#Fandom xenophobia

[horizon-verizon]

The fact that so many people think the Starks are honorable anticolonial fighters and the pinnacle of morality is absolutely insane, they literally built a massive wall to isolated a bunch of people they considered as “savages”, they hunted and slaughtered the Free Folk, the Children of the Forest, giants, exterminated whole houses and clans and took their daughters as “prizes” while conquering the North, etc. The Blackwoods were originally from the North and ruled most of the wolfswood, before being driven out by the Starks and forced to flee south. The Starks are the OG COLONIZERS in ASOIAF.

Even this did not give Winterfell dominion over all the North. Many other petty kings remained, ruling over realms great and small, and it would require thousands of years and many more wars before the last of them was conquered. Yet one by one, the Starks subdued them all, and during these struggles, many proud houses and ancient lines were extinguished forever. — The World of Ice and Fire – The North: The Kings of Winter.

I recently finished a Tiktok series that will probably just be as lost to the internet if we lose TikTok but I had to get out in response to a particular creator who bashes Rhaenyra while also proclaiming themselves as black stans. I think they are really more black stans because they hate Alicent personally and feels the thrill of the side-taking, but that's neither here nor there. 😏

To quote one of my mutuals here [rhaenin]:

It just rings so familiar to the way so many people view the other in real life. Because the Targaryens are overtly, and intentionally written as the other. It's the reason so many people identify with them, and it's the very same reason that other people vilify them. They're not just the in-universe other to the 'default' culture established in the text, but they're also given characteristics that we, the reader and audience, can recognize as other and even sometimes anathema to Western Christian culture. To paraphrase the annoying people that love to cite Ramsay when they feel like it: If you look at a morally complex family surrounded by other morally complex families in a morally complex world in a story that's famed for seeking to challenge your underlying assumptions, and think that their association with fire and brimstone is meant to signify their singular satanic evilness, rather than say... challenge that very Eurocentric assumption, you haven't been paying attention. This vilification mindset where the Targaryens are the singular evil of Westeros is so common to people who seem to want to consume ASoIaF without engaging with the criticisms of the Eurocentric worldview of history at the heart of it. And they end up using the convenient “others” to project all the wrongs of that world onto so they don't need to examine it any deeper. ........... It comes from the same place with how someone pointed out that the baffling bastardphobia that would have medieval peasants giving the side eye is so often people jumping at the chance to “cosplay” as bigots who base their arguments in misogyny and bio-essentialism. Because it's an acceptable channel to indulge in that mindset in a way that they'd often otherwise question, or at least hold back from expressing out of caution.

[survivalove]

one thing that annoys me is people reading yangchen’s books and acting like she should be this bloodthirsty assassin.

the point of yangchen’s character isn’t that she revels in violence. it’s that she would forsake her cultural beliefs for the sake of the world if she saw it necessary. and she did.

and the air nomads punished her for it.

because they were still a living and thriving culture that could hold their own accountable.

while the rest of the world held her in high regard for her efforts, even in death, there were those from her culture that wouldn’t let her deeds go unpunished on the permanent record.

aang doesn’t have that.

he can do whatever he wants and the rest of the world wouldn’t care. no one will ever hold him accountable for his cultural missteps so he has to. that’s why it’s important to aang to hold himself to his beliefs. to keep his people and culture alive.

do you ever watch celebrities talk about being famous? how they know they have legions of fans that will praise them no matter what? and how terrifying that is to them? how important family is to them? because those are the people that keep them grounded. do you line what that feels like? to be inherently famous and have no one left in your family to keep you grounded? to be a human that’s only ever seen as a god?

no, you don’t. i don’t. but that is the life aang lives.

it’s why people who complain about the finale are annoying. it’s why people using yangchen to downplay his choice is also annoying. and it’s why people acting like yangchen had nothing to lose are extremely annoying. because her choices cost her a lot. and it hurt her. because she loved her people too.

[candiezmanzion]

me when im reading idw comics and sonic is mean to metal

[randomnameless]

Why do we still have in 2024 stupid takes like Rhea created and enforces the crest system?

