#I’ve not interacted with the purity police in a while
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I remember you mentioned how most of your online friends in the jjk fandom are meta analysis people.
I’m assuming it due to you being excellent at media analysis, however… I was wondering if you have any online friends that you made who’s media literacy isn’t the highest out any sheer chances?
I’m asking this since I’ve personally have not, in fact I tend to go out of my way and not interact with anyone who’s not within the meta analysis group of the jjk fandom. Which would also include artists. I would still like their fanart and occasionally reblog it, but I’ll not personally interact with them beyond that. For fanfic writers, I personally don’t read any, so I also don’t interact with them either.
Lately though, my other friends notice how I’m been intentionally limiting my circle and being too judgmental, for they mention that while not everyone can create amazing meta posts, they are still expressing enjoyment about the same series.
I’m just personally curious to hear your thoughts and opinions on this, since you’ve also mentioned how you tend to block people you deemed unworthy of your time, so I feel like you might understand a bit where I’m coming from.
i'm not excellent at media analysis, @subdee or @cursedvibes are. and they tolerate me so.
i'm also judgemental and mean and i can rant to my friends and be very unpleasant, i do it less in public but i can also lash out in reblogs.
about the media literacy... with some people you can discuss stuff and kinda point out that they are ignoring some stuff or they could consider something. but online it's hard. and i usually just become snide about it and it never goes anywhere. it's like several stars have to align for it to happen: 1) the person needs to be open to have their opinion questioned, 2) you need to be open to question in a way that will not put them off before the message gets across, 3) you actually need a good argument, 4) you need not to be like me and get confrontational and angry 90% of the time, 5) the conv o needs to move into the dms - in public it's almost guaranteed to fail, 6) other - who knows what really.
most of the time however it ends up in a confrontation. and then blocking.
when i'm in a calmer mood i block preemptively not to rile myself up. but sometimes i'm in a bad mood and then i will start shit.
and there's also the question of flavour of the media illiteracy. like i will not discuss stuff with bigots, these are insta blocks. i will not discuss stuff with the fandom purity police, one because they are often bigots and two because they don't understand they use the language and concepts of the far right and it's like a very fundamental problem.
in the jjk fandom specifically i will not discuss stuff with people who espouse views that "gege hates ...", or call gege a misogynist or accuse them of an incest fancier, or use violent language towards gege, those people are too far gone, those are insta blocks.
i will also not try to talk to people whose main interest in hxh or jjk is completely different than mine. i don't give a single shit about stsg, at this point it actively irks me and i will ignore people who engage in it. ii will not engage with people who call yuuji boring or say he's not the main character, it'd be too much effort to talk to them and probably with no reward.
i have also a lot of smaller pet peevs that i will either block people over or not engage at all. so i do understand you anon and i think life's too short to waste on people you'd have nothing to talk to.
though my situation is quite different, i read a lot of fanfic and write it too so i interact with a lot of writers. not everyone i interact with is into meta.
it honestly depends on what you like and how you want to interact and what you want to talk about. if you only care about meta then interact with people who like these kinds of discussions, it's ok not interact with people if you don't vibe on the same wave length. i've said it before, i'm very much into organically finding people you vibe with. sometimes i interact with people and it feels we have stuff in common but the convo just doesn't really work, it's kinda awkward or whatever. and well it's not meant to be, there will be others.
#answering asks#tldr if you are happy with your circle of friends that's enough#fandom is best highly curated#it's supposed to be fun#life will force you to socialise with people you have little in common anyway#in fandom seek out those you vibe with#politely ignore the rest#block on sight the people whose posts spark even the slightest active annoyance#unless you want to start a fight with them#then knock yourself out
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On Babbushka
There is a group of well-known writers in the fandom who have been discouraged and put down by one of their own, Zannah - @babbushka. It happens behind the scenes in DMs. It happens in posts and tags.
In DMs, she has started conversations with seemingly innocent questions. When she doesn't receive the response she was aiming for, she diverts the conversation to criticizing and humiliating the person. She has attacked writers for tagging—or not tagging—a post in a way she deems appropriate. She has gotten into arguments over how characters were portrayed and then tried to claim victimization when the other person wouldn't knuckle under.
She will appeal to her following to attack any fan or creator who has an opinion that differs from her own. She will encourage friends to send rude anons. Those same friends will also DM the target with rude remarks.
Several creators have stopped writing altogether because of their interactions with her.
We are tired of being discouraged. We are tired of being talked down to. We are tired of being bullied. Enough is enough. Under the cut we share our stories, let the chips fall where they may. It's up to you, the reader, to decide whether to support her.
We can only warn up-and-coming writers, artists, fans, and supporters of her behavior.
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Hope - @callmehopeless
The Australian bushfires of the 2019-2020 season were nightmarish—for those living through it and those witnessing. As the season went on, cries for help increased. Joaquin Phoenix used the time during his Best-Actor acceptance speech at the Golden Globes to call for unity, action, and accountability. Regardless of what we may think of him, it was a thoughtful speech.
Hope, who is an Australian, found Mr. Phoenix's message encouraging and reblogged a gifset of his speech.
That morning, Zannah made a post about Mr. Phoenix's shady past and his association with a known sexual predator. The main reason wasn't because his speech was inappropriate or not timely, but because she didn't think he should be the one to get the attention over other actors who had spoken of the bushfires during the Golden Globes.
While Hope confessed she was scared of the bushfires, scared for her loved ones, Zannah was more concerned with purity. To Zannah it was about the face of the message, not the message itself. It didn't matter that Mr. Phoenix was amplifying support for Australia, what did matter was that he had done bad things.
It was virtue signaling on Zannah's part.
Still, this remains a complicated argument. Can a person who has done bad things actually have something positive to add to a cause? Should we listen to a problematic person if they share an insight? Does it reflect poorly on us to agree with their isolated statement? Will we be canceled, too? What about the bigger picture?
In this case, the bigger picture was hundreds of homes were destroyed in the bushfires and families were displaced. People died, thousands of animals died. And it was because of climate change. Mr. Phoenix called for his rich peers to examine their respective lifestyles and to give back.
Yes, Mr. Phoenix has done bad things. Yes, he has associated with people who have done bad things. His words resonated with people on Tumblr, and they reblogged part of his speech. He said something that gave Hope hope.
Hope was asked by a third party how they could help. She came back with a resource guide for those who wanted to send aid to Australians.
When it became obvious Zannah wouldn't silence Hope, Zannah decided to sub-post about the interaction. There, she accused Hope of being a rape apologist for reblogging a gifset and finding a little comfort in it. Zannah placed her ego before someone who was facing a very real danger.
Side-eying an actor is one thing, shaming a person you know for finding solace during a scary time is another. Hope isn't responsible for which voice got picked up. The only "colors" being shown here are Zannah's. She put her own concerns about being perceived as morally pure above actually supporting a friend.
I'll keep this brief - I knew Zannah for many years. And on one of the lowest weeks of my life, when my suburb was burning down and I feared for my family: she convinced me I was a rape apologist for sharing Joaquin Phoenix's speech asking for action on bushfires. In all my life, I never felt more alone. To add insult to injury, she then posted memes mocking me - something that has stuck with me to this day.
I've had dear friends quit the fandom because of her kinkshaming. I've had people I love message me distraught over what she's said.
Enough is enough.
— @callmehopeless
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Rose - @the-wayward-rose
This PM exchange started after I tagged my reblog of Zannah's fic Feast (Cameron Bistle x Reader) with cw: white reader. I had been on her taglist, and I wanted to show support because I liked the fic overall. For context, the reason for my tag is because of this sentence:
"But then you're blushing so pretty and squeezing his hand affectionately and reaching for the handle to the passenger side of his car, and then you're laughing when he swats your hand away to open it for you, and then you're beckoning him down as if to ask a question – only to place a chaste kiss to his lips instead."
This is from Cameron's point of view.
She asked the reason for the tag, and I explained it was because of the use of "blush" to describe Reader's appearance.
She misunderstood my premise. I did not mean only white people blush.
According to Merriam-Webster, blush means "a reddening of the face especially from shame, modesty, or confusion" or "a red or rosy tint."
It is an autonomic response, though. It happens in all humans for body cooling and nonverbal communication. The main problem with using it universally is that melanin obscures the appearance of said autonomic response.
Here's an example of three runners:
The two pale women, left and center, are pink in the face. They are blushing. The woman of color on the right is likely blushing, too. However, the melanin in her skin obscures the blood in her cheeks. She is not pink.
That's the pitfall of the word "blush." The observer can't always see it. We know what it feels like. We all do it. The face and/or neck gets hot. The use of "blush" is shorthand in narrative, and I understand that. Nevertheless, when writing to cater to a reader-insert audience of unknown heritage, writers need to consider describing with universal terms.
Again, she misunderstood my premise. I clarified by asking how Cameron sees the Reader blush under an abundance of melanin:
She sidestepped the physiological explanation to go straight for justification. She tried to legitimize "blush" as "perhaps [this]" or "perhaps [that]" when I stated earlier that blush by definition is pink or is to redden. That's the logic. A noncommittal, covering-all-the-bases, complicated defense diluted the conversation.
With her earlier "I have friends of color, hence I can't be exclusionary" statement, I wasn't sure she would get my point. I take full responsibility for not explaining, too. I should've asked for some time to gather my thoughts, but I didn't. Truthfully, I was unprepared, because I didn't think my insignificant tag would be an issue.
Also, I was confused why she was trying to police my blog.
Her replies came rapidly—before I could mention my confusion—and felt aggressive in the moment. Maybe that wasn't her intention, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
That doesn't take away from the fact that words have meaning. It's why we use specific words. It's not understood in the narrative that her use of "blush" could mean a bunch of things. If I had known, I wouldn't have tagged as I did. How is a reader of color supposed to know that? How does Cameron see Reader's blush if she has darker skin?
As writers, we don't know who is reading. Someone could be very pale or very dark. A person with medium-toned skin can turn a shade of pink or red. A person with darker-toned skin will not. We can't assume all readers are medium to pale. We need to develop better writing skills. We have to include everyone.
Readers of color > White-writer feelings
When I stood my ground, she doubled down, stating I made no sense in my tagging and that I lacked the ability to learn from her. She then diverted the argument, attacking a ficlet I wrote a few days beforehand—which had nothing to do with this argument. The Christian imagery in that ficlet was upsetting to her and "in such poor taste" because she headcanons Flip Zimmerman (BlacKkKlansman) is 100% culturally and ethnically Jewish.
Flip stated in the movie:
"I'm Jewish, but I wasn't raised to be. It wasn't part of my life. I never thought much about being Jewish. Nobody around me was Jewish. I wasn't going to a bunch of Bar Mitzvahs. I didn't have a Bar Mitzvah. I was just another white kid. And now I'm in some basement denying it out loud[...] I never thought much about it. Now I'm thinking about it all the time. About rituals and heritage. Is that passing? Well then, I have been passing."
By his own admission, Flip is ethnically Jewish, but not culturally. These are two separate things, and that should be recognized. While Judaism is ethnically and culturally entwined in ways that other religions are not, one does not equate the other. You can be one and not the other.
At the time, I didn't want her to sic her 3000+ followers on me. I wasn't going to argue further. I asked myself if the ficlet was important and worth anon-hate and realized, no, it wasn't. It was a throw-away.
And since I'm not culturally Jewish, maybe I had misstepped. And since Zannah is both culturally and ethnically Jewish, I asked for her guidance.
She flatly refused my request. I don't know how I was supposed to learn from her if she wouldn't teach me.
It sounded as if she wanted me to delete the whole fic. Like none of it was worth saving because it hadn't been Zannah-approved. I had gone against her headcanon, and the fic was too offensive to fix.
