#Essentially if you want to push adults out of fandom spaces just because the series characters didn't age with them...

[sofoulandfairaday]

I really enjoy your posts about Bellamort alongside your interest in Bella/Rod. Voldy seems aromantic to me and I like the idea of how much their attraction is highlighted even if both characters are fucked up.

I was wondering what your thoughts are about love re: Bellamort. I think it's love but it's just tainted? I don't think I have a good enough grasp on Voldy to say how they got together and what the relationship meant.

Ah, anon, isn't this the million-dollar question? (And one to which I have no answer)

The thing about these two is that we will never have a definitive answer because, unfortunately, the HP book series isn't about them. Their relationship is something that we see glimpses of, from Harry's POV, and that is really only explored for Bellatrix's character, (almost) never for Voldemort. We see his actions towards her, but never his thoughts on her, not even during Harry's incursions in Vold's head (and I personally think we were robbed, but I digress...)

I'll try and keep this answer brief - not because I don't wish to answer, but because there would be simply too much to say and most of it is speculation. Also, my idea of these characters is ever-evolving, so it might not even be definitive. I have made several smaller posts regarding aspects of their relationship (and even those were long), so if you want you can also check out those.

Was Bellatrix in love with him? Yes. There is no other answer but yes. Now, one can spend hours online arguing with this HP fan or that one - "was it love love or obsessive love?" Doesn't matter. She loved him. She was the high priestess of his religion, his most faithful lieutenant, his most formidable warrior, the only one who would have stuck by his side when the world was burning, no matter what. Now, amongst Bellamort fans we can try to analyse whether this love was pure or tainted. It certainly was selfless. But it was also a love born of darkness, a love that corrupts, that pushed her to do monstrous things. It corroded her and sustained her at the same time. It must have hurt her, too. She obviously thought he was worth it, and she wasn't an idiot, no matter how the fandom paints her. So make of that what you will.

Was Voldemort in love with her? Errrrrr... Whatever "in love" means, I guess. First of all, one has to remember that Lord Voldemort was originally the villain of a 77K children's novel about an 11-year-old boy wizard. Of course, Deathly Hallows is vastly different in terms of tone, style, and maturity, and is essentially Young Adult... and yet, it doesn't have the time or the space to do Vold justice as a character. I can understand why. They say actions speak louder than words, so let's list them: he saves her (and is discovered by the whole Ministry in the process) at the end of OotP; he never punishes her violently, even when she fails; he entrusts her with a Horcrux; he tells her his secrets (and even Snape admits this) up until the fiasco at the Ministry; he talks about saving "the Lestranges" from Azkaban at the end of GoF, not a word is spared for any of his other DE; he screams when she dies. If CC is to be believed (I don't like it), he made a baby with her. She talks to him "as if to a lover". She definitely meant something to him, that is beyond dispute. Now, what that something was, I can't say with certainty.

My personal interpretation is that it wasn't unrequited, that he came to realize that, at the very least, he needed her. He was sexually attracted to her. He confided in her. He taught her the Dark Arts. I think that whatever part of his broken, mangled, soul could love, loved her. Was it pure? Nah. Was it selfless? Nope. Was it enough? I like to think so. I like to think that he loved her unknowingly, that he fought it tooth and nail every single step of the way, that he made up excuses:

It's not love, it's devotion/adoration

It's not faith, it's loyalty

It's need, it's an alliance between dark wizards

It's lust, not love

Whatever. Whether he loved her because he wanted to be loved (adored), or for any other reason, I like to think that it was enough.

I also like to think that he realized it the second he saw her fall. That he pushed it from his mind, hated her for dying, while talking to Potter. That when talking about Snape agreeing there "purer, more worthy" women, she flashed before his eyes. I also know he denied it until the very end because that is who his character is.

But maybe. Just maybe. Harry Potter is not the only person who is offered a chance to stay inside Limbo or move on. Maybe Bellatrix met her equivalent of Albus Dumbledore too, as soon as she struck the floor of the Great Hall. Maybe there was a baby there, alone and crying, broken and almost flayed, but still alive. Maybe, winning her inevitable disgust, she picked him up. Maybe, he stopped crying. [in lighter words, Rodolphus is my baby and imagining them all in a fluffy (and smutty) setting brings me comfort]

[kotobukicutie]

To the anon that put me in such a foul mood, and to the minors trying to commandeer the fandom spaces that people my age made in the first place: I wasn't even ten years old when the first season of Beyblade came out. I wasn't eighteen when Beyblade Metal Fusion or even KNB, which came a few years later, first started airing. I was part of these fandoms long before my 18th birthday happened. I helped build these fandoms just as much as the other adults you're trying to push out.

Without us, you wouldn't have the fandom spaces you do in the ways you do. Leave us adult fans alone, we were in these spaces before you and I don't care that you're here as long as you're not trying to remove me from spaces we adult fans built from the ground up for those of y'all that came after us. Just let us exist with the comfort characters that didn't age with us even though we got attached to them when we were their age or younger than them.

And for the comfort characters from before we turned 18 that have canon birth years, like Kuroo Tetsuro...stop trying to turn them back into minors when their birth year puts them in their late twenties AND they had a timeskip in the source material that showed them as they are now.

If you don't like that I'm still here even though I was here before you, that's your fucking problem. Not mine. I'm not gonna sit here and pander to your temper tantrums any more.

[docholligay]

Please rant/rave (well, we already know which one it will be here) about Harry Potter!

GEE I HOPE THIS WAS WORTH WAITING FOR

OH MY GOD. The level of hatred I have for Harry Fucking Goddamn Potter, the culture around Harry Fucking Potter, extending its poisonous tentacles even to the concept of young adult fiction, fantasy, and the United Kingdom as a country and people. 

When you being on this, you may think, “Oh, Doc will explain that Harry Potter sucks because JKR hates trans women” and I will say, oh no, dear reader, that is a fantastic reason to hate the author, and I really suggest we all continue to hate her, and perhaps not purchase the QUEEN’S TONNES of officially licensed merchandise and movies and theme parks that give her stupid little fucking hands all that cash, but no, that is not why I hate the work. There are a number of great works done by terrible people, and the further out the lens of history gets the truer this is. 

I hate Harry Potter because it fucking sucks, and mentally stifled an entire fucking generation. 

