#I never got into fan fiction because I thought it was always about shipping but now that I realize genre’s exist in fan fiction too I’m

[teethbomb]

fan fiction readers where do you usually do that

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

Hello! Someone genuinely trying to understand and perhaps unlearn some reactionary tendencies. With the response to that anon about "not asking if you're a pro or anti", the response about "imagine if they put this much effort into protecting real kids" definitely got me thinking. So... Is an adult shipping children and finding that hot NEVER a red flag? Or is it case by case on seeing how that person handles the distinction between fiction and reality in other things? And bringing the issue of real kids into it, if a real kid who has been abused sees someone shipping kids and finds that a red flag in that person, that... No, no I juicy answered my own question on that one. Block them and cultivate your own experience.

hi there anon, and congrats on trying to unlearn some things! and great job catching yourself at the end there, that's exactly correct.

I will start by saying this right out of the gate: fundamentally, I do not really give a shit about what made up scenarios about fictional characters people are jorking it to in private. I am, first and foremost, interested in how they are interacting with actual, real people.

"but Makenzie are you saying people who look at sexually explicit images of real human kids should be allowed near children?" no I'm not. please note that I was specifically talking about people engaging with fictional characters who are, you know, not real and do not have feelings and therefore cannot actually be hurt, traumatized, abused, etc, in any way that actually matters. I want to be so clear about this: you can genuinely think whatever vile things you want about fictional characters. you can enjoy any problematic shit you want with little guys who don't actually exist.

like, here's an example I use a lot: I'm kind of a huge Batman fan. don't know if you could tell that or not, I'm pretty subtle about it. if you spend any time in the Batman mythos, you know that this is a story where you just kind of have to take for granted that our hero is a billionaire using his vast wealth to dispatch vigilante justice with military grade weaponry and a small army of child soldiers and cop friends to help him put people in prison. these are moral quandaries that are discussed and acknowledged within the story, but fundamentally the universe is always going to involve billionaire vigilantism and child soldiers and the so-called carceral justice system. that's just the price of admission if you're gonna read Batman.

and like. I spend a lot of time in that world. I love Batman, I love his child soldiers. he's my little blorbo or whatever. but like, at no point have I said "yeah, fuck it, preteens should be learning martial arts to fight domestic terrorists, actually. I think Elon Musk SHOULD be allowed to put on a fursuit and beat up criminals. cops need more funding." no amount of Batman comics can make me believe or act on any of those things because, you know, I'm a person with a brain and I know the difference between "thing that makes a good story" and "thing that should actually happen for real."

and the thing is that genuinely, honestly, if someone thought that it was a red flag that I like Batman, and that enjoying Batman comics was somehow a red flag indicating that I'm fine with violence being done against real, actual children? I would think that person was a nut, if I can be super real. like, I'm thinking about somebody trying to make the case that I shouldn't be allowed to hang out with my nephew because I enjoy the fictional character of Robin so clearly I'm going to kill my nephew's parents in front of him to try to get him into vigilante justice. or if someone attempted to bar me from teaching my 4th-6th grade sex ed classes on the grounds that I was obviously going to teach them to do karate to clowns instead of how their reproductive systems worked.

(although, lets be real, there are a lot of politicians who would MUCH rather let little kids cage fight each other than learn anything about safer sex.)

this doesn't just apply to morally bad things, either, btw. I also read a lot of romance novels, especially hetero romances. and the thing is, not one of those books has made me want to fall in love with a ruggedly handsome but condescending straight man. hell, none of them have made me want to fall in love with anybody, period. that's not really something I'm interested in for myself, it's just a fun and frequently funny dynamic to explore. I'm hardly the first queer person to point out that the allegations that queer media "turns kids gay/trans" is obviously bullshit since the vertible mountain of cishet media evidently failed to turn any of us straight/cis, you know?

my point being: no, I genuinely don't think it's often, if ever, reasonable to judge someone's actual, real life morals by how they interact with fiction.

I'm going to say something so vulnerable right now, because we're in a safe space here: since you asked me this very reasonable question, you evidently value my judgment and perspective at least a little bit. and I once read and thoroughly enjoyed a fic in which Dr. Horrible, from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, gets fucked by a sapient evil horse. and I don't think that makes me a morally reprehensible person, or a person who advocates for real human beings having real sex with real horses. I think it just makes me kind of a weirdo with a bullshit tolerance.

if you want to hear a MUCH more thorough take on this, complete with addressing the issue of shipping fictional children, I cannot recommend Princess Weekes' video essay enough:

[lilium-dell]

RANDOM MOUTHWASHING HEADCANNONS

This is going to be a long post...I apologise in advance.

And english isn't my first language, I apologise for any mistakes! (´；ω；`)

Captain Curly (pre-crash)

Used to be a rebel as a teen, have bad grades, drink, all the stuff. Because of that, he gave himself piercings and some hand poked tattoos.

He still has some scars from said piercings and hides the badly done tattoos he did at the ripe age of 16.

Hates science fiction movies. He thinks that they are super unrealistic and will spend the entire time criticizing them.

Loves romcoms tho.

Secretly loves punk music, the only thing left from his rebellious phase.

Works out as much as he can. He's sad? Goes to the gym. He's happy? Gym. He's stressed? Gym.

When he goes to the Tulpar, he always brings some weights so he can lift before bed/after he wakes up.

Gives the best hugs. You can't tell me this man will not bear hug you until you feel better.

Wanted to be a psychologist before studying to be a pilot, yet he gave up because he was too much of a people pleaser.

His favorite animal is bears, grizzly ones to be exact.

Captain Curly (after crash)

Spends the days thinking on what he could've done to make things different.

After he gets rescued from the cryogenic pod, he can't help but feel survivors guilt. All his crew was dead, except for the captain that should've gone down with the ship first.

After he gets his prosthetics, it takes him a while to get used to them and feels some phantom pain on the stumps of his arms and legs once in a while.

He regularly writes to his fallen crew members as if they are still alive. It helps him cope.

He also stayed in touch with the families of his fallen crew. Curly always apologizes for their death.

Anya

Left her cat on earth and the last words she said to him was "When I come back, I'll buy you wet food", as she would always buy treats for her cat after every excursion.

Her favorite thing to do on earth was to read with her cat on her lap and some tea.

Is a only child but always had pets throught her childhood.

Is a bad loser, everytime she loses at the game nights on board of the Tulpar she goes on a raging fit. Doesn't really hide it.

The only time the crew have seen her mad is when she loses at games.

Used to do combat sports as a teenager. Seeing the wounds of the people she trained with made her want to pursue medicine.

Is a really good driver. Just road rages a bit.

Wears contacts.

Her last thought on the medical bay was about her cat and how much he would miss her.

Daisuke

Loves shooting and RPG games.

Fluent in English and Japanese. Speaks mostly in japanese at home with his parents.

Has a younger sister. He used to let her do makeup on him when they were both younger.

Used to be a popular kid but never really had a girlfriend.

HUGE fantasy nerd.

He's actually a very smart kid, used to be an honor student.

Tried to teach Swansea about Pokemon and Kingdom Hearts lore on their lunch breaks. Swansea tried to understand.

Helps Anya take care of Curly, even if he doesn't have any medical experience.

Tried smoking once, started wheezing and gave up immediatelly.

Ties his hair when he needs to be super focused.

His playlist goes from Tyler the Creator to Lady Gaga to Bach in a click. The playlist is called Whiplash.

Swansea

Dog person. He definitely loves big dogs.

Sees the entire crew almost like family and takes care of them like family.

Listens to dad rock/country while reading the newspaper to relax.

He has a picture of his kids next to his bed. Unfortunately, everything got destroyed in the crash.

Was the one who brought the tabletop games for the crew. He's a huge tabletop games fan.

Girldad. He definitely spoiled his kids as much as he could.

Huge sports fan. Specially soccer.

Jimbabwe (I'm sorry)

Smokes two packs of cigarettes a day. Rothmans to be more specific.

He has a narcissistic disorder.

When he was a kid he used to torment his siblings.

Met Curry when training to be a pilot and got extremely jealous and spiteful when Curry got promoted instead of him.

Hates when Daisuke calls him every name under the sun except his. (Ex. Jimbo, Ji-man, Jimin, Jin).

Had an obsession with American Psycho as a teenager.

He was an edgy teenager.

I have so many headcannons but if I put them all here, the post would be gigantic...

[musicalmoritz]

Good Femslash Fics Already Exist

With the whole push for more femslash in fandoms, I’ve never understood the amount of hate I see femslash “fans” direct towards existing creations. There’s nothing wrong with wanting more variety, I do too, but every time someone brings up the fact that femslash fan fictions are already being written someone opens their mouth to say “yeah but those suck.” And then they proceed to read 300+ atrociously mischaracterized mlm fics. They complain abt plotless fluff and then read the exact same pwp scenarios over and over again

And hey, if you don’t want to read femslash that’s totally fine. You don’t have to pretend it interests you. I’m someone who actively looks for femslash and my only problem has been a lack of content in smaller/male-dominated fandoms, the fics themselves are cute af. Ya’ll are missing out on some real masterpieces by labeling all existing femslash fics as “boring,” some of my favorite fics ever are femslash. If an mlm ship invades the tags just filter it out, filter out every mlm pairing in the fandom if you have to. AO3 gives us that option for a reason

I’m not saying we don’t need more variety, but we’re not going to get that by shitting on writers who actively put in the work to make more femslash. When I started writing femslash consistently it was very discouraging because I’d seen soooooo many people online saying they want more femslash fics, yet nobody was reading mine. Then I looked at the stats on other femslash fics and they were the same, really great fics were barely getting any hits or kudos. It kinda sucks knowing that an mlm fic I wrote in 3 hours got more kudos than a wlw fic I spent months on (for pairings of relatively equal popularity). This seems to be the biggest roadblock for people wanting to write femslash, no one supports it. Even tho fandoms claim they would support it, they never do. It’s something I’ve learned to stop caring about but not every writer is gonna push through

This brings me back to a comment I saw about “boring, hair-braidy wlw fics.” That description really stood out to me, and to this day it makes me feel a little self-conscious about my old femslash fics that were “boring” and “hair-braidy.” But then I came across a fic for this one pairing that had actual hair-braiding. It was incredibly well-written and meaningful, exploring how both characters struggled to ask for help but they were able to recognize each other’s dilemmas and help in subtle ways. They did this, of course, by fixing each other’s hair when they both felt helpless to do anything with it. Such a simple way to express a very deep bond. This made me reassess the way people talk about femslash fics, and the way I’d been thinking of them myself. Is fluff really that much of a crime?? Do all cottagecore-type fics really have no substance?? Do femslash fics have to copy exactly what slash fics are doing, or are they allowed to have their own tropes??

