#or follow trends or follow bait because tumblr it not about that.

[wolfram-petanu]

god I'm genuinely so scared of people migrating to tumblr

because we've got Phil Tommy and Sneeg already, and probably many ccs will follow, along with the fanbase

and like don't get me wrong, i love that for them

like yeah let twitter crash and burn but im so scared of Tumblr turning into Twitter v2.0

like this is the only website i actually use that's not toxic and i actively enjoy being on

i don't want this to get ruined, there's a reason why i don't have a twitter/instagram/facebook

[xikyuu]

i redownloaded tiktok and i feel like an old grandpa trying to figure out this newfangled technology

as someone who’s been on there since 2022-ish, I GOTCHU (if you’re still keeping it) -> rant under cut

so if you’re just starting out w a new algorithm, search up things you’re interesting in and browse. like videos (favorite some of you want— the bookmark icon. collections i def recommend if you like sorting. also bc it gets crowded n you can’t find anything after a while (i have over 5k favorites. i think ‘oh thats useful for later!!’ and favorite but then it gets lost). follow users youre interested in but make sure to check their acc first so it doesnt mess w algorithm too much.

theres a way to make your account private where someone can only see what you post or repost (which is similar to reblogging) if they follow you AND you follow them back/give permission for them to see your stuff.

tiktok shop was added a few months ago. ignore it. its basically a scam except for small businesses.

comments are BRUTAL. you get attacked easily. theres a lot of rampant -ism’s and -phobia’s there. theres also probably comments that might not make sense bc of the constant trends and such (so if you dont understand, you could probably bring it up to me and i might be able to help)

there are different sides of tiktok, just as there is tumblr. theres a side of tiktok called ‘straight tiktok’ which is basically the status quo and what the algorithm tries to feed you into every once and a while. its where MANY right-wing people reside or say stupid shit. theres also the dancing vids that were a part of it. its just,, weird. theres been a rise in the pushing of these videos because of the threat of banning tiktok and such, which means more censorship.

talking about censorship!!! its censored. you cant cuss much, you cant say kill (or any similar word), cant say genocide, etc. i saw a post today where someone had to censor the word cop as c0p. a lawyer had to censor the word cop. some people still cuss but comments or videos WILL be taken down or shadow-banned (algorithm doesnt push it for such n such reasons).

theres also been bot comments recently on famous creator’s videos. its just AI with a conventionally attractive woman, normally in a bikini, as a pfp thats commenting about something on the video to try and bait and get interaction.

its also a different environment from tumblr (obviously). be a bit prepared.

[amingethia]

Posts that are like “if I get to 100k notes by tomorrow I’ll start working on my mental health” are actually really kinda toxic. I won’t Reblog them anymore and give them fodder because it’s kind of a dumb trend. You’re placing your worth on how well you do on a social media site with basically no real algorithm.

If you’re doing a goofy one like “getting 10k notes by September and I’ll shave my eyebrows” or something like that then sure I’ll join the fun. But I want to discourage people from making note bait and Reblog bait where the goal in the end could negatively impact how you think people on Tumblr feel about you. You’re worth more than that and y’all are better than that.

And if the post reaches that goal within the ridiculously short time limit some of y’all are setting, usually you guys don’t even follow through.

Don’t wait for your post to reach 210k notes by next week. If you make a post like that, just start doing what you say you’ll do. Start working on your mental health regardless.

And the guilt tripping. A lot of people have been guilt tripping too when their post don’t make it. I saw somebody Blaze a picture of them cutting themself. Because their post only got 2k notes or something and they set the limit at 10k by the end of January.

It’s getting dangerous. Pls stop. And if you see somebody making a post like that, idk send an ask or something and discourage it but don’t interact with those posts. It’s not your fault if that post doesn’t get there. Then everybody feels bad! I’m serious about this.

[shivasdarknight]

one thing that frustrates me still is how quickly people on this platform handwave instances of suppression on platforms like tiktok and twitter when it's been a well documented problem. it's been documented since youtube and y'all believe it because the white people got hit, but the second it occurs on a platform built predominantly by a non-white userbase (eg: twitter prior to the facebook and tumblr migrations, black twitter Built Twitter) suddenly it's "your content just sucks". tiktokers only seemed to be believed when it was visibly autistic users that were also white, but black tiktokers who range from every background from dance content to political stuff or just artists get suppressed constantly and their stuff "just sucks" now, huh? it's not real and it "just sucks"? trans women get suppressed on tumblr, but tumblr has no censorship? the site that removed all instances of gaza and palestine from the trending pages?

like, look at this fucking comment section that reminded me of this

we got a black woman explaining the UN ruling about Gaza (the video can be found here), and these are the comments. Why are these the comments.

It's almost like TikTok so heavily suppresses content by black creators or anything that explicitly names Gaza or Palestine or even just 🇵🇸 that in order for information about the situation to even get out to people, intentionally wrong tags and comments have to be used. The 🍉 and 🫒 emojis are used a lot too, and now there's talk of using 🦋 for Congo due to that being suppressed, too.

"What's your favourite color?" and all of these recipe comments are engagement bait and ways to put this on things like baking tiktok or craftsy tiktok spaces. Because anything that looks like Palestine gets suppressed and drowned out. Comments that want to talk about this have to be vague like the one from Anim, and further down they were talking about recipes with watermelons because gee what has the watermelon represented since the 70s with regards to suppression of information? 🤔

I've watched as activists I follow get so heavily suppressed that by the time I finally see them again, the entire comment section is just "where were you, I thought you died". And you can see them go from ~20k per video down to 800 out of nowhere on an account with 100k+ subscribers. It's been proven countless times on tiktok (like the black woman who wore blonde wigs and did a valley girl accent on wednesdays to see if she could prove a point about her algorithmic success and found that all of her wednesday videos did MUCH better than her usual content when the only difference was the wig and accent - more so when a white person was actually on screen), on twitter, on youtube (do y'all not remember nerdcity's entire study on what keywords get you demonetized?), and even here on tumblr. But why do you only believe it when it's a white creator on a predominantly white platform that gets hit, and not the dozens of black creators that get suppressed just for being visibly black on screen on apps that were In Effect built by their black userbases?

[sansloii]

@soulsxng | send me a number

2. Drabbles

i love drabbles! i love them! i wish i still had the mental energy to shit those out whenever i wanted because it's always a nice little writing exercise to get a thought or a scene you can't get out of your head written down. even if you don't necessarily put it on tumblr, you can just... write it and save it somewhere to read again later ( if you don't absolutely hate your past writing, that is ).

similarly, i like reading drabbles from others too. i'm not going to say i read every single one that crosses my dash but like... i try to! sometimes i skim, read a second time to let it soak in, and then go "that was nice" before liking it and moving on. other times, i read it 6 times, like it, and appear in dms frothing at the mouth about it. it really depends on where my brain is at that day.

