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i had more tags but they disappeared :(

I was thinking about the Scooby Doo/Supernatural crossover.

Right, so we all know Velma's gay, that's the official, real, original Velma from the first show to the direct-to-DVD movies.

Now, let's assume ScoobyNatural, the Supernatural Series 13 episode where the Supernatural brothers, Sam and Dean, along with their fake John Constantine guy, Castiel (who apparently died and was brought back with no explanation just for the crossover) get put into Scooby Doo because of a ghost. This is the only episode of that show I have seen.

Anyway, let's assume they were put into real Scooby Doo, back in time somehow, instead of a fake ghost-made version of Scooby Doo like the in-universe rationalisation. The people making it wanted that to be the case. I agree.

So, let's assume the original episode still happened, then this time travel added them to the episode. It still works with the show, they time travel all the time in the comics, and despite differences to the original made by the ghost, Sam and Dean do make a point of making sure the Scooby gang are still as normal as can be for their future adventures.

Oh, during the episode there's even a subplot where one of the brothers, Dean, tries to get with Daphne. Except that doesn't work, of course. Because Fred. At the end of the episode, they do a twist, however. Velma kisses him as they leave. And if you're an expert at the subtle ways of heterosexual communications, Velma apparently likes him back? This was shown earlier in the episode too, from what I can tell.

Bit of a mad thought but why not do it? Dean does a remark, Velma apparently wants to keep in touch. However, one snaggle*, Velma is still gay. And I know what you're thinking. But mainline Velma is better than that. But if the ghost from Supernatural was affecting the original Scooby Gang, what if the ghost like temporarily degayed her to make Dean happy/put him off the scent and keep them mostly in-character? Or like made original Velma be heterosexual for that one episode? Ghostly comphet if you will. I don't know. Oh, fun fact, the Scooby Gang are all DC characters because of their Batman crossover in the New Scooby-Doo Movies, their second incarnation, making them too exist in every DC universe. Even New 52. I don't even want to know what happened to them there.

*(They may have fallen into the James Gunn Scooby Doo 2 Trap Zone with Velma but Shaggy being somewhat self-aware is consistent with the direct-to-DVD series, specifically the Batman: The Brave and The Bold crossover movie. Oh, speaking of that one, it makes sense that they existed in the show's universe the whole time but Bat-Mite just didn't want to mess with them.)

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I was thinking about the Scooby Doo/Supernatural crossover.

Right, so we all know Velma's gay, that's the official, real, original Velma from the first show to the direct-to-DVD movies.

Now, let's assume ScoobyNatural, the Supernatural Series 13 episode where the Supernatural brothers, Sam and Dean, along with their fake John Constantine guy, Castiel (who apparently died and was brought back with no explanation just for the crossover) get put into Scooby Doo because of a ghost. This is the only episode of that show I have seen.

Anyway, let's assume they were put into real Scooby Doo, back in time somehow, instead of a fake ghost-made version of Scooby Doo like the in-universe rationalisation. The people making it wanted that to be the case. I agree.

So, let's assume the original episode still happened, then this time travel added them to the episode. It still works with the show, they time travel all the time in the comics, and despite differences to the original made by the ghost, Sam and Dean do make a point of making sure the Scooby gang are still as normal as can be for their future adventures.

Oh, during the episode there's even a subplot where one of the brothers, Dean, tries to get with Daphne. Except that doesn't work, of course. Because Fred. At the end of the episode, they do a twist, however. Velma kisses him as they leave. And if you're an expert at the subtle ways of heterosexual communications, Velma apparently likes him back? This was shown earlier in the episode too, from what I can tell.

Bit of a mad thought but why not do it? Dean does a remark, Velma apparently wants to keep in touch. However, one snaggle*, Velma is still gay. And I know what you're thinking. But mainline Velma is better than that. But if the ghost from Supernatural was affecting the original Scooby Gang, what if the ghost like temporarily degayed her to make Dean happy/put him off the scent and keep them mostly in-character? Or like made original Velma be heterosexual for that one episode? Ghostly comphet if you will. I don't know. Oh, fun fact, the Scooby Gang are all DC characters because of their Batman crossover in the New Scooby-Doo Movies, their second incarnation, making them too exist in every DC universe. Even New 52. I don't even want to know what happened to them there.

*(They may have fallen into the James Gunn Scooby Doo 2 Trap Zone with Velma but Shaggy being somewhat self-aware is consistent with the direct-to-DVD series, specifically the Batman: The Brave and The Bold crossover movie. Oh, speaking of that one, it makes sense that they existed in the show's universe the whole time but Bat-Mite just didn't want to mess with them.)

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important. look if nobody else is reblogging this i will

Okay!

After nearly a full decade of our time of Stephanie Brown being told to go home and give up being Spoiler, Batman takes her on as a student and sanctions her, with no preamble or warning.

That’s weird, let’s talk about it.

