#stan’s soapbox

[shironezuninja]

Nah, I got spoiled by the Brainiac Kame voicing Spidey before researching the Uchiha’s crack at him.

[evilhorse]

Marvel Bullpen Bulletins (circa December 1993)

[cap10wilson]

just rewatched tfatws and.. damn this show is really slept on i feel like. i mean they did a pretty good job of making critiques of the us military, the government’s use of the term ‘terrorist’, the fact that a black man being captain america holds a lot more weight than a white man doing so (but also constantly proving that sam is absolutely worthy of holding the title), and it gives both sam and bucky plenty of screen time both together and separately. also karli was a really convincing antagonist because the only times i found myself disagreeing with her was when she chose to sacrifice lives for her cause, but the cause itself was understandable. like idk i think they cooked up a very solid show but it really didn’t get the recognition it deserved, probably because people were expecting a buddy cop comedy or something

[also-fours]

something i dont get is why some people feel so obligated to stay hyperfixated on something that's taking a while to come out, to the point where they feel the need to shout to the hills that they dont care about it anymore and dont wanna make fan content for it anymore like it's such a hot take and they're so brave for losing interest in doing the same thing for years on end

girl.

no one's telling you that you HAD to try and focus on it for that long

there are OTHER things that are out there, part of the reason why devs like toby fox and team cherry are perfectly fine keeping people waiting for so long is BECAUSE theres plenty of fish in the sea, you dont NEED to focus on them forever

they dont need to give you communication on shit if they dont want to and they're not ready to because you havent been spending your money on the games themselves, have you?

and the merch you HAVE been spending your money on is a separate thing

toby's given you development newsletter updates, team cherry's said they're working on the game, that's all you need to know

these are PEOPLE and they are not obligated to feed your hyperfixation when you want them to

go play in stars and time, go play blue fire

or like. get into something completely different than deltarune or hollow knight

try something new

that being said, this IS the autism website

so for all i know your brains are telling you that you HAVE to be deltarune and hollow knight girlies and make fan content of em for the rest of your days until these new games come out

so, it's probably easier for me, i have autism differently than you guys do

that being said...just try not to be a jerk about it, okay?

making games is hard. don't make it harder for them.

[datamodel-of-disaster]

Queer identity is not just an aesthetic.

It doesn't exist separate from the lived reality of people's bodies, nor from the lived experience of sexual desire and contact.

Top surgery scars are healed wounds, not pretty tattoos. I'm all for romanticizing the transformation in art, draw them however you like, but then don't turn around and call people gross for talking about the realities of their own surgery recovery, including botched procedures, pain, or ugly scarring.

Queer sexuality is a lived experience of sexual attraction (or, yes, the lack thereof), not just brightly colored flags and thematic lighting. Like, sure, have fun with it, but... maybe don't go around plastering LGBTQ flags over all your fave characters and then start yelling about perverts when people talk about shipping them or write/draw smut featuring them.

Representation that only allows for aesthetic is not representation, it is censorship.

Sex is not gross. Bodies are not gross. Go outside. Touch grass.

If you draw and write and headcanon and cheerily meme about queer characters and then climb on your soapbox against any representation that is more physical than a flag and some sanitized suggestion, you are a hypocrite.

And no, I don't care about how sex-repulsed or triggered by body stuff you may personally be. No one is obliging you to consume content you don't like. But if you cannot accept that to be queer in the world is an intrinsically physical and sexual experience for many, and that representing that is not bad just because you don't like it, you don't get to play here.

[jemgirl86]

Just saw a tweet with over 1K likes and it’s got me wondering:

So when exactly does a character’s comic book history matter? When does it count? When does it have an impact on how the movie version of the character is judged? Because it doesn’t seem to matter at all when it’s a white male character you’re fantasizing about sleeping with… So… idk, I’m just curious: how come these things only don’t matter to y’all when it involves a character who is half of your favorite ship? It’s almost like… it’s almost like y’all don’t actually care at all lol. It’s almost like you’re only doing all this yapping because you’re rooting for certain projects to fail, because they don’t have your favorite white male character(s) in them 🤷🏾‍♀️

[luanna801]

lmfaooooo why would you willingly go into the untamed fandom gat out

I LOVE this ask, tbh. Instead of anon hate, it's so concerned and protective! Anon support! You're the kind of person we need more of in the world, anon.