5. Dash commentary

again, this another "i wish i had the bandwidth for this" because i love dash commentary. it's always so silly and fun to participate in it and i can't say that i've ever had a bad experience with it. my dash doesn't move particularly fast either so now, i can usually keep up. however, being on the dash for too long is a bit draining so after maybe an hour or so, i kinda fizzle out and go off to do other things or watch youtube videos ehjfwsfs--

25. Your muse(s)

i feel like you sent this with the express purpose of getting me to gush about my muses and i will happily take the bait. they are my babies and i love them so very very much--mikah in particular, because i've had them the longest as far as the existence of this blog.

you cannot imagine the amount of times that i've thought that maybe mikah or the others are too edgy, maybe they're too rude, too mean, too unrealistic, or that i'm just... following some trend because i saw one morally questionable muse and fixated on that. maybe that's all correct. maybe it's not. i don't know.

however, i'm enjoying myself right now. i'm having fun and that is, by far, more important to me. mikah, penny, wynn, evan, dakota, and joseph are always in a constant state of development and i will add or take away things as i so choose. sometimes something i thought of 2017 for mikah isn't something i want to keep in 2023. sometimes an idea i had for dakota way back when doesn't really fit how i envision her now. both of those things are okay and it's okay for me to change those things if i feel like... it'll make me more comfortable and more secure in myself when it comes to writing my babies. i never want to be in a place where i don't feel like i can do my ocs justice, much less because i think i can't change anything about them. Better yet, because i've already said certain things about them that i look back on now and go "...no that's not right."

i guess what i'm trying to get at is... it's a process--a process i had to force myself to be okay with in some regard. mikah was not perfect when i made them and neither were the others...but that's fine. they're mine so i'm just gonna keep chucking them at the wall and seeing where they stick. if they just slide off and fall in some garbage fire, that's fine. i can just pick em back up and throw them again... with love

[infinitecrime]

I feel like I should make a post detailing the Sebastian Stan drama because I see a whoooole lot of bad takes and misinformation and blatant lies going around. I’ve been on tumblr for nearly a decade at this point and this is genuinely one of the scariest and most out of control situations I have seen.

A quick summary for anyone who hasn’t been following: Last week, Seb was pictured with a women. Many assumed this was his girlfriend but this has not been confirmed. Fans began combing through her life and social media to find something incriminating. I feel like this is important, that the hatred came first, and the reason came after. They found a photo of the girl, from 2 years ago. I will include it for transparency (she is on the left): she is at an ‘Asian night’ party/club night, wearing a kimono. 

It’s insensitive to use culture as a costume, and to lump all the diverse and distinct Asian cultures together into one party theme, decorated with pound shop Chinese lanterns. It is cultural appropriation. A number of Asian people were understandably upset by this photo and her actions. 

But let me be very clear: These are not his actions. He was not at the party, he did not wear the kimono, he did not post or like the photo, he did not endorse, condone or defend the actions in any way. We have never seen them together before, so presumably this is 2 years before they met. He does not follow her or the friend that posted it 2 years ago on Instagram. There is no reasonable expectation that he ever would have seen this photo. He almost certainly did not know it existed.

He cannot apologise or seek redemption for someone else actions. He cannot set a precedent where he is responsible for everything everyone who comes within 20ft of him did, years before they even met. It is completely insane to expect him to do a full background check on everyone he makes out with, or to expect him and all his acquaintances to be ideologically pure, not be ignorant about anything and never make a mistake.

Some people seemed to realise that he cannot be held responsible for other people’s actions, so they invented something to pin blame on him: he defended her! I searched high and low for his statement defending her. He did not make one. Instead, he allegedly blocked a handful of people who spammed his comments with demands for apologies. At least one of these blocks has been outed as photoshop. If the others are real, we don’t know if it was him or his PR team. We don’t know if their innocent public comment alerting him to an issue was accompanied by vile death threats in his DM’s. Regardless, he is within his rights to protect his mental health by blocking people who harass him about something that is, frankly, none of his business. Blocking is not defending her.

I often hear: cancel culture is not real, it’s simply facing the consequences of your actions. So lets do an experiment where we outline the actions and consequences. If you were involved in the vile hashtags and threats made against him, ask yourself: Are these reasonable, proportional and deserved? Do I have the authority to distribute these consequences? Am I making the world a better place - or a worse one? Is my moral high ground getting a little shaky? 

Action: 

Kissed a girl who wore a kimono 2 years before they met. Allegedly (!!) blocked a few people who harassed him about it despite it being nothing to do with him.

Consequences:

Doxxed, pictures of his apartment and his address leaked online. He will almost certainly have to move from his HOME.

Intense death threats and suicide baiting, including #RIPSebastianStan trending, which his family may have seen and actually thought he had died, photoshopped articles and memorial pictures that say he died

Actual danger to his physical safety through the release of his home address

Emails sent to his newly signed agency and employers to get him FIRED

Severe damage to his reputation including news articles with his name and ‘racist post’ in the title, that do not make it clear it was not his post!!

Most likely a severe hit to his mental health, which he has said before he struggles with, particularly from all the KILL YOUR SELF CLOWN messages

If he was with the girl - well, I doubt he is now, so the possible destruction of his relationship, instead of her getting a chance to learn, educate herself, grow and be better.

I am genuinely concerned for his mental health - situations like this before have resulted in suicide (Caroline Flack springs to mind). His physical safety is also in danger. For the actions of someone else, years before they met. Please, stop this. Please see that you are making the world so, so much worse, and you could actually kill someone through this. Please exit the twitter echo chamber and think maturely and critically about whether your response is proportional, reasonable and necessary. Please see that he is a stranger to you, who is paid to do a job, and we have no more right to demand things from him or make him face consequences than we do our dentists or the cashier at the local shop. Please log off and go outside for a while.

[quillquiver]

On SPN, Burying Your Gays, and Being Heard

I am shaking, I feel sick, I feel like I’m insane. And did I run a little wild with the theories? You bet. But you know what didn’t help? The botched clusterfuck that was this entire goddamn finale debacle. How was I supposed to believe anything they said in panels when M&G dialogue would leak saying the exact opposite? How was I supposed to grieve and move on when there was nothing from the cast and crew? Nobody said anything! And any info leaked just destabilized what we already knew or directly contradicted what we’d been told. In light of that, how was I supposed to trust anything anyone said? One rogue translator reciprocated the love confession and I was practically sold, because there were so many questions surrounding the English text that this was something good, something that logically fit, and something I wanted to hold onto. 

Because they hurt me. This is about so much more than one episode or a ship; for years queer fans have seen ourselves in these characters and been told that we were crazy. That we were reading too much into it. I’m not sure how people get upset and offended when a storyline that doesn’t exist... doesn’t exist! said Guy Bee (2013). And then, after all of that, they turned around and said magnanimously, you have your version, I have mine... and that’s okay. But it’s not okay. It’s not okay, because that doesn’t erase what came before - that doesn’t erase the baiting and the gaslighting, and that invalidates everything we felt in the time leading up to that episode. It gave them an open window for all the subtext that came after. It allowed them to brush us off.

And then we got Cas’s love confession. I watched that scene about 500 times. Added to the rest of the season - to the fandom avatar being presented as successful and intelligent, to arc being the death of the author - I felt seen. Really seen, by a show that made it its mission to erase me. I had been okay with Cas dying at first because I had been sure the romance arc would carry through. I had been convinced that after everything, there was no way they would give that to us and then take it away.

But they did, because this is Supernatural. To anyone saying this is not bury your gays, I implore you to read up on the Hays Code. This link is to an amazing queer history podcast and the episode that covers it. In short, the Hays Code was a legal document that came about in 20th Century Hollywood during the puritanical war on the American entertainment industry,  and it stipulated what was not allowed on screen. Not all of it was queer - there’s a whole section about kissing - but what the Code is most remembered for is that queerness was not allowed on screen. But queer people are resilient, and so they started testing the waters... and it turned out that you could in fact code queerness into a narrative, as long as it was subtextual, or as long as the queer character died/was punished, or both. The point is that the character is not allowed to live their truth openly. They are buried, either in the ground or punished in the narrative. The former is normally what we refer to these days, because the latter just doesn’t really happen anymore.

Until Supernatural. 

