#this is probably some level of internalized antiblackness

[citriosis]

not to vent on main but this is definitely not a void moment. i had this talk with my mom a little while ago (i have complex feelings about and a hard relationship with her but it was important).

it's weird being a black person that doesn't fit in either way. because i was raised mostly in predominantly white neighborhoods (living where i do now is my first time living in a predominantly black neighborhood actually) and, aside from things i had to learn to survive in said white neighborhoods, was given a pretty "white" childhood, i don't feel like i belong as a part of black culture at all.

but i'm also...not white. lol. but despite this, other black people tell me i ACT whit. i've been accused of BEING white in the past and accused of racefaking (once over stupid kinnie shit on vent dot co and once on twitter over Mental Illness) because i don't act "black enough", but my mutuals who have been in video calls with me and have seen pictures of me know i'm not white. and not only am i not white, i'm VERY clearly black. white people will be surprised by how i speak, and they say "you speak so well!", but leave off "for a black person". they don't see me as one of them, but they probably subconsciously see me as a whiter black person, which makes my fucking skin crawl.

i'm not black enough to feel like i'm not a fucking poser when i call myself black, but i'm not white enough to completely deny my heritage. i look black, but i have a white mouth. i feel passionately about Black issues, but i feel like i can't talk about them because i'll sound too white.

i feel like i'm some secret third thing in the worst fucking possible way. i'm not having a black experience, i'm not having a white experience, i'm just kinda...void. and it fucks with my self-image in ways that i'm not fully comfortable talking about on main.

as i was on this train of thought, i said something like "i guess this IS a black experience in and of itself, though" and she was like...yeah. and she said it confidently, even though it hadn't been HER black experience. but honestly it hasn't made me feel better because of ✨ internalized racism ✨ in many, many fucking colors.

she also said i'm not alone in this experience, and that i might find other people in my generation who relate to this because of how we were raised. but honestly that doesn't make me feel better either tbh, at least not rn. maybe i will feel better if i end up finding some level of solidarity, but idek if i'm gonna post this. i feel like i'm gonna get "not black enough"ed or accused of being fucking white! which hurts when i've NOT BEEN BLACK ENOUGH my whole life! it's EXHAUSTING. too white to be black (despite having no white immediate family and being black), too black to be white (because i'm black).

anyway idek how to tag this. maybe i just won't. i said this wouldn't be a void post but i almost don't wanna post this lol. but oh well. off to tumblr it goes.

[nevermindirah]

Non-Jewish friends, y’all might be wondering right now: Israel is doing clearly unacceptable shit to Palestinians. So, why are some Jews ardent Zionists, and why do some Jews seem to feel personally attacked by criticism of Israel?

A lot of (non-Palestinian) non-Jews have asked me where I stand on Israel/Palestine over the years, apropos of nothing, just because I’m Jewish. For the longest time I felt so stuck because I just didn’t know much about Israel/Palestine and what little I did know turned out to be largely misinformation and I felt so much pressure to say The Correct Thing That All Jews Should Say About This Issue. Obviously the violence Israel is committing against Palestinians is horrific and the interpersonal weirdness individual Jews might experience as people discuss Israel’s horrific violence doesn’t compare. I’m making this post as a small supplement to the important conversations going on about what Israel is doing to Palestinians in East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank, as well as Palestinian citizens of Israel and Palestinian refugees and their descendants living outside land Israel controls. I’m making this post because non-Jews might be feeling confused by conflicting messages about Zionism as either settler colonialism or Jewish self-determination. It sucks feeling like you have to choose only one oppressed group or another. It’s possible to support Palestinian liberation and Jewish liberation at the same time! Here’s some context that might help.

Palestinian friends will probably want to ignore this post, y’all shouldn’t have to deal with your oppressors’ feelings, and especially not right now.

Zionism is the ideology behind the devastating violence Israel is committing against Palestinians right now and has been committing against Palestinians since 1947-48. It’s heartbreaking and messy to talk about this reality, because Zionism originated as a strategy to protect Jews from antisemitism.

Any oppressed group can turn into oppressors under enough pressure, because humans are flawed. Jews fleeing antisemitism turning into Israelis ethnically cleansing Palestinians happened because Zionism is profoundly influenced by its time and place of origin: 19th century Europe.

Europe invented antisemitism, and basically every European country has done at least one very very bad structural antisemitism, like expelling all the country's Jews (the monarch and/or the church then stole all the wealth the expelled people had to leave behind), looking the other way when peasants murdered a bunch of Jews as an outlet for their frustration with the actual (non-Jewish) ruling class, banning Jews from owning property or holding certain jobs or being members of guilds etc, and of course the big horrific state-sponsored mass-murder operations the Inquisition and the Holocaust. From the 1790s through the 19th century different European governments emancipated their Jews, ie removed legal barriers to full citizenship and economic participation. But this didn't end antisemitism. Just like the legal improvements of the 19th and 20th centuries didn't end antiblackness in the United States.

