#I’ve seen in happen in many fandoms even if I don’t think it’s necessarily what’s happening here

[to-rise-above-monsters]

how i interpreted the bertholdt thing was that armin’s understanding of annie deepened bc of bertholdt’s memories, not that it necessarily controlled his feelings (like how eren implied)

i reallyyy like aruani as a concept. they mean so much to me. ‘girl who doesn’t care for life’ ‘boy who cares so much’ (i also just love them as characters so much)

i think the downside for them was how long ago s1 was.

warning rant underneath (im embarrassed im so sorry)

i’d been such a long time fan but dropped off when there was a hiatus of the anime and decided ill just binge the manga when it’s done. the only real reason annie was on my mind was bc of how dedicated i was to the rba dynamic and how much i loved annie (and fanon annie) as a character. but she truly wasn’t a character for nearly half of the series.

i even knew someone who saw her in the crystal and asked me “who’s that?”

i think she suffered from fandom slightly but now it being canon ig they were right. it was a little annoying for fandom (a small part of it) deciding that every character needed to be paired off with each other and that annie must be in love with one of the boys she tolerates. maybe that was a small reason i found the canonicity so out of nowhere?

bc i love fanon ships for sillies but making a female character HAVE to hinge on a relationship with a man rubbed me the wrong way. but that’s not what aruani is in canon and im so thankful for that. but i still wish there was more

it sucks because there was really no way of developing her or their relationship while she was in the crystal and idek how someone could properly execute it but it was very jarring for her to come out of an absence that was longer than the timeskip for the readers. we hadn’t even seen her for i think six years? and then immediately she is fully canon with a character that we had followed for all the time she’d been missing.

idk i wish they had more. i wish it wasn’t hints. i wish it wasn’t the assumption that they must be romantic because of this, this and this.

their stuff in season 1 was so nice. i remember being so intrigued. but that’s all it kinda was? we never had a reason. why did she spare him? why did she seem to care about him in particular? why did she want to ‘be a good person’ for him? so interesting.

but we… never get an answer? is it because he called her nice? she clearly had empathy for him before that. but that wasn’t something ever shown. even the compilation of moments always seems to start in the middle of a blossoming relationship. there was never a moment that solidified their mutual respect and interest for each other. it’s just something that just… happened? off screen?

rereading all these years later, i can catch these things and be like ohhhh yeah ig that was them liking each other. but when it was happening in real time, it was the most jarring and insane jump. i was like woah woah buddy what is going on.

sudden blushing and confession was so crazy to me. it felt so sudden. and so did other ships. it felt like “ofc they were in love the whole time they’re a woman and a man who have some interest in each other”

honestly, something that could have been implemented maybe was that armin was genuinely talking to her not because he was in love with her but he did genuinely ‘want to see her’. maybe a scene of him reflecting on maybe why he wanted to talk to her so badly (he kinda does but i want it to circle back to his regrets and maybe acknowledging all the times she spared him or cared about him to a certain capacity). maybe a flashback of why annie respected armin so much. or when their relationship started.

and maybe showing him visiting her throughout? but from a lore perspective, i feel like that still wouldn’t work. sigh im so sorry. i have so many feelings and I don’t think I’ve ever actually written it out before 💀

idk im so sorry im rambling SO BAD. i think snk deserved to have a lot more breathing room and filler. letting my children just breathe and talk for a second. (i think that’s why junior high was so good and so well received)

i love this manga so much and i know some people hate the ending but i personally really love this series and it’s overall message and think it’s so well written. and i love anyone who is passionate about anything and loves things. i just like to write improvements or brainstorm headcanon/how i would tweak things🙏

anyways

isayama put his whole pussy into making yumihisu so explicitly romantic and intimate and loving throughout their entire relationship and decided he was done for the day<3

why did isayama put his whole pussy into yumihisu after saying he can’t write romance. and then fumble when it came to the straights.

[dragodoodlez]

Is there a canon reason why people think Kabru sleeps around? Like it’s a very wildly agreed upon headcanon - at least, that he has the reputation for it - like in fanfiction/art that I’ve seen

[bomber-grl]

General Percy Jackson dating hc⋆°🌊

~ ⋆｡‧𖦹 Percy Jackson x Gn!Reader(no pronouns)

Percy is so sassy

I think we as a fandom have established that, however sometimes you underestimate how far he’ll go.

No matter how long you’ve been dating he’ll still be sassy 😔😭

Of course it’s downgraded though

He chose mercy today

Anyway

Although he can get sassy sometimes, there is without a doubt that he loves you.

If there are 100 people who love you Percy is one of them. 1 person who loves you? Percy is that person

Zero? Percy is dead

He absolutely adores you, even if he can be a big idiot sometimes.

Now, when the two of you got together it was pretty much the same as when you were friends

Just romantic

You’d get reminded of your relationship when he calls you his girlfriend/boyfriend/partner

Especially in front of others

Or when he starts holding your hand and kissing you

It’s definitely a change

But not necessarily a bad one

Hes the type of guy to make being your boyfriend his whole personality

(Not actually but let me explain)

He’ll def wear those shirt with “I love my [insert your preferred title]

And he won’t care who sees it 😭

He’s proud no matter what

And is an absolute menace if anyone says anything about it

Or to you, for that matter

He’s powerful and we all know that

You can obviously defend yourself however sometimes he just can’t hold back

If anything were to ever happen to you

Let’s just say the opposing side will be as if it never existed.

I don’t see Percy as the jealous type ngl

I’ve seen many others say he would be and I think he could be, but only sometimes

He knows you’re just as loyal to him as he is to you

However if he sees anyone flirt and you don’t notice or tell them to back off-

He will for you

He won’t hesitate to slide an arm around your waist and ask what the hell the other person is doing with a raised eyebrow

He sasses the other person so much he leaves no room for argument 😭

Percy trusts with everything he’s got

So if you were to ever betray him he’d be crushed

Especially if you really know him

Just don’t betray him 🤷‍♀️

Percy follows you around all the time when he’s got nothing to do

He’s strong and independent

…wheeennn he’s away from you

He’s always by your side

And he loves to spend time with you too

He can’t say goodbye without hugging or kissing you

That’s a definite quirk of his

He’s technically not supposed to exist but it makes you glad he’s the only demigod child of Poseidon

And the only other person who shares his cabin is Tyson, so that way you two can sleepover and cuddle.

Ofc you guys get to actually do that once Tyson stops talking to you guys 😭

Only when Tyson goes off do you guys have time to chill in his cabin and the sleepovers you have are almost endless

I say almost because you eventually got caught by the harpy’s and luckily Chiron came in time to prevent you guys being ripped to shreds :,)

Before all that happened tho, you and Percy would cuddle and you’d play with Percy’s hair

He LOVES having his hair played with and his scalp massaged

And he accidentally insinuates that he misses that the most out of you getting banned from his cabin

The audacity for him to miss your massages rather than your presence

He let you have his share of desert as an apology for as long as you want 😭😭

You felt guilty so eventually you stopped 😭

If you are a sword fighter like him, you both often spar together.

You hit two birds with one stone

You practice your skills, and get to hang out together

What could be better?

Even then, if you specialize with daggers or a spear then it still works out

Sorry if you’re an archer 😭

Before you’re even introduced to Sally she already loves you!

And vise versa

Percy talks so much about you guys to each other that you practically already met her

And she already knew about you before you guys even started dating 😭

Percy told her (albeit a bit reluctantly) that he had a crush and the rest was history

When you finally meet it’s an automatic click and the both of you hit it off

Honestly Percy’s happy to see two of the most important people in his life getting along.

So, we’re all aware of how much of a menace Percy is, right?

