Let's all be real and have a little moment of unity here, kids.

Lily Orchard is the very worst of both Antis and Proshippers.

For Antis, she's blatantly the kind of fandommom who doesn't actually care about the problematic aspects of writing/characters unless it's a character or ship she doesn't like (hence why Family Guy is good actually and never worth any real scrutiny despite it being Family Guy). No nuance where she'll agree to disagree w people about her own tastes which r problematic. No respecting other people's triggers or comfortzones or safespaces. 100% "if you like Cattdora, you like abuse", "if you like HunterxWillow ur a boring homophobe", "Rocky Horror is evil and nasty and ur a 'bad gay' 4 liking it" - cuz she said so and she has other people's actual lived experiences, critiques and trauma to back up her vendetta.

For proshippers, ....be real she's THAT KIND of proshipper (I know some of you will refuse to call 'that kind' of person a proshipper, but I mean...). Ya'll know the one. Ur out here w your unapologetic A/B/Os and Catdoras and Stolitzs or whatever saying "let people ship/like things you don't; stop being a bully" and IN COMES THIS asshole who's definition of fetish and paraphilia are so obviously one in the same. The type who likes incest and noncon and incestnoncon A LOT and makes one too many Colleen Ballinger-esque jokes abt minors for you to not be dialing 911, but then they'll punch you with a "are you being INTOLERANT of my sexual expression" bs to gaslight you about you not liking their predation?

Between obviously having made Stockholm and denying that she could have done so, along with her behavior, she's managed to run the gambit of being that one BIGOT and CREEP of a bully everyone else in the space hates. Like an evil fandom Hannah Montana.

How can teach to the avatar fandom that Azula IS NOT SADISTIC, damn every time I go to the comments on YouTube, Tik Tok or Reddit, these silly comments come up in which they say something stupid like "hahaha Azula would kill them all" when the same fucking series implies that Azula has great values ​​such as being against torture and not killing if the opponent is not an imminent danger.

I'm just tired it seems the only friendly place for Azula fans is tumblr and even then there are times when other fans come to be annoying. It's so sad that the fandom treats Azula fans like outcasts.

Worst Nightmare Before Christmas criticisms I've ever heard:

(( OOC. paraphrazed and not linking to exact sources but:

>"Why is everyone singing?" >"Why does this music sound like something out of maralyn manson?" >"Sally's such a dunce; she's too stupid to get herself out of those ropes at the end." >"Halloween and Jack don't do anything for their holiday why should they ever have to complain about work?" >"Sally's such a [derogatory wymen word]!" >"The Christmas Town elves are disturbing to look at they're so creepy and unsettling." >"Jack is an incel." >"Sally's useless and all she ever does is swoon over Jack. She cares about nothing else and just has to be saved by him all the time. Ick." >"Sally is completely reliant on Jack she's completely codependent on him, actually." >"Jack Skellington's an expression-less stick man of a character. He's a nothing burger." >"This movie's message amounts to "stay in your place/don't stray from the norm'' when you really think about it. Pretty messed up there, Didney." >"Sally's so ungrateful and cruel to Jack and not supportive of his Christmas thing." >"Santa's so mean and angry and bitter and Jack would make a better Santa." >"Sally's such an ungrateful daughter to Dr. Finkelstein. How dare she want to escape; Fink's just protective, I swear." >"Jack's Christmas was actually better and Jack should have been allowed to do what he wanted cuz Jack actually really didn't do anything wrong."

PSA time kids: If someone you know says they don't really get/like/are annoyed by Nightmare Before Christmas because of x, x, and x reasons, the correct response is to let them keep that opinion. They're not arguing about out? Don't argue about it. Be adults, kids. Hatedom =/= criticism. People can appreciate something and just not personally like it that much (like me and Invader Zim or Rocky Horror) or even like it but also be able to point out the flaws in it (like me and Monster High). What's important is that this someone accepts that YOU love this thing, while YOU respect THEIR boundaries and not try to make them "see your way". --Not to get off track, but nothing makes someone ACTUALLY resent your special interest than you being really aggressive and demanding about it to them--

Within fandom, especially your own, I think you should be able to spot actual "hatedom" when you see it -and/or, ascertain what makes a bad take actually bad vs a take you just have to disagree with.

