#being a fan of something while the fandom is like the worst people imaginable is like a very well known experience but fuck ... 😭
Text
weird thought: I think if I was a teenager now (or anytime in the last decade or so) I think I would have written (and read!) a lot more fanfic than I did in reality, where I was a teenager in the 90s.
See, I've never been hugely into fanfic. Never had anything against it exactly, but it just wasn't something I was into. But I think that has to do with an interesting combination of how my brain works and what time I was first really getting into being a fan.
I've got a "librarian" brain (I'm literally typing this from within a library, WHERE I WORK). It wants to know things like "what are all the works in this series/by this creator?" and "are they all accessible?" and "what info is available about how it was made?"
I'm the kind of person who will watch a show then go look it up on wikipedia to see how many seasons it has, who made it, if they're still making it, check tvtropes for any more info, etc. Or I hear a song I like by a band I've never heard of, so I go listen to their entire discography while researching them. I just focus on things I'm into that way, you know? I don't half-ass my interest. (this is probably related to my autism, of course)
So what does this have to do with fanfic? like, do I go read some fanfics as part of this process? No, and I think the reason for it is when I specifically first got into fandom, as a teen.
See, this sort of fandom-librarian was harder to do in 1997, you know? You couldn't just pull up the wikipedia for that new show and see how many episodes it had. You also couldn't just listen to the whole discography of that band! Forget Spotify or Google Music, even Napster didn't exist yet.
So my interest in fandom focused a lot more on very basic questions: How many episodes/albums/books/whatever are there? Where can I see/hear them all? Like, I remember getting excited because I found some fan magazine that had a list of all the Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes. Just a list! Not even descriptions or anything. I finally could take that list and see how many I'd seen, so I'd know when I saw them all in late-night reruns.
So I'm focusing on these very basic parts of being a fandom-librarian and I stumble across some fanfic. I'm like "oh, is this a transcript of an episode I haven't seen yet?" and I realize it's not, it's a story written by a fan, and I get a knee-jerk reaction of "that's not helpful to my quest to know and find all the episodes". It's like I am on a quest for the holy grail and I found a fake cup. It's not helpful to me, and at worst it's a distraction from my goal.
And the thing is, I think the fact I had that reaction is entirely due to the time and situation in which I first encountered fanfic. It was in that environment of "I can't even find a list of the episodes, let alone a way to watch them all!" and that anxiety that colored my response to finding fanfic.
I think if I instead was first introduced to fanfic NOW, where those fandom-librarian drives aren't so difficult to fulfill, I'd be way more positive about fanfic. If I could get a list of episodes with a quick google search, and watch them easily on netflix/prime/whatever, I'd be less "THIS DOESN'T HELP! I AM STRUGGLING WITH THE BASICS HERE!" and more "yay, more content for the fandom I'm obsessed with!"
Like I said, I'm not anti-fanfic, I never have been, I just never got into it. From the beginning I had this reaction that was "this is not useful" and I never developed any real interest in it. Which is a shame, honestly. Fanfic is great. It just never became one of my interests, and while I've written it and read it from time to time, I imagine I'd be way more into it if I didn't have the weird reaction to it due to the worries of the time in which I first encountered it.
I don't know how many other people have brains that work anything like mine, but if they exist, I'm glad they're now growing up in a world where they won't have these problems. They can get into fanfic without this weird baggage caused by a lack of information.
102 notes
·
View notes
Text
a baffling amount of the our flag fandom on all platforms need to have their accounts put down like lame horses like this is so truly beyond the scope at this point. these people need to repent. i would say something crueller but they're not worth thinking about for more than two seconds if i want to keep the amount of white blood cells i have
#🐾#being a fan of something while the fandom is like the worst people imaginable is like a very well known experience but fuck ... 😭#how are you turning harassing palestinians into a Sick Burn contest for your followers and then feeling like. good about yourself#man can you guys just be fans of things 😭 i am so sick and tired#you all need to get surgery and have to be away from the internet for a week and then you'll be normal again#i started this whole thing like so ... i don't know. i barely interact with any fandom i don't see anything i'm just in my own world#but now i have seen it and it's just like man 😭 this is a lot and you people suck#like some of them are genuinely evil but even that aside it's just fucking mind numbingly annoying#also this is a tangent but it is not the only gay show on earth it's not the only gay comedy it's not the only show where middle aged#people have fallen in love. you are deranged in a bad way#the billboard was DUMB i deleted all my other posts about it cuz it doesn't even matter and i figured having a partial outsiders pov would#be helpful mostly for like. YOU GUYS. as in just providing the info on what moneys going where for accuracy's sake but man#burning money contest
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
Why does Indie Animation lend itself to such intense discourse?
If I had to speculate from my own observations (feel free to call me out on an overgeneralizations), it would be that the harsh turn against any given indie project would be akin to a mother scolding a child with, "I expected this from your sibling but you?!"
See also the "We were rooting for you" gif often tossed around.
Indie Animation be it from a small studio or crowdfunded is seen as bypassing the hoops and hurdles of getting your foot in the door of the highly corporatized entertainment industry. With the likes of Disney or Nick or any given streaming service, creator driven projects are subject to the whims of the company who holds the IP.
And those whims are often to said IP's detriment. It'll more often than not be willfully neglected at best or treated as just something to fill a time slot or shove onto a streaming platform as "content." Enough may be allowed to flourish but their either uncerimoniously cut short at best or being dragged out as a franchise at worst.
To keep from going on about the whole Legend of Korra vs. Spongebob thing (I was there people, there was an LoK fandom believe it or not), indie animation has often been seen as small scale but also within the creator's general control since they control how long it goes or how it's written.
Many cartoons like Gravity Falls, Owl House and Amphibia have talked about trying to get their vision across while contending with a lot of Standards and Practices. Their story which had a "kids and adults alike" target audience would have the top brass insist on something more just for the former category.
While they find work arounds, often to stick their tongue out at the FCC, this can be a hard reminder of who has the final say despite it being what you want. Indie animation is seen as an answer to "What if Alex Hirsch didn't have to comprimise elements of Gravity Falls for the FCC?" or "What if Dana Terrence could just blaze her own trail with The Owl House with little to no notes?"
Especially when it comes to animation with queer characters. Animation made to be "fit for kids" have it tough enough even today but adult animation has to "play it for laughs" since comedies have been the defacto standard for that type of cartoon.
However... a show being creator driven or creative team driven comes as a double edged sword for the fandoms they form. Not all stories that play out across multiple episodes of varying lengths are going in the direction YOU might want to.
Creators might tire of a certain direction or formula and mix things up with things that come to mind almost on the spot. Even with a solid plan, the status quo will get a shake up that can and will alienate those who fell in love from episode one.
Indie Pilots spark the imagination something fierce. There's theories as to what any little detail could mean going forward and speculation on what a character's arc could be. These go wild because Fandom is all about the hypothetical, the unknown, the what could've/should've/would've been. Whole phenomenon would be dead in the water otherwise.
Thing is that not all theories will be proven right if any at all. The creators aren't mind readers and even if it isn't a legality like in corporate, they don't read fanfics if only because they don't want their vision to be totally compromised. Any good creator knows not to just give fans what they want. However... trampling over all these fanfics and theories makes it feel like any given fan had their "child" dragged into the streets to be shot.
A harsh phrasing but that's how a lot of fans act when continuing episode bump up against initial impression of this character or that storyline. It was their creation but new lore, new backstory or what have you is liable to override them. It's been an occupational hazard of being a member of fandom for ages yet it's become the center of a lot of discourse now more than ever. Say thank you to social media for creating such a combative environment everybody.