Castiel is immediately punished for speaking his truth - and please don’t tell me he leveraged that punishment and so he had agency. Literally the only thing that could make him happy was confessing his feelings, and so the Empty deal was directly related to this idea of queerness-as-punishment. That being said, Bobo wrote a beautiful scene. Cas’s confession was a love letter to queerness and coming out... but everything that came after buried him. Castiel may have ended the series alive but he was effectively written out of the last two episodes, and that means that he actually never really got to live his truth. He was silenced by the narrative - that is punishment. 

Dean is a whole other can of worms. Does one rogue translator confirm canon bi!Dean? Or do we have to read our own version of the text? The fact that we even have to ask these questions firmly places us in the realm of queerbaiting. Were the writers trying to get bi!Dean approved but were unable to? I have no idea, but queerbaiting requires proof that the writers encouraged a reading they had no intent of following through on, and we certainly don’t lack in evidence of that. Not from this writers room, but from those of previous eras. Did these writers try? They might have, but the funny thing about queerbaiting discourse is that there has never been a show to bait this long, and I’m making the call that even if you tried at the end, you baited me with half the ship and all the years that came before. 

Of course, the narrative leaves open the possibility of bi!Dean so if you do read the show that way, that means Dean also falls into the bury your gays category; if you read the show this way - which many of us do - the mere suggestion that Dean Winchester was bisexual was enough to punish him. And he was punished. We’ve all written extensively on this, but he was given a random death, on a case his father never finished. All that growth, all that time spent having him accept himself, love himself, that was all taken away. He died the way he always thought he would: as a tool, in service of his father, protecting his brother. He had always believed he’d been a body to throw on the sword and in the end that’s all he was. And when he gets to Heaven? He’s also silenced. He barely speaks in the episode except to monologue during his death, and that is 100% Sam-centric. He is scared. 

It was horrific to watch. I sobbed so hard my roommate was seriously concerned. 

I had been fully prepared for Supernatural to end disappointingly. I had figured everything would end with a huge heaven reunion because white, straight, cis-male S&F writers love the idea of death as a reward, but instead of being disappointed I felt like I had witnessed a slaughter. Every single one of the queer themes intrinsic to the show: found family, resilience, speaking your truth... were gone. And I know we’ve talked about this too, but it bears repeating, because in doing this, in writing the queerness out of its narrative, Supernatural effectively looked every one of us queer folx in the eye and said: you are not important. You don’t matter. All of that stuff that came before is all good and well, but what really matters at the end of all things is blood family. It’s two brothers in a car. Life sucks but at least we get to die and go to paradise - real paradise, that your angel buddy died for and then made for you and who we never hear from again.

I felt insane. I felt cheated. I felt humiliated. I felt devastated. I still feel all those things, but listen to me. You have been heard. Not by Misha Collins, who is a great guy, but doesn’t get it. Not by Jensen Ackles, who is a similarly great guy, but also just doesn’t understand. And not by anyone else who worked on this show. 

You know who heard you? Me. The people who follow me. The people who follow you. We saw each other, and heard each other, and we gave each other a leg up. We made memes. We wrote fic. We drew fanart. We made gifs. All for ourselves and all for each other. We broke Tumblr multiple times. We donated over $60,000 USD to multiple different causes. We got multiple hashtags trending at multiple different points, and today kept it up because we demanded answers and then we got them. There were at least 5 articles written about the show today. We made that happen. We made people listen. 

Supernatural didn’t deserve me, and it didn’t deserve you. It didn’t deserve Dean. It didn’t deserve Cas. It didn’t deserve Misha and Jensen. But this show ended with a bleak, awful message and we turned around and showed them that love is loud. So what about all of this is real?

We are.

[majorxmaggiexboy]

Terror Social Media Shenanigans:

So Franklin and Fitzjames each have a twitter account dedicated to the,,,,sailing company or whatever they work for. Franklin’s is actually somewhat endearingly grandpa-esque but he has been known to make some wildly out of touch posts that get the whole company in trouble.

Fitzjames’ posts generally read as stuffy and pretentious, recaps of the....sailing company or whatever’s exploits and half the comments are along the lines of “For the love of god will you get to the recipe” 

Sofia Cracroft has a platypus fetish tumblr that gradually becomes a political activism blog instead

Crozier was basically forced to also have a Company Twitter, caused a minor scandal by liking one of Sofia’s posts (she also has twitter), but generally leaves the account’s operations to Jopson 

this tends to cause a bit of online chaos due to the very distinct difference between Jopson’s posts ( brief, cheerful expedition highlights and more than a few photos of penguins ) and Crozier’s ( rare but typically one-liners about various misfortunes befalling the explorers. And in a few notable cases some drunk, angry threads directed at Fitzjames which led to “THE DISCOVERY GIRLS ARE FIGHTING” trending for over a week )

Dr Stanley posts mainly doomscroll bait 

Goodsir publishes the most delightful actual articles about the various expeditions (the....sailing company or whatever, i’ve decided, is some manner of conservation thing. Depending on who is actually leading any given expedition.) His website is very much homemade, he tinkers with it periodically and slowly makes improvements. 

Silna runs a conservation and politics blog that Goodsir is an unabashed absolute fan of, and she co-authors several articles with him regarding linguistics

Fitzjames is infinitely more popular on tiktok than he is on twitter

Crozier has a youtube channel he made  onetime while drunk and occasionally posts on. Usually unintentional livestreams of various rants. Not many actual followers but occasionally one of his videos will go somewhat viral and people usually wind up sharing with the headline “ANGRY IRISH GUY HAS A POINT” 

Jopson appears in the background of some of these videos

the internet thinks Jopson is a cryptid

one video features Crozier reading people’s comments and at one point yelling for Jopson before asking “What is Only Fan? They’re sayin’ you should have an Only Fan.” before turning back to the camera and saying, Emotionally, “Yer all wrong, he should have lots of fans”  (Jopson, in the background: *going through an absolute face journey that becomes a popular reaction gif The chat: *losing their damn minds*)

Hodgeson has a weird kind of unintentional asmr channel

Hickey has a blog that everyone is shocked and devastated isn’t lost to the great tumblr purge

Naturally Irving has a channel and a twitter dedicated to religion and scripture-sharing as well as frantically irate religious tirades and he’s constantly getting absolutely roasted but eventually has a video that winds up just being retitled “Oh” where he stops mid-sentence and spends the last thirty seconds of the video going through every possible human emotion in absolute silence and after that there’s always a little rainbow flag in the background of his, considerably more chill videos

Bridgens and Peglar have a literary podcast together and occasionally share their own writing

Collins only posts sporadically and it’s always 50/50 whether it’s going to be something absolutely lovely like manatee gifs or something that winds up more like that one always sunny meme. 

Hodgeson, Irving, and Little briefly have a channel on Vine because it’s thought that it’ll be good pr for the sailing company or w/e. people tend to tag their videos as “Three Guys, One Braincell”

Blanky streams on twitch and most of his fans call him grandpa

Little actually has a rather cute instagram with lots of animal pictures (with the stories behind him) but every now and then will make a post that has numerous people replying with variations on “Uh...you good bro?”

Jopson doesn’t actually have his own social media but he appears at the very end of several of Crozier’s unfortunate youtube uploads, as Crozier tends to either fall asleep or just walk off. It’s a running gag for Jopson to come in and turn off the camera. He almost always tells the viewers Good Night first

Neptune, Fagin, and Jacko have more followers than any of the above

[absolutebl]

I love love love the time you take to answer each question so extensively, for real I love each post I've seen pop up on my TL since I stared following you.

Sorry for bring immediately again the topic of the queerbating. Same as you I feel that the devil judge it's totally my fault because I don't know if it's being advertised as I see on Tumblr 😂 like after you posted it I've seen a couple of account SCREAMING over how gay all this is, but obviously we are not getting anything out of it.

