#NO MATTER WHAT FANDOM-RELATED PIECE OF MEDIA I CONSUME

[mania-sama]

If you don't mind me asking, who are your top 5 (or top 7) favorite (fictional) characters ever from any media? Why love them?

thanks so much for the ask!! i always love your questions <3

God, this is a hard one. Because I've consumed and fallen in love with so many pieces of media in my life, it's hard for me to tell who exactly my favorite characters are. The pool is just too big to choose from! But I'll try my best regardless!

Also an important note that as I grow older, this list could very well become out-dated very fast. Who knows what I will see or what medias I will consume that will alter my perception of reality?

In no particular order:

Bakugou Katsuki [My Hero Academia] -> THE OG. I REPEAT. THE OG ONLINE OBSESSION. My history with My Hero Academia goes way back on my online persona, when I was a wee lad and experiencing my first online hyperfixation (Warrior Cats not included). I had him as online nickname and profile picture on multiple accounts and instances. I look back and cringe on this era of my life, but I still will not stand for slander on this character. I obsessed over him because he is an incredibly well-written character, with faults, passions, interesting qualities, and an insane amount of character growth that, arguably, rivals Zuko. His character motivations still stand out to me to this day. I quit reading/watching BNHA around the war arc, like right when it finished and Midoriya fled the scene. No particular reason for quitting, I think; I just moved on from that part of my life. But, Bakugou will always stick with me just a little. AND YOU KNOW WHAT. I liked him when everyone else still hated him. I liked him before it was cool to like him. Shout out to 2020-2021 me for being an OG. I'm still a "Ground Zero" truther to this very day.

Percy Jackson [Percy Jackson and the Olympians] -> Anyone that has read the PJO and/or the following series will not be surprised to find him here. He's like Spiderman but better, which is saying a lot because I really, really like Spiderman. Percy Jackson is there for every kid who has ever felt out of place in this world; for every kid who has struggled in succeeding in any aspect of their life; for every kid who grew up in a household different from their peers; for every kid who behaves in ways that other people don't seem to understand. Spiderman was a character created to represent the reader of superhero comics: a teenage white boy. Of course, later iterations of Spiderman come to represent more individuals, but that is not who he was originally. Percy Jackson is a character that comes from a place of necessity. He is a character that represents the reader of PJO: a kid who doesn't quite fit in with the rest, for one reason or another. Percy is funny, ultra-overpowered, relatable, and still gets his happy ending. Nothing more to want in a character, really.

Robbie White | Axe Boy [Identity V] -> My hunter main for Identity V. I don't really know how to explain why I love him so much, and how he has become a character I get emotional over very fast. I seem to find one random character from a game and attach myself to them like a jellyfish. Not only is his backstory devastatingly heartbreaking, he is adorable in all of his animations, standby motions, emotes, etc.. He has carried me to many victories, and he will continue to carry me in every match I play. I literally forced myself to download IDV on my laptop and play a few matches just so I could get his Little Nightmares crossover skin. No matter how far he falls from meta, they can never make me hate you Robbie.

Kugisaki Nobara [Jujutsu Kaisen] -> I had a LOT of internal debate over this. I guess I can't confirm until I leave the fandom, but for right now, she's definitely one of my top favorite characters of all time. I'm considering writing an analysis on her because she is just so good. I have never seen a female character in a piece of media that isn't explicitly feminine embody femininity so well. It actually impresses me to a degree I cannot reasonably tell you. She's just perfect. Everything about her is everything that I want to be as a woman. She's comfortable in her own skin, confident not in a man-ish way, but in a distinctly feminine way. What gives that she wants to feel pretty and strong in a physical way? Who is saying that she can't have both? Not to mention that she's also extremely strategically smart. I love her. I really, really do. Sometimes, I imagine strangling Gege's avatar and it makes me very happy.

Oikawa Tooru [Haikyuu] -> I honest-to-God cannot believe he made it here. I tried so hard to find a character to replace him. I did not want him here out of SPITE. But here he is, somehow, and not replaced by Miles Morales (who, upon reflection, would only be here because I did not want Oikawa to be here. Miles didn't even make my honorable mentions. That is proof enough, I suppose, that Oikawa somehow deserves his spot). I've talked about it before, but I'll reiterate it here: Oikawa is a character that is very, very easy to toy around with. He is THE teenager, and THE adult. You can project pretty much any anxiety or worry onto him and it'll make sense because he's got so many self-worth issues it's laughable. I don't want to spend more time talking about him than he deserves. I am as disappointed as you are that he made this list.

Honorable Mentions:

Razor & Xiao [Genshin Impact] -> They would've made the list if I could've put one above the other for real. Silly whimsical attachment with immense appreciation for the character writing vs serious love for the writing and development of the character beyond words. Simply an impossible choice.

Akabane Karma [Assassination Classroom] -> He was my favorite character of all time at one point in history and is still the inspiration behind my Tiktok nickname (that I may change one day). Unfortunately, it's been a long time since I've watched the anime and I can't remember much of what drew me to Karma in the first place that isn't already achieved in other of my favorite characters. Still, I thought I'd honor him here.

[miru667]

How do you manage to stay in a fandom for so long? I'm always mario jumping from fandom to fandom every 3-6 months

Oh, so many reasons. I think I've answered this before but in a much more concise way so idk what happened here when I tried to answer again from scratch but uhhh I wrote a lot lol?? Long ramble time. 😂

I found this fandom at a point in my life when I really emotionally needed it, so I got really attached to it. I stayed because of the friends I've made in it and because of the OCs I got invested in, both mine and other people's, and every so often something invigorated my interest like a new roleplay I got to join or new concept art that got discovered.

I'm also just a really dedicated person (for better or worse) and I still have ideas that I want to get out there creatively. I don't get a lot of free time, and I rarely have energy for hobbies after work so my time passes slowly in the sense that I may still be in the middle of appreciating a thing, meanwhile everyone else has already sped through and processed it and moved on.

So I've gotta be really careful about choosing what to spend my limited time and energy on. It sometimes takes me a whole month to draw a piece of art that I'm proud of. It would be a huge waste of my time to spend so much energy on a fandom that after 3 months I think I might not care about anymore.

And like, if it's going to take me a month to draw 1 thing, what am I going to choose? Fanart of a character from a show that I just finished that I might possibly move on from in 3 months? Or art of my darling Audrey OC that I've been developing for years and whom I know will always bring me joy for the rest of my life? It's not a hard choice! Like I'm sure it's obvious by now but I really love my oc. It's gotten to the point that I look for her in every media I consume. I like characters because they remind me of her, and I like plots because they remind me of her. When I watch a movie and end up loving it, I'm not going to be drawing fanart for that movie, I'm more likely going to be drawing Audrey Grace in some way that's consciously or subconsciously inspired by that movie. I'm sure other people with beloved ocs can relate to that, too.

