’s commentary so far, even if I disagree with some of it. And I’ve tagged all posts related to this discussion under #whump on my account, in case you want to read through them and form your own opinion.

[picaroroboto]

When someone does a terrible thing, in both real life and in fiction, we as onlookers find ourselves immediately asking "Why?". In real life even an understandable or relatable motive rarely justifies most crimes, while in fiction, we may actually judge evil actions less harshly if they were done with good intentions (or if the perpetrator is hot, but that's another issue)

(forgive me for interrupting my scheduled Fateposting for Zenosposting. again.)

From the moment he first appears on-screen, Zenos is just so dang weird that I think most players' reactions to him, whether they like him or not, is to wonder "Why?" - "Who is this guy, why is he like this, why does he do what he does, why is he obsessed with my player character?" and so on. What's interesting about this urge to know what's up with him is that understanding/not understanding others is a key theme of Zenos's character. He doesn't understand other people or care about their motives, doesn't even really care to try because he treats others as if they're a different species of animal than him, and doesn't even care to explain or justify his own motives until confronted. To him any motive is as good as any other, he's just chosen to live for his own hedonism. Even on a meta-level he resists being understood - which is to say that it's very possible to get a shallow reading of him, "Oh, he's just crazy.", and run with that without ever looking at the deeper level because you've already decided that this perceived insanity doesn't justify his crimes.

This is why it feels like such a huge and meaningful change that his character development in Endwalker is marked by him asking the WoL so many questions - genuinely trying to understand them instead of projecting himself onto them, genuinely trying to connect with another person for the first time.

Now that I reach the end of this post I realize that there's not really any major points here that I haven't made in other posts. When I played Endwalker, I approached the idea of the final confrontation with Zenos with my WoL wanting to ask "Why?" - not that he's looking for a justification, because he finds Zenos's actions unforgivable, but because he's the type of hero who wants to understand even his enemies. Ironically, or fittingly, that need to understand is what keeps him human, from being like the mindless beast Zenos thought he was.

I don't really ship ZenosWoL because I can't see the feelings as being mutual for my WoL, but the desire to understand one another counts for something. His pursuit of the WoL might be what constitutes "love" in Zenos's mind, but as far as I'm concerned, "wanting to understand" another person is what I consider "love".

[kerubimcrepin]

Wakfu Season 3, Episodes 1-6

//tw mentions of SA

Episode 1 - Fallen Heroes

I had a very long discussion with a friend of mine, who is a fan of medical settings, about how cool the existence of IV within the lore of Krosmoz is.

We didn't come to any conclusion. It was just us fanboying about this. Because my friend loves medical things and I love putting character into situations (some of which would not be survivable, if them being put on IV wasn't possible) (big fan of the concept of Joris getting poisoned and very sick and Kerubim and Atcham freaking the fuck out).

Funnily enough, during the making of my YouTube series, I discovered that there are two Sram-venerating women named Toxine in this franchise.

Adamai harbouring feelings of violence towards the members of the brotherhood is a good idea, (<- obviously the guy that wants Joris to beat the shit out of Kerubim would say this), but man, it could have been so cool if someone competent was working with this idea.

Episode 3 - Oropo's Tower

I should admit, this moment was probably a big win for Tristepin Mental Illness fans. Also, this is sadly the most explicit they can get with the reasons why Tristepin might hate being the Iop god in a cartoon.

He has plenty of reasons. Not only had Iop had 394824 demigods who hated him and felt abandoned by him while suffering fates worse than death (all gods have those) and just as many mortals he took advantage of using the power imbalance of godhood and promises of love (all gods have done that), he also canonically sexually assaulted a woman.

Ngl, if I was Tristepin, I would be considering killing myself — however, the kids and the wife would be sad.

They shuoild do this to Yugo too. He also had other wives. Albeit in an infinitely less insane way than Tristepin. Ankama.., please stop ignoring how existentially horrifying the Eliatrope demigods are.

In the Dofus MMO Kerubim pretty much calls the brotherhood of the forgotten an emo club of people with too much free time on their hands doing nothing but whining about their daddy issues.

And he was so real for that.

Btw canonically, Mishelle/Coqueline makes him feel intimidated (due to her grand age) while she herself doesn't really care about him (besides liking his good attitude towards animals), and is actually besties with Otomai.

Episode 4 - Beastly Girl

I like to headcanon that Joris's relationship with Coqueline is that he projects onto her ("oh god.... being 7 forever would make me kill myself.... even being 3ft tall is already horrible and makes me want to die..... the poor woman must be suffering") while she's like,, 1. probably doesn't think of herself as a "woman". I think she would describe herself as a creature, maybe a girlcreature, and 2. is literally chilling and doesn't give a single shit about anything but animal welfare and direct anti-god action.

I think talking to her would kill Joris because he'd realize that not every immortal person is as insecure about Literally Everything as he is.

She literally says, "the only good gods are ex-gods". We stan a leftist girlcreature?

This screenshot can be used as a reaction image for so many different shows. More fictional parents should say "my child is NOT ascending to godhood and shedding their mortality, becoming something beyond my comprehension, before they're of age. Fuck you."

Episode 5 - A Iop Hides Himself to Cry

You want to read @bitter-panacea's analysis posts about Goultard so bad.