Well he absolutely teases the fuck out of you

If that’s how you’re comfortable with

It’s not bad but it’s definitely silly and makes you smile at his antics, especially when you’re pretending to be mad at him 😭

You’re so weak for him lol

As is he for you

Mans is a simp and a so called “free thinker”

That changes when you step into the room and start talking to him

So after you guys got banned from going into each others cabins for unplanned sleepovers you guys had to make the most of the time you had together during the day

Just imagine an innocent camper walking by and seeing “beat ares, stopped two wars” Percy

The thing is, Percy is absolutely putty in your hands and has his head resting on your lap with your hands in his hair

Some would usually tease but with his reputation nowadays, nobody dares

With the exception of close Ally’s and ofc, Clarisse

It’s little moments that get you guys closer than ever like when there’s campfires and you can just enjoy the moment

Or when you can go into the lake

Which is where you guys had your first kiss

And it was sweet and spontaneous

And then awkward afterwards because of the walk back to your cabins 😭

Even then Percy gave you a quick peck and ran off

Best believe he was kicking his feet once he got back to his cabin 😭

you awoke the next day with being the new hot gossip in camp so that was… interesting

Anyway

I’m aware that I’ve made Percy to be a bit a menace

Although he is exactly that on the regular-

He really does care about you

Sometimes whenever he looks at you he can’t help but think about how lucky he got

He’s glad to have met you and tries his best to let you know at every chance he gets

Even if the things he might say come off as cringe, he means it

Maybe to a less cringey extent tho lolol

Bro can’t help it, he’s a romantic at heart

But only ever for you

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

I read your post about not letting kudos and hits upset us. I try to think this way but I'm curious about something else. I've written many fanfics for my fandom and they're all "flop". I don't mind that honestly. But then some writers have written only one fic about the ship I do and and it gets hundreds of kudos. How do some writers achieve that when I'm doing the same and it doesn't get the same response. What else can I do?

I’m afraid I can’t give you a definite answer about what you should do or why this person’s work is more popular, but what I can give you are some advice and, from my experience, some reasons that might explain why other’s works receive more hits and kudos.

start with why other writers’ works are more popular when it’s the same characters, same ship, same fandom. there are various factors at play that might be it;

maybe the person already has large audience base prior to their posting about the fandom you’re in, I know a few authors who already have these sorts of loyal readers that would read any work the authors posted even if they (the readers) were not in that fandom.

maybe someone, anyone, decided share the link to this person’s work on Tumblr or Twitter (X) or any social media platform, and it kind of became viral, thus it drew in lots and lots of readers. it could take just one person, didn’t necessarily have to be the author themself, to share the link among the fandom as a recommendation, or maybe a screenshot of one sentence from the fic that they liked, what happened next is that the replies were filled with people asking for the link.

tags and summary are important factors when people are looking for a fic to read. so maybe this person’s work is tagged with the content people were looking for? maybe their summary grabbed people’s attention or curiosity?

these are just what I can think of over the top of my head.

as for what you can do to gain more readers, I’ve never seen your work so the advice I can give will be a general one; I believe the trick lies in summary, tags as well as the format of one’s work.

when it comes to AO3 (I assume it’s your platform?), tags and summary are the main things people use to determine whether or not they want to click on the fic.

tag your content properly, what characters or pairings it’s about, as well as what the readers will find upon reading your work (you don’t have to spoil it, only the general tags that will give your readers an idea of what they’re in for).

summaries are just as important. there are no “rules” obviously, and I’m not telling you or any writers what to do. though a little advice that I personally take is that you use this little summary section AO3 gives you to do anything to make sure it stands out and that people will see it and want to click on it. that means leave “author’s note” out of the summary section. folks, AO3 summary is the first glimpse into the fic itself that people will see prior to clicking on it, most of the time, people look at the summary to see the author’s writing style and if what’s written, plotwise, grabs their interest. personally, when I see an author use “summary” as a place to write “author’s note”, chances are, I will scroll past that fic as I am interested in what the fic is about, not what the author has to say about their opinion on said fic or their personal life or anything (there’s an author’s note section for that) and if I can’t get a glimpse of what the plot is about or what the author’s writing style is from the summary section, then I won’t click on it, and will look for other fic that can get me interested instead.

moving on to fic format, again, I am not telling anyone what to do here. this is only a suggestion, an advice I’ve learned and want to share: when you write your fic, make sure to use line and paragraph spacing. if your 10k word long fic is one long block of text with no paragraph break, chances are, people will back away from it entirely. also, if it’s two different characters talking with dialogues, don’t put all of their dialogues in one paragraph. for instance, a paragraph for character A’s dialogue, then another separate paragraph for character B’s dialogue and so on.

and I think that’s it for my advice? however, I’ll say this again that the secret to truly enjoying your role as a fanfic writer is that you only focus on yourself. write whatever you want for yourself. it doesn’t matter if this person’s work is more popular, because fanfics and fandoms aren’t a competition. you are your main audience. just have fun creating the stories you want to create for you.

[glitteringmoonlight]

In my time in the MDZS fandom, I’ve seen people use Wei Wuxian dismissing the bathtub scene with “it’s normal for men to be like this sometimes” as evidence that he’s oblivious, but none of it ever takes into account the context of that dialogue.

First off, the quote from Chapter 96 is this:

Wei WuXian only put on one boot before continuing, “But you don’t have to feel too apologetic either. Uh, it’s normal for men to be like this sometimes. Please...don’t take it too seriously.”

Here’s the thing: Wei Wuxian doesn’t truly believe what he’s saying here! He’s saying what he thinks he needs to say to salvage their friendship! He thinks his confession has just been rejected and that he’s provoked Lan Wangji into doing something that he didn’t really want to do

[Side note, I’m using the ExR translation (with the exception of one scene, where I use multiple translations) because at the time this post was begun, it was the only fully translated version of these chapters I could find]

The sequence of events are as follows:

1. Wei Wuxian tries to express his feelings 

Wei WuXian, “I have to tell you something.” He breathed lightly before speaking, “Lan Zhan, thank you.”

With thousands of words, there was nowhere to start. If he didn’t meet Lan WangJi when he came back, Wei WuXian didn’t know what he’d be like right now. In reality, even if he roamed around alone, it wouldn’t necessarily be that bad. But no matter what, he believed that nothing would be better than this.

Unfortunately, he didn’t notice that after Lan WangJi heard this, his body froze slightly. 

The surging heat finally began to retreat. Wei WuXian’s head was still dizzy as he rambled on, “In these two lives, you’ve helped me a lot. I know you’re... really nice to me. You’re really great! Apart from thank you, I don’t know what else to say to you... Anyways, towards you, I feel... I feel...”

He’s trying so hard to convey his feelings that he doesn’t realize that as soon as Lan Wangji hears the words ‘thank you’, he thinks Wei Wuxian slept with him out of gratitude. So on one hand, we have Wei Wuxian sincerely trying to confess his feelings, while on the other hand, Lan Wangji believes that Wei Wuxian only slept with him because he feels grateful to him, not because he actually wanted to. That leads to,

2. Lan Wangji pushes Wei Wuxian away

But this wasn’t the point at all. Wei WuXian had never confessed like this to anyone before. Even someone whose face was as thick as his felt a bit embarrassed. He could only first pick a few random things to say. Just as he was thinking how to explain himself to make it sound sincere and serious when Lan WangJi suddenly pushed him away.

Now, we as readers know the reason for Lan Wangji pushing Wei Wuxian away, but Wei Wuxian doesn’t. Wei Wuxian is yet to realize that Lan Wangji has a thing about being thanked. That realization only happens later, in Chapter 111.

Wei WuXian looked at him, “Lan Zhan, you’re really scared of me telling you ‘thank you’, aren’t you? I suddenly remembered. Many of the times we parted ways in my past life, I said ‘thank you’ to you right before. And every time we separated, I worsened the next time we met.”

The time they killed Wen Chao and Wen ZhuLiu at the courier station, the time they met each other through the flowers at the tower in Yunmeng, the time they parted at Yiling’s Burial Mound. Every time, he used the word to mark a clear line between him and Lan WangJi, stretching out the distance between them.

With a long while of silence, Lan WangJi replied, “Between you and me, there is no need for ‘thank you’ and ‘sorry’.”

At this point, to Wei Wuxian, the only reasonable conclusion to make about Lan Wangji pushing him aside when he’s trying to confess his feelings is that Lan Wangji doesn’t return his feelings. Worse, that he has taken advantage of a drunk Lan Wangji. (Many people have already pointed out that Lan Wangji has already sobered up by the time they have sex, but again, Wei Wuxian doesn’t know that!) 

This is Wei Wuxian’s immediate reaction.

Although Wei WuXian didn’t know when he woke up, now that he was awake, Lan WangJi’s reaction meant that one thing was clear: he didn’t want to continue what they were doing. He didn’t want to listen to Wei WuXian finish what he was saying, either.

A little later, he thinks

That the most disciplined person would throw tantrums, hit people, mess about after he was drunk, meant that Lan WangJi’s drunken actions weren’t self-controlled. And, even though Wei WuXian knew this, he still took advantage of the easy manipulation, purposely provoking him and leading him to do what he wanted. 

[...]

This situation clearly verified the worst possibility. Lan WangJi was indeed very nice towards him, but... it probably wasn’t the kind of nice he hoped for.