It's this... feeling of ownership that has existed in fandoms of other shows owned by corporations but amplied by the smaller scale of it, how creators seem more... approachable. And THIS is how the YouTube "critic" scene comes in to capitalize.
So... yeah.
#indie animation#indie animated series#hazbin hotel#helluva boss#rwby#rooster teeth#rwby10#rwby volume 10#fandom#fandom discourse#fandom nonsense#discourse#anti rwde#fndm#hellaverse#vivziepop#monty oum#glitch productions#sm64#murder drones#the amazing digital circus#meta runner
43 notes
·
View notes
Text
As someone who likes to focus on character design in my art and frequents a lot of character creation spaces because of it, I feel I can say with confidence (Most of) the characters in The Amazing Digital Circus have commonly-used-online design traits and sources of inspiration, which make their designs feel not too exciting and maybe a bit uninspired.
HOWEVER, What makes these guys more unique lays in their personality, voice acting and animation, which perfectly fits the narrative of the story (imagine being stuck in VRchat). And It's literally perfectly fine to like the designs as they are. Their character designs have good colour contrasts which balance nicely over the design, a good weight distribution, strong shape language AND have an overarching style that ties them all together while also distinctly being based on different things and looking like they all come from a different genre of entertainment. For what these characters are, they are DESIGNED REALLY WELL.
I feel the character with the most unique and self-contained (for lack of a better word for "visually not directly inspired by something") design by far is Pomni. Literally chef's kiss. I love her expressions, love her strong colour scheme and I love how her jester's hat is stylised to be sometimes almost completely straight at the top. Her flat hat together mixed with the straight-cut strands of hair peeking out from under it are such a good and subtle contrast to her other round features that I'd dare to say they reflect her seriousness through the forced silly get-up put onto her by this digital prison. And her whole clown outfit is a really good contrast to the genuine dread and existential horror she's feeling in general. I can't get enough of it. Her design is perfect for her role in the story and also as introduction to the world we as the audience are new to.
That's why I'm honestly absolutely appalled by the amount of bad faith and horrible posts I've seen towards this project as a whole. It's one thing to not like it, but a totally whole other thing to actively make it (and the fans) out to be the worst most offensive creation to have ever touched the eyes of mortal men. It's not. And remember, people can be trolls to make a fandom look worse.
Online we have a fondness for kidcore and weirdcore aesthetics based on vague familiarity and nostalgia. It's OKAY to like a story/characters INSPIRED by these things. You are allowed to indulge on your own interests. Don't take these mean spirited posts to heart. If they don't respect your positive opinions of the show, you don't have to respect their negative opinions of it either.
#honestly the lot of these people sound like my parents telling me how bad everything I liked as a kid is bc they had it better#and ykw maybe they did. but I like the things I like anyways and I'll always hold a fondness for it because it was MY youth#I refuse to be that person for the generations after mine.#and honestly lately i've just seen a trend of mean posts scaring away interest from a topic in general... which is so sad :o(#don't let these posts scare you into disliking something you enjoy#long post#talkies#the amazing digital circus#tadc#tadc pomni#tadc jax#gooseworx#digital circus#character design#ramble#character design analysis#because i'm a nerd for character design#sorry but i had to talk about it since i'm seeing people say the designs are bad. which they aren't.#so I thought with my knowledge on character design i'd give my insight#design
42 notes
·
View notes
Text
Imagining what could have happened if the creator dared to dream bigger is fandom’s driving ethos. Whether or not the people behind the scenes expected to have the most passionate bloc of their audience fixate on a queer romance that may or may not have been intentional is irrelevant. When queerness is still on the periphery of society, it’s unsurprising that the relationships fans obsess over and seek to actualize are predominantly queer.
Our Flag Means Death, whose second season is now airing on Max, doesn’t require its fans to dream of the queer possibilities. Instead, it’s that rare breed of work that raises the romantic subtext—typically buried under bromatic jokes or subtle ambiguity—to undeniable text from the very beginning. And when fandoms and creative teams are both on the same page of the same unabashedly queer love story, as is the case for Our Flag, the experience is nothing short of sublime.
Queer media, particularly TV, has entered something of a golden age since the aughts. There are the early mainstream pioneers like The L Word and Will and Grace; the wholesome coming-of-age romcoms like Heartstopper and Love, Victor; and the adaptations taking beloved stories one big step further, like Interview with the Vampire, Good Omens, and Hannibal. There are gritty, inspired-by-real-life dramas like Orange is the New Black and Pose, murderous thrillers like Killing Eve and Orphan Black, raunchy comedies like What We Do in the Shadows and Sex Education, and many more stories featuring queer leads with fully fleshed-out storylines.
But even among these big names, this silly gay pirate show stands out by taking what these shows do best and fulfilling a particular need few have met before. The reasons are myriad: It refuses to use queer subtext as a prop or ransom for audience loyalty. It eschews the will-they-won’t-they dance that positions love as an end rather than a beginning. It defies the trope that you must renounce your past in order to move on. It scoffs at the notion of a ceiling for complex queer characters and relationships in a single show. And it demonstrates that depicting the experiences of queer people (and, just as importantly, people of color) don’t always have to center brutality and trauma—that healing can come from making acceptance the norm and bigotry the butt of ridicule, and that being kind doesn’t necessitate being passive.
As a show that didn’t explicitly market itself as “LGBTQ,” one of Our Flag’s most striking aspects is how it subverts the way this genre typically approaches romance. You could argue that the love story begins when Stede Bonnet (Rhys Darby) is recognized as the pirate he wants to be—while three-quarters of the way dead—by none other than the dread Blackbeard (Taika Waititi). Or you could say it begins when Blackbeard, a.k.a Ed Teach, is seen, for the first time, as someone who deserves softness and finery by the epitome of softness and finery himself. Or when Stede comforts Ed as he curls up in a bathtub reliving his worst memories. Or when Stede picks roasted snake out of Ed’s beard. Or when Ed gives himself up to the British to save Stede’s life. Or when…
You get my drift. There’s an entire season’s worth of scenes that make up the foundations of a fandom: moments of intimacy and connection that gesture toward the possibility of something more. These are the planks and rigs of a ship sturdy enough to outpace the fleet of fanworks chasing such moments down until feelings are admitted, consummated, and set sailing off into the sunset. In hindsight, Our Flag was undoubtedly heading in this direction. But it wasn't until the most incontrovertible on-screen gesture of romance happened—a kiss—that fans heaved a sigh of relief. Because fandom, for all its capacity to will alternative universes into being, is inherently bound to the media from which it springs, and many have only ever cast queer love as bait.
But with Our Flag, most fans aren’t at all concerned about what direction the story will take. And the key difference is that they trust the creators wholeheartedly.
For many queer fans, it’s a novel experience to interface with a creative team that is not only aware of exactly who the audience is and what they care about, but also proudly and vocally celebrates them. In interviews, producer and lead actor Taika Waititi has stated that he collects fan art on his phone. Vico Ortiz (who plays the nonbinary pirate Jim Jimenez) has shared that fan art encouraged them to get gender-affirming top surgery. Creator and showrunner David Jenkins once remarked that fan discussions are so spot-on, it was as if they had “been in the writers’ room.” And several queer actors on the show have expressed that the fandom has made them feel even more connected to the LGBTQ+ community.
Our Flag is one of the rare cases where fans and creators share the same vision for a given work. There are no calls for the figurative death of the overly originalist author, nor strict separation of the "canon" of the original work from the "fanon" interpretations of the audience. There is no need for fans to dig for subtext, because what they’ve been searching for has been on board with them all along—not as a blink-and-miss-it pantomime or a nothing-left-to-lose Hail Mary, but a queer love story that was intentionally, thoughtfully crafted from the beginning.