Batmans strange choices in how he treats Stephanie Brown can only be understood by analyzing his character.

Let's place Batman in context of what is going on directly before his decision to bring in Stephanie Brown as part of the team. The last major event preceding Stephanie Brown being sanctioned is Officer Down, which by the time it concludes Batman has lost two of his oldest allies: Jim Gordon has retired and Alfred has resigned.

In the wake of Officer Down, I’d like to track two key conflicting characteristics of Batman, how they are exacerbated, and how they influence how Stephanie is treated.

1. A Longing for Companionship

Batman's desire for the company of others is increased post-Officer Down, as he deals with suddenly being isolated from most of his core group.

Other characters point this out:

Batman #590 (1940)

Additionally, for the first time in a long while, Bruce Wayne is entirely alone in the manor.

Gotham Knights #20 (2000)

So, why doesn’t Batman just do the normal, healthy thing and reach out to the loved ones he still has? I personally believe it’s because of how embarrassed he is after getting epically owned by Alfred, but the more general answer is: he’s the Batman.

Out of paranoia his feelings will be used against him, or out of fears those close to him will be harmed if he directly expresses affection for them, or out of just being too damn cool for “emotions”, any way you slice it, Batman is:

2. Deeply uncomfortable with appearing emotionally vulnerable

We can see this with one of Bruce’s primary response to immediate grief: denial and silence

A simple example of this is how he acts after Jason Todd is killed. Bruce completely refuses to acknowledge his existence, and remains utterly silent when confronted.

Batman #437 / #440 (1940)

Another easy example of this is how he inexplicably approaches Nightwing dressed as Matches Malone in order to express that he isn’t trying to step on his toes:

Nightwing #14 (1996)

While it varies over time how emotionally closed off Bruce is, I believe one of the biggest triggers for an increase in this emotional cut off is when he is made to feel helpless.

During Cataclysm, he is helpless to stop the earthquake or meaningfully protect Gotham, there’s no enemy to fight, it’s just pure random crappy luck. He responds to this feeling of circumstances being out of his immediate control by cutting off almost all of his allies and sending them out of Gotham.

After he learns about how Zatanna and some other JLers wiped his memory and betrayed his trust, his reaction is to create an artificial intelligence to spy on the Justice League.

When Batman is put in situations which makes him feel physically or emotionally vulnerable, when he’s subject to circumstances out of his control, Batmans response has been historically to double down and isolate himself and cover up any potential weaknesses by convincing himself he’s better off alone and paranoid.

Eventually, after some time of this, he has a big moment where he decides to let people in, but his knee jerk reaction is always to pull away first.

This aversion to vulnerability is in play during and post-Officer Down, where Bruce is confronted by Jim’s mortality and retirement as well as Alfred’s resignation, all “enemies” he can’t just punch away.

Nightwing #53 (1996) / Gotham Knights #13 (2000)

In the wake of Officer Down, these conflicting traits are prominently portrayed.

In particular, Gotham Knights #18 demonstrates how these ideas clash.

Batmans loneliness is explored heavily: he starts the comic off talking to a bat, repeatably calls Oracle who is trying to sleep, and wanders through the completely empty manor.

His loneliness is conveyed through how he is framed: a shadow in a batsuit, wandering though desaturated and darkened hallways and rooms, completely silently, like a ghost.

Finally, the silence ends. Bruce calls Aquaman, asking for help excavating his giant penny. They have an awkward conversation, until Aquaman eventually calls him on his BS, pretty much directly stating that the penny was a total excuse, and that Bruce just wanted company, that he only called because he was lonely.

Gotham Knights #18 (2000)

When confronted with his loneliness, we see his desire for companionship come into play. He tries to talk to the bat, to Oracle, and then Arthur.

We also see it mitigated by the second impulse, his aversion to vulnerability. He can't tell Oracle that he just wants to talk, he has to frame the interaction through a case that he himself admits he no longer needs her help with.

Likewise, he can't just tell Aquaman that he wants to hang out, he has to make up a lie about needing help moving his giant penny.

His desire for companionship drives him to reach out, while his aversion to emotional vulnerability forces him to obscure this desire for human connection.

So, thats fine and all, but what does any of this have to do with Stephanie Brown?

As I mentioned earlier, Officer Down is the event that occurs just before Batman brings Steph onto the team. I argue that this dynamic of yearning for companionship vs. resistance to emotional vulnerability influences heavily his decision to "sanction" her as Spoiler.

Stephanie as a balm for Batmans loneliness.

This is immediately clear if you compare how much he's talking in Gotham Knights #18 to how he chatters away at Stephanie. He directly references Tim and Alfred's absence. But unlike Gotham Knights #18 the absence is not a bad thing per se, its framed against Stephanie's presence, how he allows her to stay.