He already knows and acknowledges that Lan Wangji treats him in a special way! In fact, he was hoping that it meant Lan Wangji reciprocated his feelings, but he didn’t know for sure. The fact that Lan Wangji pushes him away when he starts to confess solidifies for him that Lan Wangji does not reciprocate his feelings. Which finally leads to

3. Wei Wuxian apologizes for taking advantage of Lan Wangji and tries to reassure him by saying ‘it’s normal for men to be like this sometimes’

It’s made clear that Wei Wuxian is trying to assure Lan Wangji that it’s normal because he doesn’t want his feelings (that he believes are not reciprocated) to ruin their friendship.

Originally, Wei WuXian thought that compared to having his feelings be found out and them become so awkward they couldn’t even be friends, he’d much rather have Lan WangJi feel that he was a cheap, flippant person instead. But right now, he began to regret saying those idiotic things without thinking about them first. He whispered, “... I’m sorry.”

The text literally specifies that he says what he says because he thought it would be better for Lan Wangji to think that he was a “cheap and flippant person” than ruin their friendship! He does not actually believe what he’s saying! That’s also why Wei Wuxian’s confession in the Guanyin Temple begins with “Back then, I really wanted to sleep with you”. 

For more clarity, this line has also been translated as

He had only said it as an offhanded comment, but unexpectedly, Wei Wuxian came to the realization: "You're not wrong."

"Lan Zhan! Lan Wangji! Hanguang-jun! I—Earlier I—slept with you because I genuinely wanted to!"

  — spicychickenyang’s translation

and

He had only been thinking out loud. Little did he expect Wei WuXian to suddenly go, “You’re right.”

With that, Wei WuXian proceeded to shout at the top of his lungs, “Lan Zhan! Lan WangJi! Earlier, I—I truly wanted to sleep with you!”

  — Chapter 100, boat-full-of-lotus-pods translation

 Now that Lan Xichen’s monologue has revealed that Lan Wangji does return his feelings (and probably because he has been able to connect all the times he said ‘thank you’ to Lan Wangji with negative reactions from Lan Wangji), Wei Wuxian immediately figures out why Lan Wangji reacted the way he did and clarifies it.

[epiphainie]

I completely agree with you in that there are many bad faith interpretations of tommy and buck and tommy’s relationship. I don’t know if this one I’m about to share would necessarily be a bad faith interpretation but I’d like your take on it. In the scene where buck comes out to eddie, eddie says to buck “this changes nothing between us” and buck responds with something along the lines of “uh good, that’s a relief”. I’ve seen a lot of people interpret buck’s facial expressions as not showing just relief but relief mixed disappointment because a part of buck wanted things to change between them, in the romantic sense, he just doesn’t realize it. I do agree that buck’s expression as he says the words is interesting but I don’t personally think it has anything to do with him harbouring romantic feelings for eddie. for me it felt like one of those moments where you dread the reaction for so long, that when you finally face the thing and open up, even if the other person’s reaction is positive, it takes a minute for you to really internalise it and let yourself believe it.

Another moment that people often talk about from this scene is reaction to buck saying he can’t stop thinking about tommy. People often say eddie’s facial expression shows some sort of disappointment but again, I don’t know if that’s it? again, it is an interesting expression so I get why people would pause and focus for a minute but to me, it reads as eddie searching for a moment to give his honest advice to buck in the scenario.

Anyway, I’d love your thoughts on those particular moments and how you see them. Again, I’m not saying that the interpretations people are making of that scene in relation to buddie are necessarily in bad faith. I know it’s fun to analyze and interpret scenes in ways that you enjoy and I’d never want people to stop doing that. I just feel like Oliver and Tim have been very clear in that they do not want to tell a story where a guy comes out and is in love with his best friend and if buck was truly disappointed in hearing eddie say nothing’s going to change between them post buck’s coming out, that would be a quite bold contradiction.

Hi anon!

I'm not sure if you actually meant to send this to me because I'm kind of the exact opposite of a person who engages in the practice of reverse-engineering actors' faces to find deep secret meanings that doesn't actually exist in the script. I think it's a slippery slop of a fan practice where if you go "haha he looks jealous here" and want to make it gay in your fantasy world and are capable of compartmentalizing that from the actual text, it's great! If you look at it like it's subtext that is meant to one day come to surface, as some sort of proof that this is not the actual story, you're either too deep in your world that you treat these characters like they have agencies and thoughts and feelings and are not, yknow, fictional - or that actors are making the conscious choice to layer their performances with breadcrumbs for a plot that doesn't exist at the time.

I've seen all these arguments with almost every scene this season. Eddie's face when Tommy enters the bachelor party. Buck's face when Bobby says Tommy is good for him. Bobby's face when he says Tommy is good for Buck. Eddie's smile when they enter the hospital room. Most of these are insignificant and the others have in-text explanation (Yeah, Bobby smiles weirdly in that scene. Guess what, he's kind of planning to kill himself). And like I said, if people want to read these in a pro-Buddie sense and go do fandom stuff with it, that's great. But we all know this fandom is taken over by the question of "will Buck and Eddie happen?" so everyone who's not even doing this in bad faith (I don't think all do) are looking at it in "does this support canon romantic Buddie?" lenses. So much of shipping Buddie is about speculating for the next episode, next season, next whatever that I think it's so easy to find yourself on that slippery slop where you fit every shot, face, editing choice to your interpretation. There's also the sunk cost fallacy at play here - once you do it for so long, it's hard to give up on the belief that it'll happen.

I think both Oliver and Ryan great actors - and that scene is one of my favorites in the season - but no, I don't think there's more to their faces than what they're given to play. Which is as all of them mentioned a billion times, a scene of a guy nervously coming out as queer to his best friend and receiving support. If I'm wrong and the rest of this fandom is right and the production/writers/showrunners are actually fully married to the idea of canon romantic Buddie but The Powers That Be are keeping gay Eddie in the closet as if he's a real person and they're the evil step-mother, and come S10 Buck realizes he's been in love with his bff all along, then yeah in-text, that would recontextualize all their performances. It still wouldn't change what the writers' intention has been with the text as it exists today or be proof that Oliver and Ryan are making acting choices for a hypothetical future SL.

[queenimmadolla]

ooh, we are social this week, which i’m digging! please note this isn’t an attack on anyone, this is just me adding to the conversation. so on the status of the fandom being dead. it is. (and this is a lot, cause i can’t shut up when i get going)

we can like sugar coat it all we want and say people don’t venture out to read or maybe they’ve lost interest in writing, but fandoms usually go dead—and this term doesn’t necessarily mean like absolutely NO FICS—it just means it wasn’t as hype as it was when the last season dropped, and that’s a literal fact. it’s been two years lol. summer of ‘22, i could refresh the eddie munson x reader tag and like 16 new fics and blurbs and posts would load every time, there was just so much fucking content—it was glorious and positive because there was so many people, way too many for people to start whatever bullshit ended up happening (that occurred during the first phase of people losing interest).

now if i refresh when i dare venture out to the tags (and we’ll get to that next), it’s not as frequent. plain and simple. it’ll pick back up when the next season drops, it’ll be all hype, and then it’ll die down again as the years go by. hell, even the supernatural fandom isn’t as wild as it used to be, and they were around for YEARS.

this is coming from someone who’s been here and read (and when i was just a reader, i lived in those tags) a specific steve fic for like 5 years because there wasn’t a ton of stuff being produced, yes some, but not even to the amount that’s coming out now. and that’s again because of the YEARS long gap. and the proof of that is in stonathan. we all know the gay ships are some of the most popular amongst fandoms, and while stonathan was replaced with steddie essentially, it’s been a hot minute since stonathan owned the stranger things fandom because again, it died down. people moved onto other ships from other shows or outgrew fanfiction for the fandom. that ship was like the stranger things equivalent to destiel at one point and now it’s a literal ghost, proof that this fandom does die down and that’s fine. it’ll pick back up one last time, it’s not the end of the world.

now onto the tags, a lot of people here—i’ve noticed more so sexually explicit writers (and i love your work, thank you for your service) just think people are like lazy or something. but really? it’s because a lot of people don’t tag their fics correctly.

some people have dark kinks, some people have more niche kinks, more innocent, etc., that’s inevitable, people have their own tastes. but they won’t tag it. and that’s when people get vocal about kinks and not letting people post what they want and stuff. do you, just make sure you do your due diligence, because when you intentionally don’t, people are gonna speak up. you and i know very well all tumblr users have opinions.