The last sentence was supposed to cover her back from criticism, and it placed all the responsibility on me. Obviously, she was above such petty concerns as someone else's blog or writing. Never mind that she had just attempted to get me to change my tagging system and rewrite my ficlet. On my blog.
Later, I figured out she was only criticizing and not offering a constructive critique. Her argument was not in good faith. It was retaliation for not giving her the obedience she thought she was owed.
This is the passage that offended her:
"It’s because of the way he fucks you. Like it’s confession—though he’s never been much of a church-going man. Every touch, every thrust, is a truth between you. Even when it’s rough and greedy. It feels like flagellation when you claw his back. He wears the sin proudly."
This is what I edited it to:
"It’s because of the way he fucks you. Every touch, every thrust, is a truth between you. Even when it’s rough and greedy. It feels like flagellation when you claw his back. He wears your marks proudly."
Yeah, I'm not pleased with the revised passage. It's lost its teeth, but I keep it.
The anonymous message(s) she mentioned weren't very anonymous, either. Unfortunately, I've since deleted the two messages. I had apologized to Anon for disappointing them. I said that if the fic was too much, they should unfollow and block me. I meant that in a self-care way. At the same time, I did not—and do not—owe anyone discourse. I don't have to explain my art when it doesn't hurt anyone. And no one was hurt by some purportedly misplaced religious imagery.
I have been silent about this since late January/early February. I was embarrassed. I had been bullied into changing my blog and my fic by someone who proclaims to never do anything of the sort. I had been a fool. Since this conversation with her, I have been blocked/blacklisted by third-parties, most likely at her behest, when none of this exchange had been necessary.
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Kassanovella - @kylorengarbagedump
Zannah's followers have asked her about Kassanovella’s Fix Your Attitude. For context, it's currently one of the most kudo-ed fics for Kylo Ren x Reader on AO3. It had a bit of a renaissance earlier in 2020 because a TikToker wrote a song for it.
There is nothing wrong with not wanting to read a fic. If the subject matter doesn't work for a reader, they don't have to partake. Easy as that. So, these tags aren't a problem.
However, it led to this...
She lashed out, calling Kassanovella's fic a joke. A joke.
She implied her fics should be as popular as Kassanovella's because she works really hard on them. She admitted she's tied to the metrics. She implied she wouldn't be writing fic if not for the external validation.
Here's the thing about fanfic: readers like what they like. They don't care about a writer's effort. They only know what works for them. They comment and give kudos, reblog and like what they connect with. That is not under the writer's control. All a writer can do is try their best and concentrate on what they're passionate about.
To bash another writer's fic because it's popular is disrespectful. This whole bitter rant drips of entitlement and is an affront to Kassanovella.
Some time later, an incident happened in a chatroom during a streaming event for veterans by Arts In the Armed Forces (Adam Driver's organization). At least one fan brought up Fix Your Attitude while waiting for Mr. Driver to make an appearance. They were also disrespectful towards the other presenters by demanding to see Mr. Driver. It caused a big stink within the fandom, and Zannah had some choice words.
While mentioning the fic during the livestream was inappropriate, it was also inappropriate to throw all fans of the fic under the bus as she did in her tag. Sweeping generalizations and incriminations of a subset of fans certainly reads as if she resents those fans for a perceived slight.
Next, Zannah made an earlier disparaging comment about Kassanovella's fic, Little Bird. Unfortunately, that comment is lost. However, the messages supporting the comment remain. (For context, Little Bird is a Kylo Ren x Reader The Handmaid's Tale AU. It has been well received in the fandom, earning thousands of kudos on AO3.)
What an author wants to write about and sexualize is their business. Fantasizing about being dominated by Kylo Ren isn't cringe. It's a sexual fantasy. Some sexual fantasies can be disturbing to those who do not share the same kink.
Sexual fantasies are like ice cream. There's a reason why there are different flavors.
Also, "I will never ever be a person that tells an author what to do or not do" is an absolute lie. As evident in this post, Zannah most definitely tells authors what to do or not do.
Again, she bashes Kassanovella, claiming her writing isn't good. Her motivation for bashing Kassanovella can only be speculation. With Zannah's previously stated opinion of Fix Your Attitude, though, it indicates a certain level of negative emotions.
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Anonymous
An anonymous person came forward with a case of Zannah policing their blog. Anon has a sideblog for their personal AU with Flip Zimmerman. They reblog gifsets and post headcanons. They were an enthusiastic fan of Zannah's and reblogged a few of the gifset she made. Anon tagged their reactions, and Zannah blocked them for it.
Anon went to Zannah and asked why they were blocked, because all they wanted to do was have fun and support fellow Flip lovers.
Anon was under the impression that because they were shipping themselves, and not Zannah, with Flip, she blocked them. Their personal AU doesn't align with Zannah's headcanon that she alone is married to this character and has his children.
While Zannah's reply may sound innocent, and perhaps it is, it also speaks to someone who has set herself up as the owner of Flip Zimmerman. (Wait until Spike Lee or the real Ron Stallworth hears about that...) It appears that if a fan does not comply with the Zannah-approved headcanon, where only she is married to Flip, that fan shall be blocked. If a fan uses tags on their blog that she does not approve of, that fan will be blocked.
Zannah's policing is disturbing. Going into a blog to look for something as a reason to block is disturbing. Any fan is allowed to use any tag on their blog how they wish. If the OP has said their post can be reblogged, how a reblogger tags is beyond the OP's control. To punish that reblogger for not behaving in a way she finds acceptable is uncalled for and unjust.
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Anonymous
Backstory: Zannah does not view Ben Solo's arc in the Star Wars sequel trilogy as acceptable canon. However, she does view the story she created for Flip Zimmerman in BlacKkKlansman as completely canon.
This is not the first time she has been asked to clarify her position. Nor is it the first time she has avoided giving an on-topic response. A question asked in good faith should be responded to in kind.
If a creator doesn't want to address the issue, they can state that they don't. Deflecting from the question only muddies the waters. Fans feel dismissed. The creator feels hounded, and comes across as irritated and unapproachable. No one has a positive fandom experience.
There is nothing wrong with having a headcanon. What is wrong is Zannah mandating her headcanon for Flip on the whole fandom. As evident in this post, if a fan does not comply with her headcanon, they will be summarily blocked.
Also, there is nothing wrong with rejecting canon. Writers of transformative works have always done this. The problem is shaming fans who have accepted canon while not offering justification for that shaming. A creator saying they "can't help them" is the creator washing their hands of responsibility from articulating their thoughts when they themselves began criticizing the canon in the first place.
Again, this is a bad-faith argument. Creators can't ask for discussion and attention and then get mad when their viewpoints are challenged. Just because a discussion isn't going a creator's way doesn't mean it's an attack, either. It means people want clarification, and if one criticizes, they should be able to back up their criticisms.
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While sharing our stories has been freeing, it's not our aim as fellow fans to cancel Zannah. We would hope she would take the opportunity to reflect on the damage she has done to the fandom. We hope we all can move forward with a more approachable and supportive scene.
No one person speaks for our fandom. The actions of one fan do not represent the entire fandom. Whether creator or consumer, you are welcome here.
[posted July 25, 2020]
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Some facts for CERTAIN FOLKS, since I’ve seen some shit on my dash tonight, and previously.
Do NOT come here on my blog, don’t follow, don’t interact with me if you engage in sending anonymous bullshit messages to people minding their own business. For stupid. shit. Harrassing folks. For what??? the fuck.
Do not send me or the people i adore, hateful messages for writing villains. LITERALLY use your brain. It’s not hard to recognize that people can ENJOY villains and write them without TRULY SUPPORTING WHAT THEY DO IN REAL LIFE. VILLAINS BE VILE BUT THEY’RE STILL FUN TO WRITE OUT.
Do not harass people for writing military muses?? I truly cannot fathom this. like are you out of your mind? I don’t care what your political opinion of the military is. Keep it out of peoples askboxes unless they specifically ask you for your not so hot take. Don’t tell people they cannot explore it. Don’t tell people they cannot explore things like PTSD in writing. Writing not only builds empathy/connection/understanding for the world around us, but it also helps us through our own traumas and issues? Its a SAFE environment to explore topics. Even therapists HAVE agreed. You are NOT a therapist. You are not their boss. The RPC CHAMPION or it’s police.
Keep your outdated purity opinions to yourself on subjects regarding NSFW, whether its sexual, gore, dark and depressing topics. Don’t like it? Don’t follow the content.
We are here to RP with OUR FRIENDS. Not everyone. Not you. Not your biases. Not your political or personal opinions. We’re not here for your judgments or expectations. Go build your own circle of same minded friends. Don’t follow blogs you don’t like. It’s hella simple. Block even. But sending horrible, juvenile, cowardly messages online to people, telling them to die while also LOL making them sound like a bad person when it’s really just you?? Yikes, Karen. Grow up.
Unfollow and leave people alone? It’s literally that simple.
#literally the 'hot takes' i see people send these days#and all of my time here on tumblr#i question a lot of the logic and reasoning skills...#connect some dots my dudes.#have some understanding and be rational my dudes.#its JUST RP my dudes.#we are literally just here to have fun.#( ooc ).#( vent ).#//me??? venting?? i hate to see it but here we are.
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if we used to share a discord server, this post is for you!
hello! i am going to try to do this as anonymously and non-confrontationally as possible. i do not want this to be a spectacle or call out post, but i will say that i am quite disturbed by the way situations have transpired on the server.
in case you didn’t notice, i left! when i left, i wrote a little goodbye post in #general, which has since been deleted. either the mods deleted my goodbye or they banned me from the server (which automatically would delete my message). in case you didn’t see it, here was my goodbye message:
hi everyone, i’m leaving the server. if you’re a POC who is interested in joining an ATLA server where POC can talk about ATLA and critically discuss race, feel free to PM me for a link! otherwise, this is goodbye. see you all around.
i won’t rehash everything that happened in the events leading to this, nor will i name names in this post. if you were on the server, you probably saw what happened publicly or you can message me personally, either here or on discord. if we know each other through the server and you want some clarity over names/events in this post, please PM me.
if you are a POC in the ATLA fandom who is concerned by the events of this post and you would like me to clarify which server i’m talking about, please PM me.
i just wanted to share the very long message that i sent to the mods (on their prompting!) because i feel that it shows my perspective on what transpired. unfortunately, this message did not result in any meaningful change, except for me getting banned/my messages removed from the server. i suppose that’s a type of meaning! haha.
anyway. here’s the message. cw for racism, yellowface
hi MOD 1 (and presumably the other mods who will read this message)! thanks for reaching out. i’ve had some time to dwell on the situation and discuss it with other people in the server who witnessed it and reached out to me personally. this is going to be an unbelievably long message, so i apologize in advance and thank you for your time in reading it.
i think the first thing i’d like to do is give some context for the incident and to give my perspective on why i said the things i said.
i have PMed a mod about a racist incident in the server exactly once. it was when i first joined, and i saw a picture of a white person in yellowface in the cosplay channel. i didn’t know any of you personally yet (and this was before some of you even joined on as mods). i have since told SERVER MEMBER 1 about this incident and i’m pretty sure they mentioned it to you because i noticed you’ve changed the yellowface rule. but i think that the context of me pinging a mod about a racist incident and then witnessing another (although less egregious) instance of racism by the mods might explain why i am, in general, hesitant about talking to mods about racism on the server. i am just trying to live my life and experience as few micro-aggressions as possible.
i also think the fact that i regularly educate and push back against white people’s racially harmful messages in the server is also important context. i realize none of you likely know this, but about every two weeks i receive an unsolicited PM from a different white person apologizing/asking for forgiveness/asking for reassurance/asking further questions about their racism on the server. i’m glad people are learning from me, but this is a huge amount of emotional labor that i put into the server and its members because of course i have to reply and explain things and tell them not to worry and thank them for apologizing, etc. i know that these messages aren’t your fault, nor am i asking you to do anything about this. but it feels important that you know the price that i (and perhaps other poc in the server, although i can’t speak to that) pay in order to share space with you.