Green Arrow #5 (2001)

Stephanie's role in assuaging his loneliness is evident in other places as well, for instance, in the Gotham Knights Last Laugh tie in. Stephanie realizes she forgot to turn her comm of, and had been "blabbing in [his] ear all night", Batman reassures her that he isn't upset. Just the opposite in fact, he tells her to not turn it off, saying he "doesn't mind the company" and placing a hand awkwardly on her shoulder. He clearly appreciated the relief from his loneliness her "blabbing" had provided.

Gotham Knights #22 (2000)

So Batman's embarrassing loneliness might have had some role to play in him taking her on as a student and "sanctioning" her. But what about that second impulse? How does it come into play?

2. How Stephanie as an outsider allows for emotional vulnerability

Originally, Batman takes Stephanie on because he needed her to help him find Tim at Brentwood, as he is unable to go himself. The reasons he "can't" go himself only become clear when Tim confronts Bruce, calling him out for being afraid of running into Alfred.

Robin #87 (1993)

This scene illustrates how Stephanie satisfies the second impulse, her outsider status. Stephanie is different from the rest of the team.

Tim has access to the context and information which allows him to expose Batman's emotionally vulnerability. Tim can call out Batman out for his pettiness and cowardice in how he hides from Alfred.

But Stephanie? Stephanie doesn't know who Alfred is, or how embarrassing it is for Batman to be avoiding him after Alfred yelled at him and called him a baby. She doesn't have the context that Tim and the rest of the team have.

So what does this mean? It means that Batman can tell her shit that is not true, like that he calls his car "The Car" instead of the Batmobile. And, more importantly, it means that he can express emotional vulnerability without any of the potential consequence. She has no context, and she has no one to tell.

Alfred is beefing with her over Bruce's choice to tell her Tim's identity, so that potential friendship is over before it could begin. And she gets (seemingly) brushed off by Batgirl.

Robin #88 (1993)

She doesn't even have Tim, who Stephanies believes is mad at her.

Robin #94 (1993)

I cannot emphasize this enough: she has nobody to tell. And Batman absolutely knows this.

He is emotionally vulnerable with her, expressing concern for the future and uncertainty:

Robin #92 (1993)

This moment is weird. It stands out. Stephanie seems aware of the strangeness of this moment, she reflects on it internally.

This moment parallels something in another comic. His fears and uncertainties about bringing other people into his "war"? We see a similar dialogue in the beginning of Gotham Knights.

Gotham Knights #1 (2000)

These are his uncertainties and fears that he can normally only express through creating a case file where he writes in the third person, assessing himself as Batman as if he is a completely different person. But theres no subterfuge here. He just straight up tells Stephanie Brown, utterly unprompted.

And this isn't the last time it's mentioned. At least half a year later, at the very start of War Games, the strange and scary vulnerability of this moment is still etched in Stephanies mind.

Batman: The 12 Cent Adventure (2004)

And while Batman gets to dump his insecurities on Stephanie, it's not exactly reciprocal. Stephanie expresses fear that Batman will drop her if she goes to him for help after her dad threatens to kill her. She has no feeling of security in her place on the team if she's afraid of this.

Robin #94 (1993)

And she's not even wrong about Batman's willingness to fire her at the drop of a hat, it just occurs later.

And when it occurs is important. The events of Bruce Wayne: Murderer lead to Alfred coming back into the manor and Bruce's employ. It ends with a big reconcilltion between the primary team, where Bruce explains he's been off since Officer Down.

Batman #605 (1940)

Alfred is back, no questions asked. The "real" team gets an apology and an explanation. And in other words, Batman is no longer as alone as he was before.

Everyone was locked out of the cave during Bruce Wayne: Murderer/Fugitive, but Stephanie is the only one who is not let back in once it concludes. She doesn't get an explanation, and Batman did not seem to have a plan to tell her she's been fired. She had to track him down and confront him to find out he'd given up on her.

Gotham Knights #37 (2000)

We can see how his isolation contributes to how she is treated by who is told when she is fired/sanctioned. When he brings her on the team, no one knows ahead of time. We don't see him tell anyone at all. In contrast, once his primary support system is firmly reestablished post Bruce Wayne: Murderer, Bruce separately informs Tim, Cassandra, and Alfred that Stephanie was fired. He's able to do this because his web has been repaired.

Stephanie Brown essentially fulfills the same role as the bat that Bruce talks to in Gotham Knights #18.

A new presence, unencumbered with the point of view the rest of the team has, unknowing of Bruce's history of fucking up. A sounding board, a stand in for Bruce's normal company.

Stephanie's presence perfectly satiates the contrasting impulses Batman deals with when it comes to how he interacts with other characters. Through her, Bruce can have companionship without being afraid of the danger of emotional vulnerability. She doesn't have the context, she doesn't know Bruce Wayne. She only knows Batman, and she seems pretty starstruck about finally being let on his team.

