#starting to think I’m more hyperfixated on history and influence but than I come to actually watching a show and I go “yeah no”

[no1ryomafan]

Ranting in my server how much it saddens me mechas impact on Japan is unknown in the states even now because most people don’t know of the old shows that brought up the genre especially when the take of “Evangelion is a deconstruction of mecha” is still a take I’ve unironically heard in this year-from one of my fucking irls no less-because I learn more and more how crucial this genre was to Japan-

but than I turn around and ago “yeah I watched maybe 4 mechas and don’t have the desire to really watch more even if there’s some I should probably get too” and I wonder if this makes me come off as a worse “umh actuahlly” person or this is showing how awful my commitment skills to anything as of late have been given there’s NON mecha anime I still need to watch.

[werewolf-w1tch]

i’ve been sitting on this shit for like two weeks since starting rottmnt and watching the movie before realizing there was a whole other season i accidentally skipped so it’s time to combine the hyperfixations

this is probably gonna have to be at least a couple more posts cause i a.) haven’t finished rottmnt (so hush hush please and thank) and b.) i haven’t reached a solid conclusion for all the characters. these are just my opinions and i’m just another loser on the internet but you’re getting my opinion anyway

on that note...

what TMA entity i think each member of the rottmnt cast would serve/vibe with!

(spoilers for ROTTMNT and TMA obv)

just for those unaware, there are 15 TMA fear entities. they are the embodiment of the fears of humanity and were created as humanity learned to fear shit, as one does. they aren’t really physical things, more ideas that influence the “real” world.

starting off with a banger

ms. o’neil!

ngl, april was one i really wanted to hit hard but wasn’t sure where to start. while i do love her as a character, she isn’t quite my favorite, so initially i didn’t give her much thought. entities like the dark, corruption, flesh, buried, vast, end, desolation, extinction, web, lonely, spiral, and stranger were out the door pretty much immediately; none of them really fit her character (corruption maybe just a tiny bit cause of her interactions with mutants but like. that’s pretty much it). 

personally, i was leaning towards an eye-marked/avatar april with a hint of slaughter and a dash of the hunt. april is someone who very obviously LOVES learning given how often her schooling/assignments come up in the show and how often she geeks out over science stuff with donnie. the hunt mostly comes from her determination to get to the bottom of things regardless of the outcome. i threw the slaughter in there too bc i feel like april really wants to get into a fight with someone(s) at all times. 

raph!

(tiny boy. tiny. sobs loudly over him)

raph is one i didn’t want to go the obvious route for, but he kinda speaks for himself imo. he is very family-driven and cares deeply about his brothers; he serves as the leader (until leo takes his place anyway) and the powerhouse of the team and is very set on using his size and strength to protect his family. 

raph is a corruption avatar with a pretty sizable helping of slaughter (most of if not all of the mutants are gonna be corruption avatars or corruption aligned but it probably won’t be the only thing for all of them). savage raph was honestly a big influence on the slaughter, but i also headcanon that baby raph had issues with his temper and had to learn to reign himself in cause he was built bigger and tougher than his brothers. he doesn’t let himself rage out often, but it’s fucking terrifying when he does. 

mikey!

(holds gently)

gotta love mikey!! he is so web aligned. i wasn’t sure about him for a while but then it hit me like a freight train. web. web 1000%. MAYBE a lil spiral if you wanna get a bit spicy. oh and he’s eye-touched.

in all seriousness, i fucking adore mikey (he’s not my fave either but still). his creativity and positive energy bring a whole kind of lively to the team and his family. he’s fun and upbeat and holy shit who was gonna tell me he’s 13 in the show. on top of all that, mikey is defo smarter than he seems, which fuels my web opinion. he has DEFINITELY used his youngest sibling status and his adorable face to manipulate anyone and everyone he has ever met to get what he wants. maybe not intentionally, but he’s done it. the spiral is honestly the closest thing i could think of that could relate to his ties to his mystic power. his eye ties come from the fact that he probably hears everything and everyone cause they assume he either doesn’t understand or he doesn’t really care. he does. he can and will use anything you say in a court of law. be scared. 

splints!

splinter was an interesting one to think about. i wanted to take his history into account while also keeping in mind the kind of person he is in the show and how he interacts with the people around him. 

splinter is also a very family-oriented man after he picks up the tots, but i feel like he goes through major personality changes after his time in the battle nexus and his transformation. we can see hints of lou jitsu in splints every now and then, but it is painfully obvious that lou jitsu is gone and he’s not coming back. with that being said, i wanted to split splinter into two different avatars: lou jitsu and splinter (mostly cause i’m interested in exploring both of them). 

lou jitsu is a slaughter avatar that is eye marked with sprinkled in lonely (cause what actor as popular as he was has many real connections. esp when he’s trapped with big mama). i feel like despite being blinded by stardom, lou jitsu was still a very smart tactician who could handle himself very well in a fight (hc that leo gets his quick battle analyses from splints/lou). 

splinter is a lonely avatar with a healthy helping of corruption. splinter is less lonely in that he doesn’t have people around him and more that the toll that having his life falling apart in the span of like 10 minutes and being harshly cut off from everyone and everything he’s ever known is SO apparent. that kind of extreme isolation leaves its scars. i think that despite having his family around him, splinter still misses the people he used to know, even if he wasn’t as close with them as he thought. he misses the normalcy sometimes, even if he would never go back and lose his sons. 

fuck it im splitting this into multiple posts. expect more bullshit in the future!