MOD 2 has even messaged me personally to thank me for educating people in the server and responding to racist messages, saying: “really appreciate how much effort you put in and everything, i was trying to type something up but floundering badly.” it was a nice message, and i appreciated it a lot! it also led me to believe that the mods would prefer if i engage with racist messages myself, rather than ping them, because it felt like i was just going to be more able/willing to articulate a response anyway.
so when SERVER MEMBER 2 messaged the zukka channel “thought that lives in my head rent free: Sokka's hairstyle in canon is just a warrior's hairstyle and has meaning because of that. Sokka wearing the same hairstyle in a modern AU is undisputably queer-coded” and nobody replied for a while, i assumed that it was because they had seen what i had seen-- a racially insensitive message that totally ignores sokka’s indigenous heritage and the history behind indigenous hair-- so i decided to step in with what i thought was a balanced response.
SERVER MEMBER 2 then replied with a cheery “Fair enough! I will defer to your greater knowledge,” which i couldn’t tell was sarcastic or not, but i decided to be generous and to believe they were genuinely thankful for my reply, so i responded with a “you too can have great knowledge. i only know things because i read things. anyone can read things and learn,” which is something i firmly believe and also a way to divert the conversation away from SERVER MEMBER 2’s mistake, which i felt was the most dignified solution for them. i suppose this message could be read as aggressive because i didn’t use exclamation marks? but that feels unfair and ungenerous because i genuinely did not mean this message in a harsh way.
then SERVER MEMBER 3 jumped in and asked a few questions, which i read as a request for clarification, so i tried to continue to explain my point. it felt like SERVER MEMBER 3 wasn’t understanding what i was trying to explain, or at least i wasn’t able to articulate myself well enough, which was making me a little tired and stressy (and i was also thinking about my own race and queerness in stressful and triggering ways), so i decided to tap out of the conversation.
me: dude i love u and i respect u and i truly believe that u are trying very hard to understand, but this conversation is making me kinda heated
SERVER MEMBER 3: I’m gonna step back from it because it’s not my conversation to insert myself into, which is what I did initially and apologize for
me: i think it's so important to engage + ask questions & i appreciate that u respect my opinions on these things, but i think i'm just. i have said what i need to say and now must sleep. much love to all.
to me, this felt like me expressing that i was feeling tired and upset and leaving the conversation, while still attempting to reassure SERVER MEMBER 3 that i still admired him as a friend. i felt like the conversation had ended peacefully!
i hope this helps explain why MOD 3’s message came as such a surprise.
“the escalation to defensiveness and accusation regarding the original (relatively benign) statement was unnecessary and exaggerated. There’s an atmosphere of purity policing that’s been growing, which is why I took away the squick channel, as I assumed that a space that encouraged no repercussions was facilitating irresponsibility aggressive arguments. “
i truly didn’t believe i was being defensive. i was very careful not to accuse anyone of anything. in fact, i tried as far as i could to coat my language in “i” statements-- “i would personally not choose…”, “i would just. stay away from…” in order to avoid “accusations.” i was also trying very hard not to be aggressive, and i (and other poc that i have spoken to about this) believe that the idea that my messages were aggressive is racialized. just because a poc is upset about racism, it doesn’t mean they’re attacking you personally!
i feel so hurt that my messages were wilfully interpreted in this way, instead of being read generously and from a more compassionate perspective, especially since i voiced my own upset and discomfort during the conversation. it distresses me to think that me expressing negative emotions is seen as aggressive, rather than a cause for empathy or care, and i do believe that this is because of my race.
if a mod had asked me to take the messages to the DMs or to squick or even just let me know that someone was interpreting my messages as aggressive, i would have changed my behavior. (like i said earlier, i spend a HUGE amount of energy coddling white people on this server. i am very used to it.)
instead, i got the shock of 45 minutes after the fact, being publicly chastised and labeled as aggressive and being told that my conversation was “something nasty or unwanted.”
the idea that SERVER MEMBER 3 was de-escalating a “clearly escalating situation” feels untrue to me. i was ready to move on after i sent my message to SERVER MEMBER 2, but he kept engaging me on the subject! (no hate to SERVER MEMBER 3 on this.)
i think one of the most painful parts of this whole situation is the implication that i was attempting to “purity police,” as though i am a person who picks fights just because i want to feel good about picking fights?? or to act holier-than-thou???? i do not do this. if you have witnessed ANY interaction i’ve had with a racially insensitive white person on the server, you will know this.
i am simply a person of color trying to live my life. i do not want to fight about racism. i want to chill out and watch my cartoons. unfortunately, sometimes, someone will say something that i consider racially insensitive and i will do my best to engage and explain why i find this insensitive. that is all. (it is important to note that most of the time, when i see racially insensitive things on the server, i do not say anything because i am tired and it is a lot of effort to engage. i truly only engaged this time because nobody had replied to the message and i was just like, oh, fine, i guess i’ll educate, since no one else has!)
this whole incident has honestly made me really hurt and disrespected. i have enjoyed my time on the server and i have made some good friends there. however, it feels clearer and clearer to me that the server is a space where white feelings of safety (not being criticized for their racist content) are prioritized over poc’s feelings of safety (not having to witness and experience racist content). i sincerely considered myself to be an active and enthusiastic member of the server, maybe even friends with some of you, but it feels to me that all of our previous positive interactions have been displaced by this idea of me as an aggressive, overzealous purity cop who calls things racist for fun.
i don’t even know how to repair my relationship with the server after this because i really do feel horrible and sick about the whole thing. i have spoken to other poc who also expressed their concerns about the way the mods handled the situation, even if these other poc weren’t directly involved, and some of us are considering leaving the server, if we haven’t already. (i would also like to note that these people reached out to me, unprompted, to make sure i was doing okay after what they and i interpreted as a micro-aggression by the mods. like, we independently read the situation in this way.)
(also, not sure if this matters, but i talked to SERVER MEMBER 3 the morning after the incident because i wanted to make sure he was okay, and we both ended up apologizing to each other and having a really good and productive talk.)
thanks again for reading this. i hope that you’ll be able to better understand my perspective on what occurred. i truly appreciate the work that you put into the server (especially as someone who also puts work into the server lol), and i know it’s difficult to mod a large server (i also mod an atla server!), but i continue to feel hurt about this. i know it’s hard to read tone over server messages, but i really wish that my (and SERVER MEMBER 4′s and SERVER MEMBER 5′s ) server messages had been read with greater compassion.
...
and that’s all folks! i’m going to be remaking my blog soon, partially because this whole experience has exhausted me and partially because i have been meaning to anonymize my internet presence for some time.
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Canonization and Fandom Purity Culture
I wrote a 1k-word twitter thread (as proof that I am Not made for Twitter and it’s goddamn 240-character limit) and am pasting it here with edits and updates (it’s now 2k words).
I have thoughts to share (which I know have been stated more eloquently before by others) about this trend of demanding/obsessing that certain ships become "canon" and how it overlaps with the rise of fandom purity culture.
Under the cut.
Here in 2021 there is a seemingly large and certainly loud and active contingent of online fandoms who desire (or even demand) "canon validation" for a given interpretation of a source material. This is more true with shipping than anywhere else.
First, it is important to note that the trend is not limited to queer ships or to any single fandom. In the past few years I've seen it for Riverdale, Voltron, Supernatural (perhaps most extreme?), The 100, etc., and less recent with the MCU, Sherlock, Teen Wolf, Hawaii 5-0, etc. It is a broad trend across ships, fandoms, and mediums.
So if it is more common for queer ships, it is hardly unique to them. Similarly, pretending that it is about queer representation is a clever misdirect to disguise the fact that it is most often about ships and shipping wars. If you ever need proof of that, consider that a character can be queer without being in a given relationship or reciprocating another character's affections. Thus a call for more/better queer rep itself is very different than a call for specific ships to be made canon.
Also note that when audiences frame it as wanting to recognize a specific *character* as queer, it is almost always in the context of a ship. Litmus test: would making that character queer but having them *explicitly reject* the other half of the ship be seen as a betrayal?
(Note: none or this is to say we shouldn't push for more queer rep and more *quality and well-written* queer rep! Just that that isn't what I'm talking about here, and not what seeking canon validation for a specific interpretation or a specific ship is almost ever about.)
Why does this matter?
the language of representation and social justice should not be co-opted to prop up ship wars
it is reciprocal with a trend toward increasing toxicity in transformative fandom spaces
Number 1 here is self-explanatory (I hope). Let's chat about 2.
Demands for canon validation correlate with a rise in fanpol / fandom purity culture. What is fandom purity culture (and fandom policing)? This toxic mentality is about justifying one's shipping preferences and aiming to be pure (non-problematic) in your fictional appetites regarding romance and sex.
Note that this purity culture is so named as it arises linearly from American Protestantism, conservative puritanical anxiety around thought crimes, and overlaps in many ways with terf ideologies and regressively anti-kink paradigms.
It goes like this: problematic content is "gross" and therefore morally reprehensible. Much like how queer sex/relationships get labelled as "gross" (Other) and thus morally sinful, or how kink gets labelled as "harmful" and thus morally wrong. The Problematic label is applied by fanpol to ships with offset age or power dynamics, complicated histories, and anything they choose to label as "harmful". As such, they would decry my comparison here to queerphobia itself as also being harmful, because their (completely fictional) targets are ~actually~ evil.
(The irony of this is completely lost on them).
This mode of interacting with creative works leaves no room to explore dark or erotic themes or dynamics which may exist in fiction but not healthily in reality. Gothic romance is verboten. Even breathe the word incest and you will be labelled a monster (nevermind Greek tragedy or GoT).
As with most puritanical bullshit, fanpol ideology only applies these beliefs to sex and never to violence/murder/etc, proving what lies at its core. It also demands its American-based values be applied to all fictional periods and places as the One True Moral Standard. It evangelizes – look no further than how these people try to recruit others to their cause, aim to elevate themselves as righteous, and try to persuade (‘save’) others from their degenerate ways of thinking.
“See the light” they promise “here are our callouts and blog posts to convince you. Decry your past sins of problematic shipping, be baptized by our in-group adulation and welcome, and then go forth and send hate to others until they too see the light.” In many ways “get therapy” by the antis is akin to “I’ll pray for you” by the Christian-right (and ultimately ironic).
(Although it has been pointed out to me that these fans are likely not themselves specifically ex-evangelicals, but rather those who have brushed up with evangelical norms and modes of thinking without specifically being victims of it. In many ways they are more simply conservative Christian in temperament and attitude without necessarily being raised into religion by belief).
What this has to do with canon validation is that these fans look to canon for approval, for Truth. On the one hand, if it is in the canon then it must be good / pure or at least acceptable. The authority (canon) has deemed it thus. It is safe and acceptable to discuss and to enjoy watching or consuming. In this way, validation from canon means a measure of safety from being Bad and Problematic.
For example, where a GoT fan could discuss Cersei/Jaime's (toxic, interesting) dynamic in depth as it related to the canon, fans who shipped Jon/Sansa (healthy, interesting) were Gross and Bad. The canon as Truth provided a safety net, a launch point. "It's GRRM, not me, who is problematic." It wasn’t okay to ship the problematic bad gross incest ship, but it being in the canon material meant it was open for discussion, for nuance, for “this adds an interesting layer to the story” which is denied to all non-canon ships labelled as problematic.
