#I don’t engage in the fandom

[toadhaberkorn]

how do you feel about itac/est

You’ve come to the wrong blog: that is disgusting

[murdknux]

big congrats to rdr fandom for having some of the worse moral posturing around shipping i’ve ever seen. like congrats for shipping the canon hetero pairings and your 1 or 2 allocated gay fanon pairings. also congrats for inventing the word “psuedoincest” to scare the crows off any pairings you deem unacceptable.

like i’m sorry, but the van der linde gang are not a family and if you believe that, dutch has manipulated you too. dutch uses the family framework to keep those he manipulates loyal. hosea and dutch are not the “mum and dad”, that’s fanon characterisation. arthur and john are not the sons or brothers, they were both boys groomed by dutch into a lonely and selfish life, robbing and stealing. and though they are close and brotherLIKE, they are not brothers.

another newsflash- you can have messy romantic feelings with a friend that is so close you consider them a sibling. it’s not wholesome, it’s a bit weird and intense. but that’s kind of the point. that’s why people ship it. we’re not getting off on incestuous dynamics because the incest is not in the room w us rn. idk how to make it any clearer.

it just upsets me to see a lot of good rdr artists getting smeared on twitter by fans who think they’re a better person for not touching the morally dubious pairings. personally, it makes sense for me that this group of outlaws in the 1890s, who’ve lived so close to each other, would have intimate relationships. they’re not a cute family living out in the country, they’re a group of criminals who’ve done a lot worse than fuck a guy that they’ve grown up with. it’s so odd to imprint 2024 shipping morality politics onto a bunch of cowboys from 200 years ago. i guarantee your not winning any awards for playing it safe in fandom.

[saetoru]

something that’s always been funny to me is that long fics with smut tend to do better than long fics without but it’s like. if you write a longggg 10k+ word fic with a build up and plot and sprinkle in smut at the end, people will read that long build up and pay attention to the plot in order to get to the smut. and 99% of the time the tags and comments will talk about the plot itself and the way it was written as opposed to the sex and they will ask for more or for part 2’s and as annoying as the part 2 comments can be sometimes, it also means that they focused on the plot and not the smut. but if you post that fic without the smut—as in same fic and same build up and everything, but the smuts not there, a lot of those same people will simply not give the fic a chance. it’s just funny to me bc yes, a part of it is just horniness, but also i think it’s partly that there is also some conditioning to believe that a “perfect romance” or a “perfect story” of a romance is sealed with intimacy that’s more often than not sexual in order to actually be valid. and yeah. idk. it’s an interesting thing to see from a writers perspective

[sunnibits]

potentially hot take but this is a pet peeve of mine

[crookedfivefingers]

[florenceafternoon]

You're not less of a marauder fan for not having read/ not liking popular fics btw

[imaybe5tupid]

if you see absolutely anything that has kabru in it. And are unable to stop yourself from making it about L/abru (even when Laios doesn’t even appear or is irrelevant to the content in question!) and reduce kabrus entire deuteragonist-level character into wanting to fuck laios. I’m stealing something out of your house!!!!!

disclaimer: If you ship l/abru and gaf about kabru and don’t do this then this post isn’t about you 🤓

[mumblesplash]

if you like scurvy you would LOVE the terror 2018

obsessed with the phrasing of this. guy who just watches shows for the diseases

[tiredyke]

i’m the one oppressing straight people in fandom btw . when someone complains about people being too mean and unfair to m/f shippers they’re talking about me

[edwinisms]

pro tip if you want a positive fandom experience: do not follow confession blogs. you’re just asking for a bad time if you do that just don’t

[serpentface]

Oh yeah I meant to ask, to what extent does social paranoia/self-surveillance/Complexes/etc. affect Janeys & Brakul’s relationship, or their attitudes toward one another/themselves? I remember something written about them not engaging in penetrative sex in relation to Wardi taboos on bodily integrity, which, if not just happening to coincide with personal preference, sounds potentially pretty fraught. (Maybe excessively paranoid, but I want to clarify that this isn’t necessarily a Horny Question)

Not a horny question but as usual my answer is going to be excessively long and detailed so get ready.

