#(not really but they associated themselves with an idiot. so. and their fanbase clearly has a goddamn problem)

[tempobrucera]

Because I have enough and I usually don't talk about the anon asks in my inbox or anything that isn't fun on here (for reasons) but I have a limit. And this here is just ugly.

TW: Antisemitism, saying Ukraine is lead by a Zionist (yeah, Jewish people rule the world - got it), rape mention, literal death treats, ect. The list is long. Here we go, those are the highlights from about 100 asks or more, I am going to spare you the holocaust denial.

@anon - You're a clown. An antisemitic clown but you're still a goddamn clown and nothing more. I hope you're aware that I could take this to the police.

Discussing with people who feel the need to talk like this is absolutely senseless but maybe we can show someone else what the problem here is.

This is the problem: Jewish people are currently telling you that your rock icon (R*ger W*ters) on his pedestal is walking on antisemitic terrain and has done so for years. Not the first time Jewish people do so and are disregarded by people who don't know about our struggles or what we face. I told someone today that it's not good to talk over Jewish voices when it mainly concerns us, we might be few (open a history book - antisemitism didn't start during the 1930's) but we still have the right to be heard and to be threated like humans. I said this in a reply to a post and in DMs (which haven't really been answered, neither was I listened to - you can't apologize one billion time for "personal backlash" (......... you mean antisemitic hate death threats which don't have to do anything with me except for me being Jewish? Stop pretending this is "personal backlash") and was literally told, that they aren't talking over Jewish voices (you are - I'm not the first Jewish person pointing his tendecies out) and basically that it was disinformation. You're still talking over me.

So. We established that he used a pig with a Star of David on stage. People already pointed out ten years ago that this is antisemitic and he tried to weasel his way out of it with a half-assed explanation which btw doesn't make it better.

I am aware that Pigs is part of one of his bands concept albums and that they stand for wealthy, cunning people in office. He has said and claimed that it isn't the represent Jewish people. The problem is when you don't want to represent Jewish faith it is easy enough to not use the Star of David. "I have many Jewish friends" is an argument like "I'm not rassist, I have a Black friend", "I'm not a homophobe, I have gay friends". "it is almost inevitable that the symbol of the religion becomes confused with the symbol of the state" - No, you are the one who is confusing it. I have never stepped foot into Israel (while I worked for humanitarian aid in Palestine and Iraq (that's a story in itself) - when these countries where labelled active war zones), but I'm proud of my Jewish heritage. Stop confusing Israeli (government) with Jewish faith. Most Jewish people live outside of Israel. The other problem here is that "Judensau" / "Judenschwein" (Jewish pig) is used as an insult, especially by Nazis and people who are leaning towards antisemitism (you might not know that as a person who's not Jewish but I've heard this enough times growing up), so putting the symbol of Judaism (not goddamn Israel) on a pig isn't the smartest idea by default. In Germany and Europe, in churches and paintings, Jewish people were often depicted as pigs or Jewish people sucking on a sow (I can tell you, not in good faith). Furthermore have Jewish people adjectives like "wealthy", "cunning", "manipulative", "dirty" or that they "secretly run the world" associated with them for millenia. So putting the Star of David into this context is not a smart idea. Not at all, because it's heating up antisemitic rhetorics and resentments. You might not want to be associated with Nazis but I can tell you, Nazis will always be happy to associate themselves with you and they always do, I have seen them leech onto less than this.

He also claimed that the U.S. is being controlled by Jewish Republican donor Sheldon Adelson and described him as a “puppet master” who is “filling the coffers and pulling all the strings” on U.S. policies. Which brings us back to the antisemitic believe that Jewish people run the world. If you think, he said something like this only once, no he did it more than once over the years. (Also more than twice, or three times, honestly I STOPPED counting).

"Waters repeatedly promoted antisemitic conspiracies and themes, including that a nefarious “Israel lobby” prevented the election of Jeremy Corbyn in the UK" - this interview is from this year btw, not ten years ago because you all so fixated on how long some bullshit is ago.