“Well, Doc, Harry Potter was really there for me when--” Oh my god I could not fucking care LESS about your personal emotion connection to “orphan wizard boy turns out to be a rich aristocrat yet somehow less woke than Cinderella though” I have personally emotional connections to hot fucking garbage pails of media properties, and if someone came barreling through talking about the myriad ways in which they were horrible, I would be like, “Oh, you aren’t fucking wrong, pal” 

Harry Potter gained wild ass popularity in part due to its magnificent sorting system of Smart, Brave, Evil, and Other, because there’s nothing liberals like more than being able to put everyone’s personality into an easily labeled box, which is why astrology is so popular, or for the intellectuals, Myers-Briggs, which is just as fake but with the veneer of science. This allowed people to give into the tribalism they so desperately liked to pretend they did not possess, and also allow them to write thinkpieces about “The misunderstood Hufflepuff” or “Slytherins aren’t all bad!” or really anything that allows them to write a very real piece about their very imagined oppression for being a part of a totally fake house in a children’s book. Excellent use of your sociology degree, Kai, I thought the addition of phrases like, ‘Content of socialization” and “axes of oppression” really spoke to the struggles you face when wearing a green and silver scarf. 

The other reason it became popular is that it’s essentially wallpaper paste formed into characters. I have read all of the books, and I could not tell you even remotely what Harry’s defining personality traits are other than “protagonist”. In American, at least, a large part of it was the fascination with all things British, with the idea of boarding school and prefects and uniforms that aren’t inexplicably chinos and polo shirts for nine year olds. It allowed children to project onto something so bland that it could be anything. And for children, THAT’S FINE. There is a great deal of bland media made for children, but what I’m speaking to is the fandom, which is largely well over the age of 18. 

Because if we look at the books, are they...actually good? Was it good, or did I experience it as a child? I mean, honestly, on a literary level, are they, or was it just like we all watched Friends, we did it because everyone else was doing it, because I have a distinct memory of a series that involves such greats as “magical geegaws with poorly defined rules that are quickly forgotten despite being able to solve later problems quickly” or “Everyone loves Harry or is a bad guy, or secretly loved Harry all along” 

Oh, speaking of, man, if this was an actual well-written book, wouldn’t it have been wild to have Snape’s whole thing be to teach us that sometimes people do good things for the wrong reasons? Instead of naming your fucking child after the guy who ‘protected you’ because he still wanted to bone your mom? “After all this time” “Always.” 

While all this could have been explained, we have Quidditch added into the mix instead because 20 pages of the goddamn Puppy Bowl is exactly what I was looking for while I was waiting for JK to move the goddamn ball on literally any of these actual magical concepts. 

Harry Potter is a fucking trust fund baby, star quarterback, who grows up to be a cop and marries his high school sweetheart. (Speaking of, why were we shocked that JKR turned out to be a piece of shit when this was and always has been the conclusion of Harry Potter? Why are liberals so fucking into this series that upholds structures like it ain’t no one’s business? It’s a series that opines that those beneath us “Muggles” should be kept in the dark from us) Literally, he finds out he is a wizard and has a dragon-guarded fucking VAULT OF CASH. At 11. It’s such a series for little tyrants, you are special from birth and need do nothing to prove it, here is a letter certifying as such. Oh, not only are you rich and the greatest seeker and have excellent quips, but also your parents were not only rebels, but the best of rebels, and so deeply involved that your parents were killed by the big bad personally, again, because you are so special. His mother’s love literally saves his ass over and over again, because he was SO SPECIAL. He fought Voldemort FROM THE BEGINNING, and WON.  It’s literally the most privilege baby fantasy in the world. 

“But Doooooooooooc, it’s for chiiiiiiiiiiiiiiildren” 

A) Yeah, and you’re 32, you’re making my fucking point about Harry Potter setting an entire generation up for intellectual failure to launch. 

B) Okay, and? I can think of a bunch of kids’ books off the top of my head that in no way require specialness to be given by birth so as to roll out the red carpet for master protagonist. The Hunger Games. Watership Down. A Series of Unfortunate Events. The Chronicles of FUCKING NARNIA, about which I have only a small handful of particularly kind things to say. I’ve never read Percy Jackson, but it’s my understanding that despite his being a literal demigod, the attitudes of the supporting cast are allowed to fall between the extremes of “Appreciates Percy” and “naughty or will learn” Harry does nothing to improve himself even after knowing that he is HUNTED BY THE BIG BAD! “I won’t do this because I don’t like Snape”. So There” which, again, if this series were written with the slightest bit of care or know-how, could be a humbling fucking plot point! BUT NO THAT WOULD BE NAUGHTY. 

But the real reason I hate Harry Potter so much has everything to do with the fandom surrounding it, and how it intellectually stunted a generation of adults. The promise of Harry Potter was that it was supposed to make a new generation of readers, and so the popularity of them was pushed, and so there was discussion of teaching them in schools, but I tell you fucking what, I know a whole lot more folks who grew up reading Harry Potter that never advanced beyond reading YA, or even just rereading the entire series every year and that’s pretty much them done and dusted. 

In the attempt to recapture whatever it was about Harry Potter that attracted children (A lot of it was your peers doing it. I read them all as they came out, and it was literally the equivalent of watching the game so you could talk at the water cooler. That was never going to be recaptured) people, who by this time were likely in their teens, kept getting recommended stuff at the same and same level. No one ever felt pushed to read things that are challenging, to read things that have some of the concepts or themes of Harry Potter but maybe complicate. I know FAR more adults who read adult books that aren’t into Harry Potter, even if they were as children, than the reverse. 

But Doc, why is reading only books meant for 14 year olds a problem??? I mean I suppose I can’t convince you that comfort is not the job of literature or of life, it is the job of an easy chair, because Americans especially are decadent as fuck about being comfy cozy all the time and if anything causes them distress or pain it should be immediately avoided. But Maybe I can convince you that you’re fucking up these books for actual ass children who deserve to have their own writing section without adults bringing their fucking asses into it. They deserve their own spaces. There’s a number of YA editors who have talked about the difficult space YA now occupies because since Potter’s blowup, it’s no longer a niche category, but basically “adult easy reads” and so they have been buying books that are more about the tastes of adult buyers than of literal 14 year olds. 

Is that not...sad? To anyone else? Honestly, and this is not part of the essay because it’s a broader reaching problem, but CHILDREN’S MEDIA IS NOT FOR US. CHILDREN’S MEDIA IS NOT FOR US. CHILDREN’S MEDIA IS FOR FUCKING CHILDREN. The fucking 40-23 set really needs to get their shit together and grow up a little bit and engage in some fucking adult media, and maybe, if we support what we’re actually looking for FOR ADULTS, it will come to us. No one is saying you can’t read Harry Potter or watch some Cartoon Network show, but like, search your heart and come the fuck on. Engage in something more complex. If not for yourselves, for the kids getting shoved into simplified adult stories. It should not be about us. 

ANYWAY, my larger point is that it was Harry Potter, a badly written series about a magical boy who was chosen and magic and also rich and also a favorite of the headmaster and also more clever than most adults and also spoke the same magical snake language as the big bad and was also star quarterback, but at least there was a system in which you could buy a scarf in block colors and feel like you belonged to a team. 

