#I’m about to be problematic but you can always tell which ships I don’t really like when I’m like. ten year age gap!!!

[redfish-blu]

Cherri and Kobra’s dynamic is so interesting.

Cherri wanted to meet him sooo bad but Party was like “No Way bro you’ll turn him into a serial killer”, but they meet eventually and Cherri is like OMG…

Kobra is very suspicious of them at first but finds out Cherri is also a Mad Gear fan even though they’re “like a thousand years old”. And they become a weird duo that others refer to as the babysitter’s club because Kobra is this stringy ten year old following Cold Blooded Killer Cherri Cola around (who is like nineteen or twenty) and it’s just kind of funny. Also they might be able to read each other’s minds.

[babkaboy]

I’ve always been curious about Obikin, because it never felt right to me, but it isn’t exactly a pro-ship? I can never really tell. On one hand there’s the “you were my brother Anakin” on the other theres the headcanons. I just wanna know what the appeal is from someone who ships them. /gen

i’m not the best person to answer this bc i really don’t care at all if a ship is problematic or proshipper or whatever lol, i mean the first thing i did after watching the kenobi show was to look out for art and fics of vader nonconning obi-wan 🤪 and even if anakin and obiwan were siblings (which they aren’t let’s be real) i’m all for the dead dove ngl!! also it’s fiction… have a little more fun cuz this shouldn’t be that different than playing with our barbies when we were 4 and making them kill each other or have orgies together lol

but to answer your question, first i found their cat-and-mouse dynamic in kenobi really hot. vader obsessing diligently on his old master who he claims he doesn’t care about anymore was crazy. however, i think obikin is a beautifully complicated relationship. it’s canon that both anakin and obi-wan’s entire relationship is built on duality: master and apprentice, dark and light, love and hate, two halves of the same coin. this is some soulmatism shit that i fuck with and i was never into the whole soulmates tbh. i also think obi-wan is a heavily repressed man in terms of love and attachments and following the code to the core, and ofc struggles with his love for anakin: he cannot control him in any way for the force against humanity that anakin is (he’s such a momboy) plus he had the chance to kill him a couple of times and yet he couldn’t bring himself to do it and finally free him from the misery of being darth vader, bc of his love for him. he even spent his life in exile and probably didn’t kill himself just for the sake of anakin’s children. it’s not a coincidence that he decided to finally die and join the force when luke and leia were reunited and he guaranteed their safety

and then you have anakin who is anything but someone who subdues his feelings: he thrives for love, love is was fuels him and the reason he Fell on the first place, he pushes and pushes like the way he did to get padme to love him. i simply love how their own approach to love complements each other so well and i cannot get enough of it, bc at the end of the day they are both each other’s most important person. like look at this extract of this novel where anakin finally joins the force after ROTJ and how obi-wan has his own whole sentence from the other ones (even from padme!!!! or shmi!!!!)

idk man i just love them so much

[bigtittiecomitte]

“Envy and Thuzi was supposed to be endgame but they changed their mind for Nuzi”

Oh boy. I hate this phrase and I dislike anyone that says this phrase and BELIEVE that Envy and Thuzi were supposed to be the canon ships. I keep seeing this phrase from toxic shippers that just can’t accept that there were no signs of those two ships of even happening and I really want to talk about the stupid misinformation of it because if there’s a thing that toxic shippers love doing the most….it’s spread misinformation.

‼️This is not a hate post about ships, I just want to talk abt how silly it is‼️

Let’s start off with an actual fact about the show! Liam wrote the scripts for each episode before episode 2, everything was planned for a reason it did not just happen out of the blue, you can tell by specific posts that Glitch made in (Glitch posting abt Beau a year ago) and some Reddit posts of the Liam qna has a lot of interesting things so I definitely recommend checking that out. So no, Nuzi can’t be fanservice if it was planned before the ship became a popular thing, people just say it’s fanservice bc they hate seeing a crowd of people happy even though they’d be just like Nuzi shippers if N and V held hands instead

I kinda have a lot to say abt Envy so I’ll just talk about Thuzi first. Thuzi (the ship between Thad and Uzi) wouldn’t have happened in canon and it’s very simple to see why it wouldn’t work out, first of all Thad hasn’t been shown ANYWHERE ever since episode 4 and I don’t think he’ll ever been seen again unless they go inside the bunker and although people say that Thad is gone bc of his voice actor being problematic I think he was always supposed to be written out (reminder that the show was written before all of that va drama). Thad didn’t really have a role to be honest he was just kinda there lol which is what wouldn’t work out between him and Uzi since they haven’t talked since episode 2, if Liam wanted Thuzi to be endgame then he would’ve made them interact more, get people invested into the ship before it would become canon but the pilot is the only episode where Thad and Uzi properly interact (I would count episode 2 but there really weren’t any shipping moments between the two unless it’s that scene where Thad pops in but that was just Uzi being all awkward lol). I’d like to add that we have no idea how Thad feels about Uzi, he’s just friendly with everyone so it’s tough to know if Thad even likes Uzi because he hasn’t shown any sign that he has, anyways that’s just my view on Thuzi lol

Envy is a ship filled with miscommunication and I’m not going to deny that. Envy (ship between N and V) is the rival ship of N and Uzi and is the 2nd most popular ship, in my opinion, it’s not a good one at all and this isn’t because I’m a Nuzi shipper, it’s because of the toxicity of it, N and V in their DD forms is very toxic and dysfunctional, V is an okay character but people should acknowledge that V was incredibly mean to N (Ignoring him, physically assaulting him, etc) obviously it’s because of everything that happened in the mansion but that doesn’t justify her actions, N is also pretty mean to V too (insulting her, physically assaulting her, etc) I don’t blame him but it still shouldn’t be justified, couples shouldn’t be mean and hurt each other which is where the miscommunication comes into place. N and V don’t talk about their feelings, they don’t talk about why they’re the way that they are with each other, they just don’t communicate, the only positive interaction I’ve seen them have is only when they are Worker Drones but that’s it, as I said in that reblog of people blaming Uzi and wishing harm on her (btw go check that post out they describe everything SO well!) we don’t know what N and V’s relationship was before they became DD’s, they could’ve been dating, they could’ve just been friends, we have no idea how long they’ve known each other for, all we know is that they were much more nicer to each other than what we see in the entire show. Maybe if they just talked and explained their feelings to each other and why V was ignoring N for who knows how long then maybe they could’ve had a chance of being endgame but that hasn’t happened and might never will if V is dead for good, they still have a chance of talking to each other but it’s too late for them to love each other, N clearly has moved on from his crush on V (it’s been noticeable since episode 3) and has taken interest in Uzi which is the only relationship he has had with anyone that is healthier so it’s no surprise if N and Uzi start dating. People need to realise that V needs to sort herself out without N, she doesn’t need a man to suddenly make her better, she needs to do that on her own terms before talking to N and starting a friendship with him

So now that’s out the way…misinformation! If Toxic shippers had a dollar for every time they spread misinformation around they’d be a billionaire because holy hell do they love spreading false information, I’ve seen so much new fans comment underneath a Nuzi post “oh but I thought they were ____” which is really damn sad. No guys Glitch and Liam never stated which ship was going to be canon they wouldn’t just spoil it and no Nuzi didn’t just come out of nowhere, if you look just close enough, they’ve been hinted at a million times

Thanks for reading this silly thing I made at 3am, I hope it does make sense bc I might just cry if I was explaining gibberish to everyone

[utilitycaster]

What’s wild to me is when the purple and black hearts stans start lying about how a lot of beaujes shippers reacted to beauyahsa. Like they were out here calling beauyasha a ship for straight people and accusing the cast of queerbaiting because one wlw ship was canon instead of another one. I’ll never forget when someone said that Beau was a problematic predatory lesbian stereotype because they were mad she never confessed her feelings for Jester.

It goes to what you’ve been saying that very little has happened between Laudna and Imogen romantically so a lot of people have resorted to yelling about other things and accusing people who don’t like the ship of being homophobic. As a lesbian I wanted to love the ship so much but it doesn’t interest in and it’s so disheartening to be accused of hating wlw relationship or be told that I’m not watching the show right.

Hey anon,

I feel like I keep using the word "ahistoric" but god does it fit like...the ugly truth is that, at least on Tumblr, the main detractors from Beauyasha by the end of the campaign were people who shipped Beau and Jester; again, there will always be some misogyny and homophobia and bigotry in the fandom so long as these exist in the real world, but like, it was not homophobes saying Beauyasha was For The Straights.

(also...how is it problematic and predatory to...not confess your feelings for someone if you have no intention of acting on them because you and they are both in other relationships. This is besides the point of this ask but I swear the people who were mad at the C2 canon ships were on a new level of dipshittery; they kept asking for Closure (TM) and it's like most normal people, if they have an unrequited crush and then enter into a relationship with someone else, never tell the person about the crush because it's awkward and there's literally nothing to do or say about it. Like, the typical path forward for closure is like, telling your therapist or journalling or making an angsty playlist, not Confessing Your Love while you're both in relationships with someone else.)

I do think this history is relevant though because in many ways...the behavior of people who shipped Beau and Jester paved the way for the open dislike of Imogen and Laudna we see today. Why should I listen to someone who calls me homophobic for not liking a lesbian ship when they called me homophobic and straight last campaign for liking a lesbian ship they didn't like? Why would I ever listen to a random person who does not know me through anything but our shared interest in the same Actual Play show's assessment of my feminist credentials based on the fact that I don't want the same two characters to kiss as they do? Why would I ever bother to try hit their ever moving target instead of saying "ok" and moving on?