"(Sheldon Adelson) believes that only Jews – only Jewish people – are completely human, that they are attached in some way… everybody else on Earth is there to serve them" - That is a quote out of the interview from this year. He's talking about JEWISH people, not ISRAEL. You get what the problem here is? It doesn't matter that he apologizes anymore, he does it so often, his apologies are fucking worthless at best at this point.

He also implied Israelis / Jewish people are kind of responsible for George Floyds death (yes, Jewish people run the world, it is getting boring)

He called verified reports of Beijing’s enslavement of Uyghur Muslims and massacre of Tibetan Buddhists "absolute nonsense".

I don't know how much bullshit has to come out of one single person that you might think, maybe I shouldn't support this.

All of this leads to another problem. You can always say stuff like "I don't agree with everything this person does", "I don't agree what he said about Ukraine", "I can disagree and agree with some one" (Yes, but you're automatically treating some people as lesser with this view, congratulations. One good thing doesn't make the other things better or excusable). The problem is that there's also other people who will be like "Thank you, but I agree with the view on Jewish people and I think the same on Ukraine" and in a few hours you will have a person under your post that says Ukraine is being lead by a Zionist (yes, Jewish people rule the world, we got it). And then you don't even have the balls to call this out or you think the same, who knows. And people who feel encouraged to send death threats, are denying the shoah, and so much more. This is the problem, if you think it's okay on a small scale, people will use it on a big scale. If you really don't see one problem with any of this, you're the problem, not me.

And for fucks sake: Stop getting on people's nerves who talk to me, are nice to me or reblogged my previous post.

[natsubeatsrock]

You Can Like Nalu. I Don’t.

I should just end this post here. I mean, this is obvious enough when an idiot like me says it like this. We're all allowed to like different things. 

But, I've had the idea for this post in the back of my head for a while now after seeing a post addressed to the anti-Nalu crowd, which I guess I’m a part of. I actively avoided responding to that post for the longest time. I did it for so long it ended up not showing up. 

But considering the recent re-ignition of the fight between the fandom that has people who thought borderline sexual harassment advanced their ship and the guy who thinks anyone who likes Nalu at all is automatically sub-human vermin, I feel like now is as good a time as ever to post this.

Nalu is the most popular ship in the Fairy Tail fandom, by far. Nothing even comes close. You can't go anywhere where Fairy Tail fans congregate and not see someone say something about Nalu and how it's a good ship and obviously going to be canon, how dare you not think otherwise. I remember seeing a prominent YouTuber imply the only reason some people stuck with Fairy Tail, even as the manga was ending and writing quality was dropping, was to see Natsu and Lucy get together. I'm worried by the fact that he has no idea how dead-on he was then and even is now with the sequel. 

The idea that anyone or anything is going to change that would normally be seen as a pipe dream. Giant shipping fandoms have been shot down by canon and still haunt waters as ghost ships. Their fans are often the ones leading the charges against the writers and/or directors of shows, proud to dance over the corpse of a failed show and equally ready to lament the success of a show despite what they see as the flawed writing behind popular series they're talking about. Much of the time, listening to these types of fans reveals that they have a lack of understanding of what the series was or did that is disturbingly low for someone who willingly calls oneself a... stan. (Another rant for another day.) 

With Nalu, it's near infinitely worse.

This is a ship whose fans took a panel of Natsu climbing out of a hole behind Lucy as a ship moment. 

This is a ship whose fans I've seen argue that it's somehow a good thing that Natsu groping Lucy without her permission has become such a tired act because she's seemingly used to it. 

This is a ship whose fans went from arguing that Natsu and Lucy explicitly confirming a romantic relationship is uncharacteristic of them after the last chapter of the original series to arguing they're in a kinky sexual relationship after two Twitter sketches in a matter of months.  

A few years ago, I joked that Natsu could stab Lucy and fans would consider it romantic. If the END situation was proof enough of that, Natsu ended up burning Lucy in a chapter in the sequel earlier last year and people were sad it didn’t advance Nalu further. Excuse me for not liking this fandom.

