I'm not blaming the op of the original post, or trying to imply anything about them as a person. and I don't want to single out this post in particular, because the issue is an broadly reaching trend rather than any one individual happening to write a post in five minutes one time.

but I really Really wish we'd stop and think if it's a good idea to say "girls turning into boys makes them inherently less interesting" on the transgender website

picking a privileged group to be the butt of a joke because it's lighthearted when nobody's actually getting hurt by doing so Only Works when everyone within that group is actually privileged. making jokes about how men are lesser than doesn't Actually affect the people who are actually within power, but Does chip away at the confidence and comfort of marginalized men who are In these communities to be exposed to it.

and the issue isn't about any one joke or poorly worded discussion in particular, but it's difficult to articulate why it can feel so alienating and unsafe to have things like this be so common within my communities without sounding ridiculous or risk being made fun of for not being able to take a joke. because the framing of implied privilege makes it easy to twist those feelings alienation into the entitlement that's assumed with men taking issue with being the butt Of a joke.

I simply think "this type of person is inherently lesser than" should be reexamined and thrown out as a talking point, even in a lighthearted context. because there will always be vulnerable people within those groups who already Hear that they are lesser than for existing

I've always been obsessed with 'character & community' fics, and I'm devastated that they aren't more. There's never enough fics about superheroes & the city they protect, rulers & the people they serve, teachers & the wider school body, captain & his soldiers.... I can never get enough of them

so a thing this fandom does that remains FASCINATING to me, as a function of the fact a lot of this fandom is people's first fandom or only current fandom, is just... assume a lot of things it does is a scourge that this fandom has invented or doesn't exist outside of it? or like, is uniquely bad here? and i won't deny that sometimes mcyt fandom is a bit more intense by virtue of numbers, but like...

duo names: confusing fandom-injokes to describe duos and groups tend to be an anime fandom thing specifically for many historical reasons, but they're not uncommon. hey quick--if you haven't been in KHR fandom, can you guess what 1827 is? no? i'll give you a hint: that's actually a ship name. or, ygo fans, tell me the difference between puppyshipping, prideshipping, violetshipping, and rivalshipping. my hint is that they're all kaiba ships and two of them are actually the same ship. good luck!

reducing characters to a specific trait: have you read fic in another fandom before? i would recommend you go do so and come back to me. my example here is "sasuke likes tomatoes", for the record.

common au fanon that's confusing to outsiders: my deep cut here is "when i got into certain tv fandoms i was baffled by the existence of sentinel/guide fics", which is a slightly older tv fandom thing so many of you probably don't know what i'm on about. but trust me: in certain fandoms it's ubiquitous and unless you've watched a completely different tv show you're gonna have to entirely pick it up from reading fic. oh hey, hybrid aus and watcher!grian, nice to see your relative here,

fanon being treated as canon: did you know there's this whole bnha character, naomasa, who is treated as canonically having a lie detector quirk? did you know that, best i can tell, that's not in canon anywhere, it just got echoed through fanon enough that everyone treated it as canon? 'fanon trait becomes so ubiquitous everyone assumes it has to be there' is not a new thing. also, batfamily fans, i have been lead to understand the tim and coffee thing is also this.

characters being treated badly to make a different dynamic look better: the fact we have the term 'character bashing' tells you all you need to know, here. if anything my one complaint on this front isn't even that it's happening--it's that i wish bashing and/or "not [character] friendly" was tagged a little more frequently, haha.

characters being reduced to their family dynamics: tale as old as time. "even the family dynamic thing" yes even that. just because this fandom tended to be particularly ship-adverse in the past didn't mean it didn't do basically the same behaviors as any fandom with shipping did with those dynamics, just gen. and other gen fandoms also do that. yes, down to the "and shipping reduces them to a ship, unlike my gen dynamic, which is very in-character; why can't people just be friends?" thing. some of you have to have been marvel fans right.

characters being reduced to their ships: some of you have to have been marvel fans right.

The Discourse: yeah this is an "actively running show" fandom thing, but also a hiatus fandom thing. ask a homestuck about vriskourse sometime. as much as i hate to say it, it probably made doomsday discourse look cute.

and those are just like... some things i've seen people complain about on my dash recently. idk it just hit me there are probably fans in mcyt fandoms who are assuming that some things (like hybrid aus or duo names) are the kind of things that only happen here, so i thought i'd offer some examples of other places they happen! i also have even more examples if you'd like.

to be clear: this isn't shaming anyone for complaining about any of these things. lord knows i go complain to my friends about it all the time, just the other day i was complaining in the category of 'they keep bashing my guy'. it's more of just... a gentle reminder that maybe we're big, maybe we're loud, maybe we have problems... but these problems aren't always unique.

so uh. we're all suffering together i guess...?

