#instead of going to LJ like the majority of fandom

[olderthannetfic]

DWRP is more active than regular fandom DreamWidth, but it's full of people who are anti-queer in the weirdest ways. They're queer, but they use words like "transtrender" and "fujoshit" and "asexies". They hate how prominent slash is in DWRP but bash people who play female characters as playing self-inserts/playing Mary Sues and decry female characters who have sex as "cock-hops". Playing a lesbian or bi woman is equated to being a 40 year old guy who jerks it to lesbian porn and reveals "neckbeard qualities", even if you're an out lesbian yourself. NB people are regularly mocked on both Plurk and in anon communities as "thembys" and "genderspecials".

DWRP has also slowed down hugely in the last 5 years, with many major games closing and most new games not lasting half a year. I once accidentally started wank when I said I don't consider someone who only replies to 2 comments or less a month a roleplayer, and people rushed in to argue that we're all just too busy to reply to more than that many comments and the only way you have more time than that is if you're a NEET. Play non-white non-anime characters and you're a SJW trying too hard to be "woke". Autistic is used as an insult fairly often.

Which is another facet of DWRP to consider: the weird hatred of other DWRPers everyone in DWRP has. You're a NEET, a neckbeard, a basement dweller, a wage cuck, a fast food cuck, etc. The anon gossip communities get way, way more activity per day than any of the actual game communities do. Gossip about people regularly runs dry, so instead discussion is rehashed of people who were subjects of previous wank/gossip, sometimes including people who played during the LJ era and never played on DreamWidth because they left when the mass migration to DW happened. I have seen people get accused of being another player who was the subject of wank returning for having the same given name as someone who was the subject of wank circa 2006. People are that level of desperate to get some excitement going among their small circle of friends who want there to be A Big Deal (TM) of some kind going on.

Fandom DW is far from perfect but I would highly recommend, even if you're bored, sticking to it and not DWRP. RP on there is a much more conservative (but identifying as "centrist", for some reason) environment and if you're reading this blog, my guess is you don't think trans headcanons are the work of transtrenders woke-ifying fandom and it's not gross neckbeard behavior for a lesbian to write a lesbian character. If so, this is definitely not your scene.

Activity is not the same thing as a fandom place being good.

--

[caitylove]

20 questions for fic writers

I was tagged by @holy-ships-x-red-lips! Thank you so much for the tags. You have given me a lovely way to procrastinate right now. :)

1. How many works do you have on Ao3? Only 16, but there are also fics out there on LJ that I was too lazy (or were just too bad) to find on the group events I posted on and port over. There are also some other ff.net fics on another account that I forgot about, but were from when I was in high school so totally not bringing those over either.

2. What's your total Ao3 word count? 78,839. I expect that to drastically change once I start publishing my one long wip...

3. What fandoms do you write for? Currently I mostly write Battlestar Galactica (spaceparents ftw) and some The Closer/Major Crimes (I'm a Brenda/Sharon heathen. ) But in the past I wrote for Rizzoli and Isles and Grey's Anatomy. There's also some X-files fic out there and a CSI one somewhere.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

Caffeine (Rizzoli & Isles): What happens when Maura consumes an excessive amount of caffeine?

So major note this fic is literally like 12 years old. And super short. And honestly not good lol.

Break All The Rules For You (The Closer/Major Crimes): Sharon Raydor has a list of rules she lives her life by. But Brenda Leigh Johnson very might be the catalyst for her to break each and every one.

This is actually my current active posting WIP. I'm amused it got so many kudos so fast. Guess I'm not the only heathen out there. :)

Frak Me Red (Battlestar Galactica): Wanting Laura to feel good about herself, Bill finds her the perfect gift and they spend an exciting weekend away on shore leave aboard Cloud 9.

Part of my Cosmetics Series. This was a blast and like 70% pure smut.

Pain Management (Battlestar Galactica): Dealing with pain during her cancer treatments, Laura is suggested an unorthodox treatment plan.

This was actually my first fic back after a ten year writing hiatus... :) Never let anyone tell you that you can't return after a long time away.

Spray and Stay (Battlestar Galactica): Laura has a secret addiction that is slowly running out and she can't help but show off her addiction to Bill.

The first part of my Cosmetics Series. Also 50% smut. :)

5. Do you respond to comments? Absolutely. So, I work from home and like responding to them instead of working sometimes.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? So I don't have a ton of angst honestly. So I guess the ending of Auburn Sunsets, Starlit Nights (Battlestar Galactica) is the angstiest? (Or meanest?)

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? So like 80% of my stuff is smut... so they all have HAPPY ENDINGS. *snicker*. But I guess I'll go with Frak Me Red ?

8. Do you get hate on fics? Not really. Probably did on some of my old FF.net stuff but don't care enough to go back and look.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? Yes. Like thats half of what I write. :)

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written? Not in a long time. But once upon a time I wrote a Grey's Anatomy Zombie fic that had a Doctor House appearance. Its somewhere on LJ. It was BAD, but I am so tempted to find it now for my own amusement.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? Not that I am aware of

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? Nope. Feel free to reach out if you want to tho.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? No, but definitely open to it.

14. What's your all time favorite ship? So probably Bill/Laura(Spaceparents) from BSG. But Also have a soft spot for Sharon/Brenda (The Closer), MSR (The X-Files), Swan Queen, Janeway/Chakotay, Femshep/Garrus, to name a few.

15. What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? Love Games. My 12 year old the Closer fic I never finished. May rewrite it one day but I will never just finish it as it exists today.

16. What are your writing strengths? I like to think I do a lot of emotional introspection well. And Smut. I can do smut.

17. What are your writing weaknesses? Honestly, I struggle with dialogue.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? As long as its translated or explained, I'm fine with it. Probs would never do it, cause my language skills suck, but wouldn't mind reading.

19. First fandom you wrote for? CSI! I wrote a Grissom/Sara fic back in the day. I was in like High School.

20. Favorite fic you've written?

Thats like asking me my favorite children! My favorite is one I am still writing and haven't published yet, The Symposium of the Stars. One day it'll make an appearance.

But for published? I really loved Auburn Sunsets, Starlit Nights. I have a soft spot for it.

Tagging: @lavenderknivess, @mimine666, @madelineusherspearls. @ofhouseusher, @cryscal, @fracktastic, and anyone else who feels like it :)

[thelavendercatalogue]

LJS Important Canon events: Train Accident and the aftermath: Jigens Timeline

It should come as no surprise to anyone at this point that I am absolutely in love with the Koike Films and The Woman Called Fujiko Mine.As someone who enjoys a more "adult" tone to certain media's once in a while, the Koike films and TV show just hit a little different to me when it comes to the Lupin series, edging towards the more dark tone of the manga, without ever actually pushing completely into territory that made the first editions of the Manga so infamous.

As a result of my love for the series as a whole, it should also come as no surprise that me being me would find some way to combine certain Lupin media into my own "timeline" to work off.

Enter my favorite and most greatest achievement in the fandom thus far:

me somehow merging the Lupin Zero's timeline with the TWCFM's timeline.

Now granted it wasn't easy. But one of the things I truly appreciate about this fandom, besides the fun characters, is that it helps with it being nearly 60 years old at this point, with it having a lot of focal points to jump off at.

For me the timeline starts not with Lupin Zero itself, but what comes after. But instead basing it off of what came before Zero.

The Train accident is one of the most “legendary” albeit-not-really-explained-or-even-mentioned-much-if-not-at-all-idea, to come out of the Lupin fandom next to the Is Lupin even human idea. This incident is the one that famously yet “supposedly” scarred up Lupin’s face and ultimately killed his dad.

We often get "hints" of this incident but never fully do we ever get concrete evidence of it. Not even the infamous "Mask Scene" of Pt5 seems to directly hint to it.

In my AU however, this is actually a really important event. Basically the highlight of the entire AU so to speak. With this incident, a lot of important events transpire that open up to other media forms canon to the AU. The most important one being TWCFM, as well as the Tomoe Arc.

How? Well, you see, despite Lupin’s attempts at acting like everything is OK shortly after the train accident, both Issei, but now also Jigen as this idea incorporates Lupin Zero, begin to notice that the boy isn’t as “ok” as he lets on.

A while after he heals, he begins to show the classic symptoms of severe depression: he’s often times lethargic, sleeping all day, he’s losing weight to a point where it becomes noticeable, is often times irritable, but one of the major things that entails the possibility of something being severely wrong is that he begins to lose interest or at least the pleasure in engaging in certain activities.

He no longer comes up with wild hair brain schemes, he no longer builds fancy gadgets, he no longer does anything that he is known for. And while Jigen likes the slow pace in the beginning, as it goes on for longer then he anticipates, he ends up bringing up his concerns with Lupin’s grandpa who also notes the same changes in his grandson that Jigen has noticed as well.

As the days go on and Lupin gets worse and worse to the point he’s practically a shell of his former self, Issei ultimately makes a choice. Something has to be done before he loses his grandson to his spiraling.

But what?

In the end we all know what happens. 

With no other options that have worked including therapy and worried deeply for the safety of his grandson’s mental and physical health, Issei brings little Lupin to meet a lady who teaches not far from where they live in Japan, who has agreed halfheartedly to help bring the boy some peace.

This woman is named Tomoe. 

Well. . .we all know what happened with that.

Following Lupin's disappearance and supposed death, Jigen and him are separated for many years.

Which opens up to Jigens TWCFM Arc.

While I don't know what precisely goes on with Lupin during the time-frame of their separation, Jigens timeline merges both manga and show elements as well as Koike Elements.

