bewareofraiju

[bewareofraiju]

fanon ships and the alpha male x cinderella fantasy

i typed this on my phone, so i couldn’t expound as much as i wanted to, but these are some common features of big fanon het ships and the migratory fandoms that ship them. ima compare zuko x katara (zutara) from atla, kylo x rey (reylo) from sw and (klaus x caroline) klaroline from the vampire diaries - i’m choosing these ships because i’ve had been part of the fandoms they arose from, and because of their shared traits: all three have massive online fandoms known for badgering writers and actors/ heading twitter campaigns, bullying other fans/ generally making fandom inhospitable to other shippers, misinterpreting the characters and reducing the ship down to a cinderella-esque fantasy.

in each instance the female character being shipped - Katara, Rey, Caroline - has a canon love interest or friend who’s sweet, kind and selfless, who loves them very much and who they love in turn. these relationships are shown as gentle and supportive and very caring, vs the fanon ship where the fans emphasize their “amazing chemistry” and “sexiness” and overly romanticize combative/sometimes downright vicious and manipulative dynamics as evidence of deep passion. the male character they’re being shipped with has also done real, material harm to her and/or the people she cares about, but these wrongs are quickly subsumed by the fanon desire for a romantic connection between the two.

Continua a leggere

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mutual: *interacts with a post i maid*

me: woah, i thought u despised me and wanted me 2 die a gruesome death based on 0 evidence, but im so glad u r actually deeply in love with me instead. i will forget this in less than a day

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some of y'all fundamentally misunderstand my favorite characters but im being sooooo normal and mature about it. i haven't even killed anyone yet

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i think if twitter went down, TV writing would get at least 30% better

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DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: HONOR AMONG THIEVES 2023, dir. Jonathan Goldstein & John Francis Dale

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What a view, huh? The desert at night seems to stretch on forever.

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I really hate this idea/trend in ya fantasy, na fantasy, and romantasy where the love interests have to both be the most powerful in order to be “equals” in a healthy relationship. I see it often when readers or the main female protagonist compare love interests and use and emphasize “he could never match/understand my power” as part of the justification not to be together (like this argument can be left out, many times there are other reasons).

Like how fucked up is that? You are telling me that because one love interest does not have the same level of power as the other one they never will truly be equals and therefore it wouldn’t be a healthy relationship and should not be together? The whole idea is just so disgusting.

Why should this be an obstacle to a relationship? Why - in a truly healthy relationship - would it matter? It is because you think the other would use their power on the other in a disagreement? Do readers think that the less powered one’s opinions would be ignored/overrided by the other more powerful person? Does the respect one partner has for the other derive from the power the other one has?

This idea doesn’t reflect reality. Yes I get it it’s fantasy!!! It doesn’t have to reflect reality! No one in real life has magical abilities. But readers go on and on about these relationships being healthy. Well, where did you get/model the idea on what is healthy? Oh from reality?

People are different. They do different things and have different jobs. People enter into relationships where one partner makes more money than the other or is stronger or smarter, etc. There are imbalances in relationships and these imbalances do not make the relationship inherently unhealthy. To be equals in a relationships stems from an agreement to respect the other, to listen to them and care about their opinions, to take them into account in decision making. It does not stem from equal physical abilities, or equal monetary resources.

I feel like there is more that could be said about this and I would be really interested to hear others opinions about this as well.

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Fascinated by this phenomenon

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Starting fights on here completely unprovoked, but I’m not a fan of pathetic simp Celeborn headcanons. “Uwu he’s just a stupid little meow meow Wife Guy” NO WAY BITCH.

Literally the way that Galadriel and Celeborn get introduced they’re explicitly said to be the same height, both with heavy piercing gazes.

He acts like a ruler: he expects Haldir to report important things to him directly. He’s not meek: he criticizes Gandalf and snaps at Gimli before later apologizing. He’s practical and generous: he’s the one who asks Aragorn “yo how y’all gettin down the river” and gives him the boats the Fellowship needs.

“Galadriel only thinks he’s wise cuz she likes him” get outta here with that bullshit! She calls him wise because he is! He can’t look into the future like she can, but he can clearly spot problems the Fellowship might have and is clearly ready to help provide solutions. He stands up for the wisdom passed down by matrons as scoffed at by Boromir (no shade btw, I love Boromir a lot, but he was the one who made the “old wives’ tale” comment).

So no, I’m not here for Himbo Celeborn hcs, thank you.