Anyway yeahhhh it’s pretty fraught. The bottom line is that they love each other and are also mad horny about it with only a limited number of outlets, which only adds stress to an already stressful situation. They are fully aware that they love each other and there's no 'no homo'ing their way out of this one, but ARE kind of in denial about there being a sexual component to their relationship (which is partly bolstered by the Wardi view on sexuality only considering Full Penetration to actually be 'sex', and they aren't doing that, sooooo....).

With regards to paranoia/self surveillance....

Both of them share a fairly equal concern about status and honor. They are both fully in agreement that many aspects of their relationship have to be secret and that both need to uphold a normative life for high status individuals. The threat of public shaming is a very real concern, and they have killed people over it (duels over slander and impugned honor are legal in some contexts, Brakul extralegally beat a guy to death for it once).

Brakul personally most concerned about other people, and is compelled to avoid doing anything in public that could even be construed as romantic in nature. Wardi cultural norms permit men to be physically affectionate with male friends (kissing on the cheek is a common greeting) but Brakul is pretty hardline Bro Do Not Even Touch Me In Public. He has very few compunctions about anything done in private so long as he doesn't specifically feel emasculated by it.

Janeys is heavily religious and strongly concerned about curses and spiritual pollution (all believers in this faith share this basic tendency, but it tends to be of more pressing psychological concern to the upper classes via impact on social status and honor). His core personal concerns are on the spiritual end of things- belief in curses and spiritual pollution is a very real motivating factor in this culture. Anything he does that is conventionally understood as emasculating or spiritually violating, he has to rationalize and self-justify away.

There’s a tendency among the upper class to imagine the Commoner having a poor, uneducated, and superficial understanding of the religion, and philosophical debates on the nuances of religion is considered an ideal leisure pastime among the educated upper class. So part of Janeys’ self-justification cycle is usually like “I am very smart and knowledgeable, and now that I’m thinking about it the idea that [xyz gay as shit behavior] is spiritually polluting is superstition of the common rabble and missing all the Subtle Nuances”.

It’s kind of like Janeys will laboriously mental gymnastics his way through his various concerns and eventually be like “I Have Discovered That Giving Blowjobs Is Not Spiritually Polluting, (And In Fact Is Very Masculine???) I Will Analyze This Further” and Brakul is like “Ok cool not polluting okay awesome that’s great ok let’s go let's go letsgoletsgoletsgo”

This is a long, slow process. They have been in a relationship where they both want to fuck each other stupid for over a decade without any of that happening, instead just very slowly escalating while being very frustrated about it the whole time.

Sworn brotherhoods such as theirs are upheld by an annual ritual involving bloodletting (the palms are cut, blood drained into wine and mutually imbibed, other stuff happens). It’s a lengthy ceremony and partly supervised by a priest. The first escalation is they started doing this like, monthly on their own. It feels intimate and scratches an itch for physical and psychological closeness.

This escalated into performing a ‘’’condensed’’’ version of the ritual, which is really just them sitting around and cutting each other with a razor and licking up the blood (while perhaps half-assedly reciting the associated prayers). The underlying factor is they always need to have some excuse that does not ‘shame’ them- in this case, they have decided that their frequent exchange of blood keeps their bond soooo strong and powerful and that they're like, the best sworn brothers ever.