Despite my negative feeling on s3, this is a WIN for Goultard fans, as far as I'm aware. (and Goultard enjoyers, since I kinda consider myself one)

I;'m going to walk into the sea.

Episode 6 - The Ecaflip's Scratching Post

YEAH BABY, A FULL ON IN-SHOW CONFIRMATION OF MY "USH HAS A DIFFERENT MOM THAN KERUBIM AND ATCHAM" HYPOTHESIS.

This might not seem like a contentious issue to normal people. Gods have... a lot of different lovers, so it seems normal to assume that Ush has one mom, while Kerubim and Atcham are twins like Eleley and Flopin, and have a different mom...

But a cancelled game that Tot really liked and still considers canon had really weird "there's an Ecaflip priestess who is the CEO of Giving Birth" lore, and was planned to be the mysterious mom of Kerubim and Atcham (and many other demigods), which contradicts a lot of previously established lore (ankama LOVES retcons. sadly).

I am quite open about thinking this is stupid and not considering this canon until they show her to me in an actual released media (and even then I will find a way to headcanon a better reality). Seeing the series itself acknowledge that Ush is not Atcham and Kerubim's full brother makes me feel quite better.

Hi Ush were you doing [SEXUAL ACTS REDACTED] upon cats again.

Cute...

A normal thing for a Bontarian to do. Blue-clad (metaphorically, he isn't wearing blue but white. Still very Bontarian though) man over here protecting kids and women. While also beating them up.

But unironically, I think it's cute that he has this gap moe of being an evil man who also saves people and cares about honour (because that's a proper thing to do) despite cheating constantly.

Somehow, his shallowness and "I mostly care about appearances, even if I do have a moral code" sort of behaviour is just as Extremely Bontarian as Joris's.... 30 mental illnesses.

THE OST IN THIS EP IS SO GOOD. ECAFLIP FANS WINNING ONCE AGAIN.

Hey past me! Maybe he really does pay these cats to put up with his insane behaviours. 🤨

Yugo, I'm gonna be real with you:

he's probably heard Joris and Kerubim say these exact words at least twice before,

He is reallllllly weird about cats and I am unsure if that's illegal in your setting,

He lured in people to kill in his tower for sport serial killer style.

He's bontarian. -20 morality and honor points immediately.

[pluralthey]

is there a good place to start if we want to learn about idletry? im very interested in the story and all the bits and pieces revealed so far but i dont know if youve like, stated the basics both about the characters-in-story and how you’re releasing the comic

hi there. unfortunately, idletry became a passion project very abruptly and many details were added very quickly without regard for how long the project would take. once i did realize how large the project was, i decided that i would not even kid myself on the idea of holding in spoilers for the next 5 years, and those two factors combined make the information available very chaotic and slapdash -- somewhat intentionally.

i don't even have the comics tagged separately for easier access among the idletry content -- although, i could go back and give them a separate tag.

i can summarize the story and say that it's about a funny little talking honey badger/tasmanian devil named jessie gaylord who has for the last 10 years of her life been on heavy psychiatric medication in an attempt to mitigate a pervasive delusion that the world is a fictional story. she also has a notorious aggressive streak. these medications work primarily by leaving her so tired that she sleeps most of the time.

the story begins when her medical team has run out of typical medications to try, and they must order an older, more aggressive type of drug which is not commonly used anymore, and has a lengthier process to manufacturing and approving the drug. during this time, she is not on any medication, and she becomes more urgently fixated on convincing people that the delusion is true.

she ends up attempting to contact the writer, who is referred to as God, and she receives a response. she immediately attempts to write the story herself, and she's granted the ability to do anything within the story so long as she can write it out. (the intricacies and limitations of this power have been elaborated upon in a bunch of fragmentary posts, so i won't try to condense it here)

at the end of the first act, she kills the first writer and becomes the new God of her world. the rest of the story is about what she does after acquiring omnipotence, and it heavily features a character named fate -- or shiloh, as jessie calls her -- with whom she enters an intimate relationship.

she has a happy loving family composed of a father named adam, a mother named evelyn, and an older sister named emily. there is a later minor subplot about a cult following who worships her after she becomes God, and this cult is initially organized by an ant called samanthuel -- or samwich, as jessie calls them. these are usually the other characters i mention and i am too lazy to link them right now

the comic itself is currently being written. the script stands at around 51,000 words at the time of writing this as i work on the second act. after it's written, i will let it simmer for a few months and then write a second draft to start to relieve the story of its bloat. depending on its length at that point, i will either need to write a third draft, or i will start drawing the comic.

chances are, during the second draft, i will start to thumbnail or sketch scenes which receive little to no editing, as i know they will likely remain relatively unchanged even through multiple drafts.

the sketch strips are to tide me and an eager audience over in the meantime, but they've sort of dried up as i focus all of my attention on finishing the first draft and taking care of a puppy that was kind of just forced onto me.

i've made a couple of full-length comics before and they have taken years. it is, unfortunately, just the nature of the process. for idletry, i plan to self-publish the comic. i've never published something in print before, so that is the most daunting part for me.

the plan at the moment is to crowdfund this, but, to be frank with you, i no longer pay rent, and i care very much about having this comic as a printed book. i have no issue with paying the cost of printing out of my own pocket by the time it's done and am even anticipating that outcome ahead of time, despite having a pretty reliable audience by now.

i'm on the fence about releasing a digital book version, as i very much want to retain digital color versions of the pages that are more vibrant, but due to the explicit adult content of the story, i don't want it to be free-access.

tl;dr: it's about a lesbian incel with anger issues who's given omnipotence.

i'm still working on the story because i want it to be good.

i'm planning on printing it as a physical comic book once it's done.