(But not a sports team! lol handegg! I’m cool I don’t get into sports! Except Quidditch.) 

[itsclydebitches]

ngl voyager gets a whole lot of very disproportional hate from the fandom and i'd hazard a guess that a lot of that is just garden-variety misogyny (and probably racism mixed in, considering how many of the most prominent characters are women, poc, or both). like, is voyager perfect? absolutely not. and no spoilers but there was a lot of executive meddling that wound up leading to the finale/conclusion being lacking and there's a lot of reasonable dissatisfaction with that--but again that was largely thanks to the execs fucking the show over and i recommend looking into that if you can once you've finished the show. but overall? voyager is trek right to its very core--it has heart, it's about family, and it never loses sight of that imo, even if some episodes are weaker or just duds (but, like, would it be a trek series without some episodes that just kinda suck but are still fun to watch???)

anyway, i absolutely love that you're getting into voyager, it is my all-time favorite trek series to this day for a lot of reasons, and i hope that ppl like that anon dont put you off bc i'd love to continue to see your thoughts as you watch the series!

Oh, it would take a whole lot more than some anons being salty that others enjoy things to turn me off :D 

Thus far (I lost internet last night so I’m still only on Episode 7 of Season 2), Voyager is the Trekiest Trek I’ve watched. Which is a weird sentence, but I mean it in the way you said it’s “trek right to its very core.” What is Star Trek, if we strip the intent of the story down to its basics? It’s about exploration, discovery, that “wagon train to the stars,” wrapped up in the argument that life is fundamentally good. We have problems, but we can work past them. We have differences, but they strengthen us. Diversity is the lifeblood of the universe and the future will continue to improve so long as we embrace that. 

Voyager is (again, from what I’ve seen so far!) basically a love song to that premise. I didn’t do too deep a dive because I’m trying to avoid spoilers, but I did look at a couple threads discussing why Voyager is so hated. Again and again I saw the same reason pop up: wasted potential. Now, a lot of fans left it at that (as if the answer to what potential Voyager apparently missed out on is self-evident. It’s not), but those who did expand on the idea consistently claimed that the show needed to be darker than it was, even if they rarely said it like that. Why aren’t the Federation and the Marquis at each other’s throats? Why isn’t the crew going crazy under these circumstances? Why aren’t characters getting killed off left and right in hostile space? “Anything could have happened out there and they played it safe!” but the “anything” here is always... awful. There’s this very pervasive idea that the world is inherently cruel, people are inherently divisive, that when pushed to the brink everything will fall apart... and that (while making for one kind of great story) is very much not Star Trek. 

See, Voyager created an unimaginable scenario--lost in space, 75 years from home, forced to live indefinitely with strangers--and their answer to the question of “What happens?” is “People make it work.” They learn to respect one another, they uphold their ideals, they maintain a love of life and discovery, and they create a family. And that’s fucking fantastic. That’s Star Trek! I’m not going to pretend there aren’t problems with the show, with plenty more to come, I’m sure, but I don’t think this is one of them. Why do so many viewers think that hatred, horror, death, and growing jaded is the only potential here? Why would they expect that in a Star Trek show whose premise is the very antithesis of those things? 

“But they don’t do enough with those things, even if they have happy outcomes.” They do plenty, they just do it in an episodic rather than serialized nature. I can point to multiple episodes where the replicator rations or Maquis differences are driving the characters’ actions. “But without that horror there’s no conflict.” There’s plenty of conflict. Hostile aliens aside, I just watched an episode where Tuvok and Chakotay are pissed as hell at one another because they fundamentally disagree over how to handle problems, but--because they’re adults with a well-tested respect for one another--they apologize and work through it. “But the characters don’t develop at all.” You mean they don’t grow harder. That’s not the same thing as no development. Tuvok is figuring out how to be more flexible, Chakotay is becoming more willing to accept cultures he doesn’t agree with, Harry is growing more confident now that he’s far from home, the Doctor is learning to see himself as a person, Paris is grabbing his second chance with both hands by making strong ties, and Janeway is learning to command and care for her crew simultaneously. I honestly believe that a lot of people think of “character development” as the character becoming a fundamentally different person, unrecognizable from where they started out. But  characters can also grow into the people they wanted to be in the first place. “We’re far from home, in hostile territory, tempted to do horrific things to survive... but no. Right now at least, we’re holding onto who we are. We’re scientists, so we’re going to explore and learn. We’re peaceful, so we’re going to make friends with as many species as we can. We’re members of a society that teaches acceptance, so we’re going to form a family on this spaceship.” That’s incredible!! Did fans miss why Seska was an antagonist in the episode she was unmasked? Because she was trying to convince them to give up everything they believe in in the name of survival, an ends justify the means argument. And the crew said no, we will not give up what we believe in just to make it through. I legit saw a ton of fans saying some version of, “I can’t believe they were that far from home and actually followed Starfleet’s rulebook.” It’s because those rules don’t exist for the hell of it. Overlooking their practical function, they’re a philosophy that the characters believe in, and they’re figuring out how important that part of their identity is to them under these circumstances. Am I willing to steal a specie’s technology if it gets us home? Am I willing to die to help another uphold their own philosophy? (Chakotay in “Imitations”). What regulations should we bend or change to accommodate our new situation? The first two things Janeway does are a) giving the guy who just came out of a penal colony a rank and b) deciding that she needs to be more familiar with her crew than is normally encouraged for a captain because she’s essentially their mom now. Developing doesn’t have to mean characters do a 180 on their initial personality, or characters getting killed off when stuff gets “boring” so that others can do edgy things in response. 

Voyager upholds Trek’s premise and runs it to its logical conclusion: 

Voyager has the most literal trek--a trek back home. 

Voyager has the most diverse crew--a woman Captain, Native American First officer, black Vulcan, Asian-American communications officer, and a White Dude pilot that realizes he wants to be soft and kind towards those who took a chance on him because Toxic Masculinity who? 

Voyager has the most literal family--not just a 5+ year mission, but a crew who expects to raise the next generation. They have no choice but to work together, so they indeed come together rather than pulling apart

Except they do, of course, have a choice. In “The 37′s” the crew is allowed to stay on the Earth-like planet with a city of other humans and Janeway is convinced that a sizable number will choose that. After all, they may never get home and this is a safer, kinder future for them. In fact, the real question is whether so many will stay that they can no longer run the ship... but Janeway would never dictate her crew’s choices in that manner. So she swallows her worry down, opens the door... 

... and finds that not a single person decided to stay behind. And the show has ensured we understand that this is not just because they all have some unshakable belief that they’ll get home (many don’t), but because this is their family now. This is home. 