Which isn't to say it doesn't suck. I've gotten questions about how to not be bothered or disheartened before from others, and I don't have great advice because I happen to just, through a combination of personal experience and natural tendencies not be much of a people pleaser, but like...I mean, you're the only person who can know if you're a lesbian. That's really it. Not particularly caring about a specific F/F ship very obviously does not disqualify you from being a lesbian, which we know because otherwise we could just as easily say that not shipping Beauyasha would disqualify you from being a lesbian. They can say whatever they want; it's annoying, but it's bullshit and I think even they know it. (the alternative of course is that they're very, very stupid and do not know it.)

[rise-my-angel]

I appreciate your takes a lot and think you are quite respectful. I am a Dany fan and would enjoy Jon and Dany together in the books if it was healthy and they were interested in each other and blah blah basically it would have to be a very specific scenario for me to enjoy it but anyway I don’t consider myself a stan of any character or ship and I’m a bit perplexed by that type of fan. I enjoy reading posts by people who disagree with me and have different interpretations of characters. I get so disappointed when I find that I’m blocked by someone just because maybe they hate Dany or they ship a ship I don’t like even though we otherwise have similar opinions and even if we don’t, isn’t it nice to see what other people think sometimes? It’s refreshing I think. I’m a big Jon fan and I’m going to enjoy posts by other true Jon fans even if they don’t like Dany. I just have a hard time seeing why everyone is so bothered. Some fans are very rude and toxic when people disagree (I have been accused by other Dany fans of secretly being a Sansa and Jonsa stan just because I said I think Dany COULD be a villain in the books and I’d be okay with it as long as it’s well written which is silly. I’d be okay with so many different outcomes as long as they’re well written because it’s not my story and I trust George to tell a good one if he ever finishes it at all). I just wish we as fans could focus on celebrating the things we do agree on and ignore it when we disagree or have respectful and thought provoking conversations instead of just blocking or being hostile

I genuinely like dissecting what about characters or ships I dislike and why. I love analyzing fiction in ways that explore what works or doesn't work about something for a story in my personal opinion and how framing certain characters can have adverse effects on fan point of views.

People talk about "hating on things" when really, I love discussing why I think Rhaegar is a peice of shit. I love explaining what about Dany I think is a tyrant. But that is very difficult with a very specific subset of this fandom.

Mostly Dany stans and Sansa stans, but this also bleeds into the general discussion of targ stans. The fact of the matter is, they are fine with trashing the other character, but as soon as I make a post that is anti that character they stan, I am hating unjustifiably. I am hating just to hate and I am looking for things to hate.

And unfortunately, that means I am always on the defensive about my Jon opinions. This fandom has an issue with discussing Jon without attaching a ship to that narrative, especially Jonsa and Jonerys stans. I do not ship him with anyone, therefore I want to discuss him as a singular character and that includes exploring what I think are problematic and toxic characters towards him. Which in my analysis, includes Dany and Sansa. But because to a lot of these people, Jon is seen as an extension of Dany or Sansa in a ship, I am clearly one or the other.

I cannot tell you how silly it is to have "Anti Jonsa, Anti Jonerys, Anti Jonrya, Anti Jongritte" in my bio, and every single one of my anti jonerys posts gets passed around as pro jonsa evidence or my anti jonsa posts gets passed around as pro jonerys evidence.

It is a subset of this fandom I hate because it has shown how impossible it is to discuss Jon as a complete individual character outside of romantic ships and it is exhausting.

It is a very persistent problem. I don't care who personally ships these things, but the fandom has made it's mark by declaring that either your with them or your their enemy and any disagreeing opinions are seen as attacks instead of discussion of media I enjoy.

People can like Dany and Jonerys, or Sansa and Jonsa, but it is the persistent screaming that opinions like mine are being unfairly hateful or delusional that piss me off. I'd rather not have such negative opinions about certain shippers, but it is the angry mob mentality they have that make me so against it.

I want to just discuss Jon as a character on his own, they only want to discuss Jon as a side companion romantic interest to their favourite female character. And I get blocked for speaking against their sacred cow, whereas I go looking through their blogs just to see what their side says so I can make a fair argument to their points when engaging in critical discussion on my own personal posts.

Me and them are not the same.

[findroleplay]

good time zone ☀️ im 25+ looking for 21+ for an enemies to lovers, rivals to lovers, or a combo of the both oc x oc roleplay. Im mostly interested in some kind of dark academia or dark fantasy university setting with problematic content (for example, one of our characters is a serial killer and also a necromancer, or the two participate in black magic/satanic rituals and makes that a problem for everyone, etc). I do want to include nsfw but I’m mostly looking for plot and character development

some basics you should know: discord only and keep in mind that I work full time and really only have time to rp on the weekends

characters: I don’t like to tell people they can’t play a certain character but I just want to give a heads up that overly aggressive characters who are just aggressive all the time and for no reason irk me. im not a fan of the lone wolf Mary sue who is just rude. Your character can be rude but I do want to incorporate some romance in here so it’s hard to do that if the character is being a *redacted* all the time. also I don’t particularly like rping with uwu bottom crybaby 👉👈 types. what I want to write is darker and more problematic. the characters I plan to bring in are a sly, charming, fake, daddy’s money type with a lot of dirty laundry and secrets and/or a jock with baggage who is arrogant and always trying to one up everyone bc he worked hard to get where he’s at so he acts like he’s superior

faceclaims: no drawn faceclaims or faceclaims that belong to YouTubers, streamers, or content creators. celebs, models, musicians only. This isn’t a RPF so use whoever as long as they are in that 21 - 30 range for the academia setting

nsfw: I have very little triggers which we can talk about. I typically like to write the top or a switch. But please don’t make being dom aggressive top/I’m so shy and meek bottom their personality. It’s unrealistic and I don’t believe in type setting bedroom roles

ships: mxm or mxf with me in the male role

-

[dearestsilhouette]

Intro Post

Hello, my name is Mist, but you can call me River, Riveret, Soup, or really any other name under the sun that isn’t inappropriate.

I made this blog to chat with others and express myself to those who I know will validate me.

Here’s my pronoun page, please read it as it’s important.

I have quite a few interests, but my main ones are:

Object shows

The Pink Corruption

Regretevator

Bugbo

Wandersong

Minesweeper

JSaB

CRK / Cookie Run Kingdom

Note: just because they’re my interests doesn’t mean I’m always going to post about them.

Another note: I do not associate myself with being in the jsab fandom and never will. I just like the game.

I would appreciate it if you don’t interact with me if you:

Fall under basic DNI lists.

Are a NSFW, NSFT or minor DNI blog.

Support people, ships, or other miscellaneous things that are problematic.

Are a proshipper / comshipper (technically falls under above rule but I want to make sure y’all understand this one).

Strongly enforce / project your religion onto others.

Go to blogs to be an asshat.

[ NOTE: I am fine with adult blogs interacting, just don’t be weird or creepy. I am a minor, I would NOT like to deal with that. ]

I also have a few tags I use (which may be added onto).

Mist’s Shenanigans - Out of context posts, shitposts or just me being chaotic.

Mist’s Art - My art based posts. [NOTE: Some posts may contain vent art: these are tagged vent art and have a “continue under cut” as well.]

Mist’s Ask Responses - Ask responses.

Mist’s Submissions - My submissions.

Mist’s Thoughts - My thoughts, negative and positive. [Please look at the tone tags on these posts; I’d appreciate it.]

Right before we get to the last of all of this, here’s some notes about me.

I am a minor. Please don’t be weird with me and keep that in mind when interacting.

I dislike the topic of religion due to past and current events in my life. It’d be immensely preferred if the topic is brought away from me.

I may have hyperactive-impulsive adhd (I am not diagnosed) meaning that I can be very disorganized, chaotic, forgetful and hyperactive at times I shouldn’t. Please bear with me, I’m trying my best here.

I curse; if you don’t like this, please tell me and I’ll try to tone it down.

I find it difficult to tell what tones people are in sometimes, so it’d be appreciated if you use some form of tone indicator like tone tags.

I love it when people interact with me. I love seeing notifications! Feel free to mass like and/or reblog my posts, as I don’t mind in the slightest.

I am the embodiment of the word ambivert. (Half joking here; I’m just extremely ambiverted.)

I myself may mass like and reblog people’s posts, please tell me if you don’t like this.

Lastly, here’s some boundaries of mine. Please respect them.

If you know my real name, please do NOT use variations of it. I genuinely hate variations of my name being used on me and it makes me uncomfortable.

I dislike the topic of religion, as seen above. Please don’t bring it into casual conversation, as I’ve already been exposed to enough toxic religion related stuff.

Don’t reblog my vents unless there’s a tag explicitly saying you can. Please just comment or ignore them.

Please don’t censor tws. I have a few things filtered out and I don’t want to see them.

Here’s some userboxes; thanks for reading!

(By the way, the only userbox that is mine is the minesweeper one; the others are not mine.)