Our Flag presents fans with a vibrant world where everything is mostly beautiful and almost nothing hurts—at least, not yet. Fans can surmise the shape of the second act and the close of the third, even if they don’t know exactly how they’ll get there. But with full confidence in the creators, fans have the opportunity to stretch their imagination beyond tallying evidence and righting wrongs—and it makes for a fandom experience less a eulogy at a funeral of another buried gay, more a toast at the most extravagant and absurd cruise-ship wedding to ever grace the seven seas.
We are all on the same page of the same story, and the experiences of everyone involved is so much richer for it. Or, as Stede would say, treasure is the real treasure.
Fandom, like being a pirate, is in many respects a very queer enterprise. It centers on abandoning the rules so you can survive; grabbing every scrap of home you can find and making it your own; sharing the spoils with the people who see and accept you for who you are and who you want to be. Or, in the words of the show’s pseudo-antagonist, Izzy Hands (Con O’Neill), it's about belonging to something—a something that, I believe, could be enough to help you fall back in love with life and the world.
I think often of the scene that first drew me into Our Flag: Stede asks his former wife, Mary (Claudia O’Doherty), what it feels like to be in love. Looking back at it now, I realize her response describes what the experience of being a part of a community a show like Our Flag creates can feel like. Because love, she tells him, is as easy as breathing. It’s understanding each other’s idiosyncrasies and seeing the charm in them. It’s exposing each other to new things and laughing a lot. It’s passing the time so well together.
To every queer fan out there: I hope you find that, too. I hope you can name it without fear. And I hope you will be embraced for that revelation, and all the wonder and joy it brings.
#our flag means death season 2#ofmd s2#ofmd s2 spoilers#spoiler#our flag means death#ofmd#beautifully written#and so very spot on#and now I am NOT crying here#YOU ARE!!!#ofmd s2 press
20 notes
·
View notes
Text
I gotta say, like. I haven't seen the ep 9 and 10 leaks, nor do I want to (I watched pine barrens early and I wish I hadn't) but I swear, at this point I'm convinced everyone's overreacting for no reason; like there is NOTHING that the show could possibly do that would disappoint me on such a level that ppl are saying they don't want to continue watching the show. Unless they kill off the entire cast, pull an X-files and replace everyone, I just can't see it being as dire as people are making it out to be. Like... let's all calm down. You're getting (at best) a choppy machine translation, and at worst what is essentially a silent episode with 0 actual context for what you're seeing. From my experience watching pine barrens in Russian, I can tell y'all that things were interpreted incorrectly (both in summaries AND by me while I was watching) and watching the actual english episode was an entirely different experience.
Maybe it's just because I haven't gotten my hopes up about nandermo getting together this season there have been PLENTY of clear signs that it's not happening but I legit can't even imagine a worst case scenario that could prevent me from enjoying the show at this point. It feels like so many fans have gotten swept up in fandom hype (which is totally fine and completely understandable, I'm not immune to this either) but it's almost like... there's a terrifyingly big divide between fanon and canon this season. It's just a silly dumb little show. If you wanted it to go one way and it didn't, bummer, I guess, but to write off an entire show because the conclusions you've drawn up with friends weren't the way it panned out is so odd to me. It's understandable when theories like there being something in the walls that colin is trying to get to or whatever spread, but at the same time it could just be a running joke about him being a little shit of a kid. If this isn't addressed, I wouldn't be surprised. I don't think it's really ever been pushed like that, it's just that it gained traction in the fandom and a lot of fans started clinging to it (as well as some other common theories like it) but is it REALLY being teased? Or was it not meant to be anything more than a surface level joke.
I don't think it's right to be disappointed when stuff like this has been hyped up by the fandom rather than like... official marketing material or something, and I think that can be applied to every prediction that seemingly didn't come true.
I just see a lot of hostility and accusations thrown around, and some truly bizarre takes, and it's just... it's a show. it's a show, guys. it's just a show.
#wwdits#what we do in the shadows#ive been rewatching to recap the season for the wiki and like.#idk. ive thought some of the nandermo theories this season have been pushing it but MAN#idk how much clearer guillermo could be about not being into nandor anymore#i have no fucking idea if this is the source of all the vague complaining but it really seems like this is the root of the issue#the anger at last season's finale for 'queerbaiting' and now i guess anger about them not getting some contrived jealousy arc#ill be honest like. if it was some wack ass shit like nandor killing guillermo i still would not give a shit.#cause as we saw with last seasons cliffhanger and this seasons premiere ep. it doesnt matter#ITS JUST A DUMB LITTLE SHOW!!!!#i feel like everyones taking it SO seriously like its.... expectations are so high#its a tv show these characters arent real and they are all terrible stupid people#ada speaks#not to be all like 'calm down son its just a drawing' but can we maybe not hold this show to impossible standards#like its not some revolutionary all important work of art its a shit and fart comedy show with some plot to it#IDK MAN. IDK
107 notes
·
View notes
Text
20 Questions for Fic Writers!
I'm finally getting around to doing this after @professorsaber, @mythical-bookworm, and @daryfromthefuture tagged me! Sorry for the delay (it's been a week)!
Under the cut because it seems I felt the need to write my life story today as it relates to my body of fan work. :)
1. How many works do you have on AO3?
I'm currently sitting at 51.
2. What's your total AO3 word count?
650,606 (of which 58K are shared with co-authors)
3. What fandoms do you write for?
Predominantly Back to the Future with a lot of Pirates of the Caribbean, Iron Man, and National Treasure in my rearview mirror. I've also contributed one-shots/ small works to 19 other fandoms over the years!
4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?
What to Expect When She's Expecting - (137) - Iron Man
Where You Were (Time Circuits #3) - (95) - BttF
Where You're Going (Time Circuits #1) - (72) - Bttf
Principles of Compromise - (70) - Pirates of the Caribbean
A Fracture in the Space-time Continuum - (69) - BttF
5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?
Most definitely! I love interacting with the people who have taken the time to read and comment on my work, even if it's a simple thank you!
6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?
Ooo hoo hoo. I might have to poll some people for this one. My first reaction would be There Are No Roads (Time Circuits #2.5), but as the ending is technically an alternate series of events, I'm not sure it counts as an official 'end'. I'm big proud of it, though, because most initial reactions were somewhere along the lines of "oh my GOD." :)
That being the case, Once Upon a Time in the West wins hands down, mostly because I didn't even see the plot twist coming until the fourth chapter of this six-chapter fic! And it delivered an epic sequel!
7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?
Oof. Don't come at me like this; I'm just now realizing how much angst I really write because I've narrowed it down to maybe two of my Ao3 fics? Sheesh.
I'm going to go with the only 5+1 fic I've ever written, The Manner of Giving. It was five times Marty failed at giving Doc a gift, and the one time (the end) is when he succeeded.
Where You Were (Times Circuits #3) also gets a nod because it's the end of my trilogy rewrite, and I like to think I ended it on the happy note everyone deserved.
8. Do you get hate on fics?
I've never gotten a scathing flame of a review, thank goodness. I did have someone ask me on FFN once why I was writing an OC for Marty when he had Jennifer in canon, and while it was tempting to just say "don't like, don't read," we ended up exchanging a mature and constructive dialogue and respectfully parted ways.
I also once, long ago, before I ever planned to seriously pursue writing, had one of my fics added to a "Worst of the Worst" fandom collection on FFN. It was a terrible fic written by an inexperienced teenager, but I still find something like that distasteful and uncalled for, mostly because, as the author, I wasn't able to remove my work from the collection. And it's still there. And I'm still mad about it. Oddly, it's ensured I hold myself to a high standard and never put anything out there that could be considered for a "Worst of the Worst" collection again. So, screw that guy, and thank you.