Bcs Rhea BaD anon.

More seriously,

FE Fodlan is one of one of the most divorced FE verses from its fantasy elements (see : Nabateans being as important as Ignatz's leather shoes) : Tellius has the Laguz existing, Archanea/Ylisse has manaketes hanging around and being a core point in FE Archanea, Elibe has its entire history involving dragons and the best ending finally be about acceptance between the two races, Magvel has zombies, Valentia has terrors and in SoV we have dragons and magic dragon blood, Fates has dragons (and laguz-like!) and even Jugdral have people with magic dragon blood.

(i ranted and ranted and ranted under the cut, so it's a bit long)

Unlike Fodlan, Jugdral's "people with magic dragon blood" are a key element to the story told at large, and it bleeds through the mechanics used to tell that story. FE4 wise, toddler!Seliph has a S rank in swords when Beowulf, even if he trains his entire life, will never achieve A rank in swords. Base!Julia with her holy weapon can smack Loptyr, when max!invested (at least lore wise) Forseti!Ced will never be able to kill him.

It's unfair for Beo and Ced, but that is how the verse works because, in that verse, some people are mc guffins or "the only ones" who are able to do something, or even, straight out, stronger/have more talent than others.

In traditional fantasy settings we have the "same" sort of rules, you have elves who do X and Y, humans won't can't, dwarves who can't either but they can do W, orc who can do J, etc etc.

Even for all of the "deconstruction of the genre!" gimmick ASOIAF has, according to some people, Dany is fire-proof and Jon most likely survives after being assassinated because he is a Stark and can use his doggo as a back up save, both things Edmure Tully will never be able to achieve.

Tolkien has Numenoreans being straight up blessed by the Valar/stronger/longer lived/etc etc than middle-earth humans, on top of also having elves, dwarves and ents.

Ergo : power inbalance is baked in the fantasy genre.

And yet, the writers often manage to tell some version of "the ones who have less power are no less important", like with Tolkien, it's a bunch of hobbits who manage to take down the greatest "evil" of their era, or some message like "having more power/being more important means you are bound to help the ones who have none" thingie.

In Fodlan, the "beings who have more power" than humans are the Nabateans (+ Sothis herself!). Sothis can create life, her daughter - through unknown means - can create artifical beings, one her children can control weather (the one who was turned in a milkshake for Charon!), one of them has monstruous strength (the one turned in a milkshake for Blaiddyd), one of them could communicate with animals (Timotheos iirc - if we assume he was a Nabatean or got his powers from his crest), her granddaughter can set up an AOE to heal what would otherwise be fatal wounds (it's heavily implied this is what Flayn did when she overused her power and went comatose) etc etc.

This is the original power inbalance in Fodlan.

Then some humans "stole" this power from Nabateans, and got a share of it themselves, which is what is later called "crest" : aka, some humans got a part of the super/magic powers that Nabateans originally had and thus, because, for all intents and purposes, "super-humans".

Now, Fodlan discourse started with FE16 being released in 2019, not that long after GoT's ending - which was trash - and in an era where fandom turned from "harmless fun" to "something that looks like activism and earns you point if you manage to use it to express your real life opinions".

In 2019, after Dumb and Dumber tanked GoT and removed most of ASOIAF fantasy parts to deliver "sex that sells" with a moldy plot, some part of the fandom started to conflate and harass people over what they like, and how it, apparently, reflected on their real life opinions ("if you hate this female character it means you hate women!"/"if you think X becoming king is a good ending, you don't value democracy!").

So, we have this fantasy setting with its inherent power inbalance... that quickly became something that is/was unacceptable, because IRL, power inbalance is based on bullshit and something everyone decries - so if your beloved media reflects on what you like IRL, you can't like a setting with an objective power inbalance, even if is justified by magic which doesn't exist irl like shooting eyebeams or some people being more "special than others" who can live up to 1500 years old.

Fodlan's power inbalance, for some parts of the fandom 2019, cannot be justified by traditional fantasy settings so, those settings/fantasy elements are straight out ignored.