I'm convinced there's nothing that Mashima could do to make Nalu lose favor with the majority of the fanbase. If that's the case with the writer of the actual series, there's nothing I or anyone else is going to be able to do to convince the vast majority of fans that their ship is bad. I'd even go so far as to say that nothing I've done or said has convinced a Nalu fan that their ship is bad and they should like another ship.  

But here's the thing: I don't think it's wrong to be a Nalu shipper. 

I don't think that you are an inherently worse person for simply liking the idea of Natsu and Lucy becoming a romantic couple. You're not going to hell for writing Nalu fanfiction or drawing Nalu art. I don't even think it's inherently bad that "Nalu shipper" is a term that can be used to describe the vast swath of people who follow Fairy Tail to any degree. While I think the stuff I've talked about in the past, even in this post, shows the worst of the Nalu fandom and that part is greater than many would like to admit, that doesn't mean I think all people in the Nalu fandom are bad.  

At the same time, I am clearly not a Nalu shipper. I have never been a Nalu shipper. I will likely never be a Nalu shipper, especially if Mashima stays his current course with the ship. To be blunt, it's one of the few things I can say I hate in anime and I've talked at length multiple times about my reasons why. I highly doubt that anyone, short of Mashima himself, can do anything to make me like the ship to any meaningful degree. Especially considering much of what I've done in the past is directly attack the arguments for liking Nalu.  

The reason I've talked about Nalu in the past is that I want my position to be seen as intellectually valid. I hate that people will question why some feel the need to defend themselves over ships and then question how you don't like theirs. I came into the fandom seeing people literally say that they don’t understand how people go through Fairy Tail and not ship Nalu.

I want to show that I, and others like me, are not insane for not liking the fandom's big ship, among the myriad other things I talk about at length. I thought I was opening myself up to widespread criticism when I made my first post about why I don't like Nalu and have been beyond shocked to see the exact opposite happen over more than four years of blogging. 

But after four years of blogging, I've grown numb to the discourse. This isn't because I magically like the ship now. (Apparently, I can't reblog 5 pictures of Natsu and Lucy together before I'm accused of liking Nalu.) Frankly, I don't really have anything else to add to the conversation. I've made any and all the points against Nalu I may ever need to make. I barely have it in me to comment about the stuff I see currently happening in the sequel and that's not really pushing me towards liking Nalu more or less. It just feels like we're back to business as usual. 

To prove my point, I've directly about how the "friends to lovers" trope isn't the issue I have with Nalu. (The main thrust of the post I was going to reply to.) I've talked about I've already talked about some of the crazy things some Nalu fans have done. I tackled both and more complaints I had with Nalu were in a post I made well over three years ago.

Over.

Three. 

Years. 

Ago. 

The next post in that series would be me mentioning the possibility of Donald Trump as president, about a month before his election. I remember because I made the edit the day after he was elected in case people thought I was making up. Funny enough, that one was also about letting people who don't like things to exist (provided they're not a total jerk). If that sounds familiar, that’s because I’ve ended up making a post dealing with that topic almost every year since starting this blog. 

INCLUDING THIS POST!

Look, if you like Nalu and leave people alone about it, that's cool. If you happen to like most of the other stuff I do, and even think I make a few good points about Nalu every now and then, more power to you. That's better than I can say regarding my own views on the ship. If you happened to stumble on this post and disagree with me over Nalu, you have plenty of people who agree with you and are making content for the ship you love.

At the same time, I don't think I'm ever going to be convinced to ship Nalu. I have no such desire anymore. I just want to make my posts, write my stories and not be told I'm somehow reading or interpreting the series wrong for not liking them. I’m not taking anything away from the Nalu fandom by existing.

And to the people who also don’t ship Nalu but harass people who do, knock it off. I don't care how annoying [insert action(s) by [insert Nalu fan(s) here] here] is. Chances are that I agree with you that [copy/paste answers from above here] is/are annoying. I’m willing to bet I’ve complained about something similar in the past. Even still, you're near automatically more annoying than whoever or whatever you have an issue with by channeling that into harrassing others. 

If you disagree with me, you can meet me in the pits. At the very least, because you're making it harder for me to do what I do by association.

In Conclusion:

A personal message to the extremists in both the Nalu fandom and the Nalu hatedom.