Also happening in this time: nationalism swept Europe. From the French Revolution through the end of World War I, Europe’s predominant form of government transformed from multiethnic empires to nation-states, countries led by and for a particular ethnic group.

So this Austro-Hungarian dude Theodor Herzl came up with this idea for Jewish nationalism. Every other European ethnic group is getting their own country, so why not Jews? Maybe this is the solution to antisemitism! Maybe we’ll finally be safe if we just all move en masse out of Europe to a place that will take all of us and never expel us!

But also also happening in Europe and around the world in this time: European imperialism and white supremacist settler colonialism. Chattel slavery saw its height and then its end (legally, at least) during this era, but white supremacy entrenched itself across the planet in post-slavery economic practices and cultural imperialism as well as national and international laws.

I believe countries have a moral obligation to take in as many refugees as they can squeeze in. International law protecting refugees has evolved a lot over the past century, but we’re still devastatingly far from every refugee getting a safe place to call home, and the main reason for that is white supremacy. The Biden administration didn’t undo the Trump administration’s horrifically low cap on refugees until like last week and it’s because Democratic party leaders treat centrist white people as more valuable voters than the huge and growing numbers of people of color, immigrants, LGBT people, unmarried women, and working class people who want to vote for elected leaders who get that nobody’s free until we’re all free. Ahem. Back to the topic at hand, the US and many other countries turned away untold numbers of refugees fleeing the fucking Holocaust, so odds are slim they’d be more welcoming in less desperate times. Moving from places where Jews are an unwanted minority to places where Jews are still a minority and either still unwanted or little understood and unlikely to win revolutionary levels of support from a largely non-Jewish public seems like a bad plan.

In the mid to late 19th century, lots of Jews took the kernel of Zionism and ran with it in different directions. Maybe this ideology could mean Jewish cultural flourishing alongside stronger political/economic integration into the societies where we’re already living! Maybe it could mean a particular kind of socialism that advocates for the liberation of Jews both as Jews and as workers! Maybe it could mean a revitalization of Jewish religious practice both in Jerusalem where we have important heritage sites and everywhere we live across the world!

Eventually Herzl’s vision of Zionism won out over the others: Jewish nationalism in the sense of a Jewish nation-state, a country that has a Jewish demographic majority and/or that legally privileges Jews over non-Jews.

Problem is, if you want to do that, you have to find a piece of land on which to do it, and Earth was already a pretty crowded place a hundred years ago. Many locations were considered, and the one that ended up winning that debate was Palestine. Where a shit ton of people, mostly non-Jews, were already living. They were forming their own nationalist movement at the time: in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire they began to organize for local self-determination in Palestine.

The Herzl types who developed Zionism as an ideology and built institutions to advocate for and create a Jewish ethnostate in Palestine were a small subset of European Jews, mostly men, mostly with significant economic privilege within what Jews were able to achieve in their particular societies at the time. They were just as Orientalist as the non-Jews around them, just as antiblack, just as racist generally for all that Jews were (and sometimes still are) considered non-white in much of Europe. They had a cool idea (put a lot of effort into something that could protect Jews from antisemitism) floating in a bathtub full of shit, and they did practically nothing to protect the cool idea from absorbing that shit. Results of this include thinking about the millions of people already living in Palestine as if they were either like the rocks and the trees that will go with the flow and accept a new ruling class, or indistinct Arabs who would just leave for other Arab countries because what could be the difference — in the staggeringly small amount of time they considered the existing residents of Palestine at all.

This racist hand-waving extended to Zionist leaders’ attitudes about Jews outside Europe as well. White Jews in settler colonies like the US were largely anti-Zionist at the time (not wanting their own countries to accuse them of dual loyalty was a common reason) but European Zionist leaders took what help they could get from Jews in the US, South Africa, Australia, etc. Jews across the Middle East and North Africa, however, barely heard from Zionist leaders about any of this until Zionist militias had removed enough Palestinians from the land and it was time to repopulate it with whichever Jewish bodies were convenient. You might have heard "all the Arab countries expelled their Jews in 1948" but lots of first-person accounts tell a different story of Israel coercing Jews who’d lived securely for a long time in places like Morocco to immigrate to Israel and then confiscating their passports and forcing them to live on less-fertile land with fewer resources while serving as a buffer between Palestinians and European Jewish immigrants. Ella Shohat is the best-known writer on Israeli racism against non-European Jews and I strongly recommend Sephardim in Israel: Zionism from the Perspective of Its Jewish Victims as a starting point to learn more about this.