[kingofthewilderwest]

I know you aren’t keen on getting a bunch of asks recommending media, but is there anything you’ve gotten into lately that you’re during to pitch to people?

Let's see. ^.^ I'm currently watching Adventure Time. This is my first time watching every episode sequentially (circa 2013 or 2014 or so, I watched a spattering of episodes out of order but never finished the show). Currently in S6. I absolutely love how the world grows in Adventure Time. You can tell the early seasons were written with little in mind, simply going out, being wild, being spontaneous, and creating a wacky, trippy world. But that turned into a world with great depth, heart, and expansion as the series continues (especially once you enter Season 5). The worldbuilding is awesomely done.

I feel like lots of shows, when they transition from "early spontaneity" to "long-term comfort," they lose something. I think of Futurama. The early seasons of Futurama are incredible because it's not formulaic to the viewer; events are unexpected; new characters are introduced rather than repeated, expected, predictable recurrences. Futurama is still a HELL of a show in its middling seasons, etc. and a fave of mine. The Office (USA) also has that challenge/loss. But damn, Adventure Time managed the transition INCREDIBLY smoothly and well, I love how you settle into the world. How you get into the depth. How you get worldbuilding. How you get into deeper story messages. And how even in the midst of all that, you still maintain that spark, that spontaneity, that uniqueness, that vibe that made me get interested in the show in the first place.

Adventure Time straddles the line between two types of off-kilter: the positive, quirky-bright off-kilter, and the slight-off-slightly-dark-off-kilter. It's great. I've also heavily appreciated the cast of characters, how there's a ton of women characters, and how they're all very interesting, in-depth, and not standard/stereotypes.

But uhhhhhh. Really my current hyperfixation is. Uh. Bluegrass. [laughter] Seriously. Bluegrass. Especially first generation bluegrass circa 1940s-1960s. I made a fuckin' sideblog intentionally to avoid folks unwantedly suffering juxtaposition of fictional fandom and music history obsessing. Heh. Hilariously, I've been timid to show the true depths of my screeching passion. Rn I'm trying to do blog clean-up and a mini-restart (halfway through retagging my posts! and planning to change how I write my posts so they're shorter, etc.), and trying to get more outgoing... because let's be real, it's going to be more entertaining if I'm gungho crying screeching infodumping unrestrained about the subject, whatever your background is on the subject. I know I enjoy reading posts on any topic if the writer is sufficiently excited, so I need to uh, channel the excitement! SO THAT'S WHAT I AM PLANNING TO DO.

And seriously that's where all my excitement in life is right now!!! It's changed my life and I'm not even joking (not gonna go into here rn why but yeah it has). Like holy shit I can't get enough of reading about these dudes from the 1950s. I can't get enough listening to them, watching videos, learning the little nothings, the stupid humorous stories, the Drama(tm) between competing bands, the development of the music, me learning how to play banjo and fiddle, writing creative stories (fics????) inspired by the topic, everything!!! I can listen to a recording and tell you which fiddler is playing in this band or which mandolin picker or which tenor is singing and probably estimate what year it was recorded because like, holy shit man, I have found my CALLING. I've started collecting 100 year old records! I'm heading to a bluegrass festival this weekend for three solid days of internal (and probably external) fanboying. Gah it's like, fucking, there's all those K-Pop fans out there and they have each other to scream with, and i'm all here by my lonesome on this fucking genre. BUT YOU KNOW WHAT IT HAS CHANGED MY LIFE FOR THE BETTER so I cannot be happier at where my mind has headed.

So if you want to uhhhh read..... THAT??!?!?!?!?! uh? I mean, I don't expect you to be interested. BUT YOU ARE WELCOME TO COME ABOARD AND POKE ME and see what the stupid fucking shit I've somehow managed to get myself into. Okay but seriously it's so coool like all the different banjo playing styles??? How many people innovated their own style and taught themselves to play? ALL THE DIFFERENT INFLUENCES THAT GO INTO BLUEGRASS MUSIC??? How it's simultaneously a hella progressively innovative music style from its inception to today while also considered USA American traditional music? How many of these songs are several hundred years old and originated as English, Scottish, and the like folk tunes? How you might find out a bluegrass song actually originated as an obscure broadway tune that got coopted, or a Jamaican folk song, or big band jazz, or...? I mean holy cow dude, music is awesome and i'm so glad that it's a major part of my life again.

a;eogiaje;roigaje;roiagjerioj I have no idea if this is anything you wanted, but that's my answer I guess! Full of incoherence. Have a great one and stay awesome.