(Note: there are of course people who have zero interest in watching GoT for a whole slew of very valid reasons, including but not limited to the incest. That’s a different to this trend. A less charged example might be The Umbrella Academy, where a brother canonically is in love with his sister and antis still praise the show, but if you dare to ship any of the potential incest ships then you are the one who is disgusting).
On the other hand, a very interesting alternate (or additional) explanation for this phenomenon was raised to me on twitter. (These ideas aren’t mine originally, but I wholly endorse them as a big part of what is likely going on): Namely, as with authoritarian individuals in general, they see themselves as right and correct, but the canon (which has not yet validated their ship) is not correct, and is in fact problematic, and so they can save the canon from itself.
As mentioned, these fanpol types see their interpretation as Good and Pure. So if they can push (demand, bully) the canon into conforming to their worldview and validating their interpretation, then they have shown the (sinful) creators the light and led them to the righteous path. This only works if the canon allows itself to saved though, otherwise the creators remain Evil for spurning them.
How is this different from fans simply hoping for their ship to be canon?
For a second here, let’s rewind to the 90s (since Whedon has been in the news recently). This “I want it to be canon” thing isn’t 100% new, of course. We saw this trend then for the show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but it was different then. At the time, fans who hoped for a ship to be canon might have been cheering for a problematic one to begin with (Buffy/Spike). So shipping was still present, minus vocal fanpol.
(And Buffy fans learned that canon validation...can leave a lot to be desired. A heavy lesson was learned about the ways that fan desires can play out horrifically in canon, and how some things are best left out of the hands of canon-writers).
These days, this is still largely true. Many fans hope for their ships to go canon, as they always have. There are tropes like “will they/won’t they” that TV shows may even be designed around, which a certain narrative anticipation and a very deliberate build up to that.
But while shipping *hopes* occur for many fans, almost all ships fans that *demand* to go canon and obsess over are now the ones deemed as Unproblematic, or as Less Problematic. I’m talking here about the ships that aren’t necessarily an explicit will/won’t they dynamic but do have some canon dynamic that leads them to being shipped, but which the creators aren’t necessarily deliberately teasing and building up a romantic end-game for.
These ships often have fans who are happy to stick to fandom, but there has also been a huge uptick in the portion of fans who are approaching shipping with an explicit lens of “will they go canon?” and “don’t you want them to be canon?” and now even “they have to go canon” and “the canon is wrong if they don’t make this ship canon”, to a final end-point of “if the ship doesn’t go canon, the source material is Wrong and Bad.”
These latter opinions are the one we see more by extreme fans (‘stans’), hardcore shippers, but especially by fanpol-types, the ones who embrace fandom purity culture at least to some extent.
Why them?
In pushing for canon validation, fanpol types seek to elevate their (pure) interpretation of canon. As mentioned above, it’s validation of their authority, a safety-net, and a way to save the canon from itself if only they can bully the canon into validating their right and good interpretation.
There’s also another reason, which is that canon validation is a tool to bludgeon those seen as problematic. They can use it to denounce other (problematic) ships as Not Being Canon and therefore highlight their own as Right and Good, because it is represented in the True Meaning of the Work.
Canon validation then is a cudgel sought by virtuous crusaders to wield against their unclean enemies. It is an ideological pursuit. It is organised around identity and in groups sometimes as insular as cults.
How does this happen?
Fanpol tend to be younger or more vulnerable fans, susceptible to authoritarian manipulators. As many have highlighted before, authoritarian groups and exclusionary ideologies like terfs are very good at using websites like tumblr to mobilize others around their organizing beliefs. Fanpol tend to feel legitimate discomfort, but instead of taking responsibility for their media engagement, ringleaders stoke and help them direct their discomfort as anger onto others; “I feel ashamed and uncomfortable, and therefore you should be held accountable for my emotions.” Authoritarian communities endorse social dominance orientations, deference to ringleaders, and obedient faith to the principles those ringleaders endorse.
As these fans attach more and more of their identity to a given media (or ship), and derive more and more validation and more of their belongingness needs from this fanpol community, they also become more and more anxious about being excluding from this group. This is because such communities have rigid rules and very conditional bases for social acceptance. Question or "betray" the organizing ideology and be punished or excommunicated. If that is all you have, you are left with nothing. Being labelled problematic then is a social death.
What this means is that these fans cannot accept all interpretations of a media as equally valid: to do so Betrays the ideology. It promises exclusion. And, in line with a perspective around ‘saving’ canon and leading others into the light – forcing and bending the canon to their will is what will make it Good (and therefore acceptable to enjoy, and therefore proof of them as righteous by having saved others). As was also pointed out to me on twitter, endorsement from canon or its creators also satiates that deep need they have for authority figures to approve of them.
Due to all of this, these fans come to obsess over canon validation of their own interpretation. In a way, they have no other option but to do so. They need this validation -- as their weapon, as their authority, as their safety net, as their approval, as their evangelical mission of saviorship.
Canon validation is proof: I am Good. I am Right(eous). I am Safe.
(In many ways, I do ache for some of these people, so wrapped up in toxic communities and mindsets and so afraid to step out of line for fear of swift retribution, policing their own thoughts and art against the encroaching possibility that anything be less than pure. It’s not healthy, it’s never going to be healthy.)
In the end, people are going to write their own stories. You are well within your rights to critique those stories, to hate them, to interpret them how you will, but you can never control their story (it's theirs).
Some final notes:
This trend may be partially to do with queer ships now being *able* to go canon where before so no such expectation would exist. Similarly, social media has made this easier to vocalize. Still, who makes these demands and the underlying reasons are telling. There are also many legitimate critiques of censorship, queerbaiting (nebulous discussions to be had here), and homophobia in media to be had, and which may front specific ships in their critique. But critique is distinct from asking that canon validate one's own interpretation.
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IMPORTANT PSA FOLLOWERS PLEASE READ
Hiya everyone, Feli here! So this is a really important PSA that I really need you all to read. I’ve rewritten and reworded this like a million times over the last few months so oof I hope this goes over well but here we go-
So this blog is a side blog that is mostly for Hetalia and where the main fandom I interact with in this blog is Hetalia it’s not the only one, and that’s gonna be an important factor. You see, about a year ago I made this side blog because I got back into Hetalia and wanted to post about it online. However, I knew of the discourse and I knew of the drama and I just didn’t want to be apart of it. I also knew that Hetalia made a lot of people uncomfortable (for valid reasons of course) and I decided I didn’t want that on my main blog. Ultimately it is not my job to be concerned with other people’s internet experience (things like blocking tags and following certain blogs is all up to the individual) but I do like to at least do what I can to make it easier on everyone and myself. So I made this one. However this blog was never really meant to be just Hetalia. Mainly Hetalia, yes, but not just Hetalia. If you remember I have actually posted stuff like South Park on this blog and an anime called Rosario + Vampire (SP needing no introduction but R+V is an anime where there’s no discourse mainly because there’s no fanbase it’s still a,,,, not very good show,,,,,) but of course neither of these ever stuck around long enough in my brain to make much of an impact on this blog so I never addressed it. (South Park might continue to pop up here and there it’s a very old hyperfixation and though I dislike the show these days I still like the characters and just have momentary brain rot ig.) Ultimately this was always meant to be what I call my ‘Discourse Blog’. A blog where I could quietly like content I know has major issues with it and is not well liked while both making sure others on my main blog don’t have to see it unless they want to and keeping any discourse off my main blog all together. (Still not sure if I wanna keep Homestuck stuff on this blog or my main tbh.) The reason I’m bringing this up is because lately I’ve been getting into some stuff that might start being on this blog a bit more often and I wanted to acknowledge it before just randomly doing it that way everyone is prepared and not confused. Please know this blog is still MOSTLY going to be Hetalia so you don’t have to worry about that. I’m still a nasty little Italy kinnie who only thinks about Germany’s hot man tits a good 85% of the day(/hj).
One of the things that might start popping up a bit more is Danganronpa. I’ll be real honest I don’t know why Tumblr’s purity police has such a vendetta against this game there is WAY worse anime out there that I rarely ever see people bitch about. But I started playing it and I like it (wish Kokichi was in the first game but apparently he’s not). I can see some of the issues people might have with it which is understandable so yeah if you wanna keep Danganronpa off your dash just block the tag.
The other thing (and arguably the one that makes me way more nervous and is why I kept putting off talking about it) is Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss. Before you go get your pitch forks and shit let me just talk about this for a second. Yes Vivzie and the shows have very big obvious issues with them but, much like Hetalia, I don’t think it’s actually as bad as people make it out to be. I spent hours in the anti tags and just like Hetalia antis its just people making out things to be a lot worse than they are and throwing around words that really don’t need to be used in this situation. My honest opinion on Vivzie is she’s a woman who never grew out of her 2012 shock humor phase that came with watching too much South Park and she’s too prideful for her own good. She made dumb mistakes and did dumb shit and she did apologize for it all. Of course her apology post kinda sucked and when people bring stuff up she’s not exactly very graceful in her responses. But never the less she’s not the pedo transphobic satan spawn everyone makes her out to be (for more info on this drama and why I think what I think I highly recommend this video, he actively does his research and looks into everything really well and I agree with most of his points). And even if she was I’ve personally never been the kinda person to let people who work on or have made stuff stop me from liking it. I hate JK Rowling but still like Harry Potter, I don’t like Tony Anselmo but I still love Donald Duck. Letting others’ shitty mistakes and bad personalities dictate what I watch and how I live my life has never been the way I lived and I’m really not gonna start today. As for the shows themselves, yeah they got issues. Some of them, again, a bit drug out of proportion by the antis, but still issues none the less. Giving Alastor Voodoo is a big one (it leans into the constant negative connotation that Voodoo is always strapped with despite being a real world religion that actual people follow), Vaggie is very much a bad stereotype and even though Vivzie wasn’t trying to be racist (openly stating that as a Latina she wanted more firey Latina representation) it still has the potential to harm and upset Latino viewers, and then Angel Dust who is kinda a mess and honestly a big way she could have fixed him was just to keep him by his original version instead of changing so much about him (that honestly would need a whole separate post to explain).
So, yes, I acknowledge the issues and stuff in all this content and I’m very open and vocal about the issues just as I am with Hetalia. Liking these things doesn’t change that and I mostly made this post to make sure everyone knows that. But like I said before, your internet experience is up to you. If any of these things make you uncomfortable please do yourself a favor and block the tags. I promise I always keep things perfectly tagged on my blog down to the characters and ships. This isn’t gonna change. I’m pretty confident that no one here will take much issue with this. After all, if you like one of these things you know what it’s like to like things critically. If you have issues with anything on this post or me or anything I say or do come talk to me about it respectfully so no one is left thinking I’m some asshole for liking some dumb cartoon.
TL;DR This blog is gonna stay mostly Hetalia but it’s ultimately a blog for any content I don’t want on my main and if there’s anything you don’t like or that makes you uncomfortable please just block the tags and keep about your day happily
#PSA#vee~#im not giving this post any fandom tags cause i want it to stay out of those tags and be just for my followers to see#but seriously#please regulate your own internet experience#dont focus on stuff you dont like or stuff that makes you uncomfortable#itll only hurt yourself in the end#and if you have an issue with me my ask box and dms are always open (i normally keep dms to mutuals only but if its a serious issue its ok)#sssoooooo ya#have a good day yall ily
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Hello fellow fan who has been here since the beginning! I come from the “other side” I suppose, in that I do think the top/bottom discourse is worth talking about. It has to do with the elephant in the room which I haven’t seen anyone touch on – self-identified top!joe fans (in contrast to simply fans who enjoy or prefer content where joe tops). I remember the original top/bottom discourse coming out of a more general conversation about trends in fic (1)
Thank you fan!anon for sending me such a long, detailed message! Never apologize for writing me an essay since I always seem to be writing essays for other people in return lol. Also sorry it took a while to get to! This required a bit of preparation. You’ve given me a lot to respond to. I’m going to be putting the entirety of the ask under the cut and the tl;dr because this one is very, verrrryyyy long.