My attitude towards the overload of plotless fluff wlw fics is “this is a good starting point.” We need more people writing femslash, more variety in what is written, but that doesn’t mean what we have is bad. I critique wlw fic tropes a lot but I always give the disclaimer that I actually love the fics themselves, I just want to see more of a different thing. And I comment on every femslash fic I read (every fic I read in general but especially femslash), I try to leave something thoughtful to let the writer know I appreciate the effort they put into their work. You’d be surprised how many writers said they were encouraged to update a fic or write more femslash because of a positive comment I left them. Engaging with fics will give you more of a good thing. It has so much more influence than that video you’re about to make talking about how there’s no good femslash fics. When you say things like that it actually discourages people from writing, and makes them feel bad about things they’ve already written. Support femslash writers guys, it’s sexy

[gabessquishytum]

Dream and Hob play the characters of the new popular ship on the super popular sexy historical fiction TV show (Sand-ridgerton 😝😶).

This season they are finally the focus couple, and with the TV sexy times and falling in (tv) love & marriage, the spotlight is bright on them during the press run up to the new season.

Dream and Hob have been friends forever, both in the business, doing different jobs - tv shows and movies, never working together, but always cheerleading for the other. Both of them are amused by all the attention (and the "hot-ification" of the press tour glam squad; although if you ask Dream, Hob has always been hot!).

Initially, the marketing people wanted Hob and Dream to play up the romance angle - have fun and maybe touch each other more/cuddle up - create a little buzz, but don't be inauthentic.

Neither Dream or Hob expected to catch real feelings, they had been friends forever, why would this be the catalyst for changing their relationship to lovers?!? But as the press tour went on.....their hands lingered on each other with intent; quiet corner conversations became hidden kiss and clothes crumpling necking.

Really what they worried about most, at this point, wasn't fan theories that they were together in "real life," but that they, themselves, got so caught up in acting out romance and love for the audience, that what they're feeling is actually real.

It's totally real!

Sand-ridgerton! I love it!

I have this wonderful image of Hob getting a makeover before the press tour because the producers REALLY want to market him as a leading man. He's always had kind of goofy roles before, and the people in charge really want to cement the fact that Hob Gadling Is Sexy Now, so they get him dressed up, give him an incredibly expensive haircut, and generally primp and plume him into a perfect specimen of manly hunkiness.

Well. Dream has always been of the opinion that Hob Gadling Is Sexy, actually. He thought so even when Hob did that zombie comedy and spent the whole time covered in weird prosthetics and makeup. But even Dream is not immune to yassified Hob in his three piece suit and his beard oil. Especially when they're always together, being interviewed, doing photo shoots, or just hanging out before the next event. Dream is totally captivated by how gorgeous Hob is, and he's EXTREMELY jealous that the rest of the world finally seems to have caught on to the fact. Dream glares when the interviewers flirt with Hob. He even acts cold with the fans who giggle and swoon over Hob in public places (nobody notices, however, because Dream is always cold... to anyone who isn't Hob).

Hob honestly doesn't much like the fancy clothes and the new diet and the fact that someone is always taking his picture. He preferred being inconspicuous in his khakis and fun shirts. One night he gets pretty emotional about it, and to cheer him up, Dream confesses that he thought Hob was cute and sexy before all this recent nonsense. Hob finally brightens up... and thats when they have their first off-screen kiss.

But however much they'd both prefer to keep their blossoming relationship private, of course they don't have a choice. Soon enough they're being hounded by paparazzi, neither of them can post on social media without starting a riot, and the only thing that makes life living is the fucking incredible sex they're having at every opportunity. Hob ruins his fancy suits by pulling Dream into his lap in the car on the way to events, and Dream can never find the willpower to say no. It is intoxicating, even if it is a kind of hell.

Ironically its the show itself that saves them. Once the episodes start airing, focus shifts from real life to fiction. The fans are more interested in the characters on screen (Mr Kingsley and Mr Sturridge, eligble bachelors in the Sand-ridgerton show, are fan favourite characters and have a wonderful steamy queer romance storyline!) than the real life Hob and Dream. Slowly, slowly, the attention begins to die down. They feel like they can breathe again. Dream privately thanks god for the stupid TV show, which has turned his life upside down at least twice now. Now, Hob is really and truly finally his. The fans can have the character, but Dream gets Hob...

...and maybe those fancy outfits can stay in the wardrobe. Just for Dream to enjoy, in private.

[bluemirrorangel]

Dps headcanons the poets and their type of academia aesthetic 

This is wayyyy longer than I intended it to be lol anyway I hope you enjoy these, leave a ship or fandom suggestions and I’ll do headcanons for them if you want :) 

Todd:darkest Academia

Loves gothic fiction and horror stories because he likes being nervous knowing that he's supposed to be.

Likes reading outside at night because it’s quiet 

Surprisingly nosey, not in a bad way he’s just really curious about stuff.

Likes dark/muted colours.

His favourite book is a picture of Dorian grey.

Weirdly into cryptids and other mysteries.

Was TERRIFIED of the Bermuda triangle as a kid.

Loves writing poetry but enjoys writing in general.

Semi popular writer on AO3 for classical literature, started because Keating told him to publicise  some of creative writing.

Runs his good reads account like the navy.

Charlie:chaotic academia

Regularly gets uniform carded for everything; shirt unbuttoned and untucked, tie loosened, he never has his blazer on and his jumper is perpetually tied around his waist. 

Has a mason jar type cup on his nightstand that is always full of a mixture of different energy drinks and fizzy drinks/soda’s, Cameron says it looks like paint water.

Banned from reading out loud in English class pre-Keating because he got a little too into the role of Jack in Lord of the Flies .

Point blank refuses to do P.E and is always ‘losing’ his kit.

Shockingly serious about music class, deeply respects the teacher and never misses a lesson.

Post stick notes EVERYWHERE

Writes his notes in highlighter and felt tips

Went through a phase of bringing a flask to school instead of a water bottle because he thought it looked cool.

Spark notes BIGGEST FAN.

A saxophone prodigy despite being unable to read sheet music.

Neil:light academia

Loves Shakespeare and the theatre in general

Good grades in every class but really shines when it comes to the arts

Eats his lunch in the English classroom with the other poets

Forges his fathers signature for school trips so much half his teachers have no idea what his dads handwriting actually looks like.

Hates biology because he’s scared of blood

Always says that Todd is his favourite author/poet.

Really good memory, able to learn lines at shocking speeds. 

Finds it difficult to multitask; has to have instrumental music playing otherwise he gets distracted.

Prefers plays over books.

Collects playbills.

Meeks:classic academia 

Loves typewriters, inherited one from his grandparents and uses it alllll the time.

has a polaroid camera and uses it to take either the best candid's or the  most diabolical mugs there's no in-between.

Owns a shocking amount of sweater vests.

Has a record collection.

Loves those retro 50’s themed diners/drive-ins, drags Pitts and the poets to those all the time.

Really into history

Owns an analogue radio.

Taught himself Latin one summer to impress Pitts, and is now fluent.

His entire wardrobe is vintage themed.

Favourite book is the Outsiders by S.E Hinton.

Knox:romantic academia

Writes love letters and poetry whenever he has a crush on someone, used to keep them under his bed but swiftly changed that hiding place after watching ‘to all the boys I've loved before.’ with his sister, they now live in a shoebox on his trophy/bookshelf.

Loves the romantics big fan of love poetry as a whole.

Has definitely tried to serenade someone before.

 Self taught guitarist.

Has only ever received on card on Valentines Day, it was from Charlie in year nine it’s one of Knox’s most prized possessions.

Loves Romeo and Juliet.

Thinks ‘say anything’ is the height of romance 

Subconsciously wants to be romanced for once instead of the other way round. 

 Has Pinterest boards dedicated to romantic quotes 

His favourite movie is the princess bride.

pitts:’nerdy’ Academia 

really into the roman empire 

Loves renaissance fairs and goes every year.

REALLY into dungeons and dragons.

Loves going to random museum exhibits.

Spent half his childhood hyper fixated on the Titanic, was super excited to watch the movie and completely heartbroken when he realised it was a fictional story and not a documentary.

Brilliant at chess.

Knows random historical facts.

Horrible at remembering faces but never forgets a name.

Loves mythology of all kinds.

Really good at architecture; his middle school used to have a architecture competition where  you had 2 minutes to make a house out of marshmallows and dry spaghetti the most stable one won, Pitts won every year.

Cameron:dark academia 

Keeps his notes/homework in colour coded folders and files

A proper perfectionist and  chronic overachiever.

Writes in pencil or fountain Pen.

the gifted kid who REFUSED to burn out.

Only gets attention at home when he’s doing well at school, so he throws himself into his studies.

Drinks more coffee than water

Can play the piano, was entered in a school concert and his whole family came. He was terrified of embarrassing or disappointing them so he overdid it and played so hard his fingers bled.

Has a copy of every graded test practice or otherwise in his room so he can go over them before his exams.

Hates English with a passion because it’s the one lesson where there are no rules.

Once spent an entire night going over his English notes before a test and was so overtired he fell asleep during the exam and failed it. None of the poets bring it up not even Charlie because that day was the first time he’d seen Cameron cry.

[retiredkat]

Great interview with Eric Bogosian

Vulture article

Eric Bogosian Would Get Naked for Interview With the Vampire 10:31 A.M.

Daniel Molloy is a fictional two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, bullshitometer, and sass-kitten, an aging journalist holding his own among monsters while conducting the titular Q&A at the heart of Interview With the Vampire. With clear-eyed wit and a dash of human vulnerability, Eric Bogosian gives Molloy a distinctly Anthony Bourdain–ish edge infused with notes of his own acerbic Talk Radio character Barry Champlain. In Anne Rice’s book and the movie that followed, Daniel Molloy is a cub reporter trembling over his tape deck. But in Rolin Jones’s brilliant AMC adaptation, which just wrapped up its second season, this isn’t Molloy’s first twirl around the vampire hoedown. The conversation takes place 50 years after that first interview ended in blood, gore, and sexual frustration (Luke Brandon Field plays the younger Molloy in flashbacks, including this season’s standout episode five). Now Molloy’s seen it all, has a loaded past with these vamps, and when he trembles, it’s from Parkinson’s, rarely nerves. Molloy’s the audience surrogate, cutting through Louis (Jacob Anderson) and Armand’s (Assad Zaman) competing narratives while ultimately shipping Loustat just like the rest of us.