and when they do tag their work, it’s usually after it’s caused a stir or several hours after its been up (this is a tactic for engagement purposes, it’s not tagged for a couple of hours and then magically it appears hours after people have seen it and spread it and it happens pretty routinely). this is also applies to REBLOGS. i’m not sure if people think that because the original was tagged, it’ll be the same when they reblog, but it’s not! in fact, a lot of people just slap the eddie x reader tag on it and send it out again.

i get it, whatever it is may be your thing, my thing, but that’s just irresponsible and it sucks the joy out of whatever moment people were in when they went into the general tag. i don’t think it may have triggered them to the point of a mental breakdown, though i guess that could happen, but it definitely could put them in a man, fuck this shit i’m gonna go do something else or read something else from some other fandom, blah blah blah, and that’s valid, too. running into something you filtered out through the tags because someone didn’t want to tag their work so they could get more engagement kills vibes.

it’s happened a ton of times with me and so now i don’t go searching, because i’ve encountered waaaaaaaay too many dead doves with no proper tags other than “smut”.

i don’t ever really leave the three tab thingies on tumblr mobile home screen, so now i just get whatever i see my mutuals reblog, or something with a tag i follow (another neat feature to utilize), but again, because some people dont care to tag their stuff appropriately, it’s not always something i can read or something i feel mentally safe reading.

i doubt, like i seriously doubt, people only want to read their mutuals’ stuff. like me, i will support my mutuals and i appreciate them dearly but like….its not enough lol, i LOVE to read and i’m not tryna use them to farm a bunch of writing i can read for myself, that’s just fucked so i’m always looking (as best as i can while trying to avoid other people’s hidden landmines so to speak, because if i happen to like someone’s fic to read, i go back and check to see the blog is now just ‘???��� for me 💀) for new stuff from new writers, writers i don’t know, etc. that fits what i want to read (please, no more white character sibling!reader recs for me, i think you guys are so sweet for tryna plug me with something you think i’ll like but that immediately takes me out of the reader insert, like i can’t imagine myself or someone that looks like me)

yes, you can say there are cliques here who only support each other, and we haven’t been blind to drama and whatever, but people can say the same about you and your group of friends here. it’s all viewpoint. everyone is a part of a clique or group unless they literally don’t talk to anyone.

that aside, i dont know how many times ive gotten on here and like begged for recs and have been desperate enough to jump back into the general x reader tag to search for something to read only to encounter those dead doves. i hate not being able to venture out of my little cave, but it’s what i have to limit myself to. after this last dead dove with no warning, its gonna be a hot damn minute til i try again but i guess the whole point of this is

PLEASE TAG YOUR STUFF APPROPRIATELY AT THE TIME OF POSTING IF YOU ALREADY KNOW BETTER.

[rutadales]

Do you not think cDream is the villain? Sorry this is not at all meant to be agressive or anything, I just have trouble understanding that interpretation. I’m genuinely interested in what you think bc I’m not as well versed in lore as many dsmp fans but from what I’ve seen, cDream is a pretty unequivocally bad person. I think few of the characters aren’t to be fair, but though cDream is more complex than the common interpretations, he doesnt necessarily seem to be morally better? Again, don’t mean to sound rude or anything!! Just kinda trying to understand :)

So this question kinda expands into several branching off points for me, but I'll try to keep it simple and break it down into sections as best I can. this is going to get long

So do I think c!Dream is a villain? Depends on what definition you're using first of all but also in what context, in which storyline, and from whose perspective you're consuming the story from. A strength of SMPs as storytelling devices is that the concrete plot and hard facts of the story are often pretty fluid; what happened when, who was there, who saw what, and who is a villain or a hero is all dependent on which stream you chose to tune into at the time. But as much as this is a strength, it's also a detriment. Entire character beats and motivations can be missed or obfuscated by simply not tuning into a creators stream. A big example of this is how many people missed the Staged Finale reveal, anyone who didn't watch Punz stream will still be operating under the belief that everything Dream did in the disc finale was his true nature, and not an act. Completely changes how to interpret those characters and the entire finale as a scene.

The nature of stream based storytelling is audiences are consuming completely different stories, simultaneously, and there's no hard copy of this story. It's not a book you can go pick up at Barnes and Noble or a movie you can stream on Netflix. To get caught up and engage with the fiction you either have to go back and rewatch hundreds of hours of live content (with dead space and parts that have been completely ret-conned), watch recaps edited by third parties who are at liberty to cut out anything they deem irrelevant to the story, or get it exclusively word of mouth by the audience. A character being more loved by the audience now means that character's narration is given higher value in contrast to other characters. Even supposedly non-biased sources, like the fan wiki, meant to lay out bare bone facts of the story are riddled with un-sourced fan interpretations of the media. Look here

Now, reading a characters unreliable narration as reliable isn't a failing as it is more just engaging with the media as intended. The intent of utilizing unreliable narrators is often to "trick" the audience or to showcase how that character sees the world. Its fine and is used is a lot of different mediums, I'm actually a huge fan. Love me some bitches who just lie. The thing is, due to everything I've laid out above, having a character who is unreliable, like c!Tommy often is, in this medium means fans who only consume the content via world of mouth are getting an unreliable narration without the context that its unreliable. This completely changes entire swaths of the fiction and more, to our point, who is the villain.

A really, kind of neat phenomena in the fandom is how fans bought into c!Wilbur's lies about L'manberg the same way the characters he was manipulating did. Fans became part of the narrative in a strange way. Which is actually a perfect example for how other characters shape the narrative around Dream, both within the fiction and within the fans trying to engage with it.

With that in mind, I don't even read the dsmp as a story with "villains" or "heros", its a story with a lot of different perspectives that clash with each other. Those terms don't really lend themselves to the kind of questions I'm asking about the story.

I think the question you're really asking is "Do you think c!Dream is a good person". You bring up being "unequivocally bad" and moral a couple different times, which to me flags as a question about fictional morality. Because the question of who is a villain in the dream smp is completely dependent on who you watch, which streams you've watched, and whosever narration you decided to subscribe to-- and is why I find the label villain in dsmp analysis fairly mute. It's kinda a pointless exercise to try and determine who earns that label and who doesn't. Not the kind of analysis I'm interested in.

But to answer the question I think you imply here, no I don't think c!Dream is a good person. I don't think anyone on the smp is. Maybe Michael? Well he tried to break into a prison for information, so by some moral standards, absolutely not! I'd certainly agree with you that Dream is more complex than common interpretation would lead us to believe, but that complexity does lend itself to morality in some cases.

Is Dream wrong to want to prevent his home from being split up into countries and thus filled with conflict? Is it worse to threaten, torment, and assault someone because you're pathologically obsessed with them or because you have a larger goal in mind and find those actions beneficial to the goal at hand?

To me, that's it's just pointless hole to get sucked into. I am personally uninterested in ideas of a character possessing or gaining moral purity and much more interested in characters learning to move on from the harm they've caused. C!Dream is interesting to me, not because he's a good person, but because hes a complex one. TL;DR: I am uninterested in using villain as a term within the context of dsmp and find the discussions of the moral goodness of characters reductive.

If you have any other questions feel free to shoot me an ask! I actually quite enjoy breaking down how I think about characters and media and am always open to (friendly) discussions on the matter. <3

[olderthannetfic]

“Besides, thinking in terms of "clearing your name" is very black and white and self-important.” You said this on my anon about how to not care about randos blocking you, can you elaborate there?

Tbh framing it as callout posts maybe wasn’t the best choice, J agree that no one in 2023 who listens to those is very smart, I’m thinking more of where I get in a discussion about X representation with one individual and I don’t respond the way they like/respond at all and don’t 100% agree with them and bow down to their infinite wisdom since they’re part of X minority group, and then that person starts *privately* warning others in the fandom (like in discords and stuff) that I’m X-ist or “unsafe for X people to follow” or I “talk over X people” and a bunch of people who weren’t involved at all start blocking for safety reasons. (And yeah I’m not being paranoid, people have told me this is happening.) The thing is, I’m sympathetic to why marginalized people are a bit over cautious in blocking — I have been myself, too — but there are so many people now who weaponize that for mean girl shit by just saying “racist” or “homophobic” or whatever and not discussing the actual situation, since that might cause some of these individuals to disagree with them if they knew. And it bothers me so much because a lot of these people are themselves deeply bigoted in other ways: for instance, I know someone in a fandom who was slurred as antisemitic and blocked by a bunch of randos where the “antisemitism” was “disagreed with one (1) Jewish person about whether a fictional group was a Nazi analogue” and the Jewish user in question was really racist toward people from some of the groups victimized by those other proposed analogues — but of course that is left out in that person’s version of events, as is the fact that plenty more Jewish people in the discussion agreed with OP than didn’t. Situations like that and what happened to me are why I think now it just makes sense to require evidence (as in the offending posts) when someone does an “OP is a terf” or whatever, so you can make up your own mind — but I’ve seen people get accused of shit just for asking that. Someone even said in response “a trans woman asked you nicely and you can’t even just take her word for it and block the TERF, you have to ask her to do the emotional labor of finding proof for you?” Yeah? She’s a stranger? I think it’s normal not to listen to random accusations from strangers without evidence behind them????