Which brings us to today. We still haven’t eradicated antisemitism, several European governments that did a lot of structural antisemitism they still haven’t made meaningful reparations for get to feel good about themselves for “giving the Jews a state” as if carving up the former Ottoman Empire was up to them and not the people who lived there, and millions of people across the world who previously either lived peacefully enough alongside Jews or hadn’t really thought about us much at all now have very valid reasons to be pissed at this country that claims it represents all of us.

Zionism was supposed to protect Jews from antisemitism. And Israel has saved Jewish lives! But if we hadn’t sunk the past 70+ years into an ethnostate we could’ve been putting that energy into other political and economic activity to create adequate international support for refugees while we work on ending root causes of refugee crises, like antisemitism, racism, climate change, and capitalism. Meanwhile Zionism has killed, maimed, incarcerated, stolen from, traumatized, and erased the history of millions of Palestinians just because they happened to be living on land that some dudes who had a lot more in common with Thomas Jefferson and Donald Trump than with you or me decided needed to be cleansed for a Jewish ethnostate.

White nationalists in the US love Israel because they want American Jews to go away. Fascist leaders across Europe love Israel for the same reason, so much so that Israel’s prime minister is buddy-buddy with Trump and the equivalent shitstains of several European far-right parties. And I don’t know what it’s like in other white supremacist countries that are close allies of Israel, but the overwhelming majority of Zionist lobbying that pushes the US to give so much aid to Israel comes from Evangelical Christians, because they believe all the Jews have to be in the Holy Land for Jesus to come back. No thanks.

This whole thing fucking sucks. Jews and Palestinians, like all human beings, deserve to be free. Many Jews are understandably afraid of what might happen next if Israel decided to give up on ethnonationalism, allow Palestinian refugees to return, make reparations, and establish a pluralistic democracy that represents and protects all its residents — will some Palestinians murder Jews in revenge? That’s genuinely fucking scary. And it’s genuinely fucking scary to be a Palestinian in Israel/Palestine, and has been for over 70 years. We’ve gotta do something different. I say that as a white person sitting on land stolen from Piscataway people who has thought in detail about what portion of my income would be reasonable for my government to tax in order to fund reparations for the descendants of enslaved people.

Ok. One final piece of context before I wrap this up.

Most Jewish institutions in the US are explicitly Zionist, teach children that Zionism is THE way to ensure Jewish safety, and increasingly tell non-Zionist Jews that we're unwelcome or even that we’re not “real” Jews. This comes in a context where it’s only been 76 years since the latest and most gruesome of several attempts to wipe our entire people off the face of the planet. If you grew up in that environment, you, too, might be jumpy about even hearing the words Zionism or Israel, let alone considering the devastation this ideology and country have caused Palestinians.

Jews have a right to exist. Jews have a millennia-old connection to this scrap of land in the Levant, and we have a right to access religiously and culturally important geographic landmarks. What we don't have a right to is murdering or expelling other people in order to make an ethnostate, on that land or any other. Zionism is settler colonialism, but it’s settler colonialism by and for people who have a valid need for protection from structural antisemitism, which means that it’s going to take a lot of messy empathy to undo. The members of my extended family who voted for Trump (non-Jews in my case, though Jared Kushner isn’t the only Jewish Trumpite) are afraid that ending white supremacy will demote them from a privileged class to equal footing with everyone else — that’s the kind of fear individuals work on in therapy, not the kind that’s reasonable for a whole society to prevent from happening. I and millions of Jews do deserve for whole societies to work hard to end antisemitism.

I would never and will never ask a Palestinian to gently request their liberation. But if you’re not Palestinian, and you’ve got a little extra empathy to spare this week, I ask you to remember what I’ve shared here when interacting with Jews about Israel/Palestine.

If you’re a fellow Jew reading this and you feel like Israel is the only way to guarantee our safety, all I ask of you is to sit with the idea that what Israel is doing to Palestinians is too high a cost for safety that’s still not guaranteed, and start to imagine real-world ways we can protect our people from antisemitism without an ethnostate.

I made this post for people who know me (or know of me I guess?) in Old Guard and Cap fandom, despite my better judgment, because talking about Jewish Booker and Jewish Bucky and Jewish Natasha makes me so happy and I think some of the people I love on these characters with might appreciate this perspective. I didn’t provide any links in this post on purpose (to decrease its usefulness, so fewer people will reblog it) because the risk of anon hate when talking about Zionism outside my immediate fandom circles is so high. You’re welcome to reblog this post if you find it helpful! Unless you’re not within a few concentric circles of me, in which case, maybe don’t? If seeing this post makes you want to send me anon hate, no need: many people who share your perspective have already done so on Twitter.