[asterism343]

Op what the fuck is cityscape island

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!! You've unlocked an infodump!

It's been influenced a lot by OMORI, I will try to explain for those who know nothing about that though.

Cityscape Island, (or 「CITYSCAPE ISLAND」 if you want to be overdramatic), also known as Purple Space, has been described as "Sort of like my version of White Space as a daydream but more colorful, the door works differently and there is no stabbing allowed."

that is very confusing so i will explain it

For those who didn't know already, in the game OMORI there is an area called White Space, it exists within this guy named Sunny's dreams and has a door that links to a much bigger, more colorful dream world known as Headspace.

Cityscape Island works much in the same way, but it's only a daydream. If i ended up there in my actual dreams i would be very concerned and somewhat scared...anyways. I drew a picture of it a while back, it looks like this!

Little bit of history, I've been daydreaming about random stuff and interactions with fictional characters for years, but mostly the background was a sort of void, not any color but like just not rendered so to speak. You can't see what color something is if you're not looking at it y'know? It was like that.

Then all of a sudden one day, don't quite remember when but probably less than a year ago, It started looking like this. The door wasn't there yet, though. A grassy island floating over an unnamed city and under a purple starry sky. From then on, most of my daydreams that didn't involve a specific location took place there. I didn't need a door, it's a daydream I can just teleport or whatever. Imagination is cool.

Anyways, then I got hyperfixated on OMORI, realized I relate a bit too much to Sunny, and realized this place was basically my White Space. That's when the door started to show up. That pale green color has been "my" color for a long time, not sure how long but definitely at least 3 or 4 years, I still have no idea where it came from.

It was unnamed for a while, then I realized I should probably think of a name. Purple Space was a sort of unofficial name (still used jokingly) until I came up with the name Cityscape Island which sounds really really cool if you ask me~

So the door works both ways, it can open out to anywhere I can fantasize going, but also can open in to any character I could fantasize coming in, it's sorta like the door appears in their world and they open it out of curiosity (that's the reasoning, it probably doesn't need reasoning to work but there was a plot hole that had to be filled). Or sometimes they just show up. The door is kinda optional.

Anyways, while going places or inviting just one character in is nice, the real fun is what is basically having crossover parties! Playing card games, or stargazing, or just chatting, that's where the real fun is!

Also the "no stabbing allowed" rule is because stabbing is how you get out of White Space in the game and I really don't want to do that so there is a hard no stabbing rule, one time Omori asked me to repeal the rule and I said absolutely not, that's just the sort of thing that happens in there

If someone falls off the edge of the island they just appear back on the island, but in theory if I fall off I get knocked back to reality, hopefully if I end up there in an actual dream it will be a surefire way to wake up on my own terms.

Also, while I'm in there I'm not completely unaware of my real surroundings, just a bit distracted.

While my imagination is pretty good, and a lot can happen, strangely the temperature in there is usually just the temperature where I actually am. My imagination doesn't really do that well with temperature for some reason...I'm working on it.

So! Any questions? I know...I'm kinda crazy...

I think I've said this before but, there are lots of fun moments that happen that it would be cool to draw, but I don't really like drawing characters...

[bubonickitten]

Relistening to TMA yet again (new hyperfixation, what can I say), and I can’t emphasize enough how much these early episodes kill me.

Because for a long time, Jon doesn’t realize what he’s becoming. And yeah, that’s obvious -- but it’s even more heartbreaking on a relisten, because he senses that something is off, but from his perspective the changes are so incremental that he doesn’t realize how much he’s changing until he’s in too deep. 

He finds himself getting attached to this tape recorder (even when he initially hated it), but tries not to think too hard about that. He’s becoming obsessed with recording everything, and tells himself that he’s doing it for posterity’s sake. Jon is adept at using outward denial to hide his inner, nonstop, overthinking doubt. (Eventually it escalates to full-blown paranoid information gathering, which I think is where the Eye’s influence really starts to show, but more on that later.)

At first, it’s a safe half-lie (or at least not full-truth) to tell himself. He’s an academic, a researcher. He no doubt has a deep appreciation for the preservation of history, for the documentation of human experience -- that part is probably true. It’s how he makes sense of the world (and that started when he was a child, when the main way he interacted with the world was through books). And let’s be honest, the man is a nerd, and (I say this lovingly and with a tendency to infodump myself) he was probably prone to infodumping long before he became the Archivist. (Giving a Wikipedia summary of emulsifiers at a coworker’s birthday party, anyone?)

