#though i don't think that's the majority of people in a fandom space

[witsserviceablesubstitute]

I don’t think the harassment is acceptable. I think people are really out of pocket doing that, but I do think him establishing what is and isn’t part of his job is fine. And maybe did need to be said, because clearly people didn’t know.

As for using Buddie as promo… idk. The marketing team is gonna do whatever ABC feels will garner the most viewers, and right now it’s Buck being bi and the long held desire to see him and Eddie become canon. They’re gonna milk it however they can, which falls back on Tim, thus him feelings like he needed to explain himself, presumably.

I do agree it could be toned down though, because Buck is now canonically dating someone else, and I don’t recall them teasing Buddie for real when he was with women. So doing it now the way they are is purely because they’re banking on Buddie fans, while also currently not committing.

Plus, everything Buddie related from before has to now be assumed not canon, so it’s putting everyone in a messy spot. Because we have canon, fanon, show runner confirmed but not on screen, and canon jokes that are now floating in the in between because no one knows if the they’ll be acknowledged in canon or get scrapped.

I think people should just calm down and wait to see what the season brings, anyway. Once it’s over and we get an idea of where all the characters are at, then start asking bigger questions or letting out the more angry frustrations.

Hi! Sorry for the late reply. The sheer amount of work that goes into television hasn't often been well realized in fan spaces. The writing, how it translates to screen, the process of acting, all the work by the crew, the pressures from moneymen, managing the expectations of the audience, the long hours and repetition of scenes. How multiple people working on a creative project means multiple interpretations— all of which bleed through. The showrunner has every right to protect himself and the people who work for him. I was mainly trying to draw on my own experiences in how these harassment campaigns happen, how they continue, and how they can be mitigated.

US TV production has a long and rocky history when it comes to queer narratives. That doesn't really end now that there are canonically queer characters on screen and this fallout is part of the response to that tension.

For example, if I engage in the whole Buddie vs. Bucktommy thing (sorry), I'd say both perspectives have a point they don't realize they're making about queerness in television storytelling.

The thesis I feel like Buddie fans are making is there are two queer coded main characters who love each other, who have seasons of build up in their individual characters and in their relationship. Why can't they be together? Because they're two male main characters on network television? Be bold, be brave. Wouldn't it be amazing if they did commit to that story? Wouldn't it be game changing? Sexuality and friendship and love is not set in stone, it's okay to be flexible. M/F relationships are allowed that space to develop within a story and you know if one of them were a woman they probably would be together already.

The thesis I feel like BuckTommy fans are making is that Buddie was never going to happen, realistically, and it's amazing enough that they committed to Buck being canonically bisexual. Why do you want to rock the boat? Don't you see that if you can't embrace this development it could be snatched away at any moment. The show is its own thing within its own context and not the blinkered interpretation you have of two characters. This queerness is canon.

Those two thesis's (thesi?) are rubbing up against each other and building straw men of the other to attack and tear down. A showrunner wading in was only ever going to combust that tension further and that's what happened. What keeps happening.

[prokopetz]

I think a lot of folks in indie RPG spaces misunderstand what's going on when people who've only ever played Dungeons & Dragons claim that indie RPGs are categorically "too complicated". Yes, it's sometimes the case that they're making the unjustified assumption that all games are as complicated as Dungeons & Dragons and shying away from the possibility of having to brave a steep learning cure a second time, but that's not the whole picture.

A big part of it is that there's a substantial chunk of the D&D fandom – not a majority by any means, but certainly a very significant minority – who are into D&D because they like its vibes or they enjoy its default setting or whatever, but they have no interest in actually playing the kind of game that D&D is... so they don't.

Oh, they'll show up at your table, and if you're very lucky they might even provide their own character sheet (though whether it adheres to the character creation guidelines is anyone's guess!), but their actual engagement with the process of play consists of dicking around until the GM tells them to roll some dice, then reporting what number they rolled and letting the GM figure out what that means.

Basically, they're putting the GM in the position of acting as their personal assistant, onto whom they can offload any parts of the process of play that they're not interested in – and for some players, that's essentially everything except the physical act of rolling the dice, made possible by the fact most of D&D's mechanics are either GM-facing or amenable to being treated as such.*

Now, let's take this player and present them with a game whose design is informed by a culture of play where mechanics are strongly player facing, often to the extent that the GM doesn't need to familiarise themselves with the players' character sheets and never rolls any dice, and... well, you can see where the wires get crossed, right?

And the worst part is that it's not these players' fault – not really. Heck, it's not even a problem with D&D as a system. The problem is D&D's marketing-decreed position as a universal entry-level game means that neither the text nor the culture of play are ever allowed to admit that it might be a bad fit for any player, so total disengagement from the processes of play has to be framed as a personal preference and not a sign of basic incompatibility between the kind of game a player wants to be playing and the kind of game they're actually playing.

(Of course, from the GM's perspective, having even one player who expects you to do all the work represents a huge increase to the GM's workload, let alone a whole group full of them – but we can't admit that, either, so we're left with a culture of play whose received wisdom holds that it's just normal for GMs to be constantly riding the ragged edge of creative burnout. Fun!)

* Which, to be clear, is not a flaw in itself; a rules-heavy game ideally needs a mechanism for introducing its processes of play gradually.

[lemotmo]

I think we should all be reminded of this more often:

What are the Upfronts?

***

Source: wikipedia

Source: 6ABC.com

We have never, in the history of 911, seen advertising for Buddie on such a grand scale. We were bombarded with it. Just when we thought it was over, something new dropped. It was insane and absolutely glorious.

Unfortunately these Upfronts were held in the same week of the season finale. A season finale that came after a couple of episodes that were not well received, because of Bobby's death and the way all of the characters' personal storylines were sidelined in the wake of his death.

If these Upfronts had been held only one week later? Things would have looked decidedly different. Fandom would have been excited for Buddie in season 9.

The timing was just bad and we were all so swept away by Ryan and Oliver's chemistry that we forgot what these Upfronts were really about: Season 9.

So taking all of that into consideration? Coupled with the fact that Ryan and Oliver would NEVER consciously shipbait in any way? They were just there to promote the next season.

I am looking forward to season 9. I have been on this ship since 2019. I'm not leaving until I see those two idiots und up together. I am still 100% confident we'll get there.

But as I've stated before, I have no idea of the timeline. The only thing I know is that, after the major clues in season 8 and the Upfronts? Season 9 seems very promising right now.

Let's not forget that all of that Buddie build up from season 8 is still right there. It didn't just vanish. Non fandom people picked up on it and have clued in that something is brewing between Buck and Eddie. Even more so, a lot of them are anticipating for something to happen between them in season 9.

Buddie firmly stepped out of the strictly fandom spaces, into the limelight of the general audience. That is huge and so much more than what we ever got from FOX.

Further more, the members of the GA who dislike the idea of Buddie can now switch over to '911: Nashville'. It seems like that show will be right up their alley. Good riddance.