That said, this mostly just makes me giggle. At this point I'm an old hat at fandom drama and I promise you I'm probably impervious to whatever nonsense the Untamed fandom has to offer. And as of now, I mostly haven't even been tagging my MDZS/Untamed posts, so I'm unlikely to draw much attention from them anyway.

[sunriseverse]

complaint time? complaint time! let's talk about my annoyance relating to sapphic, especially lesbian, characters, relationships, and mxtx! because apparently, i love kicking hornet's nests these days (this isn't new, i just usually confine it to dms). this got long, my apologies, so it's going below the cut.

first off, i'd like to clarify that i am not talking about fanfic that makes mxtx characters sapphic/lesbians. i think that's great. i love rule 63. if you want to write these men in an au where they are sapphic, i have been there and support you wholly. this isn't what that's about, though—this is specifically about mxtx.

i've seen the same sentiment over and over trying to go through the chinese gl tag (baihe): people wishing mxtx would write about sapphic characters, wishing that mxtx would write sapphic novels, etc. and honestly, this pisses me off for a few reasons: my thoughts on how mxtx handles lgbt characters generally, the way that these posts clog the tag, and, finally, the way people going "wish mxtx wrote sapphic novels :( too bad she didn't, i guess there's no sapphic cnovels!" cheapens the extant, vibrant baihe field.

one: my thoughts on how mxtx handles lgbt characters

first of all, i'd like to preface this by saying this is only going off of what i know about mxtx, and mxtx works. as far as i'm aware, mxtx is a straight woman, writing about same-sex male relationships. she's the author of svsss, mdzs, and tgcf. i don't know if she's written anything else, but for this post, that doesn't really matter. let's go over these, shall we? mdzs' main couple has a rape kink, svsss' main couple is a teacher-student relationship, and tgcf's main couple is a man who saved a young child who later grew up to worship him. this isn't a judgement—i am a tgcf fan, so i'll be upfront about that; i think the way that specific scenario is handled in canon makes sense, and isn't objectionable to me specifically because of the way it's handled. i haven't finished svsss, and i haven't read mdzs, so i can't make commentaries there. i simply say this to point out the fact that, generally, mxtx couples play into a number of uncomfortable stereotypes about gay men, especially that their sex lives must be particularly "freakish", or that they must be older men pursuing younger men, especially those who idolise them. whether or not this is the message intended in these works, and whatever the characters themselves may think about these situations, they are not their own, real people; they are characters created specifically to be the way they are, by an author who is not a gay man. you can probably see why i, as a lesbian, do not want her writing lesbian characters specifically, and sapphic characters generally.

point two: posts like these clog the tags

any time i scroll the baihe tag, i inevitably run into at least one post where people wish that mxtx would write sapphic characters. while i understand wanting your favourite author to write about characters you feel better represented by, the truth of the matter is that when people make these often-one line posts that aren't actually related to baihe content in any way, and then tag them as #baihe, this leads to the clogging of a tag meant to be specifically filled with content about and surrounding baihe works.

point three: these posts draw attention away from extant baihe (chinese sapphic) works

as surprising as it may be, sapphic cnovels exist! there's actually a decent number of them, in fact. not many are fully translated, but there's a few big ones that are—and, i would say, the quality of the ones that have been translated are at least as good as extant mxtx fantranslations. baihe suffers from being ignored by the mainstream and official english-language publishing/translation houses, for a number of reasons that would take an entire post to even begin to try and unpick, but it does exist. however, when there's a bunch of people acting like no baihe exists and wishing their favourite danmei author would write baihe so it would exist, it creates the false illusion that baihe doesn't exist, drawing attention away from extant baihe—and thus perpetuating the tendency of those in fandom spaces to only ever talk about and promote male-centric works, and erase or marginalise female-centric works, as well as sapphic fans themselves.

in conclusion: i don't have a solution to this. i'm just frustrated by the tendency to act like mxtx is the paragon of lgbt fiction in cnovel spaces, and the way that, rather than looking for extant sapphic cnovels and characters, people seem far more willing to wish that mxtx would write sapphic novels, something that i, as an individual lesbian, think is a foolish idea, and just a generally annoying sentiment.