This delicate dynamic got slammed into a concrete wall and lit on fire (complimentary) in the final minutes of the season-two finale, when Molloy was revealed to have been turned into a vampire by Armand, breaking the ancient vampire’s centuries-long incel streak. And boy, is it a reveal, with a cocky Molloy, riding high on his best-selling book, whipping off his sunglasses at night to reveal color-changing eyes while doing mental walkie-talkie with Louis. He’s even got a sick leather jacket to really hammer home that he’s a cool bad-boy vampire now. It’s an incredibly fun beat to leave this character on and opens up a world of season-three possibilities for Bogosian as a performer who, at 71, has always wanted to play a vampire.

Do you know how weird it is to be hitting record on my MacBook right now to interview you about playing a character who’s always hitting record on his MacBook to interview people?

It’s all weird to me. I’m from another century, so all these things are new to me.

This is suspiciously sounding more and more like an interview with a vampire by the minute! Which makes sense, considering where we last saw Daniel in the finale.

Since we have multiple narratives and jump around in time already, I don’t know where things are going. Personally, I’d love to see more of young Daniel, Luke Brandon Field. I think he’s terrific. I’d love to see more Claudia. I wonder whether vampires can time travel. I think they can move around in time. I’m not sure how much Anne Rice you’ve read, but Merrick can actually bring people back from the dead, so you never know.

What was your relationship to the books when you signed on to this show?

In the mid-’70s, when Interview With the Vampire came out, I was 20-something and reading that stuff and I loved it. Then I got distracted by life. When we started doing the show, I was going to read the first one again, but then I realized that the script and my character were quite different, so I thought, I better stick to the script.

However, I needed to know what happened next, so I started plowing through the books and it was amazing. The Vampire Lestat was a trip — that’s what they’ll be hitting next — and they just got trippier and trippier. I just finished the seventh, which puts all the stories together. I love Anne Rice because her imagination is completely unfettered and she plays with really deep themes in a way that’s not heavy. It’s not like you’re reading Ayn Rand; it’s more like Stephen King. She explores death in the guise of these vampires by asking, Oh yeah, you wanna be immortal? Here’s what immortal looks like.

I’ve always been a big fan of vamps. I lobbied Francis Ford Coppola to get a part in his Dracula in the ’90s. I guess I wasn’t a big star, so I couldn’t get a part in it, but he was nice about it and invited me to set. I’ve told this story in other interviews, but my wife was directing a play in Chicago, which, totally by coincidence, was written by one of our first-year writers. On the plane there, I was thinking about life, thinking, I’ve done so many things. What’s left? And I thought, Man, I still really want to play a vampire. And when I landed, I got a phone call: “Do you want to be on Interview With the Vampire?” At the time, it wasn’t like, “You’re going to be a vampire,” but I figured vampire-adjacent was good enough. And of course, it evolved, and as I got on set, Assad was explaining all of these things that were going to happen with my character. Sometimes I didn’t even want to hear about it because we never know what’s going to happen. There have been slight detours off the main story, particularly with my character.

What were those things you didn’t want to hear about your character that Assad was talking about?

I become, you know, under his spell in later stories, and there’s a whole relationship that goes on between us. I’m not entirely clear at this point how that’s going to shake out or if it’s going to shake out. I didn’t necessarily want to go waltzing into something where they were making me do anything weird or awkward or embarrassing to no particular end. I’ve done nudity and stuff like that a long time ago, and at 71, I’m not really big on getting naked and sexy onscreen.

However, having been around the genius of Rolin Jones for two years, whatever he wants to do, I’ll do it. When you’re around a master like this, it becomes a process of discovery. When I’m learning my lines it’s like, Oh, this is 3-D chess. There’s a lot going on here that I didn’t see the first time I read it. When I first got this job, I thought I was just going to be doing bookends every episode, like, “So, tell me the story,” and then it would be vampires the whole time, and at the end I’d be like, “Hmmm!” And then, “stay tuned for the next episode!” But Rolin had this idea from the beginning and it went deeper and deeper until it was insane by the end of the second season.

I would prefer not to be playing cliché. Sometimes I’m playing something that feels like a lot of other things I’ve done. Even in the service of a show that is terrific, like Succession or Billions, the things I’m doing on those shows are not things I’ve never done before. As a friend of mine said when I was doing Under Siege 2 with Steven Seagal 1,000 years ago, “They just want you to do that Eric thing you do.” My stage stuff is about being very big and very loud, and a lot of the stuff I do on-camera is like in Uncut Gems, being very angry and very broad. But this thing, particularly in the fifth episode, and going into the end — I have to go places that I’ve never gone as an actor before. The subtlety of episode five, where I am brought to tears, that’s new stuff for me, and I was really happy to do it. Not only working with Rolin and the directors but with everybody. The writers bring a lot of sensitivity, a lot of nuance to every scene.

I need to ask if you’ve seen this: Someone from the writers’ room tweeted a picture of a note card that was on the wall for episode five and it just says, “MOLLOY ASKS ABOUT 1973: DID WE FUCK?”

I love that beat. As much as I’m known for my verbosity, I love reaction stuff, too. Jacob and I are very in sync, and we’ve developed a good relationship. He’s not holding back, he’s not being cagey, and that allows you to trust the other person a lot. You’d be amazed how some actors … are actually not good actors. They’re thinking about what they look like and all this crap. Jacob can’t be thinking about what he looks like because sometimes he looks really nasty. He’s letting the emotions build out of him. And yet he’s always very adept at sculpting what he’s doing. It’s a great company. I never work with Sam, I just see him all the time on set, but that scene in the courtroom, and the scene in New Orleans … where’s that shit coming from? The emotion is wild.

You all have incredible chemistry with each other, too. Knowing where your character might go with Armand, or what other buried history may or may not also be between them, how do you play that dynamic?

In scripted narratives, you’ve just got to play what the script is doing and let the audience try to figure out the rest of it. On Succession, I worked with Sarah Snook, and her character was never clear until the end. They were making it very hard to figure out what she was thinking. And I don’t know that she always knew herself what she was thinking. She was playing the script.

There are a lot of ways to look at it, and ask, What’s really going on here? Much of it is the audience putting it together. They hear the lines, they see my face, and an older actor’s face kind of has a narrative built into it. All of it gets put together, and what you don’t know becomes fodder for your imagination.

And this audience has quite the imagination.

I’ve never been through this experience before, exploring where the audience is at. I’m reading a lot of the blogs, and they make a science out of it. Rolin gives them all they can eat in terms of details and Easter eggs that are blended into the story. I think like 30 percent of our audience is really familiar with the books, so they’re constantly checking back and forth between Anne Rice’s story and ours. So far, Rolin’s been scoring pretty well in terms of being consistent with the original material.

But again, Daniel is a whole different ball of wax. The Armand thing is interesting, because it goes into all kinds of fascinating realms far away and weird. I had to get out history books and start reading about ancient Kyiv.

The fans aren’t even just pulling from the books; I’ve seen some draw comparisons from your work like Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll. They’re finding all these crazy parallels.

That I haven’t seen. The character in this show and me in real life have a lot of parallels. Just imagine young Daniel in the show, that was my life. The funny thing is when I used to write and perform these monologues, in my mind they didn’t have anything to do with me. And then last year, Andre Royo, who played Bubs on The Wire, did one of my shows, Drinking in America, onstage. This was the first time that I’ve watched my own solo show, and he did a great job. I started to understand the biographical aspects of these monologues. It isn’t until afterward that I can look at it and go, Oh right, this is about that. Rolin told me that they were always thinking of me for this role. He didn’t know me, so this was coming out of his enthusiasm for a movie I did 700 years ago, Talk Radio with Oliver Stone. That was based on a play I wrote for myself. What I write about has to do with a certain kind of narcissistic personality, which seems to be the theme of this TV show — they’re all narcissists in one way or another.

I’m fascinated by my character. In episode five, when he’s in San Francisco, he’s kind of a loser. That’s what Armand says: “You might as well die right now. Where’s your life going?” And yet Daniel has two Pulitzer Prizes by the time he’s an older guy. What is that about? I would almost not believe it except that it happened to me. I was leading a really dissolute life in the late ’70s into the early ’80s. I didn’t win a Pulitzer, but I was nominated in 1987 and continued to be, I guess, “successful.” So it makes sense that it happens to Daniel. But you can also ask, What motivates this? It’s a way of fighting against the world or maintaining your sanity.

I think I’ll continue to play with the push-pull of this guy if I continue with the show. In San Francisco, he says, “Make me a vampire.” Later in Dubai, he says, “No, I don’t want it, because I’ll outlive my children.” He’s going back and forth. Of course, what we don’t see in the last episode is how did he become a vamp? Did he say, “Yeah, I want to do it?” Or did he get drunk with Armand one night and when he wasn’t looking, he became a vampire? I guess we’ll find out.

I’m sure it’s the subject of dozens of fan fictions already.

I’ve gotten so close with Assad. We’ve enjoyed spending a lot of time with each other. But when he gets on set, he turns into a different person. That’s some evil shit going on there. The way he ends up in that last episode, kind of smashed, he put everything into that. It’s a lot of fun. I never got into this business to do anything other than make believe and pretend. I feel more whole when I’m being somebody else than when I’m my own self, so the more deeply we can pretend when we’re making the show, the more deeply we can get into all of this, the higher I get from it. And when you’ve got guys like this who are ready to fly, I want to go flying with them.

I know you said you don’t really know what’s happening next season, but I look forward to your vampire adventures.

Rolin keeps sending me notes saying we’re gonna have an amazing time when we start shooting again. I can’t wait. It’s just that there’s a whole formal process of how this goes, and I’m waiting for my engraved invitation from the King of AMC to say “welcome back.”