[ The separators were made by @cafekitsune, please go give them some love and check them out! /nf ]

[shenzuns]

KNOWING YOUR PARTNER WELL CAN POTENTIALLY MAKE WRITING TOGETHER A LOT EASIER. REPOST.

name.  kiwi  !

pronouns.  they  /  them  (  +  she  /  he  )

preference  of  communication.  uhhh probably... IMs or discord  ???  i give out my discord as much as i can, but i’m very bad at talking to people BHDFDJF

name  of  muse.  shen qingqiu, or shen yuan depending on who you get acquainted with...  first  ?  it’s very verse dependent, if you meet him when he’s transmigrated then it’s shen qingqiu bc by that point he’s given up his old identity as  “  shen yuan  “

rp  experience  /  how  long.  good god i’ve probably been here since i was like... 13? so...  8 years disgostang

best  experience.  shitposting  !  that’s literally all i do on a daily basis anyways, but my best rp experiences were when the community would kind of get together and do silly shit on the dash. i don’t see much of that anymore at all now lol, unfortunate  !  oh, and, in character games were THE shit like...  i still try to get those going when i can bc there’s nothing more fun than muses meeting each other for the first time to yell at each other about being the imposter or something.  also, when you kind of have a group of people who are in a specific verse, and matching urls, and just idk very community based things were always my type of beat  !

rp  pet  peeves  /  dealbreakers.  i...  don’t really have many actually  ?  it’s quite litchrally the basic principal that people have been touting for years, read rules  (  please god, i know he acts like a straight guy but my man is gay as all hell Do Not approach him romantically if ur muse is fem aligned  ), don’t try to play god without My permission, don’t forceship unless i say it’s cool cus i love forceshipping with my breasties, don’t... tell me what my muse is... or how he could be  /  act like... man.  uhhh, probably also like, feeling as though i have to diminish how powerful or mean a muse is otherwise me and someone’s mun will get off on the wrong foot like...  i’m sorry i don’t control my muse’s power level it’s on UR muse to not instigate a fight if u Know my muse is strong man.  uhhh...  when people complain about posting too much ooc like ok just say u don’t want to have fun or get to know the ppl behind the screen.  also, it kind of squicks me when ppl are like ‘oh ur character isn’t super canon’ like i already have phobias, don’t add to that man  ---  also canon divergencies exist.  and then other stuff is just stupid shit like, if we’re shipping and there’s no reciprocating amount of effort put in it just tanks me, and like.  fighting over ships too lawl like, i get if toxic ships aren’t ppls cups of tea but that doesn’t mean u have to kill someone over it  (  this does NOT include actually problematic ships, yall are adult enough to get what i mean here  )

fluff,  angst,  or  smut.  all i guess  ???  my fatal flaw is liking angst and smut but being too much of a baby to write it out and  /  or talk about it.  like, i’m very bad at writing angst but it’s all i give my muses so I Want To Learn.  and, re: smut i’m... weirdly shy  ?  which is funny bc it’s horny thoughts 24/7 here but i just get anxious and lock up even though i want to write smut. it’s fucked up and evil and i’m the bearer of the curse SFNFKMSF

plots  or  memes.  boooth...  i say tentatively, LIKE i’m kind of bad at plotting is the thing.  i prefer discussing character dynamics and then discussing how things can go from that.  also, s.qq is kind of difficult to plot with i’ve come to slowly realize  ???  but i also Have to plot with him to get anywhere, so u see it’s a pain.  BUT I LOVE MEMES i thrive on memes, it’s the best way i interact  !  i do try my best to send in stuff and i adore getting things in return  (  i’m just slow as fuck but i always smile when i get asks  )

long  or  short  replies.  UHHHH...  it really depends but i’ll be real, i talk too fucking much when i write SHDSFMKFDKM a bitch doesn’t know how to shut up and s.qq is an overthinker so he’s very introspective  (  TOO introspective u might say  ), so while i love the idea of short replies...  it never really works out that way for me </3

best  time  to  write.  man.  who even knows w/ me at this point LMAOO probably night though that’s when everything’s quiet for me and i can vibe, or like.  the early hours of daybreak.  but idk when my motivation, creativity and social battery are up there is usually when i start writing again

are  you  like  your  muse.  KIIIND OF  ???  my friend’s and i like to joke around that i’m kind of a shen yuan at times, i actually really latched onto his character BECAUSE of his neurosis but.  i dunno, i’m not as logic driven as he is, nor am i as stilted emotionally  /  with my affections.  so, yes and no  !  he can be difficult to write sometimes because of how different he is from me, i think.  i’ve never written a muse like him before, so it’s definitely a challenge, but a fun one  !  i also think it’s pretty natural to take on muses similar to you or put parts of yourself in a muse, bc how else are you supposed to understand them on a deeper level yk  ?  it helps with getting into a muses mental imo.

tagged.  @oftwilight​  thank u sybil, ily  !  <3

tagging.  @junshang​,  @feiyuie​,  @mellodiies​,  @kuurtaa​,  @chiheru​,  @hymnblood​,  @fuxian​,  @suender​  &  if ur reading this that’s it. ur tagged, @ me i want to see  !

[ultimablades]

For the character ask game: Sanson, the one and only, obviously! Or if you've already answered for him, how about Alphinaud? :D

I’ll do both because I love both of these characters!!!

Sanson

[vibrates at a frequency b that could shatter glass] I love him a normal amount.

1: sexuality headcanon: gay gay homosexual gay

2: otp: Guydelot is the love of his life — i always imagine that he wasn’t trying to find a relationship or didn’t have a lot of interest in them because he was so focused on his duty and his goal of creating a bard unit that it was very “that’s something that will happen later in life,” so his feelings for Guydelot are unexpected and also hit him like a train

3: brotp: the WoL once again lol but I also love his relationship with moogles??? They are his little friends???

4: notp: the WoL lol. I make jokes about Nourval having a crush on Sanson post SB just cause Sanson was nice to him but he knows it won’t go anywhere and I think it’s funny to imagine him being frustrated by a silly lil crush. But I don’t actually ship them.

5: first headcanon that pops into my head: I think Sanson is an okay singer. Not great like Guydelot, probably not good enough to be a bard. But he’s better than he gives himself credit for and will sing with Guydelot when they’re alone

6: favorite line from this character: it’s hard to choose one but the first ones that came to mind were him saying that he’s nervous but knows things will be okay with Guydelot by his side, him telling us to tell Nourval Guydelot is in a drunken stupor, and him saying he needs to write the view from the churning mists down so he can share it with Guydelot 🥲🥲🥲

7: one way in which I relate to this character: I related to him a lot tbh which is probably why I always headcanon him as a September virgo…sometimes I’m like there’s definitely a lil projection going on here but—

But I think a big one is getting so focused on small details, it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture, which I think he does a lot in the HW quests

8: thing that gives me second hand embarrassment about this character: him walking right into Nourval’s very obvious trap…baby girl please

9: cinnamon roll or problematic fave? He’s Mon petiti Chou, he has never done anything wrong in his life

Alphinaud:

My baby boy, my son who I birthed and raised myself

1: sexuality headcanon: gay but he hasn’t realized it yet

2: otp: he’s only 16/17 so I don’t ship him romantically with anyone, he’s too young…but I think his big ole puppy love/idol worship crush on estinien is cute, and I think he has a lil crush on Arenvald too (again, very much in a baby’s first crush on someone who’s older than them kinda way)

3: brotp: I do really love his friendship with Arenvald and I wish we got to see them hanging out more! And his friendship with Kai-shirr is sweet too

4: notp: basically anyone who is an adult LOL but especially an adult who is twice his age

5: first headcanon that pops into my head: I’ve always thought he was a trans boy

6: favorite line from this character: hmmmmm i really like when he tells Vauthry he needs a mirror cause it will capture the horror he sees before him better than a painting could. Imagine getting burned by ALPHINAUD

7: one way in which I relate to this character: when we first meet him, he was very much a know it all who thought he knew best lol. I was really bad about being a know it all when I was younger and I try to be mindful about those tendencies in myself now that I’m older

8: thing that gives me second hand embarrassment about this character: the entire buying a sword incident…baby boy please

9: cinnamon roll or problematic fave? If you look up a picture of a cinnamon roll, it would just be a picture of Alphinaud

[cann1ballistic]

Hello!!!

I just wanted to say I’m a fan of your art!!! Both here and on twitter!!! Unfortunately I’ve never said anything before, I also don’t follow you on twitter because of the antis. It’s also why I’m dropping an anonymous ask instead of showing my account.

I’ve watched the trolls movies before but the third movie was what got me into looking for art and fiction cause I wanted to see more of Branch and his family. And new official content takes a long time to come out, so I decided to look for more content online since there are many artists and writers that are always creating more content!!! Sometimes it’s even better than the official stuff 😂!!! I was looking for more stories about Branch and his brothers growing up together and stuff like that, more family centered stuff.

I was however, a little surprised with the Trolls fandom base because of the antis, I’ve been reading and seeing art from different fandoms for many years now and so far, at least for me, I’ve never seen such intense anti pro shippers. In fact, I’ve never quite understood what the word meant before, I thought it had to do with problematic ships, which I thought had to do with shipping for example heroes and villains or if two people have a big age difference.

I never even realized that incest was part of it. In all the fandoms I’ve read stories that include incest before magic or technology or natural biology, etc solved all the problems. Same with age differences, some characters would be aged up. Villains would turn out to have tragic backstories or one of the supposed good guys was tricking the protagonist. And I never noticed people being overly vocal about it. I mean I knew there were antis out there but it never got out of hand. An example of that, at least for me, was the Harry Potter fandom, I never had problems with antis or feared being blocked by certain artists because of what I read or who I followed.

But with the Trolls fan base some artists are very vocal about it. If a certain artist sees that you follow a pro shipper artist or if they see you comment on any of their art or if you say anything about the subject that they don’t like you are immediately blocked!!!

And twitter isn’t very private, everyone can see who you follow, your likes, retweets, your comments, etc and that makes it super easy for the antis to block you immediately!!! To avoid that, any pro shipper art I like I bookmark it, since that is the only thing other people on twitter can’t see. I don’t leave comments or like the art, cause I know if any of the antis find out about it they will block you, screenshot your account and tell everyone to avoid and block you cause you are a pro shipper or neutral. And I really don’t know what a neutral is!!! I’m guess it’s someone that doesn’t care either way, I think?