Reliable sources on all this info are a few googles away, and I apologize for the things I know I oversimplified as well as any things I might have misremembered. I’m an American who’s never lived in Israel/Palestine who is posting this on my fandom blog.

TL;DR: This is a short ‘n pithy post about the same idea.

TL;DR, fandom edition: The shortest distillation of this anti-Zionist Jew’s feelings on the matter can be found in segment 4 of Five Times Booker Got Wasted on Purim and One Time He Didn’t.

[cannibalisticapple]

Okay, so I have some thoughts on Kurikuri’s decision to delete a large number of her fan fics, and on fan fiction as a whole.

For those who don’t know, Kurikuri (@letaizawarest) is a popular fan fiction author with numerous popular Erasermic fics, along with other fandoms. Around the end of May/start of June she deleted a large number of her stories, specifically those that featured either police, or those set in the My Hero Academia universe where they work as Pro Heroes.

To quote her post:

as you may have noticed, roughly half of the fics on my ao3 have been deleted.

i’ve deleted all my fics about police officers. also, after some thought, i also deleted my non-AU bnha fics, because although they might not be “cops” in name, they are law enforcement. i do not want to be a part of the system that glorifies the police. 


at the moment i haven’t deleted other profession AUs and high school era fics, but i will continue to reflect on their relation to the source material. even if you enjoyed the deleted fics, please do not circulate them in other formats (PDFs, EPUBs, etc). 


i also encourage other writers to think about cop fic they’ve written. while it may be fun and escapist for you, it still encourages the idea that antiblack and killer cops are just “bad apples” and that good cops exist. let’s dismantle that system of thought.

I have some very, very mixed feelings on this.

To start: I respect her reasoning, but I don’t agree with it. I fully agree that it’s not just a bunch of “bad apples”, there’s a serious issue with the system and how the police operate in the United States. I’ve always been bothered by how the police let other officers get away with horrible BS, even as a kid, and that rage has only grown as I’ve grown older and found out more about how screwed up it is on every single level.

But the way that last paragraph is written rubs me the wrong way because you can’t paint every single person in an entire career field as unequivocally corrupt, bigoted and all around callous murderers. Good cops DO exist. Plenty of people go into the career hoping to fix things, or just genuinely want to help their community in whatever way they can. But the thing is, they’re fighting a losing battle because the system is working against them. When they DO speak up against the corruption, bigotry, violence and other issues, they tend to get fired and blacklisted from the field. Or sometimes, they get outright murdered and it’s treated as a “suicide.”

A shitty fact of life: sometimes, the people who are more willing to resort to underhanded tactics and willing to turn a blind eye to corruption are the ones who climb up the career ladder furthest. And in the case of the police, it’s deep-rooted enough that it can’t be fixed internally anymore. But that doesn’t make literally every police officer corrupt.

I’m not posting this to make some political point or argument though. I obviously disagree with Kurikuri’s opinion, but I respect it. I can even respect her decision to remove the stories featuring the police, or even the ones heavily focusing on the characters’ jobs as pro heroes. I can see how heroes are just another version of law enforcement, because honestly, they are.

As a writer and a reader, I fully respect that it’s ultimately her choice to delete her stories. It’s not my place to make demands. She’s the one who created it, and as a writer I know the hard work and time that goes into crafting stories, so I believe she has a right in how it’s used and shared. The fact she shared it in the first place was something she didn’t have to do.

But the thing is, she DID share it, which is why I have this conflict.

As a writer, I’ve always believed that fiction can be more powerful than fact.

Fiction can give readers a window into mindsets you’d never imagine before, because you can connect more easily with fictional characters than real people on the news. That’s why Uncle Tom’s Cabin was so critical in the battle against slavery: it didn’t just gave a face to slavery, it let readers experience the characters’ lives directly. People got to see the struggles and suffering firsthand, feel the rising crescendo of hope each time freedom is in reach, and the soul-crushing despair every time that hope gets dashed by outside forces.

Fiction may not always be “true” or even “accurate,” but it can help us understand other people, see them as fellow humans, in ways that nonfiction just can’t. It can evoke emotions, empathy and familiarity in a reader that a news story or biography can’t capture because it draws you directly into their world.

And it’s that part—the part where readers enter this fictional world to connect to characters they’ll never meet—that leads to the other power of fiction that many people overlook:

Fiction has the ability to help readers persevere.