Back to media consumption: I'm constantly watching new things, shows, movies, letsplays, and I'm able to love them just fine, but I never participate in their fandoms (unless you count reblogging fanart as participation. I personally don't). I just don't feel motivated to and I feel like it's unnecessary. I shouldn't need to prove anything. You can appreciate media without engaging in fandom. In fact, I encourage it, because a lot of what I see in fandoms these days is just stressful, at least to me. And I don't want that stress. I'm much happier as a person when I don't have to read other people's opinions, discourse and drama over some show's themes or ships or whatever. I can just quietly revel in my own enjoyment of the show without being tainted by anything else, and my love for it is not any less valid than the person who's livetweeting their loud emotions while watching the same show and putting out fanart 1 hour after every episode. Bless them, though.

And I guess that's mostly what I do these days with the Onceler fandom, too. Appreciating it more quietly these days, I mean. It's just that...I have a fandom related oc so I draw her. And I have friends here so we do stuff together and we reference fandom inside jokes no matter what activity we're doing. If I encounter art that deeply moves me personally, I reblog it, just like I reblog art for other media on my sideblog. When anyone has a fandom history related question, I'm eager to answer because I don't want the past to be misrepresented or misunderstood. And also, since it's been over a decade, this fandom has long ago become my daily normal. I can do whatever I like but I can't really "leave" this fandom unless I delete all my social media and cut off all my online friends. And delete my memories of the past 12 years of my life as well. Just become a completely different person.

So I guess I can reverse the sentiment: I can't relate to people who hop fandoms every 3 to 6 months. 😭 All the power to you, but that's just not the way I happen to live my life, nor the way I engage with the media I consume! The Once-ler fandom was the one exception. It was special.

But who knows, anything can happen in the future. I'm not so proud that I'm purposely blocking myself from looking at other fandoms or anything. I just go with the flow! Right now I'm slowly making my way through jjba, an omori playthrough, a Plague Tale playthrough, and urusei yatsura season 2 (the new anime). Probably nothing will come out of any it except for a bunch of Audrey inspos, but again, who knows. XD I'm also going to an idkhow concert soon, and I've bought merch from their store already. Does that count as participating in a fandom? Maybe not. But now that I think of it, even if I "join" another fandom, it doesn't necessarily mean I'd leave the onceler fandom either, so maybe it wouldn't matter haha.

Thank you for the ask and thank you to anyone who's read my entire answer!

[shanksxbuggy]

aren’t they brothers? I haven’t reached that part yet but I heard they were sworn brothers, not blood related but isn’t it creepy like shipping ALS?

Shanks and Buggy? No, they haven’t referred to each other as brothers, and the only time is when a Marine is operating on their own misconceptions. I’m not sure what you know (spoilers ahead?) even in the future, people believe Buggy’s debt collecter is his older brother, because Buggy’s whole gimmick of falling upwards relies on misconceptions to hype him up.

In the ASL flashback, you’ll see they refer to each other as brothers and make an oath. Shanks and Buggy don’t even call each other family. They grew up in the context of being crewmates and fellow apprentices, and that’s where their pride is.

You’ll also see in the future arcs, there are canon couples who are childhood friends and refer to themselves as sister or brother, but they still clearly fall in love. It’s not uncommon to say two people are like siblings just to explain how close they are.

Just the term sworn brother doesn’t necessarily mean ‘you guys have sworn to be brothers’, it can be used to describe a very close bond between male friends. The official one piece info never acknowledges them as brothers, not in the supplemental info or marketing.

It’s strange to me to see this argument in the English-speaking fandom, because where my family’s from people will use brother or sister to describe others all the time.

I think what I see is that people believe growing up together automatically means siblings? But in a lot of East Asian media, the standard for adoptive siblings isn’t just growing up together, it’s whether or not they choose to see each other as siblings. Not only that, Shanks and Buggy were apprentices on a pirate ship with like a hundred adults on that ship, this was not a traditional family setting.

There’s a lot of ships people will say you can’t ship for some reason. Some people don’t like shipping the Straw Hats together because they’re a found family. But you should consume the story and decide for yourself what you like.

I take this opportunity to ask you not to hassle people over something like this, no matter what your opinion. It’s just not worth it. I see artists who get disheartened by the negative comments they get. So I will not accept hateful behavior towards artists and fans. I appreciate it if you left that stuff in your own space. I hope this explanation clarified some things for you.

[clockwork-stars]

[ask game] Hi!!!!!

List 5 things that make you happy, then put this in the askbox for the last 10 people who reblogged something from you! get to know your mutuals and followers <3

Okay I can't promise that I will put in 10 people askbox because I am scared to bother but I am answering because it's fun

Movies. I don't talk about it often on Tumblr for some unknown reasons but I currently have an obsession with movies that is making me deeply happy. I am watching too much movie for my own well being but it is fun and it feels nice so who am I to tell myself to stop (lastly I have seen Mutt that was really nice!)

Books and reading in general. (Not so) ancient bookworm here that used to read multiple books a week and that is now happy when they end more than 2 books in a month. As much as I don't read as many books as I did before, reading makes me happy. Truly. Mostly fantasy, I am not gonna lie but reading truly feels magical

Okay this one is weird but trust me on it: Notion. Being able to do organisation in my life, having so many Notion page or Excel sheet for so many thing (I might have at least 4 different systems/place where I report the movies I watch/things about them). It just feels nice to do so, to be able to do statistics with it (yes I am weird) to have pretty notion pages to motivate me to things.

Uni. Yes I had at least 4 anxiety crisis that were uni related this week but still I love it so much??? I am absolutely fascinated by what I am studying I just always want more and if I listened to myself (and that capitalism wasn’t a thing) I would just spend the 10 next years studying in multiple fields.

Being in fandom related space. On Twitter but also on tumblr lately, interacting with people, consuming fan made content, going to convention, watching new content with theories and random pieces of content all over my mind. No matter the fandom, no matter my implication in it (there are those fandom where I am barely liking some tumblr post then there is this where I am managing the Twitter jail account, and then in the middle those where I read fanfictions as if my life depended on it without ever interacting with this fandom on social media. I have a lot of types of interactions). Fandom life and fandom interactions just make me feel good and make me happy. And seeing people happy to be there or happy to have new content often make me love the original work even more (typically doctor who) because of how much it makes others people happy.

I could continue but the ask was for 5 things so here we are 🫡

(Apparently I am unable to just list things and feel the need to always explain so sorry and take this freaking long answer-)

[sasubaeuchithot]

I was reading one of the comments on chapter 13 that essentially praised you for how the username YoungAndOverIntelligent was very accurate because your intelligence shows in your writing and I was nodding along saying DAMN STRAIGHT (might not be able to claim the title of no1 Sasuke glazer cuz that's naruto's job, but trust and believe I AM the no1 kh glazer, I will fight anyone who tries to disagree I fear 🤷‍♀️) and then I read your response and.

oh.

HOW DID I MISS THE ACRONYM NO OH MY GOD I CAN'T STOP LAUGHING I'VE BEEN SOOOOO BAMBOOZLED DAMN ITTTTTT THAT'S TOO GOOD UGH

Even in your inside joke of a username there exists humour indicative of high level smarts 😔

Okay but on a more serious note, I genuinely have to once more thank you for sharing your work with us.