Tl;dr- fan!anon talks about the history of top/bottom discourse in TOG and the issues of racism in our fandom. My response: my own feelings on the history of the top/bottom discourse in TOG and the current state of it. General issues I’ve observed in this fandom and the current discourse. Also, we shouldn’t ignore fandom racism, but I don’t think we should be looking at it through the lens of top/bottom, AND I think we should be focusing on misogyny, homophobia, etc. in addition to racism. Not ignore one for the other.
Bottom line though, don’t harrass people, block people if you need to, focus on what you love, support fan creation and let’s try to be a better fandom.
Okay, time to dig in!
Hello fellow fan who has been here since the beginning! I come from the “other side” I suppose, in that I do think the top/bottom discourse is worth talking about. It has to do with the elephant in the room which I haven’t seen anyone touch on – self-identified top!joe fans (in contrast to simply fans who enjoy or prefer content where joe tops). I remember the original top/bottom discourse coming out of a more general conversation about trends in fic (1) wherein Joe was more violent, less empathetic, often not religious, more aggressive in sexual scenarios, and also most often topping. People asked the fandom in general to simply consider, if that is how they perceive Joe, to reflect for themselves about implicit biases that could be colouring that interpretation. The self-identified top!joes used that conversation as a starting point to argue that the above interpretation of Joe, (2) and writing/drawing Nicky as smaller, almost twink-like, demure, more feminine (or writing fic where he was de-aged) was justified by canon (if you recall the multi-day argument about the approximately 1 inch height difference between Marwan and Luca) and connecting those ideas to top!joe just “making more sense” to them. In the hands of a good writer (of which we are blessed to have many in this fandom!), which character tops in an explicit fic is of no consequence to me. (3) But the concept of top!joe has, in my mind, become so closely tied with those fans who, a) interpret these characters and actions in a way that seems influenced by racial stereotypes and tropes and b) use that characterization as “justification” for top!joe. All this when I thought we all agreed that position preference has nothing to do with personality? (4) If someone sees Joe as a very masculine, aggressive, dom-type character (which is a bit of a one-note characterization to start, but I digress), that shouldn’t be related to him being a “top”, correct? Yet that is the interpretation and connection that the top!joes themselves make. So that’s why to me, the top/bottom framework continues to have some value, eve though in an ideal world it wouldn’t: (5) because some fans connect what should be a neutral sexual position preference to an interpretation of Joe’s character, an interpretation which I think doesn’t do him justice. I understand if you don’t want to publish this but I’m hesitant to talk off anon due to how heated this whole conversation is. I also don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings or make them feel bad about how they are participating in the fandom, but I do think self-reflection in terms of how we engage is valuable. (6) And just to fully reiterate in case it wasn’t clear, my above points are specifically referring to who I think of as “top!joe only” fans as opposed to fans who enjoy or prefer content in which joe tops – only the former of which I am wary of. Anyways, sorry for this long message, and I hope I've been able to explain my reasoning. If we continue to disagree, thanks for reading this anyways and continuing the dialogue. Thank you also for promoting femslash events and content! (7)
So....I did say in a previous post that I’m not a big fan of hearsay, and I’m sorry but… that’s kind of what you’ve given me. A lot of “this is what Top!Joe Only people have said” and “this is what the rest of the fandom has said back.” I have to ask, who are these “Top!Joe Only” people that are on the other side of this fandom war? Who are the people representing the “rest of the fandom”? The only names I could really come up with myself are the Top!Joe Server mods as top!Joe only fans, and they haven’t exactly been active recently. Not to mention the Top!Joe server mod @karanoidandroid was the focus of the Art Theft and Bullying debacle a while back (here) which even if you disagree with her… that’s not the way you treat people. Full stop.
But anyway, to break this down, you’ve said that top!joe only fans wanted to interpret Joe in a way that was “more violent, less empathetic, less religious, more sexually aggressive, and topping (most of the time)” and that Nicky is “smaller, more twink-like, more demure and feminine” and that the hardcore top!joe stans are using this interpretation as a reasoning for liking top!joe explicit fics (and for underage fic?)
Er, honestly, I’ll have to disregard the “less religious” comment in this one. Lucyclairedelune has talked about it very eloquently here. As for the rest, let’s say these opinions were expressed on tumblr in July, just when the fandom was getting started. However, after personally going through all the Explicit July fics, I gotta say, the overwhelming majority of writers are focused on romantic Malta sex vacations lol.
From my personal observations (I started reading fic on ao3 in August), I’ve seen some stories that cater to very… specific tastes (mostly kinkmeme fics so I’m not going to touch that) and some that have…. been written in poor taste perhaps. But, honestly, the majority of fics (aka G, T, M rated) that I’ve seen? I would say that they were written with care and concern for the character’s portrayal.
Now, some fans (usually older fans) are very focused on “your kink is not my kink” and other fans feel this is an inappropriate way to view “racist, homophobic, islamophobic, etc” fics. And I agree with that. If people are using kink to excuse racism, homophobia, islamophobia, transphobia, antisemitism, misogyny, etc, in fics: Fuck that. But I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding flying around when people react to ‘ykinmk”. This fandom likes to assume the worst of their fellow fans imo, and I honestly don’t think that when a person defends kink that they’re trying to defend racism. They’re trying to defend their kink community which, historically, has been attacked and misunderstood by the purity police. Look into the Livejournal, ffnet, and even the Tumblr purges if you don’t believe me.
For the record, I don’t know anyone on tumblr personally. We’re all effectively strangers talking to each other on the internet, so I’m not going to make assumptions about people from stories they’ve posted on AO3 or the kinkmeme. If you want to talk about the issues those fics represent, that’s cool, but don’t harass people whose life stories you don’t know (and don’t vagueblog about them). (This is just a general statement, not saying this about you anon! I feel really strongly about this.)
Now you say, “some fans connect what should be a neutral sexual position preference to an interpretation of Joe’s character” and I hate to say it, but there are ALWAYS going to be some people who have awful opinions. Ones that are either truly terrible, or kind of in poor taste, or maybe you just don’t vibe with them. Personally, I don’t have enough time in the day to address every weird thing that a person spews on the internet. I won’t judge if you want to take them on, but, personally, I haven’t seen any recent militant top!joe only posts that are calling for racist portrayals. I see people referring to past conversations, for sure, but again, I can’t do anything with hearsay.
And honestly, we keep bringing up the top/bottom discourse of early TOG fandom, and we’re just not the same fandom we were then. SO MANY people have left the fandom in that time-- a lot of big name (or simply well known) fans and a lot of MENA fans. Regardless of what “side” you’re on in this, we all lose by focusing on the positions, by dividing everyone by “top” or “bottom” or “switch” fans, and by bringing up what people said in July, or August, or September. It’s exhausting, especially because I think a lot of people have done exactly what you said. Many authors HAVE self-reflected, they’ve thought about trends, the implications, and are contributing/interacting with the fandom as best as they can. Do I think we should stop focusing on self-reflection? That we should stop being careful about writing potentially damaging portrayals of our favorite characters? NO. Let’s keep at it! Let’s encourage others to do the same… but not with top/bottom discourse.
Let it be known that I don’t think racism is a topic we should disregard to focus on other things. Honestly, I would be happy if people gave some of the energy they have for “top/bottom” discourse to talk about the portrayal of Nile Freeman or Lykon or Copley or Quynh… the other POC representation in TOG that usually gets ignored. You may interpret this as me going “but what about??” and that’s fair. I just think that we talk about Joe ALL THE TIME in this fandom. There is an avalanche of conversation and content for this man (who I love, don’t get me wrong) and it just feels really disingenuous (to me) to talk ad nauseum about racist portrayals of Joe, but then to ignore Nile Freeman and wlw fics when Nile is the rare Black Female Action Protagonist and Andy/Quynh is an extremely rare interracial canon lesbian couple. And I’ve been trying to use my blog here to bring attention to this, think of me what you will because of that. (Again just a general statement anon! Not directed to you XD)
And from what I’ve seen in this fandom (and many others to be fair) is that we care about racism SO MUCH…but only when talking about how a man has sex. It speaks of a lack of intersectional understanding of these topics, disregarding the misogyny that IS ALSO inherent in fandom, and disregarding the homophobia of overfocusing on the top/bottom dynamics. BUT I’m not asking you to ignore racism; all I’m asking is for you to focus on the other issues too.
Bottom line though… the discourse is not what it once was. A lot of people, on whatever side, have left the fandom, or have taken a break, or are vocally tired of “top/bottom” discourse. Personally, I think we should talk about racism… but not through the lens of explicit mlm fic sex positions. Let’s talk more about race, gender, sex and sexual orientation, but not in a way that divides the fandom, in a way that makes people sick of being here, in a way that kills our content creator’s passion. Honestly, I think it can be done! But only if we work toward that goal together.
I would like to focus on encouraging events in our community, such as the ongoing Old Guard Big Bang 2021 event and the upcoming Femslash Fortnight Spring Solstice Edition event. If anyone is organizing other events, let me know and I’ll hype you up! But as for the rest, I’m tired, you’re tired, we’re all tired. Let’s try and work harder to be a kinder, more inclusive fandom in the future, for everyone’s sake.
#tumblr is a nightmare#the formatting issues i had with this one...#the old guard#my post#my ask#reply#loooooonnnnng ask and loooooong reply#sorry guys#this will be the last one for a while i think#the old guard discourse#old guard discourse#tog discourse
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Hey there, check out this pinned post first!
Thanks for visiting Roleplay Better, where I believe that you can fucking do better! That kind of language, however, is why it is important for you to read this post before proceeding.
This blog and its posts are meant for an adult RPing audience; be over legal, adult age in the USA, 18+. Do not interact by submitting, asking, reblogging, commenting, or liking unless you are over eighteen years of age. By interacting with RPB or me, Vespertine, you are assumed to be following this rule. If you are breaking this rule, you will be blocked.
I have that rule because this blog can/will/does address topics inappropriate for a younger audience. Those can include, but are not limited to:
not safe for work - violence, injury, sexual language, smut, substance use
“dark topics” and themes like violence, unhealthy relationships, mental illness, trauma, graphic injury, dubious consent, substance use, and so forth addressed realistically
foul, sexual, and otherwise “Adult” language
unpopular opinions and approaches about writing, RP, fandoms
“negativity” since literally anything can be, and my whole point here isn’t about holding back; it is likely that, at some point, in some post or another, a shoe will fit you-you need to be mature enough to handle that without taking it as a personal attack on you
images and links that may contain things inappropriate for a younger audience
this blog is founded upon the idea that fiction has reflections in reality, but that fiction does not utterly equate to reality. You should write with realism, your characters should be people in their own right, and you should absolutely be addressing many popular topics responsibly, which is to say realistically. I do not support or otherwise condone purity culture, so while realism is a big deal here, fiction = reality arguments are a no
seriously, you have no idea how fucking salty I am! I try to be fair, reasonable, and mellow with everyone, but it can and does come out.
This blog tags for common, major triggers, but it is not for those easily triggered or particularly sensitive. By proceeding, you take responsibility for yourself...like a mature adult. I expect you to utilize blacklist, unfollow, and block. Tag format is simple, it is literally just the word in most cases, with “cw” and “tw” added to particularly common things. Example, a post containing a breakdown of forms of dubcon will be tagged #dubcon #dubious consent. If that was specifically of a sexual nature, since tumblr is unfriendly to using Not Safe For Work now, I will be using #notsafe for sexual topics. In the event that this needs to change, it will be posted about, the previous tag left intact, so that you may update your blacklist.