Thus the "crests"' magic effects/powers are ignored, and dumbed down to, roughly, what a middle school student would think "nobility" is/was in the Middle Ages/Renaissance.

Jean-François Marie Pierre de Bourbon isn't inherently better at smashing things with a sword than Bob, or at healing than Roger, any "advantage" Jean-François Marie Pierre de Bourbon has over them is, maybe, that he started training earlier.

In Fodlan?

If Jean-François Marie Pierre de Charon has a major Charon crest, he can dance and clap in his hands to summon rain. Bob and Roger, no matter how hard they train, will never be able to do that. Jean-François Marie Pierre de Charon will thus be seen as having higher "value" or being straight up "better" than Bob or Roger, because as long as he is here, your crops will never suffer from drought.

But... we can't have that, because if you confuse fandom and real life opinions and aspirations, you cannot admit that some people in Fodlan are inherently "better" at something, only because of their blood, otherwise, what would it translate to IRL?

This is why, imo, part of the fandom (and the game sure doesn't help! Fodlan is no Jugdral and its gameplay lacks coherence regarding the in-game lore! Remember how Raphael can use a relic and only loses 10HP, when Miklan, plot wise, was turned in a demonic beast?) that loves this take, arguably, reduces crests to a title and family name.

Why should the Bourbon family rule over us, when they're no better than Roger or Bob? Isn't it unfair the Bourbons are still valued nowadays when the only thing to their fame is their name, and not what they are actually doing?

The game plays coy about crests - we know each of them has a specific power - but it never reveals what are those powers (lore wise!) save for 2 of them. So are crests superpowers, or just a family name with a particle, or both? Is the "system" (a friend made a post debunking any idea of "systemic" application of this notion in the three countries) based on bullshit, or on, objective superpowers?

Dimitri tries to tackle the issue, but only around relic usage : the Gautiers are valued if they have a crest because they can use their superweapon to protect the border. But what about valuing House Charon's ability to bring rain and guarantee good harvests? What is the other superpower tied to the crest of Gautier that isn't "use a femur and wreck havoc with it"?

If Marianne's ability to talk to animals is tied to her crest, why isn't it more developed? Instead of having useless shit like talking and befriending horses like a Disney princess, we could have Maurice-blooded people be masters of counter-intelligence, imagine if they can talk to birds/rodents and ask them to scout various areas or spy/ask them what they saw ! Hell, we could have had a situation where in a fog of war map, where Marianne, if, idk, through Billy fed enough animals in the monastery, would have a better field of vision than anyone else, with some blurb/one-line about her relying on the animals around to know and see what is going on! Alas, it wasn't meant to be.

FE16 eludes the question, because the character who "questions" a world centered around "crests" is the marketable asset of the game, and cannot be challenged in any meaningful capacity v- she feels it's unfair that her crest seemingly dictate her life, and only in the gacha game with ery serious writing like the Heavy Plate Corps or Sniddies, does she get a modicum of self-reflection - or at least someone challenging her - where she is told that she could use the superpowers she has to help people instead of blaming the world for getting one.

In a traditional FE setting, where some Lords question why they were born with power/or are in powerful positions, the answer is always that no matter what they were born with (or without in Leif's case!) what is more important is what they decide to do with that power. Elincia never wanted to become Queen? She will still fight and protect Crimea and its people. Marth is the last hope of Altea, even if it means leaving Elice behind. Seliph doesn't want to fight in Thracia anymore or feels like he's a fraud? He can turn tail and return home, while the world around him falls apart. Leif also feels like a fraud because he doesn't have superpowers like his cousin? Does that mean he should turn his thumbs and watch as his people are being caught/enslaved/sacrificed?

In Fodlan you have no reflection like this : Linhardt is, imo, the best example.

Dude hates blood and has a crest (aka magic powers) geared towards healing, you could make a case that for someone who has hematophobia, being a healer is difficult and this would be the reason why he refuses to heal/use his powers to help people around him... but no. Lin's laziness is played for laughs, and his refusal to do anything not related to his topic of interest is never questioned/analysed under the angle of, say, a head nurse who has no crest and laments that she couldn't save everyone who was hurt during an assault, who snaps at him for having the "gift" he has and not using it for the sake of people around him.