[booksandabeer]

Ramblings on Fandom: Peggy Carter, Steve Rogers, Delusional Shippers, and Alleged Misogyny

So with the release of Season 2 of What If…? emotions are once again running high, the outrage is outraging, and people are up in arms about the whole Captain Carter situation. While I do think that some reactions are a little overblown, even needlessly aggressive in tone to the unfortunate detriment of their otherwise convincing arguments, I share the confusion and frustration about the sudden centering of a long-dead & never excessively popular character, the sidelining of the Steve-Bucky friendship, and the as-inexplicable-as-it-is-total exclusion of Sam Wilson as Captain America. However, I’m not here to talk about the show because (1) I haven’t watched this season and have no plans to (why waste time torturing myself with something I know I’ll hate?) and (2) other people have already written dozens of metas about it, so what could I possibly add at this point.

What I do want need to talk about (lest I explode) is something that has irritated me for a long time and that is now happening again: Every time someone even mildly criticizes Peggy Carter, expresses doubts about her suitability as a heroine, or even just questions her disproportionate importance to the franchise post-EG, inevitably a certain section of fans will come out of the woodwork to immediately throw around accusations of misogyny and yell about how we’re all just a bunch of delusional Stuckies who are mad that she got "in the way" of our ship. Sigh.

This is gonna be a long one, so I’ll put it under a cut. Rant incoming. You've been warned. If you don't want to read, simply keep scrolling.

First of all, let me state very clearly that I’m not debating the existence of misogyny and sexism in fandom spaces—or in the media from which these fandoms originate. At all. It exists, it’s a thing, I’m not denying that. Which is exactly why it frustrates me endlessly to see these accusations thrown around as a gotcha! argument to shut down any and all critical debate around a female character. All it does in the end is escalate rhetoric and radicalize attitudes.  

In the case of Peggy Carter, specifically her treatment by Stucky shippers, I’ve always found 'misogyny as a motive' to be a largely unsubstantiated accusation.¹ Now, I neither presume nor do I want to speak for the entirety of Stuckynation, so I will not claim that there aren't corners of the fandom where people discuss her in ways that I find off-putting and deeply unserious, but I will say this: If you genuinely believe that disliking one (1) fictional female character equals “hating all women” and wanting to suppress and marginalize their presence in fiction and real life alike—then I think we need to take that word away from you until you’ve learned its true meaning.

You might also want to ask yourself how exactly reducing a female character to a mute trophy wife or a heroine who has to act out her love interest’s recycled storylines helps your feminist fight.

As for the “getting in the way of your ship” part of the argument. Very simply put: No character can get in the way of something if there never ever was “a way” to that something to begin with. “Being mad” implies that there was a reasonable expectation that wasn’t met, a substantive hope that was crushed. Now, I’ve said this before and I’ll gladly say it again a million more times: No Stucky shipper in their right mind ever truly thought that there was even the slightest chance that Marvel Studios owned by the Walt Disney Company would allow Steve “Captain America” Rogers and Bucky “Winter Soldier” Barnes to be canonized as an explicitly romantic pairing in their billion dollar franchise. Be serious. That was never in the cards. I wish we all lived in a world where it was, but we don’t, and it wasn’t. The best we could ever hope for was for Steve and Bucky to get a good, satisfying, in-character ending. And if, in Steve’s case, that would’ve included hints (or more) about a possible rekindling of his, uh, aborted romance with Sharon—then so be it. But we never got any of that. The characters never got any of that. Instead they sent Steve into 1950s suburban hell, literally trapped him behind a white picket fence, and condemned him to a life of passivity and lies, all so he could be married to a woman he barely knew a long time ago in a completely different world; who built and ran a top-to-bottom Hydra-infested organization, but apparently never noticed that there was anything wrong with her life's work. For decades. Great. As for Bucky—well, we’ve all seen the devastatingly grim-faced, utterly lonely, and deeply sad version of him that was presented to us in TFATWS. Happy endings all around, I guess.

So. Am I mad that Steve didn’t get to ride into the rainbow-colored sunset with Bucky at the end of EG? No. Because that was never going to happen anyway. Would I have been mad had he ended up with Sharon or another female character in the 21st century? Also no. Granted, I wouldn’t have been ecstatic about it, but mad? No. But am I mad that Steve ended up with this specific female character under these specific circumstances as presented in canon? Fuck yeah, I am.

The thing is: I personally believe Steve and Peggy to be fundamentally incompatible when it comes to the way they view the world and their respective places in it; their morals and values; their capacity for compassion and empathy; their ability and willingness to compartmentalize, compromise, and collaborate with people and institutions whose ethics and/or politics do not align with their own. I have a real hard time believing that a relationship between these two (or worse, a hasty marriage) could be either happy or long-lasting.

I don’t believe Peggy to be inherently evil, I don’t hate her, I simply think she operates within a different moral framework than Steve (and even genuinely believes it to be a righteous one).² Your mileage may vary, but I personally happen to find that framework reprehensible, even indecent, and ultimately dangerous. After all, over the course of the 20th century, we have seen exactly where that kind of “the ends justify the means” brand of pragmatism leads—over and over again. Not to mention that the people who use this line of argument to defend characters like Peggy (or real-life politicians for that matter) never seem to want to look too closely at who gets to define what "the ends" are in the first place and who decides when they've finally been met.

(Never. The answer is never.)

And to be clear, there is absolutely nothing wrong with depicting, and even centering a narrative around a morally (dark)gray character—oftentimes it’s actually the more interesting option—but you cannot at the same time claim that they are purely good and should be only admired as such when their actions literally tell an entirely different story.

So, no. I will not accept Peggy Carter as the shining aspirational heroine that the MCU so badly wants to sell her to me as—while simultaneously continuing to reveal things that paint an increasingly darker picture of her character. And I will certainly not celebrate seeing one of my favorite characters of all time—whose defining trait was that he couldn't ignore "a situation pointed south"; who used to fight for the little guy and against the establishment; who once said about the very organization that Peggy Carter helped build that it was so corrupt, it all needed to go—rendered morally inert for some hollow happy ending that may as well be a conservative’s wet dream full of false nostalgia for an America that never really existed. I cannot find it in me to be anything less but mad about that.

But that does not make me a misogynist. It does not make me a delusional shipper. It makes me someone who looks at what the MCU has been telling me about Peggy Carter for years now—over and over again—and takes it at its own word.

--------

¹ If you’ve actually read a a fair number of Stucky(!) fanfics you will have noticed that the reverence afforded to and "page time" devoted to her character and her relationship with Steve is somewhat disproportionate to anything that's backed up by canon—well, up until EG, where she was suddenly reanimated as The Great Love of Steve’s Life—and in my experience, it's highly unusual for any fandom to put so much (mostly) positive attention on another character, let alone a potential love interest that is not part of the endgame ship.

² I also want to emphasize that if you love Peggy and she's your fave: good for you! I genuinely have no beef with you. People can agree to disagree. All I ask for is that we maybe stop willfully ignoring the less savory aspects of her character. You don't need to pretend she's perfect to justify your affection for her. I LOVE Steve, and yet I have no problem conceding that he is FAR from perfect.

[kalinara]

So I had a thought about Scott/Jean vs. Logan/Jean ship dynamics, in the 616 universe and I felt the need to share it. (Without scans for once because I am not at my primary computer. Alas.)

Disclaimer: I am a Scott/Jean fan (I'm sure anyone who's been to my blog is shocked) and I've never really seen the appeal of Logan/Jean outside of a throuple context. That bias will likely come through in this thought.

But anyway, something I find really interesting is how Scott/Jean and Logan/Jean kind of reverse a very common YA fantasy love triangle dynamic.

I mean, reverse is kind of a funny thing to say here, because I think both ships long predate the kind of YA fiction trends that I'm talking about, but it's still kind of funny.

Anyway, this is the trend that I'm thinking about: in many YA fantasy books, there is a female protagonist that is somehow caught in two worlds. Maybe she's secretly a faerie raised by humans. Or she's half elf, half human. But raised human. Basically, the idea is that the female character is an ordinary human girl until something happens that reveals that she has this whole other magical life and potential.

And in many of these books, there is something resembling a love triangle. The girl's got a boyfriend who is an ordinary human. He's in love with her as a human and helps her keep connected to her human side. He's usually conventional and a bit boring. Then there's the bad boy magic guy. He's the one who encourages her to embrace her elf/faerie/whatever magic side. Go wild with your sparkly chaotic magic.

Inevitably the boring dude loses out to the bad boy, because really, there's no competition.

But that's why Scott/Jean and Logan/Jean are kind of funny from that perspective. Because in this badly imagined comparison, Jean is of course, that ordinary girl. Now, she IS a mutant, so she's already not completely baseline ordinary. But we could look at the Phoenix as kind of her whole magical other self.

Scott, of course, is the conventional bland original love interest whose known her since her youth. Logan, of course, is the bad boy, wild guy she meets as an adult.

But the actual dynamics of the relationship are the OPPOSITE of the YA cliches.

Because Logan, for all his wildness, is a pretty conventional romantic. Oh, he's got the dramatic self-loathing and pining, but generally, he's a "bring flowers to the lady" kind of guy. At least with her. She's "Jeannie". She's normal and kind and sweet and she brings out the best in him and makes him want to be a better guy.

I don't know if we ever really get a clear idea of Logan's feelings about Jean AS the Phoenix in 616. Probably because back during the Phoenix/Dark Phoenix Saga, Jean/Logan wasn't really a thing. He liked her, but she seemed primarily disgusted by him. (This got retroactively remedied in some of the X-Men classic stories that rewrote a few of those scenes to add some pining and reciprocity. But that's after the fact.) Basically, during the time when we were supposed to see Jean and the Phoenix as essentially aspects of the same person, Logan wasn't a romantic factor at all.

By the time Jean/Logan was a thing, the Phoenix was narratively a separate entity, and Logan's never particularly been in favor of it. He is, however, very into Jean as the girl next door. The human side of her.

But Scott, on the other hand, has always been MASSIVELY into Jean as the Phoenix. He never really seemed that put off by the Dark Phoenix. He was happy to propose marriage just before the Shi'ar decided to poke their heads in and make everything more difficult, and that was AFTER the woman nearly killed them all and ate a star.

There's at least one point in an X-Factor issue, when Scott's admittedly running very hot and cold (mostly due to the Maddie issue), where Jean outright accuses him of loving the Phoenix more than he loves her.