--

I mean, I assume tons of people block me for "safety reasons", but that's both their prerogative and a them problem.

You can either placate people all the time, or you can accept that some people will find you contentious/annoying/scary/whatever.

Whisper campaigns and callouts aren't actually different here. Someone who believes the rando that you're a bigot is also not interested in doing their own thinking and investigation. Maybe they're tired and busy. I can't fault them for that. Maybe they're easily led and you're better off without them.

The situation remains the same: there are a fuckton of people in the world and you are not going to run out of people to hang out with just because some believed a rumor.

People who go "How dare you ask for evidence?!" are generally bad news, especially when they have decided to intentionally take upon themselves the labor of spreading the news about so-and-so.

If someone demands I do a thing and then throws a tantrum, it's that person who's getting blocked.

--

As for why it's black and white and self-important, my reasons were in the other post:

Yes, I'm sure some people did just believe a whisper campaign and they genuinely think you're a bigot and that scared them off...

...but to assume that's necessarily why a specific person blocked you is silly.

It's entirely plausible that they blocked you after looking at your actual tumblr/twitter/whatever and finding you not to their taste. Maybe they looked after hearing the rumors, but that doesn't mean the rumors themselves are why they blocked. It's plausible that they block everyone whom they perceive to be involved in wank on the theory that no matter who's at fault, blocking all and sundry will lead to a quieter fandom life. They may block everyone who ships something they dislike. They may block for one single annoying response on one single post that they happen to see. (I have blocked hundreds of people for this kind of reason. Maybe thousands.)

The reason it's black and white thinking is that many people block for all kinds of murky "I just felt like it" reasons that aren't as dramatic as dividing other users into Safe and Unsafe, Good and Bad.

The reason it's self-important is that you're imagining that you matter to this person. You probably don't. Their reasons may be extraordinarily petty and not this grand drama about whether you're a bigot or not.

--

I mean, sure, the pattern you describe above is a constant in fandom now from what I can tell, but who cares?

The people being hurt by this are the people who are preemptively blocking interesting tumblrs, not the tumblrs that got blocked.

I suppose it's compassionate to wish for people to learn how to do their own research and not be swayed by rumors, but it's also not my job to save them from their lack of critical thinking skills.

[kyluxtrashpit]

Sooo, I’m not sure if this will make you feel any better about the whole poll drama disappointment, but I thought I’d let you know where I think some of this may have originated from and why I think the bots rumor started rather than there actually being bots (though I will get to that too).

(as a disclaimer: I’m speaking only from what I’ve seen from my neck of the (kylux) fandom woods; there could absolutely be other people involved that I’ve simply seen nothing from)

A person, who happens to ship kylux but has promoted to all fandoms with that character, has been having fun with the ‘hottest SW man poll’. They’ve been reblogging links to it along with entertaining little edits to promote their favorite character with the hope of getting people to take part in the vote. Now obviously they’re voting for that character themself, but anyone who happens to see the post are no more obligated than anyone else who reblogs/sees the poll to vote for that person’s preference. (I’m a kyluxer too, and I love both of them, but despite the promotions I still didn’t vote for him because that’s not my opinion for ‘hottest SW man’) And I don’t know about you, but I’m sure there have been many people, myself included, who have voted in a poll someone they follow reblogged for something that person liked and, despite not having a stake in it personally, cast said vote in deference to them. I’m sure that happened in some cases with this situation, however I’m also sure part of what happened is that fans who’d have otherwise never seen the poll were able to cast their vote (I’m in this category as I don’t follow these sorts of blogs at all), as well as – because it was put out in a fun, silly way – led them to vote when they might not have cared to bother otherwise.

Now, I do agree it’s kinda stretching the general spirit of these polls, however what they’ve been doing is only really different in that they’ve been adding character edits along with multiple reblogs in an attempt to make it a silly little attention-grabbing promotion thing rather than merely a reblog or two of the poll. Again, I do think it’s been a bit much, but I will say I can appreciate the enthusiasm of someone who thought they were having fun in their fandom with a simple ‘for fun’ fandom related poll. Another consideration to make is that this person might be new to these things (and/or tumblr in general), which could be a reason for it as well. Plus, different people are going to react to and participate in things in different ways, and sometimes those ways differ from the norm enough to cause a stir despite no ill will or actual ‘rule breaking’ meant.

Nevertheless, that isn’t botting. I can see why people might feel it’s a little unfair even if it’s only exaggerating behavior people already naturally have with polls. I can also certainly understand why it could lead to some people getting rubbed the wrong way and then feeling upset, thus further leading to a sense of drama and subsequent botting rumors (and the origin person being a kylux shipper leading to the kylux fandom as a whole being scapegoated). But still, that’s not the same as botting. In the end, neither you nor anyone else are obligated to no longer be upset simply because of this explanation. That’s your right and you don’t have to like this any more than genuine botting, I just wanted to clarify a potential source.

However, if there IS real botting, that’s indeed an absurd thing for someone to be doing for a simple poll. Perhaps someone got out of hand because of the above person’s promoting; perhaps it’s just a rumor started because some people simply weren’t expecting the character to receive enough votes to persist in the poll – and hey, everyone’s got their own preferences and opinions on ‘hotness’, but the fact a character some don’t think should be lingering over others has endured so long doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a conspiracy. Of course, I’m sure there are people who also have their own opinions on what might constitute ‘botting’ and have considered what I described to be in that category. Which is totally fine too. I personally disagree, but that’s merely my opinion and no one else has to accept it. For the most part, I merely believe this was a situation that got a little out of hand and led to a bit of drama that’s now negatively painting people who meant no harm – because it IS just a fun little fandom poll.

As for the numbers bumping in seemingly large chunks upon refreshing (I don’t even know how you could see individual numbers for an individual character???), I can only guess at how these polls bring in the numbers in order to calculate percentages, both continuous and final. Is it in delayed chunks? Is it really one by one by one exactness??? Perhaps a combination of both, somehow??? While on your end it might appear to be an immediate change after your vote (so a one by one idea), upon a refresh it might ACTUALLY be registering assorted votes in collected chunks, altering the newly refreshed percentage in a way that might seem huge based on what it was before/after your vote, but actually isn’t due to a collected recalculation of ALL new votes. And by individual character numbers, I’m not talking about that character's percentage, which is a percentage of a whole being recalculated upon that refresh. A whole which shifts percentages up and down throughout as the vote total increases regardless of minutes or hours. For a long-term example: he could be at a 13% high at one point because a number of that character’s voters voted around that time, heightening his numbers amongst the pool of votes, then a few hours later is at a 5% low because even more overall votes have come in since and his were few to none, and then later up to 9% as another batch of his voter’s participated. These ‘batches’ ostensibly have more to do with time zones/people online seeing the poll post and not botting. And in the short term you can apply this concept but with the ‘batches’ being overall votes that happen to have some chunks for that character mixed in.

Honestly, I don’t know if any of that is fully true or not; I’m just going off general observation of the polls and vaguely educated(?) guesswork. I could be totally wrong and that stupidly long paragraph is nonsense. Really this whole seemingly suspicious numbers thing is something I’d not seen or heard about at all until your post, so...I’ve no idea there. If botting is happening, and someone did get out of hand with this, I think it’s likely piggybacking off this above person’s attempt at fun engagement, thus tainting and casting blame on said person and, in particular, their ship fandom (which is quite unfair as not all his fans come from kylux, or even from pairings to begin with). And if there isn’t botting and it’s all a misunderstanding, then it’s still doing that to this person and the kylux fandom because of people’s upset and blame shifting onto the biggest pairing he’s in. Either way, it’s just a really unfortunate turn of events. (of course, I’m still merely speaking from my neck of the woods, there could be other stuff going on outside it that I don’t know anything about.)