9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?
No. I've never wanted a tell a story where that was essential to the story. Now, I've recently included/ alluded to more mature situations in the last year for the first time in my 20 years of writing to get me out of my comfort zone, but no graphic, extended scenes.
10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?
I have! And the craziest crossover I have is FFHQ. Imagine all the characters in all the fandoms in one giant office park drawing up contracts to appear in fics, meeting with fanfic authors, collaborating on crossovers, etc. It's a lot of paperwork, meaning each character has a secretary. That's a lot of secretaries, so there is a list of "subs" who fill in as floaters when a secretary is out, and this crazy crossover follows three OCs as they bounce around random fandoms each day. This baby is my crackfic, the idea I escaped to in those eight years of depression when I wasn't doing so hot. If you're up for it, I promise it's lots of fun!
Honorable mention goes to the BttF/Elf AU I wrote for our server's Secret Santa exchange last year: Pennies From Heaven.
11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?
*inserts Ben Affleck smoking meme*
Yes. And it's… I'm just very over this form of "flattery".
When I was still in high school, I was writing a pretty successful National Treasure fic when a reader told me they found the story on another site. The person who stole it was writing author notes at the beginning, like "Find out what happens to them next time! I've got great stuff in the works!" I emailed that website, and they kindly took it down and banned that user.
Last year, I had someone on Wattpad steal the Time Circuits Series, rename it the "Flux Capacitor Series", and switched out Emma's name with "Dawn". Two things that had me cackling: When I have Marty call Emma "Em," Marty was calling Dawn "Da," and you could see several places where Emma's name wasn't backspaced all the way out of the text. I confronted the "author", and they wisely took it down, telling me it was just so hard to write it themselves. You bet your ass I have this person still on my alerts list to keep an eye on them, and once a month, I am searching Wattpad for my own fics.
Novel HD/ Novel WW also stole Time Circuts off Wattpad for their website, scrubbed my name from it so that it said it was written by "Anonymous", and put the stories behind paywalls. I caught wind of this about a quarter of the way into the last story and took everything I had off Wattpad. I saved the links but they no longer work, and I can't even access the website anymore. I'm not sure if it's gone or if, because it is a foreign site, they somehow blocked our region from accessing it.
I also had FictionHunt take all of my stuff off FFN! It took several months, but I finally got them to remove my stuff from their site. I might not have minded so much if they had asked me, but that's too hard, I suppose.
There was one website called MovieFanficChains way back in 2005 I gave permission to to host my PotC fics, but aside from FFN and Ao3, that the only place with my permission to have my stuff.
If you see my work elsewhere and it has not been linked back to me, let me know. I'll do the same for you. :)
12. Have you ever had a fic translated?
Not that I know of.
13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?
I've done a few roleplays with @daryfromthefuture, where I wrote for Doc and she wrote for Marty. Our most well-known roleplay-turned-fic would be the 1885 scarlet fever sickfic Lean on Me (When You're Not Strong).
I've also been part of the silly blind writing game in our Discord server aptly named Back to the Future: Discord.
14. What's your all-time favourite ship?
I don't know. This is hard. I'm a romantic, and I make the excited Andy Dwyer face every time a ship is hinted at. I have so many I love, but the mainstream ones that immediately come to mind are Tony/Pepper (Iron Man), Sherlock/Molly (BBC Sherlock), Jamie/Brienne (Game of Thrones), and Reylo (Star Wars).
15. What's a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?
I wrote a National Treasure story in high school called Another Clue, and it was one of my first real attempts at an OC insert. It did fairly well, given my talents at the time; I incorporated an OC, but I focused on crafting a canon-like treasure hunt more, and a lot of people complimented that.
So I started a sequel, One More Clue. It built a bigger story around the first, highlighting a treasure hunt that required the help of a rival and two friends seemingly trying to out-betray one another. I got about 12 chapters and 69K into One More Clue before life took over. I last updated it on June 1, 2010, and I left it at quite the cliffhanger with Riley turning Ben into the FBI only to learn the FBI guy was working for the rival and UGH, I keep meaning to go back to it. I have all the notes!
The problem is, I would have to rewrite Another Clue at this point because it's a hot high schooler's mess. You could tell as I wrote One More Clue that I was applying what I was learning from my writing classes in college. While Another Clue didn't have that luxury, it showcases some strengths that compelled me to pursue a writing major (AKA I can make a decent history-driven treasure hunt).
So, while I could finish One More Clue if I really wanted to, it would be pointless unless I overhauled Another Clue first. Which I've thought about. Because National Treasure is my guilty pleasure. I'm just fairly certain no one would be around to appreciate it if I put all that work in now. :)
16. What are your writing strengths?
I've consistently been told it's dialogue, and I find myself agreeing with that. The single lines of dialogue that turn a whole story on its head or tell a whole story of their own are what I live for.
This is the DUMBEST example, but there is an episode of Spongebob Squarepants where Mrs. Puff is freaking out because she gave Spongebob his boating license just to finally get him out of her class, and she's spiraling. She arrives at "I'll have to change my name, move to another city, and open another boating school!" or something like that.
And then her voice just goes dead flat and her eyes narrow and she says, "No. Not again."
And I lose it every time! But you know there's a WHOLE story there just by that little bit of dialogue! I love that! And I love implementing it where I can, whether it be in a comedic or dramatic setting.
17. What are your writing weaknesses?
I'm wordy. When I give myself a word count goal for a project, it inevitably goes over, but it gets shaved down some in editing.
Thankfully, I got a hard lesson in this in one of my college writing classes. I turned in a prose-y poem I was quite proud of, and in the next class, the professor handed out copies to everyone. We proceeded to workshop (i.e. destroy) my work, whittling the word count down by half when it was all said and done. And while I was mortified at the time, I've since thanked my professor a few times for that day. That one lesson lives in my brain every day, and I am right back in that classroom every time I edit a work, trying to figure out what the most succinct wording is, what is un/necessary, and how to play with my line breaks. Criticism is daunting but so, so worth it if you can find the courage to apply it!
18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?
I did this for the first time in Once Upon a Time in the South. I have a headcanon that Buford's baby momma is a Spanish actress at a small theater in Pine City, and he had to get something from her. This woman speaks very little English, and it was a challenge to stay true to that because (a) I don't speak Spanish and (b) my brain just struggles a lot with foreign language translations. Me being me, I wanted the most accurate and realistic translations I could get, ones that didn't sound too formal. Then you add in the fact that it's 1893, so there's a time-period language barrier, too. Ultimately, I'm happy with the end result, but I don't see myself going out of my way to do this again.
19. First fandom you wrote for?
Pirates of the Caribbean! What a fantastic playground in which to practice storytelling! What really got me hooked on this "I might try writing for real one day" thing was listening to the writer's commentary on The Curse of the Black Pearl DVD when I was 15.
Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio gave excellent insight to this story I was enamored with and how they came up with it! "We had Sparrow and Swann, so we figured we shouldn't give Will a bird name" cracked me up. They covered everything — what challenged them, what rules ("guidelines") they stuck to ("leave the kiss for the end"), stuff like that. But what lit me up was hearing the entire backstory while the credits rolled, about how Barbossa was Jack's first mate until Barbossa committed mutiny and all that jazz. There was so much story to the story! That was a big, big day that influenced me. :)
20. Favourite fic you've ever written?
Oh, gosh. This is tough because the favoritism depends on the reason!
I'll forever love Principles of Compromise because after abandoning it several chapters from the end and not touching it for eight years, it was the first story I came back to and finished before returning to the Time Circuits Series. It was the first plot-heavy story with canon characters I attempted and completed (most of my works up until that point had been rewrites or headlined OCs). Finishing it was the stepping stone to all the writing I've since completed (30-some works)!