How many people reading this have used books to get away from trouble in their lives? To take a breather from all their anxieties and stress, and dive head-first into this other world for just a moment, where nothing else matters? How many people reading this had their whole lives changed by reading a story where a character’s words resonated with them? Where it helped them come to an epiphany about how to do better, how to be better.

Sometimes, the world is too overwhelming and we need to escape it. That’s the beauty of fiction. It lets us go to a world where our problems just don’t matter. Even if the world in question is worse than our own, it can still be a relief and give us hope because hey, at least we’re not living in 1984 or the Hunger Games, right? Stories are what keeps many people going through the hardest time, what gives them hope that life isn’t utterly hopeless.

And even after a story is finished, whether it’s fan fiction, a book, a show, or any other medium, that story will have a special place in people’s hearts. Many people will go back to those stories years later when they’re faced with immense stress and need a break from the real world, so that they can dive into the world that helped them persevere the last time they felt so bad. Just having a copy of it on hand can be a source of comfort even if you never read it again.

I want to highlight one phrase Kurikuri used in her post to describe how people feel writing stories about police and heroes: "fun and escapist”. That’s honestly so accurate, those stories are escapist, and that is why I’m so conflicted.

Stories about superheroes, while technically revolving around themes of law enforcement, are a form of escapism FROM police corruption.

There’s a reason that superhero comics are so popular in America. Superheroes appeal to a natural desire for justice because as so aptly pointed out, the real world doesn’t always HAVE that justice. It gives an ideal for people to aspire to, a glimpse of what could be, what should be. (Come to think of it, that’s probably why I hate the DC cinematic universe so much, it’s skewed way too much to favor the villains/antagonists and maximize suffering for the good guys.)

Right now, the world is full of more injustice than ever before. I can’t turn on the news without feeling my rage and stress boil over. Every day it gets worse and worse somehow, and I (and many others) genuinely fear that the United States may be heading towards a civil war this November. Donald Trump’s voice alone is enough to make my blood boil at this point.

I, and many others, turn to fan fiction so I can break away from reality because that amount of rage and fear just isn’t healthy.

I don’t have depression, or anxiety, or an abusive family, or a chronic illness. I’m not at risk of being made homeless anytime soon, nor do I need to worry about bills right now or going hungry. I’m a privileged white girl who has barely anything to worry about. What I’m saying is I’m fucking lucky and I know it, but I STILL can’t stand thinking about the state of the world and need to get the fuck away from it to take a breather for my own mental health.

And I also know that many people don’t have that option because their situation is so bad, they NEED to be aware of it at all times.

In the past when writing for other fandoms, I’ve had people tell me my fan fiction was the reason they did not commit suicide.

In my early college years I fell into the creepypasta community and was pretty active in it, especially on deviantArt. I don’t know if that particular fandom’s subject and focus makes it more appealing to teenagers going through rough times or what, but I swear, more than half the people I spoke to suffered from some form of mental illness, abusive or broken family and home situations, bullying, and every other way the world can screw someone over through means beyond their control.

During that time, a few readers left comments that waiting for my stories to update were what kept them going. They didn’t explicitly say that it was the only reason they didn’t kill themselves. It was more just remarks like, “Your writing is the only thing keeping me going.”

I’m not vain enough to believe my stories are so good, it made people decide to continue living JUST to see what happens next. Suicidal thoughts and urges are much more complex than that. But it’s still not something you expect to hear on something you write for fun.

I’ve thought about it a lot over the years, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it probably wasn’t because my stories were "just that good.” I think it was because they needed something to cling to in bleak times. That sometimes at the lowest point where all seems lost, people need just one little thought, just the smallest thing to push away those dark urges before they could fully overwhelm them. Something like, “If I die now, I won’t get to see how that story ends.” It’s such a small thing, but having something to look forward to can be so powerful in fighting off impulsive decisions.

It’s made me hyper-aware of just how powerful writing is.

To me, I see writing as a way of helping others. I give people that option for escape. It’s a large part of why I update on a regular, weekly schedule, and why I published extra chapters when the pandemic got announced and when the riots started. People need that comfort, that little break from reality to just sit and breathe so they can get through the rest of the day. I can’t do much to fix the world, but I can at least give people that.

Right now, people need that escape more than ever.

And deleting the stories is taking that escape away and causing MORE stress.

In times like this, people often turn to the stories they know will help most, and plenty of people in fandoms will first search up their favorite ships. They look for fluff, smut, angst... It helps people feel better to focus on these two people who are obviously in love as they work through their troubles.