For me a bad take is: actively misreading the text/refusing to engage with text on it's own terms; inserting yourself where the text is asking you NOT to; being a jerk about your opinion like you have the one take to rule them all; and finally; coming in with a toxic badfaith/badtake cocktail and not even caring that you're doing so. This is what so many of the worst takes surrounding TNBC amount.

The "Jack is an emotion-less nothingburger of a character" is the one that perplexes me the most. I only ever saw that one once on a "cult movies that are actually not good"-site article. Feel whatever way you want about Jack as a character but I have no idea how you look at that guy and think "no personality" or even no EXPRESSION.

Ya killing me, smalls. ))

What a genuinely horrible rant there!

No idea how universal this is (neurodivergent problem- but in fandom)

My problem is rarely ever

"grr CURSE THIS bad take from this certain set of the fandom I already don't agree with HOW DARE THEY DISMISS MY BLORBO I SHALL HONOR THEIR NAME!!"

but always

"Person I otherwise deeply respect (friend, mutual, cool person I follow cuz I love their shit) dislikes my hyperfixation for whatever reason. [[proceeds to die inside via self-induced shame]]."

Part of the reason I want us all to get used to and take criticism better is I know what it's like fixate on a thing you like being criticized by someone you like. Learning to live with it is hard even though it SHOULD be easy. You do have to live with it- provided they don't make any cheap shots or use the language of fandom and criticism to belittle/demean you. Oh trust me- I know from experience -those types are out there. They're the worst.

Fandoms, Hatedoms, and the Ending of Series

With the announcement that Discovery will end at season 5, commentators motivated primarily by spite are out in force.

I have complicated feelings about Discovery. The short version is that I feel like I see what its trying to do and that it often just doesn't do it very well. Where I'm enthusiastic for these choices about character arcs, setting details, or plots, the middling execution is frustrating. Where these are choices I disagree with, I'm extra frustrated because I don't want something that isn't to my taste to be bad and something that isn't to my taste isn't automatically bad.

Something that isn't to my taste can actually be well executed from a technical standpoint - the acting, the writing etc. There's quite a bit going on right now in Star Trek Picard that isn't to my taste, it violently disagrees with my understanding of the characters involved and I find it frustrating and uncomfortable, but a lot of it is well written and well performed. I even have a somewhat spicy take that the tremendous amount of harsh reaction to Raffi is that the character is actually written too well and performed too well. If you've ever known a Raffi in your personal life, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

A common joke about Discovery is that it should get the "Enterprise ending" wherein someone goes "End Program" and we're invited to consider the possibility that if we want to, we can retcon an ugly duckling of a show out of continuity. It was just a holodrama. It wasn't "real" Star Trek.

Which is incredibly abusive to people who like a thing. I'm not free of the capacity for schadenfreude, but at the same time I feel like we've seen this dynamic at play in a profoundly meta way already and the end result wasn't something that anyone seems to love except for how it is so intentionally spiteful.

I'm of course talking about the Star Wars sequel trilogy. The textbook example of "too many cooks in the kitchen" and what happens when auteurs are given little guidance on what they should do with their films, are disinterested in how their films fit into a broader narrative, and seem to very intentionally kick sand in the face of fans of entries into the franchise they weren't personally responsible for.

Whatever your thoughts on Abrams' explicit fan service or Johnson's attempt to complicate and subvert the narrative; if we're being honest with ourselves, it cannot be denied that these are movies that are at war with each other and by virtue of being at war with each other, they are pitting fans against one another.

If you loved Abrams' nostalgia, Johnson kicked sand in your face and turned Kylo Ren into a ventriloquist dummy to tell you that your desire to see tributes to George Lucas' original works with the benefit of modern technology was largely invalid and toxic.

If you hungered for something new, something less predictable, and thought Star Wars needed to branch out and tell different kinds of stories with different character archetypes, Johnson heard you. Then Abrams came back around again to do unto Johnson what Johnson did unto him: ignore, mock, and subvert Johnson's storylines as he saw fit.

As a matter of generality, I don't find any of the sequel trilogy films to be irredeemably bad. Especially with 8 & 9, much of what I find to be particularly bad relates to the retcon war. I'm often of two minds about many of the retcons. For example Lonely Luke Skywalker is a fascinating deconstruction of the character, often hilarious, and his pathos is well done. Yet I also feel cheated by not getting to see "the real" Luke Skywalker, Luke at the height of his powers, before everything was taken away from him.

