oh my god can we not have this fucking argument again istfg

-slamming bolt upright in a cold sweat- what do you mean verbal contracts cleo. what do you MEAN verbal contracts cleo. artists if you're doing commercial work you're A) charging much higher rates and B) making them SIGN A CONTRACT, right? right? you understand why that's VITAL, right? why having a written contract is VITAL for commercial work? you understand? you make them sign a written contract? please if you go looking in proper artist/graphic design circles i'm sure you can find a basic form that's legal in your locality and doesn't require you talk to a lawyer but if you're doing commercial work you're MAKING THEM SIGN A CONTRACT RIGHT--

OH. okay so normally i dont touch discourse with a 20 ft pole, but this has been niggling at my brain tonight and i finally realized why

the people who are mad at qbbh for the memory loss and “dodging consequences” dont understand that he doesnt want to dodge consequences. Like they cant know that, they werent focused on him when he was literally feeding himself to the soul vultures and planning his eventual imprisonment and also. The Many Many Many hints he made towards suicide/sacrifice/Just Fucking Dying.

ccbbh is a subtle roleplayer, he’s been building this shit up for two whole months- it was day FIVE of the eggs going missing that he resolved to do whatever it took (hurting his friends) to get the eggs back. It was day three that he followed in dapper’s footsteps and started feeding himself to the soul vultures (and gaining a Massive headwound beneath his hood in the process- you can only see it if you go on namemc and remove the layers). He’s got impaired judgement. Even the memory issues arent a new thing- i cant remember exactly when they started, but one of the first big moments i remmeber was september 30th where he spent an hour falling into a delusional frenzy searching his base for cameras that he forgot he asked aypierre to plant.

The super murder of purgatory and the memory loss afterwards probably all feels very sudden for people who havent been following his story, but as someone who has been- all of this has been true to character. The only cheap swings he’s made have been combat-based in purgatory, and even the motive for those was built up in rp.

People are calling for consequences, but he has alrwady been experiencing self-inflicted consequences for months. The blue on his usual outfit is blood. This recent memory loss isnt a restart to get away with the atrocities - it is yet another consequence of his egg-protecting complexes and the ways he punishes himself for failing them.

he is NOT a moral character. he’s a demon hiding in plain site. he has eaten people. he has killed people. he understands the cruelty of his actions, and the consequences of them for the loved ones of his victims. but it matters when that harm is being done to his loved ones. he’ll still do it, because he will do anything for the eggs, but it matters, and that means that he has already started the process of self-inflicting those much-demanded consequences

tired of people who want pjo movie references in the disney+ show. "logan lerman should've been-" i don’t care. "poker face in the casino-" actually i hope ms. gaga keeps her entire discography miles away from it. i don't care move on

Still baffled that Hopes so blatantly wrote Claude as the typical Evil Vaguely Middle Eastern Man set on destroying the Good White Nation for his Evil Vaguely Middle Eastern Nation that is often seen in fantasy settings - complete with him being seen as worse than a white woman who does many of the same evil deeds he does in-verse, even by his friends (should it be the bad ending route of SB) - and so many in the fandom was so eager to gobble that shit up. INSISTS that "Clearly A Racist Stereotype" is LEAGUES better than "Subversion Of A Racist Stereotype" even. Like I don't think I'll ever get over how supremely fucked that is

Okay so inspired by nothing in particular (it's inspired by reading the notes on the ace swag final poll, fun stuff in there), I have been thinking about being Cringe. Cause like, you enter a fandom, and usually, you find out shortly that somebody else hates that fandom. There is no fandom niche enough that it's not Weird to somebody, and there's no fandom mainstream enough that it's not Annoying to somebody else. And given the fact that some people do hatred recreationally, there's often going to be somebody mad enough about your fandom that they're going to go on diatribes about how your fandom is bad and actually harmful and destroying the fabric of civilization, etc. They're gonna pull out anything negative and blow it up until it's the size of the skyline and attack you for liking this negative thing.

Fun times, we've all seen it.

And the thing is, there's an impulse to have this happen and immediately find somebody else to point to and say, yeah, well, I might be weird, but at least I'm not THAT guy. I might read YA, but at least I'm not a Furry— those guys are sexual deviants! I might be into actual play podcasts, but at least I'm not into mcyt— those guys are all harmful and my guy is fine. I might be into danmei, but at least I'm not into bandom— rpf is so gross. I might be a furry, but at least I'm not into mainstream romance novels— senseless drivel aimed at middle class white women. Y'know. Immediately find someone to punch down on.

And boy do I understand why you want to do that, when people are pointing at you, but I don't actually think that it's helpful.

