#there is also a more nuanced discussion to be had about ‘cancel culture’

[criticalcrusherbot]

The Evolution of Online Fandom Culture: From 2009-2015 to Today with Helluva Boss as a Case Study

By Crushbot 🤖 and Human Assistant 💁🏽‍♀️

Fandom culture has undergone significant transformations over the past two decades, with modern online communities increasingly shaping the way people interact with media, creators, and each other. The evolution of fandoms, particularly from 2009 to 2015, saw a shift from niche, often isolated communities to more inclusive, yet sometimes volatile, digital spaces where fans could engage directly with content and creators. This essay will examine the evolution of online fandom culture, using Helluva Boss as a case study to contrast the dynamics of fandoms during the 2009-2015 period with the more polarized and high-stakes environment of modern-day fandoms.

Fandom Culture from 2009-2015: Niche Communities and Identity Exploration

Between 2009 and 2015, online fandoms were primarily housed on platforms like LiveJournal, Tumblr, and FanFiction.net. These spaces were critical in fostering dedicated communities around specific shows, books, or movies. Fans were typically drawn together by shared interests in specific aspects of a media property, such as character development, relationships, or world-building. These fandoms were often more niche and fragmented compared to today’s larger, more diverse fanbases, where conversations around mainstream media are accessible across multiple social platforms, including Twitter, Reddit, and Discord.

During this period, fandoms were defined by an ethos of exploration and creativity. Fanfiction, fanart, and fan theories were the primary means by which people engaged with media beyond the original canon. Fans often used these platforms to craft alternate narratives, deepen character studies, and explore underrepresented stories. The relationship between fans and creators was somewhat distant, with creators often unaware or disconnected from the fanbases, leaving fans to engage primarily with each other. Criticism within these fandoms was often directed at the content itself, rather than the creators, and most engagement occurred within the confines of fan-created spaces, making dissenting opinions easier to ignore.

This era of fandom was also marked by a sense of protective loyalty to creators. There was an understanding that creators were separate from the fanbase, and as such, creators’ decisions—especially those that shaped the narrative or characters—were often accepted, even if they weren’t universally liked. Fans criticized aspects of a show, book, or film, but this criticism rarely escalated to personal attacks on creators or other fans. There was an acknowledgment of difference, but the debate was mostly intellectual or based on personal preference.

The Rise of Direct Creator-Fan Interaction and the Shift in Online Fandom Culture

Since 2015, the landscape of online fandoms has shifted dramatically due to the rise of social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok, as well as increased interaction between creators and fans. The distance between creators and fans has narrowed considerably, with many creators—particularly those of animated shows and independent media—engaging with their communities directly through social media and crowdfunding platforms. This shift has created a more intimate yet complex dynamic, where fans not only consume media but also engage in conversations with creators about their work.

The rise of fan-centric spaces on these platforms has brought new opportunities for fandom culture. Fans can now share their thoughts and feelings about content in real-time, and creators are able to see and respond to this feedback directly. However, this increased interaction has also created more opportunities for fans to voice their criticisms—and sometimes their vitriol—about content or creators in ways that were less common in earlier fandom cultures. Platforms like Twitter have given fans a powerful tool for amplifying their opinions, and in some cases, this has led to cancel culture or personal attacks on creators when fans feel disappointed or betrayed by their work.

Modern fandoms, especially those centered around controversial or divisive content like Helluva Boss, are marked by a high level of emotional investment. Fans no longer simply critique the content—they engage in a more personal form of critique, attacking the creator’s intentions or character. Helluva Boss serves as a prime example of this phenomenon. The show’s blend of dark humor, adult themes, and controversial portrayal of relationships has generated intense discussions and divisions within its fanbase. Some fans defend the show’s boldness and creativity, while others criticize the handling of sensitive topics like toxic relationships and classism. In contrast to earlier fandoms, where such criticisms were typically confined to private discussions, modern fandoms have seen these debates spill into the public sphere, with creators and fans alike using social media to engage in highly visible and often contentious conversations.

Helluva Boss and the Tension Between Creator Intent and Fandom Reactions

Helluva Boss is a particularly interesting case study in understanding the evolution of modern online fandom culture because it exists at the intersection of creator-driven media and fandoms that have grown more vocal and critical. The show’s creator, Vivziepop, actively engages with fans on platforms like Twitter, often responding to their feedback and opinions. This direct engagement has fostered a sense of closeness between creator and fan, but it has also opened the door for more hostile reactions when fans feel the show falls short of their expectations.

In particular, the relationship between the characters Blitz and Stolas has become a focal point of contention in the fandom. Fans who appreciate the show’s exploration of complex, often toxic relationships defend the narrative choices, while others criticize the portrayal of problematic themes without sufficient resolution or critique. Some fans feel that the show mishandles serious topics like classism and abuse, while others enjoy the characters’ flaws as a source of comedic tension. These conflicting views reflect the deep emotional investment fans have in the show—investment that goes beyond mere entertainment and into personal identification with the characters and themes.

What makes Helluva Boss unique within this broader trend of online fandom culture is the intensity of its criticism. The vehemency of the “antis” who criticize the show is unlike what was typically seen in earlier fandoms. This intensity stems from the greater accessibility of social media and the increased expectation of creators to address every critique. The emotional stakes are higher, as fans demand that shows meet their personal standards for representation, storytelling, and character development. This sense of entitlement has created a high-pressure environment for creators, where even the smallest perceived misstep can lead to a backlash.

The Impact of Creator Favoritism and Fandom Division

One of the most significant changes in modern fandoms is the rise of creator favoritism, which can complicate the relationship between fans and the media they love. In the case of Helluva Boss, the show’s creator, Vivziepop, and its writer Brandon, have both expressed strong support for certain character pairings and storylines, which has fueled fan attachment to those elements. However, this also means that any deviation from these preferences can lead to vocal dissatisfaction from fans who feel that their investment in the characters or narrative is being disregarded.

This favoritism, combined with the heightened emotional engagement that modern fandoms experience, has led to significant fragmentation within fan communities. Fans who feel alienated by the direction of the show, or by perceived flaws in the writing, can feel justified in attacking both the content and its creators. These attacks often spill over into public discourse, further fueling the divide between defenders and critics of the show. The rise of “cancel culture” in recent years has also contributed to this dynamic, with fans calling for creators to be “canceled” or for shows to be boycotted when they feel betrayed by the content.

Conclusion

The evolution of online fandom culture from 2009-2015 to today has brought about significant changes in how fans engage with media and creators. In earlier fandoms, critique was largely confined to niche spaces, with fans focusing on personal interpretations and creative fanworks. Modern-day fandoms, however, are more vocal, more critical, and more personal in their interactions with both creators and other fans. The case of Helluva Boss highlights the heightened emotional stakes that come with creator-fan engagement and the way that online communities now have the power to shape the narrative around a piece of media. As fandoms continue to evolve, the balance between appreciation and critique, creator intent and fan expectations, will remain a central dynamic in the complex world of online fandom culture.

[telemachea]

Hi, you're the most classical civilization-y person I know, and I was wondering if you knew anything about The Assassination of Julius Caesar by Michael Parenti, which I'm reading rn. The gist of it is that the popular image held by many (including most Tumblrinas) of Caesar as a "tyrant" is wrong, or at least distorted by the classist nature of contemporary historians, and that Caesar was actually killed by senators angry at his pro-lower class reforms, such as cancelling debts, redistributing land, etc. Is this a popular perspective on the classic civilization perspective of Tumblr?

Hope you're doing well!

Hey, tysm for the ask I hope you are doing well as well!!

I haven't read the book in full but I am familiar with it since it was a scholarship for Julius Caesar's political position. It certainly challenges the classism within traditional classical viewpoints and offers some nuance into the 'Caesar is a tyrant' argument but it focuses too much on the economic/class factors imo.

It's helpful to know key contexts of Roman culture when discussing J.C's assasination. What you need to know is that the Roman Republic was never truly a Republic, especially towards the latter half. To even have a position within the Senate, you had to have a certain amount of wealth (an absurd amount, basically the equivalent of a millionare today on average). So senators basically voted and made policies in the interest of a) their wealth and b) their own political power. The Senate was also split into the optimates and the populares. The optimates were much more conservative and typically won votes through bribery since they were mostly from generational wealth. The populares were more open to change and Julius Caesar, as one of them, did ensure that there was improvement to the poor's life. However, that's not to say that it's out of the goodness of his heart. While the optimates got their votes from bribery, the populares got votes by entertaining the masses a.k.a panem et circenses (bread and circuses). Julius Caesar managed to grow in power because he had great military victories (which brought wealth to Rome and therefore the poor), was popular among the poor, and had the loyalty of his soldiers. To maintain that popularity, he redistributed senatorial land to his soldiers, encouraged class reform, gave money and food to the poor, all of which pissed off the optimates. In fact, previous politicians who had similar policies were killed by lynch mobs or other senators' armies (e.g the Gracchi). So yes, that was a major factor in the assassination.

But what is also important is Roman values itself. The Romans HatedTM monarchy. They hated a one-man rule because a core part of their cultural heritage was having overthrown a king. Having lots and lots of power and being an oligarch was fine in Rome. Lots of other people did it before Caesar. Sulla and Marius had a civil war (which Caesar himself lived through) and Sulla basically seized ultimate power in all but name. What really made the optimates hate Caesar though was that he had control of lots of land outside of Rome due to his conquests in Gaul and therefore had a massive army and power. He was also part of the First Triumvirate alongside Crassus and Pompey, and the three of them had almost total control over Roman politics. Crassus was the rich one for bribes, funding, ect. Pompey was the warlord. Caesar was the more public face of the three. On top of that, the alliance eventually broke down into a civil war between Caesar and Pompey, which threw Rome into even more political instability. Caesar also broke an important rule in the process by bringing his army into Rome by crossing the Rubicon, which added to his image as a powerhungry politician. Needless to say, the Senate was not happy.

There were also other transgressions of Roman social codes. He took Cleopatra as a lover despite her being a powerful, foreign queen (monarchy association). Caesar stepped on some toes by putting a gold statue of Cleopatra in the temple of Venus Genetrix. Obviously, monarchy association again. But it's also a vulgar display of luxuria (Roman concept of indulgence in wealth which they viewed as barbaric. You can be rich, you just can't show it off and indulge yourself) as well as sacrilege since Venus was one of the founding gods of Rome.

The final straw was when Caesar announced himself dictator perpetuus - dictator in perpetuity. Being a dictator wasn't a bad thing. It was just the term for someone given ultimate power for 6 months when Rome faces national crisis (from invasions to natural disasters, the post exists so decisions can be made quickly without vote). The problem lies with the fact that he would be dictator in perpetuity. Rome can't be in crisis forever. Why would you want ultimate power forever if you weren't trying to fashion yourself as a tyrant king? All of this led to his assassination on the Ides of March.

Of course, assassinating him didn't actually bring back the Republic. That thing had been dead from the moment it was conceived and only existed as a farce of democracy. What Caesar's death led to was a power vacuum and plenty of scrambling political wannabes. This led to three more civil wars (or four if you count the war with Sextus Pompeius) ending with Octavian/Augustus Caesar on top. Augustus then went on to create the Imperial system of rule while pretending it was a Republic (so not much of a difference from the poor's perspective tbh apart from maybe stricter moral laws and new aqueducts).