[mister-tom-a-dildo-lover]

Just a random thought I had.

I've been spending a lot of time recently going over what I know about myself and my behaviors and the way I have existed my entire life, and have been slowly coming to terms with the fact that I probably have undiagnosed Autism(and ADHD) and I will never have the money to get a proper diagnosis for this because being able to get to just a regular doctor is a luxury that I do not have.

As such, I have been putting all of my interests into perspective and thinking more clearly about the characters I like in the pieces of fiction I like and trying to draw similarities between them and how they behave, compared to me and how I behave.

This brought me to Tom Riddle, clearly. I've always been big into HP and it's influenced my fandom journey heavily. I've gotten into fandoms just because someone wrote a crossover with Harry Potter in their ship.

So, with that in mind, what is similar between me and Tom Riddle?

The special interests.

The obsession with collecting unique items.

The intense hyperfixation on his interests that causes him to monologue for ages about them in relation to himself.

Being exceptional at hiding how he really feels behind a mask to trick people into thinking he's normal like them.

Learning the right words to say to get by even if he thinks they're foolish or nonsensical.

Struggling with understanding emotions either from himself or others, and misconstruing what others are feeling based on his limited understanding.

Making his whole personality revolve around the Thing he's good at(Dark Magic).

Having no tolerance for other people because they cannot keep up with him.

Now that I am forced to come to terms with these things about myself, and even more things, thanks to a lot of help from others, I can't not review everything I'd ever shown interest in. Like, all of my favorite characters end up falling along the lines of depressed character, anxious character, or Autism-coded character. Or all 3 in a character. And I have all these issues and technically should be medicated for some but can't afford it.

And the thing is, I have considered similar characters to Tom, wondering if I'm projecting onto his type of character.

I like Hannibal, the TV show. My favorite character is Will Graham. And would you happen to know that he is depressed, anxious, and very Autism-coded? But the character in Hannibal, that Tom is most like, is actually Hannibal himself. And the ship for Hannigram feels very similar at times to the Harrymort ship, which is why a lot of people ship both.

But if I was to line Tom up beside Hannibal and consider what I know about both of them in relation to my undiagnosed Autism, Tom is the one who feels like he could be Autistic. Hannibal does not. Even with his special interests and masking and monologuing, and all their similarities on the Potentially Autistic List, Hannibal doesn't give me the same vibe. Will does, but not Hannibal.

So, I don't think this is me forcing the 'misunderstood Autistic villain trope' onto Tom. I think it's just that I've gained a new perspective on myself, and it has forced me to reevaluate everything I know about who I am and what I like and what draws me to those things in the first place.

It's kind of like how I liked Severus Snape as a character, long before I realized that I was depressed and that he was also depressed(I was 10 when I started the HP books). Like, the day I finally realized that I had depression(I was 17) and that wanting to kill myself and trying to are actually suicidal issues that I need help for, I thought of Snape. And a lot of things clicked.

Gaining a new perspective on yourself gives you new perspectives on everything else.

I am interested in pursuing these new thoughts in fanfic form in the future, ngl. And my reads of Tom going forward are going to be a lot more nuanced.

[meowmeowmeowmeow4x]

tumblr.com/emdeerm insert-that-spiderman-meme

based on this prompt and the amazing fanfic "Wait I'm a Cartoon Over Here?!"

Ahem Damian flopped onto his bed, exhausted after having had to clean the bat litter once more, as per Alfred's instruction. However, that exhaustion was punctuated by an underlying satisfaction. Despite everything, he and Richard had succeeded. They made contact with Team Phantom (part of him felt dizzy and giddy at the notion, but he'd impale anyone who'd suggest it) and managed to keep Father and the others from combusting at the notion of their existence. Phantom had sworn up and down to never expose their identities, knowing just how important they are. ("You were my hero since I was 7, I'd rather eat Dash's underwear again than betray your trust!") If only he knew...

Speaking of whom, Damian clamped his hands of his ears as the girlish squealing in this room entered a fever pitch. He was starting to regret allowing Kent to enter the Manor while team Phantom were visiting.

"DANNY DANNY DANNY DANNY DANNY I'M SUCH A HUGE FAN OF YOU CAN YOU PLEASE SIGN THIS AND THIS AND THIS AND-" Damian could've sworn that's the spiel Jonathan had opened with about twenty minutes ago. Fenton, for his part, was doing his best to withstand the onslaught of super-powered pre-teen fandom.

He'd never be caught dead doing something so... debased. So petty and pointless as to gawk at a fictional character. He, the blood son of the Bat and his future successor.

"Come on Damian, aren't you excited too?" His heart rate spiked. Blast. How quickly could he break into Father's kryptonite vault...

"You sure you wanna mess him with right now? He really looks like he could kill you, and I read the issue where he tried to murder Tim."