I've sent an insane amount of Asks to you these past few weeks; at least, insane considering how rarely I generally send Asks, and how you're the only person I've sent more than two to.

Fanfiction has been a pivotal part of my life for as long as I can remember myself, and I find that it's an incredible way to, among other things, express your love for a piece of media, to make friends with people in the same community and give back to the fandom, to practice and hone your writing, and most importantly, to have fun.

It's very soothing to have a comfort read that perfectly encapsulates my thoughts and feelings on these characters and on the world that Kishi has carefully crafted but, in the same breath, basically wasted, in a fandom that I feel like so often misunderstands the point.

There are many fandoms I've been in, thousands of fics I've read, millions and millions of words consumed in the past three-four years, and hundreds of literary works (both fanfiction and not) that have, in some way or another, left their mark on me.

But Kizuna Hikari has always stood out to me the most. Maybe that sounds unbelievable. Out of all the beautifully written works I've read (the number of those is actually astronomical), I'd still pick kh over every single one of the works that have ever pierced my soul?

Yes. I can't put it into words, exactly, but there's a feeling that engulfs me every time I think about it that is so unique in its warmth.

Both because I especially love Naruto, multiple flaws and all, and because this story hits every mark that it's aiming for dead-on.

Not very many stories can achieve that.

Most fanfiction, no matter how gorgeous, or well-written, or enthralling, or in character, feels like fanfiction. This of course doesn't have any effect on how much I love it; the vast majority of the time, I long for that exact feeling of a fanmade work infused with copious amounts of the author's love and passion for their creation. It doesn't matter that it's fanfiction.

But there's a degree of believability in kh that brings about a different type of comfort.

Naruto's ending sucked. It makes me miserable to think about it. The Naruto fandom, for a fandom that insists on the show's greatness, collectively misses the point of an alarming amount of the story's arcs, characters, and overall essence in a way that has me seriously concerned for the world's media literacy.

But kh is so concentrated on, and deeply rooted in, the realistic depiction of a differing outcome and the consistently in-character portrayal of Naruto and Sasuke and their simple, but still incredibly complicated, relationship, without either of their ideals and convictions taking the backseat in the name of conventional romance; romance that also just doesn't fit these characters.

It's been three years since I first read it, and it continues to be equally wholly satisfying, and provides me with what I initially didn't even know was the idyllic, fleshed out exploration of the events following that final battle that I needed.

It also helps that I relate to/crave and ache for the, in my eyes, inherently queer type of love/attraction that exists between your Naruto and Sasuke way more than that of any other romantic love story that I've ever known.

In other words, the meticulous planning, loving effort, and skillful writing that make up your story have bewitched me, body and soul.

Wow, this took a direction I couldn't have foreseen. I only started this rant to whine about missing the YAOI acronym

okay you've turned me into an embarrassing jelly goop of a person on the floor over here 😭 I've trained myself to be good at taking compliments but this is making me blush and squirm because it is so beautiful and kind and like do I deserve this???? (yes i do, i keep telling myself, because I believe your sincerity but even my therapy trained brain is too flustered to work correctly 😭😭😭)

but lmaaaoooooooo i love when people fall for my username. the height of humor to me is making people think I'm pretentious but really my brain is just a twelve year old giggling at the word "sex"

[genshinconfessions]

"Actually, Nahida only takes a smaller form because she's the youngest archon--"

So you're telling me she identifies most with a child body.

"Well, no, see she's just short-"

But you just related her form to her age and how she percieves her age

"Yeah, but she's so mature-"

Because of the trauma. Literally as a result of her trauma. Maybe she could've aged differently and chosen her form as such should she have been given a proper upbringing, but that doesn't change the fact that as of now she Views herself as a Child and Projects The Body Of One.

---- I'm sorry, I can't - with Sigewinne being revealed, I've been seeing more shit sexualizing children and I'm Tired. Lets just put it to rest, okay? Tall body models? Typically adults, no exceptions come to mind. Medium body models? Some young adults and some teenagers.

But characters with the Smallest Model? It's not just short. Look at their proportions. If they were just short, they'd still have similar proportions to the previous models, but they don't. Their heads are largened with softened features and their body shape matches other child models in the game. An argument for body type also doesn't work given Genshin isn't exactly inclusive and such logic would only apply to one of the three model categories. They are children. Stop fucking around with your "AcTUaLly" - It doesn't matter. You are attracted to CHILDREN and need HELP. If not help, then to be on a list. Either check yourself and improve, or at least quit making excuses so the rest of us can ignore you as we so please whilst also redirecting younger members of the community.

Not to mention, those that plea and cry that their "waifus" aren't actually children and are just short adults, typically don't have that reflect in their content created and consumed. Maybe I'd take y'all a little more at face value if y'all actually y'know, drew and wrote what you supposedly believe. Hell, it'd still be a problem if it were Jean or Lisa being sexualized, but drawn and written blatantly as children.

Also, anyone that may want to say "oh, you don't believe in short people" - I DO. I AM a short person. A short asian person who has been infantalized and not treated as an adult. But I have also been a child who was sexualized. And now both intermingle in my life. I am sick and tired of it all. It's all just shitty excuses. Thirst after literally anything else. Work out whatever you have going on with consenting adults instead of projecting it onto public media that has an audience of varying ages Including Minors. Additionally; Venting, coping, and exploring darker topics via fiction is NOT the same as GLORIFYING and INDULGING. That line should be Very Distinct.

(one last point: some people say characters like Dori and Sigewinne are a salesperson and nurse respectively, adult professions, yeah? Well friendly reminder, Barbara is ALSO a nurse. Fischl is an adventurer, and she's no older than 16. We are going by FANTASY LOGIC in which children can wield weapons and explore nations with little to no supervision! The given profession of any character as well as their attire means nothing in that kind of world.)

i'm sorry you've had to go through such things, anon :///

but i agree with you; it's a problem that definitely extends outside of genshin but for some reason, ppl seem so desensitized to it and shrug it off as 'oh waifu go brrrr' which is quite irresponsible imo

i'm a big proponent of 'fiction is fiction and you can think whatever you want as long as it doesn't harm anyone', but in this case, these things DO harm ppl; they harm all the very young children who play genshin and partake in fandom discussions

it's very important for everyone to realize that even if a piece of media is fictional and thinking/saying/doing certain things won't hurt the characters, your actions will absolutely set an example in real life, very possibly harming the younger members of the fandom

the line is quite gray sometimes, in fandom circles, and it might be hard to tell what's 'okay' and what's 'not okay', but i think most ppl have a good sense of what's simply enjoying a character vs sexualizing them

and hence, it becomes our responsibility to call out the things that are disturbing and potentially harmful. even if the original person who did those things won't change, you've at least spread awareness to others and let them know that [whatever the thing was] is unacceptable

katheryne from liyue

[pjwarriorcats]

Into the Wild

So… what’s the deal with these cat books anyway?