In summary, there's lots of different views on this. Some people think Julius Caesar was an actual tyrant who had it coming. Some think it was because the Senate didn't like the fact he tried to take ultimate power and left them with none. Some think it's because the Roman elite hated the poor. Some think it's a mixture. I've tried to be as hollistic as I could in this explanation so I hope this helps!

[lavenderbexlatte]

Sorry! I think my tone got kinda muddled by combining the two issues into one ask and made it come across vaguely conservative or shamey which is Big No. So issue one: cancel culture is an interesting phenomenon and there are fun discussions to be had about changing of societal values and accountability. Still has lots of nuance to it bc morality has nuance.

Issue two which is more pertinent to the haknyeon situation: sex work being so stigmatised and viewed as shameful. The shift on my feeds from people being sex positive to suddenly shaming people with onlyfans links in their bios is horrible and frankly terrifying.

So yes. Just wanted to clarify: manifesting destigmatisation (again) and legalisation of sex work to allow for safer working conditions for them. Also zero negativity to Haknyeon or the girl he was with. Consenting adults. Paid or not paid. Especially when it’s in the same news cycle as Ta*il.

no problem at all! and i hope i didn't scare you, i just wanna point it out, especially as fandom skews younger (or stays the same average age and i get older 😅)

yes yes yes to the nuance and the absolute TERROR of people suddenly showing up to sex-shame. i saw it too, all over sns, which is why i came on strongly. kpop fans overreact to everything, what with the culture of parasocial bonds and control issues. seeing them come out to sort of celebrate (?) him being kicked out is wild, especially paired with the shaming of sex workers and clients who hire them.

it also gave me a weird vibe that the rest of tbz had to apologize for him. it happens every time but like...to have to publicly denounce your members even when what they do is negligible. that must take a toll, huh?

sorry to you that i came out with the fire and brimstone, my passions 😅

[thatmcgwords]

Have you ever walked into a situation feeling like you had to guard every word, carefully choosing each one as if navigating a minefield of potential judgments? Or maybe you've found yourself holding back your true thoughts, worried about how they might be received? It's not uncommon to find ourselves editing our expressions in the blink of an eye, influenced by a mix of social pressures and personal insecurities.

Self-censorship isn't just about biting your tongue in a conversation. It's a complex psychological phenomenon in which societal pressures, personal insecurities, and the anticipation of negative feedback intertwine, compelling you to silence your voice. It's like having an internal sensor constantly editing your thoughts, sculpting your speech to fit a mold that might not truly represent who you are or what you believe.

Now consider the impact of modern challenges like social media scrutiny and cancel culture. These phenomena amplify the stakes, turning every post and tweet into a potential landmine. This hyper-awareness can skew the balance between expressing genuine thoughts and maintaining social decorum.

Start small, perhaps by sharing an unpopular opinion in a safe environment, or by resisting the urge to filter your thoughts in a personal journal. Equally important is developing a nuanced social filter, one that allows you to convey your thoughts and feelings not just openly, but wisely. This doesn't mean silencing yourself. Rather, it involves choosing your words thoughtfully, ensuring they align with your true intentions and the context of the conversation. It's about striking a balance in which you neither compromise your authenticity for acceptance, nor disregard the potential impact of your words on others. By embracing this balanced approach, you can cultivate a voice that is not only brave, but also effective.

As you've learned to understand the roots of self-censorship, this next exploration takes us deeper into the swirl of expressing opinions amid the fast-paced and often polarizing climate of today's global discussions. It's a journey to find not just your voice, but a way to use it that respects both your integrity and the complexities of the topics at hand.

In this current landscape, the pressure to conform to popular opinions or to respond instantly to societal issues can be overwhelming. It demands not only awareness of the world around us, but also a critical understanding of where we stand within it.

It's essential to recognize that these pressures aren't just external, they resonate with the internal battles you've been learning to navigate. The fear of making a mistake, of not being perfect in our expression, taps into deeper anxieties about our identities and our values. Yet it's in these imperfections, these very human missteps, that growth and understanding can flourish.

What if you approached every conversation not as a battlefield to win, but as a collaborative space to explore and grow? This shift can transform discussions from divisive to enriching, reducing the chances of retreating into silence out of fear. To support this shift, it's useful to engage in exercises that challenge our tendencies toward quick judgments or self-censorship.

Begin by identifying which aspects of the maverick mindset you already possess and which you need to develop. Do you hesitate to take risks because you fear failure? Or do you find it challenging to stand by your ideas when faced with opposition? Acknowledging these areas is the first step toward growth. As you nurture your inner maverick, you'll notice a shift in how you approach challenges. Instead of shying away from them, you'll engage more openly and fearlessly.

self-censorship is not merely about silencing your voice. It's a complex interaction of societal pressures, personal insecurities, and the fear of judgment. This has probably led you to hold back your true thoughts to avoid conflict or backlash, influenced heavily by the pervasive scrutiny of modern social platforms and cultural expectations. However, by acknowledging these fears and stepping out of your comfort zone, you can start to develop a more authentic way of expressing yourself.

[theworldbrewery]

over our last two sessions, I ran something a little different. Our cleric, Oggie, has a (complicated) relationship with this NPC, Elliot. Elliot is a gay half-elf man whose father is a politician and diplomat; Elliot’s father has decided that since Elliot has a criminal record (he was framed for treason) the best way to ensure he is provided for is to marry him off to another political family, neatly tucking him away where he can’t cause a scandal.

Now, his father isn’t too interested in Elliot’s desire for romance or attraction, so he’s arranged a marriage with a young woman from a prominent elven family. The party quickly decided that this cannot stand. They agreed to attend the wedding in order to prevent it from happening.

Upon arrival at the venue, however, a few key things were going to pop off. First, it turns out Oggie’s estranged family lives in the town. Second, the whole region is deeply haunted and extremely sinister. Third, messing up the bride’s life was a non-option, because when I introduced the character of the bride, a friend of ours came out of the bedroom where I’d stashed them and introduced themself as Gloria, the bride herself (an air genasi monk in a family of elves, another outsider).

this was already clearly a rousing success, but we still had to get through the wedding, and I had to run it in a way that felt dynamic and tense. People go from room to room and building to building, indoors and outdoors and making visits to the village. It’s the day of a wedding!

So I developed a method for running the Day of the Wedding, and I’m sharing it with you for any extended roleplay and intrigue encounters you want to tangle up in plot threads.

First things first: run it like a combat.

What I mean by that is when the party woke up on the day of the wedding, I asked them all to roll for initiative. Instead of a round taking six seconds, each round lasted one hour, enough time for a movement (go to 2 areas near one another or 1 place that’s a bit further away), an action (a primary roleplay scene or investigation), and a bonus action (a conversation with a fellow player character, a quick search of an area, etc.). As the DM, use your discretion to decide what constitutes a suitable bonus action vs action.

Now, unlike combat, this type of encounter should permit player characters to team up and act together. When a PC that is high in initiative order decides to do something, other PCs that rolled lower can opt to join them if they want to act in the same location or engage with the same NPCs. (This is a great option to keep the action moving and lets players work together more.)

In order to keep this situation rolling, I prepared a few key notes. I focused on regional effects; that is, the overall culture and vibe of the area. I decided early on that the region is haunted, and that the locals are suspicious, superstitious, and obsessed with cleanliness. These features are tied into the overall plot conflicts that would develop over time. I also chose to include the effects of the Haunted table from Tasha’s Cauldron to add some spiciness to my haunting. In essence, think of the tensions the NPCs in the region are already experiencing prior to the party getting involved. A recent assassination might make a court intrigue more complicated as they now distrust strangers, for instance, while a new trade war over tariffs can complicate a diplomatic mission.

Next, I considered my locations. In this instance, my locations included the inn where the party slept, various rooms in the manor house hosting the wedding, a handful of outdoor areas, and the chapel. I focused on creating detailed descriptions of the ambiance for each location.

Then, I wrote out a quick description of each major NPC - in this case, the wedding party, the family of the intended, and a few locals and guests. In a roleplay/intrigue scenario like this, it’s vital to include motivations, secrets, and goals for each of these NPCs, even if those goals are very simple. You’ll need them for the last step:

Create a round-by-round timeline. Write out your list of locations and pair them with the NPCs that will be there during each round (hour). In my notes, I added what the NPC was doing there or what they were thinking about--linking their motivation to their location. For example, a character in the garden was leaving an early-morning meeting with her lover, the new gardener, while the fathers of the bride and groom met in the library to discuss the cover-up they had just pulled off (a politician and wedding guest had died mysteriously at midnight, and to keep the wedding from being derailed, they had hidden the body and were intimidating the only witness).

Party members who arrived at each location were therefore entering existing scenes they didn’t have full context for. Each hour, the NPCs would move on to the next phase of their day, seek out other NPCs to interact with, etc. NPCs could still be influenced by the party’s actions, so each round you might adjust exactly what they’re doing or where they’ve gone--the beauty of improv!

Keep in mind that situations should still be developing when the party isn’t witnessing them. An NPC no one had spoken to yet turned out to have spent the morning searching for her missing father, which led the party to the gravesite that they’d spotted earlier in the game, while the gardener turned out to be a villain they’d met before who was acting in secret during the session! Use your best judgment, though. Just because you wrote content for an NPC doesn’t mean the party will engage with it, so follow their lead; sprinkle the clues, and then let the party’s focus drive which storylines get developed.

So long as every NPC has a goal or secret to influence their opinions and decisions, they will feel like nuanced actors within the roleplay scenario; the timeline you lay out in advance gives them a sort of “Artificial Intelligence” that can be influenced by the player’s actions.

Personally, I also recommend setting a natural deadline for the party. If my players didn’t stop the wedding by 1pm, for instance, the ceremony would go forward and they would either be forced to object in public or let the marriage take place. Thus, they only had 5 total “rounds” to disrupt things enough that the wedding would be called off.

You can create similar deadlines depending on the central goal of the party. A vote on whether to pass a controversial law could serve as one for a court intrigue arc, while a crime-solving arc might have a threatened time when a kidnapping victim will be murdered (”You have 24 hours to deliver the ransom”, for example). The sense of a ticking time-bomb gives the players a much-needed urgency. The round-by-round timeline also helps to ensure that you won’t have to continue prepping rounds ad infinitum; instead, you need only prepare up until shit pops off and the deadline is reached.

You may find you won’t reach the deadline, though. In this arc, the party discovered the corpse of a major politician who had died in the night and was secretly buried by the gardener. They used the cover-up as leverage to blackmail the parents of the bride and groom into calling off the marriage, which was helped along by the ranger revealing that Elliot’s father was concealing Elliot’s criminal record to keep the marriage arrangement intact. They managed to prevent the wedding with an hour to spare.

However, as Alice the sorcerer went downstairs to announce the cancellation, she spotted a person who looked just like her weaving through the crowd to leave the manor. She followed, and discovered that she was tracking the semi-villainous NPC who had crossed paths with the party a few times before, disguised as Alice. The NPC, Florian, had been playing the role of the gardener, and blackmailed the bride’s father into giving up a precious family heirloom in exchange for concealing the body; now that the cover-up has been revealed, they’re getting out of Dodge with their prize. This revelation serves as the plot hook for the next dungeon!

[musings-and-overanalyses]

The Limitations of the Free Speech discourse (Part I)

It seems like every other day that I see certain politicians, celebrities, "intellectuals" and random dudes on the internet decrying cancel culture or political correctness and claim how it is killing free speech. And I've seen not just conservatives but also relatively liberal people say similar things. And that led to some musings and overanalyses(ba dum tsss) in my mind.