Some time after returning home following the loss of his friend, as he is unable to cope without him, Jigen returns to the old bump-grind life he had before he met Lupin. He goes back to work for the mafia and his father as a mercenary once again, rising up in the ranks as a remarkable hitman. But it’s a large tragic occurrence, with every bad thing that can happen to him happening to him, his life falling apart without Lupin to be by his side.

Some of the major turning points include:

The kidnapping of his youngest sister, and the death of his brother in the same event when he was in his late teens. Following the death of Joey Dunn, Jigen is pushed harder by his father to "carry on the family business. However this is a tumultuous event as it leads him to proceed with an attempt at a full mercenary career. Because of his background, he becomes a mercenary who went to South America and befriended Gallanco, whom he admired. They both went to Dolminea to fight in a war; the image of Gallanco becoming a hero left a deep impression on Jigen. At some point, he returned home, but due to events unknown to outsiders, he ends up relocating to Europe and joined the Italian mob; although the reason is unknown, it is thought to be at the behest of his father, who still attempts at using his only living son as a way to carry on with the name and all that, thoroughly abandoning the thought of his youngest being at any means useful thus casting her aside.

The Death of his Father can't come quickly enough. But when it does, it throws Jigen for a loop. He fully expects with his fathers death to leave the mafia for good and go home. But with the life now embedded deep in his bones no thanks to his old man, he finds himself unable to do so. Believing himself to be no good at anything else other than mafia/mercenary life, he lives in self-exile from the family, cutting off contact with his mother and sister for a few years.

However, this turns out to be a terrible idea, as while in the Italian mob, he grows close to his boss's wife Cicciolina. His boss eventually catches wind of this, and tries to kill Jigen, but is accidentally killed by Cicciolina instead when she tries to stop him. Following a series of event's later, including his first interaction with one, Fujiko Mine, Jigen becomes a unwilling participant of Cicciolina assisted suicide. Fed up with everything, he decides once more to become a thief for all times sake.

Which leads to the most important part of Jigens TWCFM arc: The Reunion between him and Lupin.

The reunion between Jigen and Lupin happens in Episode 05 of The Woman Called Fujiko Mine: Blood-Soaked Triangle. Following the same premise of the original episode: Fujiko and Lupin, and later Jigen, go in search of a jewel peacock at the bottom of a booby-trapped pyramid in Egypt. In LJS, Jigen, with his life going absolutely nowhere fast, decides to attempt a life once again of thieving, desperate to find some direction or traction in his life. Halfway through traversing this gruesome pit of horrors, he comes across a familiar sight.

Now up until this point, Lupin spent much of his time actually trying to track Jigen down. But because of his change in lifestyle, Jigen basically dropped off the grid. So when Lupin is discovered to still be alive some many years later, Issei sadly had no way of telling him about the potential whereabouts of his childhood friend. It would only be by chance that he would run into his old friend nearly a hundred plus more feet underground.

After playing a few Lupin tricks on his buddy, as he’s always gotta play some game with people Especially when he notices it’s his best friend who he hasn’t seen in a long while:

Lupin eventually reveals himself to Jigen However, Jigen, whose sanity up until this point had been holding on by a measly thread, assumed that Lupin was an illusion, more so a ghost. And because Jigen is scared of Ghosts, his first instinct when scared was shoot. However in typical Lupin fashion, Jigen missed and Lupin is more insulted then appalled.

"Why'd you shoot at me?!" "Cos' you scared the shit outta me! I thought you were a friggin' ghost, man!" "YOU CAN'T EVEN SHOOT GHOSTS!! The bullets would go right through!!" "Oh, yeah."

Upon realizing just who exactly he is talking too, the pair embrace like old friends. And in typical Lupin Media fashion, there is nothing like a classic, ridiculous, goofy-ass tomb-robbing scenario to jump start reigniting your relationship.

Especially when you guys nearly kill each other the first time.

Following the events in the Pyramid, Jigen attempts not to leave his old friends' side, fully intent on figuring out just Where in the hell Lupin had been this whole damn time. It's around this point however, that Jigen begins to notice that despite his wacky goofy nature still going strong, that Lupin does not appear to be himself anymore. He's more tight, serious, an odd personality he doesn't remember his old friend ever having.

As the day's go on, Jigen begins to also realize that while life doesn’t go back to the way it was when the boys were younger, and that it never would probably.

It does get somewhat better

In the beginning, things do end up being weird between the both of them because it had been so long and both of them don’t know how to talk or interact with each other cause both still don’t know how this could be happening after so many years.

However after small heists together, things begin to fall into place. Before the dramatic climax of TWCFM's final episodes, Lupin attempts to ease Jigen back into the partnership with small heists. The most important being when Lupin asks for Jigens help on a project, because it’s a big big job and he’s still hard of seeing because he has no sight in his one eye, which by now he basically gotten rid of and replaced with a glass eye, and his other eye is only as good as his contact lens. He needs Jigens help and it ends up being their first true series of heists the pair do together.

Jigen soon finds out that this project is a new, functioning prosthetic eye, that Lupin has built with the tools and items Jigen has helped him pilfer over the last few weeks. It’s top notch, highly sophisticated and it fits perfectly in Lupin’s eye socket.

Following the end of TWCFM's storyline, the pair are not far from each others side.

Then Gravestone happens. Gravestone is canon in my Ljs series because it's premise is suppose to stick as the final trust exercise between Jigen and Lupin after their reunion in the Pyramid to cement their partnership to the highest form it could be. The final nail in the coffin so to speak, solidifying their old and new partnership so to speak. Putting each others life and trust in one another where uncertainty grows.

The rest was simply history

[thisbarbiereallylikesbirds]

Huy! What are Shen and LJ's fanbase like? Do they differ? Maybe one has a greater age range of fans or more analytical fans or one skews to being comprised more of one gender than the other, one has more of an international fanbase.... idk Do Shen and Lou's have a nickname for themselves like Directioners or whatever? Who's more fond of their fans or interacts with their fans more?

During the Nameless Trio era (the time period where the Lou Jitsu movies are actively being made) the fandom is primarily comprised of people who casual like the movies and of people who are interested in the lives of the actors.

After Lou Jitsu's disappearance the fandom switches into two main sections. Around half the people are in the fandom because they like the movies (a good amount of it is nostalgia, though there is a fair amount of analysis going on) and the other half is more focused on what exactly went down on set and what really happened to Lou.

When Shen starts making her own movies a small portion of the fandom watches them, but since they're for a completely different age range (skewing older) and a different genre (artsy horror films depicting the horrors of aging as a woman in Hollywood) the majority of the fandom is new viewers.

The fan base would probably call themselves "Lou"sers (like loser) or some pun like that. Idk if the Shen specific fan base would have a name, but I know she'd be open to it.

As for fan interactions Lou Jitsu absolutely LOVED meeting fans. It made him feel appreciated lol. He was very friendly. always doing autographs and pictures, and was known for actually having full conversations with fans instead. He likely was also one of the celebrities who would remember the names of fans and call them by name if he saw them again. Shen also loved her fans, though she probably prefers the fandom for her movies over the one for the Lou Jitsu movies. That being said, I think she was also very friendly to fans but is more likely to turn down pictures if she's just not feeling it that day.

Thanks for asking!! Nameless Trio asks are always open if you'd like me to rant about the sillies again lol 😆

[riafunnel]

On Fandom

"So you know how sometimes a piece of media stops being just a movie or just a series or just a whatever and becomes, like, a legitimately important part of your life?"

-arisha on LJ

For me, that was Escaflowne.

When you consume a piece of media at the perfect time in your life, it just really sticks to you and becomes more than just that thing. It becomes a marker for who you were at the time, no matter how cringey. And if the work is really, really good, it'll be a joy to revisit years later when you've grown up and can look at it with different eyes. I have other reasons for revisiting it, I suppose, and a lot of them have to do with fully accepting my younger self.

I was that girl when I was a grade school kid, fully obsessed, the way only a fangirl could be. I had posters in my room, listened to all the OSTs, talked about how much I hated Allen (lol), made a Fanel household in The Sims, tried out for track, and daydreamed about getting isekai'd myself.

The media landscape was so different back then, a lot of media was just very inaccessible and I had to be resourceful. The depth of research and rabbit-holes I got into - I taught myself katakana, read up on Atlantis and tarot cards, read One Thousand and One Nights, the Van Allen radiation belt (lol), and all the fanfiction I encountered on Geocities websites and FFN. I tracked down all the other works of the voice actors, both English and Japanese, and watched those.

I had my group of friends who were also fangirls, and we all hung out together and talked about our anime crushes and wrote fanfiction together. We definitely got weird looks, but that's okay, on a certain level we did know we were into weird things.

Towards the end of grade school I distinctly remember feeling ashamed of my weeby behavior and took active measures to tamp it down, 'grow up' a little, and make more friends outside of my anime bubble. It worked and I hung out with other crowds.

I would still engage in the fandom intermittently, but by then my group of friends had all gone our separate ways. I ended up going to a different high school than my grade school friends, and we all gradually stopped being anime fangirls. We developed different interests, discovered boys, etc.

I have bittersweet feelings about that time in my life, consciously suppressing my love for all anime (not just Escaflowne) because I was embarrassed. But at the same time, I was busy with a demanding school schedule and other major life events. Looking back, I wish I didn't shame myself for giving up on my 'childish interests'. I wish I engaged more with the fandom and sought out the corners of the internet where my fellow fans gathered. I recently discovered that there was an Escaflowne forum in the mid-2000s that I completely missed, as the whole site is defunct now.

I also didn't think to look on Tumblr, because I was A Cool Girl(TM) and joined reddit in 2010 instead. I feel like I missed out on a lot, not just because of Life Events but also because of my embarrassment at being a fangirl.

Over the years I'd still listen to the score, rewatch every few years or so. I convinced one of my best buddies to rewatch it with me during the pandemic and he was so impressed the animation, the story, the direction, with how well it holds up. It really reaffirmed by love for the show.