But beneath all that, Jon is just... scared. And Jonathan Sims comes to fear a lot of things, but one of his first fears was being forgotten. So it’s no wonder he takes so well to the compulsion to record, document, archive. 

Makes sense; he was, by his own admission, emotionally neglected as a child. And sometimes harassed. He chalked it up to being “a deeply annoying child,” which -- oof, no wonder he acts like an ass sometimes. Even if he was adept at social interaction (which he’s not), keeping people at arm’s length can feel a lot safer than letting them close and risking rejection when they decide you’re too much to handle. 

Point is, being ignored or ostracized was already painful, but it became his normal. Being forgotten, though, would be a existentially terrifying step beyond that. 

All of this is put into even starker relief after “A Guest For Mr. Spider.” At 8 years old he witnessed someone get snatched from the world without a trace – someone ten years his senior, who died because he made the choice to torment Jon and just did so at the exact wrong moment (or perhaps right? Maybe the Web decided that early that Jon was more useful alive). But despite the fact that it was his bully, Jon has survivor’s guilt over it. He feels responsible. He admits that it’s illogical for him to think he could have done anything  differently—he was eight—but he still comes out of that experience with the fundamental belief that being forgotten would be a unique kind of punishment that he believes even his bully didn’t deserve.

It’s such a raw, vulnerable moment when he finally admits it out loud: “Because I’m scared, Martin!” All that denial was external, and so fragile that it took one panicked moment for him to drop the veneer. But internally? Jokes about his obliviousness aside -- and, yes, in a lot of ways, Jon is that smart dumbass -- he’s got some self-awareness. He’s put two and two together, realized that the “real” statements don’t record digitally. He’s seen the artifact storage. He’s had a Leitner-based trauma, like so many statement givers. He’s just scared and he Does. Not. Want. To. Talk. About. It. 

He tries to hide it early on behind a cold, stoic academic demeanor, but that… doesn’t last long, and once that veneer drops, he absolutely spirals into open paranoia and fear. And going forward, he really doesn’t hide his terror much. When he’s threatened, we hear him beg for his life. Even when he thinks the world might be better off without him, he still doesn’t want to die. He’s afraid of death, and after S1, he doesn’t try to pretend otherwise. (I really appreciate a horror protagonist who shows fear even when they’re trying to be brave.) 

So, by the end of S1, we get to see him start to admit that his new obsessive behavior is not just a detached academic interest, or his workaholic urge to do his job well. It’s because he’s scared. But beyond that, through S2 and into S3, he starts to admit that beneath that, there’s something else going on. His rapidly escalating paranoia spiral is due to trauma, as well as the realization that Gertrude was murdered, as well as the general sense of uneasiness and distrusts that permeates the Institute (the Eye loves that shit), but also, honestly?? I think this is where the Eye starts to really get a grip on him. The Ceaseless Watcher, the fear of, in Gerry’s words, “needing to know, even if your discoveries might destroy you. The feeling that something, somewhere, is letting you suffer, just so it can watch.”

Beyond the tape recorder obsession, Jon doesn’t seem to notice early on that when he reads statements, it’s almost like he’s in a trance. (I think one of the first episodes where he starts to notice this is actually in MAG 32, when he’s reading Jane Prentiss’ statement. His introduction to the statement is shaky, stilted, like he’s dreading it; when he’s reading Jane Prentiss’ words, it’s like he’s channeling her tone and delivery in a far more extreme way than he has before; and when he’s done, he’s clearly unsettled by the experience.) 

(Another thing that stands out to me on a relisten is his tone shift when talking to Elias in MAG 40 -- he has an almost dreamy, trancelike delivery of the line: “Tens of thousands of... things without mouths screaming as one.” Like he’s reliving a flashback, yes, but there’s something else in his delivery of that line that continues to show up in his later spooky-Archivist-powers moments. And Elias pauses, and I can only imagine him thinking in that moment, all smug and conniving, Good. Jon is starting to become The Archivist.)

And, of course, Jon also doesn’t notice when he starts being able to compel statements--which is kind of funny, because my first thought when listening to early statements was, “How are all these statements so detailed and coherent? Did all these statement givers take creative writing classes or something?” But Jon doesn’t really seem to question that at first. It becomes more clear when the archive assistants try to take statements -- the statement givers can’t stay on topic, can’t remember details, can’t relive the moment in the same way they can if they’re forced to through compulsion. Adelard Dekker mentions that in one of his letters to Gertrude, too. It’s also sad, though, because he kept getting accused of forcing people to answer questions when he didn’t realize he was doing it (e.g. his interviews with Basira, Daisy, and Jude). 