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Exactly.

like i'm sorry but we as a fandom have to stay firm on our anti-AI values. we cannot suddenly start giving AI a pass when it's something we "want to see" like destiel kisses. it's not suddenly fine. we're not going to start using AI to make fanfic scenes come to life or audio AI to make characters "say" stuff we want to hear. you have GOT to be firm on your anti-AI stance. if you start making exceptions then suddenly anything will fly. fandom is for real art and creations made by real people. no AI fanfics. no AI art. no AI rendered "bonus" scenes. no AI audio. none of it has a place here.

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The Strange Case of Harley & Harleen (2024)

written by Melissa Marr art by Jen St-Onge, Lea Caballero, & Jeremy Lawson

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Do we ship them now? Are they related? Is that why Annita's missing an arm? Kink?

I love the difference between the designs

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Cool name.

hey parents: there is literally no non-abusive reason a person would want the ability to read someone’s emails, track their location, and go through their calls and text messages without their knowledge or consent.

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One of those insidious little things I notice sometimes is how much the window of 'appropriate for children' content has shrunk within the past 20 years. The range of things it is socially acceptable to show a 10-year-old has never been more limited, and it's happened incredibly quickly.

Take, for instance, Star Trek: TNG. I grew up watching TNG. I was a little young for it as it was airing, but it got syndicated almost immediately and they would show an episode most weekday evenings on the Space Channel, and I'd watch it with my lifelong Trekkie mom. This was a very common thing. I was by no means unusual for watching Star Trek as a child.

Star Trek: TNG has lots of sex in it! It's never explicit (unless you have a particularly niche interpretation of some of the borg stuff) but on many an occasion you'll have a few characters doing a bit of making out followed by a closing door or fade to black, and then they wake up in bed together. If you know what sex is, you know that is what is being implied here. Even my 8-year-old self, whose understanding of the subject mostly came from books of ancient mythology that used words like 'ravish' and 'the pleasures of the couch' a whole bunch, could tell that what was happening was sex.

And I am not bringing this up as a 'see, I watched all this inappropriate stuff and I turned out just fine!'. I'm bringing it up to argue that TNG's level of sexual content is not inappropriate for children (I'm not using the legalese 'minors', because I think that lumping children and teenagers together in this conversation would make it nonsense. Star Trek is obviously appropriate for teenagers. Don't use 'minors' when you mean either children or teens, it just muddies the waters).

The point is that Star Trek: TNG was very obviously designed to be watched by children and teenagers. There's a whole character in the main cast whose role in the show is to be an audience insert for children and teenagers. The moral tone of TNG, its occasional dips into 'don't do drugs, kids' type messaging, and its general avoidance of graphic violence all scream 'we are designing this with an audience of children - but not just children - in mind'. It's a family show. It's supposed to be watched by the whole family.

Which means that, until at least the end of the 90s, this amount of sexual content was generally considered appropriate for kids to see. It's not pornographic - it's not even graphic. Maybe the very most conservative parents wouldn't let their kids watch TNG, but that might have had more to do with all the socialism and atheism.

So, why did that change? Why do we now have such a strong bullwark between 'things kids are allowed to know about' and 'things for GROWN UPS ONLY 18+ Minors DNI', and why have we relegated even the most discreet references to sex to the second category only?

And the next time you find yourself experiencing that knee-jerk 'think of the children' reaction, consider: would what you're looking at have been ok on Star Trek: TNG in the 90s?

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I literally just posted this from my head. I was like, "What would I say if I saw the real Kate Kane on Tumblr" and I did.

Also, I got the gay bar thing from the Batwoman show; utterly love that show.

(Also if you're doing a character event thing I'd love to attend)

Kate Kate Kate! I'm a big fan, couldn't think of any good questions so, sorry, here's a few dumb ones.

Have you ever thought of owning a gay bar in Gotham or something like that?

Supergirl: smash or pass?

Why did you join Tumblr? ~

What are your thoughts on the Mad Hatter?

Hello! It's so nice to meet a fan! And seriously no worries I love interacting with lovely people like you even if you're only here to say hi!

Hm you know I never really thought about it before. Its a lot of work certainly but you know it could be fun! Yeah.. yeah maybe this is what I need to get me back in the game. Thanks for the idea! I'm definitely going to think about it.

Hmm well most of the Supergirls I know are either minors or if not that, still far too young for my taste. So I'm going to ignore that. Superwoman though- smash. Yes yes the evil one I know I know but she was hot!

Well my lovely cousin and all my little nieces and nephews and even the supervillans and heroes of Gotham were here and I thought huh let me see what all the hype is about. I'm not ashamed to admit I'm a little hooked on this hellsite.

He creeps me out. I don't like him, period. He's just- creepy. Not scary- just creepy.

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In retrospect, four years later, I feel like the Isabel Fall incident was just the biggest ignored cautionary tale modern fandom spaces have ever had. Yes, it wasn't limited to fandom, it was also a professional author/booktok type argument, but it had a lot of crossover.