A "computer, end program" ending to Discovery or one that is otherwise massively disrespectful to the preexisting material of the show is exactly the same thing. It will not heal the fandom, it will merely make one faction that much more smug and entitled to troll and malinger when they aren't catered to, and it will make another faction of fans newly embittered in a way they won't soon forgive or forget.

We've got new year energy! Find out what magic we're hoping to make at the intersection of fandom and creation this year. <3

A reminder:

Robins: Dick, Jason, Tim, Steph, Damian

Batboys: Dick, Jason, Tim, Damian, Duke

Batkids: Dick, Barbara, Jason, Tim, Cass, Steph, Damian, Duke

Batsiblings: Dick, Jason, Tim, Damian, Cass, Duke

it is, i think, symptomatic of the way larian has built this brand: bg3 was always marketed as being mature (read: sexual), and that was one of the big draws for players - myself included! especially as media pulls more towards extremes, with mainstream video games starting to get increasingly graphically sexual, graphically violent, and the vogue for 'grey morality' becomes the norm, those boundaries get pushed, and it becomes more and more of a selling point.

larian obviously focused on this, along with the How Do You Do, Fellow Kids brand, the increased accessibility of game devs on twitter, and adopted it heavily into their marketing strategy, and are now pretty reliant on the horny gamer crowd for a lot of their audience, and more importantly, they're doing this on purpose.

which is how you end up in situations like this.

characters (white men) the players want to fuck get centred: they get updates, they get more content, they get favoured. halsin's gone from a side character in EA to a half-fledged romance option, to a full romance option: he shows up in the promotional material, is larian's poster boy for the sex scenes, he gets more content with every update.

now gortash gets more heavily implied situationship lines with the dark urge, because players are horny for him. nevermind that some people aren't playing that way, or that he was originally set up to be a lower-level antagonist; nevermind that if the durge's storyline needed expansion, it should've been with orin and sarevok and bhaal, or that it muddies the writing for the rest of gortash's arc + characterisation: people want to fuck him, so it gets put in the game. it's not even to do with karlach, whose quest so desperately needs expansion! it's specifically catering to the people who want their character to have a Relationship with the slaver, because they're either not interested in or not able to focus on strengthening the weak spots in the narrative: they're just doing things that will net the 'my favourite dating sim' people lmfao.

meanwhile, literal main character wyll gets his quest demoted to a subquest, doesn't get bugfixes, doesn't get a single unique romance greeting after 6 patches and months of requests. he's not a Horny character, so he doesn't get the focus: he's not a player favourite, so he gets nothing. it's just... so unbelievably, indisputably racist, and it's incredibly grim and disappointing to watch it happen in real-time.

Legit Bad-take/Bad-Faith Helluvaverse critics you should not trust if you see them

Interpersonal squabbles within the critical tag are irrelevant, sorry. This here is a genuine warning against users you should keep your distance from in regards to any VivziePop drama-discourse because their names may come up and you should know what it is that crossed the line.

Starlatte/Starvader/HonestHazbinCritiques/OhGodDude and Woomycritiques/RaySquid - Serial harasser(s). Long story incoming. Starlatte was/is a Vivcritical who got involved in the fandom back in 2019/2020 when she was a minor and didn't tell anyone. Her blog on tumblr was HonestHazbinCritiques where she made some good points but also managed to find/be a part of everyone else's takes in the critical community. Her relationship with several criticalblogs turned sour when she started lashing out, talking over people, being accused of faking her age, and doing stuff like arguing with irl sexworkers abt how they should feel about Angel Dust. Whatever her age actually was at the time, she was also sending her own rewrite scripts and fanwritten episodes to Spindlehorse in order to 'fix' Hazbin. In 2021 Star returned to Tumblr under the name "Oh-God-Dude" w/o disclosing to new people who she was while also starting shit. When said new ppl found out her past and got mad at her, she proceeded to block-backtalk every one of them.

Woomycritiques (twitter handle: Raysquid) is a critical blogger who stans Star and calls everyone else in the critical community an obsessed stalker while lashing out herself. She accused others of racism (unfounded), her friends of predation just for being proship (not the 'cest and underage is good'-kind, the "I like some problematic stuff in fic-context"-kind), and heckled Dirgentlemen over how much they should hate Helluva, and more.

