you know fandom's been infested by normies when someone's "what's the craziest, wackiest, most insane crack ship you've ever heard of??" post's answers are full of characters from the same show/series who have some sort of canon relationship with each other and/or semi-constant interactions

Batfam™ posts are like

What are the BATFAM™'s favorite drinks?

Dick: sparkling hibiscus nectar infused with pistachio honey (bubbly and sweet just like him 💙) served in a World's Best Big Brother mug that was chipped in a hilarious incident when all three of his beloved siblings got into a wacky swordfight and sunshine big bro Dick had to make peace between them because he's a loving mother hen

Jason: vodka mixed with Earl Grey tea—in Crime Alley, street rats only ever drink alcohol because they're uneducated and miserable, but Jason also drinks tea because he's now elevated above his lowly origins (how quaint! He's Not Like The Other Poors) and to symbolize how much he LOVES his rich family

Tim: COFFEE!! brewed from a special blend of extra caffeinated Arabica beans, mixed with hazelnut non-dairy creamer (lactose hurts him just like everything and everyone in his life 😔) and one sugar cube for every hug he's ever gotten from his parents in his entire life (none) and also his tears

Damian: lemonade colored pink with Tim's blood (now Tim is dying of blood loss and it's all evil Damian's fault! how dare Damian be so cruel to Tim in this terrible scenario that I made up in my own head)

Babs:

Cass: water

Steph: water (with a bendy straw lol she's such a character)

Duke: water

As a proshipper, it is not my problem if children wander into an area that is clearly marked for them to avoid. If they can't monitor their own internet usage, they have their parents and a multitude of internet apps.

If the dove is dead, don't be surprised to see maggots when you open the bag. Your inability to heed warnings is not my problem

It is absolutely wild to me that some asexual and aromantic people will praise Vivziepop for "adding to aromantic and asexual representation with Alastor", but then demonize her in the next breath by calling her a, quote, "cishet fetishizer woman", because she said it was "okay to ship Alastor in fanfiction and fan art, as long as nobody is harmed". Do you love Vivziepop, or hate her? Pick a lane already and stick to it.

As a 30+ asexual person, someone calling it "frustrating" that Vivziepop didn't condone people harassing and bullying other fans who liked shipping Alastor is equally wild to me. What did you expect her to say? "Yeah, fuck those shippers"? That would never happen.

We said, probably three or so years ago, that antishippers settling into the plural community-- and bringing with them mostly sysmed and anti-endogenic views-- was going to be a problem.

Why? Because (1) we predicted it’d lead to a rise in harassment and “kys” type sentiments. And it did. We also said (2) antishipping is directly linked to radfem bullshit. Even if antishippers who are trans or nonbinary whine about it, there’s a direct link, starting at least back in 2007 to now. You can see the path in fandom history, and you can see it in attitudes/behaviors.

It surprises us exactly zero that we now have terfs showing up in the syscourse and plural community tags.

(Not letting proshippers or similar off the hook, either. We see you parroting sysmed/anti-endogenic shit, and it’d benefit y’all to stop and take a good, long look at where that rhetoric is coming from.)

hi shy new mutual on anon but ur right. of course ur right. about all of it. and these fucking anons? “eddie has to be attracted to women he married shannon and dated ana” WHAT?? bitches PLEASE. never heard of comphet? never heard of being so deep in the closet that you haven’t realized it for yourself yet? never heard of Knowing but wishing so badly things could be different and thinking “maybe i can change myself maybe if i try hard enough…” ?? (not that i’m anti bi eddie but like. that’s a terrible argument for him not being gay. im incensed. im gonna fight them.) anyway ur takes are soooo big brained i love seeing u on my dash <3 also. tiktok comment sections are a truly terrifying place. rip.

literally!!!! the whole point of my post wasn’t anti-bi eddie it was just saying that eddie married to shannon isn’t a reason that he couldn’t be gay!! the tiktok comment i was vague posting about literally just said "eddie was married to shannon he can’t be gay" like thats all i was saying!!!! its so frustrating because eddie could have loved her. and he could still be gay. or he could have loved her. and he could still be bi. the whole point was just to stop making blanket statements like that because its frustrating to see as a gay man!!!! who was in love with his ex girlfriend!!!!!! everyone’s queer experiences are so different i wasn’t saying he didnt love shannon just AGHHHHHH bite bite bite etc

You've been reblogging more stuff about female characters getting ignored by fandoms recently and I would be really curious to hear your full views on the topic.