I guess I was mostly embarrassed of my antics when I was younger, but that was just me expressing my love for a piece of media that I really like. What's so strange about that? Christopher Lee used to read LOTR every damn year, there are a million adaptations of The Iliad, and a bajillion more covers of The Beatles' Yesterday. Good art is just timeless, you know?

So yes, this blog is about Escaflowne but also more than that. I’m really happy that I found media that I obsessed over back then and that it still has a bunch of fans like me all over the world.

Nowadays I'm unlearning that shame, I am fully accepting my younger self's cringe, and I owe it to her to engage in fandom. :)

[pingnova]

How I find fic to read in a new fandom on Ao3

Open fandom tag

Sort by kudos*

Open first few that seem interesting

After reading a fic, go to authors works

Filter and sort by fandom and kudos*

Read what seems interesting

Once I've exhausted the authors' own work, go to their bookmarks

Filter and sort by fandom (no detailed sorting available for bookmarks)

Read what seems interesting

Once I've run out of authors, return to bookmarked page of fandom tag sorted by kudos and repeat from the top

*Obligatory note about sort by kudos: I don't think a fic's worth or whether I will like it correlates with kudos, but sorting by kudos shows what's most popular which I feel like is a decent introduction to a fandom for me. It also stabilizes the order of works in a fandom tag for a fandom that gets a lot of works and updates daily so I don't miss things. Why kudos and not hits? In the past I've found that NSFW fic tends to have high hits and low kudos (likely to preserve readers' anonymity) or at least a far wider gap between hit and kudos count, and I'm rarely looking specifically for NSFW. Conversely if I happen to be looking for NSFW I sort by hits instead.

As far as what I look at to decide on a fic, typically first I read the description, then look at additional tags for anything offputting like squicks or triggers. My hard no is major character death, with very few exceptions. If those pass muster, I read the relationship tags and additional tags closer to see if it's a ship and tropes/themes I like. If the description doesn't say much (like one vague sentence) and the tags are likewise sparse (no tags or less than five) but the kudos or hits are very high, I tend to give it a shot anyway. A lot of imported fic from vintage zines or previous fan communities like LJ tend to lack metadata despite being up my alley.

Things that rarely matter to me when assessing a fic are the rating or relationship categories (like M/M or Other), character tags, or extremely literal tags (like Animals, Food, whatever). Comment and bookmark count also mean little, although if either is a lot higher than average I tend to note that in passing; it piques my curiosity about the fic but doesn't necessarily tell me anything I want to know about it. Some of my favorite fics have less than ten comments, so I don't find those useful measures.

Personally a fic being WIP or incomplete/abandoned doesn't mean much to me, I'm willing to subscribe to updated fic or read an incomplete fic as if it was the total work (since it functionally is). So I never filter by completeness.

[biffelderberry]

so I recently applied to volunteer with AO3 and part of one of the questions was related to fandom and my history with fandom. I normally say I’ve been in fandom for 12 years. 12 years ago, I was bugging @voldiebuns before a color guard practice because I was boreed, and she handed me Loveless and told me to read it and leave her alone. So whatever, I read it, and from there got dragged into fandom. I’m not really sure how Loveless lead to FFn and fandom in general, but it’s definitely a marked point in time as when I really realized that there was this obsessive group on the internet. It’s also when I learned about Slash and Yaoi (which is what the cool kids called it back then.) 

I remember us getting our moms to drop us off at Borders (god I miss that store) and we would go through the manga section looking for manga. I remember binge watching 18 episodes of Kuroshitsuji while home alone and being afraid to turn around. I remember @voldiebuns,  @magickallity, and I  writing 20 minute fanfiction challenges. 

But none of that is even the point of all of this, because I also remember 2 years before reading Loveless, finding a little site called Quizilla. Quizilla was designed to be a quiz hosting site, as it’s name would suggest, but it had a thriving fanfiction corner. And the fanfictions were glorious, by the way, almost all of them were either Harry Potter self insert fic - where you could date either Harry, Draco, Fred, or George, vampire stories or gratuitous porn. And you think the porn on AO3 is bad? The porn on Quizilla was glorious. it probably shaped a lot of who I am today... which might be a bad thing? Most of it was either straight or lesbian, and it was all trashy and poorly written. One in particular I remember was a girl who in the previous story had had sex with her best friend at a slumber party, seducing the guy working in her parents back yard and having sex with him in the pool. He lined her up with the water jet and... yea. I read that 14 years ago. It made that much of an impression on me. 

Anyways, Quizilla had little user functionality built in, and it was certainly not designed to be a fanfiction archive. But there’s something about fandom that just builds itself in whatever corner of the web it can. And that’s something that I think a lot of the newbies in fandom don’t realize. We have something so great in AO3, it’s a space built for us, by us. Quizilla had a very shitty search function so really the only way to find even readable stories was to go through the top 10. Which was our version of reviews/rating. You wanted to be in the top whatever you could. 

There was a forum I was on, I don’t know if it was the official one. I hope it was deleted with quizilla in 2014, because I was a little shit at 13, as most people are, and there are things I know I said that I want to remain hidden.

OH I forgot the best part of Quizilla!! Banners. Banners were such a weird thing. Basically for your story to be a legitimate story you had to have a banner. I think it’s why I cringe when I see stories with banners on AO3. I just associate it with Quizilla and that part of my life. They would be images done up to look like the book cover for the story and they were... I mean it was early 2004, what do you expect from a bunch of teens and tweens? 

I just. When we talk about recent fandom history, we talk about FFn, and Adult Fanfiction, and LJ. But let’s bring Quizilla into the history of it all too.  

[shirozora-draws]

Had a rather brutal work week and am making good on my promise to stop drawing so much in order to finish a fic, so no new sketch dumps posts. Instead I’m doing what I said I would a while back (and then promptly forgot bc undiagnosed AD[H]D brain is a helluva thing) and posting the JPG version of the GIF if anyone wants to see an HQ version.

Also posting a close up of the Darksaber animation because I’m so fucking proud of that sizzling Darksaber edge that makes me think about circuits in Tron/Tron Legacy and also why the fuck not.

Lastly, good god y’all, I’m nearly at 600 followers and the vast majority of you showed up when I started putting out some Star Wars doodles. It is incredible, humbling, and quite frankly terrifying to see so much of my art get put on blast for positive reasons (I was once put on blast in a fandom wank LJ comm bc someone got sick and tired of me spamming a fandom comm with my art lololol those sure were the fucking days). You guys have given me so much encouragement and confidence in how I draw (mainly, sketch a fuckton of nonsense messily with pencil and don’t bother trying to turn everything into a polished colored piece), and I am forever grateful. 

(also learned a former Pixar artist would use a bajillion lines to build up their forms [go check out concept art for Ratatouille and Brave] so, y’know, everyone has a process, the process can get you actual factual work, and I am not hopeless)

Meddling in a galaxy far, far away from the likes of Rian Johnson come on bro meet me in fucking pIT LET’S GO and seeing all of your tags/replies (this never happened to me before so I didn’t know you could reply to those replies? I’M SO SORRY I DID SEE ALL YOUR COMMENTS)/mentions/gif use (holy fuck is that how Tumblr gifs work???) and seeing your comments at AO3 and faffing around on the dinluke server has been pushing the bounds of what I can do and offer as an artist and writer, and that is incredibly precious to me. Suppose it’s a good thing I showed up here as a tired working Millennial and not years earlier when I was still stumbling around like a fucking fool and getting involved in Fandom messes I shouldn’t and hating my art style for never being Good Enough.

Sometimes Good Enough is fucking rad. Embrace that shit.

... okay I’m sorry I didn’t mean to word barf so much but I’ve been running on 4 hours of extremely frustrated sleep due to having OT and not being able to write/draw so enjoy the details, I’mma bounce.

[gallavichthings]

This week I interviewed someone who, despite being really new to the fandom, has already made for themselves: Arrow aka Arrowflier/ @arrowflier. Aside from several short stories here on Tumblr, they’ve also written Marriage, Mickey, and Milk of the Gods, Eighty-Seven Percent (Anatomy of a Heart), Burn Out the Sun and several others, including several on-going projects.

Also, I found out what a spectrometrist does.

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A: I'm 30 years old, though when I go out I'm often mistaken for much younger. I got my PhD in analytical chemistry about three years ago, and moved from one midwest college town to another (where I currently work as a mass spectrometrist), both only hours from the city where I grew up. So you could definitely say I'm a homebody, and I like my comfort zone! That said, I've had some amazing opportunities to travel over the years, and love exploring as long as I get to go home after. 

GT: I’m sorry but I have no idea what an spectometrist does. Could you explain it a bit to us and also what made you choose this career? It sounds so interesting! What was your favorite place to visit?

A: I won't get into the nitty gritty, but basically I use really expensive instrumentation to identify, detect, and quantfify trace levels of contaminants like pesticides in a variety of matrices: crops, soil, water, etc. When I first decided to major in chemistry in undergrad it was on a whim, and since then I've focused mainly on environmental applications because it's so important to the health of not just people, but everything else too.

So far I think I have to say Germany in general; I really love it there. It's also the only other country I've been to more than once--first in high school as part of a trip with other young musicians throughout my state, and then again for a three month internship in undergrad. People tend to think this is odd, but one of the things I miss the most is the public transportation...and the bakeries on every corner, of course! I lived right off the Duesseldorf Altstadt, and it was absolutely beautiful there with festivals all the time.

When I am home, I cycle through hyperfixations on several hobbies: reading, writing, and crafting, mostly. Before I decided to dive into this fandom, I spent most evenings knitting or crocheting in front of the tv, and even joined an internet-based crafting competition (reward: bragging rights).