Now I do have a question regarding queerbating, are we being you know queerbated with this, like when I watch the whole at distance spring is greener (wow why is it so tiring to writge the name of this) I knew what was happening, I knew that they kept the relationship between the male leads and somehow manage to give them girlfriends, like if we would not notice, but I'm genuinely intrigued if the devil judge is doing the same. I don't expect anything from it yet I'm truly rooting for it. So are they queerbating me?

Also I just remembered other of the star dramas of the year (I'm new to dramas but again I asked if it was a trend become the few I've watched have it) and it's Doom at your service, now I know me and my friends where rooting for something, we obviously did not get it, but they hinted at a possibility TWICE in the las episode which for me feels like a confirmation, and we have a (GL not sure if that's correct) lesbian relationship in nevertheless, so I am wondering if we are seeing true progress with them or is it just a trend.

To end this I just want to say that I'm giving Viki all my coins for Light On Me, it's already competiting with cherry magic as my favourite BL of them all and I can't still wrap my head around the idea that we are getting 16 episodes and that we've had episodes of 28 minutes, I honestly did not think this was coming to us and I can only hope that we will get more. Again thank you for your answer and I'm sending you lots of love because I'm sick at the moment and you manage to make me smile while feeling shitty. ❤️

Why thank you for the compliment! I LOVE the questions, they make me think hard about this stuff. And that’s really fun for me. 

Devil Judge... is it queerbaiting? 

Maybe? Probably? Let me try to explain the grey areas. 

Wikipedia says:

Queerbaiting is a marketing technique for fiction and entertainment in which creators hint at, but then do not actually depict, same-sex romance or other LGBTQ+ representation. They do so to attract ("bait") a queer or straight ally audience with the suggestion of relationships or characters that appeal to them, while at the same time attempting to avoid alienating other consumers.

Honestly I think this is a case of, if you feel queerbaited, then yeah. It’s queerbaiting. 

Are you watching it for the bromance even though you know they'll never kiss and they probably won’t end up together? 

Will you be mad when that happens? 

Did it get your eyeballs because you’re invested in the characters being gay? 

Is it earning streaming revenue from you because of your identity, when it will likely never acknowledge or honor that identity? 

Probably queerbaiting. 

I feel it a little, but I kind of enjoy being manipulated by pop culture, that’s why I’m an analyst. I react and I’m like, 

“OH THAT was an interesting emotional response. Why did this drama make me feel like that? What did it do? And how did it do it? Why am I surprised when I should have guessed what was going to happen? Or why am I crying when I knew it was going to happen all along?” 

I can say that the director (at least) must know he’s using visual romance tropes applied to his with two male leads. The actors are experienced enough to know this too. But it’s the camera lens that is gay...  

No director puts this kinda thing on the screen of a strictly heterosexual or non-sexual court procedural or dystopian: 

So I have to assume someone in production knows what they are about with this bromance. These are only a few of the visual romance tropes (some of them even BL) being deployed. They’re sexy and hella gay. Don’t get me started on the amount of unexpected (and out of genre) domesticity in this drama. (If anything, that’s the real queerbaiting sin.) 

Devil Judge, however, does not have a romantic endgame. We have no guarantee that any characters will end up together, or indeed, survive the narrative. (It’s a court procedural meets superhero with a dystopian setting and an anti-hero lead, plus some buddy cop elements. Think Deadpool or Dexter.)  

I mean, I could tell you what would happen with this narrative under a Western studio. GaOn is being groomed as a scion, which means our judge is preparing to die for his revenge. And probably will, likely also in protection of GaOn. Leaving GaOn to assume the burden of the continued revenge as well as the mantle of the Devil Judge. 

In this case the sexual tension would be highlighting that part of the queer journey when we are like: wait, I’m a dude, do I admire him or is this lust, do I want to fuck him or do I want to be him? (Hannibal used this technique.) 

But as this is a K-drama, I have no real clue what the narrative endgame is, it’s not necessarily going to obey the taste conceits established by Hollywood.  

So are we being manipulated?

Sure are. 

The question as to whether to get upset about queerbaiting or not, is for me, one of whether I care that I am being manipulated. 

And right now, I’m really enjoying being manipulated.

 But I reserve the right to get angry about it later. 

* Note on Nevertheless, when it’s side dishes that’s a different situation. Because it doesn’t cost the drama much (marketing or money wise) to make a side character actually queer. I think they might follow through with those two. 

[i-did]

Do you know when the racism and ableism accusations against Nora started? Because back when I was active in 2016/2017 and don't think they were a thing, or were very low-key. Was it something she said or are people just basing it off the things she wrote in the books?

From what I remember, the first time I heard the blanket statement of “Nora is racist/fetishizes gay men” blanket statement was early fall 2019 (which is so ironic for the fandom to say on so many levels lmao). There wasn’t a catalyst or anything, just she went offline 2016 and no new content was coming out and the aftg fandom is such an echo chamber that… an accidental smear campaign happened.

 Before then, I would see occasional “Nora used ableist slur” which… is funny (not that ableism isn’t serious) to me people care more about that than Seth saying the f-slur. IMO this is because with Seth, it clearly shows the character thinking it and not the author who is writing about what will be an end game mlm relationship. 

But anyways! Long story short, it's the fact that she’s an ace/aro woman who wrote a mlm book, and based off of the events in canon. There is no “Nora called me/someone else a slur” it’s “Nora wrote a book where slur(s) are used” and “the Moriyama’s are Japanese.”

Below I put my own opinion on these claims and go into more detail:

CW for discussions of: racism, ableism, mlm fetishization

Fetishization: (and mentions of sexism at the end)

To one question in the EC about her inspo for aftg she jokingly responded how she wanted to write about gay athletes. On other parts of your blog you could see she was a hockey fan and an overall sports fan (anime or otherwise) but I've seen this statement taken out of context and framed as “she's one of those BOYXBOY” shippers. Considering how… well-developed both Andrew and Neil’s relationship is, and it takes them until like the 3rd book and there is a whole complex ass plot going on around, you can see how that's just. Not really true. And considering the fandom is like… 85% women (queer women but still women) and I've gotten into a discussion with someone who is a woman and called Nora a fetishizer and was ignoring my opinions as a mlm, and I really just wanted to say “well what does that make you?” it's a very ironic high horse. She didn’t write 3 all 3 books to put Neil in lingerie pwp or crop-top fem-fatal fashion show, fandom did. 

Also, I talked to an ace/aro friend about this, and she talked to me about how AFTG spoke to her very much so as an ace/aro story. Neil is demisexual, Nora didn’t know of the word at the time of reading it, but she did get an anon asking if Neil was demi after, and she said “had to look it up, and yep, but he doesn't really think about it” (paraphrased). Obviously it would have been cool if andreil were canonly written as wlw by Nora instead, (which would have increased the amount of wlw rep and demi rep) but tbh I don’t think tumblr would have cared about it nearly as much and everyone would just call Neil a cold bitch–like people do with Nora’s other published book with a main character who's a woman. Plus they're her OC’s, not mine. 

The fact is that 50% of all LGBT+ rep in literature is mlm, mostly white mlm, and not written by mlm. I’m not going to hold her to a higher standard than everyone else, she already broke a shit ton of barriers in topics she discusses that otherwise get ignored. I’m grateful to these books for existing even if it's a mlm story written by a woman. I still will prioritize reading mlm written by mlm–and vice versa with wlw– in the way I prioritize reading stories about POC written by POC. But credit where credit is due, this is a very good story, and a very good demi story. 