Cause like, every fandom has a logical train of thought and reasonable human impulses behind it. You might not share those impulses— I'm not a furry I don't think, I don't really get true crime— but that doesn't mean I can't have it explained to me by a very patient person in in the writer's workshop common room and go "oh, yeah, kinda pretending to be an animal, but you're gay about it, yeah, makes sense", or "oh yeah, morbid curiosity from the safety of your headphones, it's like a horror movie but real" and nod. Like there isn't a fandom or group out there that doesn't look weird from the outside, and there isn't a fandom or group that can't be explained if someone has thought about the human psyche enough.

And that isn't to say that there isn't sometimes salient critiques for what fandoms are doing or not doing— to grab the two examples above, I have heard people talking about issues with true crime reinforcing the current fucked up justice system, or bigotry at furry cons. But a) most of the time, there is already somebody inside that community that's fighting against those issues, and you just threw them under the bus with the problem they're trying to fix b) you don't usually know the nuances of the actual conversation and problems, you saw a couple callout posts. You saying "Yeah I'm a board game nerd but at least I don't play competitive trading card cames, those guys are doing nothing but feeding the capitalist machine" is not usually helpful towards fixing the ctg scene. It's just a cheap way to score points.

Like, I assure you that the YA scene is aware of the calcification of the genre into a tighter and tighter romantic form and their dependence on going big on tik-tok to sell enough to keep publishing. They know.

You specifically saying that your fandom is better cause it's not [problems you heard about other fandom having] is not actually going to make the person who's hating on you stop hating. They already decided that you're the person they're better than and that they're punching down on, you passing the punching down on to another fandom just makes more people sad on the internet, and potentially starts yet another chain of someone punching down at someone else. The wheel grinds on, everybody gets punched.

I guess this is just kinda turning into a "why hate on the internet, what good does that do" post, which is broader than I meant it to be. But like, there's a difference between thoughtful critique of problems (complicated to do fairly but very necessary) and finding someone new to curbstomp to make yourself feel better/morally superior (look, I'm writing this on a mcyt blog, we've all seen this happen, it does not increase the joy in the world).

Like in MCYT, we all decide to punch down on [other server we hate], or RPF, or people who write kidfic, or people who write e-rated fic/art, or people doing the popular trope of the moment, and sure, it lets you feel morally superior for the moment, at the cost of slapping the guy next to you. Haven't we had enough slapping the guy next to you? There but for the grace of god (got a fun idea/watched the wrong stream/ended up in the wrong brainstorming circle/got fixated on the wrong funny guy) goes I. You're not better than another group just because you saw a couple more callout posts (usually from people inside the community trying to fix things) about them.

We are all Cringe. There is nobody who's not Cringe. Don't say that you're not Cringe because someone else is more Cringe. Stop that.

again just because a lot of my personal theory and criticism comes from death of the author, i don’t take brendon’s comment to be literally, “pickles is canonically trans.” as i said last night, it was an explanation that FOR WHATEVER REASON he was never given a dick despite everyone else getting one, and brendon literally does not care if people see him as trans or not. he was neither confirming trans pickles nor deconfirming it, he just told trans fans that if they wanted to claim him, they should. which is so based i’m obsessed.

all that being said, the fact that he WAS intentionally drawn without a dick is enough for me to then turn around and say “oof cis pickles? idk about that headcanon it really doesn’t work within the context of the show, but hey whatever floats your boat i guess 🤷🏻”

the reason i specifically try to avoid any and all persona related leaks is because if I hear anything about a persona 1 2 or 4 remake it's going to pre-emptively kill off a substantial number of my braincells. different reasons for each game

Lol I said after I finished Bridgerton S1 that I would have liked to see more of the older women characters, whom I preferred to the young leads (Lady Danbury and Lady Bridgerton and Lady Featherington) and now on episode 2 of S2 and my wish really came true! I'm ok liking side characters, I usually do, but still it's good to see more of my faves. Also, with the arrival of Kate Sharma, I finally have a fave among the young ones too! (I kinda have a hard time liking Penelope and Eloise, not that I dislike them, I just have to remind myself to like them, if you know what I mean. In S1 I preferred Marina over both of them, honestly.)

my timbern hot take is that i thank god everyday that we got riley rossmo's art for those first few issues instead of serg acuña's because i know some of you bitches would've been extremely weird about timbern if we had gotten acuña's manga-esque style from the beginning

"are you proship" "are you anti" idk man i'm tired

maybe it's because i almost exclusively stick to mlandersen0 which has a tiny fanbase, but i don't personally get when people say the slenderverse fandom sucks. the vast majority of people i've met here have been cool and respectful of others, even if they don't agree with each other on everything. we don't have to! slenderverse has always been fun to interpret differently, and it was an even bigger feature of the fandom a few years ago. of course we disagree and even bicker about it sometimes (i am no exception), but it's a matter of opinion and it's all in good fun. of course there's exceptions, shitty people and actions do exist here and there's nothing wrong with talking about it, but it's more of a bug than a feature for me.

this ties into how i get frustrated over people mindlessly attacking the kids in the fandom for being "the problem," as if a bunch of the adults here weren't young teens when they first showed up here as a fan. kids have always been "cringe," and made shipping content, and AUs, and self inserts. believe it or not, but a lot of adults like stuff like that too! you are on tumblr in a fandom space, after all. i thought we agreed being a jerk to people over harmless things is unnecessary and rude. and like, not to be a dick, but.... if this is how you treat community spaces, is it really any wonder you're not having fun?