GT:  I' A crafting competition? That's cool! Have you ever made anything fandom inspired? 👀

A: Well I haven't made anything Shameless related just yet--though I've talked about making some little Ian and Mickey figures recently--but I've made things based on other fandoms. Here's a pic of one of the things I'm most proud of, my first double-knitting (reversible) project from a few years ago:

GT: That looks great!

A: What else...I have pretty major (but medicated) anxiety and am extremely open about it, like being by myself, and adore my dog (who lives with my parents a few hours away) more than anything.

GT: If you've read these interviews before you know I'm about to ask for a picture of that dog...

A: My furry baby:

Unfortunately, I just found out about an hour ago that he has a very aggressive oral cancer and won't be with us much longer, but right now he's feeling pretty good and happy.

GT: Awn, I'm so sorry about your dog. He's a cutie and I'm sure he gives you a lot of love.

Tell about your relationship with fanfiction. When did you first come across it?

A: I want to say middle school, maybe about 2005? I'm pretty sure I tried to search for something specific I was wondering about a book, and instead of a canonical answer, I found a fic and dove right in. I would sit at the family desktop in my parent's room and browse ff.net and LJ while I was supposed to be doing homework; thankfully I always cranked out assignments fast so it worked out, haha.

I read for a lot of little fandoms at first, and loved discovering that other people had some of the same thoughts I did about the characters. Back then I was mostly in it either for closure or because I wasn't ready for something to end. Now it's an immediate instinct: see or read something I like, then go see what other people have turned it into.

GT: Ah, FF.net and LJ, those bring out memories!

What was the fandom? Did you write for it too?

A: I want to say the very first one was Good Omens, back when it was just a book, but fics for video games were some of my first as well, specifically Skies of Arcadia: Legends and Tales of Symphonia because I had just discovered my ongoing love of JRPGs.

While I've had ideas for other fandoms, Shameless was the very first one I actually participated in, much less wrote for--my first fic ever was only posted on April 25th this year!

GT: I am reading Good Omens right now! I've already seen the show though.

Wow, you write a lot for someone so new to fanfiction! What made you want to start?

A: You know, I'm honestly not sure what was different to make me finally go for it! I periodically work on originals but hadn't written anything at all for a pretty long time--over a year I think.

But there's so much in Shameless that can be expanded on, and I just wanted to try! Besides that, I was lurking here on Tumblr and seeing what a great community it was, and figured writing was my way to become a part of it.

GT: The fandom is pretty great indeed, and very large nowadays. When did you start watching Shameless?

A: So that's kind of funny too...because I also started watching just this year! I don't know exactly when, but probably around February? I caught up just in time to watch the very last episode the night it aired.

GT: Good for you, you didn't have to suffer through our trials and tribulations lol

Did you binge the whole thing? What was your favorite episode?

A: I binge watched the hell out of it, haha. Totally obsessed once my coworker finally convinced me to give it a try. My favorite episode is definitely the gallavich wedding--I knew most of their story already, at least in general, so I totally cheated and watched bits of that one in between angstier episodes as a palate cleanser. I really needed that to get through season 8, especially.

GT: Is the wedding your favorite scene?

A: Hmm, favorite individual scene is much harder! I'd say it's a tie between the wedding, Mickey coming out, and "Holy fuck".

GT: What would you change in canon if you could change one thing?

A: I'd definitely get rid of Terry walking in on them and the following events. I get the place it has in the story, but it was just too much. While other things are difficult or don't seem to fit, that's the one thing I just can't handle.

GT: Who are your favorite characters aside from them?

A:  That definitely varied throughout the series! Kev and V always had a special place in my heart for being such a constant even when they were struggling. But by the end, Carl was pretty high up there--I think he showed a lot of growth while still being himself.

GT: Do you write them as well or just Ian and Mickey?

A: So far they've only shown up as brief side characters, mostly because I find it harder to write them in a way that feels authentic yet. I'd like to get more into other characters though, and tentatively plan to do character studies for them at some point in the future.

GT: Do you ever include original characters in your fics?

A: I do! They mostly just spring up along the way; I start writing them and see what happens. But most of the characters in my outsider POV series (Meet the Neighbors) are original, and I started a kid!fic that will have OCs as well.

GT: What do you base them on?

A: Nothing in particular, honestly. I don't base them on real people or other characters, at least on purpose. I just start with the basic background that I think makes sense for the story, and let them grow from there. It mostly turns out ok I think, though sometimes they turn out a bit different than I expected!

GT: What inspires your stories?

A: Just about anything and everything! Lately I've mostly been letting other people inspire me with prompts, because there's something really special about writing something you know at least one person is really looking forward to. And a lot of it has been in the vein of "missing scenes", things I wish we had gotten to see on screen, or fix-its. If I can't think of something but want to write, I just sit for a bit and let my mind wander until something sticks.

I also have about a million crossover/AU ideas, because I like plunking my favorite characters into established situations and seeing how that twists it. Because most of the time you can't just merge stories like that and expect them to come out intact--it's sort of a character study on its own to discover how different stories will bend around different people.

GT: What kind of fics do you write the most?

A: Oh gosh, there's so many already I'm not even sure, haha. I'm thinking the majority of my ficlets are post-canon scenarios, which I really do enjoy, and either fluff or hurt/comfort. Because Mickey and Ian deserve good things, but they're not always great at letting themselves have them.

Most of my longer ideas are AU though; I'm just working much more slowly on them.

GT: Which fic you've written are you most proud of?

A: I think I have to say my very first one: F*ck the Stars. It's not that it's my best or my most popular, but it was a really big deal for me to put out there. I still kind of can't believe I actually did, and that I keep doing it!

GT: Which fics and authors in the fandom are your most favorite?

A: Does it sound like a cop-out if I say I can't pick? Really though, I can't--there's just so much talent, and I haven't even made my way through all the fandom classics yet. That said, whenever I see a fantasy AU it shoots right to the top of the list.

Two of my current fantasy favorites came out of you hosting Gallavich Week this year: Bad for Business by Ravenheart [@sunoficarus] and Lest They Say, Here Be Dragons by RageSeptember [@gallavictorious​]. Then there's a witch in wicker park by horror_business [@damnnmilkovich], another taste of divine rush by kissteethstainred, and on a slightly different note Thicker Than Forget by @wehangout.

That doesn't even scratch the surface of works (or authors) I adore, and my to-read list is so long it's scary, but it's one little niche I'm very fond of that doesn't always get a lot of attention.

GT: You're right, it doesn't, so thanks for sharing your favorites with us!

So, fantasy is definitely one of your favorite themes/tropes, right? What else catches your attention when you're looking for fics to read?

A: Absolutely! Fantasy is all I read anymore outside of fic, so I love it when those things cross.

I'm also a sucker for just about any fic centered on misunderstandings, as long as there's a happy ending, usually where they both fall for each other and think they're the only one. It's my not-so-guilty pleasure.

Other than that, I love lots of description, things other people would probably consider purple prose, and familiar stories with unique twists. In general though, I'll give anything a shot if I'm in the mood for it, especially if it comes recommended.

GT: And what annoys you when reading?

A: Hmm, I think the biggest thing might actually be in formatting, not the work itself. If I see huge blocks of text, I tend to hit the back button pretty quickly. Likewise, if I can't tell when a scene shifts or when a flashback starts, it pulls me out of the story as I try to figure it out. I can overlook a lot if a storyline is compelling, but obvious inaccuracies--I'm talking things like physically impossible actions or timelines--throw me off as well. I do avoid some fics (not all) with medical or scientific plots for that reason.

GT: What has the reception been to your fics?

A: So much better than I expected! Sometimes I can't believe people aren't tired of me yet, honestly. The weird thing to me is that ficlets I don't think are very good (here on tumblr, I don't generally put my speedwrites on ao3) sometimes seem to be among the best received! But that's encouraging in its own way, and I think tends to reflect general interest in different topics.

GT: What kind of comments do you just love getting?

A: All of them, even though I'm terrible about replying! But I think it's really special when someone picks out a phrase or passage that spoke to them, or that they related to.

GT: What's your writing process like?

A: Never the same twice, haha. But I'd say that once I have an idea, it's usually immediately followed by a line or two that I fall in love with, and I go from there. For longer fics I attempt to outline, but if I try too hard to stick to that I tend to fizzle out very quickly. So instead I try to apply something I was originally taught for public speaking/oral storytelling: know the bare bones. Stick to those couple of impactful moments that the story wouldn't be the same without, and let the rest fall where it may.

That's easier said than done, of course, and I still struggle to self-edit and keep the bullet-point key moments manageable. I also tend to edit as I go because I'm a perfectionist, but I've started forcing myself to just leave blanks and skip around if I don't feel like I'm getting it right. I skip around a lot, in fact; instead of trying to write up to the point I just had a random idea for, I go ahead and write it and fit it in later.

For my tumblr fics it's a little different though; they're short and fairly stream-of-conscious, and generally unedited as a way to force myself to just put things out there and stop worrying about it.

GT: Do you have any writing rituals? How do you motivate yourself to write?

A: It changes from day to day, nothing concrete except an endless supply of tea and either silence or instrumental music.

When I really need motivation, I like to use my hourglass, and tell myself that I have to at least try to work on something until the sand runs out. More often, though, I try to sit outside--albeit that only works for me in a very narrow temperature range--or I get set up in the spare room that serves as my little library. Sometimes I'll hand write in a pretty journal to type up later. Atmosphere can make a big difference, as can a comfy place to sit--no desks or tables for me.

In a pinch, I take a shower--shower thoughts are creative thoughts--or go to bed extra early and type ideas on my phone, since things always seem to come to me when I shouldn't be thinking about it at all.