So i have a small nicpic i wanted to share with you about your interpretation of spike in the au and i want to make two things clear before i talk

1) i havent watch the series for a little while as of now so i might be misnterpreting a aspect of this chatacter that might have never been there and only apeared in fan content and personal interpretation (since that whats been keeping me on the fandom)

2) this is not a big problem about the au i matured enough to not get angry at a interpretation of a fictional charater

Now here i go

I feel spike being the same race as the rest of his familie makes him lose a part of his character that might have not been central but was still something interesting about him and is the idea of not mayhering how diferent he looked from his adoptive family (and his cominty as a whole) he was he was still seen as part of it

Again this isnt a big problem with the au as a whole its just a small nicpic that i have about the au and its not going to make me hate the au

This was just my opinion that i wanted to share and im interested to know your opinion about what i said

I understand this criticism and agree that having Simon/Spike be a different race than Thea could speak to their relationship in the original show.

My reasoning for designing them both to be African American is this. I believe Simon's adoption is enough to explore the feelings of separation and exclusion he may have with Thea and her family. The original show doesn't bring up Twilight and Spike's racial differences much because they originally didn't consider Spike to be a part of Twilight's family. As far as I know, there's no moment where someone says, "Wow! You're telling me you're related to Twilight Sparkle? But you look nothing alike!" because Spike was more so Twilights... familiar than anything.

Later episodes that explore their familial dynamic poses the conflict through Spike's adoption. There's one episode where Spike's "biological father" returns, and Spike accuses Twilight of not being his real family, which breaks her heart. There's another that delves deep into Spike's feelings of exclusion from Twilight and Shining Armor's siblinghood. Basically, in discussions of family dynamics, the show places more emphasis on Spike's identity as an adopted sibling rather than a dragon.

I really do believe a multiracial family would be good representation, but the racial dynamics would not be something I'd be interested in getting into. That's not to say I find real multiracial families problematic or uninteresting or unappealing or unimportant. I just wouldn't be interested in having to explain in-text that Simon (non-black) and Thea (black) are related over and over; it would grow tedious. It adds an extra level of writing complication and opens up racial discourse (discourse that I feel is unrelated to their relationship in the original show) that I don't want to concern myself with, especially because I have no experience in navigating such discourse.

this fandom is so mean sometimes when it comes to even the most basic of fandom shit like. i get it, ST is relatively mainstream, a lot of yall have never been in fandoms before, but the stuff folks call out as "cringe" behavior (or worse) in fandom is quite literally stuff that has always been a part of fandom and always will. people cosplaying, kinning characters, shipping characters who have barely spoken in canon, going to nerdy conventions, overanalyzing every scene w/ ur fave character in it, crying over characters, writing fanfiction and making art of whatever the fuck you want since you're doing it for free and for fun... this is fandom culture. if you dont like it you don't have to engage with it and its so easy to block/not interact with content you don't like.

tldr; stop bullying fans for doing fan things.

not sure if this is a hot take or not but the way surge is spoken about by the fandom really brings out the worst of it's misogyny.

i'm constantly seeing people call her a brat, a crybaby, etc. or how they want (x character) to beat her up and humble her. and like, sure, at first impression you could say it's because she's a villain and a bad person. but then you look at how every other male villain of a similar or worse degree is treated and the difference is pretty clear!

but when you bring this up and people will tell you it's nothing to do with misogyny! but this sort of language, while it may not be explicit, is the exact sort of stuff you see against both real and fictional women constantly. and it really just makes me wonder how differently people would think of her had she been a boy?

idk. i don't have any real point with this post. i'm just complaining

thinking about when people were arguing that c!dream faked his memory issues bc he told techno that he was writing things down for memory reasons when he was writing about steve in the book bc Obviously He Was Doing That To Keep Track Of Techno's Attachments To Use Against Him!!!! Why Else Wouldn't He Write Anything Else!! and rolling my eyes again

my favorite thing about fanfic is that we're all just making shit up (affectionate) but sometimes y'all are really just making shit up (derogatory)

*Walks up to a hornet’s nest with a bat* Idk, I think more people need to get it in their head that the labels the DSM provides us are meant to give us labels for the way the human brain functions. The way that everyone’s brain is different, and reacts to different circumstances, doesn’t revolve around the DSM.