Regardless of if you believe Woomy and Star are the same person, which ppl do, they are both -by now- adult persons who have been asked to stop and DIDN'T, which is why people don't trust them. Star and Woom were asked to tone it down, stop making accusations and even asked by many criticals to leave and stop talking about Helluvaverse as she/they seem to have nothing good to say about it. To put that into perspective, cuz I know some HH/HB fans are gonna be reading this: the people who've self-styled themselves antis and criticals begged this person to leave cuz she had nothing nice to say and was being a nuisance. I know the stans think that's all of us anyway, so let that sink in.

LincarRox aka ToyTaker - Creep. Nasty jealous stalker freak who got kicked out of Helluvaverse servers and Aminos for saying nasty shit like how he "wants to put a baby" in Viv. No really. He took his shit and grievances to BadWebComics wiki under the name TheToyTaker while also seemingly trying to get work at Spindlehorse in order to have access to Viv directly and to 'fix' her show. He did so by faking his animation portfolio. BWW did eventually catch on and kick him out but yeah....bad. May or may not still be going under his old pseudonyms, but regardless if you see someone talking weirdly sexually abt Viv while saying they were "let go" both by SH and BWW, get out now. That's probably him.

Animation Call-Out - Bigoted shitlord. Twitter user who rags on Vivz' controversies w other people but also hates gays and BIPOCs. Admitted to submitting one of the anonymous reviews against Spindlehorse "for fun" amidst legitimate ex-employees. All of the reviews, even the ones that seem the most validating/believable should be taken with a grain of salt I believe especially since they are coming to us anonymously, but when a racist person admits to def being one of those fake reviews for "Lolz" sake, that's def when shit's hit the fan.

DoodleToons - Also bigoted creeperlooser. Altright white kid who hates BIPOC existing in anything and admits to hating Viv's stuff for their LGBTisms and 'demons'. Yes, there legit are bad-faith critics who are homophobic. Just because Viv and her crew have a way of saying that's EVERY critic of her work doesn't mean there aren't shitty people out there.

So, just curious how many writers and creators will have to be forcibly outed by relentless harassment before we acknowledge that "This queer characters was written by a cishet person and that's why they're bad" is not good criticism.

Sus Princess

Finding out that The Swan Princess series is actually Mormon propaganda (thanks Laura Crone) really explains my dislike for those movies and their characters. Yes, even the original.

It's definitely nostalgia-based. I still have a soft spot in my heart for Balto, the rewritten-History appropriation dog movie, and The Brave Little Toaster which is like if Toy Story just didn't let up with the horrifying implications. But then again, I also didn't grow up with Ferngully or Help! I'm a Fish like other 90s2000s kids did, yet I found those films enjoyable as an adult who didn't know them personally. Swan Princess (the original) is ALL ‘sus’ to me.

Again, the films being made by prosperity-gospel preaching mormons who don't ever believe in shaking up the status quo answers so much of what about them feels off to my sensibilities.

I’ve been having trouble getting into the right headspace for more deep dives into fandom and analysis. Also finding myself having difficulty channeling the persona of this account, tending to be easily annoyed, being snippy and falling back on reflexive acidity when encountering the sort of shallow, histrionic, performative commentary that I strive to avoid and, in some cases, try to dissect.

Someone who is consistently good at this is Dylan Marron. And in this podcast series he’s tackling the granddaddy of all online hate campaigns. His resurrection of the late 90s internet landscape and the collective feelings of those of us responsible for perpetuating this is eerie (why yes, I did happen to be just old enough to be a snot nosed teen brat too cool to be entertained by Jar Jar and slamming my outrage into the keyboard.) And the commentary on medium as message and the incentives to be over the top is superb.

Why is it that brainrotted fandom idiots will go "fandom is a space for FREAKS and WEIRDOS it's not your safe space 😡😡😡 if you don't like it you can LEAVE 😤😤😤" but then when someone asks them to stop treating black people in fandom spaces like shit they're all suddenly like "but ummmmm it's my safe space 🥺 the real world is mean and scary this is the only place I can go 🥺 racist harassment is my coping mechanism why won't you let people enjoy things 🥺"

How do we practice critical fandom in community? Part of it is accepting that not everyone is going to agree!

You can watch our full conversation on critical fandom at YouTube!

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