The thing is that... look. I get it. Many fandoms do not have very many women in their canon, many of those women are treated pretty poorly by the canon or aren't given as much depth as their male peers, and if you're at all picky the pickings are kind of slim (I would love to be a fan of c!Niki, if I were able to watch six-hour vods, which I am not). It is not wrong that most works with large fandoms are really, really sexist, and the problem is not just in the fanbase!

But come the fuck on. It is not an accident that the DSMP and the MCU and BNHA, all of which are vast-majority male and the female characters are treated terribly, are megafandoms, and Revolutionary Girl Utena is eligible for yuletide. It is not wrong that if you want to see more female-character-focused fanwork you should go to Sailor Moon and not The Untamed, but it is also kind of missing the point to say that and not look at the difference in size between those fandoms. People can say "it's because the male characters are so often more interesting and have more meaningful interactions," and like, sometimes that's even true, I will be the first to tell you that quackbur has more to it than tinarose, but please compare the Clint/Coulson tag to the Utena/Anthy tag and look me in the eye and tell me that's the only thing driving the trend. With a straight face.

And even more there's a thing where— so, I was a mod in the @ao3topshipsbracket bracket. And femslash ships, once they were in the bracket, did really well. Like, absurdly well, like 80% of the f/f ships entered got to the top 16, and the last one was against blackbonnet which was never gonna lose in round 1. You might notice something about that number, though, which is that there were only five of them entered total, because people love to vote for femslash but they absolutely will not write it. And they won't say anything about it either! I was watching the activity feed the entire tournament, and I can tell you, for all of the "let's go lesbians" that populated our notes, nobody would say anything that was actually about the specific characters who made up their ship. I learned a lot about Naruto fandom, modding that bracket; I still know nothing about CW Supergirl, because the only thing anyone would say about it is "it has women in it". Because women are interchangeable. Because women are avatars of Being A Good Feminist. Because clicking a button is easy, and actually thinking about any specific woman and her traits and her internality is hard.

The thing is that guilt over misogyny does not actually fix misogyny. It gets you a lot of people who vote for women in polls, and who say "he's like a woman to me" about their male faves but notably don't have any canonically female characters they talk about, and who say that the only thing they care about in a fic is if it has women in it but will not ever actually say anything about any specific woman, and who never shut up about yuri but apparently yuri is everything and anything except women who have feelings about one another.

I'm tired! I'm very tired. I want people to actually give a shit about specific women and their specific traits, which do not begin and end with "woman". And, also, to stop treating women exclusively as the wingmen, advice-givers, mom figures, and accessories of men.

Hi! Please don't follow me if you support eddiemakesart. I should have made this a long time ago but after seeing what they did to sheep/flaafy I don't think they even deserve to have a following in the ew fandom.

Here's the reason if you want to read it for yourself.

And also, for the love of God, PLEASE DON'T ATTACK ANYBODY WHO DOES STILL FOLLOW EDDIE. (I can't believe I have to say that.)

on Consequences in minecraft streaming

Okay so one of the real common things that I've been seeing lately is an increasingly passionate call for certain characters to experience Consequences (and the rest of the post always makes it clear that they mean a specific type of definatively negative repercussions) for their actions during QSMP events. And aside from the absolute deja vu of having seen these same calls when DSMP was airing, and how that turned out (sorry, the syndicate did not all have a meeting where they apologized for their sins while tommy told them they were horrible people), I'm not 100% sure if that's going to happen or pan out in the exact way that I think people are aiming for and expecting will happen.

I keep seeing a lot of people saying that it would be bad writing if people don't get "consequences" for their actions, and what they're specifically asking for is punishment and for people to realize what they're doing was wrong. BBH is supposed to repent for furniture thefts and torturing the people keeping him from his kid. Phil is supposed to realize that actually he's good at PVP and apologize for saying that his team has been suffering in purgatory. Tubbo is supposed to fill in his tubhole and only do things other people ask him to do.