Many times, readers will be more drawn to stories in the canon universe than radical AUs set in other universes. That’s how they were introduced to those characters. I myself can enjoy no-power and fantasy AUs sometimes, but what I really crave are how they interact in the canon world because that’s the world and versions of them I want to see the most. By deleting EVERY SINGLE STORY IN THE CANON UNIVERSE, that option was removed.

In many of the stories that were deleted, the characters’ careers were honestly a minor facet of the story. Some used it to establish the setting, such as treating injuries after a patrol. Some just simply used it to explain they work at UA, a school for teaching kids with superpowers. Some just had them work as heroes because it’s set in the canon universe, and never directly show ANTTHING about the work.

I’m not always looking for a story about how being a hero shapes and impacts their lives, and most of those stories that got deleted AREN’T about being a hero. That’s just one piece of their character, it’s far from the focal point. It could honestly be removed from several of them without changing the rest of the story.

I can get wanting to make a political point and I respect that, but by deleting those stories, you’ve taken away a key source of comfort from hundreds, thousands of people. By deleting the stories, you’re making the stress worse.

On Saturday night, I realized several of my favorite stories are suddenly gone. I knew Kurikuri had deleted a bunch of her stories, but I hadn’t realized just how many of them I liked. Some of them I’ve specifically sought out to reread multiple times in the past, never really paying attention to the author. Realizing they’re just gone caused me heavy stress because it made me paranoid about all these other stories I like to reread. I don’t expect those stories to be around forever, but I still didn’t expect them to vanish so suddenly. I never thought I’d need to download them to make sure I’d still be able to read them while the site is still up.

I spent hours searching out specific stories to see if they were written by her, and make sure they’re not gone forever. I have no way of knowing which ones she’d written and deleted because there’s not exactly a list out there anymore. My desperate search for those stories and one in particular (which I still haven’t found) contributed to the lack of sleep I got that night.

And I need to reiterate: I am mentally healthy and have no major stresses in my immediate life. And that’s why I’m hyper-aware of how this stress will affect people who AREN’T as lucky as I am.

If an author decides to delete their stories because they feel the stories themselves push harmful values or themes, fine. If they’re getting harassed, or it reminds them of a bad time in the lives, or they just don’t like that story anymore, okay. I can respect that and accept it.

But these stories were deleted for the EXACT reasons that people will be looking for them now more than ever, and that’s where I draw the line.

This applies to ALL fandoms.

If you as a fan fiction writer have more than, say, 100 kudos on a completed story or one-shot, there’s a good chance people will read and reread your story in stressful times. If you have a reasonably popular story that updates on a regular or even semi-regular basis, there is a chance that someone is using it as a lifeline to have something to look forward to while the rest of their lives go to hell. Maybe not because they specifically love it, but because it gives them something routine.

I want to make it clear that it’s not our job to care for other people’s mental health. Fan fiction writers don’t have an obligation to people, we’re doing it for fun first and foremost. We’re not some sort of saviors, and we shouldn’t think of ourselves that way or we can honestly screw people up worse. We’re not obligated to write these stories JUST for our fans.

At most, our stories are sources of support and comfort for readers. A little break from reality. If writing a story is causing you more stress than enjoyment, stop. Fan fiction, and all other fan media and stories in general, is ultimately created for the creator’s enjoyment more than anything.

Your own mental health comes first. Don’t set yourself on fire to keep other people warm.

But with how utterly fucked and unfair the world is right now, people need those stories now more than ever. So if you’ve got a story out there that’s fairly popular, please, please, PLEASE be mindful of your readers before deciding to delete it. Now is the absolute last time people need more stress trying to find a single story. And if you’re going to delete it, maybe give readers a heads up so that those who need it or have some powerful attachment to it for all the reasons I’ve discussed here can download a copy for their own personal use.

Don’t hurt your readers to make a point.

[initiumseries]

LMAO but thats the think choni don't make sense. Everyone on Twitter would probably call us hompphobic/racist for not seeing any chemistry in an interracial f/f ship but there's literally no substance. Cheryl is a stuck up rich girl who hates the Sepents but falls in love with one in 3 episodes and now they live together. They spent 3 months together but we don't see any of it???

Oh tbh I’m waiting for people to run in screaming at me for being “racist/homophobic” for not immediately, blindly and without question jumping on board a gay interracial ship that makes no fucking sense instead of questioning why Choni makes no fucking sense. Folks be so desperate for Black people to be “loved on” (we never actually see this loving process actually take place, Black people are just tacked on to white partners to serve as Magical Negroes but whatever) by literally anyone, anything other than other Black people and that level of internalized antiblackness is NOT my burden to unpack.  