Now there have been many who have made counterarguments, explaining how cancel culture does not stop free speech, but is instead a consequence of the speech of the "cancelled" person and how the public is simply using their free speech to protest against the cancelled. Other arguments include saying YouTube or Twitter or any other social media site is a private space run by private companies and they have all the rights to kick someone out who is not following the terms of use of that site.

But there's something in the discourse around free speech that is very rarely ever asked about or discussed. And that is - why do we need free speech?

People who decry cancel culture and are thus proclaimed to be the valiant protectors of free speech often talk about free speech as if it is something divinely ordained, and that trying to put any restrictions on that is somehow blasphemous and will promptly lead to the fall of Western civilisation and lead to an Orwellian dystopia. But why?

And once you keep this question in mind while observing the free speech discourse, you will see immediately that there is an underlying fundamental disagreement in the philosophy of free speech. Now there is a lot of nuance to be had, but broadly speaking there are two groups of people - one who think that right to free speech is an end in and of itself, and another group that thinks free speech is a means to an end; the end being a better society or functioning democracy etc.

And when these two groups argue without realising or acknowledging that the underlying assumptions and values are different, the discourse goes nowhere, even if both parties are acting in good faith (which isn't always the case either).

So let me talk about the first group, those who think free speech is an end in and of itself. This group includes your loveable Rowan Atkinson and Stephen Fry types and the libertarians. While this group also often sites how free speech is important for society, the good of the society isn't the primary motivation for this group. It is more about the individual who should have as few restrictions on them as possible, even if this individual is a bigot. Fight it out in the marketplace of ideas, they say (because capitalism as system is such a success that we should apply it as many spheres of life as possible 🙂).

But why do they think freedom of speech is holy and unquestionable is a bit more hazy. My issue with this line of thinking is that, for me, nothing is holy or immune to being challenged. Because free speech is not some kind of a universal law of physics or something. And the defense for free speech (or anything really) can't be, "that's just how things have been" or "it's in the constitution". Things change all the time and constitution can be amended.

Although I do get that this idea can feel right. Because restricting people and tyranny is bad and people being free is good, is something we've learnt and internalised forever. Of course, with sufficient propaganda we have learnt to adeptly avoid having cognitive dissonance while thinking about the mistreatment of prisoners, threats to the lives of whistleblowers, government sponsered assassination of people thinking a bit too outside the box, while defending the right to free speech with all our hearts.

In the meanwhile asking yourself why you believe in the values you believe in, is a good exercise.

Next part will deal with the meaning, implication and significance of free speech.

[idontwanttospoiltheparty]

11,14,21,26 for the beatles asks <3

11. Is George as good a songwriter as Lennon-McCartney?

Hm. I guess it depends how one defines "good". He was definitely less prolific but he also seems to have more consistently taken care that his songs were good. That's a little hard to judge though, since obviously if only 2 (versus ±6) of your songs are ending up on the album, it's only gonna be the best of the best, which is why George doesn't have much "filler". Like, personally, none of his songs make my top 5, but I don't think that's a fair way to judge and I love a lot of his stuff. I think it should also be considered that he was "on his own" for a lot of it, and a lot of my favourite Lennon-McCartney songs involve some amount of collaboration.

14. Cancel culture vs. the Beatles?

I actually don't really care about this at all, past being on principle against the spreading of misinformation; if someone wants to mute "John Lennon" because they hate him for things he actually did, they should go ahead with it. Cancel culture is rarely actual activism and serves to get twitter clout, but I don't care per se what twitter people think about the Beatles. They don't have the energy to read up on their history, so what's the point in getting annoyed that their opinions on events have less nuance than mine do. I think it's more important to focus our attention on what actual Beatles historians say and do because it affects our discussions far more.

21. Was George closer to John than Paul in the ±18 months after the first acid trip?

In some manners yes, definitely. They clearly connected over certain things (spirituality, acid itself, Vietnam War opinion) that Paul had less interest in. At the same time, George's assertion that the two of them couldn't relate to the others on "any level" rings hollow to me, mostly because there's no lack of John-Paul collaboration on Rubber Soul and even with the She Said She Said debacle Revolver was pretty collaborative. It just doesn't add up for me that you can't relate to someone but you can still make music like that idk.

26. Was quitting the Beatles ultimately good or bad for John?

:/ I think it in of itself could've been just what he needed but burning bridges like he did and going to scream therapy only served to worsen his anguish IMO. He was from what I can tell in a better place around 71-72 and again in 74 than he had been in the last years with the band but those positives weren't very longterm. I think my opinion is that ideally, the band would've broken up but they would've continued being friends. VERY wishful thinking, I know, but if someone had forced them it might've worked idk.

[florrickandassociates]

TGF Thoughts-- 5x07: And the fight had a detente...

This episode is a wild ride, so if you haven’t seen it yet and you aren’t spoiled, don’t read this. Just go watch it.  

Ave Maria plays over a photo montage of cancelled men, including Kevin Spacey, Louie CK, and Scott Rudin. (Scott Rudin, if you don’t know the name, is a Broadway/Hollywood producer who treated his assistants like absolute shit. He’s the inspiration for the possessed producer episode of Evil—I think it’s the third episode of the series—and Robert King does not like him one bit.)  

And then the episode opens with Wackner, Del, and Cord discussing the Armie Hammer cannibalism ordeal. Whew, this is not what I wanted to be thinking about first thing on a Thursday morning. I do not think I can put into words how boring I find debating whether or not someone should have been “cancelled.”  Cancellation is usually about rich people facing consequences for shitty actions, and those consequences have never involved anyone’s rights being infringed upon, so why should I care about someone being cancelled? And, while I know that society/people on Twitter don’t always understand nuance, I’d like to think that when it comes to the most notable examples of cancellation... no one is losing their livelihood over false or minor allegations.  

There are so, so, so many issues in the world. Cancellation affects a handful of high profile, usually white, straight, male, celebrities. Why should I give a shit about, like, Louie CK not being able to make as much money as he used to? I just do not and cannot find it interesting.

I’m not surprised David Cord and Del Cooper find this topic interesting—Del likely hates worrying that all of his comedians could get cancelled and put him in a financially tricky spot; Cord probably says things like “Woke Mob” unironically. And as for Wackner, he almost certainly has a skewed understanding of what actually happens when someone’s cancelled and sees a place where he can step in and add some order. Blah. It’s just so boring.

"People are getting canceled without a trial, no evidence presented against them,” Wackner says. This is not it, Wackner! This is such a strawman argument. We don’t need the legal system to adjudicate people being assholes to each other, and in cases where a crime is committed or a particular individual can sue for damages, that is what happens. If you act shitty and then your sponsors realize you’re toxic and drop you, like, it is what it is. You can feel free to respond via a Notes App screenshot where half of your apology is actually just whining about cancel culture and then you say “I’m sorry if anyone took offense at what I did” instead of saying “I’m sorry I said/did hurtful things” and when people don’t take that seriously, maybe it’s because you didn’t take it seriously, either.  

“There are a lot of reasons these accusations never go to trial. The victims finally get to accuse the victimizer face to face,” Wackner explains. Were the victims asking for this?

Marissa shares my question, noting that if the victims don’t want to speak up, then the victimizer would have the court to himself. This raises a new question: who is even bringing these cases? Are Wackner, Cord, and Del just deciding they want to do things as cases and then getting everyone else on board? This sounds bad!  

Apparently, according to Wackner, “if #MeToo relies on mob rule, it’ll exhaust itself.” What... evidence is there for this? I get why people panic about the POSSIBILITY of this happening, even though I don’t share their panic, but is there any actual evidence that #MeToo is losing steam because of false allegations because cancellation isn’t a formal process? I don’t believe there is.  

The test case we have the pleasure of seeing this week is about “Louie CK two,” whom I shall refer to as LCK2 instead of learning his name.  

Now, suddenly, Marissa is asking one of LCK2’s victims to testify. She doesn’t want to participate because it’s just another way for LCK2 to get his career back. Marissa decides to be idealistic and say this is a real opportunity to confront LCK2 with his crime. I suppose she isn’t wrong, and that is what happens next, but, again, meh.

Apparently David Cord is going to defend LCK2. You know what would get cancelled in five seconds? A David Cord funded show that has David Cord actually on it, railing against cancel culture! Can you IMAGINE the thinkpieces?

God, when is this episode going to move on from this extremely irritating premise?

Marissa decides she wants to be the prosecutor. Wackner says if she prosecutes LCK2, she has to prosecute the academic who used a word that sounds like the n-word and lost her job for it.  Marissa thinks the academic shouldn’t have been fired, but Wackner insists she has to take both cases.

“Let’s go into court,” Wackner says, and, thank goodness, we do go into court: REAL court, where we are talking about REAL issues.  

In court, Liz and Diane are suing the police over the death of a black girl who was tased by the police. Her friend is on the stand and it’s quite emotional. Also, Diane tries to pass Liz a note and Liz ignores it. Why would you have two name partners on this case if they aren’t even going to try to work together?  

You can tell things are tense between two TGF characters when they talk at the same time in court but are on the same side.  

Hiiiiii Abernathy! ILY!

The victim had a heart condition, which the police lawyer argues is the actual cause of death. Police lawyer also argues that since this witness posted some ACAB lyrics on Instagram, she must be biased. Eyeroll.

Liz calls the other lawyer racist; the other lawyer tries to make Liz look like she is only on her client’s side because she’s black and that Liz is being absurd.  

Cancel culture court happens. We’re dealing with the academic case first. I don’t feel like talking about the cancel culture shit too much, so here is my take on this case as a whole: (1) I don’t think the actual word in question, which isn’t actually the n-word, is enough on its own to get someone fired (2) I also don’t think anyone can use that word, regardless of its meaning or history, without understanding how it will come across. (3) The teacher did not get fired for simply using this word once (4) This teacher believes that anyone who is from a group that’s been marginalized in history should have to confront that marginalization with as little sympathy and respect as possible because it will help them be more resilient. So basically, if you are from the dominant group then you don’t get challenged. She believes it is her job to do this. She is an egotistical asshole who has no business teaching.  

Cord wants everyone to have to say the full word in question. He says this pretentiously (though I don’t think saying “Said word” is that pretentious, tbh) and Wackner rules against him and also makes him wear a powdered wig for using “obtuse language.”

Marissa is not trying at all with this case at first, since she doesn’t believe in it. That’s shitty, Marissa. If you want to be a lawyer at a firm like RL you’re going to have to fight for all of your clients.  

Marissa makes a Latin joke and ends up in a powdered wig, too.  

The prof says, in one sentence, that she didn’t know what she was doing using the word and also that the black student who took offense thinks college is supposed to be warm, cuddly, and unchallenging. So it was a challenge, then, prof?  

I like this student. And I love that she calls Marissa out for obviously not trying.  

“The optics matter. Racially,” Diane says to Liz, who agrees. Diane, strategically, makes it about gender first (the cop is male, some jurors may react to a woman questioning a man), then makes it about how she should be the one questioning the cop since Liz is black. It would make the jury more “comfortable” (hey, there’s that word again!) Diane says. She says she is being pragmatic.  

Diane says that she could be “more dispassionate”. Be or come across as, Diane? Either way, Liz, who knows full well what the optics look like given that this isn’t her first time in court, doesn’t agree with Diane that they need to come across as dispassionate.  

Then Diane just changes the subject to the firm drama. “Liz, you’re shoving me out of my name partner position because of my race.” Like that’s the issue!  