But like, so much of the time, what we're seeing is these streamers being interested in writing morally grey characters, just some little guys who make bad decisions, and the thing about characters being morally grey is that they don't always have a come to jesus moment and become morally pure. Sometimes they just keep being morally grey. Sometimes they get worse on purpose.

Maybe BBH never decides that torturing that guy was bad, because he wanted to get his FUCKING KID back. Like, I seriously think you have to be prepared for that character arc to never end in Bad going "that was wrong to do", and maybe his cubito will still be happy. Phil is a dude with anxiety who's been sure that his kids are going to die from the moment he got to purgatory, streaming at 1-4 in the morning while other teams break into their base, even if bolas goes insane and scrapes out a win I think it's way more likely that that team is gonna go "what a wild fluke that's the power of gas masks" and not have a moment where they go "it was unfair of us to assume that we were underpowered, I guess everybody else was the underdogs! Our bad." Tubbo is tubbo, he's already building a new create thing, he is not going to apologize for leaving marks on the landscape with mod packs.

Like, the streamers are interested in making human characters, making interesting decisions, not communicating moral lessons to their fanbases. Bad is operating within a Taken film, not a sermon. Quackity wants his cubito to be pathetic, gay, and out for revenge, not to communicate the importance of forgiveness to those who hurt you. Tubbo's victory condition is having a nice date with Fred, full stop, does not care who he has to run over to get there.

Absolutely I think there are people intentionally doing corruption/villany arcs on the server, and they probably intend for that to lead places. There will be Consequences, as in, things will happen. Cellbit is doing cannibalsm on purpose, and not as a teaching moment about how good cannibalism is for your social bonds. But like, maybe that leads to him being thrown out of his family and not trusted because of his sins, OR maybe it leads to him murdering his way through a federation complex, facing down a bloody cucurucho, and going "you made me into you and I hate this" and eating him. Narrative consequences does not always mean punishment and a return to moral purity. Sometimes people just do bad things, and then repercussions happen, but they don't necessarily "see the error of their ways". The specific call for like— retribution and repentance as the consequences people are going for— for punishment— if a character has done something bad they don't "deserve" good things to happen to them and it's bad writing for that to happen— I just don't think that those are the stories the creators are necessarily interested in telling.

And secondly, what people are often asking for is character conflict— they want people to be socially excluded by characters they feel have been wronged, and learn the error of their ways that way until they apologize sufficiently. Phil is gonna hate BBH or Tubbo is going to hate Roier or something once they return from Purgatory. People want their cubitos to have beef with each other.

But the thing is, on a meta level, I don't doubt that the entire admin team and streaming team on QSMP is just screamingly aware that this fandom cannot be trusted with conflict. The election was just part of it, but I made it through the election, and Purgatory has been so much more unpleasant— and I am not just talking about twitter. This website, tumblr, has been full of people fighting each other for their teams. And I am not just saying "red team fans have been bad", because boy have I been staring in horrified awe at the takes that some red team people have been putting forward (what on EARTH do you mean BBH deserves to have his kid die, touch grass immediately), but if I step outside of red team circles, everyone is talking about how red team people are horrible hypocrites who win too much and only deserve to suffer (I saw this posting the day that blue had back to back wins, so it isn't even tied to how well red is doing). The quality of the discourse has been increasingly unpleasant, and this has been taking place in streamer's chats, on twitter, in discords, and here on tumblr.

Every QSMP streamer is increasingly aware that having conflict with another streamer is basically sending a wave of negativity their way, and setting off bombs in the fandom at the same time. And they're all friends with each other! Sometimes they decide that the story beat they're going for is worth it and just tell each other to stay off twitter, but like, you have got to be prepared that maybe they will just be friends again. And that might be weaker writing, for people to keep forgiving each other, but that is an unfortunate aspect of the technical aspects of this medium and this fandom. Maybe the creators would be more willing to have character conflict if they didn't know that that meant the person they were mad at in-game would get death threats on social media.