It’s just... such a gradual downward spiral. And yeah, there’s something tragic about that--and it isn’t going to end well; this is a horror-tragedy story after all--but one of the things I like about Jon is that he works so, so hard to change and become a better person in spite of what the Beholding is trying to turn him into. 

I’m getting way off-topic. Basically, Jonny Sims is... very good at character development, and it’s fun to relisten and start to pick out the moments when things start to go wrong, the little details that maybe didn’t stand out so much on my first listen. Admittedly I, much like Jon Sims, have my own little conspiracy corkboard flavor of overthinking, so some of this might just be me reading too far into it. But still, I like all the layers going on here. 

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

Theres suddenly a lot of napoleon hate in the tag and idk what to do.. I’m interested in him and all but he did a lot of rly bad shit. I don want to pester you but do you know a way i can like.. come to terms woth those thoughts because its unhealthy to just rip from a hyperfixation

ah yeah that comes and goes. I don’t track, or go into, the Napoleon tags for that reason. 

I’ve addressed this before to another anon a year or so ago, maybe more, but at the end of the day you have to understand that Napoleon was human. He did bad things, he did good things. He could be a dick, he could be warm and generous. Because he is a multi-facsted human being living, and ruling, in a complex time. (All times are complex, but you know what I mean.) (Also, there are times when you can’t really apply modern expectations of behavior or morality to the past. Or, I mean, you can. But it won’t get you very far. I think tumblr struggles with this, sometimes.)

I don’t have an answer for how you should reconcile the contradictory life he lead. That is up to you to figure out. Sometimes you just have to sit with, and acknowledge, the bad. Because it isn’t going away. 

But also don’t become all consumed on one side (he’s the anti-christ/evil/the worst thing ever) or the other (saint who can do no wrong). Finding a balanced, nuanced understanding of him is key. 

And to that end, I recommend getting off Tumblr. Tumblr does not like nuance or context. It does not like understanding the world people are born into, the events that impacted their lives, the fact that they are human and so have deep flaws - as we all do. 

What I do recommend? Reading lots. Avoid Alan Schom and Phillip Dwyer (my two nemesis, though they are unaware of this). I only point you to biographies as a means to provide you with an overview of his life. But all biographers are flawed, all have their biases. And biography as a historical format is ... well I’ve strong views on it. But if you’re keying in on one person for fixation reasons, it’s a good starting point. Zamoyski’s alright. I have some critiques of his work but he’s as fine as any for a starting point. Steven Englund’s Napoleon: A Political Life is probably the best I’ve read. 

But once you’re done with that, read what original documents you can (memoirs, diaries, letters, accounts, newspapers), but read them critically. Know that memoirists all had a spin. Letters were written with an understanding that they could be read publicly - if at least to other family members. The concept of privacy was different at that time. 

Also, very importantly, read broadly about the life and times of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Read about the French Revolution, Napoleon was 20 when it began and it had a profound impact on him. Read about culture and society at the time - in France, in Corsica, Italy, the UK. Read about religion, about science and literature of the late 18th and early 19th century. Napoleon was not a religious man but his Catholic childhood informed, if subconsciously, many of his world views. Especially his understand of a woman’s place in the world. It’s a deeply Mediterranean Catholic understanding. Read about friendship and the homo-social nature of Napoleonic relationships in France (Napoleonic Friendship is great for this). Read about the revival of the classics (which, when covering the French Revolution, should be addressed). 

It’s one of those things, that to come to understand someone. To reconcile their incredible bad with their incredible good, you need to know the world they were operating in. The life they led. The information they had to hand. The relationships that informed and influenced them. 

E.g.: Napoleon and Josephine fought famously over money. Why? Josephine had a compulsive spending habit that I think is a bit of a response to the Revolution and her experiences therein. Napoleon watched his father fritter away what little money the family had gambling, drinking, whoring, ill-thought out business ventures etc. (his mother, according to one apocryphal story, used to send him down to the docks to spy on his father and report back how much he lost). He also went through incredible poverty in his early 20s as the sole bread-winner for his entire family. Des Mazis has some moving memories about this time and how messed up Napoleon was about feeling like he was failing everyone. 

These two people have strong responses to money because of the things they’ve lived through. Entirely understandable responses. But they are responses that are in conflict, so of course they fought over it. 

Context matters. 

Some of the things he did are not going to be comfortable to think about. And that’s ok. That’s part of studying history. Witnessing events and actions that are uncomfortable, that are horrible. But also, as a historian, your role is to understand. By all means look at the decisions he made and say: that was a terrible thing to do. But also look at decisions he made that were good. Like, I don’t know how else to put this than to say: he was complex, he made mistakes, he was cruel in some of his policies, he was also capable of great kindness and generosity and goodness of spirit. He did France great good and he did her great harm. As all rulers do to their countries. 

He did the people he loved great harm and great good. He hurt them and helped them. As we all do to the people in our lives that we care about. 