And fans want to toss that out for a generic, gritty, sci-fi adventure where hope is scarce, the universe is cruel, and people need to be pushed to the limit just to admit that they maybe, sort of, like each other?? Obviously like what you like, but that’s a hard pass for me. I’ll take the bridge crew comforting each other in “Twisted,” thanks. Besides, we already have shows like that. And we already have DS9 which grapples with many of those dark, pessimistic themes. Voyager feels like a breath of fresh air, even within the breath of fresh air that is Star Trek as a franchise. It’s a show that says, “Yes, when everything goes wrong people will come together. They will love each other. They will make it through.” 

What’s more Star Trek than that? 

[bullet-farmer]

Okay, I’m having a horrible mental-health day and feel overwhelmed by work, and talking about something that’s been bothering me really feels liberating. Because I feel like it’s one thing I can control right now.

Please don’t reblog this or tag it. I don’t want this to become Discourse, especially in an awesome fandom. But I needed to get this out in a space where people I trust can reply if they wish. I’m fine with disagreement and discussion, as long as people respect my feelings, or ask for clarification if they don’t understand what I’m talking about.

This got long. And it’s about pronouns. And fictional characters. And idk.

Another thing that kind of bothers me about assuming they/them or ze/zir for Beelzebub’s pronouns, and why I’m using both less and less*: I’m really uncomfortable with how few authors do the same for any other character (save, of course, for Pollution, whose pronouns are clearly mentioned as they/them and really should be used exclusively, because that’s just the decent thing to do).  Of course, some people use they/them across the board, or pronouns other than she/her and he/him in any combination. But in my experience, authors who do this are quite rare, at least on Ao3. In most cases, I find authors using “gendered” (for lack of a better word) pronouns for everyone else--namely, those that (presumably) match the gender of the actor who plays each role. For example: she/her for Michael and Dagon, and he/him for Hastur and Gabriel. 

I don’t want to make assumptions about why people do this. For one thing, making sweeping generalizations about people is always a bad idea. It’s even a worse idea when talking about why a group as diverse as fanfic authors. For another, I don’t know what is in people’s hearts or minds, and I’d rather not try to arbitrate any thoughts but my own. That said, in the West, we are swimming in a sea of gender essentialism and binarism. And I can’t help but feel that both are somehow in play in this phenomenon.

Angels and demons in Good Omens are nonbinary. But from a binarist point of view, you could say that nearly all of the angels and demons have at least a few stereotypical masculine or feminine qualities. For example: Michael wears makeup, and a very frilly blouse at one point; Michael’s suit and Uriel’s have what we would call a feminine cut. Dagon has long hair in a style we would call feminine, Sandalphon has male-pattern baldness, Hastur has a deep voice and wears “masculine” clothes, etc. 

But Beelzebub breaks this pattern. She’s what people in the West tend to think of when they hear the term “androgynous”: somewhat boyish and youthful in appearance, dressing in typically “masculine” clothes that don’t emphasize her shape, and behaving in a way that many would call more masculine than feminine. To put it another way, she is aggressive, she speaks forcefully, she shows no hallmarks of being a queen or princess, and she entirely lacks subtlety. Women, of course, are socialized to do the exact opposite. Save for her appearance at the airfield, she is also far more unkempt than any character in the series with the possible exception of Hastur.  I’m beginning to see several problems as I go deeper into this deep dive.  First problem: the assumption that “nonbinary” means androgynous or genderless. And, as a subset of that problem, the assumption that androgynous and agender/genderless are synonymous, and that they/them and ze/zir are “genderless” pronouns. For some people, they very much are. For others, they are not. (For example, a blogger I follow identifies as a cis woman and uses both she/her and they/them).  Second problem: The fact that a character played by an actress simply must be agender or “not female” because said character is androgynous and behaves in stereotypically “masculine” ways.  Third problem: ...Why are we only insisting on they/them or ze/zir for the dirtiest, least conventionally attractive character in the show? I mean, being dirty and unkempt isn’t a stereotypically nonbinary trait, but considering how society sees women who don’t obsess over their looks as “not real women,” this has some very unfortunate implications to me. Fourth problem: Y’all, Neil didn’t say that Beelzebub would probably use they/them as pronouns. He said “zir” (and to be honest, I think that was him being witty rather than making an official statement). I understand that some people can uses these interchangeably to describe themselves, but they really aren’t interchangeable. And acting like they are, strikes me as basically saying “well, these are all nongendered pronouns, so just pick whichever you like best when talking about someone.” Imagine calling someone whose pronouns are they/them, “ze/zir” and thinking that isn’t misgendering or upsetting. I also don’t see posts that insist we respect any other character as nonbinary--particularly characters like, say, Hastur, Ligur, or Gabriel. (Perhaps I’m mistaken, but I really feel like people are even more hesitant to call more “masculine” characters nonbinary than they are Dagon, Michael, etc. Which also strikes me as having really unfortunate implications. But that’s a whole other post.) Or regular use of “Nonbinary Character” and “Canon Nonbinary Character” tags on AO3 for any other demon or angel.  All of this is really starting to get to me as a nonbinary/genderfluid person who absolutely does not see myself as agender or androgynous, even if people regularly describe my looks as “masculine” for reasons I’ll get into in a second. I’m genderfluid and nonbinary because I do not fully or consistently identify with the gender I was assigned at birth--and because I never have. While some days I feel fine with having society see me as a cis woman, some days I am deeply not okay with it--and am actually dysphoric because my body doesn’t look more stereotypically androgynous. However, when I realized that stereotypical androgyny is a concept that cisheterocentric society forces on nonbinary people--and DFAB people in particular--my dysphoria became a bit more manageable.  I also do not attend to my appearance. I have no interest in wearing makeup, flattering clothes, or even feminine ones. I wear skirts for comfort; I’ve always hated pants because of sensory issues, but if I didn’t, I’d probably wear a lot of “men’s” clothes. As it is, I wear T-shirts cut for men, rather than the fitted versions for women. And baggy clothes that men can get away with wearing, but women not so much. I don’t regularly style my hair despite having it long. I don’t shave any part of my body--which began upsetting people when I was twelve, y’all. Adults constantly bothered me about it, and about looking more feminine and stylish. I may be the only “girl” on the planet whose father encouraged her to wear shorter skirts and more flattering tops when she was in her early teens.