Favorite all time though? I'm a mom; you can't just ask me to pick a favorite kid, and this is just as mean. :)
(But for real, it's probably a tie between There Are No Roads (Time Circuits #2.5) and Once Upon a Time in the East )
Tagging @retro-hussy, @jowritesfanfiction, @writingwife-83, and anyone else who wants to play!
Thank you so much for tagging me, friends!! I don't know why, but I love doing these! Sorry again it took so long for me to get to. ❤️
#20 questions for fic writers#ask game#tag game#answered asks#fanfic#fanfic writing#fan fic writer#back to the future#pirates of the caribbean#national treasure#iron man#ao3#bgsparrow
8 notes
·
View notes
Text
...
this is the last time i'll talk about the kpop mia thing i promise. i pinky promise. just have to get this off my chest. (post contains mentions of Unpleasant fanservice elements with underage characters in other shows, not terribly detailed but they are described.)
Imagine if every time someone said they liked Gainax’s beloved mecha classic Gunbuster everyone who heard them assumed it was specifically because of that one locker room scene that is in there more prominently than the scenes of nudity in MiA and feature more visible, more detailed, and more prolonged underage nudity and quite unambiguously exists for the sake of titillation alone
imagine if mentioning you were a Fate fan caused everyone to think you were watching it for the little girls making out in Prisma Ilya or the microbikini-clad underage version of Jack the Ripper in FGO. or saying you liked Gurren Lagann immediately caused people to come running with that one interview where a staff writer randomly said Yoko is 14 while most of the merchandise featuring her is heavily focused on sexualization and fanservice, retroactively rendering the show's many many fanservice scenes with her highly questionable for reasons lying totally outside its established canon
or to take a break from objectionable sexualization even though that's the internet's favorite subject: what if every LOGH fan was assumed to share Tanaka's potential tendency of according validity of Great Man Theory or take an uncritical view of the authoritative military autocracies like the one Reinhard establishes amid a mostly positive framing in the story. there are definitely fans that do this by the way but good lord i can't imagine someone assuming the entire fandom does instead of being prone to creating many healthily-critical diatribes questioning the above, even alongside our great love of the characters of the story and the overall work
like nobody assumes these things because it’s widely agreed there’s lots of other good shit in there for all of those shows, and many fans enjoy them without liking and thumbs-upping everything in it. so can you give us Giant Hole Show Liker People that bare minimum of consideration. huh.
like. man. i’m not out here standing by everything in MiA as something I am pleased is in it — like, fucking duh i’m not, since everyone who’s heard me rant about how the otherwise consistent and fantastically delineated theme of “condemning and inspecting a world that exploits innocents for its advancement and those who partake in this” is veritably kneecapped by some of s1’s dumbass lolisho fanservice moments (that Tsukushi just haaaad to throw in, where trauma and humiliation is thrown into casual everyday life montages and brushed off as funny-sexy), knows perfectly well how i feel about them.
but I’m so so tired of people not affording the fans any consideration that we might like The Fucking Rest Of It when there’s way more mainstream things with worse-or-as-bad elements of underage fanservice whose fandom isn’t assumed to be there primarily for the worst bits of fan service.
like can you just accord people the grace of potentially being human beings with complex opinions and well developed reasoning skills and nuanced opinions
#orphan hole tag#I like gunbuster a lot! and I’ve never in my life seen anyone cancel all its fans for the uncritical-sexualization-of-underage-girls part#because we’re a bunch of adults who don’t assume that watching it means you did so for the Worst Part or cosign every element. amazing#idk maybe the kpop idol fanbase people are mostly really young#and are used to a) idols' manufactured perfection b) fanbases with no gray area between 'love every bit of a thing' and 'loathe every bit'
9 notes
·
View notes
Text
well well well, here we go again.
being an indie artist that suddenly gets a fuck ton of attention is so hard.
everything that has happened with welcome home reminds me of a situation not too long ago with another popular horror creation ‘the walten files’
artists are just one person, and often times our work has gotten us through so fucking much, my personal project that i have been working on since i was in the 6th grade is similar in that regard.
i feel like people don’t fucking understand the mental distress growing fans can cause, its not all fun and games, ESPECIALLY with mental illness involved. for example, i remember the first time one of my youtube video hit the 10ks in views and it was a short animation i made for a youtube drama. i had a damn panic attack and that was over a video i didn't care about that got just a few thousand views. i cant imagine how clown is feeling right now, but as someone who has recently come out of a very dark place, i really hope he can get the support he needs.
being lonely is very, well lonely.
about 2 months ago i admitted myself into a psychiatric hospital, i was overwhelmed, horrified of facing anything, going to the hospital was the worst and best thing i have ever done. im happier, im healthier, i got the proper diagnosis and medications and while i am not ‘better’, i am stable. i am by no means comparing my experiences to clown’s, but what i am trying to get at is that crisis like this can strike so deeply and can destroy someone before they have the time to rebuild themselves. especially when they feel that they have nobody around to help.
a creator is a person.
CLOWN is a person, they did not expect all this ‘fandom’ at all.
if you really do love welcome home, support clown through this. support him as a human being. puppets are cool and all, but a human life is not something worth sacrificing for a puppet show that quite frankly you do not know enough about to care so deeply for. and that passion, all the passion put into the project has been taken swiftly away from clown and its just, really fucking sad.
#fuck yall man#welcome home#support clown#support indie artists#rant#stay safe#im so tired of seeing this happen
24 notes
·
View notes
Text
(before i get started this is just a vent post, but i want to make it clear i’m not a proshipper or an anti. i choose not to align myself with either but no i really don’t like “problematic ships.”)
It irks me. No one seems to understand the true definition of proship anymore. It does not mean you ship problematic ships, it means that you believe people should be allowed to explore things (mostly relationships) in fiction without harassment. It’s tied to the dead dove do not eat rule on Ao3. But also being a proshipper does not automatically mean you ship incest or pedophilia, which is what seems to get passed around.
Anti on the flip side means that you believe fiction effects real life.
Now the part that has always confused me is these two statements seem as if they should be able to coexist yet they are considered to be opposites. To me it seems obvious that problematic things should be allowed to be explored in fiction AND fiction effects real life. (ex: the book Lolita, obviously very dark and i don’t like the book itself but the author suffered from CSA himself and needed a space to sort that out)
But the real issue with the proship rhetoric right now is that it pushes dangerously into the territory of censorship, which is what fandom has fought against for years. I’ve seen this wave of younger fans policing what is and isn’t problematic and that leads to dangerous places. Especially considering the term problematic these days is so overused it can range from the worst thing imaginable to something completely arbitrary.
I mean hell I hate pedo and incest content too, I don’t like seeing it, and it gets annoying to repeatedly come across, but this is why blocking and filtering tags exist. Trying to ban “proshipping” doesn’t make these types of people go away, it just pushes them out, while simultaneously pushing people who are trying to grapple with their own trauma out of a space they can explore that.
And then there’s this blurred line of what is considered “problematic.” It starts as a trickle and then pretty soon, you get puritan fanatics being given the chance to shut Ao3 down because it dared to show “sinful relationships” (aka homosexuality). And it sounds dramatic, but we’ve seen this happen before. In China a stupid argument over rpf in the mdzs/untamed fandom spiraled so far it got Ao3 banned in the country. Just know that there are literally always forces at work trying to get places like Ao3 shut down.
Basically the debate itself is harmful and the definitions are not mutually exclusive.