In conclusion:

Was the last part of season 8 one giant mess? Yes.

Did Bobby's sudden death throw a wrench into everyone's personal storylines? Yes.

Was there a lot of weird bts stuff going on with Peter/Bobby's goodbye? Yes. Something happened behind the scenes, that much is clear. I don't think we'll ever find out the full truth about that though.

Were we disappointed by how all of this was handled? Yes. As we should be.

But we're past that now.

The Upfronts clearly showed us that Buddie is, now even more than ever, very popular. With audience, fans and the press alike.

Narratively speaking there is only one way this can go. This show has written itself into a corner when it comes to Buddie. The foreshadowing is very clear.

No other love interest will ever compare or be good enough anymore. There is no beating the natural chemistry between Ryan and Oliver. We saw it on full display last week.

So yeah...

You don't have to agree with me or anything like that. I'm not here to proclaim that my opinion is the only opinion that is right.

Everyone is free to draw their own conclusions and make their own decisions. Whatever you decide to do is completely valid and true.

I just wanted to offer some perspective. That's all.

That being said, you can probably tell that I'm still all aboard the Buddie train. There's no getting rid of me. 😄😋

[olderthannetfic]

Are there fandoms where the amount of male fanfiction writers significantly outweighs female writers? I think there was a survey or study that proved that female fandom goers tend to gravitate towards transformative ways of engaging with a work (so fanfic and fanart etc), while male members tend to gravitate towards archival methods (wiki, writing guides, etc). I know for a fact that there are plenty of male fic writers though. The only fandom I can think of where men dominated in fanfic circles is My Little Pony

--

Supposedly, Ranma had a lot back in the day, but I frankly doubt that they were an overwhelming majority.

Men don't all just compile canon wikis or collect action figures. The true difference I've noticed is that cis dudes are socialized to expect to get something for their labor. They, broadly and on average, show up more writing spec scripts or derivative but saleable works.

People researching this tend to be far too focused on the actual fic part, but I think it would be more valuable to look at it in the context of unpaid labor in general. Cis dudes do a lot of unpaid coding labor, but it tends to be stuff that will get very obvious payoffs from their communities, and it's directly relevant to getting jobs. Many of the less prestigious volunteer spaces are dominated by women. It's a whole brew of who expects what, who's underemployed and thus has the wrong kind of free time, who has job prospects beyond unpaid labor in that field, etc.

Anyway, maybe there are some more corners we don't know about, but I would not expect to find all that many fandoms of any real size where the men vastly outnumber the women.

[thebroccolination]

Hi Key, your post is the second I've seen that hinted at Joss but without further explanation. He generally has a positive public perception and I only know him from 3WBF (which I liked), so I'm curious where this shift in perception is coming from recently.

Would you mind making a post or directing me to where I can learn more about his general...situation.

I apologize if this is intrusive since I know you don't like to engage in Fandom Drama and like to keep your space positive, but I don't have XTwitter and his Tumblr tag is usually quite dead.

Thank you in advance!

Why I Don't Fuck with Joss: An Extremely Academic Essay of Words and Screenshots

Hi Anon!

I normally would have DM'd you an answer to this, but since you sent the ask anonymously and you were very kind in how you asked, I didn't want to ignore you.

However, two things:

I do generally make it a policy to keep my negative personal thoughts about certain actors to private conversations or, y'know, Discord servers, just to keep it off public platforms where toxicity is already rampant. In this case, though, I think the situation is interesting enough to comment on. (Plus, y'know, I'm amazed he was even managing a comeback when he's been known to Be Like This for years.)

I didn't get a lot of primary sources for this post because quite frankly I don't like Joss and I don't want to look at his face any more than I already have. However, friends who've been following this more closely than I have were able to verify that there are sources out there for everything I'm going to mention. Just, y'know, don't use me or this post as a source. This isn't one of my Citations Included Posts, this is just a Why I Don't Fuck with This Guy Post.

So, for context, I made this post last month, and someone made a more explicitly worded reblog here that's honestly better if you're going in without any context.

Essentially, Joss has had a dodgy reputation for years, but I think because fan turnover is high in interfandom and he's never been in a BL series before, most interfans just know Joss as A Tall Man Who Likes Sportsball.

But when I got into Thai BL back in 2020, Joss was one of the first actors I heard of as ~Problematique~ so I looked into him, and what I learned made me go, "Ew," so I just keenly ignored him from then on. (General gross stuff like the Domundi boob-grabbing prank and some assorted Dudebro comments about women. I don't remember specifics anymore because he was barely on my radar, but a friend at the time who'd been in fandom longer basically told me, "Yeah, that's Joss, lol.")

Interestingly, before JossGawin became a thing, most interfans were rooting for JossLuke, but I think given how vocally left-leaning Luke has proven to be, I wouldn't be surprised if Luke saw the prospect of tying his public reputation to Joss and went, "lol no goddamn thank you."

Gawin, on the other hand, seems to be down for whatever GMMTV wants him to do, so he probably just sees Joss as a colleague he makes out with (acting is a weird job). He went to high school in western Pennsylvania, he has white relatives on his dad's side, and he hangs out with the Gym Dudes of GMMTV, so I'm sure he's completely desensitized and is one of those guys who thinks, "Nah," but doesn't go so far as to say, "Not cool, dude." The Gawin Caskey Method seems to be: throw a basketball, make out with a dude on camera, go home and eat an edible. Dismount.

Unfortunately, even though Gawin's never really made any political statements or taken any major stand for the queer community, he's gained goodwill that some people are now calling into question because of Joss.

Anyway, apparently Joss used to follow Andrew Tate on Twitter until Tate was suspended, so it seems a lot of people assumed Joss unfollowed Tate, but yeah, between the sexist comments, Boobgate, and admiring Joe Rogan, that was enough for me to physically recoil from the screen when I saw the teaser for MGB.

Okay NOW, everything from this point onward is new stuff I've learned over the past month that made me go, "Oh. So he's worse now."

Joss has apparently had that Joe Rogan quote pinned to his Twitter account since 2020, but people just shrugged it off because they like his man stomach or something? (I don't find him attractive, but even if I did, I truly don't understand how he made it this far. It feels like he's been pretty firmly canceled every year since I got here, honestly.)

I also didn't like him weight-shaming Gawin. There's some older clip of him calling Gawin fat, and I know in Asia it's more common to comment on other people's bodies and weight, but I also recently found out that he got Gawin a meat cake for his birthday because idk actual cake is for pussies? (Sorry, Anon, I was trying to aim for an objective tone but I abandoned it because I reeeally don't like this man.) And apparently a lot of JG fanservice is just Joss and Gawin at the gym so Joss can teach Gawin self-control or something? I've had their tag blocked from the beginning, so you'll have to look into that if you're curious.

Ah, and at some point in the last few months, Joss was apparently asked what his "type" is and he said something like "white, skinny English-speaking Europeans/Americans"(?) Which apparently made Asian women go, "Hey, c'mere real quick: good. Bye."