It really upset me, but at the time I had no language for why--other than that I felt pushed and harassed. Thankfully, people have since mostly cut that shit out, but when you deal with it as a child, it really leaves some scars and some gender confusion--a fact I only realized while typing this out! Of course, I don’t believe that any of these life choices inherently make anyone any particular gender. But society thinks differently. To it, I’m a failure as a woman, and when you add on the fact that I’m nearing forty, childfree, offbeat, clueless about ‘appropriate” interactions with men, and loud and messy because of ADHD, I’m labeled as even less of a woman. I would have no problem with this if it didn’t come with the pejorative baggage. I have never been a girl or a woman, though I feel I share enough in common with this gender to be comfortable having it be part of my identity to some degree. Even as a child, I felt this but I had no name for it because no one was talking about trans issues in a conservative red state in the 80s and 90s, and they sure as fuck wouldn’t have done it around kids. I didn’t even hear the word “nonbinary” until the early 2010s.  All of this also means that I don’t get many characters or images that represent me. Again, media portrayals of people like me (DFAB and not consistently woman-identifying) are so rare that Beelzebub is the ONLY one I have found in my adult life who isn’t, you know, the butt of a joke about viragos and lesbians who are too ugly to get a man, and “undateables.” So having people insist that using she/her is somehow misgendering is...well, I get that it’s not directed at me. That it isn’t about me personally. That it isn’t meant to hurt me. That it is a lot of nonbinary people and genderfluid people talking about their own experiences. I know all of that, and I don’t begrudge people their feelings. But it still kind of hurts when they disapprove of disagreement. And it makes me worry that fewer people will read my fic, and may accuse me of misgendering if they do, even if I always “warn” for pronouns. I’m even hesitant to make posts like this or to refer to Beelzebub as she/her in casual conversation. Which, well...kind of makes me feel like I do in life. Almost no one but my therapists knows I’m not cis, because I don’t think I could explain it to them without causing confusion and some distress. Which I don’t want to cause and don’t have the spoons to deal with, especially when my own gender issues are so complicated and unclear even to me.

I also just don’t have the spoons to deal with people for assuming I’m a cis, straight girl writing a hetero relationship when I use she/her in most of my Beelzefic. And to be honest, I’m just sort of hurt at the inconsistency around pronouns and the issues said inconsistency raise for me. 

I mean, like I said, I know this isn’t personal, and I do my best to keep that in mind. But I don’t like having to hold my thoughts in because they might upset other genderfluid and nonbinary people.** I have to do that enough in my life already as a queer person, and as a mentally ill person whose feelings are not always appropriate to the situation. Having to hold them in here, too, feels really unfair and frustrating to me, and kind of like I can’t be myself even in LGBTQ+ spaces. so... tl;dr  Use whatever pronouns for Beelzebub you like, or no pronouns at all. I am not the pronoun police, and I would never tell anyone what to do with their writing. But please don’t accuse people of misgendering if they do otherwise, or mistreat them if they do, or make assumptions about them or their reasons. You don’t know who they are or what experience they’re writing from, just as they don’t know who you are and your experiences. I guess that’s it. thank you. 

* Yes, I am aware of what Neil said on the subject. I’m genderfluid and allowed to disagree and to present an alternate view. ** I really don’t care too much about cisgender folks’ opinions on this issue. I’m sorry, but I don’t. Especially when cisgender people opine about what pronouns we should use for a character. I’m glad that they’re concerned and think they’re trying admirably to be good allies, but this really is an in-house and stay-in-your-lane issue. 

[jeanjauthor]

It’s a ladder, not a competition, writers.  Honor those who came before you, yes, and remember you are there to uplift those who come after you, too.

Amity gets to have a painfully obvious crush on Luz

because Catradora was so essential to the story of She-ra and actually became cannon

because Steven Universe got to show so many wlw relationships - even a lesbian wedding -

because the seeds of Bubbline planted by Rebecca blossomed into a kiss in the finale

because Korra and Asami got an implied happily ever after.

And I’ll add more:  because we had seven seasons of Xena: Warrior Princess building up the bisexual relationships (plural, both men and women!) of Xena and Gabriel, with ever-increasing subtexts about their own relationship together...until we got that final kiss between the two in the final episode in 2001... 

because we had Jadzia Dax kissing Lenara on Deep Space: 9‘s episode Rejoined in 1995. 

^^^This was the first primetime romantic kiss between two women on television in America.  It was a big deal back then when it happened, even if nobody today remembers it being so.  (There were even write-ups on it in local newspapers and magazines, too; we didn’t have the internet that you know of today back in 1995 to look up things casually.)

There was even talk in Star Trek fandom about how ST was again leading the way for the rights of those mature adults who wanted to love “outside the bounds of normal decency” as their detractors tried to cry.  We were cheering to each other about how Trekkies got that first primetime interracial kiss between Kirk and Uhura (ST:TOS) into the world’s eyes and ears and minds.  And we were cheering how we again were leading the way with the first women-loving-women kiss on DS:9.

...Just a reminder, this kiss was bisexual, not lesbian; both of the characters’ Trill-symbiotes having been multiple genders in various relationships throughout their lives. The currently involved genders do not strictly define these characters’ sexuality--if you want that, you have to go to Beverly Crusher in Next Gen’s episode The Host, where the doctor was okay with the Trill symbiote going from an alien guy to Riker, another guy, but then upset when the next proper host was female.

Yes, they tried to write the swap as discomfort with the swapping, but it showed discomfort with wlw relationships--this was a case where showing the actions of the story was actually worse than telling the story.  And no, I do not blame Gates McFadden.  It was 1991, not 1995, the boundaries hadn’t been pushed far enough yet...and because of that seeming rejection of bisexuality, there was enough backlash among fandom to the perceived rejection of wlw that the writers & producers of DS:9 went for the story with Jadzia Dax and Lenara Kahn despite it being very risky for its time.

So if you want to talk about who did the most, who risked the most, who started the bonfire...it wasn’t a bonfire.  it was a single little wooden match that almost went out.  And we got nothing but ashes and embers for a long time, barely living coals that slowly grew throughout the Xena series, and in other locations, and eventually became hope of more than embers and ashes in the Korra series...

Every single rung on the ladder has been important.

Let me repeat that:

EVERY SINGLE RUNG ON THE QUEER LADDER HAS BEEN IMPORTANT IN OUR CLIMB TO ACCEPTANCE AND FREEDOM.

Honor all of that, and then go build more rungs on different branching paths for folks to climb.  Light more fires under the asses of producers and directors and writers and artists.  Because we’re still far too close to the shitpits of discrimination, disdain, imprisonment, and the risk of being murdered for simply existing with an inborn love for people who look like us, instead of strictly & solely some binary opposite.

Honor the steps taken just to get here, and keep building many, many more story-stairs.

I hate that there are people who constantly compare wlw representation in cartoons by putting down the cartoon that did the most before it. Like, this shit's a ladder, not a pyramid.

I keep seeing posts about people calling out people who shit on Catradora's development in favor of how Lumity is going, and it doesn't make sense to me. You can't compare things like this because you don't see all of the fighting and struggling that goes on behind the scenes to get a love confession between two female leads? Noelle herself said that she had to fight to get the story she wanted to tell out there, and found ways to weave Catradora into the story of the show that they couldn't ignore it...but people want to complain because it took the entirety of the show to get what we got compared to Amity losing her shit in front of Luz in the first season of The Owl House.

