#Discourse Dump

[hojichasunrise]

Katara playfully splashes water at Aang, who responded by sulking in a brooding cave and then exploding lava in her face and storming off without any apology. From The Lost Adventures.

Golly gee why don't I want to ship such a wholesome wonderful healthy ship like this? Gee whiz, it's great Katara didn't end with Zuko, otherwise she might get lava thrown at her in an argument from an immature, emotionally unavailable, abusive jerk! /s Oh, right, Aang is the one who did that.

Aang has always been the one to hurt Katara. Funny Zuko hasn't. Remind me again who scarred Katara's hands, who blew up into the avatar state leaving Katara to pull him out lest he destroy her, her brother, and everything around him? Who stormed off right before the finale without communication leaving his friends to die in the invasion? Was it Zuko who did those things? Was it?

Such a wholesome ship!

[jakeperalta]

I have to say that for me none of this has been about expecting taylor to listen to fans about her personal life. no part of me expects her to go "oh look the fans aren't happy about my boyfriend I better break up with him". it all stems from the fact with it happening in the first place. I'm not disappointed that she's doing something I personally don't want (my opinion on her life is unimportant!) I'm disappointed that someone I'm a fan of is acting in a way that totally opposes the values she's previously preached. it's just the sinking feeling that she's showing her true colours and they don't entirely align with what I thought.

[kokodain-nation]

Me being proship has nothing to do with your trauma. It's not about you.

[gor3sigil]

I have to share a story about why I HATE the term "trauma dumping".

So basically, we were at my at the time partner's house with friends of them and we were talking about mental health.

I don't remember exactly how we came to this but one woman started talking about psychosis and her sister who is schizophrenic.

She had a lot of preconception about this and, while I am not schizophrenic, I dealt with psychosis and hallucinations.

So I started to talk about my experiences with that, stating AGAIN that I wasn't schizophrenic but I thought it was an interesting point of view.

Some other people started asking questions so I answered them, asking here and there if it was okay for me to talk about it, and nobody, INCLUDING the woman who started the conversation in the first place, said anything.

And at one point I saw she was uncomfortable and asked her if she'd rather drop the subject.

And then, she BLEW UP on me saying that I was trauma dumping, that she felt like she was partaking in a conversation she NEVER ASKED to partake in (again, she was the one who brought up the subject), that I was being insensitive and over sharing shit and that she didn't like it.

Like, bitch, I asked a bunch of time if it was okay, you were the one talking about these symptoms without even living it and trying to teach people some crappy over the counter shit, but now that she wasn't the Main Character with the Knowledge it became an issue and I was the problem.

I know that I'm open about my experiences and tend to talk about it but I ALWAYS make sure that people on the other end are okay with me sharing this. This was just utter bullshit.

And online or IRL, I just noticed that the term "trauma dumping" is just the easy way out of a conversation that makes you feel uncomfortable while putting the blame on the person doing it.

You can absolutely put boundaries, but don't you dare guilt someone just to avoid being seen as an asshole and make yourself clean of anything. It's healthy to state that you are uncomfortable talking about things, but you can do so without making up shit about others.

[ranna-alga]

Crowley and Aziraphale justifying their respective understandings about how humans fall in love with each other on fictional media they consume is literally the asexual/aromantic/aspec experience are you kidding me

[secretsofthewilde]

There's something particularly frustrating about how academic fandom studies tend to talk about fandom spaces as being a place for inclusiveness and queer representation when there's still a very prominent misogyny problem throughout them. Even when these studies address issues of racism within fandom shipping dynamics, they still tend to perpetuate the idea that fandom is the rare place where queer ships tend to be more popular than straight ones, without really addressing the fact that this tends to only true when it comes to cis, white, m/m ships. If you want some kind of numerical evidence of this, you just need to look at the statistics on ao3 to see that f/f ships are the least popular kind of pairing on that site. And when you think of the stereotypical big name fandoms, most of them are well known for their m/m ships, with the f/f ships often being dismissed or treated as a joke.