I also thought it was a huge red flag that Joss has been in the industry for years, and his domestic fanbase is still quite small. Others have pointed out that very few fan interactions with him are in Thai, and he's clearly courting a western audience both in his individual engagement and by partnering with a mixed American actor. When he did the LGBTQ+ panel last summer, apparently the reaction from Thai commenters was, "lmao why Joss?" not, "Oh yes, of course, Joss!"

So it seems like GMMTV has been trying to do a rebrand for Joss using Gawin and interfans more generally since Joss speaks English and interfans don't generally seek out the resources to do research. Remember last year when GMMTV announced that Y-MIND script competition? It was originally domestic only, but after Thai fans overwhelmingly went, "The contract terms here are wildly exploitative, so fuck off," GMMTV rereleased the promotional material in English and went, "HEY INTERFANS WANNA SEND US STUFF :D?"

That told me they really don't think especially highly of us.

On December 15th, someone pointed out that Joss didn't just follow Trump on Twitter, he also followed a ton of extreme alt-right accounts on Instagram. Not normal political figures, either. Obscure figures like Pearl, Candace Owens, that guy who was saying Your Body My Choice, and Andrew Tate's right-hand man, and more! Some of his fans tried to point out that he follows progressive Thai politicians, but as far as the American side, he only followed alt-right conservative accounts with zero liberal accounts.

Though, in fairness, someone did point out that Joss also follows famous progressive Democratic figures [checks notes] comedian Chris Rock and basketball player Stephen Curry.

So. Whoohoo for that, amirite?

Since Joss's fans weren't having much success defending him on their own, they threw some @'s at his account to get him to make some kind of statement that would somehow explain away why he was following a deep, deep alt-right fanatic like Pearl. (Spoiler: He didn't.)

The JossGawin International fan club even released the above statement to address the issue, then received such alarmingly vitriolic backlash from the JossGawin fandom for "betraying" Joss that the fanclub decided to deactivate entirely. (I have no idea if they reactivated or not, since I stopped keeping up with this whole debacle shortly afterward.)

One Thai(?) JossGawin fan actually seems to have used ChatGPT to create an English comment to chastise the fanclub for their lack of support in Joss's dire times:

Amusingly, rather than address his fans' concerns or unfollow any of the accounts causing the chaos, Joss instead just started deleting any comment on his Instagram that called on him to comment.

Five days later, he unfollowed 137 accounts. No idea how many of those were alt-right extremists and how many were just extra padding to make it look like a general cleanse, but it was at least fifty last I heard, and the fact that 1) it took him nearly a week to do anything but delete the comments calling him out, and 2) his first tweet after this whole mess was a quote-retweet of GMMTV's message welcoming Barcode into the company saying, "lol this kid looks like if me and Gawin had a baby" just goes to show how unthreatened he feels.

After all, Joss has been this way for years, and his upcoming series with Gawin is probably going to do numbers regardless. He's successfully rebuilt his stagnant career off the support of interfans, and he knows he'll be fine.

Even Foei has a show with Tay! We're all good here. \:D/

So yeah! That's why I don't fuck with Joss. \:D/

This'll be the last I say on Joss publicly.

I just figured I'd make one all-encompassing post so I can link back to this in case anyone asks why I'm not supporting any of Gawin's projects with Joss. It's a shame because I do really like Gawin, but this isn't even a hard choice for me to make.

Oh, and while we're on the subject: the director of MGB, Ark, is also Not a Good Dude by all accounts I've heard from multiple people who've interacted with him privately. I mean, he sure is queer, but he's also said to be a misogynist with some white-people-worshipping tendencies. He doesn't have the highest opinion of BL fandom in general, either, especially when you look back on his whole direction of IT'S NOT A BL Shadow. Just, y'know, another reminder that queer people aren't Virtuous or Evil by nature. We're a big ole clusterfuck of nuance, so you don't have to support MGB for Ark just because he's a queer man. I have zero proof that I can share publicly, so you don't have to take my word for it. Just, y'know, in case you were on the fence, I've heard he's a dick.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go write absolutely filthy gay porn to purify myself from writing Joss's name so many times.

[zsakuva]

Regarding The Recent AnonConfessions

To the Tumblr Crumpet Community,

I’m aware that a couple of posts on audioroleplayconfessions have sparked an uproar over the last couple of days, and I think it has been blown way out of proportion, to the extent where I need to write this.

Though I agree that most criticisms about others can be handled in private, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and the confessions blog is a way to publicly post what they want to say while also keeping their anonymity. As a creator, it's unfortunate to see members having issues with other members, but that is also an opinion someone can have. It's impossible for everyone to get along, and inevitably, we are drawn to/repelled by certain people and behaviours.

Just as I agree that the confession author can block those in the community they have a problem with, so can those who have a problem with the confession blog. We all know the purpose of it and what it's used for, and it will likely have opinions/criticisms we don't like or agree with. It is meant to be a place for thoughts that would probably receive backlash/conflict with the majority in said fandom. Still, you are free to comment, and I always advocate for healthy discourse.

I have also seen the community blame Ringmaster for this. As far as I can see, Ringmaster did not break any of their own rules with the first post: it was not hate, nor was it targeted harassment because the member was unnamed. However, I think the second post treads a fine line between being a follow-up of the first post, and fighting with the community directly under the guise of anonymity, fuelling it further.

Again, if the confessions blog irritates/offends you, please block it for your health and your sanity.

The ZSakuVA tag has been filled with this recently. I understand that a lot of you want to defend the community and ensure it remains a safe space for all, and I have tried to keep it that way since the beginning. It's wonderful to see some positive comments stem from this. However, some posts simply reacting to the drama can prove detrimental to the community as a whole and fan the flame, drawing more eyes to the matter when there was no need to, and adding more conflict where there was little. Please do not insult others. Do not seek out the drama and cause more harm than good. And if you have a problem with another member, the best way to resolve it is by either talking to them privately, or blocking them.

I would recommend, before you post about drama like this (which shouldn't have been drama in the first place), ask yourself if it will contribute to the conflict or contribute to the community.

This will be my only post on the matter.

[tazmiilly]

smth I've been noticing in fandom (and especially prevalent in this fandom) is that people keep presenting headcanon as fact in analysis. makes it so hard to be a ford fan when the vast majority is people who don't like him <//3

its a very common thing in all fan spaces, but gravity falls has definitely been the worst about it in my experience. I think the reason it appears to be significantly worse is because the show lays down such a strong foundation for many characters and it either tends to get ignored, exaggerated, or rewritten by many fans.

i think stan, ford and fiddleford all get this treatment in one way or another.

though with ford, ive never seen people hate just some nice guy so much?? like it was shocking... I really don't get it. he's not even morally gray....he's just nice

[hyperions-light]

Writing Workshop Master Post

What is it?

A writing workshop lasting approximately seven weeks (barring complications), where we go over and practice critiquing a work, and then you provide a piece that is 5,000 words or less for the entire group to give you feedback on.