Stop me if you've heard this one before: a writer, whether fan or pro, publishes a work. If one were to judge a book by its cover, something we are all taught in Kindergarten shouldn't happen but has a way of occurring regardless, one might find that there was something that seemed deeply problematic about this work. Maybe the title or summary alluded to something Wrong happening, or maybe the tags indicated there was problematic kinks or relationships. And that meant the story was Bad. So, a group of people takes to the Twittersphere to inform everyone who will listen why the work, and therefore the author, are Bad. The author, receiving an avalanche of abuse and harassment, deactivates their account, and checks into a mental health facility for monitoring for suicidal ideation. They never return to their writing space, and the harassers get a slap on the wrist (if that- usually they get praise and high-fives all around) and start waiting for their next victim to transgress.

Sounds awful familiar, doesn't it?

Isabel Fall's case, though, was even more extreme for many reasons. See, she made the terrible mistake of using a transphobic meme as the genesis to actually explore issues of gender identity.

More specifically, she used the phrase "I sexually identify as an attack helicopter" to examine how marginalized identities, when they become more accepted, become nothing more than a tool for the military-industrial complex to rebrand itself as a more personable and inclusive atrocity; a chance to pursue praise for bombing brown children while being progressive, because queer people, too, can help blow up brown children now! It also contained an examination of identity and how queerness is intrinsic to a person, etc.

But... well, if harassers ever bothered to read the things they critique, we wouldn't be here, would we? So instead, they called Isabel a transphobic monster for the title alone, even starting a misinformation campaign to claim she was, in fact, a cis male nazi using a fake identity to psyop the queer community.

A few days later, after days of horrific abuse and harassment, Isabel requested that Clarkesworld magazine pull the story. She checked in to a psych ward with suicidal thoughts. That wasn't all, though; the harassment was so bad that she was forced to out herself as trans to defend against the claims.

Only... we know this type of person, the fandom harassers, don't we? You know where this is going. Outing herself did nothing to stop the harassment. No one was willing to read the book, much less examine how her sexuality and gender might have influenced her when writing it.

So some time later, Isabel deleted her social media. She is still alive, but "Isabel Fall" is not- because the harassment was so bad that Isabel detransitioned/closeted herself, too traumatized to continue living her authentic life.

Supposed trans allies were so outraged at a fictional portrayal of transness, written by a trans woman, that they harassed a real life trans woman into detransitioning.

It's heartbreakingly familiar, isn't it? Many of us in fandom communities have been in Isabel's shoes, even if the outcome wasn't so extreme (or in some cases, when it truly was). Most especially, many of us, as marginalized writers speaking from our own experiences in some way, have found that others did not enjoy our framework for examining these things, and hurt us, members of those identities, in defense of "the community" as a nebulous undefined entity.

There's a quote that was posted in a news writeup about the whole saga that was published a year after the fact. The quote is:

The delineation between paranoid and reparative readings originated in 1995, with influential critic Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. A paranoid reading focuses on what’s wrong or problematic about a work of art. A reparative reading seeks out what might be nourishing or healing in a work of art, even if the work is flawed. Importantly, a reparative reading also tends to consider what might be nourishing or healing in a work of art for someone who isn’t the reader. This kind of nuance gets completely worn away on Twitter, home of paranoid readings. “[You might tweet], ‘Well, they didn’t discuss X, Y, or Z, so that’s bad!’ Or, ‘They didn’t’ — in this case — ‘discuss transness in a way that felt like what I feel about transness, therefore it is bad.’ That flattens everything into this very individual, very hostile way of reading,” Mandelo says. “Part of reparative reading is trying to think about how a story cannot do everything. Nothing can do everything. If you’re reading every text, fiction, or criticism looking for it to tick a bunch of boxes — like if it represents X, Y, and Z appropriately to my definitions of appropriate, and if it’s missing any of those things, it’s not good — you’re not really seeing the close focus that it has on something else.”

A paranoid reading describes perfectly what fandom culture has become in the modern times. It is why "proship", once simply a word for common sense "don't engage with what you don't like, and don't harass people who create it either" philosophies, has become the boogeyman of fandom, a bad and dangerous word. The days of reparative readings, where you would look for things you enjoyed, are all but dead. Fiction is rarely a chance to feel joy; it's an excuse to get angry, to vitriolically attack those different from oneself while surrounded with those who are the same as oneself. It's an excuse to form in-groups and out-groups that must necessarily be in a constant state of conflict, lest it come across like This side is accepting That side's faults. In other words, fandom has become the exact sort of space as the nonfandom spaces it used to seek to define itself against.

It's not about joy. It's not about resonance with plot or characters. It's about hate. It's about finding fault. If they can't find any in the story, they will, rest assured, create it by instigating fan wars- dividing fandom into factions and mercilessly attacking the other.