We’re not talking out of our asses here. Choni has no screen time and it’s been clear to me for a while, from the dialogue, and from how they run this show, Riverdale isn’t invested in a truly diverse, fleshed out cast. They’re looking for hit points. Because if they WERE, we would have seen a lot better development for Toni and Cheryl. Because AS WE MET THEM, there’s no fucking way Toni would give a shit about Cheryl and I’m sorry but I FIRMLY believe there are a ton of OTHER girls Cheryl could have knocked boots with, privately or otherwise. But since Riverdale can’t even tell me if it’s 1919 or 2019, they create more problems than they solve with this storyline. 

Them living together is just…Ok I need to clear something up, are they living in the mansion she burned down? Or in that weird Kiddie Serpents trailer park thing? Because I have a hard time believing a rich white girl is having no issues adjusting to living with a bunch of poor teens in a trailer park. Give me a fucking break. Also Riverdale, do y’all just not have Child Protective Services for anyone other than Jughead or…?? Cheryl is not 18 right? So how is she or Veronica signing for ANYTHING? Also, how can she just…LEAVE home with no school or system involvement? Does Toni just not have parents or…??? Like what the FUCK guys? We know NOTHING about the details of their lives. And just rando cameos of them sitting together or holding hands or whatever is trash. The chemistry thing isn’t even specific to Choni so people can get comfortable being pressed because not a single couple on that cast makes sense or has any chemistry. They all look uncomfortable as fuck around each other. Betty and Veronica are literally the worst best friends I’ve ever seen on television. This whole show is a dumpster fire, but given how often gay couples are relegated to the background or one member from the couple is usually brutally murdered (I didn’t forget about Betty’s suddenly serial killing father who killed gay dudes as some kind of religious punishment we never talk about), we deserved some attention to Choni, ESPECIALLY given their backgrounds. 

[lj-writes]

Wait... Am I reading all this correctly...? Does China actually like Finn over Rey...?Like, China would rather watch Finn over R*ylo...? Despite Disney acting like their research team finds China to be anti-black as fuck...? China actually prefers to see more of Finn...? 😮

I mean, China is antiblack as fuck, like pretty much the whole world, but I think antiblackness is a little more complicated than not wanting to see Black people so if that’s the conclusion Disney drew they’re wrong. I don’t have enough knowledge of the Chinese media market or culture to make a full comment on this but I know that in Korea, which also has serious problems with racism and antiblackness, there are a few successful Black entertainers and media figures.

It doesn’t take a ton of movie knowledge, however, to say that better action sequences among other things would have helped TLJ be more successful in China and not, like, have its screen time cut by 90% a week into its release.

To be fair, I don’t think Finn alone could have turned things around barring some massive changes. According to an article linked from the above article analyzing the reasons TLJ flopped so badly in China, the only fight sequences in the new SW movies that Chinese moviegoers found worthwhile were Donnie Yen’s in Rogue One. Which is fair enough, Donnie is an actual martial arts master and his fight scenes were on another level. LucasFilm can’t make that a regular thing for Star Wars without changing the nature of the franchise, and it probably shouldn’t.

What they could and should have done was make TLJ itself a better movie, more comprehensible and aesthetically pleasing instead of letting a director new to blockbusters and international releases do whatever the hell he liked. Using a fit and coordinated actor like John more on top of that for good action sequences would have helped TLJ do better.

[sunnyharley]

internalized misogyny within fandom

I’ve been seeing alot of hate against lea lately and I thought I’d mention why it’s been bothering me lately. First of all Henrik is not Even. So if he wants to post pictures of his girlfriend he very well can. You cannot control him. I don’t care what kind of ideas you’ve projected on him but he is an adult and if he wants to express his affections for her publicly then he can. That’s just how it is. 

“well when you’re in public you open yourself up to criticism” yes that is absolutely true. the more open you are online the more unwanted opinions you subject yourself to however this does not excuse the level of vitriol that many skam fans feel they can leave on lea’s posts. No one deserves to have their appearance critiqued so harshly or have their friends deal with judgement as well. No one deserves to be accused of using their significant other. 