[captainpirateface]

Stan Lee got it.

It's revolting OVER HALF the country to this very day does not.

We need more Stans in the world.

[transhulklings]

If I ever hear another word from kevin feigie I will become violent. My hater levels are at 9000 rn

[eliah]

[geronimostiltonofficial]

wayne and melaan breakup its so over for me

[bonefall]

God I am so tired of Bramble fans who refuse to use critical thinking and believe that brambleclaw and squilf are equally bad. Many also hate on moonkitti's video which they most likely haven't even watched or misconstrued points in it. You can like a character without defending all their actions please I'm begging you

And people will sometimes jump to their defense, saying that people just dogpiled them for liking a character the fandom doesn't like, and while that can happen, sometimes people are actually dogpiling them for ignoring abuse and insulting creators with different opinions

(Some discourse happened on Twitter recently about this but it's something I've seen happen before, I'm not specifically talking about anyone)

I'm going to be honest and drop my feelings.

Never have I ever actually SEEN a Bramblefan "get dogpiled" for liking Bramble.

I come out here on my massive soapbox every couple of weeks and drop whole essays on this guy, I chat casually about how important he is to me as a character, both as someone who was abused in a way similar to Squirrelflight AND as someone who can relate to Bramblestar's situation, and before BB got so large and my attention was easier to divide I even ran an AU called Sweet Nothings which had a "big brother" Bramble take in it.

There is no shortage of Bramblestar-related posts around here, yet, I have never, NEVER gotten shit for when I talk positively about Bramble.

In fact, he's commonly cited as one of the favorite cats to see on this blog from my audience. I get praise for addressing him with nuance, explaining how his actions are abuse while also keeping him human, talking about how his life is a painful cycle of self-doubt that makes him double down on his worst decisions. Every time I post about him, I get an influx of comments centered around how my takes on him are appreciated.

What I DO see is people who make art where they try to bothsides him and Squirrelflight, or say something completely false about his behavior, or straightup post DARVO tactics to defend their fav's honor. When someone makes a comment that goes "uhmm? Bit strange innit?" they call it "harassment." Or when people block them, they call that "receiving hate."

OR when someone makes a vaguepost like "Heyyy, DARVO is an abuse denial tactic where the abuser or their apologists Deny the abuse took place, Attack the accuser, and then Reverse Victim and Offender to claim they were actually the person harmed. Bramblestans are playing this out, step for step, and that's bad!" they call THAT dogpiling.

Meanwhile Moonkitti got death threats and was actually harassed for posting Bramblestar Is Worse. To the point where she is hesitant to ever make another video on the topic.

So y'know what? Hot take? The stans don't actually like Bramblestar. They like the vague idea of a sadboy character who broke free from his dad's legacy so they slurp up the framing of the notorious abuse apologist writers, and they get mad when people who have critically engaged with the books don't see what they desperately crave.

How can you really LIKE a character if you can't engage with their actions? If you need to surround yourself in an unpoppable bubble and can't accept anything he's done in the 20+ years he's been active? How can you truly love a man without all his mistakes?

It's sooo hard to be me, Tumblr User Bonefall, the ONLY one who likes Bramblestar correctly. It's rough out here.

[pessimisticpigeonsworld]

Aemma Arryn: the Real Victim

I'm back on my soapbox about book vs show characterization, this time about Aemma Arryn. Aemma is obviously a tragic character, her mother died soon after she was born, she had many miscarriages with only one child surviving infancy, and she ultimately was killed to try to save her son who died anyway. However, the show tried again and again to romanticize her and her relationship with Viserys and trying to make it seem like she got a better deal in life than fucking Alicent (yes it all circles back to her, how she was written is my villain origin story, I fucking swear).