The antis will also talk shit about you behind your back!!! I also don’t leave comments on the stories on AO3 and I’ve considered making a second twitter account so that I can follow the pro shipping artists from the Trolls fandom I like in peace but!!! I’m so paranoid about the fact that the antis will discover my original account somehow that I haven’t done it!!! Here on tumblr you can at least keep your likes and who you follow private.

There are so many amazing Trolls artists out there, unfortunately they are for the most part very outspoken antis, at least from what I’ve seen.

Sorry!!! I’m venting a little here, it’s just… for the longest time I was ok with whatever showed up in front of me, story and art wise. For me it didn’t matter the pairing or anything else as long as the story was interesting!!! I’ve read stories where the only thing in common with the cannon content was the names and appearances of the characters everything else was completely different and I was fine with it because the story was super interesting!!! And there’s also the fact that it’s FICTION!!! Just because you are ok with what people write or draw doesn’t mean you’re ok with it in real life!!! I mean there are authors out there that write horror, gore and murder mysteries but that doesn’t mean that they want to actually kill some in real life!!!

The Trolls antis got me so out of sorts that I actually had the balls (metaphorically speaking) to ask my psychologist if it was ok to like this sort of stuff!!! And I told them about the antis, liking stuff like incest art and stories, the whole just because you are ok with it in fiction doesn’t mean that you’re ok with it in real life, etc!!! And they agreed with me!!! Told me that I shouldn’t worry about it and that some people just take somethings to seriously!!!

So… Again sorry for venting, but I wanted to share my experience and opinion with you.

I also want to say that you and all the other artists and writers that are ok with pro shipping should keep producing your amazing content and ignore all those nasty antis!!! Cause you are amazing!!!

So please keep up the amazing work!!! And don’t let anyone get you down!!!

Thank you for the encouragement, i appreciate it! To be honest i’ve become so jaded over this topic in general that it’s nice to be reminded that there are people online who do in fact enjoy fandom more than starting slapfights lol (not scolding you for talking about it of course, feel free to vent!)

my own rant below the cut lol

I’ve found that a lot of fandoms with audiences who skew to the younger side tend to be the most combative, so it checks out that you’ve found the Trolls fandom to be like this. A stark example that i’ve seen is the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle fandom, specifically around the Rise of the TMNT series, which came out in….2018, i think? (i didn’t get into it til 2022 so idk) BUT fans have been shipping the brothers together in that fandom since the 80s and largely nobody bat an eye until Rise happened, and brought a lot of the younger crowd into it. NOW, suddenly it’s Too Far to ship characters that have been shipped since before most of the new fandom members were born 💀

a lot of these younger fans had the misfortune of coming into fandom around the same time that a lot of TERFs and other conservative types were getting REALLY vocal on here around 2015-2018; of course, they grow up into really conservative types who spread the same nonsensical rhetoric to those younger than them, and so on and so forth.

i cannot emphasize enough that NO fandoms were like this (on a wide scale) pre-2015. this is coming from my perspective as someone who had VERY vanilla tastes for most of my fandom career…the fact that the term proship even exists is a testament to how much fandom has changed; proship is a term that popped up as a reaction to people using Anti Shipper as a way to tout their fandom activism (derogatory) & purity politics.

(being Neutral, btw, means basically nothing afaik because being Proship means that you mind your business, and people who are neutral just say that they mind their business and want nothing to do with the entire argument. Antis call them pros and pros also call them pros so idk how it’s even useful as a label 🤷‍♀️)

ALSO I FEEL THAT SELF DOUBT!! talking to your therapist was a good idea though, it’s good to get a reality check when you need it, haha. I had a moment several years back where i was questioning why i, as an adult, was into a fandom whose target audience was teenagers, before i realized that it’s not that deep and you can do what you want forever lmao

I would love nothing more than to dismiss the entire pro vs anti argument if i’m honest, but i can’t ignore the real life abuse that comes from it. I understand why you’d be afraid to be public with your opinions; especially on a garbage website like twitter, where reporting accounts only ever seems to work for the wrong people 🫠

The best way to do fandom has always been and continues to be to find your group of friends and be insane with them. (AND TO BLOCK LIBERALLY!) I hope you can find some people to chill with 🫂

[scruffylookingpiratecaptain]

I posted 1,802 times in 2022

163 posts created (9%)

1,639 posts reblogged (91%)

I tagged 1,781 of my posts in 2022

Only 1% of my posts had no tags

#sexy helmet boi - 165 posts

#violent moon moon - 138 posts

#metalhead of my heart - 113 posts

#moon knight spoilers - 82 posts

#scarlet goddess - 81 posts

#tbobf spoilers - 72 posts

#avocado of hell’s kitchen - 71 posts

#k’uk’ulkan - 67 posts

#obi wan kenobi spoilers - 66 posts

#scruffy rebel boi - 66 posts

Longest Tag: 128 characters

#all these companies slowly starting to annoy us until they offer to charge us to fix the thing they fucked up in the first place

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

To all the men criticizing Jen for talking about being catcalled:

Getting catcalled doesn’t just make you feel mildly uncomfortable. It makes you feel unsafe. You never know which of those guys jeering at you is going to follow you and try to rape or kill you.

Sorry, if that offends your sensitivities and doesn’t fit in with your worldview, but that’s how women feel.

730 notes - Posted August 22, 2022

#4

Reblog if you find Pedro Pascal attractive

I know they’re just teasing me, but I’m sick of everyone at my work telling me I’m the only person in the world who could ever find Pedro attractive. They tease me every day about it at this point, and I’m annoyed.

So, yeah, please reblog and leave comments and stuff so I can rub it in their faces.

848 notes - Posted October 3, 2022

#3

Can someone explain to me how it’s seemingly always been ok to ship teenaged white girls with immortal white men, but the moment people want to ship an adult black woman with an immortal Latino man, it’s problematic?

1,476 notes - Posted November 12, 2022

#2

2022 really do be the year of pretty Hispanic men in everything and I’m living for it

See the full post

5,946 notes - Posted October 8, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

I think people have truly lost any ability to be patient with storytelling.

‘I don’t understand this’ They’ll explain it if you wait.

‘I don’t like how this episode left things hanging’ There’s a continuation next week.

‘This character is flat’ Wait for them to be fleshed out.

So many of the complaints I see about shows lately are people being confused by things THAT THE SHOW WANTS YOU TO BE CONFUSED BY THATS THE FUN OF MYSTERY AND FORESHADOWING YOU ABSOLUTE GOBLINS THE MAIN CHARACTER IS ALSO CONFUSED AND THEYRE GONNA DO A BIG REVEAL AND EXPLANATION LATER IF YOU WOULD JUST FUCKING WAIT

55,885 notes - Posted June 15, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[writing-for-life]

@parasocialite, I’m also tagging @violetoftheendless in this because she chimed in on this earlier, and I am spinning trying reply to everyone.

I can only speak for myself, but it is a bit like what I already wrote somewhere else, and what @orionsangel86 also brushed upon:

The fun side of fandom and the deeper contemplation/analysis of works/characters are seemingly often presented as mutually exclusive, when (at least to me), they are two sides to the same coin. I often think, wrong as I may be, that problems seem to arise if we are very deeply anchored in just one of those sides and see the other as either less than, or an attack on what we hold dear?

So for me, deeper analytical engagement is far from bringing me no joy. Actually the opposite, even if I discover things that are maybe not just “fun”, but point towards deeper issues. And just looking at silly gifs or amazing fan-art without thinking about it too deeply also brings me joy. Again, they aren’t mutually exclusive.

What doesn’t bring me joy are the things I mentioned (personal attacks, directly or indirectly trying to silence people etc), and I tend to step away for a bit if I think that's beginning to take over (as I said, no fandom is worth losing mental well-being over). However, if everyone just constantly stepped away from problematic behaviours without ever saying anything, the fandom will also become poorer for it, plus it skews the view on "what's consensus". The loudest group isn't necessarily the one who always gets it right (or wrong, for that matter). It's simply the loudest group.

I don't so much have a problem with characters/characterisation. I can look at Hob, see him as canonically problematic and talk about it, but that doesn't mean that I have a problem with people who like Hob or ship Dreamling. There are people in the fandom, however, who perceive criticism of Hob as criticism of them, and that *is* problematic. In the same way, I don’t have problem with anyone who doesn’t go into a raging fit about Thessaly and can just see her as a character (which seems to be a far bigger issue for the fandom tbh). @violetoftheendless mentioned the meta I wrote about it, and it ultimately boils down to what I also wrote under 2) in this post: We have to be able to separate characterisation from personal endorsement of what characters do. Accepting Thessaly as an inherent part of the story doesn’t make anyone transphobic, nor does accepting Hob as an inherent part of the story make anyone racist:

It is how we engage with the deeper questions that these characters present us with that’s far more telling. Thessaly goes against the self-image that much of the fandom likes to perpetuate (“the queer academic”, and I’m one myself, so this isn’t a slight), so transphobia always creates immediate outrage. Why doesn’t Hob’s racism cause the same outrage? Yes, perhaps it helps (or is it convenient?) that Hob as one half of the typical fandom M/M ship regrets, and that makes him “more okay” than the murderous witch who doesn’t. But does it really? Because at the end of the day, they’re both just characters, aren’t they? They’re both written to hammer a certain point home. I think you can tell where I’m going with this…

What is the goal? I don’t know, I can only say what’s important to me. Mutual respect, thinking/breathing before hitting “send”, accepting that not everyone shares our views, that people are in fandom for different reasons and they’re all okay, understanding that not every critical thought about our favourite characters or works is a personal attack, and that critical discourse can ultimately foster growth and not stagnation, would be good starting points? Because that way, fandom can be fun for *everyone*, no matter how they personally approach it I guess?