Lea posting a picture of her and her boyfriend at 21:21, an important custom to many fans, probably pissed off alot of people but why? 21:21 is supposed to represent the things you love, things you are grateful for, things that make you happy. So why am I seeing so much hate from skam fans? Have you considered that maybe she’s happy? That they both are? I know many of you guys like to thirst over Henrik, and I do too, but you shouldn’t hate on someone else just because they’re dating them. That’s pathetic. And also misogynistic which leads me to my next point:

Unchecked misogyny within fandom. Many of the fandom is composed of straight girls. Or at least girls who like men. Attraction to men, especially good looking supposedly kind men, isn’t the problem. The problem lies with cracking jokes at the girlfriend’s expense. Judging her for superficial reasons and hating on her. Many fandoms do this to the girlfriends of the men they support, and the skam fandom is unfortunately no different. It’s strange to me though, considering how many of you claim to care about feminism and women’s rights but yet hate on a woman who posted a picture.  Do you realize how insane that is? It’s a picture. Lea, from my knowledge at least, hasn’t said or done anything too “problematic” but yet you hate on her over a picture. But you excuse men’s actions for much less. I strongly encourage you to reflect on yourself and question why you are willing to demonize women for no real reason but excuse men for actually being problematic. (I am of course talking about adam being antiblack and yousef being ableist but that is a different topic for another time) But yeah, I’ve seen more pointless hate thrown her way than men who actually perpetuate inequality. And that’s a problem.

“her post ruined her chances of her boyfriends’ gullruten chances” I’m sure they will live. I’m sure Henrik won’t be too pressed if he doesn’t win the awards tbh. He has friends, some supportive fans, a loving mom and girlfriend. I’m sure he’ll still be alright with or without the award. But it’s nice that you try to hold that over his head. No one asked you to “campaign” or vote excessively. Henrik said if you think him and Tarjei deserved to win you could vote, but you don’t have to. And maybe you shouldn’t if you’re going to be so negative. 

“I don’t mind them being together but don’t try dragging the fandom that got you here in the first place” Okay……first of all Henrik didn’t get success from the fandom. He got it from Julie Andem. And he earned his spot in the cast okay? He got the part of Even by being an exceptional actor. How toxic do you have to be to say something like that? This is getting ridiculous.

tldr: if you really don’t like lea or her dating henrik then don’t follow her on instagram. and don’t engage with her. don’t claim to care about feminism and “supporting women” if you’re going to throw all of that ideology under the bus just because you’re lowkey jealous that she’s dating him. 

[nevermindirah]

5 and 18?

Ooh thank you for asking!!

5) character you were most surprised to end up writing

I fell in love with James Copley over the course of I See Your Eyes Seek a Distant Shore. He's the character I have the most life experience in common with — I don't work for the CIA or NSA, I promise, but I can't really say more than that and I know exactly how ridiculous this all sounds — but I hadn’t thought about him in that much detail and originally his role in that fic was as glorified plot device. It was over the course of writing it that he and Nile got to know each other and I realized he's a lot more than a plot device in Nile's life. I didn't explore his own feelings or motivations because that fic was so focused on Nile and honestly I see several of the things I most dislike about myself in Copley so I’m not sure how healthy it would be for me to explore him in more detail right now. I'm glad to have spent so much time exploring how he grew to be one of the most important people in Nile's life and I very likely will do more of that in different fics in the future.

18) were there any works you read that affected you so much that it influenced your writing style? what were they?

Now that I’m reflecting on this question I’m realizing that there’s a direct line from a handful of my very favorite Cap fics to I See Your Eyes Seek a Distant Shore, and less directly to pretty much everything else I’ve written:

Make a Thing Go Right by @hansbekhart: 100k SamBucky epic that explores trauma recovery and antiblackness and police violence and the messiness of 20something queer community, featuring Jewish Bucky and a very interesting and extremely unusual intersection with canon. This is my very favorite fic of all time — any TOG fans (and especially BoN fans) who have never read any MCU fic, go read this one right now.

This, You Protect by owlet: 64k epic that starts a 264k series that follows Bucky Barnes through his trauma recovery in so. much. detail. This fic includes therapy tactics that I went on to use in my real life, and some of those therapy tactics led me to the ones that I then handed off to Booker in ISYESADS.

4 Minute Window by speranza: 24k adventure that kicks off 157k of adventures and romance and all kinds of genre-crossing gorgeousness. This is my favorite of this author’s many exceptional fics and I aspire to reach even a tenth of this level of mastery of combining a heart-pounding caper with insightful characterization that informs said heart-pounding caper.

Known Associates by thingswithwings: 295k epic that follows Steve Rogers from starving disabled queer socialist to physically and socially powerful queer socialist who is an international symbol of a lot of shit he does and does not agree with. Extraordinarily thoughtful exploration of how queer and trans identities change as the cultural contexts around a character change.

There was an AU I read probably close to 15 years ago now where Faith Lehane from Buffy had alley-behind-a-bar sex with Sirius Black and it was hot as fuck and very weird and perfect and it was probably only ever posted on a long-deleted LiveJournal but the concept of writing smut that is that hot without belaboring the getting-to-know-you part beyond just a few sentences has stayed with me for a very long time.

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