Damian prickled, even felt a hint of shame knowing that Fenton knew just as much about him as he did, how shameful. No not shameful at all, why would he care about someone who probably wasn't even real. Damian moved to sit up and shot Jonathan the deadliest glare he could muster, an expression copy-pasted right off his Father's Batglare.

Jonathan, for his part, cowered behind Fenton. "You'd do well to keep remain silent, Kent, before I remind you that your life is as fragile as a dying rat." He all but spat out. However, instead of cowering further, Jonathan's lips curled into a devious expression.

Fenton's head bounced between the two. "Maybe this personal arc hasn't been published yet..." He muttered.

"Hey Danny..." Jonathan began, hesitantly. This could not be happening. Damian grabbed the nearest katana and lunged. However, his efforts were made fruitless as he passed through the duo like they weren't there. Dammit! "I know this is kind of embarassing, but we put in a lot of work and you're like my number two inspiration after my dad and we don't know how long you'll be here so., but you gotta keep this a total secret, like a total secret, you can't tell anyone."

Jonathan reached into his backpack. Damian swung his sword again. Anything, anything to prevent the inevitable. If this were allowed to happen, his life would be forfeit. Curse his hero this hero for being so overpowered. Where was the lipstick laser when you needed it? Or the fenton thermos? or the anti-creep stick, or anything?!