Nuance in (The Sandman) Fandom

I thought a lot over the past few days, partly prompted by discourse on here, partly due to a couple of “interesting” asks and messages I received (the type you don’t answer). I *think* they might have been prompted by engaging in discourse on topics like anti-blackness/racism, misogyny/sexism, TERF characters etc in The Sandman.

Fandoms are always getting super sensitive if someone shines a critical lens on their favourite works, authors and characters. So to make this clear (in case it isn’t already obvious from my brain-rot blog):

I love The Sandman. I love Neil Gaiman. I have an extremely soft spot for Dream (and Desire btw, who deserves a lot more character analysis than just being summed up as “villainous, sexy bitch”. One day, perhaps ;)).

I can read The Sandman and just get lost in the story, even after decades and many rereads. 

But I can also view it through a critical lens—these things aren’t mutually exclusive.

Not critical enough or too critical?

As fans, we can get trapped in certain thinking patterns, like:

“My blorbo can do no wrong”-syndrome 

“Characters with flaws are inherently problematic and imply authorial endorsement of those actions” 

“Characterisation and problematic subtext are one and the same” (aka overanalysing and looking for problems where there are none is the death of every story, but failing to see problematic patterns where they are clearly visible is a problem, too).

Don't say anything bad about my favourite character

I think this doesn’t need much further exploration. It’s not my personal way of looking at stories through permanently rose-tinted glasses (I always feel it stalls my experience, but my experience is not everyone else's). Some people prefer that type of escapism, and I’m good with that (although the downside is of course that by not willing to engage with issues, we can unwillingly perpetuate them). Live and let live, ship and let sail. But please, for the love of god: Don’t insult people via their inboxes or messages just because their opinions and preferences don’t align with yours. I’m not going to sugarcoat it or phrase it “nicely”: It’s infantile (and a form of bullying btw), end of.

How can you even like a character who's so horrible? And that author must be equally horrible, too

We have to separate flawed characters, even those who are written to be really problematic, from real-life endorsement of these actions. 

Author, narrator and character are three fundamentally different things, and don’t overlap as much as some people seem to think. 

We can write vile, despicable characters to make a point (for me, Thessaly was always a prime example for this, and I explained why here). We probably hate them as we write them. I don’t know what else to say, but this facet of writing seems to get more and more lost on people, and it’s a worry. Crying for sanitised characterisation is one step away from censorship. We explore what is problematic about people and humanity through story. That’s how we process and learn. It’s nothing new, but it becomes impossible if we can’t write flawed and even disgusting characters. 

Face value…

Since I’m mostly in The Sandman fandom, I often read that its ending is hopeless, and that’s supposedly the entire message. 

It is agonisingly sad, yes. But is it truly hopeless? I personally see it as quite the opposite, but of course that’s my opinion, coloured by my life experiences.

I also get that show-only fans often haven’t read the comics, or at least not the whole arc. And as such, their outlook from what they’ve seen so far (and choose to focus on) has to be different by default. I also understand that many people are quite new to the comics, even if they have read them in their entirety. I’ve sat with them for 30 years, and I still find new things on every reread (and I read it more times than anyone should 🙈), and I still don’t feel like I’ve understood it all. Perhaps because I still haven’t fully understood myself (and it’s unlikely I ever will). If there’s one thing The Sandman isn’t, it’s one-dimensional and easy to grasp in its whole depth.

I just wrote a ginormous meta on it, if you’re interested, it’s here:

Subtext, (not so) glorious subtext

This is where it gets complicated:

We shouldn’t mix up characterisation and story subtext. Overanalysing every line to death will always make us find something that’s “problematic”, when it really isn’t in the wider context of the story.

Zooming in is NOT always a good thing. Sometimes, we actually need to zoom out. 

But subtext *can be* (accidentally) problematic. Even in stories we love. And none of this negates what I previously wrote.

Stories have real-life implications of sorts, and we need to be able to talk about it. That’s where those slightly flabbergasting, hostile inbox messages come in, and I want to expand on that "topic of contention" a bit:

Neil himself confirmed that the Endless basically warp reality, and that this is why, after Dream’s failed relationship with Nada, many black women in his vicinity suffer terrible fates (Ruby and Carla in particular). And that this spell is only broken when he dies, and that it is the reason why Gwen doesn’t suffer the same fate. And said Gwen then gets used as a plot device to basically absolve Hob (who canonically really is a problematic character, whether show-only fans like it or not) from his slaver past. Once again, very clearly: No one is making this up. Neil confirmed it (for the comics, and that was over 20 years ago. It remains to be seen if his stance has changed as we move into that arc in the TV show).

I don't think it is correct to imply that Dream as a character is racist (I've read that, too) because he logically can’t be. He holds *all* the collective unconscious. He is also, strictly speaking, not white. He is everything and nothing, and he shows up in many different ethnicities throughout the whole arc, depending on who looks at him. But Neil played with a subtext here (reality warping due to a bad relationship which then affects everyone with similar physical traits) that will read very differently to a black person than it reads to a white person, and we have to understand why that is an *extremely* slippery slope.

Plus, we are supposed to see Hob, who *was* a racist at some point (you can’t not be if you’re a slave-trader—it’s impossible by default) as redeemed. And yes, he *does* regret deeply, good for him (and if I were saying this aloud, you would hear the sarcasm in my voice, because it is indeed all about him. We are to sympathise/empathise with him and his character growth while there isn’t much mention of the people he maltreated). But also: it was a black woman who basically forgave him (with dialogue that personally makes me cringe). And that black woman who offers forgiveness is not truly a black woman—she is a character written by a white man. And as much as author and character are not the same (see above), there is an inherent sensitivity in that power imbalance that we can't brush under the carpet.

I don’t think Neil is racist. Probably quite the opposite, and I can even see that his intentions were good from a storytelling point of view. BUT intention and impact are two fundamentally different things, and telling the story this way (comic version) betrays blindspots only white people have. Just like women have blindspots when they tell stories about men, and men have blindspots when they tell stories about women (and there are a few of those in The Sandman, too). And and and…

As storytellers, we can’t always speak from lived experience. It’s impossible. And that also means we occasionally make mistakes that look bad in hindsight, even if our intentions were good.

I guess the proof is in the pudding: What do we do when people who *have* that lived experience tell us it looks bad? If they inform us why it is hurtful, plays into old stereotypes etc?

Are we willing to listen and yield (both are the foundations of allyship btw), or are we insisting that our viewpoint as someone *without* lived experience is right? That lived experience extends to all lived experiences (sex/gender, sexual orientation, age...), and from all we’ve heard from Neil so far, it seems important to him to rewrite what he sees differently today. Whether they’ll always get it right for the show—we’ll see. At the moment, it looks a lot better than in the comics, and certain issues are already being handled with a lot more sensitivity, but a few problems remain.

Pushing back on criticism that comes from people with lived experience is problematic—I’d encourage us to think about what it looks like if a white majority in the fandom is basically saying that the opinions of POC are essentially “overreactions” (and yes, that happened).

It’s complicated. The Sandman was written in a different time, and I think we have to distinguish between things that weren’t really problematic at the time but have aged poorly (again, Thessaly springs to mind, and I have lived experience as a queer person during that time, so I can see it in context while at the same time acknowledging that I would make changes to bring it to the present day), and things that were always a problem due to blindspots. They were a problem in 1990, and if they don’t get changed, they are still a problem today.

This fandom is generally so much more open and nicer than others I know. But that doesn’t mean it’s infallible, because it’s full of humans. 

Nuance is sorely needed, in both story interpretation and interaction between said humans.

(tagging @violetoftheendless )

[mishafletcher]

Are you a Gold Star lesbian? (Just in case you don't know what it means, a Gold Star lesbian is a lesbian that has never had the sex with a guy and would never have any intentions of ever doing so)

So I got this ask a while ago, and I've been lowkey thinking about it ever since.

First: No. I am a queer, cranky dyke who is too old for this sort of bullshit gatekeeping. 

Second: What an unbelievable question to ask someone you don't even know! What an incomprehensibly rude thing to ask, as if you're somehow owed information about my sexual history. You're not! No one—and I can't reiterate this enough, but no one—owes you the details of their sex lives, of their trauma, or of anything about themselves that they don't feel like sharing with you.

The clickbait mills of the internet and the purity police of social media would like nothing more than to convince everyone that you owe these things to everyone. They would like you to believe that you have to prove that you're traumatized enough to identify with this character, that you can't sell this article about campus rape without relating it to your own sexual assault, that you can't talk about queer issues without offering up a comprehensive history of your own experiences, and none of those things are true. You owe people, and especially random strangers on the internet, nothing, least of all citations to somehow prove to them that you have the right to talk about your own life.

This makes some people uncomfortable, and to be clear, I think that that's good: people who feel entitled to demand this information should be uncomfortable. Refusing to justify yourself takes power away from people who would very much like to have it, people who would like to gatekeep and dictate who is permitted to speak about what topics or like what things. You don't have to justify yourself. You don't have to explain that you like this ship because this one character reminds you a bit of yourself because you were traumatized in a vaguely similar way and now— You don't have to justify your queerness by telling people about the best friend you had when you were twelve, and how you kissed, and she laughed and said it was good practice for when she would kiss boys and your stomach twisted and your mouth tasted like bile and she was the first and last girl you kissed, but— 

You don't owe anyone these pieces of yourself. They're yours, and you can share them or not, but if someone demands that you share, they're probably not someone you should trust.

Third: The idea of gold star lesbians is a profoundly bi- and trans- phobic idea, often reducing gender to genitals and the long, shared history of queer women of all identities to a stark, artificial divide where some identities are seen as purer or more valuable than others. This is bullshit on all counts.