Where is it?

I run it through a private Discord server.

How much does it cost?

It's free! I'm doing this to provide access to this service for people who want to improve their writing skills without spending a lot of money. I do ask that if you join the workshop and are in a financial position to do so, you consider contributing a suggested donation of $50 (or whatever you can spare) to my ko-fi after your workshop day has passed. (I want to make sure you get something useful out of it first, though!) However, if you aren't able to do that, I understand, and it's still perfectly fine for you to participate!

Further details under the cut!

How long does it take, and when is it?

It takes approximately an hour and a half each time, and we are currently doing it on Sundays at noon MST. If the group would like to pick another date/time, I can likely accommodate it.

Who is allowed to participate?

Any adult who is fluent in reading and writing English is free to join. You do not need to be a native speaker. I have no desire to lock participation to English-speaking countries, but the topics covered in ESL classes are very different from those that I cover, and I don't feel qualified to teach that sort of curriculum. You do not need to be part of the Dragon Age or BW fandoms to join. If you are under the age of majority in the country where you live, please talk to me and we'll see if we can work something out. Some pieces submitted for critique may handle adult subject matter, so special accommodations/permissions may need to be arranged.

What information will you go over?

Close reading, providing helpful critique, how to give feedback to other people that is useful and well-received, how to line-edit a piece, how to write a critique letter, and some general writing tips.

How many people will be in each workshop?

I think I will stick with eight!

How do I sign up?

I will not start a new workshop until the current one is over, but if you know you want to participate, please contact me on Tumblr or ko-fi and I will reserve a spot for you in the next one. I will contact you and send you a survey when the previous workshop ends; if the timing is inconvenient for you, but you still want to do it, let me know and I can ask you later! If you want to, you can contact me right now!

Other writing workshops cost a lot more money. Are they overcharging me?

NO. This is an extraordinary amount of work, and I have no desire to devalue the services that other people provide in this space. I am doing this for comparatively little because I have a deeply held belief that people should have access to education, regardless of their economic circumstances.

Do I have to come to every single session?

Ideally, you should attend every session. The first two are necessary to participate in the rest of the course; if you can't make it to one of those two for any reason, please contact me and I'll see if we can figure out a time to make it up. However, the strength of the workshop is in the participants and the community of writers; the more people are present to give their opinions, the better each critique will be. Please try to come to as many meetings as possible, so that everyone can have a useful and fun critique!

I want to emphasize that this workshop does involve actual critical feedback of your work, and the participants will provide suggestions for improvement. However, I also expect all participants to be respectful and polite to one another, and to offer their critique with the author's goals in mind. If anyone cannot follow these guidelines, they will be asked to leave.

I have more questions! Where can I ask?

You can always contact me on Tumblr via asks or DMs, if you have any questions!

Thank you for your interest! Hope to see you all in workshop!

[motziedapul]

If you don't mind my sharing my own, probably less spicy POC rep in audio drama take: the AD community's tendency toward celebration of "representation" within the medium as if this rep applies to anything substancially besides queer characters is exausting. Sure, queer rep is important but so often reading "there's rep for everything!" and the cast is like, 95% white? Or, bafflingly, people claiming diversity for something that is entirely fanon? Mmh.

Hi anon!

My take is just about as spicy, honestly.

There's a tendency to value "racially ambiguous" characters played entirely by White actors over actual BIPOC characters

(usually with BIPOC actors, though I'm not as strict about this since I don't mind White actors playing BIPOC characters so long as BIPOC voice actors can play White characters and no BIPOC actors lose voice acting opportunities. And as long as more attention is given to BIPOC creators than we're getting currently).

It sometimes feels as though BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People Of Colour) characters and creators are overlooked in favour of characters who are ostensibly White but drawn by fandom as BIPOC.

I've seen a lot of support in the community from fellow audio drama people; I've felt uplifted by my fellow creators who are White, and I always appreciate and value that. And obviously some shows are just well made and part of their success is based on other factors.

But as someone who's also aware of audio drama fandom, it's easy to see how much favour is given to White Characters drawn as BIPOC in comparison to characters who are BIPOC in text, and I'm not sure why.

That's my spicy opinion. I follow a few BIPOC creators but I can only name two that have an amount of success comparable to White audio drama creators (Gabriel Urbina of W359 fame and Octavia Bray of Atypical Artists), but my knowledge is limited.

And that's not even getting into female led audio drama, but I do love the success of creators such as Lauren Shippen in the space.

I'm not here to yuck anyone's yum or blame anyone for this phenomenon, but I do think it's worth thinking about. Why I see 50 brown Jonny Simses for every canonically brown Samama Khalid. Maybe it's all a coincidence based on other factors. Maybe White characters invite more imagination in their depiction or something.

I don't mind BIPOC depictions of ostensibly White or "racially ambiguous" characters, but I'm not a big fan of if they outnumber depictions of canon BIPOC characters. I just think the latter deserve more love.

I'm no expert. Also I'm mostly in the horror space, apart from my love of Life With Leoh (a sci fi romcom). My knowledge is very limited so if anyone would like to contradict me, I welcome it (especially if it means discovering more BIPOC led shows).

I don't want this to just be about complaining, so please feel free to shout out some fantastic BIPOC led audio drama (either created by or with a majority BIPOC cast) or even share some art you've done of characters from them and I'll happily share them.

My favorites are Wolf 359 (by Gabriel Urbina) and Life with Leoh (by Octavia Bray)!

[scoobydoodean]

I know you said you had a lot of asks, but do you have any thoughts on why the fandom hates the idea of Dean being seen as a dad to Jack? I don't even know how to put it into words, but I feel like it just rubs me the wrong way the way that certain segments oversimplify all the stuff with Jack and make fatherhood a competition. Sorry to take up your time and you don't have to answer.

It's totally okay to send me asks. I've had a backlog for a long time that slowly increases in size for one reason or another (no time to answer then forgetting, left half answered in drafts and forgotten, wanting to circle back later with a fresh perspective, not having a strong opinion on something, it's about disk horse I've addressed as much as I'd like, etc). I do answer the vast majority of the asks I get as I get them and try to catch things that won't take me much time.

I think a lot of people really resent that Dean didn't automatically slot himself into a nurturing, parental role with Jack in early season 13. Dean was grieving Cas, Mary, and Crowley, he did not trust Jack because of "The Future" and because Dean was full of utter despair. He was suicidally depressed (13.05) and in absolutely no state to nurture/guide Jack or anyone else. Sam was disassociating from his own grief and because of that, would not stop trying to convince Dean that his grief was not real, and that exacerbated the situation and caused Dean and Jack to be pushed together when they needed space the most. Dean explicitly rejected being Jack's "mother", two episodes after telling his own mother in tears that he had to be Sam's mother and father when he was incapable of filling those roles, and that wasn't fair (12.22). 12.23 then replayed Dean's defining childhood trauma, "killing" his mother in front of him, and shouldering him with a "child" that was not his, who he was not equipped to parent but was expected to begin parenting. He was overwhelmed, utterly lost, and wanted to die, and Jack was not his child, and Dean trying to set boundaries was immediately and thoroughly dismissed by his brother.