However, just as Jonathan was about to retrieve the forbidden contraband, a fist flew out and blew him away. "Woah what is this?" Exclaimed one Danielle Phantom. It was at that moment that Damian knew, there was nothing more that could be done.

~~~~~

Danielle rifled through the pages of the comic book that Jon was about to pull out (which, btw, was amazing! Danny might be into Nightwing and Martian Manhunter, but she could not count the number of nights she'd dreamt of flying with the Super Sons. Basically she was never gonna wash that fist again anyway) and was shocked to find the contents. "Yo Danny, have you seen this??"

Her template/brother/cousin/dad (his status is in a weird gray area at the moment) leaned over, eyes widening too.

For within her hands was the latest issue of the celebrated fancomic, the Secret Adventures of Danny Phantom, which circulated around this universe's social media forums and the schoolyards of Metropolis and Gotham. Danielle flipped through pages upon pages of lovingly hand-drawn panels.

"I didn't know we were a comic, too! I've never looked that cool before." Danny said, nothing the cover art.

"I dont think this is official, i mean, whatever official canon means these days. Look, there's no logo from the channel our cartoon's on."

"I can't believe I have fans who know enough about me to make a fancomic." Danny groaned.

"Oh shut up, Danny. you don't see me getting any fanart." Dani teased, until she reached the beautiful two-page spread of her, Robin and Superboy swooping in to save Danny from the GiW. Special attention was placed by the artist on her hair, and the unnatural glow of her ghostly eyes. Overall it was a very flattering picture. the real Dani's jaw dropped.

Danny turned to the gaping Jon, and the limp Damian, both of whose faces were drained of colour, looking even more dead than himself on a cold day. Realisation dawned inside of him. "Wait, did you guys make this?"

His interoogation could not continue furhter before Dani squealed with excitement. She phased out of the bedroom door in an instant before anyone could react, yelling in excitement about this amazing fancomic that Damian and Jon had made, like it was fate... Her voice was followed by one Dick Grayon's comment on Damian's evolving artstyle, before more joined the chorus. As for Damian? He rolled for 60d6 psychic damage, took 300, and lost the wlil to live. Jon was not far behind.

[gatoraid]

Shelley Parker-Chan for Locus Magazine

Locus Magazine's March 2024 issue had a long interview with Shelley Parker-Chan! They talk about their inspirations, the writing process of The Radiant Emperor duology, exploring gender in their books and how writing fanfic has shaped their writing (among a lot of other things). I was finally able to get my hands on the magazine and wanted to share some favorite quotes.

Check out more quotes and how to buy the magazine to read the full interview: Shelley Parker-Chan: All the Others

On their origins with scifi/fantasy

My mother was such a stereotypical Chinese tiger parent: 'You have to study really hard, get great grades. But then she also loved Star Trek. So we’d spend a lot of time watching that together at home. That was a formative part of my childhood, to the point where I wanted to be an astrophysicist when I grew up. I was obsessed with the stars.

A lot of the themes in science fiction/fantasy really spoke to me. Robots! I love an awkward robot - Murderbot by Martha Wells is one of my favorites. As a slightly awkward, possibly on-the-spectrum child, I really identified with robots, and the Spocks of the world.

On writing and fanfiction

Action/adventure plus relationships has always really interested me. Obviously, back in the day, nothing was really queer, so in my teens I gravitated towards Japanese manga and anime, which had more queer themes. Especially in the online spaces, people were writing fanfic, so I started writing it, too.

I never did any formal writing classes outside of fandom and fanfic - that was where I learned to write. I think the number one Most Important Thing was that fanfic was a place where you could write and find acceptance and enthusiasm. […] You could express very upsetting desires, and really explore aspects of sexuality, personality, and problematic relationships in a way that other people would read with an open mind and greet very enthusiastically without judging. No one said, 'Well, this is not the correct moral lesson that we want in fiction!’ Which is a response that has increasingly popped up in traditional publishing.

On exploring themes of gender in The Radiant Emperor Duology

There’s a lot of trans issues and gender exploration in the books, but I didn't want to make it too close to contemporary life because then it’s not fun for me. I like exploring those issues from a step removed, allowing for people with many different identities, for instance, to project themselves onto a certain character. Like, a eunuch - no one has a eunuch identity these days. But any kind of gender nonconforming, nonbinary, trans person - I've had many trans women write to me and say they enjoyed reading a character like that. If I had written an actual trans man character in the book, that would have narrowed it down a bit.

I always think that my main goal as a writer is to explore characters. But I don't start with the characters. I start with a theme, and the theme was gender and being oneself in a system where a rigid gender binary is enforced. It’s about the performance of femininity and masculinity. Not that I put it in so many words- ‘I want to write a book about gender!’ Its about people exploring, expanding that, confronting that, battling the binary in their own ways. What does it mean to be yourself when that self is in opposition to what people say you should be?

About the characters of TRE

All of the characters are either queer or they are really engaged with the concept of how to be themselves when the world is pressing afainst that. I do have a straight female character, Madam Zhang, based on a famous nineteenth-century female pirate in Southern China, who ran rhis mercantile empire. […] It was said that her background was a courtesan. So I was like, ‘Oh, I’ll take that character – a woman in a very male world who uses femininity as a weapon. But, knowing she can never rule herself, she has to work through men.’ That’s one character who bounces off of gender in an interesting way, and then I could have her in dialogue with other characters.

There’s a genderfluid character, my main protagonist Zhu, who used the performance of gender kind of like a superpower. She can move in and out of identities and doesn’t feel particularly wedded to any of them.

Then we have a nongender-conforming – but straight, I guess – man, Wang Baoxiang, who does not conform to society’s standards of what it is to be a man, and that impacts his identity in a certain way. His self-esteem is very damaged, and he often feels like, ‘I was born in the wrong time. If I had been born in a different time, my version of masculinity would be recognized.’ Through that character, I was thinking fo the way in which Chinese traditional performance of masculinity, for instance, is not recognized here in Australia as masculine - it's seen as feminine. In Australia. we have a certain white, sports-playing, particular idea of masculinity - It looks like Chris Hemsworth. If you do not look like Hemsworth, it you're a little Asian guy, your’e inherently seen as feminine, no matter now masculine you feel.