Claremont's had that moment of connection at the orphanage, and we've had at least a couple of Phoenix comes back stories that involved her directly coming for him (Endsong was my favorite. Scott gets her to back down by having Kitty's hand phased through his chest. Such a stupid fucking plan, Scott).

And there was a scene that, back when it came out, got Scott a fair bit of criticism. In New X-Men, to Emma, he vents something about Jean's wardrobe, the mom sweaters verses the Black Queen's corset. Now this was Scott at his most traumatized and self-destructive/self-loathing. I don't think he was literally saying that he preferred her when she was being mentally influenced (especially since she almost killed him at the time). I THINK it was more of an indicator of the out of control way he was feeling, and how her attempt to project normalcy and repress the wilder/more passionate/more powerful aspects of herself were something that he felt very alienated from..

(There were a lot of interesting Jean-and-Phoenix elements going on in that run, alongside Scott's trauma, and Emma's...many issues. It's worth a reread, though not all of it is a comfortable reread..)

There's a reason that the "psychic affair" started with Emma wearing the guise of the Phoenix.

And of course, the more powerful Jean is, the more Scott seems to be into it. This is the man who has, more than once, used "my wife could kick your ass" to win a confrontation. He's clearly turned on when she ignites a star.

It's not that Scott is ONLY into the Phoenix though. He loves Jean too, and we've seen that 100 times over in the 90s and in Krakoa and how they interact on a day to day basis. But to him, her power is an important part of her. And it's hot when she embraces it.

I feel like this may be the fundamental reason that Jean/Logan never really took off as a pairing, even when there was ample opportunity (except in the context of polyamory). Because for all that Logan has that bad boy sex appeal, he doesn't really work as a power fantasy. Not every girl is into civilizing the wild man, after all. Some really want to cut loose with them instead.

And well, when that's not an option, a quiet conventional man who'll happily hold your flower while YOU cut loose, that's got its appeal too.

[victimsofyaoipoll]

Round 3

Propaganda Under Cut

Joan Watson

How were BBC Sherlock shippers so rancid about a WOMAN who wasnt even in the SAME SHOW?????

Martin Freeman of BBC Sherlock insulted Elementary and specifically Lucy Liu in the press. He straight up called Lucy Liu a "dog" in an interview APPARENTLY as a joke, because calling female actors ugly is hilarious. Benedict Cumberbatch was more measured about it, but he still said he was cynical about Elementary because it would lose the "male friendship" dynamic, which of course Johnlock shippers used against Joan Watson fans. Even the lead BBC Sherlock actors got in on the yaoi victimization of Joan Watson... 😔

she wasn't even in the same SHOW as the yaoi I've been convinced she deserves to win the entire poll. I was a Johnlocker but I did watch the first season of Elementary and it was fine????? It was totally okay????? Especially in hindsight given how hard Sherlock season four flopped. Also Lucy Liu is a queen and deserved zero vitriol for *checks notes* playing a character???? A fucking fictional character???????? Oh my god we were all SO mean to this show and we (or at least I) thought it was like The Good Fight™️, like we were defending BBC Sherlock against copyright infringement and straightwashing and Jonny Lee Miller's bizarre scarf, (it wasn't a good scarf I do stand by that) but then Elementary didn't make Holmes and Watson a couple either???? And also it didn't insult its audience constantly etc etc we've all seen the Hbomberguy Sherlock is Garbage video. This is really long sorry hashtag justice for Joan Watson

Nyota Uhura

She's Spock's canon partner in AOS, and I get it because they're not a great couple, but she gets villianized in fic so much. They constantly make her an asshole (which totally has nothing to do with her being black /sarcasm) and abusive just for the crime of dating a man headcanoned as gay. And I mean, I think Spock is gay and her being a love interest was unnecessary but still! She's cool!

Oh my god so in the Star Trek reboot she’s Spock’s girlfriend and the fandom has no idea what to do with her??? Like she is ALWAYS either such a bitch or like the mom friend? And there is so much more to her character than that? But they always break down her character AND find a quick and easy way to break up her and Spock. I’m not even mad at that but at least treat their relationship with some weight instead of just being like ‘it never mattered’. People can love multiple people throughout the course of their lives. You know that right? Just because you loved someone before doesn’t make your new love any less special. And even headcanoning Spock as gay… you realize he doesn’t need to be attracted to Uhura for their relationship to have mattered, right? Even if he confused friendship for romantic attraction, him feeling such strong friendship and openly expressing it is so monumental for him!!! 

she's dating Spock, who people ship with Kirk, so fans have decided that it's horrible writing and "really, they're just defending her, the movies turned her into just a love interests," which is not at all true. The movies do so much more for her to the point that the fans who have only seen the movies think that the main characters are Kirk, Spock, and Uhura instead of the Kirk, Spock, McCoy of the original series. Also having a black women being shown as being desired and loved in mainstream media, particularly by one of the most popular characters of all time, is a good thing, not making her "just a love interest"

[momentomori24]

Long-ass fandom rant because I need to scream into the void to find a reason to live let's gooooo

[For context I wrote most of this last friday which I thought was good to mention so the timeline makes a bit more sense. I really held off on this one XD Welp, let's start this trainwreck.]

Ok, I know I have other long posts I should be paying attention to (*cough* Keiji's shady shenanigans rant *cough*) among other probably more important things, but quickly wanna get this off my chest because it's kinda started to bug me and add even more concerns about the yttd fandom than I already have. This is specifically going to be about soushin-- yeah, yeah, I know-- but also bleed into something more... broad. Or broader. Idk, I'm a Tumblr user not a grammar teacher.

While browsing through Twitter I've been noticing a little spike in popularity for yttd with more fans and soushin shippers emerging as well. Which is cool, the game deserves all the praise and popularity it can get. And as someone whose been here for years, I'm glad that the fandom is slowly and steadily grown more accepting of soushin compared to the attitude around it way back when. There's been some genuinely really cool stuff that really does the ship justice from a lot of talented artist and writers that I absolutely love (will link some later), but something I've also been seeing a lot of from fans is what I can only describe as a "sanitisation resurgence" (but not really. kinda). A week or two ago on Twitter I stumbled across some soushin discourse where some people were sharing the sentiment that "if soushin end up being related and/or have a big age gap the ship is ruined". That they can only be two years apart max or else Nankidai has "fumbled them".

And the only response to that I had is "what". Like, how is that a deal breaker to you lot? How did you even get into the ship without accepting that those things could very likely end up being canon? How are you here and not ready to ship them no matter what's revealed about them after everything we've learned about them? Midori and Shin possibly being related was always on the table, and Midori potentially having already been an adult when Shin was in high school was always a very real possibility ever since we learned that he was never actually a student at his school. This is literally what soushin shippers got harassed by antis for years ago. Soushin is "problematic", and that's why people who shipped them where treated so badly in the fandom or just excluded all together. I can't count how many timed I've come across a "soushin shippers dni" or "soushiners are freaks and I hope you all have a bad day" or soushin fanfics/art with "I DON'T ACTUALLY SHIP IT BTW" and "not a ship" and "actual soushin shippers dni" attached to it. I can't recall how many times I had to explain myself with the "I ship but I don't condone it irl" or explain why I shipped them to not be labelled as a freak as if you need an excuse to ship anything fictional to begin with. I still remember soushin artist @uououoon and how they ended up deleting their Twitter account years ago because of the harassment and slanderous comments they were receiving for ships the fandom deemed problematic. When a person was saying their goodbyes to them on reddit and made some goodbye art (which is now deleted), some assholes in the comments were calling them weirdos and pedophiles for how they explored fiction and "glorified abuse" (which are the usual comments to uououoon's art posted on reddit unfortunately). I only caught wind of this one because back when they were still active in the fandom they were my favourite soushin artist and I went through their stuff almost every day and was tipped off when I randomly couldn't find their account anymore. They were such a nice and incredibly talented person too so the fact they essentially got bullied by a flock of stupid western fans seriously irritates me thinking about it again. This is why we cannot have nice things.

Soushin is "problematic". It's toxic and subtly abusive and important to the characters in question, but that didn't stop people from going after people who wanted to explore a dark, canon relationship (romantic, platonic or otherwise). How the actual hell did we go from "soushin has very toxic and problematic elements and you shouldn't be shipping it, you fucking freaks" to "you can ship it but don't make it actually problematic, you fucking freaks" like what is happening right now???? The worst part is that this is coming from other soushin shippers. The fact that there's actually soushiners with "proshippers dni" or "soushin is not for proship" genuinely makes me want to bite someone. Like, you horrible summer child-- not only are you demonstrating that you don't even know what "proship" actually means, but you're also spitting in the face of the people in our community that have CARRIED this ship for us for years. Why throw them under the bus to be one of the “good ones” in the eyes of antis when they hate us all anyway?

This brings us back to the sanitisation point: I feel like soushin is slowly being "sanitised" to fit the sensitive palette of antis by trying to make them as "morally acceptable" as possible. It's a worry I’ve had for a long time that once the fandom grows more accepting of the ship we'll be seeing more people basically scrubbing soushin of everything that made, well, soushin, to justify enjoying it. I've seen a bit of it already with a few people trying to say it's "not abusive" or just erase Shin's very obvious trauma by Midori all together for quite some time. Guess it's starting to happen on a bigger scale sooner rather than later. Maybe. Personally I don't think soushin having a big age gap or being related would ruin the ship. It just adds another layer of fucked up to their already fucked up relationship (I already hc Midori to be significantly older anyway so maybe I'm just biased). It doesn't really matter. I came here for toxic yaoi. I want nuclear waste level toxicity, not nuclear waste level toxicity presented in the most conventional and moral way possible. What would the point even be? It’s like packaging poison in a grape juice box. Like, it might be harmless to look at and more justifiable to think of as delicious, but it’s still poison. You making it look all cute and innocent isn’t going to change that. It's kinda funny and by that I mean not really that people will talk about wanting more "toxic yaoi" but when the yaoi is actually toxic and messy and horrific they will cry about it being "bad" or "ruined". You don't actually want dark dynamics, you want dark dynamics stripped of everything that makes them uncomfortable and dark so it's digestible to your tastes that don't even align with said dynamics in the first place. The worst part of this whole "soushin isn't proship so it's fine" bullshit is that it relies on trying to make the ship more "morally acceptable" or "legal" than other ships. Dawg, we are talking about abuse. You shouldn't be minimising that to say "well it's not [insert other terrible thing] so it's fine!!" That's not the "gotcha" you think it is. It’s one of the reasons why antis being into soushin made me feel weird cuz like you can’t ship it and then turn around to insult someone else, man (I’ve seen so many soushin defenders bash other “proships” to justify theirs like what are you doing--).