I'm not of the opinion, nor trying to make an argument in support of the idea, that this is due to the stereotype of fangirls fetishising queer men. Instead, I think it's largely due to misogyny* - shocker, I know. I really do think that the stereotypical fangirl gravitates towards slash pairings due to both internalised misogyny and the general prominence of male oriented media over female oriented media (which will therefore have more male characters that are fleshed out with more engaging writing as opposed to their female supporting cast).

However, it's one thing for the abundance of male driven stories to generate more fan works exploring said characters, and another entirely for those same fans to then ignore when we do have media that gives us well written and enjoyable female characters. I think it's in part due to our internalised misogyny that fangirls have a tendency to gravitate towards their familiar male orientated shows and then fixate on the same familiar character types, rather than exploring and celebrating the breadth of female-centric media we have finally been getting produced in recent years. And this inability to allow ourselves to enjoy female characters the same way we do with male ones is what leads to an abundance of slash pairings being celebrated in fandom spaces, while femslash ones struggle to get recognition**. The fact that there's a common joke in fandom spaces about popular pairings developing between two characters who never interacted (or for only a brief scene) is all very well and good fun, but this is almost always referring to a m/m pairing.

As fans we should really reflect on why we might celebrate a male character for doing morally grey things, but then hate a female character for exhibiting those exact same traits. It's fine to genuinely not enjoy the writing of a female character (especially when sexist writing is often to blame), but we should consider how much more willing we seem to be to forgive poor writing when it comes to male characters than we are with female characters. If we can make a million headcanons and claim to love a poorly written male character, who is now viewed as something so far removed from the canon of the media he appears in its practically a different character entirely, why do so many of us seem unwilling to do the same for female characters?

We should be doing the same with our female characters - we should be putting more female characters into our favourite dynamics and tropes. I want to see more enemies to lovers headcanons with femslash pairings; I want nbc hannibal levels of art and meta posts about toxic femslash couples; I want johnlock levels of delusion posts about a femslash couple the story writers are claiming they didn't write the subtext for. I would just really love to log into tumblr and see a femslash pairings tag is trending more than once in a blue moon.

*note: obviously misogny is not the only contributing factor, and this initial argument I'm raising doesn't address the issues surrounding racial, gender-queer identities, and other inequalities within fandom. Please do not think I'm ignoring or downplaying them.

**Theres also an argument to be made here about fangirls projecting themselves onto male characters in order to explore queer relationships, without having to challenge their own internalised misogyny/homophobia, but I'll come back to that later (and this in general) and expand on it some other time I think.

[antimony-medusa]

So this fandom has a problem with trauma-dumping. We all know it. People are bad in streamers TTS, and we all cringe, and it seems like every major author has to have something in their Ao3 notes to say not to trauma dump, and last night I saw people telling tham n0phis, who is an artist and like 18 or 19, just details and jokes that you should not tell a random person on the internet. It's bad.

But Why is it bad? What's wrong about being honest about how you're feeling?

Okay, this is gonna take a while.

The basic test for "am I being weird/overfamiliar/trauma dumping" is "would you say this to a barista/cashier". Would you walk up to someone whose job is to take your money and give you coffee, while they are at work, and would you say this. This is the place that like 80% of TTS and a surprising number of anons falls down. They break the social rules, and make it awkward and terrible for everybody. But again, why is it bad to say these things to a stranger? If I think someone's hot, if I've been having tramatic things happen why shouldn't I say so?

Conversation is a game for two or more players. You have what you're actually saying in words, and you have a huge amount of information that is being communciated and things that are being assumed based on things like body language, cultural context, setting, etc. Some people find conversation very natural and keep track of all the rules easily, without thinking about it. Some people have to memorize the rules manually. I have had to memorize the rules manually. It is difficult and it sucks, but it's necessary, because the failure state of a successful conversation, what happens when you break the rules of the conversational game we're playing, is you being rude. That is all being rude is, it's breaking the rules of the conversational game. So. How do you avoid being rude?

If you boil allll the rules down to a single rule, it is "if I say this, do I know what the other person is going to say, and are they going to be comfortable with this. Am I changing the rules or setting of the conversational game we're playing." Not what I want them to say, in some imaginary world where we're best friends, but what is likely that this person who doesn't know me, and is having a causual interaction with me, is going to say. And if you have any sense that you are putting the person on the spot, or you're making them uncomfortable, if you are changing the tone of the conversation from "i am here to get you your coffee" to "things you say to a therapist", don't say it.