And that's if they even went so far as to read the work they're critiquing. The ones they don't bother to read, as you saw above, fare even worse. If an AO3 writer tagged an abuser/victim ship, it's bad, it's fetishism, even if the story is about how the victim escapes. If a trans writer uses the title "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter" to find a framework to dissect rainbow-washing the military-industrial complex, it's unforgivable. It's a cesspool of kneejerk reactions, moralizing discomfort, treating good/evil as dichotomous categories that can never be escaped, and using that complex as an excuse to heap harassment on people who "deserve it." Because once you are Bad, there is no action against you that is too Bad for you to deserve.

Isabel Fall's story follows this so step-by-step that it's like a textbook case study on modern fandom behavior.

Isabel Fall wrote a short story with an inflammatory title, with a genesis in transphobic mockery, in the hopes of turning it into a genuine treatise on the intersection of gender and sexuality and the military-industrial complex. But because audiences are unprepared for the idea of inflammatory rhetoric as a tool to force discomfort to then force deeper introspection... they zeroed in on the discomfort. "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter"- the title phrase, not the work- made them uncomfortable. We no longer teach people how to handle discomfort; we live in a world of euphemism and glossing over, a world where people can't even type out the words "kill" and rape", instead substituting "unalive" and "grape." We don't deal with uncomfortable feelings anymore; we censor them, we transform them, we sanitize them. When you are unable to process discomfort, when you are never given self-soothing tools, your only possible conclusion is that anything Uncomfortable must be Bad, and the creator must either be censored too, or attacked into conformity so that you never again experience the horrors of being Uncomfortable.

So the masses took to Twitter, outraged. They were Uncomfortable, and that de facto meant that they had been Wronged. Because the content was related to trans identity issues, that became the accusation; it was transphobic, inherently. It couldn't be a critique of bigger and more fluid systems than gender identity alone; it was a slight against trans people. And no amount of explanations would change their minds now, because they had already been aggrieved and made to feel Uncomfortable.

Isabel Fall was now a Bad Person, and we all know what fandom spaces do to Bad People. Bad People, because they are Bad, will always be deserving of suicide bait and namecalling and threatening. Once a person is Bad, there is no way to ever become Good again. Not by refuting the accusations (because the accusations are now self-evident facts; "there is a callout thread against them" is its own tautological proof that wrongdoing has happened regardless of the veracity of the claims in the callout) and not by apologizing and changing, because if you apologize and admit you did the Bad thing, you are still Bad, and no matter what you do in future, you were once Bad and that needs to be brought up every time you are mentioned. If you are bad, you can NEVER be more than what you were at your worst (in their definition) moment. Your are now ontologically evil, and there is no action taken against you that can be immoral.

So Isabel was doomed, naturally. It didn't matter that she outed herself to explain that she personally had lived the experience of a trans woman and could speak with authority on the atrocity of rainbow-washing the military industrial complex as a proaganda tool to capture progressives. None of it mattered. She had written a work with an Uncomfortable phrase for a title, the readers were Uncomfortable, and someone had to pay for it.

And that's the key; pay for it. Punishment. Revenge. It's never about correcting behavior. Restorative justice is not in this group's vocabulary. You will, incidentally, never find one of these folks have a stance against the death penalty; if you did Bad as a verb, you are Bad as an intrinsic, inescapable adjective, and what can you do to incorrigible people but kill them to save the Normal people? This is the same principle, on a smaller scale, that underscores their fandom activities; if a Bad fan writes Bad fiction, they are a Bad person, and their fandom persona needs to die to save Normal fans the pain of feeling Uncomfortable.

And that's what happened to Isabel Fall. The person who wrote the short story is very much alive, but the pseudonym of Isabel Fall, the identity, the lived experiences coming together in concert with imagination to form a speculative work to critique deeply problematic sociopolitical structures? That is dead. Isabel Fall will never write again, even if by some miracle the person who once used the name does. Even if she ever decides to restart her transition, she will be permanently scarred by this experience, and will never again be able to share her experience with us as a way to grow our own empathy and challenge our understanding of the world. In spirit, but not body, fandom spaces murdered Isabel Fall.

And that's... fandom, anymore. That's just what is done, routinely and without question, to Bad people. Good people are Good, so they don't make mistakes, and they never go too far when dealing with Bad people. And Bad people, well, they should have thought before they did something Bad which made them Bad people.

Isabel Fall's harassment happened in early 2020, before quarantine started, but it was in so many ways a final chance for fandom to hit the breaks. A chance for fandom to think collectively about what it wanted to be, who it wanted to be for and how it wanted to do it. And fandom looked at this and said, "more, please." It continues to harass marginalized people, especially fans of color and queen fans, into suffering mental breakdowns. With gusto.

Any ideas of reparative reading is dead. Fandom runs solely on paranoid readings. And so too is restorative justice gone for fandom transgressions, real or imagined. It is now solely about punitive, vigilante justice. It's a concerted campaign to make sure oddballs conform or die (in spirit, but sometimes even physically given how often mentally ill individuals are pushed into committing suicide).