Realistically, the simplest and smartest thing to do when I see someone mischaracterise or butcher my faves is to either block or ignore and pretend to not care so I don't act on my sixth sense telling me to off them and myself. Realistically, this shouldn't be a big deal or anything that important, but this attitude is usually weaponized to harm and harass people who don't conform to their purity crisis over fiction. I'm in the unfortunate position of being not only a Your Turn to Die fandom dweller, but a Hazbin Hotel and The Coffin of Andy and Leyley one too. I'm used to being labelled a rapist and incest apologist irl who's delusional and deserves to be harassed and insulted by virtue of the media or ships I like (probably not a good thing). But people who are more active in these fandoms than me have it much worse as they get this shit directly waaaay more often while I mostly get called these things indirectly, which is what motivated me more to make this post.

So a couple days ago someone made some art of Monika from ddlc, Nikole (don't know the game sorry) and Ashley from Tcoaal. A lot of people on Twitter, unsurprisingly, bashed it for including Ashley to the point where some felt the need to clarify that they like her as a character but her actions (for some reason I do not understand like Monika has also done some seriously evil shit why are you not applying that logic to her too?). What struck me the most is that a yttd fan-- a self proclaimed "Midori enthusiast"-- ALSO quoted it to bash having Ashley in it. A freaking Midori fan. I told them to mind their business and start separating fiction and reality and to stop being a hypocrite, and thus ensued the most hilarious and stupidest convo I've had in a while:

You can literally count the seconds it takes for these guys to start throwing predator accusations and slurs at people. So "not exploring fiction correctly" makes me weird, but harming or putting real people on blast for nothing is free game, apparently. They're not the worst, both in this instance and in general, but it just stuck with me. Which is impressive, cuz I normally don't have much emotions to spare aside from general mild irritation for things like this. Maybe it's the Sonic feet.

But it ties into my issue. Midori's an absolute piece of garbage, yet some people will convince themselves that his actions are in some way justifiable to justify their hatred of something else (that is a lot less severe in this case) rather than love and let love. Tcoaal is not an "incest game" and if you describe it like that unironically you are not ready to be on the internet. No, it doesn't condone or glorify incest-- it literally does the opposite. If you need the characters to look into the camera and say "what we're doing is wrong and immoral" before doing something bad, I think you're the problem at that point. For the same reason you liking Midori (probably) doesn't mean you support human experimentation and torture, someone liking Tcoaal doesn't mean they support incest and someone shipping soushin doesn't mean they support abuse. These things are dark and shouldn't be condoned irl, but this is fiction. We can do whatever the hell we want. Being into darker themes and media doesn't have to reflect your real world views, but the inability to grasp that sentiment leads people to make their interests as moral and sanitised as possible and, feeling morally superior, will go after people who don't do that. This person deadass said that "incest is not morally grey and absolutely unjustifiable" (didn't even say that it wasn't btw) as if their blorbo hasn't committed so many atrocities for kicks that I personally find more unjustifiable. That line implies that they think that everything else Ashley has done and everything Midori has done can be justified because it wasn't incest specifically, which I find is a WILD thing to insinuate XD But it really does encapsulate the hoops antis will jump through to defend their likes while attacking yours despite the fact that it's literally the exact same as theirs. Rule of thumb: if someone accuses you of condoning something immoral because you like it in fiction, apply that logic to them, look at what they like and if their wet little meow meow is the Joker, Eren, Killua, Makima, Midori or whatever other morally bankrupt character you can come up with, take that as a confession and run. Cuz half the time these guys are actually nuts. While quote tweeting someone to shit on their art isn't the worst thing, considering how twitter has treated tcoaal artists the fact that they'd potentially open them up to harassment pissed me off, which is probably evident from my tone.

[Hi hi, this is me from the present right now cuz a more recent development came up so I’m using it as an example here too.]

While most of the things listed here have all been happening online, this attitude can come up in the real world as well.

As OP states, a bunch of hellaverse cosplayers were targetted at a french convention by haters of the show trying to ruin their cosplay. This is already completely unacceptable but the thing I can’t for the life of me get over is torching their costume while they’re still wearing it. Literally attempting to set someone on fire. All over a fucking show. It’s baffling how people can justify actions like this because they think your taste in fiction is so disgusting it’s Ok for them to hurt you. Not just online, but outside as well. It’s not the first time a hellaverse cosplayer has been harassed (last time it was a Valentino cosplayer but then again Val fans get shit from all sides all the time), and while I’m pretty sure these will remain as isolated cases it’s still scary to think about. What’s even more scary to think about how people think that their opinion on hazbin hotel has any relevance to the situation. So many of the comments in that post are just “I hate Hazbin Hotel, but—” or “I hate the fandom, but--” or “I hate Vivzie, but—” and I’m literally here ready to start pouncing like SHUT UP. No buts. That is not in any way important here. You not liking the show or the creator should not be important to the situation of cosplayers being actively harmed. You don’t have to signal your allegiances before showing basic human empathy, goddamnit. And what’s even worse is that some people have just turned this into a “b-but the hazbin fandom!!” issue, which is insulting. For example:

The “Hazbin fans do blackface and disrespect black people daily” is a reference to ONE Alastor cosplayer that nobody had defended. Not even fans. At least no one I can find. Yet they are using this one bad apple to generalise the whole fandom as "bad" and down play the amount of bullshit the hatedom does to fans on a regular. It kinda makes me feel sick that someone would look at a situation like this and spin this into a “fandom thing” rather than focusing on the victims. That they don’t deserve to be taken as seriously just because of the fandom their in. Some lunatic in the comments was literally completely minimising this whole thing saying “some red paint (fake blood capsules) isn’t nearly as bad as lynching and what black people have gone through in America” before calling anyone who called out that that’s completely irrelevant racist for liking Hazbin Hotel like are you kidding me. My homies in Christ, someone almost got lit on fire can everyone please stay on the goddamn topic. This is one of the rare moments where I was kinda proud of twitter as the majority of the comments and quotes where calling out their bullshit, but the amount of likes and some of the comments are still disappointing.

So what points am I trying to make here? This was very spontaneous and rushed so apologies if it feels messy cuz it very much is messy. But my main points boil down to this: Purification, sanitation and the “fiction equals reality” and "your fictional tastes reflect on you morality irl" arguments need to die. They just have to. While petting Shin on a daily basis gives me enough serotonin to find the will to live, the only true solace I will find is when people start being normal. People shouldn’t be getting harassed or labelled as freaks for fiction you don’t like both online and real life. People are not less worthy of basic human decency and empathy solely based on their fictional interests. People should be able to explore fiction however the hell they want without worrying about there being made a call out post on them somewhere. I search Tcoaal on twitter and there’ll always be a bunch of posts with over 10k likes calling all fans annoying weirdos or say it’s an “incest game” even tho it literally isn’t. I will try looking for some Valangel art on tumblr and see some loser use the tag to basically shit on everyone who ships it and lying about the treatment these shippers get while defending Charlastor or just shit on the ship in general. I just exist on the twitter side of the HH fandom chilling with other Val fans and literally every single one of them has either received death/rape threats or told to kill themselves, got ratio’d by a bunch of haters, had a call out post saying not to follow dedicated to them, had their art reposted and Val scribbled out, repeatedly accused of ““romantising a rapist””, or all of the fucking above. Valentino’s VA gets asked if he’s actually like the character he plays in real life or a fan being “relieved that he didn’t abuse them like Valentino” when they met (kudos to Joel for being chill about it btw I would be fuming this fandom does not deserve this man). I type in a certain controversial yttd ship to search and most of the latest posts are just people being rude, saying that if Nankidai makes them canon they’ll drop the game, calling the man himself a freak, calling other shippers freaks, shitting on soushin as well and then having soushiners defend their ship while also shitting on said controversial ship. It genuinely feels like fanbases are circuses and we are the clowns 💀

I could list other examples people being weirdos but I can't do that without breaking the momentum of this post even more than I already have. I guess what I wanted to vent about is how these attitudes regarding fiction and the way people police how others engage with it and how people think of you based on what you like can go from just annoying to downright dangerous more often than you’d think. That belief that you are morally superior to someone else based on the fact that you ship or like things the “legal” and “pure” and “healthy” way (which is never actually the case btw) can lead to you being really disrespectful or a complete asshole and not feeling bad about it at all, which does more harm than good. Which is why I thought it was important to bring up more extreme cases to empathise how this obsessive gatekeeping of fiction can and does hurt real people, who should be more important to you than fictional characters.

All of this is very likely going to sound very aggressive in tone and I want to quickly clarify that this is not meant to be an attack towards anyone in particular. I'm just tired and recalling all this stuff is making my mood sink like a stone lmao. Who knows, maybe I'm just overexaggerating and things won't get worse when the game gets more popular. This is just what I've been witnessing both in and out of my side of the moon. The amount of yttd fans I've seen act like this are a lot tho. No fandom is perfect obviously, and this one is the farthest from it, but with new people coming in and this weird attitude and need to sanitise not only towards soushin, but other "problematic" ships and media as well growing more prominent (mostly on Twitter and Tiktok) my biggest worry is that the hostility in this fandom will just... increase? Roulettefeel made pretty good posts about it-- my favourites being this one, also this one and this one's pretty short and sweet, summarising most of my soushin points a lot better and shorter than my trainwreck of a post so I recommend checking them out. If you like soushin, go check them out. If you don't like soushin, go check them out anyway. They make stuff outside of soushin too. They're pretty cool.

[I also want to add that the whole sanitisation thing in the yttd fandom is nothing new. It’s been a thing for longer than I have been here. I’ve just been seeing it again with soushin, which is was what made me want to do this in the first place. There’s another dynamic the fandom obviously does this for, but uttering it would not only get me flamed but straight up burned at the stake of bad takes so I’m saving that for a rainy day.]