If you’ve spent a decent chunk of time on the internet, you’ve probably encountered them in some form at least once. While by no means the largest fandom on the internet, nor even the largest book series fandom, Warriors fans are pretty prolific, particularly on art-sharing websites and on YouTube. 

The series itself began in 2003 with the release of Into the Wild. Since then, the series has only grown tremendously, with over 90 additional chapter books, graphic novels, super editions, guide books, ebook exclusives, and more (quick note for your own reference: I myself managed to read an even 60 of the main series books before I finally gave up). The children’s book series is written by Erin Hunter, a pseudonym shared by a team of writers and editors, currently consisting of Victoria Holmes, Kate Cary, Cherith Baldry, Tui Sutherland, Inbali Iserles, and Clarissa Hutton, and formerly Gillian Philip (fired after a run-in with what she called the “woke warriors” of publishing—more on that at another time). Different books were worked on by different members of the team, so the pseudonym was devised in order to keep them all organized together when placed on a library shelf.

[Alt Text: The cover art for the first Warriors book, with an orange cat sitting in a separate box, against a forested background where two more cats approach each other: Artist credit]

The books are about feral cats who have created an organized society of four Clans (each with around 15-20 cats) for themselves in the woods, complete with traditions, customs, a code of rules to live by, and a religion to follow. Built around this general premise, the series has since followed multiple plotlines, and many different characters have starred as the reader’s point of perspective in each book or arc.

These books hooked their claws into multiple generations of young readers. People found enjoyment in discussing their favorite characters, predicting future events, creating fan artworks, arguing over their favorite Clan and territory, and so much more. Furthermore, the basic premise outline left plenty of room for people to devise their own characters, Clans, and stories. Communities popped up around the internet, filled with people’s original Warrior Cats characters, sharing them with each other, creating artwork and animations, writing fan fictions, drawing comics, and developing stories. Roleplay forums related to these original characters (OCs) began appearing everywhere that they could, anywhere that had even the barest technological capability for it: DeviantArt and Wattpad comments sections, Minecraft multiplayer servers, online MMOs like Animal Jam, even MIT’s Scratch programming website. It was everywhere.

And it still is.

I can’t account for DeviantArt or Scratch anymore; it’s been a long time since I’ve traversed through those forums. But I can say with certainty that the Warriors Community has not stopped talking and creating and sharing what they’ve made since it began. The books are one thing, but it’s the fandom I really find fascinating, even all these years since leaving it.

There’s not really any way to consume every single bit of content created by the fans of the Warrior Cats books; there’s just too much of it. I’ll give you as big and as varied a sample as I can at a later time. There’s some extremely remarkable things out there that they’ve created. But the truth of the matter is that not every piece of media made in Warrior Cats’ honor necessarily deserves to be consumed, nor every creator supported. The series is not free from controversies, ranging from accusations of cultural appropriation, to zoophilia, to ableism, and more, and I hope to discuss some of those, as many as I can, as well.

Long story short: there’s a lot to say about the Warriors fandom. Let’s get into it!

[Alt Text: A digital painting of a large cream cat and a small grey cat running together through a birch forest. Artist credit]

[angel-is-not-creative]

Azuma- Otaku, Japan’s Database Animals 

I am much better at watching anime than I am at reading anything so this was incredibly difficult for me.

In order to understand this I had to relate it back to my own experience in fandom. I have been an avid participant in fandom culture since about the age of 12 (when I made tumblr) so I would say I am pretty well-versed.

What it seemed to be saying at the beginning is that if there is a piece of media that is relatively liked by consumers, both the audience and the creators will find ways to parody it and sell it in different ways. Many fan creations are imitations of worlds that are often imitations of other worlds (it is an endless cycle).

As this becomes more common the line between what is original and what is a "knockoff" becomes more blurred. When everything is inspired by something else in some form, when are you copying and when are you just drawing inspiration from a story.

Originality stems from the way each individual event plays out through the story, the overarching narrative, however, a narrative cannot be sold or expressed as a commodity such as stickers.

The author then goes on to talk about the newer generation of Evangelion fans who did not want to immerse themselves in the fictional world, but rather wanted to be able to separate the characters from the show and use them in other works (like erotic telephone cards). This is something we see a lot in fandom nowadays, everything within a story is up to interpretation, headcanons run wild. Looking at the most popular show of 2010's fandom Hetalia (which I will be talking about in depth when we get to it) was frequently removed from canon, even by the creators. This allows for more freedom for fans to connect with characters and stories as well as take some creative interpretations in fan works or cosplay.

Particularly, they like to take characters and add "moe elements to them" and I mean Hetalia shows us this too

I mean literally cat ears and nurse outfits are the definition of these moe elements that are added to characters in "parody" work.

"Within the consumer behavior of feeling moe for a specific character, along with the blind obsession, there is hidden a peculiarly cool, detached dimension— one that takes apart the object into moe-elements and objectifies them within a database"

While this typically happens with female characters I don't think it is exclusive to them... as displayed above. Who cares if a character is well-written within their story? Can we put them on a body pillow? Cause that is all that matters to a lot of fans.

I think this is the main point of this, that a lot of fandom culture revolves around removing characters from their story and portraying them in a way that we want to see them. This is where fanfiction and alternate universes arise from, and it allows for fans to take a piece of another work to make their own.

[thenukacolachallenge]

Masterpost!

PLEASE NOTE THAT I FOLLOW FROM @pinkcatminht AND THIS IS A SIDE ACCOUNT :)

hello! I’m dia, and this is my fandom and writing account!

FANDOMS:

-Yu Yu Hakusho -One Piece(long time fan, caught up with the manga, loved the live action. ‘#opspoilers’ is my spoiler tag for the animanga, ‘#dia watches opla’ is my spoiler tag for the live action) -Wotakoi(Love Is Hard For Otaku) -Mortal Kombat -Fallout -The Outer Worlds -The Legend of Zelda -Stranger Things -Nope -other occasional things i’m currently forgetting lmao

for most of my fandoms, i tag by character, not by the name of the piece of media itself. feel free to go through my character tags! (they work best on desktop! sorry mobile users)

i have an absolute fuckton of OCs lmao. i have a masterlist where you can learn more about them :D

some tags i use frequently(they work best on desktop! sorry mobile users):

#dia drabbles - my writing! #others works - writing that isn’t mine! #others ocs - if i post about an OC that isn’t mine, this will be the tag :D #funny - the laugh tag! primarily memes and shitposts related to writing and fandom stuff. #reference - writing references! this is largely catered to my writing, so not everything in here may be relevant to writing advice as a whole. #prompts - writing prompt lists! #tips - ideas and reminders to improve your writing and fandom experience :) #oc asks - questions about OCs, to help flesh them out! #fandom wank - anything fandom or purity culture related. this tag sucks but if you want my opinions on Fandom Things, it’ll likely be in here.

Some things of note:

1. This blog is for ages 18+. This is non negotiable. please keep in mind that i will block if i find you are lying about your age and you follow me.