It's a deeply toxic environment and I'm sad to say that Isabel Fall's story was, in retrospect, a sort of event horizon for the fandom. The gravitational pull of these harassment campaigns is entirely too strong now and there is no escaping it. I'm sorry, I hate to say something so bleak, but thinking the last few days about the state of fandom (not just my current one but also others I watch from the outside), I just don't think we can ever go back to peaceful "for joy" engagement, not when so many people are determined to use it as an outlet for lateral aggression against other people.

[heretolurkbutalasitstaken]

Do it as a haiku, that always helps for me. Oh I misread, thought that said poem.

I am really struggling to write porn about nuclear war

I feel that's a personal failing on my part

[heretolurkbutalasitstaken]

I'd also kill to make one. One day, I'll know Python better.

I would kill to make an incest VN. I cannot draw anywhere near well enough 😭 any artists out there looking for a partner in crime?

This isn’t a bit I’m being sincere, DM if you’re down.

[heretolurkbutalasitstaken]

Truly NERF or nothing.

“If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing”

20 years ago, I got in a (friendly) public spat with Chris Anderson, who was then the editor in chief of Wired. I'd publicly noted my disappointment with glowing Wired reviews of DRM-encumbered digital devices, prompting Anderson to call me unrealistic for expecting the magazine to condemn gadgets for their DRM:

https://longtail.typepad.com/the_long_tail/2004/12/is_drm_evil.html

I replied in public, telling him that he'd misunderstood. This wasn't an issue of ideological purity – it was about good reviewing practice. Wired was telling readers to buy a product because it had features x, y and z, but at any time in the future, without warning, without recourse, the vendor could switch off any of those features:

https://memex.craphound.com/2004/12/29/cory-responds-to-wired-editor-on-drm/

I proposed that all Wired endorsements for DRM-encumbered products should come with this disclaimer:

WARNING: THIS DEVICE’S FEATURES ARE SUBJECT TO REVOCATION WITHOUT NOTICE, ACCORDING TO TERMS SET OUT IN SECRET NEGOTIATIONS. YOUR INVESTMENT IS CONTINGENT ON THE GOODWILL OF THE WORLD’S MOST PARANOID, TECHNOPHOBIC ENTERTAINMENT EXECS. THIS DEVICE AND DEVICES LIKE IT ARE TYPICALLY USED TO CHARGE YOU FOR THINGS YOU USED TO GET FOR FREE — BE SURE TO FACTOR IN THE PRICE OF BUYING ALL YOUR MEDIA OVER AND OVER AGAIN. AT NO TIME IN HISTORY HAS ANY ENTERTAINMENT COMPANY GOTTEN A SWEET DEAL LIKE THIS FROM THE ELECTRONICS PEOPLE, BUT THIS TIME THEY’RE GETTING A TOTAL WALK. HERE, PUT THIS IN YOUR MOUTH, IT’LL MUFFLE YOUR WHIMPERS.

Wired didn't take me up on this suggestion.

But I was right. The ability to change features, prices, and availability of things you've already paid for is a powerful temptation to corporations. Inkjet printers were always a sleazy business, but once these printers got directly connected to the internet, companies like HP started pushing out "security updates" that modified your printer to make it reject the third-party ink you'd paid for:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

Now, this scam wouldn't work if you could just put things back the way they were before the "update," which is where the DRM comes in. A thicket of IP laws make reverse-engineering DRM-encumbered products into a felony. Combine always-on network access with indiscriminate criminalization of user modification, and the enshittification will follow, as surely as night follows day.

This is the root of all the right to repair shenanigans. Sure, companies withhold access to diagnostic codes and parts, but codes can be extracted and parts can be cloned. The real teeth in blocking repair comes from the law, not the tech. The company that makes McDonald's wildly unreliable McFlurry machines makes a fortune charging franchisees to fix these eternally broken appliances. When a third party threatened this racket by reverse-engineering the DRM that blocked independent repair, they got buried in legal threats:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/20/euthanize-rentier-enablers/#cold-war

Everybody loves this racket. In Poland, a team of security researchers at the OhMyHack conference just presented their teardown of the anti-repair features in NEWAG Impuls locomotives. NEWAG boobytrapped their trains to try and detect if they've been independently serviced, and to respond to any unauthorized repairs by bricking themselves:

https://mamot.fr/@q3k@hackerspace.pl/111528162905209453

Poland is part of the EU, meaning that they are required to uphold the provisions of the 2001 EU Copyright Directive, including Article 6, which bans this kind of reverse-engineering. The researchers are planning to present their work again at the Chaos Communications Congress in Hamburg this month – Germany is also a party to the EUCD. The threat to researchers from presenting this work is real – but so is the threat to conferences that host them:

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/researchers-face-legal-threats-over-sdmi-hack/

20 years ago, Chris Anderson told me that it was unrealistic to expect tech companies to refuse demands for DRM from the entertainment companies whose media they hoped to play. My argument – then and now – was that any tech company that sells you a gadget that can have its features revoked is defrauding you. You're paying for x, y and z – and if they are contractually required to remove x and y on demand, they are selling you something that you can't rely on, without making that clear to you.