There's a weird and largely artificial division between bisexuals and lesbians that seems to be intensifying on tumblr, and I have to say: I hate it. Bisexual women aren't failed lesbians. They're not somehow less good or less valid because they're attracted to [checks notes] people. Do you think that having sex with a man somehow changes them? What are you so worried about it for? I've checked, and having sex with a man does not, in fact, make your vagina grow teeth or tentacles. Does that make you feel better? Why is what other people are doing so threatening to you?

Discussions of gold star lesbians are often filled with tittering about hehe penises, which is unfortunate, since I know a fair few lesbians who have penises, and even more lesbians who've had sex with people, men and women alike, who have penises. I'm sorry to report that "I'm disgusted by a standard-issue human body part" is neither a personality nor anything to be proud of. I'm a dyke and I don't especially like men, but dicks are just dicks. You don't have to be interested in them, but a lot of people have them, and it doesn't make you less of a lesbian to have sex with someone who has a dick.

There's so much garbage happening in the world—maybe you haven't noticed, but things are kind of Not Great in a lot of places, and there's a whole pandemic thing that's been sort of a major buzzkill? How is this something that you're worried about? Make a tea, remind yourself that other people's genitalia and sexual history are none of your business, maybe go watch a video about a cute animal or something. 

Fourth: The idea of gold star lesbians is a shitty premise that argues that sexuality is better if it's always been clear-cut and straightforward—but it rarely is. We live in a very, very heterosexist culture. I didn’t have a word for lesbian until many years after I knew that I was one. How can you say that you are something when your mouth can’t even make the shape of it? The person you are at 24 is different to the person you are at 14, and 34, and 74. You change. You get braver. The world gets wider. You learn to see possibilities in the shadows you used to overlook. Of course people learn more about themselves as they age.

Also, many of us, especially those of us who grew up in smaller towns, or who are over the age of, say, 25, grew up in times and places where our sexuality was literally criminal.

Shortly after I graduated high school, a gay man in my state was sentenced to six months in jail. Why? Well, he’d hit on someone, and it was a misdemeanor to "solicit homosexual or lesbian activity", which included expressing romantic or sexual interest in someone who didn’t reciprocate. You might think, then, that I am in fact quite old, but you would be mistaken. The conviction was in 1999; it was overturned in 2002.

I grew up knowing this: the wrong thing said to the wrong person would be sufficient reason to charge me with a crime.

In the United States, the Defense of Marriage Act was passed in 1996, clarifying that according to the federal government, marriage could only ever be between one man and one woman. It also promised that even if a state were to legalize same-sex unions, other states wouldn't have to recognize them if they didn't want to. And wow, they super did not want to, because between 1998 and 2012, a whopping thirty states had approved some sort of amendment banning same-sex marriage.

Every queer person who's older than about 25 watched this, knowing that this was aimed at people like them. Knowing that these votes were cast by their friends and their families and their teachers and their employers. 

Some states were worse than others. Ohio passed their bill in 2004 with 62% approval. Mississippi passed theirs the same year with 86% approval. Imagine sitting in a classroom, or at work, or in a church, or at a family dinner, and knowing that statistically, at least two out of every three people in that room felt you shouldn't be allowed to marry someone you loved.

Matthew Shepard was tortured to death in October of 1998. For being gay, for (maybe) hitting on one of the men who had planned to merely rob him. Instead, he was tortured and left to die, tied to a barbed wire fence. His murderers were both sentenced to two consecutive life terms in prison. This was controversial, because a nonzero number of people felt that Shepard had brought it upon himself.

Many of us sat at dinner tables and listened to this discussion, one that told us, over and over, that we were fundamentally wrong, fundamentally undeserving of love or sympathy or of life itself.

This is a tiny, tiny sliver of history—a staggeringly incomplete overview of what happened in the US over about ten years. Even if this tiny sliver is all that there were, looking at this, how could you blame someone for wanting to try being not Like This? How can you fault someone who had sex, maybe even had a bunch of sex, hoping desperately that maybe they could be normal enough to be loved if they just tried harder? How can you say that someone who found themself an uninteresting but inoffensive boyfriend and went on dates and had sex and said that it was fine is somehow less valuable or less queer or less of a lesbian for doing so? For many people, even now, passing as straight, as problematic as that term is, is a survival skill. How dare you imply that the things that someone did to protect themself make them worth less? They survived, and that's worth literally everything.

Fifth, finally: What is a gold star, anyhow? You've capitalized it, like it's Weighty and Important, but it's not. Gold stars were what your most generous grade school teacher put on spelling tests that you did really well on. But ultimately, gold stars are just shiny scraps of paper. They don't have any inherent value: I can buy a thousand of them for five bucks and have them at my door tomorrow. They have only the meaning that we give them, only the importance that we give them. We’re not children desperately scrabbling for a teacher’s approval anymore, though. We understand that good and bad are more of a spectrum than a binary, and that a gold star is a simplification. We understand that no number of gold stars will make us feel like we’re special enough or good enough or important enough, or fix the broken places we can still feel inside ourselves. Only we can do that.

The stars are only shiny scraps of paper. They offer us nothing; we don’t need them. I hope that someday, you see that, too. 

[heathersproship]

I’m saying this in anon bc I’m scared irl friends or followers will see this but I like the pro-ship community.

I’m new to it, and while I don’t have any kind of ships that anti’s usually hate (minor/adult, family/family, etc.) I do have a lot of age gap ships and one ships that’s especially problematic.

My super problematic one I use for coping, and I want to talk about and share and stuff, but I’m worried people will send threats or call me things like an abuser bc I like this certain ship.

It sucks that I can’t just talk about my problematic ship, but the pro-ship community makes it better. I just wish there was a way to make sure only pro-shippers see my toxic/coping ship posts, and not anyone else like anti’s or irl friends lol.

I’m not really sure what the point of this was, so I’m sorry if this was annoying, I just like your blog and wanted to just say that I appreciate pro-shippers :)

Everything is /g

You’re not being annoying, no worries! I’m glad you’re having a nice time in the community! (Also thank you, I appreciate you taking time to tell me you like my blog! That’s really sweet! Sorry I took so long to respond, I had a very early night lol.)

Someone put Howl’s Moving Castle on a list of “problematic media” because for the majority of it Sophie is cursed to be a 90yo woman and Howl is in his late 20s. Both the novel and the Ghibli movie had the romance as the subplot, but antis are still against it cuz age gap (also spoilers, she turns back to her original age of 18 at the end, so while the gap is still there it’s not even half as severe). But nooo, a gap is a gap so in it goes! Also, Tangled is problematic. Frozen. Zootopia. Disney as a whole is problematic “just” because “racist.” (While I won’t deny there are some very racist things in Disney media like SotS, the depiction of Native Americans in Peter Pan, the Siamese cats in both Lady and the Tramp AND Aristocats, and the company itself is capitalist asf, to condemn Disney based on “just” racism alone is a bit of a stretch.)

Haters gonna hate for the sake of hating. There’s a high chance it's not going to make a lick of sense to you because of the long leaps in logic to get to those conclusions. And that’s entirely a them problem. I’m actually really surprised When Marnie Was There didn’t make it on the list (iykyk!).

Anyway, back to you. There is a way for you to post freely about your ships here! Two ways, actually!

The first is to make a sideblog.

Pros:

great option if you’re lazy and don't want to log out

anonymity. no connection to your primary blog unless you link it (literally or if there’s enough info to reasonably ID you)

much like a vent blog, a writing blog, or an art blog, can be dedicated solely to one thing so you don’t have to clutter your primary/stuff won’t get buried if you want/need to find them later

can be as private or as public as you want

can get asks (anon or not) and submissions

can block people*

can send Tumblr DMs

*Blocking someone on mobile only applies to your primary blog. I don’t know if there’s a way to do so for sideblogs but if you’re on browser you’ll have go to to Settings > select the sideblog URL > scroll down and manually type in/copy-paste the URL of the person you want to block into the Blocked Tumblrs section. Which leads me to

Cons:

the blocking thing, as mentioned above. if you block from your primary account, you can’t see them, but they can still see your sideblog unless you block them there.

can’t send asks, reply, or follow from sideblog; all interactions will come from your primary

always the risk of posting content to the wrong blog so whether you’re on the web or on mobile, double-check and save as drafts just in case!

if you’re going by a different name/persona, you may need to be careful what headcanons/aus/ideas you put out there. this goes doubly so for artists

The second is to make a new account.

Pros:

brand new shiny clean fresh start! anonymity!

sending asks, following people, replying to posts, all the perks!

no worries about posting to the wrong blog

block to your heart’s content without jumping through hoops

again, can be as private or as public as you want

Cons:

a bit more work (emails and passwords and all that)

might feel trapped to just be about One Thing

same con as the sideblog if you’re going by another name/persona, in that very specific or niche hcs/ideas/aus/art could be used to ID you. or just go for it and pretend this really is another person who just happens to share your exact opinions on things. who’s going to know but you, ya know?

Whichever route you take, do what you need to keep yourself safe. You can’t stop idiots from seeking things out they don’t like (you’d think they just wouldn’t but antis aren't known for being logical, ironic they insist they are), which is why proper tagging is so important. Note the tags proshippers use and tag your posts with those. Pop into inboxes to say hello, a majority of us are friendly and chill! And regardless of what the antis say, you do belong in the main tags. People just need to learn to filter and block shit they don’t like, but that’s far more work than screaming at other people to a) block them first and b) not post things they worked hard on making.