Getting proper representation in a show - a "children's show" at that - is hard, and is a constant uphill battle. Amity gets to have a painfully obvious crush on Luz because Catradora was so essential to the story of She-ra and actually became cannon because Steven Universe got to show so many wlw relationships - even a lesbian wedding - because the seeds of Bubbline planted by Rebecca blossomed into a kiss in the finale because Korra and Asami got an implied happily ever after. And there are probably so many more examples that have and will happen because of the work that these shows did.

Tl;dr: I understand seeing how little we actually got in terms of representation in retrospect, but we can't put down these pieces of media, because doing so invalidates not only the importance of these milestones, but the hard work and sacrifices of these showrunners who just wanted to create a story for people like us.

[violetemerald]

Asexuality & Aromanticism; Celibacy & Nonamory - Television Representation (Unpacking the Problems)

If you'd like to download just the audio to listen to like a podcast, feel free: https://www.sendspace.com/file/zeb8id but my analysis is all in the writing. You could mute the video and it would make it easier to read.

I forgot a few good options of representation in this. Nathan For You, Emmerdale, Game of Thrones, etc. See hotterhatter2211's comment thread on the YouTube page.

I'm not sure what compelled me to edit an over 30 min video w/ no music & no narration, just clips from various TV series and text on top. It's a very informal, casual video essay that attempts to discuss harmful/hurtful portrayals of asexual characters, including those who are only alluded to being asexual (and often alluded to being aromantic too), as well as things like mockery of virginity in adults  "too old" to not have had sex, or mockery of committed partnerships who sleep in separate bedrooms - essentially explaining how even when not directly about asexual or aromantic characters, not being accepting of the behaviors that disproportionately affect asexual or aromantic people still affects asexual and aromantic viewers, and also still reinforces harmful attitudes in allosexual and alloromantic viewers of the shows.

I also threw in a tiny bit of good representation. :)

My previous videos about asexuality: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQIrXD4weMljQTvb6NLWlzOOArm6FDtNb

I've been catching up on the final seasons of The Vampire Diaries so it was on my mind. Sorry if the inclusion seems weird, but what Alaric & Caroline were doing was essentially my "dream come true" of a queerplatonic arrangement for co-parenting, all the way to the separate bedrooms for each parent. So it kinda affected me personally. Lol.

I also have been rewatching a lot of Grey's Anatomy. When I first saw season 7 episode 3 of Grey's Anatomy and the beginning of that arc where April Kepner is a 27-year-old virgin, at the end of the year 2010, I was a 20 year-old asexual who didn't yet know asexuality was a sexual orientation, so I was confused and beginning to feel a lot of shame over my inexperience when it came to dating and sex. I related to and identified with April and her attitude here, one character who didn't seem motivated by sex. Grey's Anatomy is a show without any acknowledgement that asexuality might be real in the entire universe it created. It is a hospital show known for "sex and death". Every character seems addicted to both the adrenaline rush/high of surgery AND the high of sexual pleasure. Casual sex, sex even when going through divorce and breakups, sex with colleagues, etc is a staple of this series, and that's fine, except there have been 14 seasons and still have been no characters within the main cast who it is possible to even imagine MIGHT be asexual. That bothers me, half of my lifetime watching a show that presumes non-existence of people like me. Still, I'm addicted to Grey's Anatomy. It's a very good show, lol.

I started watching BBC's Sherlock in the summer of 2016 because after I figured out I was asexual at the end of 2013, I heard within the ace-spaces I frequented online that the main character was often interpreted as asexual, and also that there was a lot of fanfiction directly dealing with asexuality within this fandom. I was considering watching for years but was finally pushed into watching the show after reading @anagnori's essay series about why Sherlock is asexual: http://anagnori.tumblr.com/post/70661417641/sherlock-holmes-as-an-asexual-character - This video here ended up borrowing a LOT of ideas from that post. Please give all credit where credit is due, to anagnori. I love, in video, form capturing some of the most asexual-seeming moments for Sherlock. :) This video became VERY Sherlock heavy; I could not resist including so many scenes!!

Sirens I actually really liked as good representation, but it was also the ONLY canon representation I saw for a long time. The more I think about the fact that Voodoo's main asexuality episode is titled "The Finger" and if I want to "show off" the representation to someone I have to feel uncomfortable around the scene where she looks at a purple, dead, severed human finger makes me realize she's really not THAT much better representation than Dexter. Dexter's not really that bad a person, he is a serial killer but only kills "heinous criminals (such as child molesters, mob assassins, rapists, serial killers of the innocent, etc.)" (Wikipedia). I never finished watching all the seasons of that show. I would love to finish it one day, I really enjoyed Dexter, and I'd believe back then the writer of the book it was based on and the creators of the television series didn't know asexuality as a sexual orientation existed. I can be forgiving because of that likely ignorance.

But The End of the F***ing World bothered me. They brought up the asexual spectrum, they made it VERY clear in that TV series that they knew asexuality was real, but they did nothing to make it clear that asexuality is valid as an orientation in emotional, healthy, normal human beings. They had lesbian cops, they could've done something with a side character who was ace instead of having Alyssa dismiss asexuality as just a joke.  It would never have happened in a million years but they could've let James still be asexual even after his emotional numbness was cured.

[recentanimenews]

INTERVIEW: Roland Kelts On Fantasy Worlds And The Impact of Streaming

  Roland Kelts, half-Japanese author of JAPANAMERICA: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the U.S., has made a name for himself covering the unique nuances of American and Japanese cultural-exchange. Kelts recently presented a talk titled "Anime and Race" with Arthell Isom for this year's Virtual Crunchyroll Expo. We had the opportunity to ask Kelts a few questions about the impact of streaming, adapting international webcomics, the appeal of isekai, and of course, Twitter.

  English-language and Japanese-language editions of JAPANAMERICA

  With Crunchyroll hitting three million paid subscribers as of July, it’s evident that anime streaming is thriving, especially with young adults. Simulcasts now allow essentially anyone access to the latest hours after airing in Japan. How have you seen this constant finger on anime’s pulse change how fans engage with Japanese pop culture, versus the heavily curated experience of exclusively watching whatever made it to American television networks?

  Everything’s faster. Fans I meet from Boston to Kansas to Los Angeles now ask me about shows that were just released months or even weeks ago on my TV in Tokyo. And simulcasts have also made the US fans hungrier, more demanding, sometimes even whiny. (“Why don’t we have this yet? When’s this coming out? Where’s that title?”)