*Takes a batting stance* The DSM is constantly adding and taking away new diagnostic criteria and types of diagnoses as the understanding of different mental states change and grow, as well as other factors, like if they think something is being ‘overdiagnosed’. It’s not set and stone, and it never has been.

*Winds up to take a swing* It used to classify being queer as a mental illness. It also often fails to take cultural sensitivity, and the actual lived experiences of those with the disorder, into account.

So maybe, if you hate or harass people on the basis of them not conforming to the exact DSM criteria to your diagnosis, but claiming they have the same experiences as you, you’re just not as progressive or forward-thinking as you’ve fooled yourself into believing you are.

*SMACK*

Bolas fans have such a superiority complex, they have done nothing wrong, they're the best, they did the most for their team...

They are so toxic and spreading such disgusting misinfo about soulfire just to up bolas that it makes me sick

You are free to hype up your team, to make content for it, to appreciate new ccs discovering them

But you can't do it to by criticizing soulfire( it literally nullifies the good stuff), you can't say that nobody did content for soulfire, you simply never saw it because you never looked for it because you were stuck in you bolas bubble full of people just has toxic has you conforting you in your behavior, we're not mad at ccs discovering bolas we're mad at the fans to immediately redo the old competition and pick up the atrocious behavior and erasing everything that blue went through

Bolas was literally the worst team in term of behavior, they were the only ones to grieve bases and burn people stuff for the sake of it, to make it impossible for the others to play ( exemple: the bounty stuff ), they also took advantage of the rules but when it's soulfire the world is falling on your heads no? Omg bad killed the red on the first day, well that costed him his whole purgatory experience because of fans and he constantly had to hold back on what he wanted to do and he still got hate. The meta gaming allegations are a goddam joke i don't even need to talk about it, the biggest argument of red fans is that they were only half the team....

Have we watched the same event? Blue was max 3 persons on a good day and when someone tried to connect they would get killed by red before they could even understand the event ( people love to say blue lived in reds base but red did the same for the old blue base don't be hypocrite), while red had EVERYDAY like 5 people on at the same time and at the end of the day which was the best advantage ever

Red weren't victims, and I'm tired of people saying that it was the case. Open your eyes and see. Both teams were awful, and that was the objective of this event, I only wrote about bad red things because this is addressed to red fans.

I don't know who needs to hear this, but if you hate a character solely because of a ship/ships, you're a childish fuck who needs to log off the internet and go touch grass. It's so annoying to see some of my favorite characters either reduced to who they're paired with or demonized because of said pairing. Fans really do take the fun out of shipping, especially on Tumblr and TikTok. And what gets me is that y'all aren't only loud with that bullshit, but you're wrong with it too! Like, damn, so and so, which, let's be real, is usually a girl, being shipped with the main character really lodged a stick up your ass, huh? If you don't like him or her or whoever, that's fine! If you don't like them because of shipping, stop making that everyone else's problem because I'm sick of seeing my faves personalities twisted and diminished just because you take shipping way too seriously.

Tubblings and crows at least once a month

A gentle and I hope kind reminder:

It makes just as much sense to not have a significant other and kids as an adult as it does to have them, whether you're talking about real life or writing characters.

The submas fandom is chock full of aro and/or ace people, so of course a large amount of people prefer to not go the amatonormative nuclear family route with characters whose home lives are a blank slate.

It doesn't "not make sense" and I again kindly ask anyone who thinks being alone or living with family or solely having platonic relationships as an adult is weird or a crazy idea to think about why they feel like that.

Having a partner isn't "probable," in real life or fiction, just because someone's sexuality or status is unknown.

Everyone is allowed to choose whatever sexuality and relationship status they want for characters, please just be mindful about how you speak about certain concepts okay? Characters can have no opinion on how things are written but real aro and/or ace people do, and it doesn't feel very good to read stuff like this.

if i see one more person in this tag mention that hunter and willow is a "straight-passing relationship" when talking about their bi and pansexuality, i will come to your house and remove all the doors from your cabinets

edit: y'all i like the fucking ship, i am complaining about people saying "straight-passing" like that's an appropriate term to use when discussing representation

babe would you still love me if we were superheroes and you were in danger and i went absolutely bonkers and crossed every moral boundary imaginable to protect you at literally any cost?

something that’s really frustrating about this topic in particular is that it is very complex and requires both nuance and critical thinking however because it’s currently taking place in the content creation world, the only people talking about it are content creators who love the sound of their own voice rather than being an impactful part of the conversation