2. Series-typical content warnings apply. many of these works i’m a fan of contain mature content. please be mindful of potentially seeing those things if you follow me. if you are unsure of what specific content you may see, feel free to search the above-listed media’s mature content warnings. i tag my individual works as best i can. if i miss something big that isn’t covered by the subject matter in the above works, please let me know.

3. I am here to have fun, and I do not care about things like note counts and engagement. if this is something that you focus heavily on, then my blog may not be for you. i treat this very casually. this is a hobby for me. i follow over 300 people and i realistically cannot consume every bit of content that all 300 people are posting. if you want me to see something specific, consider tagging me in it! it’s not a full guarantee i will see it nor that i’ll have the time and energy to read it, but i will do my best.

4. I am neither pro nor anti-ship, but a secret third thing(a grown adult who pays taxes and has better things to worry about than shipping nonsense). behave yourself accordingly. i block with extreme prejudice. if you’re that upset about what people do with fictional characters, you should consider putting that energy into helping people in offline spaces.

that’s about it, thanks for reading!

[wernerherzogs]

not to be gay and constantly starved for good representation, but i truly Cannot get over the fact that. yusuf and nicolo are not only a canon gay couple, but also that no matter where exactly any viewer's fandom interests lie regarding the old guard (2020) dir. gina prince-bythewood, they'll ALWAYS be a canon gay couple. like, you want a nile-centric fic? they're a couple. booker's character study? still in love. an analysis of andy's struggles over the centuries? yusuf and nicolo continue to choose each other over and over again in the background. there's no room for antis in this fandom. no one will take joenicky away from me. no one will tell me i'm being stupid, and reading too much into things. no one's gonna make the "the content creators and actors are just queerbaiting you" argument. no one CAN make it. it's indisputable. it's canon. IT'S HEALING.

[prettyboykatsuki]

i would like to know ur opinions on aging up discourse tho🙇🏽‍♀️

man lmfao it's pretty complicated i don't know how to articulate it. this is really long

cw for the typical discourse around this stuff, mentions of p*dophilia

in short every argument made against aging up uses the same basic logical fallacies. slippery slope, generalization, and assumption . the implication that every person who ages up fictional characters either is a danger to minors or is attracted to them in some way despite their being no empirical evidence or definitive way to conclude that about a person is, point blank, a bad faith argument.

fictional characters are not people - they're story telling devices. therefore they have no agency and cannot be effected by anything that happens to them. they're closer to a concept than a person. they're not real, they have no stake in real life - and the things we do with them are entirely made up. the argument should end there.

"but why age them up and not use *already adult character*" they are different character that accomplish different things. you wouldn't use blue to paint the sun

"im a minor and it makes me uncomfortable," i was a minor but im an adult now and i don't want to engage with any minors in this particular space which is why it's labelled 18+. most adults don't want to engage with minors over nsfw either. if someone does try to engage with or lure you with nsfw content knowing you're a minor, you are in danger and you should seek out a trusted person in your life to talk to and block said person. my job online isn't to make you comfortable and that experience is not indicative of every person online.

"why're you justifying having a crush on *canon minor character*" im in no way shape or form explicitly attracted to this character because he's a minor so there's not a crush to justify. im a person consuming a piece of media, and this character engages my interest and is drawn to be good looking. so i take him and engage with him in a way i like - that is how media consumption works. as an adult because im an adult.

even if we took sex/nsfw/romantic context out of the equation because that's normally what this argument centers on - i almost always contextualize characters in adulthood because that's the stage of life im in.

"why're you aging up a character just to sexualize them," im not. im aging them up because it develops their character in my mind and i find them more relatable. even if i did it wouldn't matter because it still means im transforming that character into an adult.

your assumption that people use this weird roundabout to justify their attraction to kids is based on the idea that actual predators and dangerous people online don't have spaces that are easily accessible and that their specific target is fandom.

"what about characters who are drawn as explicitly as children and meant to be depicted as children? is it okay then?" i find it deeply uncomfortable to age up a character who's next stage of life isn't already adulthood since it jumps through a lot of hoops. it's a boundary im unwilling to cross as it is for many others. if somoene does something i find unsavory, i block them.

at a certain point, ever single possible moral gray for this argument becomes bad faith. to break it down any further than necessary is simply a way to foster a "gotcha sicko!" moment instead of contributing intelligence to this conversation. people aren't actually looking to understand what this is or to break it down, they're just unwilling to think critically for fear of being morally ostracized by internet communities.

i hate to inform you, but having all the "right takes," will not save you from internet crucifixion. the sooner you have strong boundaries and morals in real life, the easier your life will be instead of trying to gain moral highground on random people online.

fiction indeed effects reality - but fiction isn't an inherent one to one to who someone is. fictions relationship to reality in relation to things like propaganda, and those affects all require additional context.

im in a stable relationship with a man i've been with for 5 years. he is a year older than me. i consume content about toxic relationships all day long. because what i do, what i find interesting, what i engage with are not inherent to who i am.

just like how watching a violent movie doesn't make you a violent person. just like how reading a book from a problematic writer doesn't mean you condone their actions. does everyone person who makes freud jokes agree with the things he was? you can have perceived correlations, bias is human nature but you can't decide anything definitively over something as trivial as fandom content on the internet.

morality and real life are largely based on context and awareness of the world. a man can be a murderer, but there is a stark difference between a man killing his abuser and a serial killer. your opinion of these people is formed and shaped by what context you know about them and evidence. real people have context necessary to make fully formed opinions on them and are effected by internet witch hunts.

and it is, your right, to not engage with someone based on a perceived context. but making assumptions and accusations as serious as p*dophilia is unbelievably dangerous and not rooted in anything.

when you create moral boundaries between you and someone else, assume the worst of them, you are creating a type of person to be othered. that line of thinking has been used for hundreds of years to commit acts of violence against unassuming people and it is dangerous.

"it's not that deep," it sure isn't. which is why you shouldn't fucking harass strangers you have no real context for. which is why the concept of aging up a character cannot be indicative of a persons morals and doesn't mean someone is attracted to kids.

if you want to have a talk minor safety online, there are plenty of ways to do that. there are plenty of conversations to be had about how adults and minors should engage appropriately.

but adults cultivating a space for themselves and other adults has little to do with minors. and unless you can prove, without doubt, that the person you're engaging with is bad - it's not your place to enact your perceived justice.

i would understand if there was some provable evidence in relation to fandom communities but there just isn't. the things that happen in this spaces have no effect on real minors unless minors are in the spaces they're not supposed to be in anyways.

aging up is a narrative tool, just like au's are. just like backstories are. we're all playing make believe and aging up a fictional character doesn't mean someone is a predator. end of story.