Bounced back and forth, think I'll just make this post-

(Warning: Under the read more, if tumblr keeps the read more intact, is me, an aromantic/aegofictosexual person ramble-ranting about aroaceness in fandom. You're free to scroll past if you wish, or to disagree with me on whatever takes for whatever reason, this is just my one opinion on something I consider to be a big pet peeve of mine.)

(If you read this and go "but I don't do that!", then I trust you, and you're not the kind of person I'm talking about. I'm moreso referring to some things I've personally either witnessed or experienced in previous fandoms, and nobody this applies to will actually see this post unless it, like, gets a bajillion notes...um, hopefully.)

It is so. fricking. frustrating. having my only possible representation in media be like...[that one character] from DR. You know. the otaku or "geek" that's portrayed to be unattractive, "gross", and "weird", and will eventually express sexual attraction to "3D" people, because their attraction to and obsession with 2D was never a sexuality, but intended to be some creepy, incomprehensible thing, and a way to demonstrate their shortcomings and inability to actually court someone.

Characters who actually match my sexuality and experience will never exist unless I make them with my own hands, because both allos and other aces consider me "not ace enough".

This honestly plays a big part in why I'm really touchy about aroace headcanons; because often times they're blatantly used to say people aren't allowed to ship [character a] with [character b] -- and the person making the headcanon is usually 100000% fine with [character a] being put in a gay ship, but will loudly complain if they see them featured in the (usually het, usually canonically teased) first ship. Because it was never about actually writing an aroace character, it was about reframing "ewwww you like THAT ship?? gross uxu what's wrong with you??" into "uhhhmmmm but that character's aroace-coded" "sorry, I can't see them as anything other than aroace" (yeah, I didn't ask? Everyone else gets to talk about THEIR ships with that character and you enthusiastically support them...) And it's like... I feel like these types of headcanons specifically are always presented like, inherently, I'm totally, obviously going to agree with them, and if I don't, then clearly I'm just not aroace. (I wish that was more of a dramatization, but I had someone who I previously told my seuxality to go "oh. well. I'm asexual, so I see this character as aroace-coded, (and I'm right)" <- not outright said but very, very heavily implied, especially because they continuously insisted the character was "canonically aroace-coded", and I just had to sit there like... "...okay, but I'm aroace. (and I think saying that about a clearly het-intended character that's constantly being flirted and canonically shipped in extra side materials with is kinda hurtful)" <- I didn't say that part)

And the fact that no one respects if a character is canonically het or bi kind of plays into why I don't care when a character is canonically gay or ace. If everyone's sexuality is just "gay (MAYBE ace!!!)" or "okay but have you CONSIDERED they might be bi??? (stop putting them in het ships >:((( )" only when it's convenient, then why should I care for my downtime? It doesn't change canon. And I don't feel represented by people's on-the-whim, flimsy-as-fuck headcanons.

But it does still piss me off when people take a reboot or remake or continuation and flagrantly disregard a character's canon sexuality.

And it's upsetting that aroace characters 1. aren't really a thing for the most part, and 2. get written over when they are a thing.

I imagine that when I finally manage to finish one of my stories or games and, y'know, all of my characters are bi/pan/demi because that's what I tend to write...that's probably just gonna get changed to be "whoops everyone's gay lol" by the fandom, and I've already come to terms with that. (Well, by the part of the fandom that isn't populated by "ugh, everything is so WOKE now!" assholes, I'm just gonna pretend they won't even show up because they aren't worth it.) But then, it's also like...if someone officially continued or adapted my properties, and they changed my characters to be all straight or maybe one character gets to be kinda-sorta gay or something, I. I would definitely lose my shit.

-vague gestures-

I don't really know where I'm going with this, I just wanted to say my whole piece without having to worry about being accused of derailing/not listening to a post-

But basically if you're outraged whenever a gay character's sexuality is changed for any reason in any context, I better hear you be that upset about the rest of the possible orientations, and not pulling that shit yourself. I swear to god.

it is 2024 and people are still putting kink at pride discourse on my dash????? are yall not tired because im tired. if you put that shit on my dashboard i will unfollow you and i dont care which 'side' youre arguing its all so dumb and pointless amen

.

Did Jared ghostwrite season 15 or something, why are they talking so much shit about Dean and complimenting Sam every other sentence I-