Ableism:

To me, AFTG is a story about ableism and how we perceive some trauma survivors more worthy than others. Neil and the foxes using ableist language shows how people actually talk. Neil thinks shitty things about Andrew, like the others do too, and thinks he's “psycho”. The story ultimately deconstructs this idea and these perceptions of people. Wymack, someone who says the r-slur (which is still not known by the general population as a slur even in 2021 much less the early 2000s when the book was beginning to be written and what the timeline is based off of) is a character who understands Andrew better than most of the others do, and gives him the most sympathy and understanding despite using words like the m-slur and r-slur. Using these words isn't good, but it is how people talk, and this character talks. Wymack is a playful “name caller” especially when he’s mad, the foxes think Andrew is “crazy” and incapable of humanity and love because of it. They call his meds “antipsychotics” as an assumption and insult in a derogatory way, when really antipsychotics are a very helpful drug for some people who need them. Even Neil thinks these things about Andrew until he learns to care about him. All the foxes are hypocritical to am extent, as people in real life tend to be. Nora herself doesn’t use these or tweet them or something, her characters do to show aspects of their personality and opinions and how they change over time.

Racism:

As for the racism, I've seen people talk about how racial minorities being antagonists is inherently bad, which I think lacks nuance but overall isn't a harmful statement or belief. However, Nora herself said she wrote in the yakuza instead of another gang or mob because she was inspired for AFTG by sports anime, (which often queer-bait for a variety of reasons). I haven’t seen a textual analysis acknowledging the racist undertones surrounding the Moriyama’s as the few characters of color who are also major antagonists, but instead just “Nora is racist”. Wymack having shitty flame tribal tattoo’s is just… a huge 90’s thing and a part of his character design. Her having a character with bad taste in tattoo trends doesn’t mean she's racist. There is the whole how Nicky is handled thing, but that's a whole thing on it’s own. The fandom… really will write Nicky being all “ai ai muy spicy, jaja imma hit on my white–not annoying like me–boyfriend in Spanish. With my booty hole out and open for him ofc.” and as a Mexican mlm I’m like … damn alright. 

I think there is merit to the fact that she writes white as the default* and unless otherwise stated a POC a character was written with the intent to be white is another valid criticism, as well as the fact that the cast is largely white, but everything Nora is accused of I've seen the fandom do worse. That goes to the debate of, is actively writing stereotypes for POC more harmful than no representation at all? And personally I prefer the lack of established race line that lets me ignore Nora’s canon intent of characters to be white and come up with my own HC’s over the fandoms depictions of “zen monk Renee with dark past” “black best friend Matt who got over drugs but is a puppy dog” “ex stripper black Dan who dates Matt” vague tokenism. I HC many of the upperclassmen as POC and do my best to actively give thought behind it and have their own arcs that also avoids the fandom colorism spectrum of “darkest characters we HC go to the back and fandom favorites are in the front and are the lightest.” 

*I however won't criticize her harsher or more than… everyone else who still largely does this in fanfiction regarding AFTG as well as literature in general. This isn't a Nora thing, it's a societal thing, and considering the books came out in like 2014 I'm not gonna hold her to a higher standard than the rest of the world. She's just someone who wrote her personal OC’s and self-published expecting no following. I don’t know her race and I’m not gonna hold her to a higher standard than everyone else just because. 

The criticisms I've seen have always been… ironic IMO, and clearly I have a lot of thoughts on it. I think most people say those things about Nora because they heard them, and it's the woke thing to say and do and don’t critically analyze their actions or anything, but just accept them. 

[erosia-rhodes]

Top 9 Newbie thoughts on Supernatural after Six Months of Madness

I started watching Supernatural a week before the series finale, and full disclosure, it was only because I heard about the gay angel. I loved me some Good Omens, so I decided to check out a series my only previous thoughts about had been, "Is that show still on?" In the past six months, I've watched about fifty percent of the episodes scattered across all fifteen seasons. I've also spent time following the bonkers-in-the-best-way fandom on Tumblr, and here is what I have learned:

1) Everyone who loves Supernatural also hates Supernatural

No one is capable of praising this show without also trashing it. Supernatural is as awful as it is awesome. Watching Supernatural is like hate-fucking your nemesis against a wall; you're totally conflicted about it, but it's enormously pleasurable and you know you're going to do it over and over again. No one has a pure, untainted love for this show. They only have complicated emotions. This is because…

2) The fact that the show needs to be fixed is an essential part of its appeal

Strangely, if this show were better, it wouldn't be as popular. If you love a show that is perfect, you watch it once or twice or thrice, make a bunch of memes, and move on with your life two years later when you find something else to hyper-fixate on. If you love a show that's broken, you spend the rest of your life obsessed with fixing it. It's the crooked photo hanging on the wall that yearns to be straightened (because, you know, this show is bad at making things straight). It's the stray dog you know would be adoptable if you fattened it up and socialized it with your other dogs, and just like some people can't stop rescuing animals, Supernatural fans can't stop thinking about how to fix a show that isn't great, but could be with a flea bath and a trip to the groomers. Supernatural fans are not fans of the actual show, but of the show they imagine it could be, one that only exists in an alternate universe. They are in love with the Platonic ideal of Supernatural. That's also the reason why…

3) The fans understand the characters and themes better than 95% of the people who worked on the show

The people who watch Supernatural have thought about it way, way, way, more than anyone who produced it. I have read complex essays about what the color of people's clothing imply and how the state of the Impala reflects the state of Dean's mental health and other things I'm certain this show did not do intentionally. People can find depth in the shallowest aspects of this series. Any random fan could explain the complicated dynamics of the Winchester family and the overriding themes of the series better than most of the people who worked on it. That includes the LGBTQ stuff, which leads to the fact that…

4) The show is simultaneously too gay and not gay enough

On one end of the spectrum are fans who are offended you would dare to suggest one of the Winchesters might like kissing a boy and they'll shove you in a locker and duct tape your butt cheeks together for it. On the other end of the spectrum are fans who think it's odd that every episode doesn't end with two attractive men dry humping in a dark corner of the bunker library. No one is happy with the level of gayness on this show. It's always got too much "No Homo" or too much queer subtext, which is why I've concluded that…

5) The audience this show wanted is not the audience they got and they are resentful of it

The original pitch for this show targeted a male demographic who’s into toxic masculinity in a non-ironic way. It was about bros and beers and muscle cars and shotguns and hot chicks who will be killed to further the man's storyline. However, when making that show, they accidentally created a show that attracted female viewers who liked speculating about the queer subtext of each scene while looking at pretty men with traumatic backstories fight back their man tears. The show depends on the unintended audience segment to survive, but is bitter about it, which they remind you of time and time again by killing the female and non-white characters and toying with endless queer-baiting. It's like the writers got a plane to Rome, ended up in a gay nightclub in Amsterdam instead, and even though the canals and tulips make it a lovely city to visit, they wanted to go to Rome, damnit, and they'll never let you forget it! I also suspect that…

6) The people who made this show were at constant war with each other

This show has such a split personality. Sometimes it leans into the gay stuff and other times it makes fun of it outright. Sometimes they'll introduce an interesting side character that could make the show more diverse and then they'll slaughter that person for practically no reason. Sometimes they praise free will and other times they force people down pre-destined paths. The writers feel like a dysfunctional family stuck at Thanksgiving dinner endlessly squabbling with each other—who then had to write a TV show together over dessert. That's why it's such a weird hot mess. The show's unevenness makes me think that…

7) Some people's attachment to the show can only be explained by the fact that it imprinted on them when they were young

Some fans have mentioned they started watching Supernatural when they were kids. It's a pretty common experience to go back and watch things you loved when you were a kid and realize they were…not so good. Your memories of them are far better than the reality of them, but you cling to them anyway. The shows you watch when you're young imprint on you in a way you never forget. Supernatural fans are like a baby duck who looks up at a cat and assumes it’s their mother. Then that cat slices open their poor little hearts, leaving them wounded but not dead, forever be toyed with in agony. The only relief is that…

8) The fandom is batshit insane in the best way

I started following the Supernatural fandom on Tumblr in November of 2020 and OMG, it was AH-MAZE-ING. It was total insanity. I didn't understand half of what was going on, but it was more fun than a yard full of puppies doing zoomies. People were posting detailed PowerPoint presentations theorizing how the series would end, citing extensive physical evidence like the background in Misha's hotel room. People learned election results through Supernatural memes. Destiel went canon every other week. When the Spanish dub was released, Tumblr literally crashed! Obama's Twitter was following a Destiel account. There was a Twitter wedding for Destiel on Valentine's Day, which made the one-month anniversary on Pi Day.