And if you want to say in a byf/ dni that you don’t want interaction from people who ship incest or pedo content, just say that directly. That’s your space to curate however you want (and I mean it’s the type of space I would want to curate too), but using a word incorrectly just fuels this debate even further. I think we can all agree we want to continue to have fandom spaces. So please protect them.
11 notes
·
View notes
Text
Potential Weaponization of Anti-Ship Culture to Justify Personal Discomfort - An Essay
TW: mentions of shipping minors, censored use of words often used in the context of shipping minors by those who dislike it, some devil's advocation, a critical look at the motivations behind a multilayered and multifaceted movement that includes many people who are there for diverse reasons and whose disliked ships range from "literally there's nothing wrong with this" to "the most toxic and abusive thing imaginable" so please don't take this as me saying everyone's views within anti-culture are morally or ethically equivalent because they aren't, also simping over an anime man, but I'm not sorry for that because he's beautiful. And also potential kavetham slander but it isn't really slander because I never claim that there's actually anything wrong with the ship, but if seeing me say "i don't like that" might upset you maybe give this one a miss.
The reason I was thinking about this subject at all is because of this video essay, which I encourage you to watch if you're at all interested in this sort of thing:
Fandom Policing, Purity Culture and the Death of Media Literacy by E
(also i call this an essay in a tongue-in-cheek way but it's lowkey the length of an actual essay so strap in i guess.)
So I've been playing hella Genshin Impact again lately.
I want to marry Kaveh. I want him carnally. In fact, I'm going to go ahead and say that, actually, I am already married to Kaveh in every sense of the word besides legally. Additionally, I should probably mention that I'm probably the least polyamorous person alive. I simply could never share in a relationship. I would inevitably have a favorite and it would be an ugly mess. I mention this because it provides a bit of context as to why I feel so sad that my husband Kaveh is so ubiquitously shipped with whats-his-name, because I am deeply and intensely in love with him, so seeing him with another man hurts me on a very deep level, and I cannot nor do I want to engage in the mental gymnastics of an imaginary polycule.
So all that said, I was sitting alone, stewing over my dislike of this ship, and something occurred to me. Something disturbing. Because as much as I don't ship this particular thing, there's nothing wrong with the ship. The characters are adults, they're not related, there's no abuse, they just canonically act as if they don't like each other while having a more complicated relationship. You know the type. They're very popular. I've never liked ships between characters that don't get along in canon, so even if I wasn't madly in love with Kaveh, I don't think I'd be a fan of this particular ship. What I'm getting at is this:
What if I gave into my darker impulses and acted like the worst of the antis? I could come up with some rationale for why this extremely popular ship is actually extremely toxic and validate my own discomfort over seeing my lawfully wedded husband getting dicked down by some dude. I could say, "Financial abuse! Kaveh could never be in a consensual relationship with a man who could literally make him homeless on a whim!" I could say "My precious baby is being manipulated by a man who is in a position of power over him due to my baby's decision to value his art over all else and hurling himself into bankruptcy like a moron!"
Then I could declare that the ship is toxic; therefore those who ship it are toxic; therefore those who warn about its toxicity are protecting others from toxic influences. I am morally good. I am protecting the internet from nastiness.
Of course that would be very silly and extremely manipulative of me, because there's nothing inherently wrong with shipping two adults from a piece of fictional media, even when their dynamic is a lot more dubious than the one between these two.
But this brings me back to what I was thinking about before... That is to say, my deep, gut discomfort with the ship for entirely personal reasons. A lot of people, myself included, seem to feel like we need to have logical reasons behind our likes and dislikes. It's not enough just to feel a certain way. We need to be able to defend our views against nay-sayers. This is particularly true when you dislike something, because when you go out into a crowd (the internet) and start broadcasting that you don't like something, it's seen as a little inflammatory.
And with good reason! If I didn't think of all this stuff I wanna talk about, I would have kept my thoughts on this ship completely to myself, because my negativity really couldn't do anything but antagonize people who do like the ship.
I wonder to what extent our culture of extremism has bled into our media consumption even on such an unimportant level as shipping. If I find out someone I know votes Republican, that will change my entire perspective on them. But sometimes we take something like that and translate it to stuff that's a lot less important. Like, "If I find out someone ships two teenagers, that will change my entire perspective on them." (I'm not here to get into the ethics of shipping minors, but I'm willing to stick my neck out enough to say that the above example wouldn't be something I'd be horrified to discover about a friend or acquaintance. A lot of media stars teenage characters, it's just the reality of what we consume, and when people consume media, people ship the characters, it just happens.)
But what if you didn't actually care that they were teenagers, in your heart of hearts? What if you just...didn't like the ship, because you shipped one of them with somebody else, or you headcanon that one of them is gay, or straight, or ace, or whatever? But you're sick of seeing this stupid ship everywhere, and has anyone even considered the fact that these characters are minors? In a sense, by shipping them, you're s*xualizing minors. So in a sense, anyone who likes this ship is okay with s*xualizing minors. So in a sense, anyone who likes this ship is okay with p*dophelia. So in a sense, anyone who likes this ship is a p*dophile. And now, you can hate that ship openly and rather than being an asshole who's ruining people's day, you're a crusader for morality.
You are morally good. You are protecting the internet from nastiness.
Okay, now for my disclaimers, because I'm a fearful netizen!
Now I want to be very clear and say that I'm NOT suggesting that this is secretly the reason why anyone hates any ship. Plenty of ships are nasty for all sorts of reasons. Though I would encourage readers to consider whether that nastiness is grounds for a call-out rather than simply blacklisting it.
Also, some people have strong negative reactions to ships that might seem unproblematic or at least not that awful for reasons that aren't just "it goes against my headcanon" or "I'm lawfully married to Kaveh how dare you". Some people might see real life trauma reflected in ship dynamics that aren't inherently "gross" to other people.
Basically, I want to acknowledge that this is a specific look at a specific subsection of shipping purity culture, and I'm not claiming to examine every potentiality of the issue with complete nuance. But I do want to assert that this is a nuanced issue, and encourage people to discuss it with each other in good faith, not assuming that the other party is intentionally ignoring a perspective or trying to harm or silence another group.
#text post#not om#fandom shenanigans#other fandoms#genshin impact#i'm married to kaveh#why am i like this
3 notes
·
View notes
Text
[cws: non-detailed discussion of both fictional and irl SA/CSA/abuse dynamics, apologia for the previous, homophobia, fetishization of wlw, and anti rhetoric.]
-
having a lot of thoughts about the wider fandom's treatment of the various abuse dynamics present in sdmi--supposedly in the name of being anti-abuse--and how instead it's propagated deeply anti-survivor/abuse apologist sentiment and behavior through where they choose to apply that rhetoric, and where they choose to look the other way.