I have a eunuch character, someone whose gender has literally been ripped away from them, and that kind of reflects a trans experience – someone who feels they are intensely masculine on the inside, but the entire world sees them in a different way. Then you feel the need to perform, in order to seen to be the way that you feel you are. But this character, in trying to be the most manly he can possibly be , starts to adopt all these toxic masculine traits, and, in a sense, kills a lot of his own honest desires in pursuit of performing this ideal of masculinity.

About their next book and future aspirations as an author

I'm going to write a secondary-world fantasy. I've never built a world from scratch before […] It will feel pre-industrial, historical. It will be very kinky and - what are the comps? So far l've been saying, 'It's Foucault's Discipline and Punish meets Simone Weil's Gravity & Grace with a side of of Kushiel’s Dart. There's a lot of kinky BDSM in a world like that. One of the joys of fan fiction was people were not afraid to create these worlds where society is completely based around kink concepts, so I'm building a world around kink concepts here, and that’ll be fun.

I'm a frustrated romance author, so I really want to write some romances in the future - straight up. None of that politics stuff. none of the adventure, only the relationships! I'm not fast enough to write category romance, though, that's for sure. I'll have to stick with fantasy romance so I can do one every two years.

[suncchaser]

You are definitely not a minority, you really are saying what many of older fans are thinking but I think most don’t want to deal with the discourse, it’s already tiring enough having to report and block those accounts that spam the Jily tag which already drove so many popular Jily blogs away. This really is all because they keep spamming the tags, honestly it wasn’t this bad last year and even the year before that, the fandom was fine when they stayed in their own lane. I honestly feel like the silver lining of the discourse shows how much of the source material is foreign to them, and a lot of what is used to back up their statements are made up, so at the very least, while they may not ever admit it, these teenagers get some food for thought and exercise critical thinking lol I commend you for your perseverance !

Thank you.

I haven’t dealt with too much shit for my takes. There has only been two or three instances where I have gotten some people under my posts or in my inbox, which is a positive.

I try my very best never to come off as aggressive because I think that just takes away from the value of what whatever it is that I am trying to say.

I think the main issue these discourses don’t happen often is because people are unable to separate themselves from their interests, in this case, the characters and the ships they love. Especially when you consider how projecting into characters is such a massive part of the modern fandom with all the ‘kinnie’ tend going around. Because it’s no longer about people finding a character they simply relate to. Now, people pick a character, change the character’s entire personality to fit their own and then claim they relate to them. And this leads to a lot of defensiveness whenever someone speaks critically of that character because people are so so deeply connected with the character and have projected so much of themselves onto this fictional person that they ended up taking it as a personal attack.

[cornyonmains]

Something I really like about Only Friends is the characters are so complexly written and layered that I kind of wind up being an apologist or detractor for all of them at different points in time. I don't really have a black and white view of the characters, which is usually the only thing you have in BL.

Top's a fuckboy with substance abuse issues. But also, he seems like he genuinely wants connection, and I feel bad for him sometimes because it's so clear he wants Mew to be affectionate with him, and Mew just isn't.

Mew is controlling. A giant walking defense mechanism that can't connect will with people. But also, he's surrounded by people who don't have his best interests in mind, and as he's opening up, we're seeing that he's not some criminal mastermind. In fact, that's the mask. The real Mew is just some dumb college kid who's into a guy he's scared of being vulnerable with, because he's never caught feelings he couldn't control. It's so obvious someone messed Mew up REAL GOOD.

Boston is.... He's an objectively terribly human being. He's also a miserable human being though, a lot like Ray, and he places so much of his value on sex he doesn't know how to make meaningful bonds. It's clear he's nuts about Nick, that he wants to monopolize his affections and attentions, but he doesn't know how to translate that into something healthy. Like Mew, his relationship with sex is fucked, and at the core of an inability to bond. I actually think he's jealous of Mew because there's a parallel there, but whereas Boston is derided for his relationship with sex and inability to connect, Mew is praised. Boston is a shit human being, but he is to be pitied.

Ray's kind of a dick. He's self-centered, won't take no for an answer from Mew, he has substance abuse issues, and saying Sand wasn't his boyfriend because he's holding onto that hope for Mew was fucked. But he's also got major depressive disorder, his parents sound like real pieces of work, and Khao does such a great job of conveying his fragility you can really sense how close to just breaking apart he is. He fucks up, but you still want him to get to a better place.

Sand, oh dear god, this boy has my heart. He's not perfect. Yeah, he sells hooch, he smokes weed, he parties. But he's got flaws too. He works too much, his head's in the clouds, he's destined to wind up on a sexiest mugshots website, and he falls too hard, too fast. He lets himself get led around by the nose by Ray. Sand's the easiest character to like on this show. He's got a hustle, but he's also got 'dude I wouldn't be deeply uncomfortable to be in a room alone with' energy.

Nick's not completely guiltless with his relationship with Boston. I've got a soft spot for him because he's a sweet, quiet kid, and I have a habit of adopting introverts. But he's not like Mew, he knew his way around both dick and dicks from the start, and wasn't blind to who Boston was. He bugged the car. That was a little too extra. I still wanna buy him cheeseburgers and tell him these boys ain't shit though, because he's so miserably in love with Boston, and Boston might be up front with him, but he's still stringing him along, telling him what he wants to hear, and giving more when Nick expresses interest in seeing other people. Was recording Boston and Top some pure creep mode shit to do? Yes. But do I support him using the recording to put Boston in his place? Yeah, I do.

Cheum is another easy to like characters, but we don't get to see much of her, so aside from simply liking her dancing queen energy, I can't really make an assessment. I like that she's the only one in the group actually helping Mew with the project. Also, I laughed when she clocked Ray as most fuckable. Most queer woman would agree, and Jojo is out here making us feel attacked.

Anyways, in summation, I'm thinking of opening a GoFundMe to get therapy for fictional characters. I still can't believe we've got 7 more episodes of drams to get through.

[wizkhaleesii]

Time for another 3:30 am tangent that’ll get me in trouble again lol :3

I think I’ve maybe finally boiled down my issue with how a good bit of the fan base characterizes Rhaenyra, because I couldn’t put my finger on it before.