It's been a ride, y'all. I have no idea how you guys survived fifteen years of this. The fandom has been so much fun that I actually sat down and watched more than 100 hours of this show so I could understand everything better. It's like the show is an extension of the fandom instead of vice versa. If anything sums up Supernatural for me, that's it. It's all about the fandom and the show is secondary to that. It's like the fans willed the show into existence as part of some partially botched spell. And part of that twisted spell is that…

9) The show will never die until someone finds its bones and burns them

This show has been off the air for more than six months now and it keeps trending on Tumblr consistently. Misha recently trended on Twitter simply because he was at the Oscars. That was it! He didn't even do anything there, he just attended, and some people figured it out by the reflection in a photo posted by someone else! And just as I was proofreading this post, Destiel started trending again because John Cena is a stan or something? This fandom is crazy and unpredictable and I love it like Dean loves pie! If there ever does come a time when this show stops trending, that will be the moment when they decide to reboot it or revisit it.

There is a lot more I could say about this show, but these were the elements that seemed most unique and bizarre about it. I wouldn't say Supernatural is a ride-or-die fandom for me, and I have no intention of watching another 100 hours of this series, but it's been hella' fun to drop in for a while. The show is just as much a dysfunctional mess as the Winchester family and I guess that's why people love it, right?

[mister-geuse]

I'm on Tumblr a lot and my best friend is on Twitter a lot, and it's been such an experience to see the two sides of the whole Sprigatito Incineroar thing play out.

The Twitter mob is losing its shit as they always do about their fear that Sprigatito will be another Incineroar. You know, human shaped, bi pedal """Furry bait""". And as we know, the Twitter side of the Pokemon community doesn't necessarily have a *ahem* healthy way of expressing their opinions of the Pokemon Company's handling of the series as of recent.

The Tumblr side, upon seeing Twitter's worries jumped on the complete other side of the band wagon, basically saying fuck you I hope it's another bipedal wrestler cat.

I hate to say it, but I agree with the Twitter opinion. I really hope Sprigatito is quadrepedal, just because I'm not a huge fan of the uncannily human starters they have been doing recently.

All 3 starters from Gen 8 are very human shaped. They are plantigrade, 2 of them have fully anatomical human hands, 2 of them have pseudo clothing, and all 3 have human proportions.

I'm not gonna lie when I first saw the trailer for gen 8 where they revealed the starters I couldn't decide which one I would choose, but once I saw the final evolutions, I decided I would box my starter at the first opportunity.

On top of that, cat Pokemon have been some of my favorites. I LOVE purugly, delcatty, meowth, and torracat. I was so disappointed to see Incineroar because it was such a hard pivot away from Litten and Torracat.

On the contrary I also love Meowstick, Perrserker, and Zeraora. They still look very much like cats and they were already standing on 2 legs.

I think the main issue people have with Incineroar and the likes, is that he started on 4 legs and ended up on 2. This isn't necessarily a bad design detail but it makes for a really harsh rug pull when you're expecting a cat shaped Pokemon and end up with something that looks like there could be a literal person in that cat suit.

Additionally the series is Pocket MONSTERS. So the very human designs feel a touch out of place. Even in the past when they had human ish Pokemon like Mr. Mime, Jynx, and to a lesser extent Pokemon like Pangoro and Bisharp, they had very exadgerated proportions and look like animals who just so happen to be human adjacent.

I think people are scared that it will happen again. They saw the cute little weed cat and got really attached to it and are afraid Pokemon will follow their recent design trend of putting all their starter Pokemon on 2 legs.

Here's the thing though. I really don't agree with how Twitter talks to the Pokemon Company, but I do agree with a lot of their criticisms. The Pokemon company built their brand on catching them all and to take away the national dex it is really upsetting to people who have carried their Pokemon all the way up with them since R/S/E in 2002. And I do think that Sword and Shield were rushed or unfinished, with the render distance being 2 feet in front of your face and the animations being next to nothing, they even black the camera out and describe motion instead of actually animating it.

I do not believe this is the fault of the people actually making the games I think it's a problem with the strict schedule and crunch. If anything it's a problem with the way Game Freak/The Pokemon Company pushes their developers.

I think it's fine for the Twitter people to express their criticisms. The Pokemon Company is theoretically making games for the fans to enjoy, so if the fans don't enjoy what's being put out, they are allowed to criticise the company. If the Pokemon Company is alienating their base they're going to get push back. I just wish people would be more civil instead of what ever melt down they're having right now. If they don't like the game then don't buy it!

Now this is the part where Tumblr comes in. I know that we have this big war with Twitter, not just with Pokemon things but with almost all Twitter things. And I know that the Twitter crowd can be really cut throat when it comes to Pokemon. But I don't think this is a basis to throw out every price of criticism they have.

I do think the Twitter people can have a point sometimes even if they go about it the wrong way. That's the difficult part, picking through all the reactionary bullshit to find the very few good points they have. And I think this is one of them.

People are just trying to express their distaste with the recent direction Pokemon designs. I think that they are going about it in the wrong way but their criticism doesnt lose all value because of the way they express it.

I understand that we are afraid of being lumped in with the Twitter crowd and the way they spew hatred toward anything that moves. But I think we can also admit when they have a point.

Furthermore, always choosing the opposite side the Twitter mob takes is not going to do anything except create a very us vs them mentality and make it more difficult to accept when they are right for once.

It is ok to have an opinion that may align with the loudest most annoying sector of Pokemon fans as long as you yourself are not participating in the hate mob.

Although, at a certain point, if youre not enjoying the games to a point where you feel the need to act like this and say things with such venom, maybe it is time to take a step back from the franchise and move on to other things.

A lot of these people have been there since the beginning and I think they are having a hard time admitting its time to throw in the towel because Pokemon has been such a huge part of their entire life. As unhealthy as it may seem, a piece of their identity is tied to Pokemon. So to see the Franchise go in a direction they don't approve of can be very painful.

Maybe for some of these people, it's just time to let go.

On a similar note, if I am unhappy with this game, I think it will be my last one.

Thank you for your time and for reading my, well I guess this turned into an essay lol.

Please keep the reblogs civil. Thanks ❤

[jikookerie]

Hello do you what is white day in south korea ?? I saw tkkrs talking about tae-kook not posting after the concert because it was white day ?? What is that ?? Ans what doesit have to do with them not posting after concert 🙄🙄🙄

Hello Anon!

White Day was Monday March 14 this year. In S.Korea, the men give women the gifts because Valentine’s Day is for women to give the men gifts. Like any holiday… people respond to them differently and observe them differently.

As for TK shippers, I don’t what they are thinking or why they say what they say. I won’t even attempt to comment on that. They believe what they believe and We have different opinions on this matter. I don’t follow any TK shippers and have curated all the shippers who are toxic and drama ridden out of all my timelines. I don’t allow hate to enter my heart and try hard to keep a positive world view.