Also, not gonna lie, I sometimes bribe myself.

GT: Oh, bribe how? It never works for me.

A: I mean, I never said it worked well, haha. But it can be the last push sometimes. "If I finish this passage, I get to open that bottle of wine." "If I spend 30 minutes at least trying on this, I can leave the laundry until tomorrow." "If I actually post tomorrow, I can splurge on take-out as a reward." That kind of thing.

GT: Hahah, I wish that worked for me too!

Do you have a preference for writing Ian or Mickey pov?

A: In the beginning, I was more comfortable writing Ian. I can really relate to both his mental health struggles and the way he seems to think about and deal with things sometimes, so it came more naturally.

Now though, I find myself writing as Mickey more and more. I probably make him a bit more introspective than would be true to character, but there's so much depth and development there to explore. Beyond that, it's sort of cathartic to write Ian through his eyes, because he's blunt and can put things in perspective and obviously cares very deeply for all of Ian, not just the easy parts.

GT: What's the most difficult thing about writing them?

A: For me, I think it's not being too self-indulgent and keeping them in-character enough that it doesn't throw other people off. That, and dealing with their individual issues and traumas respectfully. It can be nerve-wracking to try and tackle something like bipolar disorder or child abuse from an outside perspective, because it's important but getting it wrong could be hurtful.

GT: And what's the best part?

A: How well they fit together. They've been in each other's orbits for so long, and know each other so well, and it's a pleasure to write about a couple that has their problems but keep coming back to each other to work it out. Because any kind of personal relationship is work, but it's worth it for all the fun, silly, and completely-in-love moments we didn't get enough of in the show.

GT: What are your headcanons for their future?

A: I think I'd like to see them move back to the Southside, and really make it their own. They might not have kids of their own, but their nieces and nephews hang around with their friends at the "cool uncle's" house all the time. They're the honorary parents of the neighborhood, too, and kids know where to go when they need a nonjudgemental adult or a protective force. And I don't care if they keep the same jobs, but whatever they do they find a way to do together.

GT: What are you working on right now?

A: Oh, so many things. I currently have...6 official WIPs? One is a fluff piece of them taking a delayed honeymoon and should go quickly once I get back to it, but the others are more intensive and need some worldbuilding still. There's a Jurassic World AU, a twisty sort of Snow White AU, an alternate meeting AU where Mickey is basically a survivalist, a post-canon fic about them picking up some strays, and my outsider POV series.

I'm trying really hard not to start anything else big until I at least get further into those, but I have a handful of other chaptered AUs planned for sometime in the far future, most based on fairy tales. And I'm still enjoying doing my little ficlets, too.

GT: Wow! Looks like we have a lot to look forward to!!

Ok, last question: why arrowflier?

A: Good question, no good answer haha. Arrow comes from a class I took in undergrad, where we were encouraged to choose our "storytelling" names to use for the semester. It's a character (sort of) in an original work I've been not-writing since high school.

But Arrow was always taken on other websites, so I had to add to it. In trying to think of modifiers, I think I was looking at my books and saw "Arrow's Flight" by Mercedes Lackey. So now I'm either Arrowfly or Arrowflier depending on availability!

GT: Hahah, no, it was a good answer, thanks!

Well, best of luck with all your WIPs and thank you for providing us so much content in such little time. I love seeing new people come into the fandom, it's always a boost of motivation.

Leave a message to the readers now.

A: Thank you for this opportunity, and for all you do for the fandom!

For everyone else, thank you for being such an incredibly supportive community; I'm so glad I chose this as my first real fandom, because I couldn't have chosen better. And if you ever think, "I wish I could write, or draw, or gif, or whatever," just go for it! You'll have an amazing audience, and it's absolutely worth it.💖

[shadowfae]

We’re all pretty aware that the tumblr otherkin community is at a huge decline; I was wondering if you have any theories as to why that is?

American Protestantism, the decline of queer oppression in North America and the AIDS crisis, helicopter parenting, web 3.0, morality politics, and  Tumblr’s porn ban; roughly in that order and rolled up into one bombshell that was a few years in the coming but nobody really saw it and understood it until it was far too late.

That was a mouthful and probably only made sense if you follow current cyberpolitical theory. For some of you reading this, as with every other hot take I have this has a chance of being passed around, that alone is enough. But for others who had no idea what I just said and need the ELI5 version, let me explain that. Buckle up, this’ll be a long one, and will go into fandom history a bit as well because it is actually relevant.

As we know, tumblr is a very American-centric platform. Twitter is also this way, but less so, but tumblr has it bad. Now, I’m ‘lucky’ in the fact that I’m Canadian and a twenty minute drive from the American border, so that puts me in the ‘privileged’ majority. (I say privileged because I’m not really sure what else to call it. Most of the information going around about politics either directly affects me or indirectly affects me approximately one or two links of contact away. Someone who’s only influenced by American politics because it makes their sister’s online friends sad is not going to be privileged in that way.)

This means that American politics and their social climate overwhelmingly affects tumblr’s social climate. This also bleeds through into other fandom spaces, on twitter, instagram, and Pixiv to name a few places; but here’s where I spend the majority of my time so here’s what I’ve witnessed.

America’s main religion, as far as I understand (from the raised agnostic and currently neopagan view I have), is some weirdass capitalistic-Protestantism that is so many miles from what the actual Bible says that if I were a betting man and knew more about cults than I did, I’d say it’s some weird fucking cult and never set foot in the country again for any reason that isn’t gaming free shipping through a PO box. If you have no idea what I just said but are at least vaguely familiar with Christianity, this graphic explains it pretty well. So we can see there’s some glaring issues with that ideal.

The decline of queer oppression and the rise of queer rights in North America, which is to tenderly include my own country but we all know when people say ‘in NA’ they mean ‘America, and Canada where it applies because the right-wing Republicans are really good in the propaganda department to convince everyone that Mexico is a drug-lords-and-anarchy wasteland to the point where even I don’t actually know what’s down there other than bad drivers and heat’; means two things. One, it’s a good thing by a long shot and do not mistake this as me thinking queer oppression being lessened is a bad thing. But two, it means that thanks to the AIDS crisis, queer folks lost a lot of first-person sources as history.

The queer elders in NA who survived are typically either a) bitter anarchists who are often POC, probably still dirt poor and do recreational drugs or b) university-tenured TERFs (trans exclusionary radical feminists). Category A are the people who Republicans have deemed worthless in every way, because racism, queerphobia, ableism, and all the other ways to be wrong and different and Evil that they can’t handle, because Jeezus would never want them to actually learn to love someone who wasn’t just like them, and they don’t have the compassion to do better. Category B are the people who want to be different in just a teensie little bit, typically with TERFs they want to be lesbians, but they don’t want to challenge the status quo. They’re fine with the way things work, they just want to be on top oppressing others over ripping the whole damn thing down and building a more forgiving system.

Now, due to all those ‘isms and the cheerfully malicious aid of the Republicans, pun not intended but drives home the cruelty of it all, we also see the rise of helicopter parenting. The invention of the internet did not really help this. Basically what you’ve got is a whole bunch of parents who saw the civil rights movement, just got access to the internet and things going viral, know the world is changing, and like all parents, they’re scared for their children. Now instead of parents knowing one or two people in their classes who just went missing one day and everyone assumed they ran away, they hear about eight homicides in the city of kids going to parks at night and dying. The Satanic Panic was another event around this time that contributed to that, but I’ll let you research that one.

This means that all of these parents, instead of doing what their parents typically did and let their kids wander off for the day so long as they’re back by sundown, they can’t let their children out of their sight. There might be a freak accident where their child is decapitated on the playground swing! Their baby might get murdered by an evil Satanist walking home from school! Their dearest darling might go online and tell their address to someone who’s got a 100% chance of being a pedophile who will show up and kidnap them in the night!

…You get the idea. 

Combine those three things I just established, what we’ve got is a lot of queer kids who have a lot of internalized shame for being different and wrong, because they’re queer, and they can’t find spaces offline to be themselves, because all of the elders who would do that are dead and/or inaccessible and their parents won’t let them go to any clubs that aren’t school-related, which they’ll never find a GSA or queer club because Republicans, ‘isms, propaganda, and the war on Category A queer adults have all done their best to ensure that those spaces don’t exist.

So you have a generation of kids who I am the youngest of. The first generation on the internet. The late Web 1.0 (usenets and Geocities) and early Web 2.0 (livejournal was the big one, ff.net too, also 4chan but fuck those guys) generation. What we were taught was: trust nobody on the internet with your real info no matter how much you like them, this is a wilderness and any crimes that happen won’t be punished or seen so don’t put yourself in a position where you’re going to be the victim of one, and everything you put online is never getting taken down so don’t put anything up that you’re not willing to have on the front page of your local newspaper.

This worked out pretty well, actually! You had kids who knew that if they got in trouble, there was no backup coming to save them. Because the form that backup might take - parents and police - wasn’t going to help. Best case, they’d be banned from their friends and online support groups for being queer. Worst case, they’d be jailed and put in juvie and conversion therapy and turn to drugs and become evil Satanists just like everyone says they secretly are already. So they learned very quickly to take care of themselves. Nobody was going to save them, so they learned to not need saving.

And then, well, Web 2.0 shifted to Web 3.0. Livejournal died because parents - the Warriors for Innocence was the big name - went “gasp how horrible my children are being exposed to the evil pedos and homosexuals they’re going to do drugs and die of AIDS!”. Which is uh. It’s filled with a lot of bigotry, and I’m not excusing them - absolutely I am not - but you can kind of see where they’re coming from, if you tilt your head and squint.