"What Lin decides to do with his power?" : Well, nothing.

Instead we have a reflection on his bright mind going to waste if he lazes all day long, culminating in his Supreme support where an Imperial facility is created specifically to cater to his tastes, that will enable him to research crests as much as he wants...

But still, nothing about his innate "healing" power!

In the end, it's no surprise that part of the fandom latched on that "crest = nobility title" because the Fodlan verse refuses to develop anything about its fantasy elements (hell, iirc Nopes swaps "crests" for "blood" and "titles" in its Supreme route ?).

"Sure, but where does Rhea fit in this nonsense?"

Rhea is, in this vision, the ultimate target !

For all of the "I ignore fantasy elements", Rhea is always (in FE16 at least!) turning into a dragon : no matter how hard you want to ignore fantasy, she's here to remind you tht, in this verse, dragons exist.

But most importantly, as Fodlan must be analysed through an IRL lens otherwise modern fandom cannot engage with it, Rhea, by virtue of being the lady in charge of a religious organisation called "Church", is also seen through a lens : Rhea BaD bcs Religion BaD and Catholic Church BaD.

FWIW, thanks to the five years of discourse we had, I learnt more about cultural values and differences existings between, here and the rest of the world - especially a place that is overepresented on fandom spaces - on organised religions especially the catholic church. Of course this bled on fandom takes and analysis, which projected some users' irl bias against the Catholic Church on the fandom organisation and entity that is the Church of Seiros. Combine this with secularism being now weaponised and used to ridicule people in spaces like r/atheism and you have a perfect recipe for "Religion BaD = Catholic Church BaD = fictional organised religion with a catholic flair BaD".

Granted, given how a certain loLcalisation team also originates from this place, it's no surprise that some "creative liberties" they took tried to hammer even more, let it be in the script or the fucking "what is this game about?" page on their website, how this fictional organisation is basically a squenix trope of "evil cult manipulating everything in the shadows and sekritly controlling the world".

Besides, the main heroine of the game (even if that comes with a twist!) opposes this faction (CoS and especially its leader!) and, by the way those games are built, as seen earlier, they cannot disavow her too much, else the entire gut-punch the devs were gunning for (you are betrayed by your beloved character! But unlike what happens in Baten Kaitos, you only are attached to her because she is your avatar's simp) will fall apart. So she must be, somehow, right and not motivated by more personal and heinous reasons, like not accepting "non-humans" to have powers over humans, or thinking the world is not a place for them (this was carefully scrubbed out in Nopes, btw!).

If Supreme Leader, who we are supposed to root for and whom the game ultimately rewards because "reforms" happen in the endings, says that the CoS is the reason why humans value superpowers, she must be right, or at least, not completely wrong???

Which raises the final point on this topic : FE16 came in 2019, which was election year in the US, and we all know that election time in the US means the rest of the world is also affected, even if the rest of the world, well, isn't the US. As I mentionned, the US is over-represented in fandom spaces, and fandom is far from being a safehaven from all the mayhem and passion that always boil during election time and its immediate following.

Coupled with the "my fandom faves define my real life opinions" thingie I already wrote about, and we had an explosive cocktail for bad takes, needless aggressivity, ridiculing people with dissident opinions because they are seen as "wrong", etc etc. And let it be something trendy or not, especially when (young?) people are arguing about "politics" in online spaces, but it always boils down to gross simplification of various complex issues and/or using catchphrases or "shock-value" words to win over whoever is reading/listening.

(et je ne dis pas ça parce que certains de nos politiques font des "immigrés clandestins ou pas" la source de tous les maux, ou le fait que nos députés font la même chose en ce moment, Jonluk et Marine main dans la main, pour paralyser l'Etat afin de pousser Manu à la démission et éviter la case prison pour Marine)

I always thought the "CEO of racism" was a meme, but through Fodlan discourse, I started to wonder if it was something started seriously by someone who really thought that "racism" is caused by one person.