[bao3bei4]

fan language: the victorian imaginary and cnovel fandom

there’s this pinterest image i’ve seen circulating a lot in the past year i’ve been on fandom social media. it’s a drawn infographic of a, i guess, asian-looking woman holding a fan in different places relative to her face to show what the graphic helpfully calls “the language of the fan.”

people like sharing it. they like thinking about what nefarious ancient chinese hanky code shenanigans their favorite fan-toting character might get up to⁠—accidentally or on purpose. and what’s the problem with that?

the problem is that fan language isn’t chinese. it’s victorian. and even then, it’s not really quite victorian at all. 

--------------------

fans served a primarily utilitarian purpose throughout chinese history. of course, most of the surviving fans we see⁠—and the types of fans we tend to care about⁠—are closer to art pieces. but realistically speaking, the majority of fans were made of cheaper material for more mundane purposes. in china, just like all around the world, people fanned themselves. it got hot!

so here’s a big tipoff. it would be very difficult to use a fan if you had an elaborate language centered around fanning yourself.

you might argue that fine, everyday working people didn’t have a fan language. but wealthy people might have had one. the problem we encounter here is that fans weren’t really gendered. (caveat here that certain types of fans were more popular with women. however, those tended to be the round silk fans, ones that bear no resemblance to the folding fans in the graphic). no disrespect to the gnc old man fuckers in the crowd, but this language isn’t quite masc enough for a tool that someone’s dad might regularly use.

folding fans, we know, reached europe in the 17th century and gained immense popularity in the 18th. it was there that fans began to take on a gendered quality. ariel beaujot describes in their 2012 victorian fashion accessories how middle class women, in the midst of a top shortage, found themselves clutching fans in hopes of securing a husband.

she quotes an article from the illustrated london news, suggesting “women ‘not only’ used fans to ‘move the air and cool themselves but also to express their sentiments.’” general wisdom was that the movement of the fan was sufficiently expressive that it augmented a woman’s displays of emotion. and of course, the more english audiences became aware that it might do so, the more they might use their fans purposefully in that way.

notice, however, that this is no more codified than body language in general is. it turns out that “the language of the fan” was actually created by fan manufacturers at the turn of the 20th century⁠—hundreds of years after their arrival⁠ in europe—to sell more fans. i’m not even kidding right now. the story goes that it was louis duvelleroy of the maison duvelleroy who decided to include pamphlets on the language with each fan sold.

interestingly enough, beaujot suggests that it didn’t really matter what each particular fan sign meant. gentlemen could tell when they were being flirted with. as it happens, meaningful eye contact and a light flutter near the face may be a lingua franca.

so it seems then, the language of the fan is merely part of this victorian imaginary we collectively have today, which in turn itself was itself captivated by china.

--------------------

victorian references come up perhaps unexpectedly often in cnovel fandom, most often with regards to modesty.

it’s a bit of an awkward reference considering that chinese traditional fashion⁠—and the ambiguous time periods in which these novels are set⁠—far predate victorian england. it is even more awkward considering that victoria and her covered ankles did um. imperialize china.

but nonetheless, it is common. and to make a point about how ubiquitous it is, here is a link to the twitter search for “sqq victorian.” sqq is the fandom abbreviation for shen qingqiu, the main character of the scum villain’s self-saving system, by the way.

this is an awful lot of results for a search involving a chinese man who spends the entire novel in either real modern-day china or fantasy ancient china. that’s all i’m going to say on the matter, without referencing any specific tweet.

i think people are aware of the anachronism. and i think they don’t mind. even the most cursory research reveals that fan language is european and a revisionist fantasy. wikipedia can tell us this⁠—i checked!

but it doesn’t matter to me whether people are trying to make an internally consistent canon compliant claim, or whether they’re just free associating between fan facts they know. it is, instead, more interesting to me that people consistently refer to this particular bit of history. and that’s what i want to talk about today⁠—the relationship of fandom today to this two hundred odd year span of time in england (roughly stuart to victorian times) and england in that time period to its contemporaneous china.

things will slip a little here. victorian has expanded in timeframe, if only because random guys posting online do not care overly much for respect for the intricacies of british history. china has expanded in geographic location, if only because the english of the time themselves conflated china with all of asia.

in addition, note that i am critiquing a certain perspective on the topic. this is why i write about fan as white here⁠—not because all fans are white⁠—but because the tendencies i’m examining have a clear historical antecedent in whiteness that shapes how white fans encounter these novels.

i’m sure some fans of color participate in these practices. however i don’t really care about that. they are not its main perpetrators nor its main beneficiaries. so personally i am minding my own business on that front.

it’s instead important to me to illuminate the linkage between white as subject and chinese as object in history and in the present that i do argue that fannish products today are built upon.

--------------------

it’s not radical, or even new at all, for white audiences to consume⁠—or create their own versions of⁠—chinese art en masse. in many ways the white creators who appear to owe their whole style and aesthetic to their asian peers in turn are just the new chinoiserie.

this is not to say that white people can’t create asian-inspired art. but rather, i am asking you to sit with the discomfort that you may not like the artistic company you keep in the broader view of history, and to consider together what is to be done about that.

now, when i say the new chinoiserie, i first want to establish what the original one is. chinoiserie was a european artistic movement that appeared coincident with the rise in popularity of folding fans that i described above. this is not by coincidence; the european demand for asian imports and the eventual production of lookalikes is the movement itself. so: when we talk about fans, when we talk about china (porcelain), when we talk about tea in england⁠—we are talking about the legacy of chinoiserie.

there are a couple things i want to note here. while english people as a whole had a very tenuous knowledge of what china might be, their appetites for chinoiserie were roughly coincident with national relations with china. as the relationship between england and china moved from trade to out-and-out wars, chinoiserie declined in popularity until china had been safely subjugated once more by the end of the 19th century.

the second thing i want to note on the subject that contrary to what one might think at first, the appeal of chinoiserie was not that it was foreign. eugenia zuroski’s 2013 taste for china examines 18th century english literature and its descriptions of the according material culture with the lens that chinese imports might be formative to english identity, rather than antithetical to it.

beyond that bare thesis, i think it’s also worthwhile to extend her insight that material objects become animated by the literary viewpoints on them. this is true, both in a limited general sense as well as in the sense that english thinkers of the time self-consciously articulated this viewpoint. consider the quote from the illustrated london news above⁠—your fan, that object, says something about you. and not only that, but the objects you surround yourself with ought to.

it’s a bit circular, the idea that written material says that you should allow written material to shape your understanding of physical objects. but it’s both 1) what happened, and 2) integral, i think, to integrating a fannish perspective into the topic.

--------------------

japanning is the name for the popular imitative lacquering that english craftspeople developed in domestic response to the demand for lacquerware imports. in the eighteenth century, japanning became an artform especially suited for young women. manuals were published on the subject, urging young women to learn how to paint furniture and other surfaces, encouraging them to rework the designs provided in the text.

it was considered a beneficial activity for them; zuroski describes how it was “associated with commerce and connoisseurship, practical skill and aesthetic judgment.” a skillful japanner, rather than simply obscuring what lay underneath the lacquer, displayed their superior judgment in how they chose to arrange these new canonical figures and effects in a tasteful way to bring out the best qualities of them.

zuroski quotes the first english-language manual on the subject, written in 1688, which explains how japanning allows one to:

alter and correct, take out a piece from one, add a fragment to the next, and make an entire garment compleat in all its parts, though tis wrought out of never so many disagreeing patterns.

this language evokes a very different, very modern practice. it is this english reworking of an asian artform that i think the parallels are most obvious.

white people, through their artistic investment in chinese material objects and aesthetics, integrated them into their own subjectivity. these practices came to say something about the people who participated in them, in a way that had little to do with the country itself. their relationship changed from being a “consumer” of chinese objects to becoming the proprietor of these new aesthetic signifiers.