  At the same time, it creates a zone of delusion, a kind of third universe between the US and Japan where fans think they know everything that’s happening in Japan and what’s right and wrong about the anime industry and how it works just because streaming media delivers the entertainment they want when they want it. 

  I still call that third universe JAPANAMERICA, neither here (Japan) nor there (US) but some kind of hybrid space, and in some ways streaming has only expanded its borders. 

  Image via Netflix

  Anime produced and released for streaming services have seen major cultural impact lately. In 2018, Netflix released Devilman Crybaby to critical acclaim, and more recently Crunchyroll has begun streaming its own originals shows like Tower of God in 2020. In previous interviews, you’ve described younger animators butting heads against the old guards in Japan’s traditional anime industry, compared to other industries like games or design. Nowadays, you have younger studios such as Studio Trigger and Science Saru signing streaming deals to distribute their shows to a wider demographic. Do you see this pivot to web-original anime as a way for younger animators, producers, and even veterans to exercise new ideas they may otherwise not be able to explore?

  Definitely. Masaaki Yuasa told me that if it weren’t for streaming services, Devilman Crybaby would be an old-school OAD collecting dust in the adult video corner of Tsutaya that may have aired once in wee-hour programming on domestic Japanese TV. 

  Two years ago, Go Nagai, the manga artist who created the original Devilman in 1972, told me backstage at Anime Expo in Los Angeles that streaming was the only reason he’d been invited to Los Angeles. “Hey, I’m an old man,” he said, laughing.

  There were always innovative upstart studios like Trigger. The difference is that web-original anime and streaming platforms get Trigger’s works screened in major American cinemas by national distributors like GKIDS, and around the world online, and gets Trigger artists and people like Yuasa and Nagai the VIP treatment at overseas anime cons.

  Emilia and Subaru from Re:Zero

  One of the biggest trends in anime recently is the boom of a genre called “isekai,” i.e “another world” stories where average protagonists get transported into fantastical worlds. In the last ten years, isekai has already explored virtual reality MMO worlds like Sword Art Online to self-aware “Groundhog Day” stories like Re: Zero. Although portal fantasies have always been present in traditional Japanese folklore and a staple of global speculative fiction, why do you think this particular narrative may have gained so much traction with young adults recently?

  One of the trends I write about in JAPANAMERICA is how the constant presence of the internet in our lives can diminish our satisfaction with the real worlds we inhabit. 

  You’re right, of course: portal fantasies have long been a part of Japanese literature, folklore, fantasy, and spirituality. 

  But the world-within-the-world of the internet has arguably overtaken our realities. It’s not only ever-present, it’s superior: brighter, freer (we can click on anything and almost immediately see and hear what we want), and faster. It’s also portable and ubiquitous. 

  Many of us greet the morning not as sunlight through our blinds or the sound of birdsong, but as the OLED or LCD light from our smartphone screen. Our sense of “home” is the emails we recognize, the apps we check, our news, our weather, our sports updates. It ain’t called an “I” phone for nothing. Online, everything’s for me.

  So it makes a kind of sense to me that young adults might be kind of bored with stories that don’t feature immediate and easy access to virtual realities and other worlds and role-playing lives. Stories without isekai-type narratives might feel outdated, boring, even irrelevant to the way we all live now.

    Original creator comics, such as Webtoon series like God of High School, have recently been adapted into series exclusively streamed on Crunchyroll. Series like God of High School feature diverse characters from all across the world in a tournament set in Seoul, a setting we rarely see in television anime. Although many Japanese web novels and amateur projects have since been adapted into professionally produced shows, such treatment is less common for non-Japanese properties. In terms of broadening the horizons for intellectual property, did you ever anticipate the world of Japanese animation and international webcomics to cross paths? 

  I wrote about it in JAPANAMERICA and thought it would happen sooner, actually. On book tours at anime cons, fan artists and amateur comics artists ask me to sign JAPANAMERICA and hand me a copy of their own work in return. I’d read their work on the plane to the next city and sometimes I’d think, this might make a great anime series or feature. 

  But I couldn’t generate much enthusiasm when I got back to Japan. Part of the problem was obvious: language and culture barriers. 

  But also, the Japanese industry is sitting on piles of great intellectual property from decades of manga about every imaginable type of topic and character, plus all the great doujin fan-art that powers the record crowds at the biannual Comiket and fills the floors at Mandarake. Why would they reach overseas to work with someone who doesn’t speak the language and/or understand the codes of cultural and business behavior to take a risk on a property from a foreign land?

  Obviously, the increased involvement of non-Japanese producers like Crunchyroll and others are changing that. Also, newer generations of artists from outside Japan have an even greater sense of how Japanese-made anime works, how it gets made, and how to behave in Japanese business transactions. Plus, I do think online translators, as bad as they may be, have helped ease the transition between languages on both sides, Japanese and non-Japanese.

  Tokyo Big Sight during Comiket 96 last year (photo by Daryl Harding)

  Fourteen years ago, there was no such thing as Twitter. It goes without saying it’s huge now, especially among anime fans. With major events like Comiket canceled this year, alongside dozens of conventions in the states, more fans than ever are converging online. Nowadays, it’s not only incredibly easy to find anime, but also discover a whole community buzzing with activity regardless of what language you speak. How much of a role do you think social media has played in pushing anime from niche to ubiquitous, and what do you hope to come out of this zealous digital convergence for fans everywhere?

  I write about the importance of fan forums and chatrooms in JAPANAMERICA. Anime fans were one of the key drivers of Usenet groups and BBS sites back in the day. In a chapter I called DIY (“do it yourself”), I explain how anime fandom is a bottom-up phenomenon, fired by shared communal passion and the sharing of that passion. 

  But I didn’t know how massive social media platforms would become, or how crucial they would be for Japanese pop culture fandom.

  What sucks is that the discourse on social media is so coarse. When you go back and read exchanges between diehard anime fans on Usenet and old chatrooms and forums from the mid-2000s, they read like middlebrow literature compared to what you see on Twitter, Reddit, and Discord. So many social media posts are made just to get hits, not to communicate or share ideas, and the most provocative, cruel, or just plain daft stuff gets liked and retweeted a thousand times. 

  An ex-friend of mine once told me he was going to market his book entirely on Twitter. I said, well then you’ll get a bunch of responses from people who don’t read a lot of books. But he said he just wanted to sell a lot of copies. He didn’t care about the quality of the people who read them or followed him.

  But I guess that’s the state of most things in America right now, politics in particular. Mass appeal is all that matters.

    Roland Kelts' blog can be found here. Follow him on Twitter at @rolandkelts!

More information on JAPANAMERICA can be found here. A Japanese-language edition is also available from Kodansha.

      Blake P. is a weekly columnist for Crunchyroll Features. He is still thinking about Hellshake Yano. His twitter is @_dispossessed. His bylines include Fanbyte, VRV, Unwinnable, and more.

  Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[chloewildlifestyle]

Communications

I got so caught up in them I totally forgot to explain my communications. I didn’t have enough words to justify everything in the launch pack but I’m so proud of what I came up with. I always try my best to push the boat out and think outside the box for comms as its always my favourite part of the project. I even put them in our first ever report in first year. I’m sooo passionate about them. 

The email marketing I mentioned in my routes to market, I based off my survey. 70% of respondents stated they sign up to email marketing (see appendix, fig 3) and when asked how often they would like to be emailed 46% the highest amount said once a week (See appendix, fig 4) so thats what I went for.  

My comms are split into 4 phases. I did this because for my ASICS project I tried to list things month by month and fill each month.This ended up being really messy and not making sense at all because it was all jumbled together. I’ve learnt my lesson and found the 12 month critical path a much better way to explain little things happening each month rather than rambling on about how often YouTube videos would be uploaded etc. 

In phase one I explain my rooms. With the brand and designs being based around alternative worlds I wanted to create my own. I knew people liked that sort of thing and straight away thought about Harry Potter houses. I’ve never seen Harry Potter- I know its weird but its just really not my thing. However, even though I’ve never seen a single film I know I’m a hufflepuff because i took that test online. I have no idea which characters belong to hufflepuff but for some reason it makes me feel weirdly special and I like telling people. I realised that I liked and enjoyed being in this imaginary school house at 21 (how embarrassing like grow up chlo) because its like the test knew me. It was personal and fun and a little bit magic. I researched similar fandoms and what behaviours and things they did and displayed but kept coming back to Harry Potter. I know. Fashion brand comms inspired by a nerdy childrens film, so random. So I created 3 rooms within my fashion house (which I thought was clever and suited my tone of voice with a play on words), with a personality test which took me AGES to make, that assigned you to a room based on things you liked and picked. I got my friends to do it and immediately noticed it created a weird hype. All of my friends, adults, in their 20s, who aren’t even weird like pretty cool girls, were excited about my little personality test that gave them a room which they then wanted to know more about. So I created playlists and aesthetic boards and showed them and they were all so happy and sending it to their friends because it was fun. I was so so so so proud of this. Like really proud of this little concept that I’ve never seen a fashion brand do. I decided to come up with different things that could be personal for each house (playlists and aesthetic boards). I then started to think about proper exclusive clubs and how being on someones private story also makes me feel good. I looked into it and it’s a trend. Like I’m sorry but someone up there was definitely looking over my brain power that day and filling me with ideas. Private stories and groups for consumers is slowly a growing concept because they feel closer to the brand so I added this idea into the mix as well. Each house to have highlights for everyone to see and also private stories for just them. I thought about how lovely these little communities would be and decided to put forums on my website. I went on to test all these ideas in a focus group which everyone loved. All free for me to create. With 67% of survey participants struggling to wind down (see appendix, fig 11), it also told me that these spaces to escape were essential and needed. 60% also said they would appreciate a brand that helped them escape  (see appendix, fig 12).

Moving onto phase two. Phase two consists of the my world campaign. I knew I wanted to created an emotional campaign because it really is one of the best ways to connect consumers. My brand is also something based around helping people cope. So it only felt right to be raw, authentic and real about it. The My world campaign pretty much came to me straight away. An insight into consumers world and what they do when they need to escape from it. This could be about anything, a disability, divorce absolutely anything. I think its important to remind consumers this is what we’re here for and you’re not alone. Especially in cases of mental health. We often forget what real mental health issues look like. The adverts on TV don’t cover the half of it and left me feeling so strange for years. Sometimes I still feel like nobody else really knows what goes on in my little brain. I NEVER want anyone to feel like that. Even thought this isn’t a real brand I wanted it to be based around what I’m passionate about and had to involve this campaign. 60% of those surveyed said emotional campaigns help them (See appendix, figure 10). This confirmed for me it was the right thing to do. It’s again free because it can all come from my consumers. The only thing that would cost is the influencers. 

Moving onto the influencers, I would only use 4. They’re so expensive and my designer was really specific on which ones she wanted. Although she wasn’t much help to me I’m still trying to stick as closely as i can to what she envisioned because I’m hoping this could help her future brand. She wanted Yara Shahidi and Cynthia Erivo- both big followings but I felt would really benefit our brand and appeal to or target audience and I chose WUZg00d and Sofia Coelho because I felt they would be more reasonable with pricing. 

i decided I wanted to email and reach out to stylists every month to elevate my chances on getting onto some sort of red carpet. People like Law Roach, Kate Young and Tom Erebout and Sandra Amador, etc. You don’t ask you don’t get. Reaching out to these people and updating them on my brand and promoting it puts my brand in their mind. 

For phase three I thought back to the most popular social media platforms I researched last term and thought of YouTube. It’s in the top three most popular platforms for millennials and made sense to use it. I thought about transparency and my craftsmanship value and thought a YouTube series on how we make our garments and how to look after them would be engaging, interesting and educational. It also meant people would be less likely to ignore the big care label that comes with each piece. I also felt this was a good option on a budget. 

Finally phase four. Phase four is my favourite phase. At first I was hesitant to do a popup because I felt it was overdone and perhaps unrealistic. But then I heard someone say they wanted a popup in Selfridges in a seminar and felt that my tiny popup was totally realistic in comparison and I also looked at the past examples and they had similar scale ideas too. I even spoke to my stepdad whose had his own business and he told me I had to invest in something big to really get it going otherwise its just a website and some social media accounts. Which I totally agree with. The obvious option was a popup event for my 3 rooms. To dress the rooms like an alternative world which fit the theme of each room, because they all have their own personalities. Instantly I thought about follows and yellow tones in Serenity, disco balls and pink in Serenity and dark cool vibes in Oblivion. I was very excited again at the thought. I felt like online spaces only let you escape so far having an actual place you could go would be heaven. I’m hoping these popups lead to permanent stores with spaces eventually. I decided to just use tablets/ screens because then the rooms don’t need many members of staff and it would cut down my costings. It’s also a nicer environment than having staff looming over you. I feel like they’re instagramable, fun and fit perfectly. I feel like they’re a great step up. I asked respondents in the survey if they would benefit from a physical space to go and if they would visit and 70% said yes (see appendix, fig 6). I also asked how long they think it should stand which majority said 1 week (see appendix, fig 5). 70% also said this space they could visit would encourage them to purchase (see appendix fig 7), which was really positive to hear. 

I made a rough estimate based off my last assignments financials total this would cost me around £5500. Which I think as a start up brand that wants to move froward is a pretty good investment. I loved this part of the assignment and really hope you like what I came up with because I am so proud. 

Chloe xo