Either way, LJ died, tumblr took its place, Facebook was fast taking off, and the fandom folks who had seen mailing lists go inactive, web admins take their fanfic sites down due to copyright, entire fandoms burnt to the ground in flame wars, said ‘fuck that we’re making our own place’ and that’s how AO3 got made.

That’s important. A lot of folks move to AO3, because well, the rules let them. The rules say ‘you can throw literally anything up here so long as it’s fan content and is not literally illegal, so we don’t get taken down’. It’s a swing for the first generation internet users, those kids who know this place is a wilderness and are carving out our own sanctuary.

But. The children under us. The children for whom AIDS is a nightmarish fairy tale, for whom the ghost stories are conversion therapy, for whom know they can’t really talk to their parents about being queer but can trust they probably won’t get kicked out over it. The children who haven’t spent ten seconds without supervision except online, and their reaction isn’t ‘oh thank god I’m finally free to express myself’ but ‘if I get in trouble, who will protect me?’.

And there’s nobody there. Because we went in knowing there was no backup. And that was fine. But now, the actual adults have figured out that hey uh, maybe we should make cyber laws? Maybe we should make revenge porn and grooming children over the internet crimes? And they grew up with that. They grew up learning that no, even if your parents are suffocating and controlling, they’re always be there for you! Some adult will always be there to protect you!

That isn’t the case. It’s not. But they expect it, because it’s always been done for them. They don’t really want to change the status quo, because that means doing it themselves. They can’t do that, because they don’t know how, they’ve been controlled for every single part of their lives thanks to helicopter parenting and without that control, they don’t know how to keep their lives together, and they demand someone come and control it for them, without restraining them.

Effectively, they want someone to ensure they never face the consequences of their actions. Helicopter parents will rescue you from whatever you did, because you’re their precious baby and it doesn’t matter if you punched a kid, you can do no wrong and the other kid clearly started it.

But being queer is doing wrong. Being queer is something Jeezus doesn’t approve of. So they want to make it something he could approve of! But if it’s too off what they consider to be okay, if it’s too different and weird and wrong and evil, that can’t do, that’s still bad, and they’re precious angels, and children, and minors, why are we the adults not protecting them and letting them see it? Why aren’t we being just like their parents  but queer-friendly, why aren’t we protecting the children?

The adults who taught us were the children of those who died as a result of AIDS. The eldest of my generation knew some of them personally. My therapist’s younger brother died at 20 of AIDS, and she told me what it was like. But they don’t have that. These kids of web 3.0, they don’t have that. What they have is over-controlling parents, and the expectation that someone will always be there to protect them but hopefully in ways that don’t hurt them this time, no real understanding of why Category A queer elders are the way they are, and so much internalized shame that they have to do some pretty fancy logic-leaping to keep them from collapsing entirely.

They can’t turn into Category A queer youngsters, because they don’t know how to unravel the system around them, because they’ve never had to actually make choices in their lives and live with the consequences, because they don’t have the example of how to do it. They can’t unravel their internalized shame because again, that’s hard and they don’t have their parents to take away the consequences and pain. It doesn’t come easy to them, so it may as well not come at all.

But, you ask, if Category A queer elders aren’t around to teach the kids, then how are they learning anything positive at all? Well, Category B, our university-tenured TERFs, who don’t want to change the status quo but want to just be at the top of it instead.

For a lot of kids who don’t know how to make hard choices but want to be queer, this is an extremely attractive option. But when they go online to queer spaces, a lot of them say fuck terfs, we don’t support your hate, and they go ‘yeah okay that makes sense’. They can say fuck terfs without ever actually questioning why terfs are bad. They’re Bad and Evil, just like drug addicts, just like fairytale nazis, just like the evil homophobes.

And we saw them say ‘yeah fuck terfs’ and we were like, ‘aight you got it’ and we never questioned if they actually understood us. They didn’t. They didn’t, and we didn’t do enough to fix it, because not enough of us realized the problem. So terfs got a little sneaky. They hid behind dogwhistles and easy little comments, hiding their rhetoric in queer theory that you’ll absolutely miss if you just memorize it and never actually question it and understand why that point is being made.

This goes back to America sucking, because their school system is far more focused on rote memorization over actual logic and understanding of the text. They’re engaging with queer theory the way they’ve been taught, which is memorize and don’t think, don’t question. Besides, questioning and understanding is hard. Being shown different points of view and asked what they think is not only hard but requires them to go against all of the conditioning that says to just listen and agree and never question it, which goes back to tearing the system and internalized shame down, and we’ve established they can’t do that so naturally they don’t do that.

This begets, then, the rise of exclusionary politics. They’re turning into Category B queer youngsters, because we told them ‘hey that’s a terf talking point what are you doing’ and they never questioned why. They learned you can do all sorts of things, just don’t say X, Y, or Z, because they never thought deeply about it.

The children who have grown on Web 3.0 do not want to do any heavy lifting to make things easier for themselves long-run. They want to do as little as possible and have things get better for them. There isn’t enough of us left in Category A, because Category B terfs are very good at recruiting young folks and Cat. A is overwhelming poor, dead, and easily dismissed in the system as evil and bad, so we can’t exactly convince the young folks to listen. If all of the young kids could agree to tear down the system, a lot more older folks might listen. Change always starts with the young, and there’s a reason for that.

But Republicans have figured out, if you get people fighting, they never put together a force that can actually stop you. TERFs, who want the exact same thing as Republicans but with themselves on top, are doing this to queer youth, and Cat. A elders can’t fight back because there isn’t enough of them and the odds are against them, and the young folk like me who follow their lead.

People can kinda handle gay people. It’s not so far from the acceptable normal that it’s impassable. But you want them to handle kinky people? Gay people of colour? Kinky gay people of colour? Trans people? Those are bridges too far to step across. The original idea was to get the foot in the door with marriage equality and inch our way through with racial equality, sex positivity, dismantling ableism and perisexism (forgive me if that isn’t the word for anti-intersex ‘ism), and see if we can’t patch up the system instead of inciting a civil war over this and have to tear down the system entirely.

Well, we might’ve managed that if not for AIDS being the perfect ‘Jeezus is killing all the evil gay people for being sinners’ propaganda machine. As it stands now, not a chance in hell. So long as Republicans and terfs keep everyone fighting, nobody has the power to dismantle their empire, and they stay in power.

So then, you ask me, “Lu what the fuck does that have to do with the decline of otherkinity on tumblr???” and now that you’ve got all that background knowledge, here is your answer.

Those children who want their experiences curated for them and the evil icky content they don’t like to be gone because it disgusts them and anything that disgusts them is clearly sinful problematic and should be destroyed, are what we call ‘antishippers’, or anti for short.

They like being progressive. Sort of. They learned what Republicans and terfs have honed to a fine talent: keep people fighting, hold them to a bar they have to constantly make or risk being ostracized, and harass the people who don’t play along into getting out of your sight forever. Sound familiar?

They learned of otherkinity, and particularly fictionkind, because web 3.0 means if something goes viral on one site, it doesn’t just go viral on that site, it makes it to worldwide newspapers and twitter and nobody ever, ever fucking forgets it. They realized the following: “Hey wait, if I’m this character for realsies, not only does it help me deal with the internalized shame I’ve done nothing to actually fix because that takes work, I can also tell these people who draw gross content I don’t like they’re hurting me personally, and that actually sounds credible, and I can shame them into stopping”.

If this is your first time here and that sounds sickening, it damn well should, and I am so, so sorry that any of us had to witness this, and I am more sorry I and everyone else who personally witnessed this didn’t realize what was going on and put a stop to it. I answer asks and browse the tags and clear up misinformation and it isn’t just a genuine desire to help. It’s damage control, and my own way of trying to deal with the guilt of not stopping this. I’m well aware I couldn’t have seen it coming, I was a teenager myself still learning and no one person has that much power. I still feel like I should have done more, and I’ll do what I can to fix what’s within my power to fix.

So back to the story. This all culminates around 2016 or so. Trump wins the election, and every queer person ever knows they’re fucked, and the younger generation’s only ever heard horror stories, never seen actual oppression that this could bring. We’re all scared. We all don’t know what to do. Nobody has any answers or any control over the situation.

So they lash out. They attack others for drawing things they don’t like, for challenging them in literally any way, for asking them to reconsider the vile shit they just said, for so much as defending themselves from the harassment they just got. And when challenged, they yell “But I’m a minor! A literal child! How dare you attack me, clearly you get off on this, you evil pedophile!” and they sling around every insult in the book until one sticks. Pedophile is a pretty good one, so is abuser, and sometimes zoophile works out too. Freak is great, everyone gets right pissed off about it.

The fact that Category A queer elders were called pedophiles and freaks is not a fact they know or care about. The fact that they are quickly making every fandom community super toxic is also not a fact they care about. The fact that the ‘kin community has words and terminology and they actually mean shit, and the fact that they’re spreading misinformation faster than we can keep up with, are not facts they care about.

So they come in, take our terms, make it impossible for us to find new folks. They realize our anger is easily a power trip, because we’re already made fun of, so they get off on the little power they can find and make fun of us too, and then when we get rightfully annoyed and pissed off, they can hide behind being minors.

Then tumblr implements their porn ban, because nobody’s stopping them, because it isn’t profitable to have porn on here. Considering most of the otherkin community, and most fandom communities, are full of adults who do occasionally talk about NSFW things, and the fact that they’re just banning everyone who so much as breathes wrong, this begins the start of a mass exodus, scattering already fragile communities to twitter, pillowfort, dreamwidth, and a few other places. Largely, twitter, where you can’t make a post longer than a snappy comeback and where the algorithm is literally designed to piss you off as much as possible.