--------------------

i want to talk about this through a few pairs of tensions on the subject that i think characterize common attitudes then and now.

first, consider the relationship between the self and the other: the chinese object as something that is very familiar to you, speaking to something about your own self vs. the chinese object as something that is fundamentally different from you and unknowable to you. 

consider: [insert character name] is just like me. he would no doubt like the same things i like, consume the same cultural products. we are the same in some meaningful way vs. the fast standard fic disclaimer that “i tried my best when writing this fic, but i’m a english-speaking westerner, and i’m just writing this for fun so...... [excuses and alterations the person has chosen to make in this light],” going hand-in-hand with a preoccupation with authenticity or even overreliance on the unpaid labor of chinese friends and acquaintances. 

consider: hugh honour when he quotes a man from the 1640s claiming “chinoiserie of this even more hybrid kind had become so far removed from genuine Chinese tradition that it was exported from India to China as a novelty to the Chinese themselves” 

these tensions coexist, and look how they have been resolved.

second, consider what we vest in objects themselves: beaujot explains how the fan became a sexualized, coquettish object in the hands of a british woman, but was used to great effect in gilbert and sullivan’s 1885 mikado to demonstrate the docility of asian women. 

consider: these characters became expressions of your sexual desires and fetishes, even as their 5’10 actors themselves are emasculated.

what is liberating for one necessitates the subjugation and fetishization of the other. 

third, consider reactions to the practice: enjoyment of chinese objects as a sign of your cosmopolitan palate vs “so what’s the hype about those ancient chinese gays” pop culture explainers that addressed the unconvinced mainstream.

consider: zuroski describes how both english consumers purchased china in droves, and contemporary publications reported on them. how: 

It was in the pages of these papers that the growing popularity of Chinese things in the early eighteenth century acquired the reputation of a “craze”; they portrayed china fanatics as flawed, fragile, and unreliable characters, and frequently cast chinoiserie itself in the same light.

referenda on fannish behavior serve as referenda on the objects of their devotion, and vice versa. as the difference between identity and fetish collapses, they come to be treated as one and the same by not just participants but their observers. 

at what point does mxtx fic cease to be chinese? 

--------------------

finally, it seems readily apparent that attitudes towards chinese objects may in fact have something to do with attitudes about china as a country. i do not want to suggest that these literary concerns are primarily motivated and begot by forces entirely divorced from the real mechanics of power. 

here, i want to bring in edward said, and his 1993 culture and imperialism. there, he explains how power and legitimacy go hand in hand. one is direct, and one is purely cultural. he originally wrote this in response to the outsize impact that british novelists have had in the maintenance of empire and throughout decolonization. literature, he argues, gives rise to powerful narratives that constrain our ability to think outside of them.

there’s a little bit of an inversion at play here. these are chinese novels, actually. but they’re being transformed by white narratives and artists. and just as i think the form of the novel is important to said’s critique, i think there’s something to be said about the form that fic takes and how it legitimates itself.

bound up in fandom is the idea that you have a right to create and transform as you please. it is a nice idea, but it is one that is directed towards a certain kind of asymmetry. that is, one where the author has all the power. this is the narrative we hear a lot in the history of fandom⁠—litigious authors and plucky fans, fanspaces always under attack from corporate sanitization.

meanwhile, said builds upon raymond schwab’s narrative of cultural exchange between european writers and cultural products outside the imperial core. said explains that fundamental to these two great borrowings (from greek classics and, in the so-called “oriental renaissance” of the late 18th, early 19th centuries from “india, china, japan, persia, and islam”) is asymmetry. 

he had argued prior, in orientalism, that any “cultural exchange” between “partners conscious of inequality” always results in the suffering of the people. and here, he describes how “texts by dead people were read, appreciated, and appropriated” without the presence of any actual living people in that tradition. 

i will not understate that there is a certain economic dynamic complicating this particular fannish asymmetry. mxtx has profited materially from the success of her works, most fans will not. also secondly, mxtx is um. not dead. LMAO.

but first, the international dynamic of extraction that said described is still present. i do not want to get overly into white attitudes towards china in this post, because i am already thoroughly derailed, but i do believe that they structure how white cnovel fandom encounters this texts.

at any rate, any profit she receives is overwhelmingly due to her domestic popularity, not her international popularity. (i say this because many of her international fans have never given her a cent. in fact, most of them have no real way to.) and moreover, as we talk about the structure of english-language fandom, what does it mean to create chinese cultural products without chinese people? 

as white people take ownership over their versions of stories, do we lose something? what narratives about engagement with cnovels might exist outside of the form of classic fandom?

i think a lot of people get the relationship between ideas (the superstructure) and production (the base) confused. oftentimes they will lob in response to criticism, that look! this fic, this fandom, these people are so niche, and so underrepresented in mainstream culture, that their effects are marginal. i am not arguing that anyone’s cql fic causes imperialism. (unless you’re really annoying. then it’s anyone’s game) 

i’m instead arguing something a little bit different. i think, given similar inputs, you tend to get similar outputs. i think we live in the world that imperialism built, and we have clear historical predecessors in terms of white appetites for creating, consuming, and transforming chinese objects. 

we have already seen, in the case of the fan language meme that began this post, that sometimes we even prefer this white chinoiserie. after all, isn’t it beautiful, too? 

i want to bring discomfort to this topic. i want to reject the paradigm of white subject and chinese object; in fact, here in this essay, i have tried to reverse it.

if you are taken aback by the comparisons i make here, how can you make meaningful changes to your fannish practice to address it? 

--------------------

some concluding thoughts on the matter, because i don’t like being misunderstood! 

i am not claiming white fans cannot create fanworks of cnovels or be inspired by asian art or artists. this essay is meant to elaborate on the historical connection between victorian england and cnovel characters and fandom that others have already popularized.

i don’t think people who make victorian jokes are inherently bad or racist. i am encouraging people to think about why we might make them and/or share them

the connections here are meant to be more provocative than strictly literal. (e.g. i don’t literally think writing fanfic is a 1-1 descendant of japanning). these connections are instead meant to 1) make visible the baggage that fans of color often approach fandom with and 2) recontextualize and defamiliarize fannish practice for the purposes of honest critique

please don’t turn this post into being about other different kinds of discourse, or into something that only one “kind” of fan does. please take my words at face value and consider them in good faith. i would really appreciate that.

please feel free to ask me to clarify any statements or supply more in-depth sources :) 

[olderthannetfic]

Okay, since there's been a lot of HP themed asks on your blog recently, I'm taking the chance to ask two genuine questions I've been confused about for a While.