The show decides to either gloss over or completely remove the fact that Aemma was herself a child bride. She was thirteen when she was forced to marry Viserys (16) and was immediately forced to start having kids. This is a plot point they decided to instead give to Alicent (because of fucking course they did). Not only that, but they aged both her and Viserys up so, when she dies, Aemma looks to be around her 30s rather than the 23 she is in the book.

Another thing the show swapped between Aemma and Alicent is who Viserys "loved most". In the show, Viserys pines after Aemma for the rest of his life, even calling Alicent Aemma in episode 7. However, in the books, Viserys and Aemma are an arranged marriage by Queen Alysanne. And while he obviously loves Rhaenyra, his relationship with Aemma is kept vague. But after her death, he chooses not only to remarry (which was unnecessary since he had named Rhaenyra as his heir). Not only that but he chooses a woman (because yes Alicent was an adult by our standards when she married him) who gives no political gain and in doing so spurns many much more powerful houses (like the Velaryons). The book literally says he married her for love, Alicent not Aemma. But in the show, Viserys clearly loved Aemma more, which fed into his favoritism of Rhaenyra (which I'm not denying, but in the books there is no evidence that Viserys was as absent as they paint him to be in the show). Not only that, they take her story and make it into a sick romance while the true victimization is given almost completely to Alicent.

Now I'd like to touch on Aemma's views on honor and duty. She tells Rhaenyra in episode 1 that the birthing bed is their battlefield, a line which mirrors Alysanne and Daela's conversation before Aemma's birth (a decision by the Condal & Hess I actually like lol). She has given her all her teenage years and eventually her fucking life to fulfill her duties as a wife, desperately trying to give Viserys a male heir. Her entire life is full of the consequences of the patriarchy and the dehumanization of women. From her mother's death to Rhaenys being passed over as heir to Aemma's own death even to Rhaenyra being usurped.

Aemma embodies everything Alicent stans claim to defend and everything they make Alicent out to be. She is a child bride, she gave up her teenage years for giving birth to/raising children, she has almost no agency, and her daughter shares in her suffering. Alicent (in the books) has none of these things, except for the fact that Helaena is suffering, but that is something Alicent fucking orchestrated. Basically, if Alicent's stans actually believed what they claimed, they'd love Aemma not Alicent. Thanks for reading, long live Queen Rhaenyra and Team Black.

[sweetpastillas]

pines family soapbox car race but its dipper & stan vs mabel & ford, loser takes over respective chore shift/shack tour for a week

[theerurishipper]

think people dislike Ursa and iroh more than they do ozai because the former two see azula's behavior as wrong and treat it accordingly? it definitely makes sense why some people are more mad at ursa for scolding azula and at iroh even thouhg he has plenty of valid reasons to dislike her than at ozai, because ozai is the only one who doesnt see anything wirong with her behavior because he himself thinks it's fine.

Oh yeah, the Azula stans who criticize Iroh and Ursa aren't doing so because of anything those characters actually did, they do it because they can't bear to see Azula be criticized because she's this perfect victim to them who did no wrong and who should never be held accountable because everything she did is the fault of her uncle, her mother, or her brother. They will get on their soapbox about how Ozai abused Azula and will then parrot everything he ever said about how Azula is the bestest ever and how her being an imperialist isn't that bad, actually and will also say the same stuff about Ursa and Iroh than Ozai did, that they hate her and are weak and isn't Azula so much better than them?

They are so unable to handle any criticism of Azula (kind of like Azula herself huh?) so they find someone else to blame, like her mother for trying to discourage her violent behavior that she's picking up from Ozai, her uncle for correctly recognizing how dangerous she is and for not putting up with her shit, and even her brother for not dropping everything to the side to let himself be abused by her some more. I sometimes feel like they criticize Iroh and Ursa more than they criticize Ozai, and sometimes the stuff they say is so oddly reminiscent of him that I feel like a few of them don't even disagree with some of the bullshit he fed Azula lol.

Thank you for your ask!