This blood shit is UNQUESTIONABLY sexual for them and is a physical outlet for sexual frustration. And it does eventually escalate to them finally getting off (‘weird blood shit’ was their first base, ‘doing weird blood shit and frantically dry humping to completion and then not talking about it’ was their second, ‘kissing on the mouth’ was like, 6th)

This all was worsened by the genius decision of having Brakul knock up Hibrides, who is Janeys’ wife. Janeys has no attraction to women (and also probable fertility issues) so he never succeeded himself. She had passed the expected childbearing age and is utterly miserable in this relationship and was kinda like “uhhh if you won’t let me fucking DIVORCE YOUR ASS you’d better figure something out because you’re shaming ME”, and since sworn brothers effectively ‘share’ wives (IN THEORY this is just a commitment to support your brothers’ wife and children in the case of his death) they came to an agreement that this was NOT Janeys being cuckolded and shamed, as long as no one else finds out.

The lingering after effects of this decision are one of the primary strains on their relationship on a whole number of levels, one of which is Janeys now being intensely jealous of Hibrides for ‘getting to’ fuck Brakul, and that she has had a form of closeness with him that Janeys can never have (not even just the sex but like, conception itself). The feeling of having a metaphysical bond with someone who he sees as stronger than himself makes him feel more secure, and the sense that someone has gotten in the way of that and experienced something 'deeper' is very distressing for him. Brakul also kind of wants to be a father and really, really, really wants a relationship with his bastard children (something which both Janeys and Hibrides prevent him from doing) which really wears on him.

On a personal level, Janeys swings between feeling smugly justified about everything (he's only hiding it because everyone around him is stupid and wouldn't get The Nuances) and like, Oh God I've fucked up so bad I am shamed beyond recognition. Why did you let me do this to myself, this is your fault, you made me like this, etc etc etc. (This is especially the case when he suffers any unusual misfortune, seeing it as signs of a curse).

Brakul can usually weather this out (and is also very good at logically assuaging his concerns), but it's very draining on him. He shares the core belief in spiritual pollution, but he doesn't share the experience of actually Feeling dirty or shamed by things only they know about. They get into a lot of fights (not necessarily explicitly about all this, but it's an underlying tension) and Brakul often just deals with it by up and leaving for days on end until Janeys is miserable enough to not be upset. Brakul also has some alcohol abuse issues and could be diagnosed with clinical depression (not entirely because of this, but it doesn't help).

Another bottom line is just like, after over a decade in vehement denial that they are fucking each other, the notion of 'actually fucking each other' has kind of an outsized weight to it. Objectively (BY WARDI CULTURAL STANDARDS) they have ENTIRELY and thoroughly shamed each other and are riddled with spiritual pollution, and taking it up the ass couldn't make it any worse so might as well. But they haven't quite got there.

So yeah this is kind of all over the place but I think this answers the question???????

[the-way-astray]

i am not ready to get pissed off today but can we not ruin people’s positive fandom experiences. can we not. if someone makes a post saying “i love sophie foster!!!!” can we not go to that post and immediately comment “well i don’t like her”. if someone shares a headcanon and it clashes with yours can we not go to that post and reply “well that headcanon is WRONG because HERE’S WHAT CANON SAYS”. if someone talks about a ship can we not go on that post and start ripping it to shreds. can we not. you are aware that just scrolling past without engaging is an option, right? you know you can tamp down the urge to express your negative opinion where inappropriate, right? make your own damn post!!!! can we not ruin positivity posts for the people that like/made them. can we please not. please.

[marragurl]

Suddenly getting the intense urge to rewatch all of the SerVamp anime was not on my 2024 bingo card- but here we are folks

[elcucurucho]

obviously you can do whatever you want but there’s nothing that immediately turns me off a piece of fan content faster than a complete refusal to engage with the source material

[the-daily-dreamer]

How dare this character not have emerged from the primordial ooze having known all the truths of the world. How dare they not have learned the lessons they haven’t been taught yet. How can they not know what I, an omniscient reader with different lived experiences, know. THE NOOSE FOR THEM!

What am I supposed to do? Watch them go through an entire character arc? What a waste of my time. They are supposed to be perfect and stay stagnantly perfect for the whole story. Lest I enjoy a character that makes a mistake or was ever wrong. They should be perfect, like me.