This is why you don't make suicide jokes in someone else's inbox, because how are you supposed to respond to that? This is why you don't bring up cancer, even if it's very on your mind, because it is rude to inflict the topic "cancer", or any other heavy thing, on someone who is not currently dealing with cancer already. (This is why it's not rude to bring up cancer at the cancer support group, because the setting has shifted and everyone here has already opted in to cancer. The barista has not opted in to cancer.) This is why you don't tell a stranger they're the cornerstone of your mental health, because again, how do you respond to that? If someone you've never seen in your life walked up and told you that, you'd be going "what the fuck, uhhhhhhhh" and then you'd be stuck between "you're welcome I guess" and "holy shit get away from me".

When you are in a causual conversation with a stranger. You throw them the ball of the conversation already knowing what they're going to say next. (In a general sense.) You say A, knowing that the normal response is B. You set them up for little interactions like "I like your hair/thanks" or "Oh what do you do for work/I work in a bakery/Oh what's your favourite thing about that". You keep that conversational ball in the air, and that's why people do things like talk about the weather, because we all already know what a conversation about the weather is like, so it's a chance for us to non-verbally communicate "politeness" and "friendliness" and "I aknowledge you as a human being and not a machine" while you have the same conversation at a bus stop you have twice a week. That is what small talk is FOR, and that's not a weakness of small talk, it's what it's designed to do.

The less you know someone, the more you are operating on a conversational level where it's vital that you don't say or do anything that you don't already know what they're going to say. Because it is rude to walk up to a conversation that's operating on a level where we're just basically waving at each other and going "hey, human! I am also a human!" and trying to drag it over to the level of intimacy you have with someone who already knows you and loves you, and would help you move without being asked, because this person does not know and love you and did not sign up for that. You're walking up to someone who doesn't know you from Adam and basically throwing your arm around their shoulder and going Heyyyyyyy, I think you and I are best friends, which is just so rude. You're making it weird. You're breaking the rules of the game.

To your friends you can walk up and tell them the terrible thing, because they're your friends, and they signed up for this. You will do the same thing when the terrible thing happens to them. You can move the conversational level beyond talking about the weather, to actual bad things (and jokes that would be inappropriate to say to a stranger), because even if you don't know exactly what your friend is going to say, you know you're not making them uncomfortable, and you have a history where you know you can bring these things up. A streamer/artist/author does not have this history with you. They did not opt in to these topics. They don't know you.

Basically just think about the person on the other end of the conversation and how it feels to be them when someone tells them that if their family finds out they're a lesbian they're going to kill themselves. They don't know what to say to that. You just took the conversational ball and you threw it in their face, breaking their nose. That is not a comment you make to a stranger.

Stop trauma-dumping, stop being over-familiar with people who don't actually know you, it makes it uncomfortable for everyone. Save it for the GC.

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

Sometimes do you ever remember the soupçon of misogyny in the press during the early (and latter) days of Joever and want to bust kneecaps lmao

[nukbody]

I DEVOURED Yellowface by Rebecca F. Kuang in 3 days and had to do something about it

[shimmershy]

What does kin mean?

The meaning can tend to vary depending on who you ask, but it generally means (TLDR:) identifying with a character in some way. Although it originated from the term "otherkin", which means identifying with an animal/another species, the way it's typically used in this context refers to "fictionkin".

Many people use it to describe simply relating strongly to a character and don't really see themselves as the character in any way, but it was originally used to describe identifying as the character in a spiritual/psychological way. To clarify, it doesn't mean that you think you literally are that character right now, in a physical way etc. It's more of an identity thing. (I could go more in-depth on what that means, but I'm going to assume that's more information than you're looking for.)

It's kind of a Tumblr/internet culture thing, but I'm not very involved in the community or anything because it's more of a personal thing for me specifically, so. I really don't feel like the best person to ask if you have any more questions. I apologize if that's too much information for such a simple question; I guess it's a bit complicated to explain.