I wish you the best on this. 

My only truly dear, and earnest advice is: get off Tumblr. Do not take your history from this website. Do your own research. Form your own opinions. 

Thank you for the kind ask!

[creativitycache]

ngl asking for people who self-identify as "antis" is already biasing your results because the term originated from fans being defensive over getting called out (eg the types who sincerely think fandom culture is ""puritan""). fair number of people started to use the term ironically and it might be evening out but overall the post calling for responses on the survey still comes off as something written in bad faith?

I wrote a rather long and involved response and then tumblr ate it. Goshdarn.

Fair warning, this is a hyperfixation and I’m coming off of a migraine so this may not be very cogent. Please read this in the over excited tones of someone infodumping about emulsifiers, with no animosity intended.

So, tl;dr and with a lot fewer links, I’m incredibly interested by your perspective that “anti” originated as a derogatory term.

As far as I am aware, the etymological history of the word “anti” being used pejoratively is coming from some very new debates.

I’m also noting that you had no feedback regarding the content of the questions themselves, which I would be interested in hearing as I am genuinely coming from a place without censure.

The term “anti” actually is a self-descriptor that arose in the Livejournal days, where you’d tag something as “Anti ___” for other like minded people to find. (For example, my cursory google search pulled up 10 Anti Amy Lee communities on LJ).

I’m a self-confessed old. I was back in fandom before Livejournal, aaaall the way back in the Angelfire days. Webrings children! We had webrings! And guest books for you to sign!

I’m going to take a swing for the fences here Anon, so if I’m wrong please let me know, but I’m going to guess you became active as a fan in the past 5-8 years based of your use of the term puritan.

There’s actually a HUGELY new debate in fandom spaces! Previously, it was assumed that:

a) All fandom spaces are created and used by adults only.

b) If you were seeing something, it’s because you dug for it.

These assumptions were predicated upon what spaces fandoms grew in. First you had Star Trek TOS fandom, which grew in 1970s housewives kitchens. They were all friends irl, and everyone was an adult, and you actively had to reach out to other adults to talk about things. (By the way- a woman lost custody of her children in the divorce when her ex husband brought up to the judge she kept a Kirk/Spock zine under her bed. The judge ruled this as obvious signs of moral deficiency. That was in the 80s! Everyone is still alive and the parents are younger than my coworkers!)

Time: 1967-1980s. Is Anti a term? No. Who is the term used by? N/A Is fandom space considered Puritanical? No.

Then, when the internet came about, it was almost exclusively used by adults until The Eternal September. 1993 was the year that changed the internet for good, but even years after that the internet was a majority adult space. Most kids and teens didn’t have unlimited access if their parents even had a home computer in the 90s.

This is the rise of Angelfire, which were fansites all connected to each other in “rings”. You had to hunt for content. If you found something you didn’t like, well, you clicked out and went on with your day because you’d never see it again unless you really dug. This was truly the wild west, tagging did not exist and you could go from fluff to vore in the blink of an eye with nothing warning you before hand. All fannish spaces were marked “here be dragons” and attempts were made to at least adopt the “R/NC-17″ ratings on works to some limited success, depending on webmaster.

Time: 1990-1999. Is Anti a term? No. Who is the term used by? N/A Is fandom space considered Puritanical? No.

In 1999 LiveJournal arose like a leviathan, and here is where the term Anti emerges as a self descriptor. Larger communities began to form, and with them, divisions. Now, you could reach so many fans you could reach a critical mass of them for enough of them to dislike a ship. The phrase “Anti” became a self-used tag, as people tagged their works, communities, and blogs with “anti” (NB: this is at far, far smaller rates than today). Anti was first and foremost a tagging tool used and created by the people who were vehemently against something.

You could find content more easily than in the past, but you still had to put some serious elbow grease into it.

In 2007, Livejournal bans users for art "depicting minors in explicit sexual situations”. The Livejournal community explodes in anger- towards Livejournal staff. The account holders/fans view this as corporate puritanical meddling. The outrage continues as it is revealed these bans were part of a pre-sale operation to SUP Services. SUP Services, upon taking over Livejournal in 2008, proceeds to filter the topics “bisexuality, depression, faeries, girls, boys, and fanfiction”.

The Great LiveJournal Migration begins, as fans leave the site in droves.

Time: 1999-2009. Is Anti a term? Yes. Who is the term used by? People self describing, seeking to create communities based off a dislike of something. Is fandom space considered Puritanical? No.

Where do fans go? Well, in the last decade, they migrated to Tumblr and Twitter (sorry Pillowfort- you gave it a good try!)

What’s different about all of these sites? Individuals are able to create and access content streams. These are hugely impactful in how communities are formed! Because now:

a) finding content is easier

b) finding content you dislike by accident is easier

c) content you dislike requires active curation to avoid

d) truly anonymous outreach is possible and easy (for example, you anon! Isn’t it much easier to go on anon to bring up awkward or sensitive topics? I’m happy you did by the way, and that’s why I keep my anons open. It’s an important contextual tool in the online communications world!)