Like no fucking wonder Phil apologized for getting mad at Wil within the same stream and before Wil said sorry to him. This is why the French have given up on revolution arcs, you know it's why the women are all very careful to get along with people. All of those creators know the cost of making anyone into a villain, and I'm just saying maybe get prepared that we won't have inner-party conflict. Maybe they'll decide it's worth it for a fun story moment! Maybe they won't. Maybe don't get 100% married to the idea that the only good writing possible moving forward is for people to be thrown out of the community and then repent for their sins.

gently staples this thread to the forehead of the people going "ew why would you ship mohg with miquella when you could make an OC/self-insert to ship with him instead"

the answer, you'll find, is shockingly simple: because that doesn't interest me. because that does literally nothing for me. because i'd rather piss in my own eye than ship a canon character with my OC (or self-insert). i promise you, if i had any interest in that, i would do it without needing to be told, but i don't so i won't. you're asking a person who likes chocolate cake why they're not eating banana cake instead as if those two are even remotely the same

in a city of millions of people ONLY selina can care about the poor and east end/park row and ONLY helena can care about children and rape victims 😉😉 but we can steal jason's traits and give them to tim (btas lmao) or bruce (ul cheer) and then wholesale lie about jason's personality to make batman look good/victim blame him for his death 😉

Well, because I'm a contrarian at heart, now I will disagree with this a bit, even though I never shut up about the story-breaking double-standards imposed on Jason.

Just to touch on some stuff before I get to the "trait-stealing" discourse...

Almost all superheroes and even many villains-who-have-standards do care about children and rape victims. I can see how some fans would get upset at seeing the broad claim that certain characters really really care about victims, because it implies that most other characters don't care enough. So, yes, all heroes should and do care—although different fans might latch on to different characters that express care in ways they find personally satisfying.

I don't think too many people are arguing that BTAS "Timmy Todd" isn't an adaptation of Jason. Once people realize how much BTAS Tim was clearly inspired by Jason, then most people seem to agree that those are signature traits of Jason. There isn't much debate there, as far as I can tell.

Others have covered Cheer thing better than I could.

I would say, yeah factually, Jason hasn't been a community-based hero in canon, and that's something I find really compelling about him. Like several months back on Reddit (yeah yeah I know lol), I did bring up Selina in the Brubaker run as a contrast to Jason. Selina became a community-based hero in that era, and Jason was not.

I believe that Jason did not think of himself as someone who can make connections with others (at least before he was magicked back into the Batfamily by the Morrison run and the New 52). He couldn't be a community-based hero because he couldn't be part of a community. He wasn't building up a neighborhood, he wasn't a neighbor to anyone. He did help people—and then he'd leave them, just walk away without a personal connection. I can't quite articulate it, but there is a distinction between Selina's streak of running away from "being domesticated" for better or for worse, and something like Jason's belief that he is this thing that is incapable of connecting with people. (Jason's immature idea that it's not his role to heal people and be part of society is the very idea that Bruce keeps reverting to as a middle-aged ultra-rich man with several kids and a famously massive support system btw! Bruce is literally doing it again right now!)

Also Selina did do all sorts of selfish, hurtful things when she was Jason's age, and when she was older too. (And she was AMAZING at it! I'm not against her Robin Hood era, but I miss her self-indulgence and misadventures as a rogue.) Helena was going ham mowing down ᴛʜᴇ ᴍᴀssᴇs ᴏғ ʟᴏᴡ-ʟɪғᴇ sᴄᴜᴍ back when she was a bit older than Jason is now as a defanged ex-villain in current-day comics. (Hey, I'm not going to be some self-appointed cop holding her accountable for that. Sometimes fictional women set fictional men on fire to cope. 🤷‍♀️ Her outfit looked great while she was burning people alive in front of children. We Aquariuses are free spirits.)

I'd love for Jason to return to Crime Alley and set up there. He's this guy who kept having his connections cut over and over, then became this weird tumbleweed thing cut off from everything, and then he could regrow his roots where it all began. As you say, there are millions of people in Gotham to help (...or to haunt; lesser evil Jason could be my jam too). And that's exactly what fan fiction is supposed to be—fans' wish-fulfillment for the potential of stories and characters. Yes, there is fanon in the fan fiction. That's where the fanon belongs.

A lot of this "trait-stealing" discourse is not helpful, it's not kind. It's not interested in actually exploring the contrasts and parallels between these characters. It's actually stripping these women and girl characters of their traits and their journeys to label them "Female Jason". It's an echo chamber, maybe even a bit a snobfest.