So community elders have largely left, because they can’t stand the drama and the pain of what’s happened, and that’s if they didn’t get banned for being kinky furries who do talk about how their kintypes merge with their sexuality. Most community members have also left or stopped talking about being ‘kin, because they get associated with antishippers and toxicity and it’s just not worth it. Those of us who are left get drowned out by misinformation and trolls and wishkin and antishippers who appropriate our terminology because it supports them getting a power trip, and whenever we argue, we get called pedophiles and freaks and worse.

And now there isn’t much left. I hope we get to find a better place. Othercon was a good place to talk about it, I did a whole panel (it’s on Youtube!) about what we want to do about it. But I don’t really have any answers. 

But to sum it all up... America’s political climate ultimately culminated in destroying queer spaces, and we survived, and then people who wanted to destroy smaller communities to get on top showed up and we were all but defenseless against something we had never, ever dealt with before on this scale.

One of my twitter mutuals mentioned how kinning and otherkin are now completely separate communities. It’s really the best I can do to keep hoping that continues, until nobody realizes the words are at all connected to each other. It’s the best anyone can hope for, now. I hate it. I hate every part of this. But maybe we can salvage what’s left.

[consistentsquash]

Your rec lists are creative and always good! Thanks for making them! 6 and 8 :)

Thanks for the ask, nonnie <3

Context - doing a mini ask game for hitting 500 fic recs

6. How do you find new fic to rec?

Most of my ficrecs come direclty from AO3 searches. During the pandemic lockdowns I made pretty detailed notes for hundreds of fics. That's where the majority of my fic recs are from.

For fics written after April/May 2021, again from AO3 but generally I get a head start by looking at word of mouth recs on Reddit/Tumblr or author bookmarks or checking what's new from the authors I am subscribed to.

8. How do you make a rec list?

This process has changed a lot for me. How I made my first list is totally different from how I make lists now. I am going to describe the process I use now. Trust me it's loads better than what I was doing in the beginning!

I make themed rec lists generally. Sometimes I make one off detailed recs but that's rare. Everything I am going to be talking about are going to be about themed rec lists.

1. Starting - Read fics from authors you are subscribed to/tags you follow on AO3. Depending on how much time you have for fandom you probably want to adapt this. When I am short on time, I just read subscribed authors. When I have more time, I read the SS/HP tag. If I have tons more time like during the pandemic lockdowns, I read the Snape character tags instead of just pairing tags.

2. Finding the theme - I generally get a vibe about what's unique about a fic/a stand out trope when reading. This is the hardest part honestly. Because sometimes you can read tons of fic w/o really feeling you identified a theme. But once you get the theme, you are golden!

3. Searching - Now you can start looking for other fic matching that theme. If you are good at searching on old sites like LJ or if you can use Wayback archives you are going to come up with unique older fics. But that's like an advanced option. You can make awesome rec lists just with AO3 fics w/o using other archives.

But you need a search strategy. Sorry to sound corporate. But it is true. Search strategy comes from your list goals! Sorry to sound even more corporate. But it is also true.

List goals can be like "I want to rec 10 infidelity fics with most kudos... I want to rec 10 OTP fics written from 2001-2003... I want to rec 10 timetravel fics which are WIPs..." Once you are really clear about your list goals you can use that to control your AO3 searches and life's going to be good.

4. Filtering - In a large fandom you are still going to end up with 100s of fics for your search strategy. Are you going to read everything? Depends on how much time you have for this/what quality you want the list to be. I generally like getting lists out because that way they are helping somebody instead of waiting to do it perfectly right. But you do you! Personally I filter pretty hard at the summaries. You can do that with the tags if the list is about a trope. I don't look at tags/stats personally because I feel that misses out on a lot of really good untagged fics or imported fics from other archives. One of my goals with reccing is to give some spotlight to fics which will go unnoticed otherwise.

5. Final selection - Once you read your fics you need to make a hard call about picking which fics to rec out of the fics you read. This was something I had a lot of angst over in my early lists. But it doesn't really matter. Don't stress about it. I don't stress about it now! If a fic doesn't make it to this list it's going on your next lists. That's it. If you don't ever make another list that's cool too! Because you got one list out and that's more than most people do! Fandom is for fun. Just don't put pressure on yourself for these things. Give reccing a chance. If you don't like it, NBD! <3

[olderthannetfic]

How do you like tumblr in comparison to other fandom gathering spaces?

--

Excellent question.

When I first came here from LJ, I wasn't impressed. As you can tell from my own tumblr, I'm very text-oriented when it comes to fandom platforms, and tumblr isn't really tailored to that. I'm a highly visual person, so I've ended up enjoying that aspect of tumblr over time, but it's not really what I'm looking for in terms of fandom.

For years, conventional wisdom among people nostalgic for LJ was that Tumblr denizens didn't care about meta and that meta as a fandom activity was dead—or at least, you couldn't make a name for yourself writing it.

As of these last few years, I've been more popular than I've ever been in fandom before, my fiction writing has been going better than ever before, and I've made some friends via Tumblr.

At the same time, I'm enjoying the move to Discord. It reminds me of the height of Yahoo Groups, when people posted to archives for longevity but did a lot of their socializing in private, both on locked lists and in realtime chat.

I very much disliked the LJ model of having the fic right in with the blog posts. I'm glad we've gone back to the older model of separation, at least for the polished final versions of fics. (Serialization on mailing lists was common, but people generally compiled the whole thing and posted it to sites afterwards.)

I like threaded comments and pagination, but tumblr's general lack of comment thread features has clearly not held me back.

Overall, I find tumblr very similar to other fandom platforms.

Fandom's major homes have routinely had terrible and broken features, LJ most definitely included. It's the community and how people adapt sites to something far from their intended purposes that give that continuity of feeling.

Anything that allows longform content is good. Anything that requires soundbites rather than just encouraging them culturally is hot garbage. Tiktok is obviously a cesspit, though for a thousand reasons in addition to this one. Twitter will always suck because its structure makes it easy for randos to find one, and its post length encourages a lack of nuance. People will forever be forced to rub shoulders with people they don't like and don't understand.

Tumblr lacks privacy features, but it's so hard to find fucking anything that there's less of that danger. Also, the only celebrities who actually maintain much of a presence here are weird tumblr gremlins themselves. Any space as full of starfuckers as twitter or instagram is poison.

So in the end, I've turned out to like tumblr quite a lot. The tumblr era is equaling the LJ era and the mailing list era for me. And now we pair it with AO3 instead of my past loves like MediaMiner that now look pretty crappy in comparison.

[pearwaldorf]

If I never see another post from Franzeska aka olderthannetfic here it will be too soon. How dare she answer questions about racism and AO3 like she wasn’t one of the people who helped build it into the very structure of the site? I am quoting this directly from her post (emphasis mine): 

We picked the archive warnings from things that were common on older fic archives. Which, yes, reflects what fandom cared about at the time and is not neutral. (And when I say “we”, I do mean me specifically. I can’t remember how much my committee chose those and how much the Board and others drove the exact selection, but I did a lot of the research into older archives at the time. Including something about racism straight up never occurred to me in 2008.)

And sure, our views can evolve a lot in a decade. But Racefail happened in 2009, and none of the topics discussed at the time are different than those we’re focusing on today, 11 years later. For shits and giggles, here is my archived Livejournal post about the entire mess. If you click through to the other links (synedochic’s in particular), I think you will see this is something that didn’t just pop up with Tumblr and the SJW/anti contingent. (I’m not comfortable with conflating antis/fandom fundies/purity wankers with fans legitimately criticizing racism in fandom, but that is how a lot of it gets lumped together as a dismissive tactic.)

Which brings us to That Piece of Shit Meta in 2016. I am linking to the Fanlore entry for context, because the Actual Piece of Shit Meta is archive-locked (you can access it from Fanlore if you really want to read it, but it’s 16K of garbage).

A selection of commentary about it:

Guys, this was the problem all along. I’m doing fandom wrong by falling in love with the wrong source text. If I’d only understood that this wasn’t my space to enjoy non-white and/or non-male characters, because the majority of characters are white men, imagine how much happier I’d be in my life. (allofthefeelings)

they’ve been spouting yt apologia while fetishizing asian culture for years, this is nothing new. i’m pretty sure i’ve read franzeska saying the same things back when racefail ‘09 was going down. like most of this isn’t surprising bc it is exactly what we saw yt lj fandom peeps spouting in 2007-2010 and i’m personally not shocked that these people learned absolutely nothing. they don’t want to learn and being accountable for their actions. (astro-projection [edited to correct quote attribution and link])

Franzeska goes deep into the history of AO3 to talk about why slash is represented heavily there... But in 16,000 words over 13 chapters, there is not one mention of Racefail ‘09. Not a single reference to the time a popular Harry Potter LJ community used a racial slur as a prompt in 2007. Nothing about the Supernatural RPF Big Bang story that used the 2010 Haiti earthquake as a backdrop for a J2 love story (THAT’S A REAL THING THAT HAPPENED). Nothing about the time in 2006 that comics BNF Te pointed out the marginalization black characters faced on two then-juggernauts of white m/m slash fandom, Angel and Smallville. (snarl-furillo, the entire comment is worth reading so please click through)

This erasure of context and history is violent. Because many of the women of color who originally (and still) critique/d and resist/ed fandom’s normalized racism/misogynoir did so to their own detriment and with not insignificant risk to their personal well-being, safety, and privacy. Women of color were ‘outed’ by other fans for speaking out (doxed). They were attacked and silenced from all sides. They lost friends and community. They had to, with great vulnerability, cut themselves open and drag out their own private, internal experiences to air for all the (white) people who disbelieved them. They often found themselves speaking directly to a fucking wall of over-sensitive whiteness that would just as easily topple right on top of them. If anything in fandom is precious, it’s white feelings. And it always has been. (halfhardtorock)

In 2017 she was part of a Kickstarter to do a film about fangirls and fandom. I asked (you’ll need to hit “show comment” to see it) her to publicly comment about That Piece of Shit Meta, which she did. 