I chose to answer this because I am choosing to believe you are asking me knowing that this is a Jikook blog and are genuinely interested in finding out. I am hoping you are not just trying to start some kind of ship war. Because liking and instigating that kind of hate and animosity between humans is wrong.

The rest of this answer is not directed to you Anon. Please don’t think I am speaking directly to you. This is just commentary on some disturbing trends I have seen lately. I have seen baiting questions on Tumblr a lot lately. It bothers me the hate that people respond to those questions. But that is there blog and they can respond as they see fit. But to those anons who ask those kind of questions, I ask that if your take on something is that compelling for you to share via an ask and it’s intent is to spark vile responses, I would recommend you get your own Anon blog and post to your hearts content and allow those who enjoy ship drama to comment and reblog. Every person has different interests and those anons may find their own people out there.

This blog is dedicated to just enjoying the fluffy side of Jikook and BTS in general. They are my joy and they help me be a better human. If you wish to talk about any of them (Jikook or BTS) and have genuine questions on my opinions on that, I would be happy to respond.

Best of luck to you.

Borahae💜

Jikookerie

[sapphic-lemonair]

My Last Post Regarding The Tommy Scandal:

Let me start off by just saying holy hell, what a day.

And second:

Twitter is literally the most disappointing platform I have ever been apart of.

I don’t even know where to begin with how badly Twitter handled the situation with Tommy. I’ll admit, it isn’t the worst they’ve acted before, but damn they really didn’t do their best either. It sucks, cause the situation could have been handled better- and it was at first.

Cis Twitter stans are probably some the most confusing bunch I’ve ever come across. The fact that they pick and choose who can get away with doing controversial things is so annoying, and probably one of the most high and mighty god complexes I’ve ever seen. The fact that they called out and made Tommy trend instead of the actual problem itself was just pathetic in my opinion. KSI has interacted with so many other creators before in the past, a prime example being Quackity, yet no one made a single post in calling them out until now. This fact alone just goes to show that Twitter stans will come out of hibernation when they feel like it.

Twitter had made no type of effort in the past to call out KSI when he first made these transphobic comments before. There were no trending tags or @‘s or “lets educate him 🥰” posts for him because Twitter didn’t bother to care about it until now. The amount of hypocritical energy that was brimming through the platform is astounding.

We’ve gone through months of Twitter stans watching by as KSI interacted with other Minecraft youtubers and not a single one of them complained the entire time until now.

A lot of the adults on that platform did nothing but post passive aggressive comments to back handed advice. Adults, actual adults, were mad that a kid they put on some pedestal made one mistake and continued to state about how “disappointed” they were in him. Let me just remind you that once again, there’s no reason for any of the older fans to talk down to minors like some type of parent. Cause you’re NOT. It was very mature of Tommy to reach out to his own mom and take effort to see how he had hurt his words had affected his fans. It’s so abundantly clear that Tommy would never maliciously hurt his fandom in any way, not to mention that his first instinct would be to immediately apologize to everyone as well.

It was honestly mind boggling to see so many adults debating on whether or not is was morally right to forgive a 16 year old for a mistake he would obviously fix. The amount of people who were making threads stating how “it’s valid if you never want to forgive Tommy” was childish in my opinion. You’re adults.....holding a grudge against an actual child??? Like come on.

Twitter stans did nothing but juggle back and forth with “Tommy needs to address the situation right now!” And “Tommy, you need to take a while and think about what you said 🥰”. Yet when Tommy posted his first apology people were mad that it didn’t live up to their expectations. Were they aware that Tommy, like I said, is a whole child who was under the pressure of posting an apology despite not having time to really grasp what had happened? So many people flamed him because his post “sounded so confused” and “Tommy, honey nobody called you transphobic 😘”.

Except you did.

Of course Tommy is gonna sound confused in his apology. He wakes up and the first thing he’s greeted with are hashtags linking HIS NAME to the the word transphobic/transphobia. Of course that’s gonna be the first thing he apologizes for! Twitter basically made nothing but click bait posts that did nothing to properly explain to Tommy why transphobia was being brought up. And even despite this Tommy STILL apologized even when he didn’t know what he did wrong.

It’s so blatantly obvious Twitter realized that instead of tackling the problem at head, aka calling out KSI for his transphobic behavior, they chose to force and instigate a minor for collaborating and apologize on KSI’s behalf. It’s the most childish thing I’ve seen this year. It’s clear that Twitter stans are just awaiting to jump into next drama and put their two cents in before leaving the moment they realize they can’t get clout off their posts.

It’s frustrating because the amount of users making those posts as well weren’t even trans. The amount of “savior complex” energy cis Twitter stans showed while they spoke up over actual trans people who were genuinely upset was so embarrassing. It’s stupid to see how so many cis users got thousands of likes and retweets on their posts and acting on behalf of the trans community.

I’ll just wrap up by giving a genuine thank you to the trans community on Twitter who had the best interests in the whole Tommy situation. I’m sorry that a lot of you got trampled over by the cis users who basically used your problems as clout chasing tactics. You had every right to be upset and I appreciate that a lot of you took the situation with ease and attempted to quietly solve the problem without a hassle. Once again the cis side of Twitter blew everything out of proportion and attempted to but their two cents into the whole thing despite knowing it was an issue for the trans community to handle.

Dear Cis Twitter users, next time don’t be hypocrites and tell other users that they have no right to speak up about the situation before making your own posts for clout and followers. You look like clowns. I’d like to think that in another situation like those Twitter will act more mature....but I wouldn’t count on it. However a super big thank you to trans tumblr users who treated the entire situation with a mature personality. The mass difference between the two platforms shows me that people here have always had the best interest in actually making a difference.

In conclusion: Twitter is a dumpster fire 😁

[onrainynights]

why you can't compare buddie to destiel (from someone who ships both)

this is kind of addressing the recent negativity in the buddie tag, but it's also a collection of my thoughts and reasoning for being buddie-positive despite my experiences with destiel and spn in general. the text of 911 is not really discussed at all, and this is relatively spoiler-free, so if you're thinking of watching 911 I encourage you to read it. if you haven't seen both shows it probably won't make perfect sense, but I wrote this with spn fans who haven't seen 911 in mind, since that's most of my followers (and also seems to be where much of the negativity was coming from) pretty long post under the cut to save your dash

I just want to prepare y'all for the fact that buddie could be the slow burn will they/won't they mlm romance we've been waiting for practically forever.

at this point it's not fair to call it queerbait because where their relationship is now fits the characters and their development. this is not like destiel, where there were many moments over the years that could've ended with them getting together and it would've made sense with the story. buddie right now is in this sweet, wholesome pre-relationship kind of place, which on its own is a compelling dynamic and so fun and good to see. a resolution of it right now would feel out of character—they both still have some development to do before that would feel natural. and so, I don't think we can really call it queerbaiting unless the characters get to that point and there is still no resolution.

also I'd like to point out the overall positivity from the cast when it comes to buddie. both Eddie's and Buck's actors have said (I'm paraphrasing cast statements in this post unless they are in quotations) positive things about the pairing, and Buck's actor has said that he likes the interpretation of Buck as queer, and he would be happy if the writers took his character in that direction. also Eddie's actor with "that's what they all say" when buddie was referred to as a "bromance". Jennifer Love Hewitt, who plays Buck's sister (another main character), is very supportive of buddie, saying she's "rooting for it", that it would be "amazing", she doesn't "see how it couldn't happen one day". this was in response to hearing that a fan insists Buck and Eddie will be a couple. She flat-out said "I think so, too." She jokes about buddie with Buck's and Eddie's actors all the time. Also, my favorite bit from the video of her saying all this, "Let's manifest it together!"