I see a lot of people, even unintentionally or subconsciously, project a lot of Daenerys onto Rhaenyra. And I get it, they’re both Targaryen women who are seeking the throne and facing a lot of systemic violent backlash over it.

However, they are VASTLY different people, with VASTLY different morals and ideals and personalities.

I think it’s safe to say, for the sake of this argument, that Dany is a hero in ASOIAF, or at least heroic in nature. Rhaenyra, however, is not, she is just a protagonist, and I would even argue? Not the greatest person.

Rhaenyra Targaryen is extremely selfish and self centered. All of her major decisions and thought processes center around her and her interests and her family and what is beneficial to her and what she wants, etc. She is stubborn, she’s petty, and she feels entitled to the throne. (If she’s right or not is irrelevant in this situation) She is a deeply flawed person, and that’s ok!

I feel like a big reason for this projecting of Dany’s more heroic nature onto Rhaenyra comes from a rise in this idea that a characters’ morality someone reflects the morality of their fans. To which I say? Absolutely not. Not unless that person has displayed concerning behavior themselves. Someone’s favorite fictional character alone is not indicative of their morals.

Rhaenyra Targaryen is genuinely one of my favorite characters in fiction, but she is not a hero. She is a mother and a queen and a Targaryen and a politician and a war criminal. She is deeply selfish and protective and intelligent and petty and stubborn and ambitious and deeply loving and reckless and maternal and entitled and remorseful and multidimensional. That’s what makes her so interesting.

HOTD doesn’t have heroes, only dancers, so pick your favorite war criminal 💕

[doctorsiren]

Woooo normalising natural aging weightgain and not shaming a person for not keeping track of it while their mental health is low!!!

I’m not even remotely close to that age but its honestly kinda comforting to see beanix fine with being a pillow. Instead of him being shamed for it from his other selves they seem to think he’s cool (?) which is something you dont see very much

REAL

I must admit that it’s not something I’ve dealt with since I’m 5’2 and have been taking ADHD medication since I was 9/10 (I’m 19 now for reference), and so I’ve stayed around 95-105 lbs for years. I sometimes wonder how my body would be different if I hadn’t been taking those since that age (maybe I’d be 5’4 like my sister and mom…) but I think that making it so that the characters I project onto are okay with their body changing that it’ll be less jarring to me if something happens for whatever reason. I’m not even 20 yet, so there’s so much that could change, but fictional characters going through issues like these kind of make them seem more real and make me think of people I know.

I just think Phoenix, as a dad, would put Trucy first and him not even second. He’s probably last out of all of his friends for the people he thinks of taking care of. It’s not something new for him, as he’s always put others before himself, no matter how misguided he might be in some of those situations. And I think his past and future selves would look at him and think how that’s still them, just at a different stage in life. And I think he would find comfort in the fact that he can be a source of comfort for his daughter.

Sorry if some of these thoughts didn’t connect (the logic mechanic isn’t wanting to work). I have no idea if those sentences even made sense as my brain doesn’t want to function at the moment, but idk I just really liked this ask :)

[davekat-sucks]

"OH my god, Anon! [Feferi]'s PETA!"

spot on on, because if meenah is more like caliborn, feferi is more like calliope. and thats how you get beforus, a nanny state planet that pretends to be an utopia. tumblr. speaking of which.

I'm cool with whatever people do in their spare time, you know, you do you. But what ticks me off is when they start acting all authoritarian with their headcanons, insisting they are canon and claiming others are clueless, ignorant, illiterate, tone-deaf, every internalized or externalized -ist and -phobic under the sun etc for not seeing it that way. Treating fictional characters with more decency than they do with real people essentially. So because I dont give a single iota of a fuck anymore, let me call out this retarded fandom that butterfly effected all western fandoms turning into warzones and hussies lazy hack ass really quick.

Here's the deal: Some people really just wanna show off how "woke" they are to others, so they slap labels like they're trendy accessories and project onto characters without giving a damn about their background or personality. That usually backfires and ends up with pretty darn terrible results. We all know this, we've heard the HS2 horror stories. And that's exactly what went down here again.

Because, lately, there's this, as I said let's call it headcanon, floating around insisting that the Vantases, Kankri in particular, are canonically aromantic asexual (aroace). The Vantases are the worst possible candidates in the whole webcomic for this. Why?

1: celibacy ≠ aroace. first one is not an orientation, but a choice to abstain from acting on attraction. and the other IS a orientation, not a choice, where you feel little to no romantic or sexual attraction. so much for respecting some people's identities and values. If the vantases HAVE to be assigned a human label despite being fucking aliens, why not demisexual???? kankri even asks karkat if he might be "panquadrantic demiromantic", doesnt that fit how the signless took time to open his heart to the disciple and had a love that went beyond all quadrants with her?

they are both HORNY and THIRSTY as hell for the pyropes, the captors, the leijons, john egbert, i dont fucking know, take your pick. make them fuck a clown. That's why Karkat is obsessed with romance and Kankri panders so hard, they are both that pathetically desperate for someone to connect and care for them back as obsessively intense as they are with everything.

3: Some previous anon pointed out how HIC, besides being an authoritarian tyrant that wanted galaxy-wide conquest, is an eugenicist fascist. Yes. She genocided limebloods. So did Beforan Feferi actually. And you know Karkat's handle? carcinogeneticist? How he inherited the Signless's burden? These things are all related, and let me use a comparison to explain how or why. Imposing this label onto them would be as perplexing as suggesting that Aang from THE LAST AIRBENDER, being a monk, should also be aroace. Right after all the airbenders were wiped out by firebenders, also authoritarian tyrants that wanted world conquest. Do you see the parallels? Karkat and Kankri have significant self-esteem issues, stemming from their mutant blood, from which bloodcaste they mutated from? Limebloods. The caste that has faced intense persecution, to the extent of genocide, on BOTH planets, resulting in their GENETIC LINEAGE being wiped out from the troll GENE POOL. Limebloods are EXTINCT. That's why their mutancy is their burden, it saved them from being killed, but condemned both to a lifetime of suffering and hiding under the same culling regime that killed their kin. And that's why the burden is the responsibility of revitalizing their bloodcaste BY PROCREATING. ADDING THEIR GENES TO THE TROLL GENE POOL. But because both Karkat and Kankri are fucking idiots with crippling self-esteem issues and Hussie wrote with his asscheeks, what did these two chucklefucks do instead? One praised the Empress that wanted to kill him and wanted to become her thresecutioner, and out of desperation did the devil's tango with the worst and most disgusting vile living being available, a hussie self-insert. And the other became fucking CELIBATE to focus on what was truly important to oppose the regime he disagreed with… performative bullshit that nobody asked him to care about, overcorrecting to the point of being even more offensive than the start, and not actually solving any problems but creating more. To make "progress as a civilization" with trigger warnings, HE DIDN'T PRESERVE THE FUTURE OF HIS OWN BLOODCASTE. NEITHER DID KARKAT WHO WAS TOO BUSY WATCHING MOVIES. And that was actually clever writing, because if you are a fandom activist who hates kankri, and also think hes unironically aroace because he's celibate, congratulations! You fell for the trap, youre exactly the kind of person Kankri is satirizing, he also missed the point by hyperfocusing on labels and hating himself, and like a self fulfilling prophecy, became the same thing that he was fighting against without realizing because he unwittingly ended up aiding troll eugenics by doing the hard work and taking himself out of the dating pool!