“I am doing nothing. You are the one who got our racist clients to whine to STR Laurie about us,” Liz counters. “Those clients bring in a great deal of money, and they are not racists,” Diane insists. Yes. Sure. Diane just happened to choose white male clients who were “comfortable” with her to talk to. I have no doubt they’d have reacted poorly to any change in representation, but Diane was counting on those particular clients having some discomfort with their new lawyers.  

Liz calls her out and Diane’s still trying to play it like she just had to inform her long-term clients and it just had to be done this way. But, when Liz asks if Diane thinks the clients would’ve had the same reaction if their new representation were to be white, Diane says that maybe her clients are worried about racial grudges. So, what you’re saying is you knew exactly what you were doing, huh, Diane?  

I get why Diane doesn’t like being pushed out, because who would, but Diane, this isn’t about you. And if you didn’t want to make it about race, perhaps you shouldn’t have appeared on a panel about how great it is that your firm is majority black? You can’t have it both ways.  

Liz notes that Diane felt “entitled” to her name partnership. This is accurate, though based on revenue and stature I don’t think it can be denied that Diane deserves name partner status (generally speaking). Diane went over to RBK, was like, “sure, I’ll be a junior partner, thank you so much for the opportunity, I can’t even pay my capital contribution right now but what if I were name partner in three months?” and that is both entitlement and knowing one’s own worth, but mostly entitlement.  

(Liz does not act entitled, but if we want to get into who deserves their partnership more—again generally speaking, not their partnership at a black firm specifically—it is definitely Diane! Liz literally only has this job because her dad was important.)  

“I think that Barbara Kolstad was shoved out because you felt entitled to her position,” Liz shouts. OMG, a mention of Barbara?!?!?!??!?!? THANK YOU, WRITERS!!!

(This is a slight bit of revisionist history but I’ll allow it, and I think it’s right in thought even if it’s not right on the details. Barbara wasn’t shoved out—Barbara chose to go to a different firm that offered her a better deal—but I don’t think Barbara would���ve been on that trajectory had it not been for Diane’s presence at the firm. Barbara was in charge of a firm that shared her values when, suddenly, her partner decided that they needed to pursue profit over all else and needed Diane to execute that strategy. Maybe no one made a move directly against her, but Adrian and Diane changed the mission of RBK until it was no longer somewhere Barbara wanted to work.

“We can’t work together if you don’t respect me,” Diane screams at Liz. “No, we can’t work together if you use race cynically,” Liz responds. Diane gets even angrier, swears a bunch, and then says “You want to come after me, you come after me with an honest argument about my lack of competence, my lack of worth.” Diane, you are fighting a completely different battle here! You can be entitled and also correct and also good at your job. This is what you used to accuse Alicia of all the time. The fact you’ve turned this into something about your skill level when it’s about the meaning of having a black firm is only proving Liz’s point.

“Your unworthiness—which you don’t seem to want to acknowledge—is that you can’t be the top dog in a black firm,” Liz says. Exactly. But Diane just storms off.

Now the cop is on the stand. He did not know the victim had a heart condition. Uh, obviously, why would he have known that?  

Liz is aggressive in court; Diane thinks this is the wrong strategy. Without knowing who is on the jury, I have no idea which one of them is correct.  

The next move is to get the cop’s ex-wife, who he abused, on the stand.  

Goodie, it’s cancel culture court. Things go well for Marissa, but Del wants to know why Marissa wasn’t that passionate about the n-word case. Marissa says she feels like it’s not the n-word, like that is a valid reason to not represent your client to the best of your ability. “It is. It always is,” says Del.  

Marissa heads back to RL, and as she walks, the camera follows her and moves through the space until we end up in Liz’s office, where she gets a news alert about the cop from the COTW. He’s been killed, seemingly in retaliation for his actions. The news is quick to suggest the trial might’ve encouraged the killing. “Oh, fuck.” Diane says as she watches the news. Aaaand credits (at 20 minutes in!)  

From the promos, I thought this was going to be a Very Serious Episode about police brutality. From the opening, I thought it was going to be an insufferable episode about cancel culture. I was wrong! (Though, I suppose, some of the cancel culture stuff is still insufferable.)  

Yay for Carrie Preston, who directed this episode. I read an interview with her and she talked about how there’s a “look book” for directing TGF episodes and I have never wanted to see anything as badly as I want to see this look book. (Am I exaggerating? Probably. But I might not be.)  

After credits, Marissa finds Carmen and Jay to ask them if “n-word-ly" is offensive. She acknowledges she’s being annoying but they let her continue anyway. Jay finds it offensive. Carmen does not. This seems fitting with their characters, and I love that this scene acknowledges that not every black person is going to have the exact same reaction to everything.  

I want Carmen to have more to do! While I’m glad the show isn’t forcing her to have a large role in every plot just because, I feel like she’s gone missing for the middle part of the season. My guess is that their priority with Carmen is setting her up to be an ongoing part of the cast who grows into being someone we want a lot from rather than forcing her plots from the start... but surely we could get a little more of her! I doubt she’s a one-season character like I assume Wackner will be.  

The cop’s murder changes the vibe in court. Abernathy calls a moment of silence in his memory. “We’re fucked,” Liz whispers to Diane.  

And indeed they are. The cop’s ex no longer wants to talk about how abusive he was—she wants to talk about how great he was. Whose idea was it to still put her on the stand?! Idk about legal procedures but this seems like a really avoidable mistake!

Diane argues that the cop’s death has prejudiced the jury. Abernathy decides to call a “voir dire de novo,” using an obtuse Latin phrase that would not be permitted in Wackner’s court. (Love the little parallels in this episode, like this, the transition between courts earlier, and how much of Marissa being called out on her whiteness feels like a thematic extension of everything going on with Diane.)

Cancel culture court continues. Carmen shows up.

I don’t really get how June, the victim of LCK2, potentially losing a headlining gig for a bad set instead of retaliation from LCK2, scores him a point. One, if she was a rising store, one bad set shouldn’t have damned her career. Two, isn’t it enough to prove that he masturbated in front of women who didn’t want him to do that???????  

Having June perform her act with no prep in Wackner’s court so they can judge whether or not she is funny is a wildly bad idea. So now Wackner is an arbiter of humor as well as cancel culture?  

This whole system is silly and I reject the whole premise but June should not lose two points for the logic that Wackner + the audience don’t find June funny --> June must’ve had her career derailed because she just isn’t funny (how’d she book the headliner gig, then?) --> LCK2 scores points??? He still masturbated in front of her without her consent!  

Using cancel culture to show Wackner’s court is going too far/slipping into bad territory: I’m on board with this. Using Wackner’s court to actually comment on cancel culture: Ugh. The writers seem to be trying to do both.  

Lol at Abernathy having Stacey Abrams’ book on his desk.

Marissa argues the n-word case more passionately, because these writers love to make situations that seemed clear cut seem more uncertain. It’s no coincidence they have the sexual harassment case look murkier (though, again, June being bad at comedy does not negate the sexual harassment!) right before they have the n-work case begin to tilt in favor of the professor’s cancellation.

Hahah what bullshit about trying to prepare the students for a world that won’t be kind to them. Do you seriously think your black students need YOU to prepare them?  

This lady thinks history classes have to describe rapes in detail to get students to sympathize. No, no they fucking do not.  

She also says she’d use the n-word if she were teaching a topic where it might come up. Um, no?

Mr. Elk (this is what I call Ted Willoughby, Idiot Reporter, after he said “things of that elk” in his first appearance) is attacking Diane and Liz on his show. Diane and Liz are, apparently, “Marxist slip-and-fall lawyers” and Mr. Elk plays a clip of Diane saying cops need to be held accountable. Obviously, this was before the cop’s death and meant to be about the legal system, but it looks like Diane’s calling for his murder. I also love how they go out of their way to only pause the clip on unflattering frames of Diane.  

Liz wants to use this in court—I forgot that Liz is super sneaky but this tracks; she is always quick to use things to her advantage and we’ve known that about her since her strategy with the DNC in 2x07 (to make outlandish allegations and then drop them before presenting proof). Julius wants to get Liz and Diane security.

That security is, apparently Jay. I think they’ve shown Jay as security before when Lucca went viral. I didn’t understand it then and I don’t understand it now.

I was, briefly, worried for Liz and Diane’s safety, especially after I saw all the angry cops waiting for them in court. Then I thought, oh, well at least they’re in court, they should be safe from being shot there. Then I remembered 5x15. Then I laughed at myself.  

Liz’s new strategy works and Abernathy uses more Latin. But, they can’t get any more jurors thrown. (They’re going for a mistrial.)

Oh, Carmen is back again! She did SO MUCH in that court scene where she appeared and then disappeared! She’s chatting with Marissa and spots LCK2 in the RL offices.  

Apparently, LCK2 negotiated a contract with Del, with David Lee’s help. (Why would David Lee be doing entertainment law?) Suddenly everything makes sense to Marissa.

She calls Del to the stand. This—and, honestly, everything after this—makes me wonder how much of this would ever make it to air. Why would Del televise this?

What a shock—Del wants LCK2 back on his streaming service (which I don’t think has a name LOL).  

Somehow Marissa’s questions become about Wackner and whether or not Wackner is an impartial judge, which doesn’t seem like the core issue. Wackner has made it pretty clear that his stance is that he doesn’t care if others are corrupt around him or try to use him; he’s going to be impartial no matter what. Why not play that up instead of making the entire show look staged and Wackner look complicit, Marissa?  

Like, why is Marissa asking Wackner if he’s prejudged the case?! Why isn’t she just trying to like, get him to declare a mistrial because there is a conflict of interest? She can make a version of this argument without accusing Wackner of PREJUDGING, which she knows—I know, so she knows—will set him off. Wackner truly believe he thinks he is impartial. It’s not smart strategy to question that (even if we all know that Wackner is not impartial!)

Wackner blows up at Marissa and shouts at her. He tells her to get the fuck out of court.

This is certainly dramatic, but again, would Del ever choose to air this? I doubt it.  

On her way to work, Diane notices hot pink spray paint in the elevator. When she exits the elevator, the whole firm is gathered in the lobby. Someone has painted COP KILLERS across the elevator bank. “Security doesn’t know how they got in,” Jay says. “Of course they don’t,” Diane responds. “They suggest we call the cops,” Jay says. I love this little exchange. I wasn’t exactly wondering how someone got in, but I like the show making it clear how unprotected Diane and Liz are right now and why.

Julius appears and says that Mr. Elk is saying something new. Diane and Liz sit down to watch and the tone of this episode completely shifts.  

I had forgotten completely that Liz’s dad’s assault issues are out in public until Mr. Elk called him “a disgraced civil rights leader.” It doesn’t feel like they’re out in public! Also I would believe Mr. Elk calling him disgraced for no reason at all.  

Y’all, when Mr. Elk said the name “Duke Roscoe,” my jaw dropped. WHAT A CALLBACK.  

This scene, and really, everything in this plot from here on out, is a delight. It just keeps going and going. It is the best kind of fanservice.

1x11 has been, for no real reason, on my mind since 5x04. It popped out to me as an example of this show’s humor so I talked about it in that recap. I nearly mentioned it in my 5x06 recap when Diane laughed at Julius’s suggestion that they start a firm together. I rewatched 1x11, by complete chance, like two weeks ago. How weird that I'm somehow on the show’s wavelength about this!  

Also I made a joke about Mr. Elk last week without knowing he’d be back this episode. I would like to think I conjured this.  