In short, I suppose I just wanted to say: hey, it’s sad to see you (and others) feeling upset or disheartened by potential botting in a simple SW fandom poll with the potential origin being a kyluxer, and maybe this could help at least give you a different viewpoint and understanding of what might be going on behind the scenes. Still, yet again, neither you nor anyone else has to care about or agree with anything I’ve said, I simply felt a desire to do so as a follower of you, awareness of this poll, and a kyluxer myself.

So first off, I do appreciate your thoughtful response! And I'll clarify a bit on what I was talking about and why I made the statement. Now I will admit that I do not have 100% concrete proof of anything, what I have is my own observations, those observations confirmed by others, plus some information that is admittedly rumour, but is from people I trust who aren't the type to start shit and wouldn't say anything unless it was something they'd personally seen or had no reason to doubt

And I don't think recruiting friends outside the fandom to vote is botting or any other kind of cheating - it's not, everyone does that, I don't think that's an issue at all and is within fairness. What I'm talking about is actual botting, using fake accounts to vote. Which, if you have either the programming know how or a bit of money to pay for a bot that's pre-made, is a lot easier than people think it is. I know how one could do it manually, but I do not know enough about programming to automate it (and I won't explain how, because then it might give more people ideas lmao). I don't think this is widespread either, like one single person with the know how can 100% make hundreds accounts and have them vote within a few minutes. And, if they've ever botted a poll before, it's even faster because the accounts may have already been made

So it started with me watching the poll near the end (I voted within the first couple hours of it being posted, but I was curious how it would turn out). I refreshed with 45-60 minutes left and saw 'oh Hux is gonna lose, okay, too bad but it is what it is' because he was at ~8% and the next lowest was Anakin, who was just under 12%. As the time ticked down, I refreshed again and saw a sudden shift, which surprised me. At that point, I started refreshing every minute or so because it kept going, every refresh was a big jump even at that frequency. Within less than 10 minutes (I don't recall the exact timeframe, but it was very fast, too fast), the total vote count had increased by about 300 or so and I watched it surge with every refresh. The vast majority of these votes, if not all of them, were for Hux as his percentage was the only one that increased significantly (the rest increased by less than a full percentage point, if they didn't decrease)

So while you can't see how many votes went for each person, polls do have the total vote count at the bottom and you can see the percentages, so you can tell if there's a sudden increase in overall votes and if those affect on particular vote choice more than any other. Which is why I found this suspicious because that many votes, that quickly, overwhelmingly for one option, it's highly unlikely it was done by real humans. Plus, we've all seen what happens with big polls both here and on twitter - people have literally paid like $200 to bot polls before and it seems sadly to just be becoming something people do

After I saw that jump, I went and talked to some friends in a private discord we use for chatting and some of them, too, had been watching the poll and having similar suspicions to myself. A more tech-savvy one said this is the kind of increases that are consistent with the use of bots. A couple of people also mentioned they had heard people talking about botting, but weren't sure if that was a joke or not (and it may have been, even if there was botting, it may not have been these people). I can't reveal much more without compromising the identities of my friends, who didn't want to speak out about their suspicions because they don't want to get targeted or anything. I am far beyond caring about that lmao, so I chose to say something about it because idk this kind of thing just really irritates me and as a kyluxer for a very long time, I feel like it's the duty of people in a fandom to call out bad behaviour of our fellows in a rational, non-harassing way

Now, again, I admit none of this is concrete proof. And if I'm wrong and everything was above board and someone did manage to conjure a few hundred people all at the same time at the last minute, well, that's genuinely miraculous like unbelievably so lmao, so good for them. If so, I'll rescind the post, apologize, and go back to having fun. But from the pov of statistics, what I saw myself, what my friends saw, and the added rumours, like. I have to say that actual botting seems far more likely to me. You're welcome to disagree, or think this isn't enough evidence to say it for sure happened, but I wanted to say something regardless because if someone is botting, or even just thinking about it, maybe pointing it out will shame them into stopping so we can go back to having fun

I hope you're right and it wasn't happening, and hell, it may not have even been a kyluxer if it was (there are non-kylux Hux fans out there), but I just find it hard to believe it wasn't happening at this point between what I saw, what others saw, and what I heard. And I think it's better to point out fandom bad behaviour than let it continue unchecked. I refuse to let that kinda shit happen if I can do something about it

[bitchapalooza]

I think Rosiepuff dies after they had escaped the tree. Chef is alone, and leaves after capturing just a single troll. If they were in the tree, she would've been catching a lot more for trollstice and probably had help. I also think brozone was created after escaping the tree, because it would've been hard to go separate ways in a small tree. I also think the bergens wouldn't have let the trolls be super loud in the tree, because it would have gotten on their nerves since they were always unhappy when it wasn't trollstice before the ending of the first trolls. Branch acts as though he hadn't seen any of them since the band broke up, which would've been hard if they were all confined to a single tree. A lot of people believe Branch to be older than Poppy but I'm not sure if that's necessarily the case. We also don't know much about troll aging considering tiny diamond could immediately talk and seems to have an intellect similar to an adult troll.

That’s what I thought too until I took the inconsistencies in the series into account. The timeline we’re presented with doesn’t make much sense to me; we’re told Trollstice happened 20 years ago. World Tour and Band Together are a month apart. The band splitting up was 20 years ago. On the fandom wiki it seems to claim it’s been a years between trolls 1 and 2, but I’m not sure how much I can believe that when I don’t see the actual source stating that. We are to assume that Branch and Poppy are at least 21-23 in the first Trolls, making them toddlers when the escape from Bergen town happens, and at least 24 in trolls 3. When the flashback to Rosiepuff happens, Branch looks to be about 4-8 years old, while in Brozone he was probably 1 or 2.

I’m sure they thought things out well enough but just didn’t exactly execute it very well since Branch’s past wasn’t a focus until trolls 3 and neither was the total past of the pop trolls, just their escape and what it’s led up to and what we got in trolls 2.

I think the bergens treated the trolls like livestock and figured that if they didn’t do their thing they probably wouldn’t actually taste good. There would probably be many gray trolls around if their spirits were down and repressed so often, which in their logic would be bad livestock and probably be seen as an infectious disease, leading to many needless dead livestock to prevent the spread of disease and the end of trollstice. The trolls probably had designated sing times, or just kept their singing to specific people(ie bands or singers) and kept it to INSIDE the tree(probably a naturally occurring hole in the trunk or in their respective individual pods) where the noise muffled enough to not attract attention.

As for the brothers going separate ways, well they’re small. The tree is very big to them. It’s probably more like a whole town or city for them. You’d actually be pretty surprised at how easy it is to not see people you know in a small town— I live in a small town with limited neighborhoods(like 2 or 3 actual neighborhoods and the rest are RV parks and mostly year round empty cabins and vacation homes) and apparently more than 5 of my coworkers actually live not far from me. And yet, I never see them when I’m out and about running errands(unless it’s the only Walmart between towns, other than that, I never see them. I don’t even see the one who lives right across from the post office! And I go to the post office very often! I’ve only encountered coworkers outside of work 3 times in the past 2 years). They could easily avoid each other if they were actually really trying to. And the escape wouldn’t really change that fact because many families probably got separated in the fray anyway, both in the group with Peppy and the group with Viva. Again, idk how trustworthy the wiki is and where they get their sources from, but it does mention Clay and Viva having escaped the Bergens together.

And I’m not trying to argue or anything, I mostly took this ask as an opportunity to explain my thoughts behind the timeline lol 🤷‍♂️

[shae-s-heartsong]

Good Omens, the fandom and sexuality

This post will mostly be me talking about sexuality (as in: sex) in Good Omens. I will go into detail. So if you’re uncomfortable with the subject, feel free not to read this post! 

There are a few things about the fandom’s relationship with sexuality (Aziraphale and Crowley’s - I’m not talking about any other characters in this post) that I find interesting to talk about. 

I’ll start with fanfictions. To be absolutely honest with you, I don’t like smut fanfictions. I’m fine with sex scenes, but pure smut annoys me. So I haven’t read any smutty fanfics of Good Omens - but I have read a few fanfics with sex scenes, and I also have read the tags under every Good Omens fanfictions I could find. (Which obviously is not every existing Good Omens fanfictions). Everything I’m going to say is based on my experience, and as I said, I can’t necessarily say I’m the best person to talk about this since I haven’t read much of it. However, I noticed things.