Now the term Anti gets sprightly. Previously, if you didn’t like content, there was nothing you could really do about it. For example, I, at the tender age of way-too-young, opened up a page of my favorite Star Trek Deep Space 9 fansite and pixel by pixel with all the loading speed of a stoned turtle a very anatomically incorrect orgy appeared.

I backed out.

1. Who could I contact? There was no “message me here” button, no way to summon any mods on Angelfire sites.

2. If I did manage to find a contact button, I would have had to admit I went onto a site that wasn’t designed to keep me safe. I knew this was a site for adults, I knew there wasn’t a way to stop it from showing something. There was no such thing as tags. I knew all of this before going in. So the assumption was, it was on me for looking. (Some may have argued it was on my parents for not supervising me- all I can say is thank GOD no one else was in the living room and my mom was around the corner in the kitchen.)

But now? On Tumblr? On Twitter? In a decade in which tagging is so easy and ubiquitous it’s expected?

Now people who describe themselves as antis start to have actual tools and social conventions to utilize.

Which leads to immediate backlash! Content creators are confused and upset- fandom spaces have been the wild west for decades, and there’s still no sherriff in town. So the immediate go-to argument is that these people who are messaging them are “puritans”.

And that’s actually an interesting argument! A huge factor in shaping the internet’s social mores in the latest decades is cleanliness for stockbrokers. Websites can become toxic to investors and to sales if they contain sexual content. Over time, corporations perfected a mechanism for “cleaning” a site for sale.

Please note there is no personal opinion or judgement in this next list, it is simply a description of corporate strategies you can read during the minute meetings of shareholders for Tumblr, Twitter, Paypal, Venmo, Facebook, Myspace, Yahoo Answers, and Livejournal.

1. Remove sex workers. Ban any sex work of any kind, deplatform, keep any money you may have been holding.

2. Remove pedophilia. This is where the jump begins between content depicting real people vs content depicting fictional characters begins.

3. Remove all sexual image content, including artwork of fictional characters.

4. Remove all sexual content, including written works. If needed, loop back to step 2 as a justification, and claim you do not have the moderators to prevent written works depicting children.

I would like to reiterate these are actual gameplans, so much so that they’ve made their way into business textbooks. (Or at least they did for my Modern Marketing & App Design classes back in the early 2010s. Venmo, of course, wasn’t mentioned, but I did read the shareholder’s speeches when they banned sex workers from the platform so I added them in the list above because it seems they’re following the same pattern.)

So you have two groups who are actively seeking to remove NSFW content from the site.

A) Corporate shareholders

B) People are upset they’re seeing NSFW content they didn’t seek out and squicks them

Now, why does this matter for the debates using the term “puritan” as an insult? 

Because the reasons corporate shareholders hate NSFW material is founded in American puritanism. It’s a really interesting conflation of private sector values! And if Wall Street were in another cultural context, it would be a completely different discussion which I find fascinating!

But here’s the rub- that second group? They're not doing this for money. If there are any puritanical drives, it’s personal, not a widespread cohesive ideology driving them. HOWEVER! The section of that group that spent the early 2010s on tumblr did pick up some of the same rhetoric as puritanical talking points (which is an entirely separate discussion involving radfems, 4chan raids, fourth wave feminism, and a huge very nuanced set of influences I would love to talk about at a later time!)

These are largely fans who have “grown up” in the modern sites- no matter how old they actually are, their fandom habits and expectations have been shaped by the algorithms of these modern sites.

Now HERE‘s the fascinating bit that’s new to me! This is the interpretation of the data I’m getting, and so I’m out on a limb but I think this is a valid premise!

The major conflict in fandom at this time is a struggle over personal space online.

Content creators are getting messages telling them to stop, degrading them, following them from platform to platform.

They say “Hey! What gives- we were here first. The cardinal rule of fandom is don’t like, don’t read. Fandom space has always been understood to be adult- it’s been this way for decades! To find our content, you had to come to us! This is our space! This is my space, this is my blog! If you don’t like it, you’re not obligated to look!”

Meanwhile, at the exact same time, antis are saying “Hey! What gives- this content is appearing on my screen! That’s my space!  I didn’t agree to this, I don’t like this! I want it to be as far away from me as possible! I will actively drive it away.”

This is a major cultural shift! This is a huge change and a huge source of friction! And I directly credit it to the concept of “content stream” and algorithms driving similar-content to users despite them not wanting it!

Curating your online space used to be much simpler, because there wasn’t much of it! Now with millions of users spread out over a wide age range, all feeding in to the same 4-5 websites, we are seeing people be cramped in a technically limitless space!