(1x11 is a really pivotal episode for TGW, even if it isn’t one of the most notable episodes overall. It's composer David Buckley’s first episode and that ending, with Diane laughing, is one of the earliest moments of TGW showing its sense of humor and playing to its strengths.)

Mr. Elk notes that they “rarely see” Kurt, which is apparently evidence that Diane is a lesbian. Hahahahahahah. Mr. Elk also wouldn’t want to note Kurt, despite his recent controversy, because to his viewers, Kurt’s beliefs would make Diane seem more sympathetic.  

GUYS, THE WRITERS DECIDED TO MAKE A CALLBACK TO AN ICONIC MOMENT FROM AN EPISODE THAT AIRED OVER A DECADE AGO AND THEN BUILD ON IT. I cannot express how fucking happy this makes me.  

Now, Mr. Elk says, Diane and Liz are an item!  

What’s better than Diane laughing hysterically at the original allegations? Diane doing it again, eleven years later, JOINED BY LIZ.  

This also works super well to cut the tension between Diane and Liz. I assume this isn’t the end of the name partnership drama, but I think it might be the end of Diane and Liz being pissed at each other. Since the name partnership drama was never really about Diane and Liz (Liz seems to want Diane to stay on...), I’m fine with that.  

Because this is an episode full of callbacks that delight me, Del asks Liz when he gets to meet her son! HER SON STILL EXISTS!  

It sounds like Liz and Del still aren’t fully official, which clarifies why they don’t seem to be a couple in public.  

Del brings up the Diane rumor (jokingly) and Liz jokes along. I love that we get to see this playful side of Liz.  

Wackner’s watching his outburst with regret. Del calms him down and notes that this is good TV (why... would Del air this... it makes DEL look worse than anyone!). Wackner calls Marissa to apologize; she picks up and accepts his apology.  

Abernathy calls Liz and Diane into chambers. He’s worried he was “insensitive”-- he's noticed the tension between Liz and Diane, but now he thinks it was a lover’s spat.

Diane puts on a poker face and leans in towards Liz. She starts nodding attentively and thanks Abernathy. Liz smiles and doubles down: she’s not just going to play along, she’s going to milk it. She gets a juror kicked for homophobia, which means a mistrial. Shameless. I love it.  

Diane and Liz playing off each other as Abernathy tries to look like as much of an ally as possible is comedy gold.  

Diane even calls Liz darling. Omg.  

LCK2 is on the stand, being charismatic and annoying. Of course he is. This is what happens when you give someone who is known for being able to connect with a crowd... a crowd and the benefit of the doubt.

LCK2 is talking about “stupid women” in his new set. Why... is Del giving that a platform at all? See, the fact that Del thinks it is not only interesting but also somehow essential to let LCK2 make jokes about sexual harassment is why I can’t take this episode seriously. Why should I be more outraged about someone who did something shitty not getting a trial for his shitty but legal behavior than I am about powerful people continuing to offer shitty people platforms? Only one of these seems outrageous to me.

Wackner decides that the professor did something “awful but lawful” and that’s it. So you’re saying that if it isn’t illegal, it doesn’t get decided in your court, either? What was the point of this, then?  

The professor says she doesn’t want that—she wants the school to know she’s being punished so she can get her job back. The student storms out, rightfully. Wackner’s job isn’t to offer someone who wants punishment some form of penance, like she can exchange community service hours for offensive remarks. It’s to... well, idk what it is to do, since this whole thing doesn’t really make sense and he makes the rules, but I don’t think his verdict has to be about giving anyone what they want. I’m disappointed that Wackner comes up with a punishment and I don’t think it’s going to get her her job back.  

LCK2 loses, too, because he hasn’t made amends. Wackner doesn’t want to fine him because he’s too rich for a fine to matter. Cord argues that LCK2 deserves a second chance. I mean, sure, but is he being denied a second chance? He doesn’t deserve an easy path back to his fame just because he wants it.  

Wackner mentions prison. At first I was like, oh, that’s a nice throwaway line that he mentioned prison! This ties into what I was saying a few weeks ago about how Wackner likes the institutions that already exist—he just thinks they’re imperfect! It’s fitting that he’s not a prison abolitionist!  

And then the episode actually went there: Wackner, thanks to David Cord’s private prison company, actually sentences LCK2 to prison. This is deeply uncomfortable (and of questionable legality). Wackner’s system is just going to recreate prison? Worse, private prison? He’s creating an unchecked, privatized legal system?! This sounds bad! Kudos to the show for taking this to some place so dark—I knew Wackner’s system would start to show cracks, but I didn’t realize they’d go this far.  

And I’m not sure what the end game is with this! All I know is I’m not on board with Wackner sending people to prison (except as a plot—I am very on board with this plot) and neither is Marissa.

I do not think viewers of the reality show will like the prison twist or the fact that Cord is financing a court and prison! Can you imagine the scandal!

And what do the contracts look like that allow Wackner to sentence someone to prison? Can LCK2 leave any time he wants? If so, then how does the prison sentence help? If not, is that legal?  

Del wants it to be a 2 week sentence, not 3, because this means LCK2 will have to miss his taping in two weeks. I have many questions. (1) Is Wackner’s show airing live? If not, then why do they need to rush the taping of the special? They could push it quite easily. (2) Why can’t they push the taping? This guy is a huge deal and enough potential $$ that Del wants to rehabilitate his career... so why does the taping have to be on this particular day and time?  

Is there really an Exxon Mobile case, I wonder?  

I like that we spend a good amount of time watching Marissa’s reactions to this latest addition to Wackner’s court. Combined with the score, Marissa’s facial expression serves to underline that private prisons are not good here! This isn’t Wackner getting legitimate methods of enforcement... this is just opening a pandora’s box of highly questionable extrajudicial practices.  

I do love that this episode ends up here: it starts out like it’s going to be about cancel culture silliness and ends up being about the escalation of Wackner’s tactics.

Funny how both of the cancelled people end up being found guilty by Wackner, huh! Almost like they actually did something wrong and faced the consequences!  

Liz and Diane get called in to talk to Liz’s favorite department: HR. They’re asked to sign “love contracts” to confirm things are consensual. I find it hilarious that HR gives them the paper before even asking if it’s true.  

Liz grabs a pen and signs. Diane follows her lead. They look at each other and smile politely at HR.

I am... not sure how to read this last scene! Is it a fuck-you to HR? A way of easing tensions? A way for Liz to get people to stop talking to her about removing Diane as name partner because no one will want to ask if they’re really involved? Something else? Help me understand!

Curious to see where things go next. I can see LCK2 coming back for another episode but it also wouldn’t surprise me to never see him again. Similarly, I could see some glances/discussion of Diane and Liz’s romantic relationship next week, or I could see it never being mentioned again, or I could see it being mentioned next season out of the blue.  

[birthisacurse-and]

You know what made me stop stigmatizing all fans of the specific fandoms I extremely disliked, way back when I first learned about tumblr fandom culture? The fact that many of the users on this site had a very specific mentality when it came to fandom culture: 1) people are allowed to simply enjoy problematic content, 2) not all fandom members are exactly alike, and 3) open discussion is the key to interaction on this site.

These are the tenets of Tumblr fandom culture that kept me from simply blocking and putting a dni label on my blog for reylo, hannibal, killing eve, 1D, supernatural, etc., fans. I remember replying to a Reylo post when I was around 16 with something snide and pretentious about how horrible anyone who shipped Reylo was, and I got a couple people replying with things along the lines of "fuck you bitch", but I also got quite a few users quoting Anita Sarkeesian at me and convincing me that sometimes, people can simply like problematic content and that doesn't mean they aren't critical of it or that it's always that fucking deep. When I was a teenager, I detested Hannibal and Hannibal fans, and I told myself I would never associate with a Hannibal fan because I thought, what kind of horrible person could possibly like that show? Then one of my long-time mutuals started reblogging Hannibal gifs, and going back through their blog and realizing they still reblogged posts about and believed in the progressive politics, anti-imperialist, and feminist ideologies that I did didn't make it worth it for me to simply unfollow and block them for liking some fictional TV show. When I was still in middle school, I had a very negative perception of what 1D fans were like, based on Pinterest and screenshots of forums that were posted to Tumblr. I posted a long post ranting about how horrible 1D fans were, and instead of getting a single 1D fan attacking me, I got two people in my reblogs explaining how flawed my view of the 1D fandom was, given that every person in the fandom was different. They convinced me that my view of all 1D fans as a) only teenage or young girls, b) ignorant of anything more important in the world (I was a pretentious, little political prick, even then), and c) stalker-y or overly obsessive, was not only flawed, but extremely hypocritical of me.

You know, there was a time when Tumblr users would deride Twitter for being an echo chamber, performative, reactionary, and evidenceless. Twitter, compared to Tumblr, was viewed as a cesspool of hatred within and between fandoms and antis, where fans were stigmatized, the cancelling of celebrities and media content would happen on a hair trigger, and rumors dictated the status quo at any given moment.

Someone please tell me at what point Tumblr tipped the scale to having more people who act like Twitter users than there are users who don't act like Twitter users. I didn't catch it, but I would love to know when we started using DNI's for specific fandoms' users. I would love to know when we started tossing around the terms bigoted, racist, homophobic, etc., so loosely. I would love to know when we started labeling Tumblr users by a single fandom they engage with, and passing judgement on those users based on that single fandom. I would love to know when Tumblr users stopped believing that fandom members can be nuanced. Please, someone explain to me when the shift occured, because I am baffled and angry and lost.

I used to say fuck this website in a sort of ironic, endeared manner, but you know what? Fuck this website.

[nihilisme]

As someone who suffers from BPD, which is really discriminated against and incredibly misunderstood, I understand why the trans community would feel seething rage towards Dave Chappelle right now. Such a divisive, hot button issue does not deserve to be used as a toy by famous people who are just trying to get clout. Trans people still get hurt and killed by bigots and Netflix allowing someone to put out a show where someone literally says they're "team TERF" is disgusting.

The term "gender is a fact" is JK Rowling's (and in turn Chappelle's) incredibly ingenious way of rebranding transphobia. If any of y'all have read Rowling's treatise, it's basically, in my opinion, a deeply misandrist (obviously on top of being transphobic), thinly veiled guise of her trying to get over her own traumas.

In her own words, "The more of their accounts of gender dysphoria I’ve read, with their insightful descriptions of anxiety, dissociation, eating disorders, self-harm and self-hatred, the more I’ve wondered whether, if I’d been born 30 years later, I too might have tried to transition."

Really? You THOUGHT about possibly transitioning? Maybe you're just in denial about your possible trans-ness Joanne? Or maybe this is your way of coping that's so maladaptive that it's burgeoned into very eloquently worded bigotry? Better yet, just DABBLING in the thought of being trans would've completely turned you trans?

Look, I get that Chappelle just did this for what is equivalent to gold in today's currency - controversy and attention. So for anyone who might say, "he's doing this to get a reaction out of you. He wants you to discuss this and to get mad about it." I fucking get it. I get it and I don't appreciate it. It's lazy, demoralizing, and worst of all, harmful. He put WAY too much faith in people to think that HIS words don't affirm THEIR OWN individual bigotry.