Fandom prefers to ignore all of this and be angry at Dean for not setting aside his grief because Dean is the narrative heart—the hearth of the house. His love and care is expected and anticipated. In Supernatural, the idea of being loved/belonging/accepted tends to orbit around Dean, so his rejection of Jack in those early stages is built into a denial of Jack's right to be loved at all by anyone or be part of the family. Jack himself almost immediately starts seeking ways to please Dean, and his well-meaning, good-hearted attempts aren't taken to immediately and that angers fans. If it was Sam or Cas who didn't immediately take to Jack, their rejection would hardly register/quickly be forgotten, because their love and acceptance just doesn't carry the narrative significance that Dean's does (though the idea that Sam immediately accepted Jack is also tenuous at best—this is something Jack confronts Sam over in 13.03).

"Jack In The Box" and "Moriah" reignite people's indignation and bring them back to the anger they felt in early season 13, even though Jack was murdering and torturing people, Sam also tricked Jack into the box, Cas went behind all their backs to see about getting him put in The Cage, and the whole point of Moriah was Chuck trying to emotionally destabilize Dean specifically to the point he would kill Jack because Chuck is obsessed with a familycide ending where Dean is the bringer of judgement and his heart is ripped in two. The entire plot of season 15 starts from Chuck being enraged that despite all his manipulations and painstakingly laid plans, and despite the carrot and the stick (it was also literally a suicide play btw) Dean would not kill his son for the "greater good". No one wants to actually look at any of it because it doesn't support their unbelievably dull narratives about Dean... to the point they'll harass you for months over polls of canonical facts that they find inconvenient. People have become obsessed with this silly nonsense about cYcLeS while fundamentally misunderstanding what is happening because they don't actually remember the show. But they sure love to try and talk down to you about tHe CyClEs and how "interesting" and "fundamental" it is that Dean does nothing more that repeat generational patterns (among the Winchesters and the angels) when the entire goddamn show is about Dean Not Doing That and telling God (who has a canonical pervy obsession with him) to go fuck himself for a decade and a half instead, culminating in god unleashing his wrath on them for not repeating tHe CYcLEs he wanted them to repeat.

All that said, I myself don't think Dean wanted to be a father to Jack early on. I think he accepted that role eventually, but he made it very clear that it wasn't what he wanted like... day one. And there's literally nothing wrong with that. Dean becomes the "parent" who treats Jack more like an adult (which Jack appreciates, because he isn't a baby and hates being treated like one). Jack seeks Dean's council on more serious topics like nightmares from traumatic experiences, guilt, and sex. Dean teaches Jack how to drive, he encourages Cas to give Jack space when he's upset, he encourages Jack to go out and have a good day when he's dying when Sam and Cas want Jack to be on bed rest. I think some fans also look down on this, wanting Jack to be treated like a child and seeing Dean's actions as a rejection of Jack's alleged "child" status.

[elrielffs]

Like, I get when people say articles aren't confirmation. I get it. They are right.

But...when it's TIME, Today, E! News??? (This isn't ScreenRant where anybody can post anything.) Like, all these MAJOR publishers and brands recognizing Elriel? (Spotify, Audible...Spotify even doing something with SJM herself!)

A part of me thinks there's no way there's not a PR marketing thing happening. Why would SJM want it broadcasted over and over to MILLIONS of people who the next book could be about? (And not even speculating multiple couples, just one.)

And yeah you can argue she doesn't have a hand in all this but at some point I just gotta disagree when it's the big news, publishers and brands, sorry, call me delulu to think that her or her PR team don't have SOME hand in how arguably one of the most popular authors and book series and major long awaited release in said book series is presented and reported on?

And given that, considering it's ALWAYS Elriel is very telling.

AND ANOTHER THING

Say all these publishers are just posting for clicks and views and don't really know ACOTAR...even a minimal perusal into the fandom would show the ship war. There's no escaping it in any ACOTAR space and even though talking about a ship war would create buzz and be juicy, they still don't do it.

[mikuchan]

Fandom theory:

Most fans do not like engaging with female characters because, deep down, they haven't worked on a bias they hold in favour of male characters and against female characters. Some even view them as competition. They view female characters as obstacles and people in the way of their ships instead of their actual characters, or even what they could have been. It is why they often disengage, hate, or flanderise female characters.

It is also why they are able to see the potential of male side characters who appear for few scenes and second, but treat canon, main female interests or deurogatonists as if they never existsed or like the worst female characters to ever exist. They build such a negative rapport of them and make it seem as if they were a big villain (news flash: they are traumatised individual).

This got long, so I'm putting it beneath a read more.

disclaimer that this is all lay opinions

deep down, they haven't worked on a bias they hold in favour of male characters and against female characters.

yes, for sure. I mean, the other options are either that the majority of media does just have awful/boring/flat women characters, or that women are just innately awful/boring/flat, and neither of those are true. In some media franchises, maybe accurate. But as a large-scale pattern?? Come on.

Some even view them as competition.

Yes. Fandom is very ship-heavy, and there is a tendency to sideline any potentially romantic competition (whether to enable a m/m pairing or to ship an OC). Ye olde Supernatural fandom was a biiig example of this lol, BBC Sherlock too. This line of thought opens up a whole other can of worms, of course, because that alone shouldn't automatically favor men -- every source but one* that I could find showed that while fandom is predominantly women, it's not predominantly straight women. We should be shipping everybody with everybody, by all rights, but every fandom-popularity metric (AO3 stats, Tumblr year in review, literally just scrolling through tags) does not reflect that at all.

(And honestly, even if it was all straight women in fandom, the whole 'it's all straight women, of course they'll focus on hot guys' excuse still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Media and culture popular with straight men isn't often about women; not from the top and not from the audience. Men, on a societal level, are expected to read and think and play games and write about men; and they do. Consider stereotypical nerd culture -- a comic convention, a game store, an early D&D campaign -- and, yeah, female characters like Lara Croft and Catwoman were there, but by and large it was men interacting with men about men. So it feels gross when that's tossed out as an explanation, as if it's reasonable for women-heavy spaces to also revolve around men and only men.)

It's not a one note issue, though, and I don't think it's all shipping. Again, lay opinions, but I've seen a lot of rhetoric basically saying: male characters are more fun to interact and play with because they offer a sense of space, and with that, emotional safety. Bodies/body shape, emotions (and how others perceive yours), relationship dynamics, pregnancy and families...topics that can feel very loaded when applied to a woman can become more manageable when packaged in a (cis/conventional) male character.

