#But so often all of humanity is labeled as evil and irredeemable and I can't fucking stand that

[awesomestarfighter]

#'maybe you did i didn't do anything' god i love that... #but yeah let's retire this tired trope

[edraculation]

god i fucking hate how much the homestuck fandom waters down characters. hussie did such an amazing job at giving us a collection of multifaceted and nuance-rich characters to really become invested in, and so much of the fandom insists on molding them into a one-dimensional husk of themselves that only reflects the traits they can use to fulfill a trope of some sort, especially female characters. and so often this leads to people horribly misunderstanding so much of the story due to blinding themselves to why somebody could be doing something, either demonizing or angelicizing characters that are actually morally grey, or even the opposite alignment of what the fandom assigned them. this is represented perfectly in the "which troll was the worst" argument, where people almost always respond with gamzee, eridan, or vriska. while I don't believe any of the three were entirely innocent, i don't believe any of them were entirely in the wrong, either. for gamzee, so many of the things people point to in order to make their argument of him being awful or irredeemable were while he wasn't fully capable of properly vetting his decisions, e.g. sopor withdrawal. eridan is definitely less defendable than gamzee, as all of his actions were done in his right mind, but we do have to step back and look at the bigger picture. not only was he a young teenager living under a series of extremely traumatic events, he had lived his whole life having violence drilled into his head because of the lifestyle he had to live and the influence he took from Dualscar. i feel like these factors more heavily influenced his personality, and eventually his violent outburst, more than people give him credit for. after all, i feel like it's obvious that he would've turned out significantly less bitter and violent if he had been raised with more nurture. especially since feferi, a troll of a caste even more known for violence than eridan's, was significantly kinder. vriska, by far the most controversial of the three, was at least partially a product of spidermom's influence. she had no choice but to feed her lusus, of course, so what choice did she have but to become accustom to murder? coupled with the fact that manipulativeness is a trait her caste is nearly universally predisposed to, we can't have expected much from her in terms of kindness to others. now, none of this is to say any of these characters are entirely innocent, they most certainly are not. their flaws are obvious to anyone who's read the comic, so i won't touch them, but labeling any of them as simply "guilty" or "innocent" is a harsh disrespect to hussie's ability to create characters with depth and humanity. no one troll is entirely evil or entirely good, they all have flaws and redeeming traits that give them a truly life-like feel, which makes me believe that asking which troll is objectively the worst is reductionary at best and truly a crime against the masterpiece of literature that is Homestuck.

[bellatrixobsessed1]

I think the bad reputation of Azula stans is an effect of the ones making her out to be an innocent angel and excusing her actions being the most visible,this is of course not exclusive to the Azula fandom the same is true of most villain fandoms. People find a villain fascinating get conflated with those who can't handle their fave being a villain which leads to annoying things in fandom

I can see that and how it’s annoying. I’ve seen this myself and it kind of bothers me when people take up the ‘Azula did nothing wrong’ mentality. To a degree it makes me wonder if these people like her for the character she is or if these people only like her for the character they have in their headcanons. However I do think that this  is a little bit of a strawman as I feel like most of Azula’s fans don’t do this and actually say that they don’t like when stans try to make her out to be a cinnamon roll. 

I also feel like ‘Azula did nothing wrong’ is very reactionary (at least for some people). I fell thrice as inclined to try to justify her actions when people are constantly dropping ‘sociopath’ as the hot new insult. People constantly demonize Azula and that puts her fans on the defensive. There’s so much ‘Azula is a sociopath’, ‘Azula was born evil’ that the opposite end of the spectrum was bound to come up eventually. People constantly post hate in the tag and make her out to be 100% irredeemable so people bend over backwards to defend her.

Tbh I feel like this is usually the case in fandoms. The way I see it is that fans with bad reps (usually these are fans of antagonists) are part of a cycle; people keep posting hate in the tags and antagonizing the fans, the fans feel inclined to swing to the very opposite end of the spectrum in an attempt to defend their character, and then they get slapped with the ‘bully fandom’/’annoying part of the fandom’ label.

Similarly I think that people feel like they have to try to justify her actions or downplay them so that they aren’t seen as abuse apologists. If that makes sense. It’s easier to say ‘Azula did nothing wrong’ than to acknowledge that she did but that she can still be redeemed. I think that most Azula fans just want to see her humanized. They don’t want to make her out to be a cinnamon roll, they want to make her out to be humanizing. They don’t want to justify, they want to sympathize. 

All of this said, I feel like the Azula did nothing wrong crowd is a very small but vocal portion of the fandom. In my other ask I mentioned that Zukka fans tend to get really nasty in people’s inboxes and have a rep for sending hate. But I also stated that I think that these people are in the minority. Across every fandom I’ve been in people, for some reason, tend to look at the vocal minority and generalize the entire fanbase on those people when they should be looking at the more silent majority--the one’s whose voices are often buried under the screeching of the bad apples of the fandom.

It isn’t fair to write off every single Azula fan, Zukka fan, Zutara fan, etc. because of a handful of people. I just hate generalizations. 

I also think that that’s no excuse to deliberately try to bully Azula fans out of the fandom/make them feel so uncomfortable and unwelcome that they just start leaving. And the fact that writers like Yang have enabled/encouraged this behavior is just mind blowing to me and not in a good way.

But yeah I think that Azula fans (like Zutara fans had been) are now caught in a cycle of people accusing them of being awful, so they get defensive or lash out, and then that is used to demonize and isolate them further. 

And all because of a handful of people who seem to speak louder than the rest. Again, this goes for so many fandoms and so many parts of this fandom. The Zutarians got it first. The Zukka fans are starting to get a rep as the fandom bullies and so on. 

The bottom line for me is that just because some fans are ‘annoying’ doesn’t mean that it’s okay to send hateful, patronizing, or antagonizing anons to members of the fandom who haven’t done anything wrong. Like I’ve seen some anons that @bezixx has gotten that are clearly trying to bait this user into saying something mean so that they can use it as an “AH HA GOTCHA!” I’ve gotten several of these asks myself that are clearly bait/someone trying to get a reaction. 

EDIT: I’d also like to mention that it’s not okay for Azula fans to send people hate for no reason. And it 100% doesn’t help make things any better to give into the bait. My solution is to just delete the patronizing ask if you don’t think that you’ll respond well to it and to block people who post anti stuff in the tag. Even better, if you are able; try to respond to patronizing asks with kindness! Literally don’t give them the reaction they want and just explain why you disagree with said hate as though you are having a perfectly peaceful discussion lol. They can’t call you a bully if you literally don’t say anything mean back. For the most part that has been working for me.

EDIT 2: Another thing I noticed that doesn’t help is when Azula fans demonize Ursa, Zuko, and Iroh to uplift Azula. I actually see this one quite a lot and I can see why outsiders would get annoyed with it. They get annoyed with it for the same reason that it annoys me when Zuko fans demonize Azula to uplift Zuko. It’s very off putting to fans of x character when fans of y character constantly demonize character x to uplift character y.