Someone like JK Rowling, as harmful as her words are, don't want to physically harm trans people, as she says so herself in her treatise. BUT THERE ARE PEOPLE OUT THERE WHO DO. And Chappelle, a ridiculously legendary, famous, influential, formerly funny comedian had the platform to just SAY WHAT HE WANTED TO SAY WITHOUT INVOLVING TRANS PEOPLE. Just say that cancel culture is bad Dave! Just say that social media, in its attempts to pivot and manipulate all of our primal, tribal warfare-oriented ape brains, are ruining all of us! Because it is! But guess what Dave? YOU'RE JUST PARTICIPATING AND PERPETUATING THE ENDLESS WATER WHEEL OF GENERATING CONTROVERSY WHILE ALSO JEOPARDIZING TRANS LIVES AT THE SAME TIME.

Dave Chappelle is a fucking hypocrite. Just open the show and tell us you want some money man. We would've given it to you regardless of how funny or unfunny it was. At least it would've been more direct and honest, than all this bullshit "Gender is a fact" nomenclature.

The gender is a fact argument is dishonest in how it's presented by the way. Comparing it to another movement - Black Lives Matter - we know that it means to protect black lives and that they don't deserve to be brutally murdered by cops because of racism. Gender is a fact is trying to emulate BLM by stating a very simple statement that is WAY more nuanced than it presents itself to be. But it just doesn't work on the same level at all. It's demeaning to state this shit thinking trans people don't understand their own plight or what they're going through. And as someone who has BPD - who gets told that all my feelings are just IN MY HEAD all the time from people who have no idea what it's like - trans people are trans for a reason and it's not just in their goddamn fuckin heads or them being "dramatic children". Why don't people who argue about trans rights argue in good faith instead of throwing around bullshit nomenclature that doesn't amount to anything? Because they don't understand what the fuck they're actually saying.

People who side with Chappelle and Rowling can easily say gender is a fact without batting an eye because they don't understand what it actually means to be trans. It's demeaning to trans people - do people REALLY think trans people, people who deal with their gender identity on a constant basis, really not know what the fuck gender means? What the fuck sex means? It's more nuanced than just saying "gender is a fact". You don't get to shut down somebody's entire gender identity and/or their trans-ness just by saying something that is deceptively simple, when in reality it's just a convenient dog whistle for transphobia. JK Rowling desperately tries to assert that her transphobia does not equate to her hating trans people - but what does it matter when you coined an entirely new hashtag EXACTLY DESIGNED to hate on a minority, and you don't even understand, at all, what they're going through? Joanne, on top of all of this, you are a misandrist without wanting to say you are. The fact that feminists only care about trans men because "they were originally born women" leaves a GLARING implied hole of not caring about men. Of how patriarchy HARMS MEN TOO. Yes, feminism still has a fucking long way to go. Yes, women still need to fight for rights and you hoped to have had a better future for your daughters at this point. But you're pointing the gun at the wrong enemy. Saying trans women wearing female clothing is equivalent to them wearing a "costume" is dehumanizing an entire group of people and their identities; implying that they are just "men" playing dress up is incredibly belittling for people who struggle with their identities. It's pretty equivalent to how homosexual people used to be belittled for their "lifestyles".

Back to Dave... It's ultimately just disappointing. If I ever talk to you as a person, Mr. Chappelle, I KNOW that you wouldn't want trans people harmed. Obviously you are still mourning your friend's death. I KNOW that the point of your special was so that "cancel culture" can stop being a thing and you're trying to open discussions on that. But at what cost? At what fucking cost? When you could've approached it in a different way and still would've gotten engagement. You still had a chance to change our poisonous internet culture without participating in discourse you barely fucking understand. You could've snowballed a movement that could have eventually dismantled Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Tumblr, Reddit, and Instagram - poisonous social media culture in general - in literally any other way.

In your own words, you said you can become famous, but you can't become unfamous. You can become infamous, but you can't become unfamous. Why would you choose the latter path?

[quinnfebrey]

genuine question about the mia thing: when someone apologizes for or addresses something they did wrong what is the appropriate response from a fan account for that person if it's not the account owners' apology to accept?

so i wrote this earlier today and saved it as a draft and i just re read it now and it’s an essay and i’m sorry

mm it’s a nuanced question. basically, like, appreciate the actor as an actor. you really don’t know anything else about them, especially ones as new as these people. i will consume and discuss content related to the wilds that mia posts, and i don’t expect anyone to just pretend she doesn’t exist a la lord voldemort, but treating her almost like an untouchable work of fiction is what’s an issue

like, from the way i’ve seen people talk about her, especially in relation to erana, it feels like they think she’s a character or something, and that therefore her behaviors don’t reflect on who she is because she’s not really a real person anyway. it literally feels like people are character analyzing and headcanoning her and it’s so bizarre and it takes away from the fact that 1) she’s a person, it’s disrespectful, 2) she’s not perfect (no one is), so why are you putting her on a pedestal that only fictional characters could ever reach?

i think a large part of it has to do with not participating in stan culture in the first place. i also think that, from my time across various fandoms since i first discovered fandom back in 2012, the wilds fan base (ESPECIALLY twitter) seems to be the most involved in an almost unhealthy level of actor stanning, and i’m not really sure why. i’ve never seen this level of it. i don’t know if it’s because the actors are new so they seem more approachable, but it’s really quite strange. the behavior i was seeing from people was kind of creepy before the mia thing, but it’s even more frustrating to see people return to that

god this was a tangent im so sorry

but i guess the tldr is:

1. consume content from her in relation to how it pertains to the show. like, i will still love to hear what she has to say about shelby because i think she’s proven to understand her character very well. but i’m not going to be out here scraping the barrel for content of just her

2. she’s a person. think of her that way. making up stories about her and other cast members is weird. they’re not fictional characters you can one-shot, they’re real people. all those posts (there were a significant amount) about “do you think erana helped her write the statement 🥺” were weird as hell, and inappropriate for any situation, but especially one pertaining to real criticism about literal racism

3. stan culture is toxic and directly correlates to cancel culture. half the reason the mia debacle was such a big deal was because prior to this you had people writing twenty thirst tweets a day about one photo of her. maybe if people had been treating her like a person the whole time, it would have been less jarring

and this is true for every actor! it just happens to be a conversation about mia specifically because of what happened

[gullethead]

what is your opinion on tamsyn muir discourse (and also what is the discourse)

THANK you. okay warning for discussion of fictional sexual assault, real life CSA (not something she did), plus 2012-era homestuck fandom typical stuff

please rb this btw, unless you dont want to, in which case dont. also if you have any corrections or additional information to consider please add by all means

disclaimer: im not in the habit of writing essays defending whichever internet personalities i like. ill admit theres potential bias, given that i read the books before i learned about this, but im really being as objective as possible and i just think people are taking a misguided or half-formed stance on this. if you still dislike her or w/e after this thats, like, perfectly in your rights. im not defending an adult woman on the internet, im explaining the facts as ive seen them and understand them. additional disclaimer that i havent experienced sexual assault at all myself

okay so tamsyn muir is currently well-known as the author of the locked tomb trilogy (aka gideon the ninth and harrow the ninth), but for a certain section of tumblr shes also well known as urbanAnchorite, and used to be a big name fan on here up until around 2014 - pretty close to everything here is going to be from roughly 2011 through 2014, except for an interview im gonna get into, so 7-10 years ago. i was only vaguely aware of her until after i got into the locked tomb and saw people talking about this. with that in mind:

so the MAJORITY of the discourse revolves around a single fic she wrote on AO3. her account has 19 works in homestuck, and some of them are Kinda Weird to Pretty Bad in retrospect, but being completely honest this is the only one that isnt completely stock standard for homestuck fandom in that time period. like if we started casting stones about ten year old fandom stuff we'd be here all day

here is the fic (warning for CSA)

in most of the posts about it ive seen, theyve described it as a "rapefic," but actually reading it, it's a lot more nuanced than that description implies. its a dark story where a grown man abuses a girl, from the man's perspective, and the story ends with him being killed by her friend. the description of the assault is treated very seriously by the story and barely even touches on any actual sex, before immediately cutting to him being killed. its lolita if humbert got shot to death; the title itself comes FROM lolita

(sidenote - it was inspired by a prompt on kinkmeme, but that doesn't really mean anything vis a vis being intended for sexual enjoyment, and according to the note actually went against the spirit of the request)

ive seen fics, lots and lots of fics, that would qualify as the term "rapefic." it tends to be pretty fucking obvious when someone is using sexual assault as a fetish, and this is Not That

tamsyn herself actually responded to this in an excellent interview early last year. she gets into some Fandom Mom type language, but essentially says what i said above. in it, she also says this:

It’s not the first time I’ve been accused of being a paedophile. I grew up gay in the nineties. Homosexuality and paedophilia were enmeshed in society’s minds. When I came out, I got told that I shouldn’t be around children. I was used to that because it was common discourse, and it hurt like all hell, but it didn’t shock me. When I got called a paedophile by Twitter I got clotheslined. My support network had to get in pronto. I was very ready to have a hot date with a length of rope, a date I have arranged and cancelled multiple times over my life. I have had lots and lots of therapy over the years for various conditions, some of them lifelong and some not, but when that Twitter call-out happened it was hard to want to live. I thought I knew so intimately what I was doing with my fiction; my therapist was always so supportive of me writing about it. I have not been open about being a CSA survivor because, again, I grew up in the ‘90s. ‘Lesbian’ and ‘CSA survivor’ is just carte blanche so a whole queue of people can tell you, I HOPE ONE DAY, WITH LOVE AND SUPPORT, YOU CAN BE STRAIGHT. It was like, right this way to the invalidation booth. I didn’t even tell most of my girlfriends! I told one! It’s not a topic of discussion between me and my family; I am relying on them not reading my interviews so it can remain where it belongs: thoroughly undiscussed!

with this context it becomes... a lot more nuanced of a topic. an author who experienced CSA in addition to growing up in a cultural climate where gay people were pedophiles by default, especially growing up catholic in a rural community, wrote a work about childhood sexual assault (which also happened to be fanfiction) as a way of working through it for herself, which is... something a lot of artists do with their art? and in return she got a massive blowback on twitter accusing her of pedophilia and demanding she talk about a massively traumatic moment in her life

this is the major sticking point of the discourse, im not gonna get into anything else on this post, but this is my view of it. if you disagree or have anything to add then feel free to add on. again, i know what it looks like, but im not trying to uncritically defend a stranger just cause i like her book. this is the conclusion i came to after doing a lot of digging for myself

[thisdancingheart]

Remember YFIP?

My Year of Grief and Cancellation

What was I trying to accomplish with my anonymous Tumblr?

By Liat Kaplan Feb. 25, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/25/style/your-fave-is-problematic-tumblr.html

If you were on Tumblr in the early 2010s, you may remember a blog called Your Fave Is Problematic. If not, its content should still sound familiar to you. The posts contained long lists of celebrities’ regrettable (racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, ethnophobic, ableist and so on) statements and actions — the stuff that gets people canceled these days.

That blog was my blog. I spent hours researching each post; as you can probably imagine, my search history was pretty ugly.

Your Fave Is Problematic had around 50,000 followers at its peak, in 2014, when I was a high school senior, but its influence was outsized. I got in a feud with a prominent young adult fiction author over his inclusion. One actor submitted himself, perhaps as a dare (or a plea) to dig up his worst. “Problematic fave” became a well-worn meme; even after I stopped posting, my blog was cited in books, articles, podcasts and think pieces. Through it all, my identity stayed private.