I do think Astarion was a shoe-in for Tumblr Sexyman anyway, but his themes of being trapped and abused clearly resonate with people, too. It's not all shallow. And while Shadowheart (and Karlach, and Minthara, and others) offers very similar themes, and a similar sense of catharsis when she stands up to her abuser...she's also a woman. Maybe she hits too close to home. Maybe you can't stop comparing yourself to her (which, as a woman, you've been trained to do basically since birth. I struggle with this a lot tbh, it is hard). Maybe she presses on whatever biases and issues you have inside. Whatever the reason, it's easier for some people to work through issues via a masculine or male character and sidestep those other issues.

So like, in that sense, I don't blame people for saying if I pay attention to Orin as well then I might think about why I like her less than Gortash, and then I might realize it's because I am unhappy with myself, or because I dislike my status as a woman in society for x reason, and that hurts and it's hard. fuck this, I want to sympathize with Gortash only. I'm not here to hurt and do hard work, I want to reblog cool art and write drama. but like ! this still sucks. It's a reasonable reason, but not exactly a good one. It's just capping the lid and saying mm, not dealing with that.

And I want to make very clear that I'm not saying girls should only care about girl characters because we have super special girly issues that can only be solved by writing fanfics about Minthara not Halsin because Halsin is a yucky boy. I'm trying to say: many women hold other women, including themselves and fictional characters, to unfair standards, or hold internal prejudice against them for sexist reasons, and turn to male characters for safe catharsis instead. This is understandable, but not healthy.

(Or they see any/all women characters as a Threat to their Hawke's adoration of Anders. Similar bias but less understandable/sympathetic, super annoying.)

*and that study is from 2008 (older than some tumblr users now) with only 3400 participants; we can contrast this information with centrelumina's much larger and more recent survey.

[skyfallscotland]

I was originally just going to reply to T on the post they made regarding their experiences in the fandom, but I find (which will come as a surprise to absolutely no one) that I have things to say.

I'm rambling on a new post so I can disable reblogs, because I don't really care for this to break containment right now.

"The things you write that you love, will rarely be the things other people love," is so true. As a writer, you have absolutely no way of knowing what will resonate with people.

I won't go into the numbers, because as I'm about to explain, they're part of the problem (for me), but I mentioned recently that statistically, What Happens in Vegas is tracking much higher, much earlier than any other fic I've written. Which is great, I love that people love it, but I could never have predicted it.

Perhaps it's just timing—I did start posting it right in time for the Onyx Storm boom—or perhaps it's because it's riorgail, which we all know will perform a lot better as a main pairing (which is fine, by the way, it's just an interesting point). What makes it so interesting to me though, is that I feel it's objectively not my best work. I have vaguely plotted it, but I spend a lot less time working on and refining it than I have some of my other works...and yet double the amount of people have subscribed to updates on it.

And it does fuck with your head. When you know you've put so much more into another work, when another piece has been a labour of love and no one really notices, that's tough. There's a strange kind of mental thing that happens when you start getting engagement. You get used to a certain level of attention for your work and when that doesn't continue it hits you twice as hard.

I have days where I get ten less comments on a chapter and I start wondering where I went wrong, and I have to remind myself some people don't get ten comments at all. It's such a warped perception of things that I think no one talks about for fear of being seen as an asshole or ungrateful (at least that's why I never talk about it), but it happens, and I think if you already struggle with mental health issues, it's ten times worse.

It doesn't mean I'm not grateful, or that I think I deserve more, or that my work is better than other people's—it's just a shitty facet to how mental health can affect your self-worth and how fandom can play into that, and in retrospect, I think mental health issues are always worth talking about. There are lots of fics in this fandom that I think objectively outshine mine by a mile, but get so little attention and it's such a shame, and all I can do (besides comment and share myself) is hope those writers don't pin their self-worth on their engagement the way I do.

I'm very lucky in a lot of ways, both that I do get a lot of engagement (which I generally put down to the above pairing, and right place, right time), and also that I haven't had any major issues with people posting hate comments on my work. I think overall, this community is a good one (looking back on how things have been in other places) and I've found my people as I know others have, but without them I'd probably have left already.

Of course I get the occasional rude comment, but it's much easier to brush off if you're not actively writing that fic. It's why I won't be posting Basgiath (Remi's Version) further until I've finished writing it, because I know some of that won't go over well and I'm cognisant enough to know I'm not in the mental position to deal with disappointed comments, if they were to come, but overall I’m so happy I’ve found my people and the best group of readers 🥹

I think we're doing a better job than we were fifteen years ago of the whole 'don't like, don't read' thing, but maybe a worse job than we were doing five years ago, as fandom on the whole, and you don't need me to elaborate on why I think that is, I'm sure. (MAKE FANDOM NERDY AGAIN).

There seems to be this renewed push in fandom spaces for "no criticism in comments" to be a rule that just...goes away, because by posting you've "opened yourself up to negative comments" and I thoroughly disagree with that. A lot of the original migrators to AO3 specifically disagreed with that, it's why we all left FF.net. We do this for free, around all our other obligations.

To T, I'm sorry the experience killed the joy of writing for you (and it seems for others too, judging by the comments). I think everyone knows that I felt the same way after Onyx Storm came out. I felt like no one saw the text the same way I did, I felt like I wasn't really included in many of the fandom spaces, and mostly like people wanted to devour my content, but didn't want to hear anything else I had to say. It was sort of like we're happy to receive your work, but not your thoughts.

Between this and a few other things, I've mostly pulled back from the community in general. I spend my time writing and direct-messaging my closer friends and rarely ever open my dash. I love writing, and I usually write until I'm falling asleep sitting up, which means I've barely read fic all year. This post made me realise though, that perhaps I'm also part of the problem. I don't want this community to die so I'll try and make a more conscious effort to read some fic going forward and give other writers some love 🥹💖

[olderthannetfic]

There is something confusing to me about older queer people (which is to say, older than I am, at a relatively young 24 years old) who get mad at original fiction whose worldbuilding involves neopronouns. I'm hoping maybe, ONTF, since you've been in queer spaces a lot longer than I have, you can explain why people have such a negative reaction to the idea.

Basically, I'm working on a novel based that takes white-throated sparrow biology and uses it for building blocks in the same way A/B/O takes (now debunked) wolf science and used it for building blocks. This means there are essentially four genders, the two viewed as more intelligent (brown-haired men and women) and the two viewed as more physical (white-haired men and women). Those two groups then get further divided along the lines of 'women are better at making smart decisions under pressure' and 'men are better at staying home and defending the children, as God intended'.

So it seemed natural to me that this worldwide quaternary system would result in at least some languages having pronoun sets for each of the four options. Some languages in real life have more complicated pronoun systems than that, particularly ones where there's a bunch of formal and informal pronouns. It'd also help the reader keep track of who was a part of what group without my having to turn around and state people's coloration constantly. Yes, these people are human, just as humans in A/B/O are, but society is fundamentally very different. I'm not throwing this in to just complicate things or sound smart or something. It's here because my minoring in Anthropology and majoring in Linguistics taught me language usage reflects the needs and values of a people.