And we finally get to the point : somehow, somewhat, Rhea is supposed to be responsible for people/humans valuing superpowers.

Forget that the same "quest to obtain those superpowers" led to the extermination of her kin, or how the devs themselves explained that people - at least in their setting - always want more power :

As a result, what would happen to humans who gained power... they would want even more power, and find a dragon much stronger to beat in order to collect materials forcefully, in order to make even more powerful weapons... and so that was the cycle that was born. And that was the birth of Fodlan's Ten Elites

Wait, kill that, those superpowers don't exist since the game and the characters (bar Catherine, but I agree with @9thwither here, Cat is one of the most overlooked characters in this fandom!) never talk about them, so they don't exist...

Rhea is thus the reason why people value bloodlines - especially since those bloodlines don't come out with superpowers.

It sounds better and closer to what you could "hear" irl, from someone who's discoursing on the internet to explain "why" some people are more valued than other, it's because of religion and the Pope! It cannot be because of, well, human greed or just the need to have more power (for good or wrong reasons), no.

"But random, the Church most likely promotes a "divine right to rule" doctrine and let the 10 Elites' families rule over their clans in Faerghus thus gain nobility!"

Sure, but everything is moot if you consider this : to make this take viable, we ignore the game and consider that crests are just bloodlines, and not, objective sources of superpowers.

So why are we, discussing about this hypothesis/theory, even arguing about what the game says and/or does?

Bob Blaiddyd can kill a giant lion/wolf with his fists at base level, is it because of a supposed doctrine that people rally and want to be in Bob's graces, or because Bob has the power to protect them all? Karen Charon can summon rain, are people siding with her because Rhea told them to, or because Karen can make crops grow?

In conclusion : why people are still, in 2024, sprouting those takes?

1- Because they refuse to engage with the game and realise that it is a fantasy game belonging to a very specific genre

2- Because fandom opinions reflect on your real life opinions and likes : so they must find a reason to oppose what their perceive as an unacceptable power inbalance otherwise it means that they support the various inequalities that exist IRL

3- Because Religion BaD and bar the "projected takes from transposing feelings about an IRL church on a fantasy one" more and more people tend to prefer an "easy to proceed" solution than think about multi-causal issues and find solutions that might not.

Of course, I can already guess that some people might argue that they don't "refuse to engage with the game" since this take is more a less a condensed version of the Supreme spiel, and as developed above, the game does - willingly - a shit job at demonstrating that her spiel is nonsense (they had to add the "greed" part in an interview released after the game and its only and final DLC!), just like her sockpuppet who supposedly learns how misguided he was in certain routes... only to end with the same ice cream, albeit with a different topping.

However, Dimitri and Sylvain mention how crestless children are disowned in Faerghus... when Dimitri's own uncle is ruling over a domain himself, Ingrid's brothers exist in the background and Gustave is still Baron Dominic's brother, on top of having been the royal master at arms for at least, depending on the route, 3 generations of Faerghan kings.

In a game where Dorothea can blame the Goddess for fighting in a war her bestie started - without anyone pointing this out - it's obvious this verse has unreliable narrators, but after 5 years and having played all routes in both games + a DLC + a dev interview explaining how and why some humans acquired crests...

Tl;Dr :

Reason 1- is most likely the most prevalent why this take exists anon, "because some people refuse to engage with the game" with the added topping of "save for what Supreme Leader and her sockpuppet say that I can use to demonise the characters I don't like".

[icantturnthisthingoff]

okay i don’t want to give that one person more attention than necessary because they aren’t very reasonable so im just gonna put in my final opinions on this topic on my own post.

no singular civilian person is at fault for the actions of their government or their military. that is the fault of the people at the top of that decision tree alongside those who knowingly and willingly choose to spread propaganda.

its also a bad faith argument to suggest that it is the fault of the russian people due to their silence and inaction when we know that those who have spoken out against the kremlin have been assassinated and imprisoned. we also know that there is little to no democracy in russia.

russians who oppose the invasion of ukraine are not silent, they have been silenced.