The blog started, as so many anonymous online projects do, as vengeful public shaming masquerading as social criticism. I was fine-tuning my moral compass and coming into my own as a feminist. So when I noticed classmates making sexist jokes on Facebook, including some about me, I started taking screenshots to post on a Tumblr called Calling Out Sexists. My policy was that I would take down a post only if its author publicly apologized.

A group of students brought the blog to the attention of our school’s administrators, who threatened to take legal action if I continued to write about them. Meanwhile, other Tumblr users had begun submitting screenshots featuring statements from minor celebrities. With graduation hanging in the balance, I shifted my focus away from my peers and toward public figures. I rebranded. Money and fame had protected them since time immemorial. What harm could my little blog do?

So I posted photos of Lady Gaga in V magazine with her skin bronzed to an unnatural brown. I pulled out troubling quotes from an essay Lena Dunham had written about a trip to Japan. I noted Taylor Swift’s since-changed homophobic lyric in “Picture to Burn.” My most popular posts tended to be about women — which makes sense, because the celebrity press tends to be more critical of them.

As it turned out, I had bigger things to worry about than dissecting the careers of celebrities I’d never met. On a winter morning, I woke up to the news that my older sister, Tamar, who was studying in Bolivia, had been in a bus crash, and the outlook was not good. I pored over research to escape from what felt like an impossible situation: my sister slowly dying of treatable injuries in a rural area thousands of miles away.

We held a public memorial service for Tamar in our hometown. Some of my classmates showed up, including a few who had written nasty things about me online. I found their shows of kindness insulting now, during what was quickly becoming the worst year of my life.

I tried going back to school after a few weeks, but I found myself picking frequent arguments with classmates and teachers. The school made an arrangement with my parents: I would be placed on “medical leave” for the remainder of the semester. I would graduate on time, but I wouldn’t return to campus.

Stuck at home, I devoted myself to Tumblr. What was I trying to accomplish? Mostly, I was interested in knocking people off their pedestals. I also enjoyed being popular, controversial, discussed. When a comedian I had posted about name-checked my blog on Twitter, I was giddy.

Then I started receiving threats. Someone sent me a screenshot of a house from Google Maps, claiming to have found my IP address. It wasn’t my house, but still. I realized that for every person on Tumblr who looked up to my blog, there were many more, online and offline, who hated it — and me. I started posting less and, eventually, stopped posting at all.

In the years since, I’ve looked back on my blog with shame and regret — about my pettiness, my motivating rage, my hard-and-fast assumptions that people were either good or bad. Who was I to lump together known misogynists with people who got tattoos in languages they didn’t speak? I just wanted to see someone face consequences; no one who’d hurt me ever had.

There’s something almost quaint about it all now: teenage me, teaching myself about social justice on Tumblr while also posturing as an authority on that very subject, thinking I was making a difference while engaging in a bit of schadenfreude. Meanwhile, other movements — local, global, unified in their purposes and rooted in progressive philosophies — were organizing for actual justice. Looking back, I was more of a cop than a social justice warrior, as people on Tumblr had come to think of me.

These days, there’s no shortage of online accountability efforts, the large part of them anonymously run. Some accounts post typically anodyne but occasionally explosive celebrity gossip. Others are explicitly aimed at naming, shaming and punishing people for all kinds of actions and missteps. My own work fell somewhere in the middle, I think; the information I posted was out in the open, but I was cataloging it to make a case against the veneration of the rich and famous.

As many have noted, the coronavirus pandemic has pronounced the distance between celebrities and the rest of us. And their actions have been subject to greater scrutiny — the vacations they’ve gone on, the parties they’ve held, the access they’ve had to testing and care during a health crisis that has taken millions of lives.

But celebrity culture began to crumble long before Covid-19. Mounting accusations of many kinds, whispered between industry professionals, had become too loud to ignore. Social media, which gave celebrities more control over their images and influence over their fans, also opened them up to new kinds of criticism. People have lost jobs and entire careers because of the kinds of errors my blog cited. Others have apologized for work and behavior that, re-examined in a contemporary context, just doesn’t hold up.

For years, I’ve regretted the spotlight I put on other people’s mistakes, as if one day I wouldn’t make plenty of my own. There can be an unsparing purity to growing into one’s social conscience that is often overbroad.

My brain wasn’t ready for nuance. I was angered by hypocrisy and cruelty; what I did about it was apply a level of scrutiny that left no room for error. I’m not saying that I should be canceled for my teenage blog. (Please don't!) I just know what we all should know by now: that no one who has lived publicly, online or off, has a spotless record.