If people call you an abuser for liking something in fiction, they need a serious reality check. Tell them to grab the fictional character’s hand with their real one and drag them away from the person harming them if they’re so concerned. Please. Don’t grab a plushie because that’s a doll and that's not alive. Don’t grab a body pillow because that’s a pillow and not alive. Don’t grab a drawing, that’s paper and not alive. Grab the real, living, breathing character who’s being abused and make it all better. Guaranteed they can’t.

How you cope is your business. You’re not self-harming unless you’re intentionally triggering yourself, and you’re not harming another living person if they happen to see something they don’t want to see. You are not responsible for their reactions. If it matters to them so much how you cope, if it offends them so much, they’re not worried about you, they want to control you. There's no one-size-fits-all approach for dealing with shit. Some people go to therapy, take medication, or both. Some people talk to friends, some people run, some project onto characters and draw vent art, write stories, or read those stories about characters suffering through their same problems to feel less alone in them. All are valid. It’s about what works for you. Not them. You. And if they can’t understand that, they also need help.

Happy shipping, friend! Take care of yourself!

[babycharmander]

If you think you have never stolen artwork, read this post.

So, art theft. If you've been a follower of mine, you've heard my barely-coherent rants about this before, but I thought it might be more productive to make a more coherent post on the subject.

If you're wondering about the title of the post here, it's because I feel like a lot of people aren't really grasping what exactly art theft is, and a LOT of people, even well-meaning ones, do it without even realizing it.

"But wait," you say. "I would never STEAL from an artist!! I never claim it as my own!" And that's all fine and good, but you're missing something here.

To start things off, what IS art theft? (It's not what deviantART said it was several years back, I'll tell you that much. *cough*)

We all know what art is, so let's talk about theft. Dictionary.com defines "theft" as "the act of stealing; the wrongful taking and carrying away of the personal goods or property of another; larceny." Okay, makes sense, but what about that other word there, stealing? Dictionary.com defines "steal" as "to take (the property of another or others) without permission or right, especially secretly or by force."

From those definitions, we can go on to define art theft as, specifically, "taking art without permission or right." In the context of art, that typically involves reposting it (not reblogging--reblogging is different) or using it for other things.

And there, my friends, is the issue.

If something is taken or used without permission, it is stolen. Permission is the important thing here--if an artist says "oh yeah, you can go ahead and use this!" then it's not stolen. You have their permission. But if you DON'T have that, then it IS stolen. It IS theft.

"But I'm not claiming it as my own!" you say. But you don't have to claim it as your own--the act of taking it in and of itself is an act of theft.

"But I said 'credit to the artist!'" The "credit" thing is a whole other conversation, but here's the short of it: The entire point of credit is to direct people to the source of something. If you are not directly linking to where you got the art from, you are not giving credit. "Credit to the artist" is not actually credit of any kind whatsoever. (Also, Google and Pinterest are not sources.)

"But I DID link back to the artist!" Okay, now this is where it may get confusing, because you may think you're covered because you actually did give credit. Here's the problem: if you reposted it or used it without permission, regardless of whether you gave credit or not, it's still stealing.

I'm bolding this because it's a point that a lot of people get tripped up on. Let me explain it this way: If you went into your neighbor's house and took something of theirs without their permission, but you told people "oh yeah, I got this from [neighbor]'s house!" that that would still, of course, be stealing, and it's no different for art.

Another thing is that even when you credit, people don't always check the source. Very recently I found a case where someone had reposted a piece of artwork of mine to Pinterest that was deliberately made to look like it came from the source material (it wasn't meant to confuse anyone, though--the description of my original post made it very clear that it was fanart). The person who reposted had linked back to my original post. The problem? The comments had people asking if this was official, where it happened in the source material, etc. Despite the fact that the source was right there, no one thought to look at it.

Even if you link back to the source, if you did it without the artist's permission, it's still stealing, and still causes problems for us artists.

"But I just posted it to my Pinterest--" DO NOT DO THIS. DO NOT POST AN ARTIST'S WORK TO PINTEREST IF YOU DO NOT HAVE THEIR EXPLICIT PERMISSION TO DO SO.

"But this artist friend of mine says they're okay if I post their work to my Pinterest so long as I link back to them!" Good for your friend! But the fact that your friend is okay with it doesn't mean that all artists are okay with it. For me, personally, I am very not okay with my work being posted to Pinterest, and say as much on my art blog description and posts (which people tend to ignore).

The problem with Pinterest--and reposting art in general--is that we artists don't know when it happens unless we're told, or unless we find it ourselves. It causes us to lose control of our art. And because of this, our art can spiral further out of our control, because when our works get posted to Pinterest or other similar websites, people who have no grasp whatsoever on how art works will just take it as "free art" and then use it for whatever they want.

That's how a piece I spent 20+ hours on was used as a poster for a paid event, without my permission, and without any payment or credit to me.

If an artist has said nothing about Pinterest (or other similar image sharing sites), your default should be to assume that they don't want their artwork posted there.

"Well I didn't repost someone's art, but I did use it for my avatar/RPing icon/video/fic cover/photo edit--" That's still stealing. If you're using it without their permission for any reason, that is stealing. Not to mention, the artist may not be cool with what you're using their art for anyway. (Looking at you, people who use platonic art in your shipping videos.)

“I MEANT to ask them for permission, but I forgot!” This can ONLY happen if you used the artwork BEFORE you asked for permission. You can resolve this by asking for permission BEFORE you use it, rather than assuming the answer will be “yes” and using it before asking.

"But it took me a really long time to make that icon/video/cover/edit!!" How long do you think it took the original artist to draw their piece? It doesn't matter how much work you put into modifying someone else's art--if you're doing it without their permission, you're still stealing.

"But I couldn't find the original artist! I tried to find them, I really did, but I couldn't. Is it okay to use their art then?" No, because you still don't have permission, and by reposting it anyway, you’re continuing to make the artwork spiral out of their control.

"What if I found the artist, but they speak a different language from mine? I can't ask them for permission, so is it okay if I repost their art anyway?" NO!! DO NOT DO THIS!! If there is a language barrier, use Google translate or find someone to translate for you and get a hold of the artist that way to ask them for their permission. The language barrier is NEVER an excuse to steal artwork. There are plenty of non-English-speaking artists who have taken ALL OF THEIR ARTWORK OFFLINE because the art theft was completely out of control. (And this isn't just exclusive to English-speakers stealing art from people who don't speak their language. It happens artists who don't speak English stealing art from English-speakers, too, but as this post is written in English it doesn't do much good for me to rant about this here.) If you can’t ask their permission, do not use it!!

"But what about reblogging?! Isn't that the same as reposting?? Should we not reblog art at all then?" No, reblogging (or retweeting) is not the same as reposting. If you reblog art, you keep all the information that we attached to the art, including our blog name and the description attached to the art. Reblogging/retweeting actually helps us artists A LOT, so as long as you're reblogging from the original artist (and not someone who's reposting their art), by all means, reblog our art!

"What if I just want to share someone else's artwork on Discord or show it to a friend?" This one's a bit different and is not actually as problematic. If you want to share our work on Discord or whatever, just link directly to where we posted it. Please don't post the art itself, unless you're doing it alongside a link because Discord won't show a preview or something.

"What about a forum or a site like Reddit?" This one's a bit different, since due to the way Reddit functions, if you LINK to the art, you have to go directly to the artist's original page to view it. (At least, that’s what it’s like the last time I was active there.) In a way it's roughly the same as with Discord--be sure you're linking directly to the actual post rather than just uploading the art on its own--but I would also ask the artist if they're okay with it, because they may be a member of the subreddit or forum and want to post it themselves, or they might not want their work shared to specific communities. (Some communities have a function where a bot will repost the artwork to Imgur, and some artists don't want that done with their art.)

"What if I'm saving it to my computer/phone to look at later, or making it into my desktop/phone wallpaper?" IMO this is fine, since your computer/phone files aren't public, and neither is your wallpaper. It's only a problem when you post it to public places without our permission.

"What if it's art I commissioned?" Well... like... in that case, it's art you paid for, so unless the artist you commissioned laid out very specific terms for you, you should be good to use that art. Like, at most, the artist may ask you to credit them somewhere in your blog description if they drew your icon or something, or credit them in a fic description if you commissioned a fic illustration from them, or something to that effect. It's really something you should have already worked out with the artist beforehand, but for the most part you should probably be fine to use art you paid for however you like.

"What about art I requested?" This is a bit different from commissioned work. Just because the art was drawn at your request doesn't mean it's explicitly yours (unless it's like, a drawing of your original character or something). Some artists take requests more as suggestions, so the art they draw in response to a suggestion or request is still theirs. Treat this as you would any other artwork and ask the artist for permission first before you do anything with the artwork you requested from them.

“What about NFTs?” ... Okay this one I can’t really go over too much because I barely understand it in the first place, but NFTs are BAD for artists and are a form of art theft. Do not turn people’s art into NFTs. This is a crappy thing to do. (If you want more information on this one, you’ll have to look it up yourself. It’s a form of cryptocurrency and it’s confusing.)

“If you don’t want your art stolen you shouldn’t post it in the first place.” This is fascinating logic. Try applying it to something else and see how it holds up. “If you don’t want your merchandise stolen, you shouldn’t open a booth.” “If you don’t want to get poisoned you shouldn’t eat food.” “If you don’t want to get punched in the face, don’t walk outside.” Yes. Flawless logic. Truly.

"Why do you care so much, anyway?! I'm sharing your art because I like it! That's a compliment! Shouldn't you be happy?" Well, we're certainly glad you like our art, but the problem is... as I've said before, reposting our art causes us to lose our control over it. When we lose control of our art, that damages our livelihood. As I said before, other people have made money off of my artwork. As well, some artists lose jobs because when their potential employers check out their portfolio, they may find artwork that's been reposted everywhere online, so they cannot hire the artist because they believe they may have stolen the artwork in their own portfolio.