It's safe to say this is a VERY different environment to spn. I don't think I've ever seen a cast this positive about a show's main non-canon queer ship before. NEVER. I think it's safe to say that if/when buddie is canonized, the cast will be just as excited as the fans—at least JLH will be! Add into the fact that the show's PR seems to be leaning into bi buck and buddie right now, it's a VERY different vibe than spn had, definitely. There's no gaslighting of the fans here, at least not that I've seen. also, although 911 has a large casual viewership, I think it's safe to say the GA would not be upset by buddie—there are only 3 serious, long-term romantic relationships involving main characters in this show, and one of them is a lesbian marriage with two children. And yes, the characters are shown being lesbians, it's not just a stated fact; the audience is privy to their relationship (and their interactions with their adorable kids). I think it's safe to say that buddie would go over well with the fans, even the casual viewers (of which there are many). buddie doesn't seem to be a huge divider in fandom like destiel is, either. reactions generally seem to be either "I ship it" or "I don't care either way."

Also I'd like to point out that while yes, it's possible that buddie is only bait (which would be disappointing), there's a reason queerbaiting works. people WANT to be queerbaited, because it's nearly indistinguishable from a slow burn will they/won't they queer romance. queerbaiting allows fans to make theories, create fan content (including fic), and keeps them engaged with the dynamic and the show. fans who are vulnerable to queerbaiting want a slow burn will they/won't they queer romance, which is currently an almost completely untapped market. spn could've tapped it, but despite the huge fandom they did not. there are SO MANY people outside of spn fandom who want a slow burn mlm romance, one that keeps the audience guessing, one that's will they/won't they, one that is not guaranteed, and that is why queerbaiting works so well. the audience doesn't just want the payoff, they also want the build-up. the longer the build-up, the higher the payoff, and the suspense of the build-up is gone if you know from the start that the payoff is definitely coming. that's part of why malec from shadowhunters didn't fully tap this market—there was no question of if, only the question of when (which wasn't really a question either, given there was an episode in season 1 literally titled "malec" when they got together.) the characters were always queer, the show being an adaptation of a book series where they were in a relationship and eventually had children together.

this was why November 5th was such a big deal—fans were so far past the will they/won't they aspect of destiel, firmly believing that destiel would always end as a "won't they" and not a "will they" that when cas confessed his romantic love for dean, destiel trended on Twitter over the US election. you all know that story, but maybe not everyone reading this knows that after Nov. 5 there was a case of hundreds if not thousands of spn fans experiencing love sickness because of the confession scene. the payoff of making destiel fully canon (and reciprocated, in English) would've been huge. fans would've been throwing their money at the c/w.

which leads me to the possibility (this is not at all me saying that I think this happened or even is likely, just that it's one possibility that /could/ have happened) that buddie started as bait, that the writers never intended for them to be a couple, but saw fan reactions to buddie during season 2 and started to lean into it in season 3 (and 4 so far, but it just started so I don't want to make any generalized statements about it) possibly still as bait or maybe not deciding yet if they'll go anywhere with it. and then maybe they saw destiel trending on November 5th, realized just how BIG the market for a slow burn will they/won't they mlm romance is, and said "hey, we already have the foundations for one of those. why not go for it and draw in all those viewers who clearly want one so badly?"

if buddie goes canon, because the cast and PR have been so positive about it, unlike spn, and because of the text of the show itself, the show's creatives could VERY EASILY claim that they were never baiting, that it was all an intentional slow burn will they/won't they romance from the beginning, and most people would believe them; there isn't really any evidence to the contrary, although I am sure there would be at least a few fans convinced it started as queerbaiting, and there might not be any evidence to refute that, either.

the point is that 911 is currently sitting on a gold mine. if they play their cards right, and execute buddie well, they will monopolize this market that old straight white men serving as network executives have failed so far to really tap into. they queerbait without the payoff, which gives the show a reputation among those in the market who haven't seen it, guaranteeing they will never watch it. shows in this vein: sherlock (huge reputation for queerbaiting and a finale fans didn't like) and spn (huge reputation for queerbaiting and a finale fans didn't like). spn got so, so close with cas's confession but then continued to gaslight its fans, and PR did not lean into destiel AT ALL. if 911 did buddie? the PR team would be all over it. it would be a moneymaker, big time, and Fox knows it. if buddie, or even just bi buck, went canon, tumblr would be all over it. viewership for the show, which is already impressive, would skyrocket. 911 would monopolize this market, because fans wary of queerbaiting would watch it with the knowledge that the payoff is there, and there really wouldn't be a competitor until other shows saw the success of buddie and followed suit with their own pairings, and given the fact that the market specifically wants /slow burn/ queer romances, that might take a couple years. that puts 911 in a really good position, where suddenly the fandom of the show, not just the GA, is very large and likely very dedicated to the show. the success of canon buddie might just change the landscape of TV in the coming years, showing execs that while queerbaiting does work, actually going through with it is really where the money is. 911 would not just monopolize the market for a while; it would pioneer it.

if buddie never goes canon, I would probably be a bit disappointed at the wasted potential, but unless the characters get to that point where canon buddie seems like the most logical outcome and they /don't/ go for it, I won't be truly upset because I don't think it's fair to claim its queerbaiting until then. I can't tell you how likely it is that buddie will be canon at some point, but it seems FAR more likely than destiel /ever/ did, and we ended up getting cas's confession in the end. I have hope, despite being hurt so badly by spn. 911 is a genuinely great show with some fantastic writing, and they don't leave chekov's gun unfired, unlike spn.

really, it comes down to this: if Jennifer Love Hewitt is allowed to clown for buddie, then so am I, and I'll enjoy this show—which is amazing even without canon buddie—while I apply my clown makeup.

[bisexualhobi]

yall way too quick to jump on the jk hate train wow. match made in bro-hell? do you also think the jay park x iu collab was a match made in bro-hell? or when soyeon or hoshi or vernon or jay b or mingi did tiktok challenges with him? they also give off bro vibes, right? there’s this really weird dynamic in korea where jay park is not really regarded negatively and it’s baffling by western standards - it’s definitely baffling to me. i’m not condoning him or any of the artists who collab or interact with him (bc i refuse to listen to jay park’s music and i’m disappointed in the idols who interact / collab with him) but i mean let’s not single out jk when clearly A LOT of idols interact with him

(also i’m just noticing a trend on your blog with a lot of ppl seemingly painting the bts members as ‘bros’ and fxckbois and i just don’t see it, i went to the concerts and have been following their music and content since 2015, they come across as consistently very kind and considerate, and it’s been reiterated over and over again throughout the years by people who interact with them. where is all this ‘bro’ stuff coming from? is it from those rumour asks that have been coming in? are ppl seriously buying into that stuff? i have no doubt they have one night stands and ndas but i highly doubt that any of the ppl on your blog have any knowledge of it. i mean, come on, some rando on tumblr knows those kind of intimate details? yeah right, ok buddy. i think you do like bts but sadly i feel like your blog is turning into a breeding ground for hivemind mentality where only those who seem to have only negative things to say about bts have their asks answered. there are those of us on your blog who very much respect bts and appreciate their music and them as people. i hope you don’t ignore us)

literally the first thing I answered about this non issue:

if i don't answer one of your asks it's because A) you're obviously baiting B) sending something in bad faith/not looking to have a real conversation C) you're relying on fallacies such as this what-aboutism you're doing right now or D) I simply don't care enough to spend my time answering it.

hope this helps