(first off, if you're someone who does not and has not done this, thank you from the bottom of my heart. second, this is not at all exhaustive of my feelings on the subject and there will probably be more posts about these dynamics and people's behavior toward them in future. as you can imagine by the length of this post that is saying something lmao)
one of the reasons i feel as strongly as i do about the way both canon and fandom have historically been about pericles, pericky, and shitting on anyone who likes them because it Normalizes Abuse(tm), is that their fans are pretty open and emphatic about the fact that it's Fucked Up. it's why we find it compelling. it is vanishingly rare that we don't.
meanwhile, velma is the UwU Cute Sassy Lesbian Icon whose relationship with shaggy was Cringy and Immature (and mutually so 🙃) at worst, when it directly mirrored such visceral aspects of my experience with CSA that i almost threw up rewatching the second episode.
and that's not even getting into how normalized it is for women to abuse men in a relationship, in broad fucking daylight in front of other people, and how men are supposed to Always Want It and it's an insult if they don't, and how the vast majority of CSA--which it overtly is in shaggy's case, he is implied not to be an adult yet--is perpetrated by other kids.
and it's also not getting into the fact that the ~cute lesbian relationship~ is almost certainly going to end up with the other queer girl in the show also being abused, because abusers are not Magically Cured by True Queer Love's Kiss. how it is incredibly difficult for survivors of abuse in a wlw relationship to be acknowledged or get support because then they'd be a Traitor, or people would rather maintain the feel-good fuzzy feelings wlw exist to give them, or they're closeted and it's not safe to let people know they're in a relationship with a woman. how queer relationships, especially between women, are fetishized as cute pure healthy fairytale romances and not dynamics involving real people who might harm each other or be harmed and need help.
and that's not even getting into the fact that mlm are seen as inherently predatory to an extent that the majority of other queer identities are not. how older queer men grooming boys is a classic homophobic stereotype used to justify violence toward them, up to and including lynchings, and how that is the abuse dynamic everyone in the show and fandom latched onto to revile as the Disgusting Evil Predatory One while giving everything else a pass. how mlm have a long history of forced institutionalization and psychiatric torture and abuse, and the Predatory Gay Man is subjected to decades of--you guessed it!--forced institutionalization and psychiatric torture and abuse, which is framed as what he deserved and where he belonged. how he's supposed to be unattractive (and the majority of the people who do this shit lean hard on that), while people are way more likely to give Charming Attractive Aesthetically Pleasing abusers a pass.
this is just..... normal, to the fandom. it's treated as completely normal. and i think that's a whole lot more fucking harmful than finding emotional catharsis in exploring an abusive dynamic that would not fly in broad daylight irl in a million years.
#sdmi#scooby doo: mystery incorporated#professor pericles#velma dinkley#shaggy rogers#SDMItag#cws in post#like. everything about shaggy and velma's dynamic in and related to the first half of S1 is *gutwrenching*#it took me up until this rewatch to realize why every time i try to rewatch the show in linear order i can never seem to watch past E02#and end up just skipping around#and time and personal experience have *really* made the 'fairytale queer romance that is a missing stair right into a bottomless pit'#thing hit harder#whereas exploring pericky when i was younger *made me realize things about their relationship were abuse that i hadn't understood before*#'okay so if i go back and fix *this* part that'll make it not abusive anymore and they can be happ--oh. oh geez. this goes deep doesn't it'#and the people who don't like pericky will do the opposite and *actively claim the abuse dynamics that are there do not exist*#because Then It Would Be Shipping and That's Just Gross UwU#because 'this can't have been [X kind of abuse] because [X abuse] is Gross and its potential existence near me makes me uncomfortable'#'you're the one who's gross for seeing it and pointing it out; ew how dare you ruin people's day by making them think about that'#'thank goodness it didn't happen and we can all move on with our lives (and you won't like what happens if you dare bring it up again)'#isn't. you know. famously a thing that happens all the time to gaslight and silence survivors irl and take our words away from us lol#anyway as you can maybe imagine i am bitter about this lmao#but also i just generally think it's worth talking about; especially if even one person understands their own experiences better for it#the crit files#the salt files#SDMIcrit tag#pericky#dyn: when i die i want you to die too
5 notes
·
View notes
Note
🔥
Send me a “ 🔥 “ for an unpopular opinion.
i'ma shape this one around the final fantasy vii fandom and go off on my usual spiel ( or, old spiel? cause i haven't chatted it in a while lol ).
i honestly despise the lack of love that the side-characters get as a whole from the fandom. i really don't like what the remake did for the franchise ( i do love the remake, don't get me wrong, but i think it bought about some of the fandoms worst traits ), and i cannot stand the 'one rule for thee, another for me' mindset that fans have regarding characters.
let's start with numero uno - so, obviously i write heid. lol. he's not particularly liked & that's totally fine...but man. finding content for him is horrible. there's nothing. like, barely anything. the few fics that exist are either rape fics or are ( and i hate saying this ), sorely out of character. the art is few and far between and usually more bara-anime-oriented. overall, i feel like i'm drinking from a dried up well. actually, nah. there was no well in the first place.
i always understood that heid isn't exactly the character who would get much fanfare but it's so disheartening to shift through five million pics of 'x' character and find two of heid. i can't even draw ( or at least, im not at all confident in my art ) and yet i took to drawing heidegger all of the time because i had to start making content for him. and in doing so - my art gets no regonition and is totally ignored anywhere but here. i think if i drew a popular character, i'd maybe get more attention but...i can't bring myself to do so.
in general though; heid isn't the only one. even reeve is quite underrated and ignored by the fandom as a whole (or implied to be an owo cat boy which makes me cringe). even, dare i say, barret is often shoved aside in favour of the more 'popular' characters ( the whole tifa/cloud are now marlene's parents suggestion by some people enrages me, like, wtf? )
secondly, i don't like what the remake did for the fandom because i think it bought the worst out in the fans. it appealed to cloud/sephiroth shippers despite that ship making no sense. you could argue the sephiroth cloud sees is just an extension of himself. they're both essentially jenova. but the remake makes it overtly sexual / suggestive. even as i played, all i could think was 'yeah, this was done for fan service'. i don't even think sephiroth should have been seen in remake part 1. ( obviously that'd never happen ).
but whereas there are things i adore about the remake. i think that they dumbed down the story and by extension, made the worse aspects of fandom writers become apparent. like, by making AVALANCHE basically entirely innocent ( despite being literal terrorists ) - they make shinra ENTIRELY evil. in the og, shinra were weirdly nuanced. they were 'evil' sure, but then they were also genuinly trying to save the planet from sephiroth. as for AVALANCHE; yes, they were fighting on behalf of good. but they did murder people in their quest to shut down reactors. in the og, reeve even calls barret out on this. but...now we probably wont get that? like, way to go rid your main heroes of any nuance. god forbid a hero does something bad.
my final point cause goddamn is this getting long is - i despise the way that the fans talk about characters & the whole 'LOL i can ship this but if you ship that then lol stinky gross smelly ewww'.
i've always wanted to explore shinra/heid as a young men. like, really explore their relationship. potentially even one-sided ship them. i love the idea of it, it's interesting and i imagine their dynamic was similar to tseng/rufus. how many jokes have i seen about shipping them? tonnes. but it's not okay to diss any other ship. make a joke about tseng/rufus and ohhh noo, you fucked up, kiddo.
i've seen people imply heidegger is a pervert because he commented on sephiroth being good looking. literally suggesting he 'creeps' on sephiroth and people wholly agreeing like 'omG LoL YEs' - as if calling someone good looking is an alien thing to do or means immediately that you want to bang them (smh).
in general, i constantly see the fandom make jokes about certain characters & imply that if you ship them, like them etc - 'loool something wrong with uuu'. it's dumb as shit. don't be mean about other people's preferences when half of the fandom can't take being told that cloud shouldn't be shipped with whoever.
#(ooc)#(answered)#(saltmeme)#i went OFF on this tirade lmao#im so sorry this got lOOOOng#i read it and thought 'han get a life u loser lol'
11 notes
·
View notes
Note
🤔I was thinking that some of the popularity could be because of the massive overlap between the trc and aftg (and somehow six of crows), or maybe it's just bc the aftg was being passed in book tumblr circles and soc and trc are popular on tumblr too, but there was this venn diagram that was inescapable back in the day with all three books, and trcs rlly popular, tradpub, loads of book instagram/youtubers made videos about it in 2016/17 then you'd look for recs with books like trc and people would recommend aftg though the books are way different to trc, there's crossover fan works too, maybe it's just because there's gay characters and both books deal with abuse. Idk this is probably the worst example ever but it's like how people would watch the untamed which was extremely popular then get into danmei, aftg would be a fairly hard series to find or to get get recced unless you were on tumblr maybe?