Aaaaannd, I'm done, I think. I didn't have a good conclusion for this in mind. Idk, just be nice? You don't have to like "proships" (or what the fandom has defined as proship cuz that's not the actual definition), but that's what the block buttons for. Don't like, don't read, I say. Fandoms are for everyone and as long as what the person is doing is harmless, let them feel safe being themselves without having to worry about someone coming after them. Real life cops already suck. Let's not bring them into our collective escapism. And something you personally don't like ending up canon doesn't mean the game or ship is "ruined". That doesn't just go for soushin. That goes for other things too. To tie up loose ends, soushin having an age gap or being related has always been on the table and fits with other themes in the narrative. That does not count as "bad" if it makes sense. Soushin is not "Ok to ship" because it's "not an illegal ship" (whatever tf that means) and it's not "bad to ship" because it's "romanticising abuse". It's fine to ship because it's fictional. You don't need a moral justification to ship anything. That goes for all ships. That's why NOTPs exist. And "proship" doesn't and has never meant "shipping problematic pairings". It's a stance on shipping. It means being pro people being allowed to ship whatever they want. That includes being cool with problematic pairings, but is not limited to those. It means not being a fandom cop. Please stop saying otherwise, I cannot keep living this way--

Soooouuu, to end off on a more positive note and finally put this whole thing to bed I'll link some of my fav newer soushin accounts for anyone who's interested:

Hyo (orewagahai on ao3 check that out too): They are an amazing, amazing writer. If you're into dark, abusive co-dependent, complicated soushin with beautiful characterisation I would highly recommend. They just posted another soushin drabble on twitter and it's great.

jinn: They've been putting out banger after banger ever since getting into the game. Their art is absolutely stunning and they upload frequently, so go check 'em out if you can! It's actual medicine for the soul, I promise. They also draw for dead plate, so if you're into that go ahead too.

angel: Also cool. They're soushin art is hilarious and cute. As much of a sucker as I am for toxic, abusive sludge, they give thses two idiots a silliness that I enjoy. Also if you like trans!Shin content they're pretty good.

欣武 (my dumbass forgot to add them the first time sorry): They are INCREDIBLE. Extremely incredible artist. Their art is so, so freaking good. Not checking them out is absolutely your loss, ngl.

Be nice to them. If I catch anyone attempting to annoy them I'm coming after you and your entire family. Let's be better and not chase new comers off this time :3 Thanks for listening to my incoherent venting. This is mostly for me to feel a bit better, but anyone is free to read. If anyone's got an opinion or observation, feel free to offer it. I need coffee. Coffee sounds good.

[distractedducky]

So I was thinking about it… why sterek

I’ve shipped a lot in my time. From the classics like spirk and destiel, to the straight vampire diaries nonsense, from murder husbands to buddy to name a very small few. They all hold weird little places in my heart and mind but they fade and as I flow in and out of fandoms I move on to the next hyperfixation. But sterek just keeps sticking around.

It’s an old ship for me. If you go on my ao3 all the way back to 2013 you’ll see my first ever book mark was a sterek fic. That fic is still a comfort fic for me today and is something I read when my anxiety is uncontrollable.

It was something I read late in 2022 when the reality of the pandemic and the last few years hit me hard and got me back into Teen Wolf so hard it actually pushed me out of the supernatural hole the start of the pandemic put me in.

I’ve always been a shipper and I have my ride or dies, my OTPs and Ot3s, and so on and so forth, but fandom has always been weird for me. I started young and witnessed the birth in Tumblr and ao3, as a tween my taste can only be described as pure trash* Affectionate * but as I got older, like most things in life, my taste changed. And though I still love me some hot garbage, I engage with it differently than that little 12-year-old who thought werewolves and vampires were cool no further explanation necessary.

Now I’m an academic, a librarian, who actually studied critical lit analysis, book studies, and religion. Who spent years learning how to dissect prose and poetry to look beyond text in an professional setting. And though I don’t regret it and it has led to some fun changes in the way I engage with fiction it also kinda ruined the fun engagement I had with things back in the day when baby me bookmarked that first fic.

I need more from my characters now, more from my fandoms and it has led me away from and into the arms of content that I never saw coming. (Looking at you Danny phantom phandom) I needed depth or the potential for depth that some shows just didn’t lend themselves to cleanly enough to satisfy me and yet… sterek persisted.

One of my problems is I didn’t really engage with the fandom when the show was airing and only watched a few season sporadically until recently, so I wasn’t there when things were forming organically. It has left me out of step with the primary directions fan content creators have taken with the ship and the directions they took, though fun and interesting, aren’t really my usual thing.

I hate the infantilization of stiles and other teen wolf characters like Isaac. I generally hate infantilization of adults, hyper feminization of certain types of characters and so on and so forth and it has to do with my own gender stuff, but I usually avoid it in fanfiction. I am also not a huge fan of modern werewolf romance erotica. I have a lot of opinions on real supernatural mythology and legends and I don’t like the anthropomorphism that shows up a lot in werewolf stories. Not that I haven’t read some amazing takes on werewolf lore, especially in the Teen Wolf fandom but I’m speaking generally. I’m also not a fan of pack mom stiles (again my own gender stuff) and though I think Scott’s inconsistent character and writing throughout the show lens him to be whatever your fic needs to be (best friend, hype man, wingman, idiot, genius, villain, so on and so forth) I don’t like a lot of the 'Scott sucks just because' fics. I don’t like the hate in the fandom around that. I also don’t like the hypermasculine depictions of Derek in a lot of fics and on and on. I have read a lot of TW and sterek and by all accounts, it should be a fandom I wouldn't personally engage with this much. Yet for all that, I have found there is an exception to every trope I hate, every hard line i draw for myself, because the fic was just so good. For every dozen or so fics that seem to tell me that this isn’t the fandom for me, there is that one amazing thing that says “No! This is exactly where you wanna be”.

Like I said, I need more from my fandoms now a days and most of what that boils down to is plausible deniability. I need enough gaps in the narrative to fill them in myself, but with enough connective pieces that everything can make sense when put together. The fatal flaw of telling without showing, which allows people to extrapolate out what they want from certain things -all the subtext with none of the text - is exactly where my degree comes in handy.

And sterek well… I think what it is for me as a shipper is the inconsistencies. That is kind of why I still ship it so far and for so long. It's the fact of why was Stiles in Derek's dream at the end of 3b? We can talk about all the things with him being his anchor and the grasping at straws that we as shippers all love to do but the narrative fact is they did not spend that much time on screen together or even saying they were doing things off-screen together. That leads us to a lot of whys. Why were they together at the beginning of season two talking about the alpha pack? Why were they in certain situations in season four that ld them to work so well? What happens in all of this dead time? What happens in season six? We see stiles in episode one be like "Oh my God Derek is a mass murderer wanted by the FBI" and at the end of the season, they've apparently driven and or flown back to California together, apparently spent some time together. They're not on the run from the FBI so that got cleared somehow, stiles isn't limping so his foot healed. There's so much dead time like that throughout the show so when scenes happen like the hand on Derek's shoulder after the death of Boyd you're left thinking that's kind of off, we haven't seen any interactions with them that would show that they have that kind of deep solemn relationship where comforting him would make sense.

The show notoriously has a terrible timeline, but all that does is fuel the fact that we don't know how much time any of these characters are really spending off-screen together. We can only assume that it happened in this weird dead time. This is why somehow Derek's view of Stiles in his head is like a calm stable dependable figure who can help him talk through an issue. This is why they always gravitate towards each other in fights. This is why they work so well together in a crisis. Like we have to assume that happened before which is stupid and I know it's so much reaching, but in my little brain, it's the only way that makes all of this random shit fit together- so I gotta ship it. Obviously, the real-world explanation is inconsistent writing plus putting space between them once the writer stopped wanting people to ship it, but because you get all of these disjointed scenes where they're too intense for what we've been previously seeing there is some type of disconnect here -what is that? and if you're looking at the show, not as a work of fiction, but as a narrative, what else are we gonna do then assume that they have spent way more time emotionally connecting than we have seen on the screen.

And for me that’s everything I want in a ship, that ability to play and extrapolate random events and ask, okay now how would these all fit! And that’s what spawns great ideas and stories and art and why I ship it, dispute the fact that it really shouldn't work for me personally.

I think it’s why a lot of people still stop sterek despite the fact that the attitude towards it and the show has shifted a lot and in many different ways in the last decade.

Sorry for the rant, I’ve been thinking about this for days and had to get it out there. I hope I didn’t offend anyone. I truly love the Teen Wolf fandom and everything it’s done and everything it created and I’m so happy to be able to engage with it.

[piracytheorist]

I chose violence ! So, ask 22. <3

22. your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores

I am really choosing violence here because I recently got the Family Portrait light novel book and I (re-)read the story of Anya and Damian getting lost in the woods and I am so amazed at how people miss how their dynamic can be funny.

Look at how Anya completely dismisses him and tell me she deserves to be reduced to an "I can fix him" narrative for Damian's uwuification. She's not playing "hard to get", she's standing up for herself while Damian is being too stubborn to confront his own conflicting emotions.

To be clear, this is far from my "favourite part of canon", but among the "parts of canon everyone else ignores", this is probably the one I feel people miss the most about. It's not funny when Damian bullies her (yes I have seen that take before because some see the bullying as "teasing" between equals and sorry but it very much isn't), it's funny when Anya ignores him or one-ups him and he's just left there pouting and grunting.

I cannot comprehend people seeing this and taking it seriously. It's just funny because Anya only challenges him when she's not trying to. She tries to help him, or impress him, or do anything positive, and she gets the cold shoulder. Then she gives him a funny look and Damian's entire world is shooketh. But saying that Damian was never a bully, that somehow his intentions were always noble, or that he never considered her lesser is just... biased, for starters, and second, it removes from the equation how funny it is that the girl he tries to avoid at all costs even by insulting her - or her father - to their faces keeps coming back to haunt him because he has a crush on her. The uneducated pleb actually helped me! The horror!

It's just funny and I cannot comprehend taking it seriously. You work with kids for a few years and you only see that stuff as funny antics you'll laugh at with your friends, and nothing close to something you'd get invested in. Like fr there's a girl at the school I work at always complaining about one certain boy and I joke with my friends about how people are only so obsessed with others when they have a crush on them - but it's just that; a joke between me and my friends, and something I would never even dare to think to utter in front of any of my students. And the thought of giving one (1) iota of shit about my students' romantic relationships makes me wanna barf. Let alone doing that for six-year-olds, even if they're fictional.