What I noticed is mostly that most fanfics with sex scenes involve penetrative sex, genital sex. And mostly, penises. I did notice a few tags mentioning vulvas, but most of them had ‘trans character’ or ‘gender swap’ in it as well. Which lead to me asking myself a few questions:

Is the tag ‘gender swap’ necessary when talking about Aziraphale and Crowley? I mean, angels and demons are sexless, and Neil Gaiman also says that their gender is fluid. The ‘trans’ tag seems natural to add because these characters are a good representation for our community. But the gender swap thing? I don’t know, I’m just confused. 

Why do the majority of people assume that if they ‘made an effort’, Crowley and/or Aziraphale would choose to grow a penis (except, like I said, when they choose to add gender swap or transness to their stories)? 

And also, that’s a really genuine question, and I’d like to have the answer to that one. Why assume that if they had sex, it would be genital sex? I’m not saying penetrative sex, I really mean: genital sex. Having sex doesn’t need to involve genitals. There are other things we can do, sexually, without our sexual organs, right? But in every fanfic I’ve read that has a ‘sex’ tag in it, or claims it has a sex scene, it always involves genital sex. If there were sexy scenes with no genitals involved, it wasn’t tagged as sexual. Now I’m pretty sure that a fiction with non-genital sex, tagged as sexual, exists, but I haven’t seen it yet, so I suppose it’s rather rare. And I really wonder why? I guess it’s because it’s still hard, for many, to consider non-genital sexual acts as proper sex? Basically what I mean is that Aziraphale and Crowley don’t NEED to ‘make an effort’ (aka grow sexes) to have sex. 

The second thing is that from what I've read, the fandom is (roughly, there are obviously shades of gray) divided into two states of mind. Some really don’t want or can’t imagine Aziraphale and Crowley having sex. The others say they need/want to see them having sex. I personally couldn’t care less. I can’t really imagine it happening, but it’s mostly because I don’t think it will happen and because I just don’t really like to assume a character’s relationship with sex, unless it’s mentioned. I’ll wait and see! 

To be absolutely honest, it confuses me to see how much some people seem to obsess on the idea of them having sex. I’m not talking about fanfiction, theories, etc. I’m talking about people who imply that it’s necessary that we see them have sex. Is it, really? I get that it matters to have queer representation, and queer representation of sex. It’s also rather rare to see two middle-aged queer characters have sex. In that regard, I can understand why people want to see it - but not why people would say it’s 100% necessary. I mean, it’s still rather rare, to this day, to even see middle-aged queer people romance on screen. And here we have it. And seeing adult asexual characters is also pretty rare. My point is, sex is rarely necessary to a story (unless it’s the subject). If it happens, good. if it doesn’t, it doesn’t matter that much, I think, because we have a beautiful and complex love story already. And because having two characters in a relationship with no sex involved is very rare. It’s also a valuable queer experience to represent and I don’t see that many people acknowledge that it’s also something we need to see on screen. (The ace community is still a victim of invisibilization). 

(And we have fanfiction for that!)

To be clear, I’m sure that if they did choose to represent sex in S3, they could make it sexy and nuanced. I absolutely trust that. I wouldn’t mind. But let’s say I don’t believe we need it for the story to matter.

I have no idea if Aziraphale & Crowley want each other sexually. I can definitely say there’s attraction - physical attraction. I still think some slightly over-read some scenes with the sexual reading in mind. For instance, I don’t think that in the Job minisode, Aziraphale and Crowley are attracted to each other. I see many posts underlying how they look at each other and say it’s sexual. I don’t think so, at all. I don’t refute that the food can be a sexual symbolism, though, but it’s not just that. I don’t even think they are even attracted to each other at this point of the story. Also, soooo many people use the fact that Aziraphale & Crowley likes earthly pleasures and develop human-like behavior as an argument to prove that they are likely to want to have sex - but I’m not really sure that’s a good proof? I mean: obviously, Aziraphale is voluptuous. No point in denying it. He likes good food. He (sometimes) looks at Crowley like he’d like to devour him, yes. He likes good clothing, likes to be taken care of, likes to smell good and look nice. But you can be sensual, without being sexual - those are different things (the ace community has been saying this for a while). His voluptuosity could mean he could be interested in sex, yes, absolutely! - but it’s not an undeniable proof, and it wouldn’t take anything away from his character not to be interested in sex. Same goes for Crowley. 

You’re absolutely free to disagree with me and tell me what you think about this! 

[gerandor]

It’s not necessarily that the wwdits fandom is edgy, it’s that this usually happens in fandoms all the time. Many people eventually get bored of the one ship after a while and crave new dynamics. It’s not a bad thing in and of itself, the problem comes when they don’t understand what they’re feeling and start trying to find reasons to justify it, hence starting toxicity claims and over-analyzing the first ship to a fault. But yeah to answer your question, it’s just a normal thing that I’ve seen happen in probably every single fandom I’ve been in.

Oh thank you so much for taking the time to explain this! 💕

I admit im not part of a lot of fandoms, and most of them are nearly dead. What you said actually makes a lot of sense.

And I think the whole toxicity discourse is just so illogical bc these are fictional characters in a silly fictional world and whatever they decide to do has no bearing on the real life n real ppl. Its just for fun. Its ok not to like a character or a ship but when they try to justify it by saying its 'problematic' and 'toxic' i can't help but to roll my eyes. Believe me we're not taking relationship advice from a silly vampire show.

And i also think its funny (n kinda frustrating tbh) that nandermo isn't even canon yet and some ppl are already treating it like it happened and its now gone, so lets move on to a new ship (which never includes my blorbo nandor) 😅

[carduelis-carduelis]

May I ask you a question? I have read your Fandom PSA post and I really liked it since it said a lot of things I already do. However I would like to know your opinion about shipping IRL People. I generally don't care what other people ship etc. And I would never harrass them even if I don't agree with them. Regardless, shipping IRL people always leaves a bitter taste, because those are not some fictional characters, but real breathing people with relationships that we don't know of, who could be impacted by the story's fans write about them, especially if they are NSFW nature. What do you think about it?

Thank you for this ask. It’s a good question, and I know there has been a lot of heated discussion around the topic of Real Person Fiction (RPF). I understand why people have strong opinions about it, and I won’t blame anyone for being weirded out by it. ”Don’t like, don’t read” applies to RPF too, so anyone who is squicked by it should just avoid it. 

I’d assume most of the real people who have inspired someone to write some smutty fiction of them would NOT want to read those stories. Some of them would probably be opposed to reading smutty fanfiction of their characters too, or seeing smutty fan art of their characters. Therefore, they should not seek it out.

There is nothing wrong with the concept of RPF, just like there is nothing wrong with the concept of fanfiction, fan art or other forms of transformative fiction. The problems start when someone disrespects the personal boundaries of either the celebrities or the fan creators. There have been many instances when fanfiction or fan art has been dragged to spotlight in late night talk shows etc., where the host has read / shown it to the actors to get a reaction out of them and gain some cheap laughs.

Very few fan creators actually want their smutty fics and art to be perceived by the celebrities that inspired them. Those works are not for them. They are for the fandom. When it comes to RPF, the writers most definitely do NOT want the real people to read those stories. Most RPF I’ve read has been published in a way that makes it pretty much impossible for anyone to read it by accident. I know this is probably not the case with all the RPF in the world, but personally I have’t seen anyone promote their RPF fics on social media in a way that would allow the real people in question to stumble upon them.

Then there’s the case of ”shipping IRL people,” which isn’t necessarily the same thing as RPF. I think it’s important to differentiate between the two.

There is a difference between a) writing fictional stories of something that inspired you and b) obsessing over celebrities’ actual relationships and actually thinking they are ”more than friends” or wishing they are or would be a couple.

We don’t actually ”know” celebrities as complete human beings. We are only shown a version of them that consists of the things they let us see or know. It’s sort of a facade, a role they play in public. It is THAT ”person” that gets shipped when people write RPF. Not the actual human being. It is possible to get an inspiration for RPF and still understand that the real people in the real world are just friends. Writing or reading RPF doesn’t mean you believe it to be true. It’s not Real Person Documentary.

Serious speculation about the nature of the relationship between celebrities, trying to snoop around to find ”proof”, asking them about it, harassing their actual spouses… These things cross boundaries. This is obsessing over what is happening in REALITY and trying to pry some private information. Speculations can turn into rumours if they get circulated for long enough. This sort of behaviour should not be tolerated. (Isn’t it funny that this is actually what tabloid magazines do all the time?)