But it's worse than that. When a tech company designs a device for remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrades, they invite both external and internal parties to demand those downgrades. Like Pavel Chekov says, a phaser on the bridge in Act I is going to go off by Act III. Selling a product that can be remote, irreversibly, nonconsensually downgraded inevitably results in the worst person at the product-planning meeting proposing to do so. The fact that there are no penalties for doing so makes it impossible for the better people in that meeting to win the ensuing argument, leading to the moral injury of seeing a product you care about reduced to a pile of shit:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/25/moral-injury/#enshittification

But even if everyone at that table is a swell egg who wouldn't dream of enshittifying the product, the existence of a remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrade feature makes the product vulnerable to external actors who will demand that it be used. Back in 2022, Adobe informed its customers that it had lost its deal to include Pantone colors in Photoshop, Illustrator and other "software as a service" packages. As a result, users would now have to start paying a monthly fee to see their own, completed images. Fail to pay the fee and all the Pantone-coded pixels in your artwork would just show up as black:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/28/fade-to-black/#trust-the-process

Adobe blamed this on Pantone, and there was lots of speculation about what had happened. Had Pantone jacked up its price to Adobe, so Adobe passed the price on to its users in the hopes of embarrassing Pantone? Who knows? Who can know? That's the point: you invested in Photoshop, you spent money and time creating images with it, but you have no way to know whether or how you'll be able to access those images in the future. Those terms can change at any time, and if you don't like it, you can go fuck yourself.

These companies are all run by CEOs who got their MBAs at Darth Vader University, where the first lesson is "I have altered the deal, pray I don't alter it further." Adobe chose to design its software so it would be vulnerable to this kind of demand, and then its customers paid for that choice. Sure, Pantone are dicks, but this is Adobe's fault. They stuck a KICK ME sign to your back, and Pantone obliged.

This keeps happening and it's gonna keep happening. Last week, Playstation owners who'd bought (or "bought") Warner TV shows got messages telling them that Warner had walked away from its deal to sell videos through the Playstation store, and so all the videos they'd paid for were going to be deleted forever. They wouldn't even get refunds (to be clear, refunds would also be bullshit – when I was a bookseller, I didn't get to break into your house and steal the books I'd sold you, not even if I left some cash on your kitchen table).

Sure, Warner is an unbelievably shitty company run by the single most guillotineable executive in all of Southern California, the loathsome David Zaslav, who oversaw the merger of Warner with Discovery. Zaslav is the creep who figured out that he could make more money cancelling completed movies and TV shows and taking a tax writeoff than he stood to make by releasing them:

https://aftermath.site/there-is-no-piracy-without-ownership

Imagine putting years of your life into making a program – showing up on set at 5AM and leaving your kids to get their own breakfast, performing stunts that could maim or kill you, working 16-hour days during the acute phase of the covid pandemic and driving home in the night, only to have this absolute turd of a man delete the program before anyone could see it, forever, to get a minor tax advantage. Talk about moral injury!

But without Sony's complicity in designing a remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrade feature into the Playstation, Zaslav's war on art and creative workers would be limited to material that hadn't been released yet. Thanks to Sony's awful choices, David Zaslav can break into your house, steal your movies – and he doesn't even have to leave a twenty on your kitchen table.

The point here – the point I made 20 years ago to Chris Anderson – is that this is the foreseeable, inevitable result of designing devices for remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrades. Anyone who was paying attention should have figured that out in the GW Bush administration. Anyone who does this today? Absolute flaming garbage.

Sure, Zaslav deserves to be staked out over and anthill and slathered in high-fructose corn syrup. But save the next anthill for the Sony exec who shipped a product that would let Zaslav come into your home and rob you. That piece of shit knew what they were doing and they did it anyway. Fuck them. Sideways. With a brick.

Meanwhile, the studios keep making the case for stealing movies rather than paying for them. As Tyler James Hill wrote: "If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing":

https://bsky.app/profile/tylerjameshill.bsky.social/post/3kflw2lvam42n

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/08/playstationed/#tyler-james-hill

Image: Alan Levine (modified) https://pxhere.com/en/photo/218986

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[heretolurkbutalasitstaken]

Love Sloane.

me: wow, I’d love to see Five get closer to his sister-in-law in season 4

me, later: no no wait, wrong sister-in-law, I meant that he should get to know Sloane because they’re both Fives and she’s intelligent and ambitious but also very sweet and fiercely loyal and I think they would be good friends, THIS IS THE WRONG SISTER-IN-LAW AND THE WRONG KIND OF CLOSE