The writing group I'm a part of IRL is mostly queer, mostly 40+, with some cishet women who are also present and active writers. The writing group I'm a part of on DW is mostly DWRPers, in their 30's and up, though no older than 50, and entirely queer. I did not expect these to be groups that were uncomfortable with the idea of "different world, different pronouns".

Instead the reception has ranged from suggestions it's pretentious or overthinking things to requests I reconsider doing it. I've been informed this could be seen as mocking the real life queer people who go by pronouns other than she, he, or they. One person asked if this was went to be me "artificially justifying" nonbinary pronouns and implying I didn't find them valid in the real world. That was an awkward conversation, to say the least.

In reality I wasn't really thinking about real life people who use nonbinary pronouns when I was writing. I was just asking, "Logically, wouldn't it make sense for things to work very differently under a quarternary than it does under a modern European binary?" and following my brain along to its' conclusions as it processed that.

I have gotten zero negative feedback from my queer friends my age regarding this. So obviously, generation and the experiences informing a generational context are key, here. I'm just... still lost on how anyone finds this objectionable.

Help?

--

Ahaha. Oh god.

Well, as a reader of sff in the 90s, the first reaction I have to such things is "IS THERE A CONLANG AND A MAP?" Because, man, the conlang people were some of the most tedious motherfuckers I ever had to deal with in sff spaces.

But broadly... I think the reasons queer people get annoyed about this stuff boil down to a couple of big factors:

Disrespectful children who don't know history

Idiot old people harrumphing about "history" they clearly failed to pay attention to while it was going on in the first place

I personally hate being asked to use new words most of the time. A few bits of fandom slang I'll pick up at once, but I'm usually like "Why would I call it 'spirk'? We already have 'K/S'!" *shakes cane*

If you're American, they're your "roommate", not your "flatmate". No, I don't care how much more precise this foreign term is, you pretentious wanker. (But then I'll use 'wanker' because fandom adopted that years ago...)

So my reaction to being asked to say aloud any pronoun not in very frequent circulation in my offline life is "Urrrgh. Do I have to?"

However, the reality is that people have been messing around with pronouns in English since forever. Do you see 'heo' in Modern English? No, you do not! (Not that it was gender neutral, but the point is that even words as ancient as pronouns have changed quite a bit.) The early internet was full of pronoun stuff in MUDs and the like. You had a choice of a lot more than just three in a bunch of these. People besides men and women have always been in queer communities.

So some people like to cry about neopronouns being actually neo, and they're just wrong.

As for the why do you care part...

There is a nasty habit in contemporary queer spaces to act like gay rights issues are solved. Bisexuality? Passe! etc. Gays and lesbians finally got a little mainstream acceptance only to suddenly be treated like the worst of the establishment by the queer youth. How dare?!?! It's even more egregious with bisexuality where the focus of a bunch of queer activism finally swung that way in the 90s... only to be sharply cut off in the 00s.

There's a real "You already got yours. Where's mine?" vibe to some queer discourse today, and it's directed at people who never got theirs. It shows up in demands for mentorship by people who've barely had a chance to escape a rocky start and figure out who they are themselves. It shows up in yowling about this or that bit of queer media we finally got not being progressive because it's the wrong letter of the acronym.

None of which has a damn thing to do with what pronouns you use in your novel, obviously, but I think some unresolved embattled feelings are why some older queer people are very weird about pronouns.

Some of them are also doing the old person version of throwing the weirdos under the bus to placate the normies. Respectability politics became a term long before the behavior was rife on tumblr.

--

If someone really does find it pretentious, though, and not just as a cover for crying about nonbinary identities being fake, I suspect they just remember how 1970s SFF was full of privileged anthropology students misunderstanding kinship systems from elsewhere in the world and then trying to tell everyone how ~deep~ their extremely contrived novels based on them were.

I'm not saying your writing is like this or that every one of these old sff novels was either, but when I hear "anthropology student", I groan internally. It's an instinctive reaction. It's less about the real fields and more about the bevvy of dilettantes I've run into over the years who'll say they study those things but really want to talk my ear off about Joseph fucking Campbell or the strong form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis or something.

--

Those birds are a really cool source of inspiration. Like with A/B/O, the first thing I wonder is how queerness works in that context and how much people like to defy their designated roles.

Omegaverse started on porn logic, so "The one I say tops always tops!" makes sense. When it gets expanded to try to make it make logical sense as a whole world, I often enjoy it, but it can break down quickly if treated as biology is law. I don't know how often the birds veer off of their set patterns, but humans certainly would.

One place where I get a strong "Oh god, this again" feeling from people's plotbunnies is when they're trying to make up a sff society that strikes me as too rigid in a way that real humans aren't. I'll see people using fake wolf biology (not just for horny reasons) but never looking at what's going on with gender in contemporary Thailand or whatever. Like... Le Guin may have made sedoretus feel plausible, but nobody I've ever seen stanning the concept as something fandom should play with has. That's probably because Le Guin was using over-complicated social norms as a thing that breaks down and causes trouble, and "This should be the next A/B/O!" posts are treating it as something that actually works and is a good way to get the pair you don't ship separated while shipping poly.

"It'd also help the reader keep track of who was a part of what group without my having to turn around and state people's coloration constantly."

This, in particular, gives me that cold shudder of recognition from when Homestuck fandom was everywhere and everyone wanted to over-explain those stupid playing card suits and why I should care.

Your concept sounds neat, and I think a set of four pronouns could easily make sense there...

But I also think that if people need the pronouns to keep track of coloration, you haven't set up a system that feels organic enough or haven't given enough cues about how characters are treating each other or why. Use the pronouns too, but just keep that in mind. It's like the "m/m is hard because the pronouns don't tell me whose hand is where" problem. It's almost never actually a pronoun problem.

--

Anyone else have thoughts here?

[boyfriendtodeathconfessional]

I feel like the fandom doesn't actually have that much concern for the minors who hang around, instead we tend to just be annoyed with them. But could we talk about WHY they're here? The majority of BTD fans I've seen who turned out to be or were plainly stating themselves as minors have been heavily traumatized and unstable, kids who think abusive behaviors in REAL LIFE mind you, are somehow desirable. They lack the ability to separate fiction from reality and it kind of seeps into their mindsets which gets them in danger a LOT. Most of them have been groomed into the fandom, I've noticed, too, which is even worse in my opinion. Why don't we call out the clear predators in our community like we do with minors? Because they're not so annoying??

Minors should NOT be in these spaces at all, but there are REASONS they tend to be here, and those reasons are often very worrying. I wish people actually brought it up more.

This is true and I agree with you, but I have to say, in defense of the fandom, the reason we don't call out predators as much as we call out kids is because predators aren't known, not because they're less-annoying. In my experience, we do a good job of taking the trash out, but we can't do that if we don't know what's trash and what's another man's treasure. There's also factors involving cancel-culture mentality and hesitance of acting alone, seeing as there are some bad-seeds in the community who like to target specific users based off trivial or juvenile circumstances, and also users who are too afraid to confront someone in the case they are wrong or they receive push-back. There is definitely a dialogue that can be had here, though.