and those who have left russia because they did not wish to be drafted or involved in said invasion in any capacity have been pretty fucking vocal about it offline at least from my experience living in hotspot area for slavic immigration.

but even without all that : just being from a country does not make you inherently bad or good or anything really because thats not how it works?? yes environmental factors can greatly impact the way somebody thinks politically and morally etc but its not inherent. like if you look within peoples families a set of siblings may all be raised the same in the same area by the same people with the same rules, regulations and beliefs but you will find that very often sibling 1 has a wildly different worldview to sibling 2 or 3 and so on. thats the beauty of human complexity we make up our own minds ultimately.

anyways i’ve ranted enough

tl;dr - the person at a JO concert singing UM in russian has no real say in the actions of their country and is not a bad person just because they are from russia, they might be a lovely person they might be awful, but whatever they are its not just because they are born in russia and to say so would be xenophobic

[dukeofdelirium]

was looking on ao3 for some kataang fics and saw yet another zvtara fic in our tag and clicked on it because I’m a hater first and foremost but my god…

LMAO

nah… the way they project this idea that Aang views Katara as a machine to repopulate the airbenders when not once did he or will he ever act that way canonically. holy shit I just??? where the actual fuck does this concept even come from? they want Katara to be his abuse victim sooooooo bad 😂

and what the cinnamon toast fuck is this passage in particular?

“Should he not sacrifice as well?”

ummmmm…. I hate to break it to you fic author, but Aang literally did sacrifice. he legitimately lost everything there is to fucking lose. he even lost the clothes off his back and the only artifact that his people made specifically for him. he fucking burned it at the bottom of a volcano. or did you forget? actually nvm, you probably never watched in the first place so of course you wouldn’t know.

like ppl can write whatever they want idc, but acting like Aang, a character who is a sole survivor of fucking genocide never LOST or suffered or sacrificed anything? be so fucking serious rn. get out of my damn face. like you can fuckin ship your ship without committing the most egregious and genuinely offensive character assassination possible

[star-trek-fandom-confessions]

#603

"The gorn in SNW destroyed the original conception of western culture demonizing other cultures and recognizing it was wrong doing so. It basically turned an anti-xenophobia narrative tool in... A xenophobic tool. The gorn are being viewd as immigrants "invading" first world countries. It sucks."

[rakkuntoast]

im just so sad cuz most of this situation that happened with cellbit started AND was fueled by pure xenophobia towards the brazilian community over on twitter

people kept looking for an excuse to hate on them and decided to resurface shit to justify their hate. so much of a community that is supposed to "unite everyone"

[hey-i-am-trying]

I love qsmp, but man, everyday this fandom finds a way to break my will.

Because it is actually pretty dismotivating to open twitter and discover my fellow brazilians moots have been receiving messages calling them monkeys because they don't agree with everything about the Carnaval event or are just sad about the possibility that there will not be a brazilian streamer on the event day.

Even sadder to see it is not only gringos but some latin people doing that.

[rhaenin-time]

It's deeply uncomfortable how so many people use the word "colonizer" as an acceptable stand-in for "foreigner I don't like" when talking about how evil the Targaryens are. You might not see yourself, but I see you.

[littlefankingdom]

I'm sorry?? Did I just see someone saying that Toshiro is the one being xenophobic/racist and the author (a japanese woman) must be making a statement about Japan's xenophobia through his character??? And the fans defending him are blinded by their love for Japan to recognize this country isn't perfect???

Some or y'all have the audacity to say that a poc character, written by a poc woman, is written to be xenophobic/racist to a blond white man???

[horizon-verizon]

I find it hilarious that ASOIAF is upheld as an anti-feudalist text when only two POV’s (outside of prologue/epilogue POV’s) are lowborn, and only one character, a former slave, has enacted large scale violence against the ruling class (and this is as seen as a portent for her madness), the serfs are mostly victims with no political agency.

When I say the serfs, I mean the Westerosi serfs and smallfolk. The slaves and freedmen of Essos actually have both revolutionary consciousness and are starting to organize along political and military lines against the slaveowning gentry. Daenerys’ actions in Slaver’s Bay are already inspiring slaves to rise up. We see nothing similar in Westeros.