EDIT: I also wanna say that I’m already in a minority of Tolkien fans generally and RoP fans specifically for liking Celeborn (and Celedriel) at all! But “uwu short wife guy with one braincell” Celeborn hcs tend to be used by other Celeborn fans as well as Celeborn resenters, so I guess I’ve just put myself into an even smaller fandom minority lol

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Something about magicians in Bartimaeus Sequence erasing their own names for self protection is so Tasty. In order to perpetuate that violence, to treat demons (and commoners) as less than human, they must first symbolically make themselves unperson. So many cultures practiced damnatio memoriae as one of the worst punishments and they did it to themselves. If you are alive as long as your name is spoken they are dead long before they die.

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Miraculous' biggest plot twist

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One fan talked to him during the London premiere of the season finale, here's the source:

wdym celebrian isn’t born yet in trop???? where is the source for this? 😭

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Honestly, speaking as someone who really likes the guy and loathes all the jabs made against him by the fandom, I don’t want Celeborn to appear in Rings of Power.

Because I just know they’re gonna butcher him by writing him as an inept, mumbling henpecked husband who has 0 chemistry with Galadriel in order to prop up the WAY more powerful, deserving, hawt, 🥵🥵🥵awesome bad boy Sauron 😍😍😍aka Galadriel’s ✨tru wuv✨and soulmate💕😘😘😘💕

After the Celebrían news, I have no faith left for the showrunners.

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I’m putting the ‘found family’ label on the highest shelf until y’all stop making them all have traditional nuclear family roles.

You can have it back when you learn to behave.

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On being an older fangirl

I was probably 10 years old when I first conceived of what was, looking back, fanfiction. Me and my best friend would lie in bed together on sleepovers and I'd make up stories about what happened after the end of our favorite book, "The Westing Game." She'd ask me for more stories, and I'd tell her more, inventing them as I went along. "Then what?" she'd say.

I was 14 when I went to my first convention. I had discovered Star Trek: The Next Generation. It was 1987, and my youth pastor was a huge Trekkie. He took me to a one-day crappy Creation con, but it was amazing to me. I met Nichelle Nichols. My dad showed me the Trek movies. He and I watched TNG together.

When I went to college in 1991, my dad used to videotape TNG episodes onto VHS tapes and mail them to me, so I could keep watching (I didn't have TV in my dorm room).

By the time I was a senior, we had Trek watching parties in the dorm lounge, where the TV had cable. Star Trek: Voyager had started up, and I wrote a column about it for the college newspaper. I joined a mailing list about it, with people in it that I still know today.

I got my first computer that could go online in 1995. I was on newsgroups. I discovered Doctor Who. I went to Trek conventions where we still passed around fanzines containing fic and art and smutty K/S fan creations.

Then it was Harry Potter. Then there were websites. Then there was Geocities, where we could all make our own little spots. We organized them into webrings. We talked on newsgroups and mailing lists. There were fanfic archives. Then there was fanfiction.net.

Then...there was LiveJournal. And we could interact in entirely new ways. We could form communities, and debate things, and fight over canon, and get into ship wars. On LiveJournal, I met my best friend of 22 years. I was in her wedding. She's my sister of the heart (which is what she calls me).

Then there was Tumblr. And Twitter. And now there's Discord. But it's all the same.

I am the same.

I am still that little girl who made up fanfiction in her head to entertain her best friend. I am still the one who was amazed to find communities on the internet - which was so new, so raw, so uncommodified - where others like me could meet. I found there people to meet in real life.

I am still that twentysomething going to her first major convention, being told that someone loved my fic, being asked about my writing process.

I am still that thirtysomething watching something I wrote blow up. Seeing friends from other fandoms find me in new ones, finding them there, too. Forgetting which fandom I know someone from, because I've known them for twenty years.

I still know some of the people who created those early websites, those mailing lists, those archives. I still meet people in new fandoms who say "Oh, I read your fic in [fandom] fifteen years ago!" There's no feeling quite like having someone remember something you wrote for that long. Or meeting someone whose fic meant a lot to YOU, or who you talked with on rec.arts.drwho.creative in 1997.

Aging in fandom is a gift. Being middle-aged in fandom is a joy. Having people who still read what I write and ask "Then what?" is a blessing.

It breaks my heart that so many people see it as something to be ashamed of, when it is one of my life's greatest gifts.

[bewareofraiju]

"Celebrían is such a minor character in the Tolkien Legendarium, she doesn't do anything relevant aside from bearing Elrond's children, in Rings of Power she can totally marry him offscreen or be replaced by a newly created character. The movies' lore wouldn't suffer from it!”

Well, excuse me if I see great potential in a character that hasn't been properly used in the original canon and is primarily known for the horrifying ordeal she suffered! How foolish of me wishing for her to get the chance to explore her personality and act in storylines that do not solely revolve around her progeny or that Bad Thing she endured!