Your reposting an image you thought was cute to Facebook or Pinterest could cost an artist their job. Think about that.

So, tl;dr, keep this in mind: you need the artist's permission to repost or use their artwork. If you do not have it, it is stealing, even if you credit the artist.

I know this post is really harsh in places, but this is such an important thing for all artists, and there's so many misconceptions about art theft online. And I feel like one of the biggest problems is that when some people see posts on art theft, they ignore them, because they think they've never done it or would never do it, so that's why I worded this post the way I did. I'm not trying to hurt anyone--I just want people to understand what art theft is, how it affects us artists, and how you can avoid it. Thank you for reading.

[qqueenofhades]

Hi. I’m curious. What did you mean by “women who read fiction might get Bad Ideas!!!” has just reached its latest and stupidest form via tumblr purity culture.? I haven’t seen any of this but I’m new to tumblr.

Oh man. You really want to get me into trouble on, like, my first day back, don’t you?

Pretty much all of this has been explained elsewhere by people much smarter than me, so this isn’t necessarily going to say anything new, but I’ll do my best to synthesize and summarize it. As ever, it comes with the caveat that it is my personal interpretation, and is not intended as the be-all, end-all. You’ll definitely run across it if you spend any time on Tumblr (or social media in general, including Twitter, and any other fandom-related spaces). This will get long.

In short: in the nineteenth century, when Gothic/romantic literature became popular and women were increasingly able to read these kinds of novels for fun, there was an attendant moral panic over whether they, with their weak female brains, would be able to distinguish fiction from reality, and that they might start making immoral or inappropriate choices in their real life as a result. Obviously, there was a huge sexist and misogynistic component to this, and it would be nice to write it off entirely as just hysterical Victorian pearl-clutching, but that feeds into the “lol people in the past were all much stupider than we are today” kind of historical fallacy that I often and vigorously shut down. (Honestly, I’m not sure how anyone can ever write the “omg medieval people believed such weird things about medicine!” nonsense again after what we’ve gone through with COVID, but that is a whole other rant.) The thinking ran that women shouldn’t read novels for fear of corrupting their impressionable brains, or if they had to read novels at all, they should only be the Right Ones: i.e., those that came with a side of heavy-handed and explicit moralizing so that they wouldn’t be tempted to transgress. Of course, books trying to hammer their readers over the head with their Moral Point aren’t often much fun to read, and that’s not the point of fiction anyway. Or at least, it shouldn’t be.

Fast-forward to today, and the entire generation of young, otherwise well-meaning people who have come to believe that being a moral person involves only consuming the “right” kind of fictional content, and being outrageously mean to strangers on the internet who do not agree with that choice. There are a lot of factors contributing to this. First, the advent of social media and being subject to the judgment of people across the world at all times has made it imperative that you demonstrate the “right” opinions to fit in with your peer-group, and on fandom websites, that often falls into a twisted, hyper-critical, so-called “progressivism” that diligently knows all the social justice buzzwords, but has trouble applying them in nuance, context, and complicated real life. To some extent, this obviously is not a bad thing. People need to be critical of the media they engage with, to know what narratives the creator(s) are promoting, the tropes they are using, the conclusions that they are supporting, and to be able to recognize and push back against genuinely harmful content when it is produced – and this distinction is critical – by professional mainstream creators. Amateur, individual fan content is another kettle of fish. There is a difference between critiquing a professional creator (though social media has also made it incredibly easy to atrociously abuse them) and attacking your fellow fan and peer, who is on the exact same footing as you as a consumer of that content.

Obviously, again, this doesn’t mean that you can’t call out people who are engaging in actually toxic or abusive behavior, fans or otherwise. But certain segments of Tumblr culture have drained both those words (along with “gaslighting”) of almost all critical meaning, until they’re applied indiscriminately to “any fictional content that I don’t like, don’t agree with, or which doesn’t seem to model healthy behavior in real life” and “anyone who likes or engages with this content.” Somewhere along the line, a reactionary mindset has been formed in which the only fictional narratives or relationships are those which would be “acceptable” in real life, to which I say…. what? If I only wanted real life, I would watch the news and only read non-fiction. Once again, the underlying fear, even if it’s framed in different terms, is that the people (often women) enjoying this content can’t be trusted to tell the difference between fiction and reality, and if they like “problematic” fictional content, they will proceed to seek it out in their real life and personal relationships. And this is just… not true.

As I said above, critical media studies and thoughtful consumption of entertainment are both great things! There have been some great metas written on, say, the Marvel Cinematic Universe and how it is increasingly relying on villains who have outwardly admirable motives (see: the Flag Smashers in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) who are then stigmatized by their anti-social, violent behavior and attacks on innocent people, which is bad even as the heroes also rely on violence to achieve their ends. This is a clever way to acknowledge social anxieties – to say that people who identify with the Flag Smashers are right, to an extent, but then the instant they cross the line into violence, they’re upsetting the status quo and need to be put down by the heroes. I watched TFATWS and obviously enjoyed it. I have gone on a Marvel re-watching binge recently as well. I like the MCU! I like the characters and the madcap sci-fi adventures! But I can also recognize it as a flawed piece of media that I don’t have to accept whole-cloth, and to be able to criticize some of the ancillary messages that come with it. It doesn’t have to be black and white.

When it comes to shipping, moreover, the toxic culture of “my ship is better than your ship because it’s Better in Real Life” ™ is both well-known and in my opinion, exhausting and pointless. As also noted, the whole point of fiction is that it allows us to create and experience realities that we don’t always want in real life. I certainly enjoy plenty of things in fiction that I would definitely not want in reality: apocalyptic space operas, violent adventures, and yes, garbage men. A large number of my ships over the years have been labeled “unhealthy” for one reason or another, presumably because they don’t adhere to the stereotype of the coffee-shop AU where there’s no tension and nobody ever makes mistakes or is allowed to have serious flaws. And I’m not even bagging on coffee-shop AUs! Some people want to remove characters from a violent situation and give them that fluff and release from the nonstop trauma that TV writers merrily inflict on them without ever thinking about the consequences. Fanfiction often focuses on the psychology and healing of characters who have been through too much, and since that’s something we can all relate to right now, it’s a very powerful exercise. As a transformative and interpretive tool, fanfic is pretty awesome.

The problem, again, comes when people think that fic/fandom can only be used in this way, and that going the other direction, and exploring darker or complicated or messy dynamics and relationships, is morally bad. As has been said before: shipping is not activism. You don’t get brownie points for only having “healthy” ships (and just my personal opinion as a queer person, these often tend to be heterosexual white ships engaging in notably heteronormative behavior) and only supporting behavior in fiction that you think is acceptable in real life. As we’ve said, there is a systematic problem in identifying what that is. Ironically, for people worried about Women Getting Ideas by confusing fiction and reality, they’re doing the same thing, and treating fiction like reality. Fiction is fiction. Nobody actually dies. Nobody actually gets hurt. These people are not real. We need to normalize the idea of characters as figments of a creator’s imagination, not actual people with their own agency. They exist as they are written, and by the choice of people whose motives can be scrutinized and questioned, but they themselves are not real. Nor do characters reflect the author’s personal views. Period.

This feeds into the fact that the internet, and fandom culture, is not intended as a “safe space” in the sense that no questionable or triggering content can ever be posted. Archive of Our Own, with its reams of scrupulous tagging and requests for you to explicitly click and confirm that you are of age to see M or E-rated content, is a constant target of the purity cultists for hosting fictional material that they see as “immoral.” But it repeatedly, unmistakably, directly asks you for your consent to see this material, and if you then act unfairly victimized, well… that’s on you. You agreed to look at this, and there are very few cases where you didn’t know what it entailed. Fandom involves adults creating contents for adults, and while teenagers and younger people can and do participate, they need to understand this fact, rather than expecting everything to be a PG Disney movie.

When I do write my “dark” ships with garbage men, moreover, they always involve a lot of the man being an idiot, being bluntly called out for an idiot, and learning healthier patterns of behavior, which is one of the fundamental patterns of romance novels. But they also involve an element of the woman realizing that societal standards are, in fact, bullshit, and she can go feral every so often, as a treat. But even if I wrote them another way, that would still be okay! There are plenty of ships and dynamics that I don’t care for and don’t express in my fic and fandom writing, but that doesn’t mean I seek out the people who do like them and reprimand them for it. I know plenty of people who use fiction, including dark fiction, in a cathartic way to process real-life trauma, and that’s exactly the role – one of them, at least – that fiction needs to be able to fulfill. It would be terribly boring and limited if we were only ever allowed to write about Real Life and nothing else. It needs to be complicated, dark, escapist, unreal, twisted, and whatever else. This means absolutely zilch about what the consumers of this fiction believe, act, or do in their real lives.

Once more, I do note the misogyny underlying this. Nobody, after all, seems to care what kind of books or fictional narratives men read, and there’s no reflection on whether this is teaching them unhealthy patterns of behavior, or whether it predicts how they’ll act in real life. (There was some of that with the “do video games cause mass shootings?”, but it was a straw man to distract from the actual issues of toxic masculinity and gun culture.) Certain kinds of fiction, especially historical fiction, romance novels, and fanfic, are intensely gendered and viewed as being “women’s fiction” and therefore hyper-criticized, while nobody’s asking if all the macho-man potboiler military-intrigue tough-guy stereotypical “men’s fiction” is teaching them bad things. So the panic about whether your average woman on the internet is reading dark fanfic with an Unhealthy Ship (zomgz) is, in my opinion, misguided at best, and actively destructive at worst.