You are always welcome to send me an ask or private message requesting a particular trigger be tagged for you. I try to check blogs I see following, especially if I follow back, so that I can tag what you require. However, I’m a person, I’m an ND, ill, busy person though, I do make mistakes!
If you find yourself desirous of telling me to tag in a hateful way, don’t. You will not be responded to with an apology and kindness. Do not be rude, it’s uncalled for when informing someone of a problem or making a request.
I will run the blog largely on a queue, and will not be following many people back. This is not personal! I just like to try to provide content at many different times, have a life elsewhere, and I am so happy that you love your fandom, but it might not be something I’ve enough interest in to have on my dash.
Don’t tumblr message me. Use the inbox or submit.
Due to recent events, I am changing this rule. It’s hard for me to receive messages unexpectedly, and I hate to imply that I’ll be able to get to these quicker because it isn’t the truth. Quicker, better responses come from the inbox. However, there have been too many incidents lately in which people needed to speak privately and had to make that a request. If you’re having a problem and need to vent, request sensitive advice, etc.? It’s alright, go ahead and drop me a PM, y’all. I’ll get back to you as soon as I am able. Please, do not be angry with me if I respond to inbox things or my queue is running! You’re important to me, I just might not have the requisite social cognition and energy you deserve at that time.
Aggressive inbox messages will be responded to in kind. I don’t care if you are on anon or not, if you haven’t an ounce of polite communication skills, I won’t have them either. This is not a “we don’t publish anon hate” blog.
I highly encourage asks and submissions on any and all RP topics, and it’s perfectly alright to be salty as fuck in them, you can totally vent here, but don’t take out your frustration on me or be demanding of me. I am always happy to help with information, advice, or just a response to your venting-it’s important to know someone is listening. However, it may take me a few days to a week to get to you, be patient.
If you are going to vent, leave out usernames. This isn’t a callout or burnbook blog. It’s fine to state characters and fandoms, but if this becomes a problem, it’ll have to change. I don’t want this becoming a salt blog for one or two fandoms I very likely can’t even stand. Practice the fine art of alluding to things, its good experience for your writing! Besides, RPC problems are RPC problems, I promise. It might feel like it’s just your fandom, but there is something relatable in all corners.
I will not overly police comments. Keep the slurs and shit out of it, though. If there is an issue going on pertaining to a serious instance of hate speech, or behavior I, personally, deem as too inappropriate and/or immature to be taking place on my post, I will step in. Otherwise, I expect everyone to be adults in the comments and reblogs too. If you want to argue with each other, that’s your business. If you want to argue with me, I’m not sorry in advance.
Addition to the above: this is not a blog in which it will be tolerated that commentators or those submitting with the URLS are targeted for callouts, shaming, or other instances of bullying. No, I cannot make those people stop bothering you by blocking them, but the least I can do is address that by shutting down their access to this blog and it’s posts by blocking on the URLs I have for them. And I will. Fuck that “we can’t be responsible for” shit. It’s my blog, it’s my content I’m putting out there, I’m not going to just ignore shit like what went down over on COAR, thanks. Not. Cool.
This is definitely not a place for:
people who think giving muses labels, including top/bottom “dynamics,” is a good substitute for character traits, personality, and development
those with no reading comprehension skills
folks dependent upon aesthetics and aesthetics-based purple prose as filler for actual writing
anti-original character/just wants to fuck a FC or canon character club, get the fuck out immediately
y’all who see writing as an obstacle to getting down to action, be that smut, drama, or fight scenes...it’s literally a writing hobby
politics, any manner of phobe or ism, violent/non-inclusive feminists, purity/rpc/fandom/content police of any manner, and exactly any manner of racism, sexism, or religious intolerance - I give not a shit if it’s popular to hate the straights, for example, I neither believe in nor tolerate reactionary classifying of any group as blanket-statement evil
people who are going to tack onto my posts shit like, “it’s okay, OP, you can say x character.” Trust me, if I were talking about one character, I fucking would name drop them, don’t bring me into your fandom drama, I doubt I know or want to know who that anime guy is who looks like 12 other anime guys to me.
About Vespertine
You can call me that, Vespertine. I’d rather you didn’t go with Vesper, but as it is unfortunately so likely to happen, I won’t feed you to the dogs over it either. RPB Mun is also acceptable.
I’m alright with either she/her or he/him, they/them is also fine. Apparently, that was big enough clue-in for the poor reading comp crowd, so while I feel it is not of importance, I’m nonbinary, yes.
Late 30′s, chronically ill but still working adult with neurodivergence. I’m both busy and Busy, and always sick. This limits my brain power and ability to be here. I have an active RP blog that I won’t be sharing to keep responsible distance. That is always going to be my priority, it is my primary hobby.
Please, don’t tumblr message me totally random things if we don’t have that kind of relationship! I’m too ill and busy, and it really fucks my nerves to have a bunch of messages/have to suddenly interact socially with people. Don’t do it. Use my inbox, use the submit, comment on posts. I cannot do random messages of “hey” and so forth.
I only do written RP, don’t expect me to understand much of anything from tabletop. I’ve RPed for the last 23 years consistently, on every platform from AOL chats to forums to messengers and here. I also don’t do RP in discord, so I’m sorry, but I can’t advise you much on anything with a word count, except to stop it for serious RP. Other than that, I promise you that I’ve seen the trends, the drama, the fandoms. I can give a lot of advice and perspective on a wide range of topics, situations, and characters! When I don’t have a clue at all, I’ll try to do enough research to give you an answer.
Do I come off as a horrible, strict asshole? I do! I’m not going to say that I am just a shy bean who is more scared of you than you are me. I’m not. I’m honestly feral, but have common decency, compassion, and sense. All of which are lacking in the general RPC. So, if you can inbox/common/otherwise interact with anyone else on this site, you can totally handle me!
Honesty and openness are policies.
And in the spirit of that, I repeat; you can fucking do better, tumblr RPC!
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Are you a Gold Star lesbian? (Just in case you don't know what it means, a Gold Star lesbian is a lesbian that has never had the sex with a guy and would never have any intentions of ever doing so)
EDIT: i’ve been told this anon is a bot, and a lot of people have received this same message. who would program a bot to do this and why is a mystery to me. assuming no harm is done in doing so, i’m going to keep my response up instead of deleting it because i spent a good amount of time writing it, and i think it’s informative, which is why i wrote it in the first place.
~~~
i’m going to do you a favour here and assume you didn’t mean any harm by asking me this, that you just didn’t know better or didn’t think it through. i’ve said some pretty weird things to people on impulse, so i know how it feels when people react aggressively when you weren’t trying to insult them or freak them out or anything. normally, i would just block you for something like this and delete the ask, but given the number of asks i’ve been getting these days after a long drought of interaction, maybe it’s a good idea to re-establish some boundaries, not to mention explain to someone who might not know better why i have so many objections to the concept of a ‘gold star lesbian’.
first off, even when i’m hosting a frank discussion about sexuality on this blog, i never want to be asked about my sex life. some people are comfortable talking about theirs on tumblr -- i am not one such person. people are welcome to enjoy this blog and ask the occasional question, probe me for opinions, but my personal life is not open for spectators. there’s a meaningful difference between asking me about my sexual orientation and my experiences as a queer person, and asking me who i’ve had sex with. one is an opportunity for education, and the other is inappropriate and invasive. i’m already really dodgy about answering questions about my personal life, about friends and location and whatever, so already that ought to be a good warning to never ask me about my sex life. it is none of anyone’s goddamn business. this is a recipe for an instant block, and to restate, the only reason i’m not blocking this anon is because it’s a learning opportunity, and i’m feeling generous today.
the other reason i’m answering this question is because it’s an opportunity to save you, anon, from the trap of believing in ‘gold star lesbians’. i already know what the term means, and i’ve long since formed a firm opinion about its uselessness.
1) a lesbian is not a better or worse lesbian for having/not having sex with men. there are a wide range of lesbian experiences that have room for a sexual history/future with men, and nobody -- absolutely nobody -- has the right to claim superiority over these people based on their comparatively “”pure”” sexual history. some lesbians formerly identified as straight, bi, pan, etc., and some may identify with those labels in the future. some older lesbians went their entire lives thinking they were straight, being married to men and having children before discovering who they are, does that make them less of a lesbian? does that make their current identity less qualified? i’ve been questioning my sexual orientation since i was thirteen years old, and not that it matters, but i don’t even identify as a lesbian anymore. am i tainted somehow?
2) let’s not pretend it’s not about purity, and let’s not pretend that purity means fucking anything when it comes to the spectrum of human experience. nothing is pure, nothing human will ever be pure, and anyone who claims their whatever the hell makes them pure is inflating their own pride at the cost of others they’ve arbitrarily declared are dirty.
3) men are not dirty. sex with men is not dirty. people who have sex with men are not dirty. you don’t get an award for not having sex with men, and the idea that ‘not having sex with men’ is a reward in and of itself is deeply unfair to both men and the people who find men attractive. there are a lot of excellent reasons people choose to have sex with men. the choice to have sex with men is not something i’m willing or even inclined to slander, even if the person making that choice is a lesbian, and even if they’re making that choice for pleasure.
4) sometimes, it’s not a choice. let’s not pretend rape in all its inglorious forms doesn’t count as sexual history, and hopefully we can all agree that, even if you’re 100% certain someone has never been raped, asking them to recount their sexual history to see if they qualify for some kind of honour is, at best, a rude and senseless violation of their privacy.
5) let’s also not pretend the concept of a ‘gold star lesbian’ isn’t borderline transphobic. i’ve seen a lot of people define ‘gold star lesbian’ as “a lesbian who has never touched a penis”, which naturally frames trans and some intersex women as dirty, while also discounting their womanhood. even if the term isn’t meant in a transphobic way, it has altogether too much flexibility as a concept for use by transphobic lesbians and terfs and not enough value in and of itself to bother reclaiming.
6) the label seeks to frame a specific lesbian experience as superior to any other experience, and does so at the expense of other queer people, and for what? is there a point to policing people’s identities and sexual experiences beyond “proving” one person is “”more queer”” than another? it’s ludicrous. it invalidates their experiences to make a select few people feel like they’re inherently better than everyone else, and i’m against that dynamic on principle.
7) if anyone thinks i’m reading too much into this, two things. one, it’s one of the only things my degree qualifies me to do, and two, just look at how the phrase ‘gold star lesbian’ is worded. you get a gold star. it’s a reward, an accomplishment, a sticker on your nametag, something which separates your from and prizes you above others because you did something good. in this case, ‘others’ is functionally everyone else in the queer community, and ‘something good’ is abstaining from sex with men. we’ve already been over why sex with men should never be seen as an inherently bad thing, and we as queer people should know better than to exclude each other for failing to conform to an arbitrarily ‘standard’ experience of sexuality.
i’m sure there’s more, but i’ve already spent enough time on this response. anon, if you’re reading this, it’s okay if you didn’t know better, and i hope i could teach you something today. i do get the feeling you asked this question in earnest, so as long as it doesn’t happen again (in which case, again, you will be blocked), no sour grapes. but to you and everyone else following this blog, this is an example of an inappropriate question -- for reasons on top of how many objections i have to the ‘gold star lesbian’ label. we have fun here on smallnico.tumblr.com, but i’m a real human being out there in the world, and this blog is my platform and spectacle, not me. there’s a reason i’m on tumblr and not twitter or instagram.
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Do you think rp has had a positive or negative affect on your life or you as a person? How has rp changed you personally? If you could change one thing about rp on tumblr, what would it be? Why?