The Brotherhood without Banners is small, scattered, disliked by the smallfolk, has not engaged in large scale revolutionary violence or organizing, and has temporarily forgotten its original purpose. The Faith Militant uprising is theocratic and reactionary. But this is the text holier-than-thou fans and Targ antis claim is about “abolishing feudalism” (but still wants the Starks to retake their feudal power in the North), lmao.

There really are levels and depths to the stupidity of Dany "critiques", huh? With this infor in mind, it does seem very much how colonizers co opt several things the very "side" they criticize, shame, and distort until they feel that side cannot make claim to those same things and people forget such origins. Love that.

[the-path-to-redemption]

Hi! I was on the Heartstopper tag and saw one of your older posts. And I'm just curious: I never even heard of the 'Boyfriends' webcomic; where can one read it? Also, what did Alice O. say about japanese BL? That seems extremely messed up, when she very obviously was inspired by them, and caters to the same audience, who would read cutesy shounen-ais... Thanks, if you answer.

Hi! So the "Boyfriends" comic is written and illustrated by Refrainbow, an Asian transman which you can read on Webtoon. It updates weekly and is generally very cute as the plot is just following a polyamorous group of boyfriends living college life together, so it won't include something like a grand overarching plot like other stories might. It's a Slice of Life comic with most chapters having a condensed plot that can be wrapped up pretty quickly.

And as for Al*ce O. and their stance on BL, here's a link to their opinion on it as well as someone responding to it on Twitter. But to briefly summarize, Al*ce claims that Hearts*ppers shouldn't be considered "yaoi" or even "BL" because the works falling under these categories are "fetishizing" gay men in a bad way. But the thing is, BL or "Boys Love" is literally just that, Boys Love. It's a genre that encompasses light-hearted works of Shounen Ai (basically just BL in Japanese) to the more hardcore, NSFW variants. It's the same thing to classify any work including an MLW relationship under the "Romance" genre, regardless of whether it has sexual content or not.

The problem with Al*ce's point is that they consider these works, mostly made by Japanese or other Asian creators, as "fetishizing" and "negative" while their work as a Western creator is somehow more pure and "not fetishizing". Which is xenophobia. Because they are elevating their work as a Westerner over Eastern creators without even attempting to do basic research into the BL genre and history, or how by creating these works, those Eastern creators are much more susceptible to legal troubles regardless of their works having NSFW contents or not. That's just shitty, and the hypocrisy of Western baby queers doing the same thing Al*ce is doing makes them xenophobes and Puritans as fuck.

Again, you can like one variant of this big genre and not like the other. That's your right as a reader, but elevating one over the other, especially when you're putting down works of marginalized people makes you scummy.

[publictrashbin]

I typically don't usually talk about my own feelings about qsmp discourse and mostly leave it to me liking posts that I agree with , but as a person of color something that pisses me off is that a white person whose seems quite popular on here is singling out a sub community and sublely clamming that all fans of that person with no proof of that said bigotry are racist/xenophobic white people despite fact the people who are questioning the arguments of this person are people of color themselves.

Like don't get me wrong here, The qsmp community does certainly have racist and xenophobic people in it but those sort of people are in every single streamers own of community and by stating that the racism on both twitter and tumblr is only from one sub community is not only a incorrect statement but its also a very dangerous one due to allowing the racist and xenophobes of those communities having a defense when someone calls out their behavior due to them under the belief that they are free of bigoted beliefs .

Overall, I'm just angry that white people in this fandom are turning the necessary conversations that people of color are having about the overall bigotry that they experience in this community into some stupid contest to see which community is "better" with poc suffering as the ammunition for their own egoistical white savior complexes.

[survivalove]

​the way the atla fandom mocks buddhism constantly I see why this is their fave character. I can’t believe people let this slide even worse defend it and say it’s funny. just a weird bunch

[queerbauten]

Western Joost fans when the Europapa Guy doesn't hate The Bad Europeans™ (Russians):