But before she did, Chelsea Woods, the co-creator of the project, emailed me about the comment. I don’t remember what exactly the email said, because it was a really long time ago, but she wanted to talk to me about the meta, perhaps to help formulate a response. Chelsea also reached out to somebody else outspoken about the issue at the time, and this is from a DM exchange I had with them:  

I understand why Chelsea reached out, as the head of the project and probably because she thought I would be more likely to respond instead of Franzeska. But tbh it feels like Franzeska's trying to get somebody else (a woman of color) to do the legwork for her. To the best of my knowledge I don't have F blocked on Twitter or Tumblr, and it's not like my email is hard to figure out.  I don't exactly relish the thought of talking to her, but as the one who fucked up, I feel like it is incumbent upon her to make the gesture...

I basically told Chelsea the same as you, that at this point there is very little she can do to demonstrate she understood what she did was fucked up, and that she has learned anything from the experience.

And when I tried to reblog her response, I found out Franzeska had blocked me, if that gives you any indication of how much she honestly wants to engage in discussion. 

Which brings me to now. I was literally today years old when I learned that Franzeska was head of the Abuse team for A While. (Bess says 2008-2012.) So suddenly a lot of things make sense, especially the lackluster (to put it politely) response about racist nonsense I’ve heard over the years, like in male hockey RPF. [edit: additional context in this post, ty Rukmini]

Certainly Franzeska is not responsible for everything racist about AO3, but she has definitely had a hand in shaping a culture that sacrifices the well-being and comfort of black users (among others) on the altar of “maximum inclusivity of content”. To turn the phrase back on them, who is “our own”? Why is it important to preserve an environment where a racially fetishistic fic that objectifies a black hockey player can stay up but a black fan basically has to go in like Viago checking for sunlight?

There is a balance between draconian content restrictions and letting racism, sexism, transphobia, etc run rampant on the site. I’m not saying it will be possible to find it immediately, or that it won’t change over time. But we have to try, if the AO3 is truly committed to making it a place that includes everybody, and not just the specific group of people who designed the site.

[darringtonshorthalt]

Fic questions! I wasn't actually tagged in this but idc here goes

1) how many works do you have on AO3?

310

2) what’s your total AO3 word count?

524265

3) how many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

~39 according to AO3 (but there's definitely some old fic that are exclusively on fanfiction.net or possibly lj? If you count things that exist within the same universe as only one fandom (e.g. MCU instead of Captain Marvel or Thor) that cuts it down to like 28, but I'm still not going to list all of them. Top five: Supernatual, Stargate Atlantis, MCU (but its mostly The Falcon and the Winter Soldier), Teen Wolf, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer

4) what are your top five fics by kudos?

Pillow Talk (SamBucky) Falling Backwards (SamBucky) The Static From Your Arms (It's a Catalyst) (Sterek) Fall Back Together (SamBucky) You Can Feel It On The Way Home (SamBucky)

I'm very intrigued by the fact that 7 of my top 10 by kudos are tfatws. I'm here for it, just surprised bc I've written a lot of fics over the years, in a lot of big fandoms, and somehow the most popular ones were all written in the last 5 months

5) do you respond to comments? why or why not?

I didn't used to because I was never really sure how? Now I try to, but the social awkwardness still comes through and idk what to say a lot of the time.

6) what’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

I really don't do things without a happy (or at least hopeful ending). I know I did when I was younger, but I've had my ao3 account for over 10 years I can't be expected to remember all of that. Probably the angstiest is recent history was a post-Despair Destiel fic, but again, fairly hopeful endings

7) do you write crossovers? if so what is the craziest one you’ve written?

Occasionally, yeah, or I just leave hints from one fandom in other fics - implied past Sam/Riley in the backstory of my Autistic!John McShep fic, for instance. The 'craziest' true crossover is probably the universe I created with Supernatural/Doctor Who/Vampire Diaries (not where you thought that was going, was it?) that I was really into for a couple months?

8) have you ever received hate on a fic?

Once that I can remember, it was a very strong 'critique' of a situation that they felt was wildly inaccurate. I was really bothered by it at the time, but mostly I think they just misunderstood the fic and also its fanfic i don't care. if it makes your day to write mean things on something a fan did for funzies: go off.

9) do you write smut? if so what kind?

very, very rarely. and idk, the soft kind?

10) have you ever had a fic stolen?

not that I'm aware of

11) have you ever had a fic translated?

yes! Not a ton, but a handful have been translated, and one or two have been podfic'd

12) have you ever co-written a fic before?

Maybe waaaay back in the day. Its really not something that pleases me? Maybe I should give it another shot some day, but mostly I have trouble working with other writing styles

13) what’s your all-time favourite ship?

I don't even know how to answer this. I will probably always have a little corner of my soul/heart/head/whatever for Destiel and McShep (and maybe Sterek?) But SamBucky is my #1 right now and I don't see that changing anytime soon, if ever.

14) what’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

Atlas Falls (Destiel). I have most of the major story planned out, and while I really love it, I just don't see it happening?

15) what are your writing strengths?

Character voice, or so I'm told.

16) what are your writing weaknesses?

Long arcs. My longest successful fic was over 20k, but that was unusual for me. My range is typically 1k-10k, anything over that and I either get bored, or I lose sight of the characters.

17) what are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I don't do it often, but if it's suited, sure. Given that I don't fluently speak anything useful, I'd probably avoid it in fear of terrible google translate shenanigcans

18) what was the first fandom you wrote for?

Harry Potter? That's the first I remember, anyway. First recorded on ao3 was Supernatural, first on fanfiction.net was x-men, but I'm pretty sure I was writing on the harry potter forums before any of that

19) what’s your favourite fic you’ve written?

Current: Until the End (Of Time) (SamBucky) All time: Survival [of the Foolish] (McShep)

[clonehub]

All these arguments everyone is making about how they can't take shit down have absolutely nothing to do with the issue of why they haven't added any safety tools like a block and blacklist function. They're all so focused on arguing you down on the whole 'taking shit down' thing that they're so obviously just trying to say they think it isn't harmful to have racism be a part of fandom 'history'. (1/2)

I really think they need to stop thinking of this like 'scraping up the ashes of what was' and more like 'putting up a monument to victims instead of oppressors' because they've got the same energy my grandparents do when they talk about 'erasing the past instead of remembering it' when I talk about removing statues of racists and replacing them with statues that commemorate the victims. Certain parts of history should be preserved but it isn't THIS shit.(2/2)

A lot of people who weren’t even literate during the LJ purge do genuinely think that we live right on the cusp of another one, perpetually. They see how mainstream fandom and fanfiction have become and ignore it in favor of pretending like they’re still in some nice oppressed minority group-by-birth (if you tell them they’re fannish by choice I dont think it’d go over well) all to support this weirdly laissez-faire “the market (community) decides what it needs and this is best for everyone” meanwhile fans of color just suffer for it day in and day out. 

wouldn’t it be great to actually learn from the past and present and realize that your response to a major lockdown on fanny shit is actually doing the exact opposite by silencing the voices you’re meant to be protecting the most? I think that’d be awesome. 

[samisadeangirl]

Hey same anon, I didn't mean to make my ask sound like it was calling out ship. I was just saying that some people are more hesitant in making their ship public or supporting their ship because they feel like they will be shamed. One reason D+C ship keeps winning polls and stuff could be because that ship doesn't mind advertising their ship or making it known, with them they have less fear of being in the mainstream. Thank you for not being mean, I just don't know if my point is getting across.

Hi again Anon,

Thanks for the clarification.  We get so many messages demanding that we justify our ship, usually from purity wankers and/or Destihellers, that it gets really tiresome.  I’m glad to know that this wasn’t your intent.

IMO the reason why D*stiel wins those silly clickbait polls isn’t about Wincest shippers being ashamed--after all, those things are generally anonymous, so no one knows who voted for what.  And if you go through most Wincest blogs here (or LJ, Discord, etc.), I doubt the impression you’ll get of how we feel is shame.  Instead, it’s all about how content the various shippers are with their ship.

You see, the vast majority of Wincest shippers are perfectly happy with our ship exactly how it is.  As I said in my previous response, it’s already 90% canon, and we get plenty of lovely brother content with nearly every episode.  Most of us understand that that last 10% won’t ever happen onscreen, and we’re absolutely fine with it.  We’re more than content to enjoy the brothers’ amazing platonic bond in canon and save the rest for fan fiction, fan art, etc.  And because we’re so satisfied with our ship, we’re generally not worried about others’ opinion of it.  

As a result, when these useless polls pop up, I suspect most of us don’t bother to participate because we know they don’t mean anything--winning or losing them won’t change the brothers’ relationship or anything else on the show.  That’s also why we don’t hassle other fans about Wincest online or bring it up to the cast and crew at conventions or whatever, because we don’t need their validation to enjoy our ship.

On the other hand, there seem to be a lot of D/C shippers who aren’t so happy with their ship as it is.  D*stiel has next to no basis in canon, and Dean and Castiel don’t interact with each other much any more--but there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, since that’s what fan fiction and the rest is for.  Rather than being content with shipping D/C in fanon though, too many of them get obsessed with what they’ll never have--i.e. “canon” D*stiel.  

So these shippers flock to those polls, harass people on SM or at conventions, and so on in the desperate hope that if they get enough people to agree with them, they’ll get what they want.  They fail to understand the core nature of both the show (that SPN is about family, not romance, and revolves around the brothers’ bond) and the fandom (that we shippers are a tiny minority, and the vast majority of SPN viewers don’t want any ship onscreen), and that’s actually rather sad.