@pepperpxtts | Mun Meme | Answering on Wednesday because I am a dweeb
14. Do you think rp has had a positive or negative affect on your life or you as a person?
It definitely has it’s ups and downs. I can say on the negative end, my anxiety has been so much worse because of the culture that surrounds rp and tumblr. It’s good to reflect on things and tumblr, like any other social media, has a way of bringing you information from a lot of different perspectives, but in the years I’ve been on here, it has definitely made me anxious about every single decision I’ve ever made in my life and the characters I like, the ships I like, the writers and stories I like. And we all preach about how everything you like is problematic to someone, but it doesn’t help the self doubt and the constant feelings of inadequacy or the feelings of some how helping perpetrate horrific things that people go through just because you like a show/movie OR just because you don’t openly condemn something. I mean, there’s a lot of other things in my life that has made me grow smaller and meeker, but to say tumblr and rp didn’t have a role in it would be wrong.
On the positive side though, I’ve met a lot of really awesome people through rp. I’ve had some of the most amazing friendships come from, and grow stronger through rp. Coming together for something we all love to do and screaming about our love for something, even just listening to someone go on about something that makes them excited is seriously rewarding. RP has also been here for me in some of the worst moments of my life, before and after I came to tumblr. Being able to cultivate a story and either use my own experiences cathartically or just to shoot the shit and have a laugh rather than focus on the bad stuff going on is honestly the best thing about it. I mean, that’s ultimately why we’re all here right?
15. How has rp changed you personally?
I think some of the points mentioned on the last question are here too. I think, even with the bad, even with the anxiety, the mistakes, the times I fucked up, the times I let other people fuck up, RP has helped me grow as a person while simultaneously stunted me. It’s helped me open my eyes to a lot of things, but also been the cause of a lot of self doubt and self deprecation. It’s bittersweet being apart of something so large. But I’m still here so I guess it hasn’t gotten rid of my stubbornness XDD
16. If you could change one thing about rp on tumblr, what would it be? Why?
Purity culture. Not just with nsfw, or villains, or taboos, but also the idea that no one can ever make mistakes. There are block buttons and blacklists for a reason. The idea that people have to be afraid to make an offhanded comment because of how someone might interpret it, the idea that something someone doesn’t like is somehow up to others to protect them from is pretty ridiculous. I mean I understand that we’re on a public forum and we should all behave as such. Just because we’re behind a computer doesn’t mean that it’s still not the same as being in a crowded auditorium, but there are lots of things that are targeted by the purity police that are completely rooted in an oppressive society. There are other things targeted by purity police that are taken out of context. There are these ideas that if you so much as interact with someone because they write something, you are guilty by association, let alone the legitimate reasons for that 3rd party individual to write whatever fiction they want to write, you are also condoning them because you don’t condemn them. It’s immature for one, and for two, it leaves absolutely no gray areas for interpretation, or growth, or understanding. Reality is not all or nothing. Everything we do is a perception and we should honestly take a look internally before making judgment calls on other people. Buuuuut I also have a lot of issues with depression soooo maybe I’m not the right person to talk to about this XDD
#[out of muse; ooc]#long post#was this salty??? I can't tell XDD#tw depression mention#tw anxiety mention#pepperpxtts
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Doctor Who: Revolution of the Daleks (2021 New Years Special)
I honestly really loved that! Like, a lot!
Cons:
It wasn't perfect, however. Of course. A few little nitpicky things, and one or two bigger complaints:
So, the bad guy was a little too one-note evil capitalist/politician. Some of his lines made me roll my eyes, like "this is a PR nightmare" being his reaction when he learned that the Daleks were eating liquified humans. The irony of him suddenly being hailed as a hero worked okay, but he was maybe just a touch too cartoonish for my personal preference, in an episode that mostly managed to feel really grounded.
Sometimes the Dalek stories will touch on this "race purity" thing, and the Doctor will talk about how they are beings of hate, and it really feels like we're doing a Nazi allegory, but they don't quite... go somewhere with it? Like, we've got the Prime Minster character talking about protecting borders and increasing security, and then the Daleks who are trying to stamp out "impurities," right? And there's something there, it's not exactly the most subtle of story craft, I guess I just wish it felt more intentional. The Daleks have metaphorical resonance here, and I'm not sure it was totally utilized.
My biggest complaint is one that could have been fixed with an added line or two of dialogue. See, the Doctor drops her "fam" off, then immediately gets imprisoned and remains trapped for literal years, from her perspective. Jack shows up and saves her, and when they return back to Earth, ten months have passed for Graham, Ryan, and Yaz. And the fam, especially Yaz and Ryan, are pissed. They're livid with her for abandoning them, and it really made them think about their place in life, if they want to stay with the Doctor or not. That's all well and good, but there's not really a confrontation of the fact that the Doctor didn't abandon them because she was off on a lark... she was imprisoned. Alone, cut off, for years. I was really flummoxed by the lack of sympathy extended by the others. I know it's her "fault" or maybe the TARDIS' "fault" that she got back ten months later, but what about the years that she spent without them? In my opinion, there was a lack of balance in dealing with that aspect of things.
Pros:
So... if Yaz is not supposed to be in love with the Doctor, someone forgot to tell the actors. And writers. Because WOW. I'm kind of obsessed with the way Yaz was written here. When the Doctor is gone, both Graham and Ryan try and get on with their lives. But Yaz remains firmly focused on finding the Doctor. Of all three companions, Yaz is the one who gets a special moment with Jack, where they basically commiserate over what it's like to be in love with the Doctor and know you won't get to stay with her forever. And then Yaz decides to stay, while the other two leave the TARDIS. There is just so much material here, so much love and desperation from Yaz. There were ways to make this a lot more no-homo, and they didn't take it. For example, during the Jack and Yaz conversation, Jack starts off talking about all the amazing things he got to see with the Doctor, and how losing that was so hard. But Yaz doesn't frame it around her experiences in general, she frames it around the Doctor as a person - wishing she'd never met her so she wouldn't have to suffer knowing what she'd be losing. It's GAY, I tell you. GAY!
Just look at Yaz's arc in this episode. She's missing the Doctor, she's conflicted about staying with her because of the heartbreak awaiting her at the end, but she chooses, ultimately, to stay by her side. Honestly, Yaz is the first companion since... well... Rose, maybe, whose character arc is best served by staying with the Doctor forever. Because she loves her. Romantically. Other companions, notably Martha, Amy, Rory, and Bill, all had other shit going on, other things they had to learn through their adventures. A life to grow into. Yaz? Yaz's place is by the Doctor's side, and I for one am thrilled to see where they're going with this. Come on, BBC. Don't be cowards. Make it gay.
Having Jack back in this special was such a treat. He's an undeniably fun and hilarious character, but Barrowman grounds the performance and gives Jack some real weight. I kind of love the way Jack and this version of the Doctor interact, with this depth of history but also a certain frostiness. We must remember that the Doctor knows what happens to Jack, exactly how long he'll live and how his end will come, and this version of the Doctor, more than any of the other modern versions, has a bit of a wall up when it comes to revealing her inner self to the people around her. But they still love each other, and you can see that love shining through the performance. At first, I was kind of miffed that Jack basically made his exit offscreen, just a voiceover saying he was staying on Earth, a very casual goodbye... but then actually I ended up loving that choice. It's like the Doctor and Jack are two people who were once very close, and will always have that bond, but now they're kind of like time traveling coworkers, just flitting in and out of each others' orbits. The way Jack leaves, there's no reason why he might not come back another time. It's refreshing and fun.
And Jack gave himself a bit of a mentor role in this episode, coaching the others (especially Yaz) on what it is to be the Doctor's companions, on what it might mean. I loved the moment when the Doctor came up with a plan to defeat the Daleks, and while the others were all confused, Jack got exactly what she was doing and tried to talk her out of it right away. Then, when the ship needed to be destroyed, the Doctor assigned the task to Jack, knowing that he'd be happy to blow it up. That shared history really shined through for me!
And now let's talk about Ryan and Graham leaving the TARDIS to stay on earth. Earlier, I was talking about companions and how for the most part, the characters have a growth arc over their time with the Doctor. For Ryan and Graham, it was about healing their relationship, as they grieved for their shared loss. And they did that. They have purpose now, as we see them continuing their life and fighting to protect Earth in the Doctor's absence. I love the idea of having more companions around for the Doctor to interact with. This has never been an ensemble show (not since it rebooted anyway), and the gimmick works best by having the Doctor and one or a small number of companions along for the ride in the TARDIS. But imagine Ryan or Graham giving the Doctor a call someday, whether it be in this regeneration or the next, because they need help with a problem back on Earth. Or maybe the Doctor calls them up the next time she's in the neighborhood! It warms my heart to think about it!
I haven't talked much about the Daleks or, you know, the actual plot of this special, and that's because frankly I'm not sure that was where its strengths lie. And that's okay! I will say I liked that the focus remained on the characters and their relationships, but we also had some commentary about the growing prevalence of the police state in first-world western countries. And capitalism is always an easy motivator for a villain, and that was executed more or less well, barring the complaints I made above. It was a serviceable story that created a proper threat, while really only being there to serve as a backdrop for the human drama.
So that's it! I've seen some mixed responses to this one floating around, but I for one quite enjoyed myself, and I'm excited to meet this new companion coming in. As long as they don't try and make him a love interest for Yaz or the Doctor. These ladies are spoken for.
8/10
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orphaned a few works from my ao3 account, and thankfully feel a lot lighter for it ;u;
i’ve done it in the way that lets me keep my username on them, but unlists them from my account. this will keep things cohesive for anyone who bookmarked them or any new readers who recognize my character and are wondering what’s going on, lol.
i just wanted to clarify that i’m not necessarily ashamed of what i wrote or censoring myself in any way. i’m not “purity policing” myself, if that’s even possible :p . i’ve just been getting notifications from those fics still, and while i’m glad people are interacting, it’s really content that makes me uncomfortable. i of course fully respect anyone and everyone who writes that kind of content, but i personally don’t feel comfortable with doing so myself, or engaging with the comments on those fics like i usually do. i published them at a time when i had a poor conception of boundaries and comfort, and although i appreciate the encouragement of my former friends and community, i floundered a lot without a safeguard. i’m definitely not blaming anyone for anything, haha! sometimes you just learn through bad experiences. i wasn’t comfortable with authoring that kind of content and i didn’t know to what level i should have been. turns out the answer is 100%! :p . sorry to everyone who i left a weird or no reply to and i hope all the ffxiv ppl who read those fics understand.
thanks! <3
(and to all the gw2 people who are expecting an E or M-rated fic, apologies but no. see above :p)
#update#to tell the truth even the scenes in mist communication make me a lil ://#but that's as far as i'm willing to go ;v;#if anyone has any questions or comments please don't hesitate to send them in i promise i will be nice
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🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 hmm. Star Wars. Current fandom discussion tendencies. General life. Current politics (locations your choice) and FREE SPACE.
If an opinion is unpopular it feels sort of overly bold to just drop it out there without explaining myself, so this is going to get long.
Star Wars: The most inherently and unequivocally evil use of the Force we ever see onscreen isn’t the Standard Dark Side Aesthetic of lightning and breathplay but the one power most closely associated with the good guys: the Jedi mind trick. Forcibly overriding somebody else’s free will? Is a dehumanizing autonomy and consent violation, full stop. What’s more, it only works on the weak-minded is barely half a breath away from they were asking for it (in other words, it only happens to bad and stupid people who deserve it; you never have to worry that this power might be abused or turned against characters you care about because the very fact that it succeeds serves as justification, which is circular systemic-abuse-of-power logic if I’ve EVER heard it).