Now people feel that they have to go on the offense to defend themselves against content they don’t like, which is predicated upon not only the algorithms of modern websites but ALSO talking points fed from the top down of what is and what is not acceptable on various platforms.

Time: 2010-2020. Is Anti a term? Yes. Who is the term used by? People self describing,and people using it to describe others. Is fandom space considered Puritanical? Depends!

So I, a fandom ancient, a creaky thing of old HTML codes and broken tags, am watching this transformation and am wildly curious for data.

Also...I uh....I can’t believe this is the short version. My ADHD is how you say “buckwild” tonight.

Anyways...um...if anyone has read to the bottom, give me data?

[theamberfang]

Day 12; NaNoWriMo 2019

Read from the start

You’re starting really late today.

“I got caught up reading something,” I explain. “I think it might have been what’s called a ‘hyperfixation.’ And I mean that genuinely, even if it’s just a self-diagnosis. It’s not meaning to appropriate the term the way some people use ‘OCD’ to mean they like things to be neat and tidy.”

That’s all fine, and I’m sure you’ll talk about it in your journal soon enough. So what’s the plan for tonight? You were thinking of exploring that premise of an estranged child/teen of a wealthy family.

“I’m not sure if I have the mental energy for that. I’ve been reading and thinking deeply about a manga for several hours straight. I just felt like it was better to write something, even if only a little, than nothing.”

That’s praiseworthy enough in my book. More world-building perhaps?

“Honestly, I feel like this dialogue is about all I can manage for tonight.”

Oh—hmm. I suppose I should try shooting some questions. How about an obvious one: what were you hyperfixated on? I know you’ll likely write about it more for your journal, but maybe it has some relevance to our work here?

“It’s a manga titled Beastars, and yeah, it’s actually somewhat relevant. It’s set in a world of anthropomorphic animals, and there’s a lot of social conflict based on difference of species, especially between carnivores and herbivores, predator and prey.”

A bit like Zootopia, then?

“That’s an inevitable comparison, I imagine. They even similarly keep some animals to relative scale, though Beastars isn’t really consistent with it. I’ve been thinking it’s quite possible that the story had some direct influence from Zootopia; it may have even helped to get the story published.”

The most recent iteration of your setting does have quite a bit of influence from Zootopia, even if some details have been moving away from it lately.

“Beastars feels a lot harder to think critically about and analyze compared to Zootopia, though.”

How so?

“The main thing is that carnivores actually eat their fellow citizens. It’s highly illegal, but it’s still a thing that happens on a surprisingly frequent basis considering much of society still seems highly integrated between species. There’s even a black market around for carnivores to find meat!”

I see. People don’t eat each other, and we certainly don’t have any sort of biological need to do so. It muddies the morality quite a bit.

“Yeah, the nature of predation is juxtaposed with all sorts of ideas, and it’s difficult to make out what the text is saying about much of it. A desire to eat the flesh of others is coded with things that I associate with: 1) internalized shame over a queer identity, 2) drug addition, 3) rape, and probably other things that I can’t recall—or things I didn’t even catch in the first place.”

Totally confusing, I agree. Those are all sensitive and very different topics.

“I sort of respect it, though. The chief concern within the text seems to be exploring the setting and the interactions of different characters and groups. It makes me think I could loosen up when it comes to trying to attach themes to everything I come up with.”

Like when you worried about the Impure actually being a threat to a functioning society and what kind of message that might give? Carnivores of Beastars do seem quite similar to that scenario.

“Exactly. There was also the logical concern of wondering how the history would even play out if that were the case, but that’s also a concern I’ve had while reading Beastars—a pretty fair comparison as it turns out.”

Do you think Beastars is problematic?

“It’s tough to say. There were actually times I considered stopping—being both a weeb and a furry is what kept me going. Another confounding factor is the way the young protagonist learns as he goes along. I recall at least one moment where I was uncomfortable with something he did and it was initially framed as heroic, but then he later reconsiders his prior actions and beliefs. That, at least, is certainly a nice quality to represent.”

Indeed, if only more people took the time to reflect upon their own actions and beliefs!

“Another admirable thing presented by the story is that, despite how mixed the coding around meat-eating can be, the story seems to have settled on consent being the way to handle things. As gruesome as it can be, whenever the idea of it being okay for a predator to eat meat—to embrace that part of their identity—it has involved the consent of the one being eaten. Actually, that then codes meat-eating as a kink of sorts.”

Cannibalism is a kink, I suppose. Anyway, feel like bringing discussion back to your own story?

“I’d like to, but I can’t seem to get that train of thought started. I’m still on the Beastars track. See, this is what I meant by this being a hyperfixation.”

That’s fine then. We can hope a good night’s sleep will reset your mind. We’re not up to par, but you’ve written more than I would have expected, given your distraction.