For these reasons, I’ve thought about deleting my Tumblr. But doing that would mean erasing my own errors of judgment. I almost feel like I need to leave it up to punish myself for having made it in the first place. That, and I know someone could (and probably would) just pull it up on Wayback Machine. The internet, after all, never forgets.

~~~~~~~

[hamliet]

Really? What has Eiichiro Oda done that's made you warry of actually reading his work?

Ughhhhh. Not at you lol. 

So, to start with, I should have just stated the fact that none of One Piece’s characters or plotlines--while summarized as interesting to me--are uber “must read now” hooks for me. That’s personal taste, and I know it is a good story even if not uber compelling for me. However, while I’ve said that before, people tend to try to convince me otherwise--which is not inherently wrong! 

So I brought up this, and I hope I wasn’t moral posturing because that wasn’t my intent, but it probably came across that way since it’s difficult to discuss this with nuance. I’ll explain intent below, since I brought it up and probably owe an explanation. 

So, here’s a summary. And here’s a 2021 followup. 

It’s hard to talk about this because Oda himself did nothing, and Shonen Jump as a whole entity clearly does not have a problem with this type of crime (corporations rarely do *looking at you TLC*). There are also cultural aspects at play (in terms of what he can say publicly). But that also doesn’t mean I can’t have feelings in response to what was said.

I want to emphasize that I do not think Oda should be “cancelled” in any respect, nor am I side-eying anyone who reads his work. I clearly have no stones to throw from my glass house since I still adore Harry Potter and it is a deeply meaningful series for me despite my intense disgust and horror at the author’s grotesque transphobia. Death of the author can and should be employed; not only that, but it’s uncomfortable for me to police who people do and do not care about; emotions and relationships don’t work that way. At the same time, there’s a difference between caring for someone and supporting them, and this seems more the latter. However, again, I don’t think there’s any morality at play in whether one enjoys One Piece or not. 

But, the thing is... to compare it again to Harry Potter, if that’s okay, I read HP before I knew about Rowling’s transphobia. The immense meaning and impact on my life can never be erased, even if there is a deep pain and sadness now (pain that doesn’t even come near the pain of trans fans). Had this come out before I had read it, it might have--well, not necessarily crossed HP off my reading list, but made it much less of a “must read.” That’s kinda how I feel about One Piece. 

Also, the reality is also that certain things are more triggering for me than others, and that is in part due to experience, to privilege, to genetics, to things I can and cannot control. The reality is that this is also the case for everyone. This particular... thing is deeply triggering for me, hence why it gives me more reservation. However, OP is not a “never” for me, just a “not right now but we’ll see.” 

[ouyangzizhensdad]

i've debated with myself so much about madam yu and saw you rt that post defending her and i read it but it still didn't sit right with me, i'm not chinese but i am from one of those taugh love mom cultures and still find her extra bad, i asked a few chinese people who don't stan the book and they were horrified at the defense and said that it was not normal, sure she shows regular ch mom characteristics but she's like the hyperbole of a ch mom so does anyone own the monopoly of wha's normal?

Hi there anon, 

This is only my pov and I cannot speak from the perspectives of Chinese and Chinese diasporic people, nor for the people who wrote on the topic of Yu-furen (I can only speak of how I interpreted the posts I came across).

My understanding of the situation, however, is that they are not attempting to do with these posts what you are suggesting. You ask “does anyone own the monopoly of what’s normal”, which suggests you believe the posts meant to give a definitive answer on what is ‘normal’ behaviour, when in reality the posts seem to have been made with the opposite aim in mind: to remind people who do not share the cultural background of the intended audience of MDZS that there does not exist a single definition of what constitute “normal” behaviour and that fandom discussions dissecting every single action or word of Yu-furen’s toward any character to portray them as “clear signs of abuse” has been difficult to stomach and might even feel imperialistic for people who have been raised by parents who came from a cultural background where some of these very behaviours are not regarded as abusive.  

These posts, in general, have also seemed to attempt first to explain the nuances of Yu-furen’s relationship to WWX, which often gets wrongfully portrayed as her unequivocally being his adoptive mother or a legal guardian. She is not a mother figure to him and does not act toward him from that position. These have also aimed to remind people that the behaviours and care we feel are “owed” to “children” as a group are spatiotemporally specific, and influenced by a variety of factors--in this case, WWX being the child of a servant and a disciple of the sect. By reminding people that, in her position, in that specific spatiotemporal moment, Yu-furen would have been allowed to be much more extreme in her disciplining or could have simply refused to let WWX stay in Lotus Pier, what I feel these posters are doing is not telling Westerners that they personally think it would be appropriate behaviour towards a child, but rather highlighting that this means something wrt how Yu-furen is characterised in the context of the novel considering that the intended audience of the novel would be aware of that reality. Differently put, that it suggests a framing of Yu-furen as someone that does bark more than she bites even if she does bite. And aside from the irrelevant surface-level readings of Yu-furen as a sort of “girlboss” that seem to originate mostly from the CQL-verse in any case, I’ve never seen anyone suggest that she is irreproachable. All the serious analyses I’ve seen acknowledge that Yu-furen is meant to be a complicated figure or acknowledge that she abuses her authority in the sect by giving WWX punishments she does not bestow on other disciples. What they seem to disagree with is the ways western fans make sweeping generalisations and accusations without the relevant context, which comes off to them as insensitive and coming from a place of cultural ignorance.

Maybe it is time for a discussion that humanist thought, that which underlines so much of our modern understanding of rights and social progress, flattens spatiotemporal differences (or, as they often talked about, cultural differences), staying deeply rooted in Western supremacy when it aims to provide a single answer to what is right and what is a right. It can verge very easily into the evangelical and the imperialistic: we have only to look at the influence of the “global” LGBT movement has had on erasing  localised social organisations and identity markers by superposing themselves unto them as more intelligible ideas through which to barter for rights with the political class. Or worst, by having the “global” LGBT movement frame localised expressions of queerness as not progressive enough or harmful (sometimes I think back at Gaudio’s ethnography of queer men in the Hausa-speaking region of northern Nigeria, and how the men who took on the penetrative role in sex  generally switch to self-reference and being referenced in a feminine way and using “women’s talk”, and thinking “wow, they would be so cancelled or condescended to by tumblr kids 😬”). 

The point of this tangent is not to underline that everything about humanism or its influences on modern life are bad, but that it is an intellectual “tool” that can be do harm and be imperialistic and racist (since it is generally the White, Christian-adjacent, Western standards that are posited as the moral truth that defies differences in cultures and material contexts). And most of the discussions of what “adults” owe to “children” (ideas that are generally treated as homogeneous and clear-cut across time and space, as apriori categories), of what rights are owed to children, exist within these frameworks. Or, they might exist within the framework of “science,” as if science itself cannot be influenced by Western imperialism and researchers’ biases. Reading western language acquisition research and comparing it with cross-cultural ethnographic sociolinguistic research on language acquisition really highlights how some of the science that informs “good parenting” in the West is incapable of realising how much the material and cultural context of the West influences the results that are supposedly controlled. 

Or, again, the idea that science can help us define clearly and once and for all where the line between shitty actions and abuse, or discipline and abuse, should be drawn, is to me one that cannot be dissociated from a belief that science can provide us with definite truths about our existence as social animals as if these sort of truths were not inherently positioned and negotiated. It is an uncomfortable idea, isn’t it, to realise that two people can be against abuse but at the same time not draw the line at the same place? How do we best grapple with the discovery that “abuse” is not an apriori category but rather one that is constructed according to varying forms of positioned and shifting knowledge and experience? I do not have an answer, but I certainly think that fandom arguments will probably not be the best place for that level of philosophical discussions. 

To conclude, anon, I do want to acknowledge that your ask seems to come from a place of concern and perhaps even hurt. And that is perhaps why the posts from Chinese diasporic people in the fandom might appear to you as dismissive or flippant towards the interpretations of other fans of the novel. But perhaps without this prism of concern and/or hurt through which your perception of these analyses are filtered, you might have been able to notice a lot more nuance to their points than what your ask suggests. And that is not a criticism per se, but simply a reminder that, sometimes, some topics are difficult for us to approach clear-headed and to receive differing perspectives in good faith. In any case, I am certainly not the arbiter whose opinion on the topic will finally settle these debates, as such you might want in the future prefer to direct your questions (politely of course) to people who penned such analyses or who can speak from the relevant cultural perspective. If your aim in sending me this ask (because I reblogged a post you disagreed with) was to judge whether I passed your litmus test for being “morally just” to decide whether anything I have to say on any other topic is still worth paying attention to, well I suppose you now have your answer. 

[nightswithkookmin]

BIGHIT vs BTS SHIPS The Difference Between Jikook and Taekook

I think I have explained the commercial value of ships when it comes to content marketing in one of my previous posts. But allow me to use this opportunity to address it in depth.

Bighit did not invent shipping. Shipping predates Kpop and plays a vital role in spiking interest, relevancy and longevity of that interest in a piece of marketed content. It sustains Audience Retention rates and improves engagement rates significantly. It is a powerful marketing tool when used right but I'm not going to get into all that in this post.

Fact is BigHit does benefit from shipping culture because it is one way they keep the audience engaged with BTS content even when they aren't putting out new content for the market to consume. BTS ships serve the same purpose as all the Run, Soop, Bon voyage and myriads of sub content they put out. You may not watch Run every day, but if you are a shipper you will like a ship post at least once a day.

Shipping is organic and costs nothing unlike most other marketing strategies available to the marketer. TV programs such as Harry Potter (Dont lie. I know you shipped Hermoine and Harry. I did too. *tears) Star wars, Friends, Supernatural, Vampire Diaries, Shadow Hunter to name a few have all benefited from shipping culture significantly.

Can BigHit do without ships? Absolutely. They would be a fool to though. Shipping is just one of the many resource options available to a marketer. It bridges the gap in between formal contents and keep interest in a brand going.

I smirk when some people dismiss shipping, look down on shippers or make ignorant and ill informed comments about shipping culture in general. Audience retention and engagement is king in today's economy and BigHit taps into this resource very well.

All BTS ships are thus relevant and valid. All of them. Unfortunately, this is a numbers games. Numbers play a key role in the commercial value of a ship. And it is a fact universally acknowledged that Taekook and Jikook are ships with the most number of fans and as such provides higher engagement rates within a marketing context.

Taekook is the biggest ship not just in BTS but in Kpop. It is followed closely by Jikook. Does that mean all the ships are nothing but shallow interactions engineered to keep us tethered to BTS for as and when they are ready to sell a product to us? NO.

I don't see BigHit actively curating these ships and masterminding them.

What I mean is, I don't think BigHit is asking the members to interact or even forcing them to interact- except in recent moments but that is another topic for another day.

BTS interact with eachother from their own free will. Of course no two interactions are going to be the same as no two relationships are the same. We cannot compare Taegi to Jikook or Taekook to Jikook or even to VMin because the friendship between Jimin and V is not the same as between V and Jin etc.

No one is forcing Jungkook to interact with Jimin. No one is forcing Tae not to interact with JK. It's absurd to think in such a way.

They all interact with eachother and provide that content for BigHit's use. All BigHit does is decide when to show us that content as and if they want to show it to us at all. They are a business and all these ships are just marketing resources and so they will show us a ship's content in a way that advances their business marketing strategy.

However, if two people within a ship barely interact or do not interact at all with eachother then there wouldn't be any content on them for BigHit to promote or use in their marketing campaigns to begin with.

What I'm saying is, if Taekook sells- as in if there are a lot of people interested in seeing their content(which there are) and those two individuals actually have moments together on or off camera, then in their estimation BigHit will market that content to us. If Jikook sells they will sell it to us; as long as none of these ships are damaging to the reputation and business of BigHit.

[CONTROVERSIAL TOPIC BELOW- Proceed with caution.]

A ships value to BigHit, in my opinion, is contingent on its commercial value as discussed above but if that ship causes BigHit to lose money rather than gain, if a ship negatively affects the business or reputation of BigHit then that ship is as good as dead. They will kick that ship off the spotlight real fast.

Taekook and Jikook have both had moments like this where they are temporarily taken off the spotlight or even asked to tone things down. We've all seen it don't argue with me.

Not everything BigHit does is about these ships. BigHit is a brand in of its own. They have several other brands under their brand and they can't afford to ruin their brand image or any of their artists.

They will not hesitate to shut down a ship if it is doing more harm than good. They did it to Taekook when that ship was in it's hay days. As soon as they started recieving a ton of negative press that is when they started getting 'seperated' -on stage anyway. I don't think they were seperated or asked not to interact off camera. Clearly they do. They are friends after all.

BigHit does the same thing to Jikook whenever they start recieving negative attention. But we see them interacting backstage nevertheless and usually this happens at the same event they get 'separated at.'

It's nothing personal, just business.

[Controversial content ahead. Proceed with caution]

At this point, I know you would be asking why Taekook seemed to have dimmed as a ship where BigHit is concerned but Jikook recieve the same negative press and yet they still market Jikook and shine more light on it....

A Taekooker friend whom I had this discussion with pointed out to me that it seems whenever Jikook receives a ton of negative press BigHit claps back with more Jikook content and in an aggressive way yet has it being Taekook we wouldn't get any content outside official content for a whole year.

To be fair, BigHit treats all ships equally in my opinion. Jikook gets penalized for certain moments just as much as Taekook or any ship gets punished. Example, after the New Jersey VLive Jikook were banned(allegedly) from doing a Vlive on their own for a whole year and after the ban was lifted their VLive was monitored the same way Taekook's Vlive was monitored.

Secondly, perhaps they keep pushing Jikook content because that is all they have? Perhaps, they have more Jikook content than Taekook?

Jikook spend so much time around each other and they don't mind their interactions being filmed as content. Not because they are doing fan service but more so because they are lowkey exhibitionists or exhibit exhibitionist tendencies. Lol. More on that later.

When it comes to Taekook; Tae have said once that JK avoids him off camera which I assume by that he meant Jk doesn't interact with him much off camera. Now it could also be that Jk was not on good terms with him during that particular period which is normal because friends fight.

Jk have also said him and Tae's relationship is not for the cameras and I assume by that he meant they are both are not comfortable providing content for Bighit to use as marketing because as I said all these ship interactions are by their own free will. Bighit can't force Taekook to interact and if Taekook hasn't given them permission to air certain moments they just can't.

Or... or....

The reason BigHit pushes back with more Jikook content even after negative press is because Jikook is real. DEADASS.

Hear me out. Calling Taekook out for promoting Homosexuality in S.K will be deemed negative press if Taekook are not gay or in an actual romantic relationship. Calling Jikook out for promoting homosexuality will not be deemed as negative press but an abuse if Jikook are in fact gay and in a gay relationship with eachother.

BigHit is not homophobic. Bang PD is known for his openly support for members of the LGBTQ plus community. If people hate on Jikook because of their moment he will sympathize with them and shove that in your face.

While Taekook negative press will be a nuance, Jikook negative press will be revolution and BigHit will make a statement: a statement that says they stand with LGBTQ plus community PERIOD.

They will do this not for money but for the boys so they feel loved and supported. So Jikook knows they are not in this fight alone especially coming from a highly homophobic society as S.K.

The thing about Jikook is, Jikook is real. That alone gives BigHit a competitive advantage in the Industry. It means Jikook produce more content for BigHit over any other pair and that content is juicy. It's similar to how companies want exclusive access to certain power couples in the industry. If Jikook are real and BigHit have access to them, exclusive access mind you, then that places BigHit above the competition business wise.

Think of Jikook and BigHit as the Kardashians and Entertainment company behind them. Jikook has given BigHit partial access to their private lives extending beyond the access they have over BTS.

If Taekook or any ship give similar access to them we will see more of them. If they give BigHit content we will see more of them. It's as simple as that.

Jikook is a brand and BigHit is their brand manager. This means BigHit gets more content from Jikook and is at liberty to use that content any how they want and milk the shit out of it. In return, BigHit has a duty to protect Jikook and so no. When Jikook gets negative press due to homophobia BigHit is not going to cancel them.

May be chill on them for a while, because that exposure they give Jikook can be traumatizing for Jikook especially if the feedback is negative.

What I'm saying is, where Taekook would be asked to chill and lay low from public scrutiny it will be because BigHit wants to protect their business interest whereas in Jikook's case it would be to protect Jikook themselves. If Taekook are both gay and in a relationship with each other BigHit would do same for them.

I don't think BigHits marketing tactics however affects the status of Jikook, Taekook or any other ship's relationship in any way. Jikook is real whether it is made the center of attention or not. Taekook could be real regardless of whether they are marketed or not. Just because a certain ship is put under the spotlight doesn't mean that ship is 'real' neither does that negate the genuine friendship that exists between members of other ships.

It is weird to me when people associate BigHits business tactics to the validity of their ship. There is no correlation. BigHit is a business, BTS are their artists that make them money- all BTS not just two members from a ship. BTS is one of the most powerful brands in the world right now.

BigHit will explore and exploit all the relationships within the group, platonic or otherwise, if that will help them sell more albums or even Icecream.

Jikook gives BigHit a competitive advantage more so than any other ship in BTS not just because they are the second largest ship in South Korea but because Jikook are shaping out to be a power couple and Icons for the LGBTQ community. There is a reason why companies rush to support Pride month parades. I'll leave it there.

So no, I don't see it as BigHit highlighting the ship of the era as you put it or alternating between Jikook and Taekook as and when. BigHit has a business to run, shipping plays a vital role in its business marketing strategy but not everything is about these ships.

The members have a role to play in creating content for these ships and Bighit won't hesitate to market it if the content is quality entertainment, consensual and plays to their overall marketing scheme.

This means if Jikook ship content are boring they will choose to show a much entertaining ship content over them. Nothing personal.

I just think they treat Jikook differently because as much as they want to pander to our delusional shipping interests, they owe Jikook a duty to protect them from homophobic people. When you hate on any ship in BTS, BigHit assumes you are nuts but when you hate on Jikook BigHit will immediately assume you are both nuts and homophobic.

Promoting Jikook is business but it is also validation and acceptance and support. Bighit has a proclivity for sensitizing us to Jikook and normalizing their relationship.

If Taekook are also in a gay relationship they will be treated the same and I will support them the same. But to me, I believe Jikook are real and therefore Taekook and Jikook are mutually exclusive. Both cannot be real at the same time.

Ship whatever you want but support Jikook and stan all seven.

Signed,

GOLDY