Idk I just feel that amatonormativity has just poisoned the public opinion so much that only romance is important and all other fictional character dynamics are merely an afterthought, if even that, and that can only make discussing fictional stories less interesting, more limited, and more shallow. And honestly, it can be unfair to the original material (yeah yeah I know death of the author but sometimes you gotta separate canon from headcanon and fanfiction). There's so much fun to have with fictional stories if you set romance aside for once.

(Anime only fan here and not interested in debate on this. Don't spoil me and don't try to sell this ship to me)

[galaxygolfergirl]

Some of my favorite Helsa fan arts I’ve done throughout the years (dates are in the alt text).

I’ve been thinking about this ship recently, especially its place in the fandom, and I have some thoughts (read below)

Ever since I was roped into this franchise 10 years ago, I think I’ve almost always drawn Hans with a beard. Primarily, it was because I felt that if he ever did show up again in Frozen media, he would be more weathered and unpretentious about his appearance since dropping his facade in the first film. Also because I just thought he would look better with more facial hair (it’s a me thing).

As for Elsa, I’ve never been consistent in drawing her, as it was hard for me to read her animated model, what with her huge eyes and baby nose, as normal, so that’s evolved over the years to a happy medium where it still reads as Elsa, but also reads as human with normal face proportions.

As to why I’ve shipped helsa all these years? Hans and Elsa are two sides of the same coin to me, the main difference being that one of them succumbed to their worst intentions and desires, while the other freed themselves and learned to embrace love and peace in their life. Both were isolated during their childhoods, resulting in years of loneliness, misery, and bitterness; both try to appear poised and reserved, hiding their inner self-loathing; both are intelligent and cunning, both have a definite aggressive streak, and both have interesting chemistry in their very few scenes together. Hans seems to be the only one on equal footing with Elsa who can get through to her throughout the film, mainly for his own ambition, of course, but it intrigued me to see even all these years later how compelling their interactions are.

Why would he sympathetically plead, “don’t be the monster they fear you are,” and stop her from killing those two guards? If he was planning on killing her, why would he go to her and ask if she could stop the winter? Why does he look shocked, almost sad when she tells him that she can’t, like he’s regretting having to kill her? It’s moments like these that paint these characters with more nuance than meets the eye.

I’ve always thought after the first movie, there was definitely potential for a more nuanced and interesting story if Hans were to return. Not simply for revenge, but rather an “enemy of my enemy is my friend” situation, where Frohana would have to work with Hans somehow to fend off an invading force or adversary, like the Southern Isles, to stick it to his family. He and Elsa would be adversarial, for sure, but through forced cooperation, they could open up and become more vulnerable with one another. The amount of angst and turmoil over their feelings for one another would be doubly engrossing. The drama would be incredible.

Now listen: I don’t really expect any of that to happen. I got off the Helsa or die party bus years ago and I’m just mainly enjoying it as it’s own non-canon concept. Believe me, I would love it if it did happen, god willing and the creek don’t rise. But really, when you get down to it, these are movies marketed at little girls, and I don’t think it would really go that far. It’s not easy to come back from holding a sword over a girl’s head, as quoted by Santino Fontana himself.

I grew up with this fandom, I started all the way back in middle school 10 years ago, and this has been a definite learning experience for me in separating the extrapolated world of fan-fiction and the reality of a pg animated musical. I’ve grown up and my expectations are different, and now I understand that canon doesn’t mean shit. I beg, do not take any of this seriously. Just because it has the Disney trademark slapped on it does not mean it’s the end all be all of a story. Stories are fluid things that adapt and evolve in each of the hands they pass through. No one interpretation of a story or a character or a relationship has to be “the right one,” and not every character has to sit on a black and white scale of moral dichotomy, there are always shades of gray.

I’m not saying all of this to be deep about a ship between a Disney princess and a Disney villain that I got into when I was 13, believe I know it’s not that deep. I’m saying this because I’ve lived through fandom and set myself up with false expectations, only to be disappointed. Hell, I took a break from helsa for a solid 3 years because of how burnt out I was. It’s far too easy to dissociate from the text and treat fanon as canon; you’re just setting yourself up to be disappointed. Just let it be its own thing! Like I said, canon does not mean shit! Don’t take things so seriously! Feel free to tell your own stories!

Anyways, I still love this ship, or at least the version I came up with in my head, because I am a storyteller, and I saw potential in these two that could be realized through other means. It doesn’t matter to me if it’s canon or not. Just enjoy it as it is.

[spop-romanticizes-abuse]

Not really an ask, but I just wanted to thank you and all the other critics that speak about how much of an actual shitshow SPOP was when dealing with C*tra.

For the longest time, I shipped C*tr*dora because I was an impressionable kid who saw them kiss and didn't realize that Canon ships can suck and still be Canon. I didn't Stan C*tra or anything, but I did try defending her one time to my irl friends and my only arguments were that:

A) She's Adora's girlfriend so there has to be good in her (yeah no)

And B) She was "redeemed".

But what actually got me second-guessing C*tra and her fans was when I saw a post about the S4 Glimmadora argument and saw hundreds of comments going; "Glimmer is so selfish!" "Glimmer is a horrible person!" "This is why C*tra is better than Glimmer."

And I was and still am the biggest Glimmer fan, and it made me upset. I mean, Glimmer literally lost her mom and was given basically no time to grieve. It didn't excuse her actions, but everyone kept talking about her like she was a villain trying to destroy the world. And then I thought;

'Didn't C*tra actually destroy the world?' And that got me in this deep rabbit hole of realizing C*tra and C*tr*dora is abusive in so many ways and telling myself I was crazy because so many people were defending her. But then I saw one of your posts, scrolled through your blog and realized; 'Oh, I'm not crazy. C*tra is a horrible person and her stans are just delusional.' It even made me realize how fucked up the show was in so many other aspects; The incest, the leash, the fact that the only enby character was a lizard, and so much more.

So thank you and all the other critics out there that might help give people validation or help people open their eyes.

Thank you. 💙

i'm glad you found my blog and other critic blogs helpful! i know that anti blogs generally have a reputation for nitpicking on unnecessary details and ruining the fun, but that was never what i wanted to do with mine. i didn't expect all of c//a stans to immediately understand my point and stop shipping c//a (most of them don't even pay attention to what we're saying, let alone try to understand) but getting asks like yours really renews my faith in humanity.

i try not to judge what other people ship or to project my moral compass too much into fiction but the problem with c//a isn't that it's toxic, it's the fact that it's heavily romanticized. if they merely wanted to explore an abusive relationship in fiction, that's not a problem. it's quite healthy, actually. but the fact that they imply that this is a healthy relationship and a lot of the fans defend this ship to hell and back is really concerning.

and yes, like you said, it's really hypocritical of fans to villanize glimmer so much for two mistakes that the narrative held her accountable for, while coddling catra who had to face exactly zero consequences for her actions.

i completely understand how you felt, it can often be daunting to be the only one to actually see things as they are, instead of blindly believing what the writers say because the rest of the fandom does. i didn't ship c//a at all but i felt the same way you did, seeing everyone praise the ship and wondering if i'm just being overdramatic.

it's only after i found an anti c//a account on instagram (@anticatradora ; they go into detail with a lot of the scenes in the show, if you want to check out their account!) that i realized that i was right, and this is actually a really weird and problematic ship that people are worshipping just because they're starved of queer representation. i understand wanting to see people like you represented in media, but there are a lot of characters and ships who are much better written and better developed than c//a.

anyway all of this to say, i'm proud of you for realizing the nuance of this situation in this hivemind of a fandom. it's always better to be open to criticism than to blindly defend a show just because you like it. thank you for this ask, it made my day! 💙

[chuplayswithfire]

Im sorry about this i need to rant. I thought things were getting better but Izzy stan Twitter is at it again with their whining, truth bending and self-victimising.

'Do you like OMFD but wish the queer disabled hero didnt die?' IZZY IS NOT THE HERO OF THIS SHOW!!!!! He is at best a reformed antagonist. What an insult to the other disabled characters, and what about the actual heroes of the show??

'We've been betrayed by straight man writing queer stories'. First of all, way to dismiss the other writers. Also, its not his fault you project your personal traumas and mental health on a fictional character on a show with death in the title.

'GB's ending is comphet (?????) because 'we only need eachother' and theyre breaking away from their queer community' ED HAS BEEN WANTING TO LEAVE PIRACY SINCE LAST SEASON!!! also, its progress that Stede was able to resist basic flattery. And David made it clear that they still have work to do. This one truly broke my brain.

Im just sick of all this. Izzy stans have been coddled for the past week, being told its ok to grieve, but theyve crossed multiple lines. I do wish some things had been more explicit in this finale, only because David overestimated the maturity and media literacy of some people.

Sorry for this but i needed to talk to people here. Its beyond annoyance at this point. Im angry and sick of petty crybabies actively working to poison what we've built.

go off anon my inbox is open to your ranting let the rage flow through you [insert palpatine dot gif] but ngl the best thing you can do is just block liberally. block everyone. block left, right, center. do not be merciful. do not hold back. block until the ceiling comes down!!

because like, some of these fans have spent the last 18 months convincing themselves that their little guy was of equal importance to the main characters, the secret third protagonist, and he just got put in a box.

🎶izzy's in a box 🎶izzy's in a box🎶izzy's in a box🎶

izzy was never a hero of this show. he was a villain and then a side character on a rushed arc to redemption for the specific purpose of making him into the kind of man who could apologize to ed for being a shit. but that's hard to swallow for people who were convinced he was always right, so. also let's be honest: they don't give a shit about the other disabled people on this show. a bunch of them were trying to figure out a way for it to be wee john who was killed, and kristian is actually a queer disabled actor. they're just mad it was their little guy who they latched onto.

also yeah like four of the writers are nonbinary people of color, and there's definitely more queer writers on the team, but somehow this was totally the decision of a straight white guy. alright folks come on now to quote your idol pack it in.

gentlebeard's ending is them deciding to give their relationship a go in a more relaxed and sedate environment than the high stress locale of a pirate ship. their friends ARE going to come see them again. just because they don't all live together in the same frat house i mean ship doesn't mean they're suddenly forever alone. also there is nothing comphet about shacking up with your gay lover in a soon to be literal loveshack.

but like you can't expect these folks to care about ed or stede or gentlebeard or anything that doesn't center their white man of choice. the only thing you can do is block because anyone still throwing a fit a week later is simply not worth it.

no need to apologize anon. return to my inbox whenever.