There is also RPF happening all around us that we don’t even pay attention to, because it’s done commercially and not as a hobby. Saturday Night Live makes RPF. Our Flag Means Death is RPF, as is The Crown. South Park had a whole ”All characters and events in this show—even those based on real people—are entirely fictional. All celebrity voices are impersonated…..poorly” disclaimer. Real people feature in works of fiction over and over again, they do fictional things and they even get put into fictional sexy situations, and nobody bats an eye as long as it’s something that’s in a wide circulation where millions of people can see it.

TL;DR: RPF is just a genre of fiction, and it can’t affect anyone’s life or relationships just by existing. Respecting the personal boundaries of celebrities is important and (smutty) fanworks should not be deliberately shoved in their faces. Obsessing over celebrities’ relationships on a public platform, spreading speculations of them and sharing information of their private lives is shitty behaviour and should not be done.

[lostyesterday]

Granted Star Trek canon sort of did this first so it’s unfair to entirely blame the fandom for it, but I really wish people in the fandom would stop equating eugenics and genetic engineering. This is something I’ve seen in a fairly large number of posts here recently, particularly in relation to DS9 and SNW. I am far from being an expert on this subject, but I do know that eugenics is a specific real-world ideology with a specific historical context, founded in racism, ableism, and colonialism. Regardless of your opinion on genetically engineering humans, eugenics and genetic engineering are not synonymous terms. In the actual history of the real world, eugenics has never been enacted through genetic engineering because genetic engineering of humans has not been done yet (at least not successfully to any extent similar to what is depicted in Star Trek and other science fiction). Eugenics has involved forced sterilization. It has involved straight up murder. But it has never to my knowledge involved genetic engineering.

If/when genetic engineering of humans is successfully developed, could it be used to further the goals of eugenicists? Of course it could, and that’s what Star Trek describes as happening prior to the “eugenics wars”. I don’t necessarily take issue with science fiction depicting a future where eugenicists use genetic engineering to further their goals. What I do take issue with is the assumption that all genetic engineering of humans is inherently equivalent to eugenics. Again, even if you believe that genetic engineering of humans is morally wrong under all circumstances, that does not mean that it is inherently eugenics. Two things can both be bad without being equivalent to each other. Eugenics is a specific ideology – it does not encompass all of the possible reasons that anyone might genetically engineer a human.

Why does this matter? Well, diluting the meaning of the term “eugenics” could have negative consequences. If we adopt a vague definition of eugenics as meaning anything related to genetics that we don’t like, we risk missing or misidentifying actual eugenicist rhetoric when it isn’t openly advocating for something like genetic engineering (and the majority of eugenicist rhetoric I have seen is not advocating for genetic engineering). Also, if we equate eugenics with genetic engineering, we would be functionally closing the door on all debate about whether genetic engineering of humans is ever acceptable. We would basically be saying: eugenics is inherently a terrible ideology (correct), and genetic engineering of humans is always eugenics (incorrect), therefore genetic engineering of humans is inherently terrible. This is not a good argument. I personally don’t know what I think about the inherent morality of genetically engineering humans, but I don’t think that using terms like eugenics to describe it regardless of the underlying ideology or situation is helpful.

There’s a potentially interesting conversation to be had about how this treatment of eugenics and genetic engineering as synonymous has happened not just in the Star Trek fandom, but also within the Star Trek universe itself. The Federation bans genetic engineering supposedly because of the harms of eugenics as an ideology. The Federation therefore sees genetic engineering as equivalent to eugenics. This causes people who were genetically engineered against their will such as Julian Bashir to face a lifetime of secrecy and fear of the government, despite the fact that they are not eugenicists at all, and are, if anything, victims of it.

There are many other possible interesting discussions about the depictions of eugenics and genetic engineering in Star Trek canon. For example, by depicting eugenicists as having successfully created “superior” superhumans, is Star Trek in some ways supporting eugenics as an ideology? What are the potential complications of Star Trek discussing eugenics without exploring or even mentioning its fundamentally racist and ableist foundations? What does it mean for the Federation to treat people who were genetically engineered against their will and people who voluntarily chose to genetically engineer themselves the same way? How are questions of bodily autonomy relevant to these discussions? What does it mean for some Star Trek episodes such as SNW Ad Astra Per Aspera to depict genetically engineered people as marginalized groups within the Federation? But having any of these conversations would, in my opinion, remain impossible as long as we treat genetic engineering and eugenics as inherently synonymous.

[deliciouskeys]

For the Writer's Ask Game, 12, 13, 14, 23, amd 21 for The Selfish Gene, if you please. :)

(Writers’ ask meme) Thank you for asking! ☺️ Some long answers towards the end, hopefully at least semi-coherent!

12. Are there any tropes you used to dislike but have grown on you?

I never disliked this per se, but I have grown much more interested in people being in / getting into long term marriage-like relationships, parenting together, domesticity in general.

13. Are there any tropes you used to like but don’t anymore?

Hardcore noncon sex used to be a real staple for me. I still like noncon nonsexual situations, but have grown to prefer the party with less freedom / being whumped to be the instigator of sex, or at least having a mutual carnal interest develop. Which is still definitely dubcon.

I’ve grown indifferent to age difference as I’ve grown older. Likely because I was into “old guys” in my teens/20s but have since lost that prism.

14. Are there any tropes you would only read if written by a trusted friend or writer?

I’m pretty bad about clicking into everything (whether the tags sound like something I love or terrifies me or mildly weirds me out, just to see what it is). I’m more likely to fully read things written by friends in the realms of: high concept AUs, characters endowed with non-human characteristics, niche fetishes (agere, complicated bdsm), and major character death.

23. What’s a trope, AU, or concept you’ve never written, but would like to?

For The Boys fandom, I’d love to be able to pull off a Caligula fic. What HL threatens to do when talking to Starlight with the door closed? Let’s say something happens to trigger him, and he actually goes through with it. Now we have some kind of postapocalyptic hellscape where HL has installed himself as a despot. He’s not thrilled about no longer being seen as a purely heroic figure, but he’ll take being worshipped and cowered in front of as a vengeful, jealous demigod. Maybe he still claims to be a savior, if presumably not every country in the world has fallen into ruin. I haven’t worked out fully in my head how dark I’d be willing to go. Does he have some of our faves (Maeve, Annie, Billy) under lockdown in a demented harem of sorts? After just saying I was over the noncon trope, I think I’m getting right back into it here 😅. The most interesting part of this kind of fic, to me, would be any/all of these characters being manipulative and managing to bring out a very different side of HL behind closed doors. So even though ostensibly now he’s shown his true colors to everyone, it doesn’t mean he won’t revert to being way more cajoling and uncertain and needy because…. yeah, he still wants that genuine love, despite how many acts he’d have committed in this fic to make that virtually impossible. But I could see clever characters stringing him along a la 1001 Arabian Nights until they can think of how to actually overthrow him.

Is there a lot of plot and logistics? Yes. Am I necessarily interested in writing all of that out in detail? Probably not. But depending on how season 4 unfolds, I may become more inspired 🙂

21. If you wrote a “missing scene” in The Selfish Gene, what would it be?

This is a fic where many days are skipped between most chapters, but I think I cover everything I want to for HL’s pov. I initially wasn’t even going to provide any Billy pov in this fic, but HL was just too unreliable and unstable a third person closely aligned narrator not to do so periodically 😅. So a scene I’ve skipped but perhaps shouldn’t have is Billy going to visit his aunt during the period when HL is still under house arrest. My hc is that she doesn’t have Billy’s phone number because he refuses to provide it and used to change it a lot anyway, but she is up to date on what the tabloids have been reporting and had half a mind to figure out the exact address and visit him herself.

I want him to go visit her embarrassed and despondent. He hasn’t fully shared everything he knows about supes and HL in particular with her, so in that sense she’s less informed than MM. But with Aunt Judy, Billy can be a bit more open about just how freaked out he is about having a child, now that it’s dawning on him that he’s made a decision that’s going to change his life profoundly and irrevocably. Aunt Judy is savvy and pragmatic and comforts him without getting too maudlin about it. Tells him he’s going to do the best he can and that it will get him through. He contemplates taking Terror back with him to NYC but decides against it, because he doesn’t want to spring that on HL as a surprise in a confined space (aka he hasn’t fully opened up to HL despite living together for months). Aunt Judy probably finally insists on getting Billy’s phone number and promises not to contact him unless something dire happens, and promises not to tell his mother.

Why didn’t I write this scene? Honestly, one of my hurdles is writing intensely British dialogue 😂 (my self serving hc is that Billy dials down the diction differences when he’s talking to a septic like HL). But there’s at least allusion to it coming in the next chapter 🤞