At the end of the day, and I feel we can all agree, this is an adult space. I feel for them, I wish they could have been protected, I wish they were well, but there are much more resources available to them as children than adults who were once victimized children, themselves. Take advantage of it, nip your mental health's cancer in the bud while you can, don't come to a fandom space to solve your problems, because it absolutely wont. The solution is removing kids altogether.

And if worse comes to worse and you need a place to cope, Strade, Ren, Lawrence, whoever aren't going anywhere and will be here when appropriate. Work on saving yourself in the meantime. Maybe you wont even need them.

[atiianeishaunted]

before we get into the actual post, I need to have a lot of preamble and stuff, pretext or whatever just so people dont assume the worst! also probably will add to this and clean it up later on when im not exhausted lmfao

Trigger warnings: grooming, familial abuse, and things adjacent to that, those are the two major ones though, and obviously this is not a shiro safe zone. you are not being held at gunpoint to read this post, read it at your own discretion. nothing is explicit or like graphically described because why the hell would i do that

This is from the perspective of someone who has been groomed and abused by a family member. This is NOT a proshipping thing nor is this a place for proshippers to jump in and romanticize what i am about to discuss. Also I am autistic and have been nitpicking this show to pieces for 6-7 years now, this is just something I've personally noticed.

I am not saying ANY of this was intentional by dreamworks, im not delusional, but whether they intended it or not the pieces ARE there, the subtext IS there! "They didnt mean it like that" or "They just didnt show it" is not going to change my stance, see the previous sentence.

all i ask of you is that you hear me out please, let me cook. also this will be a mess, just bear with me okay!! this post isnt like an absolute guide to my take as i do not have the capacity to do that but moreso like "rewatch the show with this in mind youll see what i mean"

I have no clue how to start this but with the fact upon recent rewatches, I have grown a distaste for Shiro due to how he's genuinely just a bad person. His whole character is just like sucking the government's dick yk and being one of the good gays, i wont get into that here, theres a whole other rant i posted like months ago about him that covers that area of him being a bad person and my pure hatred for the "space dad" title the fandom had given him.

With that being said, i don't think about him often clearly as he irritates me but like he's always lurking in the back of my mind, you know those itches on the palm of you hand you gnaw on because itching wont work but biting doesn't do shit either, yeah like that. I've kind of always held the belief he's a groomer, not in /that/ way, more like grooming Keith into being a perfect soldier and tool for him to use and project onto however upon recent reflection and rewatching the show, i have come to the conclusion that the subtext of the show (INTENTIONAL OR NOT) (HEAVY EMPHASIS ON THAT!) has him fitting both definitions of grooming.

His and Keith's dynamic will always be inherently unhealthy, Shiro is not a good guardian to Keith at all and makes it clear that Keith isn't someone he genuinely cares about, even in their softer moments, Shiro is just manipulating him / using manipulation tactics. He preyed on an isolated, grieving kid who clearly needed support and used that mental state to his advantage, arguably worsening Keith's state and driving the poor kid insane. Not to mention the fact we discover later on that Shiro was hiding his relationship with Keith.

When Adam is arguing for Shiro to stay on Earth, he doesn't mention Keith at all, only himself and Shiro's health. You'd think Adam, Shiro's boyfriend, would know about a kid Shiro had taken in and would bring up the fact that Shiro has a kid relying on him but he doesn't. Because he didnt know. The Holts dont know about Keith either despite Shiro being very involved in their lives. (side note,, matt and keith.. u shouldve been besties u feral men.. . we lost so hard..) Not even that, literally NO ONE acknowledges that they have a connection besides Keith. Keith is the only one to label him as family, as his brother, but Shiro explicitly avoids labeling things or reaffirming the label, which seems harmless vaguely i suppose until we get into the next point. Like what do you mean you dont tell anyone you're attached to this kid. Why are you so scared of clarifying or saying something. Why would you be so afraid to admit you took in a kid? hm???

(also before i get to the next point id like to add just now the fact shiro frequently brought keith out into the middle of nowhere which is. insane. now that i think about it. wdym you only interact with him when you're very separated and alone from everyone else. what the FREAK. most of their interactions/genuine acknowledgement of their relationship is when they are isolated. frowns. this is so sinister im ill.)

Shiro's romantic relationships, which we only see two of them, shows he has a specific preference for those who blindly do what he wants without questioning him or fight back. He broke up with Adam (willingly abandoned him) and never acknowledges him again beyond a quick scene of him looking at Adam being confirmed dead on a screen, the scene of Adam's argument, hes openly pushing against Shiro and mentions he cannot wait for Shiro again, he cannot keep doing this. And Shiro never mentions him, not once, throughout the show unless its a scene with Adam. Curtis is his second partner and husband who we actually meet before the finale where it shows them getting married, and you wanna know all we see of Curtis? him blindly following orders by Shiro. And I think one clip of him working out in Kinkade's vlog(?).

Keith is super devoted to Shiro, its constantly brought up even in the handbook (which isnt. very reliable but still) where he talks about Shiro as if Shiro is the only thing in existence and basically his god which lines up with the show. Keith borderline worships the ground Shiro walks on and Shiro eats that shit up, thats his /type/. He picked Keith very intentionally. We discover that Keith's worst fear is Shiro (its implied at least) in season 2 episode 8, Keith passes out and hallucinates Shiro. Its important to note this is a hallucination first of all due to the fact this is how he views Shiro. His brain pulled from his interactions/memories of Shiro.

Shiro's behavior isnt met with Keith's usual lashing out or anger we see him use when the others are mean to him. he looks Resigned, exhausted, hurt and scared. He isnt confused, he isnt surprised Shiro is acting like this, hes simply resigned. Implying this is something hes actually experienced outside hallucination land.

This happens again when Clone Shiro and him fight, Keith doesn't lash out, he avoids hurting Shiro, none of the words coming out Shiro's mouth are met with the intended reaction. Keith constantly jumps to a fawn response around Shiro, constantly spouting "I love you" whenever Shiro's upset which is not normal behavior for Keith. At all. Everyone else is met with anger and him snapping but when it comes to Shiro, hes suddenly very anxious and tries to appeal to him as if thats what he was taught to do / thats what Shiro wants from him.

Keith's attachment and behavior towards Shiro is not normal at all. If Shiro was a responsible non ill-intentioned adult he would've nipped things in the bud, established a healthy bond with Keith and made sure to redirect him but he does not. He allows Keith to spiral over him and consistently encourages it.

Keith was like 13 max. When they first interact (timeline wise), Keith wasn't scared of Shiro, literally stole his car, snapped at him, etc. What did Shiro do to him? What the hell happened!!!

That is all I got for now, will probably clean this up later and add to it but like 4 people wanted me to post this and i dont wanna keep people waiting so . gestures vaguely. theres the gist of things. rewatch the show as i said at the start, youll understand what im saying better.