While writing this I realised for the book to even go around in ya tumblr circles it would've had to have been kind of popular in the first place🥲I wasn't here in 2016 but I was in 2018, I do think that if you got into trc and maybe soc which are more easy to get into since they're just more well known and find in bookstores you'd go on tumblr and find something to do with aftg the overlap between the two fandoms is crazy
OH FOR SURE i have not read soc but i did read trc and honestly it was shocking to me how different it was from aftg! the idea that these books overlap in anyway is insane to me. trc is a magical story about teenagers and friendship, aftg is a self-published sports anime masking as dead dove. perhaps people feel like trc's friendship theme is in any way alike to the foxes, but the idea just feels absurd to me; the foxes are barely even friends. sure they are neil's family, but each other's family? hard to say. for the upperclassmen, yes, sure, if they can ignore kevin and andrew and aaron. for the monsters i will gracefully decline to comment
now re: the untamed and getting into danmei............................. danmei is mostly if not entirely self-published and known for heavier themes, and to have a story blow up among chinese readers is already hard as it is; to blow up among international fans feels even crazier. it's a pretty fair comparison! i guess in a way soc and trc did pull most of aftg's fanbase, but i don't know if it was all of it. like fallenstarzz said, it was probably a strike of luck mixed with the general lack of complex yet easily accessible (white american) queer content at the time. we rave about the toxic yaoi now but in 2014-2018 the most 'problematic' queer content i can think of is killing stalking and its disciples, most of which were published by authors of color outside of the imperial core. i imagine aftg owes much of its fame to the whiteness and nearness of its cast and setting too. it was more than dead dove. it was toxic yaoi for white people
#asks#when i say nearness i mean that it is set in a college in fuck-ass south carolina#im only half joking about toxic yaoi for white people im sure it played a role
6 notes
·
View notes
Note
Hi Gina, how are you? Happy Friday :)
Being someone who’s been supporting Harry for several years now, it’s been really difficult to watch what’s happening to his image on such a large scale. I feel like worked too hard and gone through too much for it to come to this.
It makes me so upset that this is the preferred alternative to just letting people know he’s queer.
I know that a good amount of the demographic he caters to is dependent on a het fantasy so obviously a full blown coming out isn’t an option anytime soon (nor do I think he even wants that kind of attention on his sexuality) but seeing the general public unanimously agree that he’s a total douche, for some reason, has done a number on me. 😅 I can’t imagine what he might be feeling.
I’m not going to sit here and act like I know him personally, but after so many years, I can confidently say I think that he is a good person, with good intentions. He just is not the person this shitshow of a PR stunt has led people to believe. And I truly don’t know how he’s going to come back from this unless there is a public break up announcement soon and he gets out of it looking like the good guy.
Somehow this is all reminding me of 2015-2016, and the media circus that Louis was involved in. Obviously babygate is so much more terrible compared to this, but I just mean the fuckboy, partier, deadbeat dad image that was forcefully pushed on him and had the general public forming such negative opinions of him.
So many people, especially some in this fandom, think that homophobia is nonexistent these days— all while PR teams would rather their clients be dragged through the mud than have people assuming they’re gay!!
It’s just been crazy seeing the public turn on someone that was once widely loved. It’s obviously not as dramatic, as, say, #taylorswiftisoverparty (which everyone saw coming), but I’ve still noticed a gradual shift.
I remember back during Fine Line seeing many casual fans say things like “How does everyone love Harry Styles, he has to have done something wrong!” Because at that point, he truly did have a pretty spotless image (other than the queerbaiting nonsense). But now, the public have found their strong something, the thing they can finally cite when asked why they don’t like him: he associates with scummy people like Olivia Wilde.
She is, and I will forever stand by this, the worst thing that has ever happened to Harry’s career.
She is. And his team (and 1DHQ before them) set up his image in such a way that people believe all of this shit about him. He’s been a “womanizer” since he was 16. He’s publicly friends with people like James Corden. He’s publicly dating a person like Olivia Wilde (and doubling down on it even as her image goes up in flames). It’s all a mess.
None of it is irreparable, but it’s going to require a lot of work. And the really stupid thing is that it all could have been avoided.
As a fan it’s really hard to watch. I just hope he’s got the support he needs. And I hope his team is up to the task of repairing what they shit on, as opposed to just pretending none of it is happening—which is their usual m.o.
50 notes
·
View notes
Text
Morning tangent 'cause I hate algorithms.
Started my day seeing an ARMY Tweet forced onto my For You page all because they mentioned something else I'm interested in via my main account and now I'm thoroughly convinced k-pop makes people miserable. Like genuinely insufferable.
''Concerts are ruined for me now, Western artists don't have lightsticks, their fans don't do freebies, and what do you mean I have to sit through opening acts?'' like do these people just genuinely hate music? Serious question.
Some of the best acts I've seen live have been opening acts, it gives you an opportunity to discover an artist you otherwise might not have come into contact with. One of the best examples for me was seeing Hozier and Little Green Cars opening for him, they were fucking incredible! They opened their set with a full acapella version of one of their songs and it left such a huge impact I went home and bought their whole album. I still listen to it to this day! So like, what the fuck. Maybe people should try opening their minds a bit and let themselves enjoy new shit, it really does wonders.
Another thing they bitched about are the ''lack of freebies'' while going on about how they went and saw the Jonas Brothers whose fans ''didn't do freebies'' which is just factually wrong. Their fans do in fact make freebies, and we know this because fans will give them out to the brothers' wives and children too, not just other fans. Kevin's wife LITERALLY 3 DAYS AGO posted her freebie bracelet she got for her birthday, and that's on top of all the ones their daughters get, and plenty of other family members posting when they get freebies too...so like, it's not even true that Western artists fans don't do freebies. This person really had the audacity to try and paint a fandom as ''boring'' simply because they didn't get an experience they didn't even try to find because they closed themselves off to thinking other artists and their fans are worse compared to the group they stan. What an asshole. What an asshole way to live life.
They also complained about dancing, like bitch go and see a dancing artist then, plenty of pop artists dance, if you go to see a band that has never danced at their shows you're not going to suddenly get dancing. Just like I wouldn't go and see BTS and suddenly expect them to play instruments. If they have never presented themselves as that type of artist, why the fuck would I expect otherwise?
They also complained about not getting ending ments...and like no shit, normal people go to music shows to hear music, no one should actually need a show with an hour of music cut in order to place a whole speech there instead. Plenty of artists break throughout their shows to talk with fans and engage with their audience, they just don't do it for half the damn concert like k-pop artists do. It's not a flex like k-pop fans think it is to know they get less songs because they have to account for time to keep the parasocial dependency alive.
And I hate lightsticks, personal hot take I guess, but they were annoying when I saw Hoseok at Lolla. People had them on the entire night, waving them and blocking people's view behind them. They were honestly the worst part of the night, there's not a single video I could take without them blocking my camera at multiple points.
End rant. I just really can't stand these people. I can't imagine being invited to a concert with a friend or family member and my only take away are all the ways I now think the concert-going experience outside of k-pop is just 'the worst experience' that 'concerts are ruined for me now!' because I let myself be closed off to it. Tickets wasted on someone when an actual fan could have gone and had an amazing time. Miserable.
#Sab talks BTS stuff#the brain washing is doing wonders#anyway will be blocking accounts on main if I see little 7's 'cause I deleted my other account for a REASON goddamn it
5 notes
·
View notes
Last Seen Blogs
dsgnpulse
design pulse
luwispattersontampubolon
Luwis Patterson Tampubolon
explicit-tae
quæ
empyrd
THRONE OF BLOOD .
guolfo
Diary