[blueblurseptember]

me @/shen yuan while reading svsss after realizing that he's an unreliable narrator who, in fact, also has feelings for binghe:

[lurking-latinist]

I like it when Act II Despard and Margaret are played with a simmering, Addams-like sexual energy running beneath their prim and proper facades. I don't know if this is a minority interpretation, but I think they really are blissfully happy and playing the roles of fun-hating Victorian moralists is exactly what they want to do together.

[hatzapalooza]

twitter is such a hellscape I need to post more so I can leave

[clickabletale]

People who hate on Lance because of shipping and call him a misogynist/misogynistic. I’ll say it, y’all are just fucking weird.

[popironrye]

Are The Lost Boys Poly or Platonic?

Answer - Yes?

If I could lore dump a little, I'd like to add after seeing discussion on this topic:

When I created my trio of lost boys ocs (Blair Stevie and Mavin) to write a love story between them +star and the boys, I thought making them all poly would be more interesting to write about. See I don't much care for writing and art that involved the boys all sharing a single (usually woman) stand in where all the romantic stuff is done by one or more boy at a time with this stand in while the others just kinda wait their turn. OC, self-insert, reader insert or otherwise. It always came off to me as harem-ish and there's nothing wrong with that OF COURSE, it's just not what I'm into.

And with my ocs specifically, I also could have gone the hetero monogamous route, since there are 4 women and 4 boys. That being Blair with David, Stevie with Dwayne, Star with Paul (which I really do ship btw), and Mavin with Marko but the lost boys always had this queer coded side (even though I am shipping them with women) and having my girls, Blair specifically being a bisexual women who falls in love with Star is something I wanted to focus on, not to mention I like my ocs with all the boys. I think they can get a different equal level of romantic enjoyment with a different boy, and therefore my girls are poly with the boys as well as Star. Standard convention of romance kinda seems like a nebulous rule to follow when you have immortal vampires and witches in the mix, so why not make them all bi and poly?

Now of course, I do have a story in the works where everyone is one big platonic family. Judy and her daughters. 'The blood sucking brady bunch' as I've so affectionally called them. In this work, Judy and Max are romantically involved but they're the only non platonic ones as the boys acting as Max's sons and Judy's actual daughters begin to pal around like step siblings and they behave as such. In that work, I also put a lot of emphasize on familial love with Judy being a caring mother who would do anything for her children and having her take in the boys as sons she never had. I also want to see Judy pull Max out of his shell. He kinda distances himself from the boys and to him it's for their own good and keeps him out of the trouble they're always getting into, but Judy knows what's it like having 3 teenage daughters of her own that get into trouble. Max is a much more involved father figure to the boys with Judy's help as well as a figure to her little girls.

Ok, so I dumped a lot there, but I hope this shows that writing to boys platonic or non platonic are both valid and depend on the work they're used in. XD

But what about you guys? Please share how you've charactized the boys in your own work! I'd love to hear about your own ocs and sonas! 😍

[wastelandroses]

Even though I’m a multishipper most of the time, I wouldn’t be fine if MiIeven was canon after the events of ST4, vol. 2 more specifically, and how the love triangle was handled overall. The sentence “I don’t care which one will be canon as long as all of them are happy” has been very common around circles that love both couples, MiIeven and Byler, but I can’t bring myself to agree.

I wouldn’t be fine if MiIeven was endgame after Will’s feelings were used as a prop to mend it. El should have herself told Mike how greatly she feels about him, or Will shouldn’t have to urge Mike to say “I love you” if the relationship was to be fixed. (However, I think they are doing this for a reason, but this is beside the point.)

Will is a gay boy in the 80’s, lives in a small conservative town that already hates his family. On top of that, he is terrified of coming out. Amongst everything else he has gone through, he does not need a storyline where his romantic love for his childhood best friend is neglected, turned into a plot device in favor of restoring a hetero relationship.

If they wanted to make Byler as an example of a tragic unrequited love, there are other ways to do it that doesn’t reek homophobia (and queerbait). The love triangle is not just a mindless fandom battle between who is better for Mike (or who he “actually loves”) like any other heterosexual love triangle in media. There is a difference between the two outcomes. One of them being filled with homophobic and disgusting writing choices that led to cause more unnecessary pain and trauma for a queer character and the other is a hopeful, refreshing ending along with another step forward in queer representation that the mainstream media lacks.

insp.