And I get that when a thing is so woven into the setting, and so firmly supported by the story’s framing, trying to challenge that thing is narrative-breaking. You can’t point out that Jedi mind tricks are innately evil without upending the internal coherence of canon’s moral universe. Sometimes people don’t have the energy to do that, and that’s okay. Sometimes you just want to play in a fictional sandbox without stripping it down to foundations and questioning every assumption it’s built on! (If you’re anything like me you might actually find that cathartic, but I am self-aware enough to recognize that there are very specific reasons I’m Like That, and not everybody shares them.) Sometimes you simply acknowledge that a story is flawed in ways that can’t be easily fixed, and avoid putting too much weight on the flawed parts of the structure while salvaging the good parts, and get on with fandom life. That’s a perfectly valid way of interacting with fiction. Where my hackles rise is when people twist themselves into logical and ethical pretzels trying to defend it. Both the concept and the execution are skeevy as fuck, and even as a story the idea of people who can (and do!!!) use mind control serving as “peacekeepers” and diplomats makes me genuinely a little angry.
The sequel trilogy actually had an opportunity to introduce some interesting intertextual conversation and self-awareness here - the difference between a mind trick and Kylo Ren’s mind probes in TFA (which are clearly framed as bad) is one of degree, not type. Unfortunately JJ Abrams is a bad writer and Disney’s entire business model is Cashing In On Nostalgia While Taking Minimal Risks, so any kind of meaningful subversion was doomed from the start.
Current Fandom Discussion Tendencies: I’m not sure this is unpopular so much as just under-discussed, but most conversations about fandom purity policing are hyperfocused on shipping. The hysteria there tends to be loudest, so I get why. But imo it’s actually pretty detrimental to understanding the issue, which I would roughly describe as a conflict between people who think that fiction is a tool that we use to examine and reflect on life - where desire is sometimes messy, where tragedy sometimes just happens, where good sometimes goes unrewarded and wrong sometimes goes unpunished, where people can have complicated feelings about their abusers, where it’s possible for someone to be both a villain and a victim (and for neither of those things to mean that the other doesn’t matter!), where infinite beautiful ugly depressing uplifting complicated things happen every day - and people who believe that fiction should serve as moral instruction, which means that writing about some of those things in all but the most intensely didactic of ways encourages moral corruption.
This bothers me for a couple of reasons. One, the purity wank is a many-headed monster lashing out at sad endings, redemption arcs, “humanized” villains, character death, realistic depictions of trauma, and anything else that might be dark or discomfiting or ambiguous or morally complex in addition to less-than-wholesome porn, and while I think it’s important to address that part of it imo we don’t do our understanding of the issue any favors by conceiving of it simply as moral panic over depictions of sex.
And two, because in my experience it’s not that uncommon - not necessarily frequent, but not uncommon - to encounter someone who gets reeeeeeally worked up about people legislating how they can and can’t read or write about fictional sex, but then turns around without a single trace of irony and opines (often with an extremely out of context Ursula Le Guin quote attached) that, for example, Sad Endings Are Unwoke Because We Need Hope In This Era Of Trump, and if you write depressing stories you are giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Which I’m sorry to say is the point where I personally lose my patience and also my temper and have to log off Tumblr to avoid the temptation of asking in my most withering tone (1) whether they have ever read anything that is not Harry Potter, (2) whether they have ever read any adult literature, at all, (3) whether they have ever read anything by any author from someplace that has actually experienced war/imperialism/dictatorship/etc, because you’ll notice that many such books contain dark themes and black humor and tragedy and wrenching moral ambiguity. BECAUSE FICTION IS A TOOL FOR REFLECTING ON THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE AND HUMANS WHO HAVE EXPERIENCED TRAGEDY SOMETIMES WRITE ABOUT IT, YOU EMPATHY-CHALLENGED NITWITS.
General Life: No shade at all for anyone who enjoys them but while I never say never (absolutely top-notch writing can sell me on almost anything), as a general rule I cordially loathe coffeeshop AUs and much of the rest of their AU kindred.
I think part of this is that I’m consistently drawn to writing with a strong sense of place; setting IS story, in so many of the stories that I love best. But it’s also because I’m drawn to stories with ethical and/or political conflict and, while there’s no particular reason that you can’t have that in a coffeeshop AU, in my experience they tend to strip out most or all of that context and serve mainly as a vehicle for exploring character relationships.
I love a good character study so you would think I might be into this, but I just…care about a lot of my favorite characters specifically as people who have been shaped by a particular environment, I guess.
Politics: First-world privilege is a thing even if you’re marginalized, in much the same way that white privilege is a thing even if you’re poor or disabled or gay etc etc. Obviously this gets complex, but a lot of people (USAmericans, particularly) insert their feet very deeply into their mouths whenever they’re asked to discuss politics outside their own immediate cultural context and I wish everybody would just. Develop much better listening skills.
Free Space: Hamlet isn’t a bad play, but I wouldn’t put in in Shakespeare’s top five and tbh I think it might barely crack the top ten.
The language is stunning for sure, but that’s also the case in a lot of Shakespeare’s other works and meanwhile in this one the plot is awfully thin (especially for the length) and imo Hamlet himself frankly just isn’t interesting enough to justify the kind of deep-dive character study where the plot is mostly incidental.
The whole thing gives me very strong vibes of one of those movies written specifically for a particular actor to showcase their talent, and while a very good actor can definitely bring some layers to it in the hands of anyone else it’s like the theatrical equivalent of an unnecessarily long guitar solo by a mediocre musician.
#ask box#my posts#star wars#poe dameron (who was. uh. mind-controlled) asking 'does she do that to us?!' is one of the most valid and relatable characters in sw#aggressive negotiations#my separatist feels#purity discourse#fandom#shakespeare#hamlet
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“What shouldn’t I do to avoid making things worse?”
Just a day or two after I wrote this post, I happened to find myself in a position that did quite the job of reminding me I need to write this one. Someone randomly decided to say something positive about a person I know, and encourage people to check out their creative output. Almost immediately, someone else chimed in to inform them that the person they were giving that plug to is A Bad Person Who You Should Not Promote. When confronted about this, this was of course followed up with That One Link that people always give out when people speak positively about this person, and after a bit of back and forth, the whole post saying the person I know was cool and promoting their stuff was removed.
It's pretty typical for people, particular the farther they are from being a cis allistic abled straight white dude, to have That One Link that "proves" they are A Bad Person Who You Should Not Promote, and they basically all follow the same pattern. It's either a blog post or a dedicated forum thread, it's the length of a novella, it has roughly 200 links to or embedded screenshots of random posts from forums and social media, all of which are old and lacking context, and whenever it’s linked to, there is an unspoken assertion that it is the work of a detective so thorough in their research and uncompromised in their ethics that only a complete monster would question the legitimacy of anything contained within. Also being the sort who routinely does double check, I’ve found the actual contents of such to more or less invariably be a mix of misinformation and petty grievances nobody should care about. The best known example of one of these is probably “The Zoe Post,” and I’m really not the frst person to talk about this sort of crap.
In this particular bit of recent context, the person I know essentially stands accused of getting... into a nasty fight with someone marginalized along significantly fewer axes and far more established in their shared field, using something like a dozen different user names. Setting aside the incredibly skewed power dynamic there and the lack of verification on whether all of those names belong to the same person, and just taking the whole accusation at face value... I don’t particularly understand why I should care. Mind you, when this person first began interacting with me and I immediately got the all the warnings and That One Link, I took a very cautious approach, did a lot of independent research, and really did not at all see the person described in the person talking to me. Not particularly relevant whether that’s due to the whole thing being BS or personal growth happening in the... decade or so that elapsed since That One Post was written.
For some reason though, people consistently get their wires crossed about this sort of thing. Even the people you’d really think would have their heads on straight. I can’t count the number of people I know who constantly sit around pontificating about white supremacy and the patriarchy and the way marginalized people can never make a single mistake or be perceived to, who then constantly play purity police, actively and vocally making sure anyone who gets That One Post written about them is completely cut out of life to the maximum possible extent, until the end of time.
Now mind you, there are totally situations where advocating that everyone shun someone is totally called for. Nazis exist, nazis should totally be exposed as such and treated like garbage. I’d explain who George Zimmerman is if I saw someone pal-ing around with him. Monsters like these. These are pretty good examples of people to badmouth. But you don’t spread the word to everyone you can not to even mention someone just because you don’t like them/had an argument, or have a friend whose behalf you’re acting on, or a celebrity.
All that said, my original plan was to list all the crap like this I personally have to deal with, so let me get to that. Presented here is a partial list, roughly in chronological order, of the many absurd lies people have come up with to rationalize doing everything they can to keep me from ever interacting with anyone. Not one item on this list has ever blown over, nor been too ridiculous to be believed by people I was very close to before they started shunning me over it:
- All the standard smears against trans women are a given. I’m an evil seductrice, I want to sneak into women’s restrooms, turn all the children in the world trans, and am of course a big ugly bearded man in a dress.
- My opposition to murderous nazis and pedophiles is the result of me being paid vast sums of money by George Soros.
- I am a wealthy heiress.
- I have some completely irrational, possibly racially motivated hatred for some random woman I have never interacted with, have no mutual point of contact with, and have never seen anything written or spoken by of any sort.
- I am a dangerous terrorist ringleader trying to murder a long-time friend I constantly speak positively about and defend from various attacks.
- I am not actually a trans woman but in fact a man whose entire life is a vast web of lies.
- I am not actually trans but in fact a cis woman.
- I am secretly a nazi.
- I am an undercover cop from Brazil trying to bring down comumnist revolutionaries by blocking people who send me violent threats on Twitter (and have long conversations with said people despite neither party being able to see the other’s messages).
- I am part of some sort of elite club of pretty popular girls who all eat lunch together at the Cool Kids table or something.
- I am a horrible scolding prude.
- I am a huge slut.
- I am straight.
- Any woman I have ever been friends with I am actually trying to seduce.
- I used to be and maybe still am a member of Something Awful’s forums, and probably also an oldschool 4chan poster.
- I am attempting to destroy Patreon.
- I am running some sort of elaborate scam through Patreon.
- I have longstanding vendettas against an additional 30 or so people whose first names I am supposed to recognize, absolutely no other context apparently needed.
- Name a cause, I’m vocally against it.
- I run a vast media empire.
- I slept with a famous bigot.
- I refused to sleep with a famous bigot.
- I paid a king’s ransom to a famous bigot in exchange for something or other.
- I’m friends with untold numbers of people I’ve never heard of but have been assured are all quite vile and repugnant.
- I am a “pedophile defender,” shouted with no explanation as to what that even means.
Again, there is not an item on that list which, when randomly shouted and blindly repeated, did not cause at least one person I care quite a lot about to cut off all contact with me, without a word of explanation, forever. And there are people who actively scour for anyone ever interacting with me in any way, even as minor as liking a post on twitter, making sure to hit them with as much of this as it takes to keep them from ever having the slightest thing to do with me.
This has, in fact, driven away every friend I ever had (though people let me know if there’s any exceptions who just haven’t checked in in a while), destroyed all my career prospects, has me constantly dealing with dangerous stalkers, violent threats, and violent actions and if I’m really quite honest, when buying a new stopper for my bathtub recently the thought was definitely going through my head that apparently slitting one’s wrists when submerged in warm water is the most painless way to stop being alive.
It’s entirely possible it’s too late for me, but again, people attack people with this sort of garbage constantly, and people who should really know better constantly perpetuate it. So just try to internalize this, and in the future whenever you see someone talking about how someone is A Bad Person Who You Should Not Promote, loudly confront them about it. Make a scene. Everyone should be feeling really awkward when you’re done, and whoever’s giving out the “warning” should be reconsidering their approach to life.
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