So next time you see a pretentious writer vagueposting about you or your interpretation of a character or guilt tripping you because you dont adhere to their offensive stereotypes, check if they headcanon Kankri as aroace, and if they do, you can simply smile and rest assured knowing that nothing you do will ever be as disconnected from reality or as far off the mark regarding character interpretation as that. Why would you listen to these evil people? Are you like Hussie?

That is truly why Davekat really fucking sucks and always fucking will,

Because not only did it ruin everything with their nonexistant chemistry-less relationship but because thanks to it and pandering to its stans, Sea Hitler won and both muties are out of the gene pool and limebloods remain extinct. That IS actually canon.

And while Johnkat and Jadekat are excellent, Karkat and Kankri's harem of trolls is better than davekat. Suck my dick.

PD: What's that? Baby HIC married Karkat? Doesn't surprise me. Grooming kids is her whole thing. There really was no excuse for not making Karkat fuck Sollux or Terezi instead.

Karkat and Kankri's Harem are better than Davekat. Meenah, Porrim, and Aranea sprites from @befriendus Damara sprite by @magua-vida

Condesce, Disciple, Redglare Neophyte, and the Dolorosa by elanor-pam

[valyrfia]

RE: this ask

Sorry about to go off on one, gender studies and online fan culture from an academic standpoint is a special interest of mine because being film and literature student wasn't annoying enough (participatory culture studies my beloved) 

From a general standpoint, I think the reason M/M ships in fiction have always been more popular is because male characters are historically more developed and complex. I think it’s only in recent years have their been an influx of popular F/F ships, with the added development of women on screen (e.g Clarke and Lexa, Kara and Lena, Regina and Emma, Nancy and Robin) - I think there is also a point to be made this has coincided with gender expression, genderqueerness and more general knowledge of being outside the typical gender spectrum. 

I can’t explicitly say that being in M/M fandom spaces encouraged my personal discovery of being transmasc but it certainly helped to have an avenue where I could project onto these “male” characters and see myself in them. I was so uncomfortable in my own body and what I didn’t know at the time as dysphoria, I can see why I didn’t go for F/F ships. 

There are of course a lot of “fandom elders” but young (early to late teens) afab people do make up a large bulk of it and I get why  it may be easier for them to fixate on M/M ships as a, sort of method of exploring their own sexuality and gender expression. F/F ships may hit too close to home and F/M ships are what they are trying to escape from so it leaves M/M ships to project onto. Which, unfortunately then can become warped by the persons own comphet and/or binary ideas about gender. 

A male character may have more stereotypically “feminine” traits (in terms of interests or emotional reactions) and I can see why people who also have those traits would project there own insecurities onto them, reinforcing the feminisation of the male character but not being comfortable enough in your own gender expression to genderbend the character or write them as trans. 

It’s the same reason I think mafia romance, dark romance etc etc is so popular with cishet women because they can read about a fantasy where instead of the very real every day misogyny and violence they face leading to abuse, assault and death, it brings “positives” ; protected, loved, a happy relationship. 

Which, side note. I think this has A Lot to do with y/n, self insert fics becoming “cringe”. Because, I think a lot of people just want to fuck/date a character and feel like they can’t write a self insert anymore, so just project massively onto one character, leading to a lot of these issues. I don’t think Tony Stark/Peter Parker would be as popular as it is if people just let young women write their self insert fic about being Tony Stark’s sugar baby and then we wouldn’t have the wildly mischaracterised version of Peter Parker that we do! 

But, all this being said. I’m talking about fiction. Dean Winchester isn’t actually affected if people online only talk about him in a stereotypically “female” way. 

RPF is a different kettle of fish (and I’m not going in RPF ethics that’s different - I have no issues with rpf creators/consumers to be clear, I am one) because a real person does become affected. Even if you are keeping your fan works and discussions to private spaces, it can leach over into how you speak about the actual person. That’s where it becomes so incredibly important to remember that your RPF version of celebrities are just as fictional as Dean Winchester is. 

sorry I used mr. supernatural as an example, 13 year old me is still alive and kicking in my head somewhere. 

I love to hear your perspective on it with a trans worldview (and academic credentials), and I do agree that that might be a big driver of some young people only wanting to engage with MLM fic and feeling uncomfortable with WLW fic. You've brought up so many great points so I'll try and address them all.

I can add the perspective of a lesbian who was closeted for the first two decades of my life, came out less than five years ago, and still struggles on and off with comphet now. MLM fics in my teens were a way to consume queer content and relationships without having to think about the implications of enjoying consuming WLW content, and I think that's true for a lot of young closeted teens so it's no surprise that some comphet/hetnorm/cisnorm stuff bleeds through there because it's a framework the authors haven't managed to detach themselves from yet.

But yeah, I agree the issue lies with people wanting characters to be self-inserts partially so that they can experience sex, sexuality, and romance without any of the hang ups of thinking about patriarchy. And I agree with your solution: make y/n fics cool again! The ability we have to hallucinate while we read is magic! You can put YOURSELF in as a character's love interest, how cool is that?

Ultimately, yeah. There's nothing wrong with RPF as long as it isn't actually affecting the person that the RPF is based off, but I've seen a lot of takes escaping containment so to say (ie. leaving this website) with takes about the actual racers so obviously picked up through RPF. The main culprits are Charles, Lando, Max in my experience.