Like I'm sorry. The stories of these women in their mid-20s and 30s who have lived in their own apartments, established their careers, formed adult relationships, come to understand their sexuality—they don't have the same journey as the societyless freak-of-nature zombie boy beefing with his own dad who is the local god-tyrant.

If I argued that Helena, JPV, Cass, and Damian all retread the same boring tortured killer cult-deprogramming redemption arc, then that'd be reductive and narrow-minded and frankly anti-storytelling of me.

Or if I just jumped to assume that fans who headcanon Bruce as Jewish are stealing his cousin Kate's canon Jewishness and refusing to engage with a canon Jewish lesbian character out of sheer bigotry, then that'd be skipping straight to the most negative possible assumptions that I could make about actual real-life people and their motives.

That's really the worst part of this. Reaching to assume the worst in real-life people. The moral posturing. This need to display superiority. Over—I can't emphasize this enough—the consumption of corporate American superhero comics.

People getting angry over that Raphael romance petition because Wyll isn't getting his much deserved screentime is this fucking tweet in a nutshell

🚨 Scam alert 🚨

The antis vs pro ship bullshit is going too far with NOW SOMEONE TRIED TO SCAM PEOPLE just to own proship or whatever and prove a point

Listen... You are taking this god damn bullshit too damn far! Why are you literally going to commit fraud over shipping and discourse?! Forget about pros vs antis whatever, you are planning to commit fraud and taking random people's money wtf

Also that person have Tumblr account as well and she seemed to be friends with a serial harasser: aster-disasters who trolling and harassing on pro ao3 post or whatever i remember someone sending me DM about it but i don't remember details because it happened some time ago... Holy fuck...

Imagine you plan to do fake commission or whatever, taking people's money + lying about your situation because you are so deep in online BS... Oh my fuckin' god some gen z are fucked beyond help...

Don't commit fraud over shipcourse!

Look if anyone with those account names babykn1fe or slime whatever asking for donation/offering commission project. Don't trust! 🚨

That person is on TikTok as well with the same name as Tumblr

Edit: Correcting pronouns + Wtf that twitter account saying "Good luck, have fun!!" To someone who's going to scam people online out of their money

It's like saying to Bernie Madoff:

"Oh! Bernie! You wanted to steal 70 billion dollars from people? Good luck! Have fun old boy!"

I've been stepping back from tumblr for a while because shipcourse makes me get angry and I don't like being angry, but honestly...

The fact is that antis often create proshippers* by treating neutrals negatively. I can't count the amount of people I know of whose neutral stance didn't last long because antis pressured them to state opinions or spread rumours about them.

I would ask "how hard is it to leave people who don't want to be involved in shipcourse alone?" but I already know that certain groups of people find that very hard indeed. Certain groups of people put their personal need to make themselves feel morally superior by harming those that they deem "bad" before everything else, and that includes the boundaries and needs of others.

When neutrals are harassed by antis, policed by antis, and continually pestered to pick a side, they won't pick the side that made them feel like they had to choose. These are nuanced issues and everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but more and more people are adopting the proship label because antis are harassing them whether they use it or not.

Antishippers talk the big talk about people being manipulated into becoming proship, but unsurprisingly, a lot of people prefer to be around people who don't make being in favour of harassment over fiction a core part of their online identity.

I may not be neutral, but shoutout to the people who are, because they have to put up with much of the same crap that proshippers do. People have the right to not take a side, to have criticisms of both viewpoints, to keep their opinions private, and to enjoy their fandoms without the fighting. Or at least I think they do.

*And for anyone who is confused or conflicted about what proship means: I would advise you to use the definition given by people who use the label, instead of people who hate people who use the label.

because genuinely this discourse started with MY post (today at least) which wasnt even about any of that !!!!! it was just about thinking how you talk about relationships and why any relationship would mean that a character can’t be gay because he was married to a woman or had girlfriends

Never seen a fandom so in love with saying "delulu" until the qsmp fandom. Guys please take a step back and think about if that is a term you want to be throwing around💀 Tubbo who used this term more then any other qsmp streamer realized it was wrong and is trying to stop using it, you can too