1) An argument I saw a lot is sth like "if you buy Harry Potter stuff, JKR will take this to mean that you support her, including her transphobic bullshit" and I just Do Not Get why I'm supposed to care what JKR thinks.

Just because she thinks people support her doesn't make it true. And we already know she believes ridiculous bullshit, because she's a terf. Why tf should I care abt her opinion??

And no, this is not the same argument as "if you buy HP stuff, you're giving JKR money to spend on her transphobic bullshit". I've seen both points going around, they're not the same thing.

2) I don't understand why it seems like a rando on tumblr reblogging a HP gifset, or a rando on AO3 writing a HP fanfic, is given the same importance as buying new HP stuff. Fandom is not the same as mainstream.

There are many fandoms where fan content has little in common with the source material, sometimes as a default. Why is the default assumption for HP that every piece of fan content kept the worst parts of canon?

Why is a fandom rando on the internet conflated with mainstream HP stuff, when the number of people who will see one is not even comparable to the number of people who will see the other? And you've written before how it's not the same when a bad (or "bad") thing is shown in a fanfic and when it's shown in a mainstream movie (you may have been talking about porn and/or darkfic, I don't remember the details), partly because the number of people who will see it is so vastly different. And I don't get why HP is exempt from this distinction?

I kinda hope I misunderstood or got the wrong impression somewhere, it's not like I'm involved in this discourse and I'm not in HP fandom, so there has to be a lot I don't see.

--

1 strikes me as a guilt-based tactic, not a serious argument. Maybe some mean it as other people seeing that as her having support, but I don't think this really holds water the way the money part does.

2 is a debate between the idea that giving money is the main problem vs. the idea that anything that makes a franchise stay relevant is the problem. Every hour spent on HP fanworks, no matter how diverse and progressive, is an hour not spent on fanworks of something else. Making awesome fanworks for HP makes it even harder for others to entirely ditch it. Yadda yadda.

My personal view is that the majority of fanworks, including critical ones or a/b/o no magic AUs that are barely related to the original, still promote the original thing.

Saying "I'm spending all my free time screaming about how [HP, SPN, Sherlock, etc.] is bad!" is still saying "I'm spending all my free time on this piece of media."

Now, how much does it matter that one random fan spent an hour on HP? Not very much. But one of my hobbyhorses is that I think fandom needs to be smarter about budgeting time. You don't have the hours in the day to consume all the old, bad things and be in their fandoms and also seek out new things and build up their fandoms.

If someone's like "I do what I want, fuck off", fine. But if they're trying to make arguments about why their hours spend on HP don't count because they were noncommercial, I think they do because that's still time giving HP your brain space.

[faelapis]

i know some of you guys will probably instinctively wince because you got caught up in gamergate during your youth and only reformed/grew out of it later... but i think many would really benefit from watching the feminist frequency tropes vs women series (yes, it's been review bombed to hell and back by anti-sjw types.)

i was a huge fan of it back in the day, watched all the videos - but unlike current discourse, which is (and i’ve also been guilty of this) hyperfocusing on the perceived flaws of a single intellectual property, it took the broader approach that we ought to be critical of just how common these tropes are.

it really helps you look at media with a bird’s eye view, if you’re new to that kind of analysis. seeing your fave there doesn’t mean they’re “bad,” it means that they’re a part of a broader pattern that maybe shouldn’t be so widespread. you can always make justifications for why a certain trope exists within the context of (your favorite media), but the point is the broader discussion, NOT individual examples.

this is part of why it’s so frustrating how many “response” videos will pause the video at a split frame showing an example to mock - trying to “disprove” problematic aspects by arguing about the very particular examples - rather than understanding it as a critique of the tropes themselves. like. guys. the point isn’t whether mario is problematic. the point is how integral damsel in distress narratives and heteronormativity are in video games right up to present day.

this, i think, is also useful when judging the "base intentions" or "base politics" of a piece of media. a huge part of what initially appealed to my feminist sensibilities about steven universe was how it avoided many of the problematic tropes that plague most animation even today.

outside of representation, it also intentionally challenged the notion of hierarchy itself, by making its "heroes" thoroughly flawed and dressing down the notion of the perfect leader. a lot of media will challenge authority, but then just install a "good" king to replace the "evil" one. SU future is super important here, as it challenges the notion of steven as the "good" diamond/leader to replace the "bad" ones. you can't just replace the leaders, you gotta dismantle that unfair hierarchy. good intentions can lead to bad outcomes when someone thinks of themselves as a hero or savior, and hence "above" others. hence, a degree of empathy for everyone in that system is key. you're not better than them, and they're not better than you.

that's also a big reason why the criticism it eventually got was so frustrating to me. there seemed to be little awareness in the fandom how it was still better and had more progressive sensibilities than 99% of the media out there. it was like they thought steven universe was the first cartoon since the 40s to ever have blind spots, rather than that being the norm.

so, yes, there is also individualistic appeal to understanding the commonality of tropes as they relate to underlying systemic issues. when (non-youtube 🙃) critics call something “progressive” or “refreshing,” it’s usually not because they have lower standards than you or can’t see the problematic nitpicks - it’s because they’re able to put it in the context of what most media is actually like. they haven’t hitched their wagon to hating or loving one piece of media. they can't; they have to look at A LOT of media.

i’m far from the first to say this, but this kind of systemic approach is also applicable to things like the bechdel test. the point was never that passing or not made an individual intellectual property “good” or “bad” - it was how. fucking. common. it was for media to center men and male perspectives. it was pointing out that most movies don’t have several female characters who are able to have dialogue about something other than men. yes, trash like showgirls passes. nobody thinks that makes it good.

~drama about individual pieces of media tends to get more clicks and views, and that is occasionally important! i’m not saying individual pieces of media or its fanbases can never be questioned or, inversely, defended (otherwise, how could i justify spending so much time defending steven universe from that big overblown hypocritical backlash?)... but it also makes me sad.

like. i’m 25. i’m not that old, but in fandom spaces i feel fucking ancient. i feel like i'm from a different time in terms of media consumption and analysis - one where me and my fellow lefties knew that all media was in some way problematic.

maybe it was just more "in your face" then, so it was easier to spot... but whatever the reason, i felt like a huge part of leftist analysis was the acknowledgment that everything, even the media you love, is a product of a broader, unfair system. just like people are shaped by that system, too - and that's "the enemy," not individuals or individual works of art (almost like SU had a point about that). the unfairness in society at large will be reflected in the products that culture creates and consumes. so intentions and caring does, actually, matter.

[halliescomut]

So I never really know who is on multiple platforms. Like I get/find KinnPorsche content all over, some here, some TikTok, some Insta, and I do have a Twitter, but I very rarely go there, even before the chaos of the last few weeks. But apparently the KP authors, who are terrible people, have been extra terrible. IDK if it's info that's made it's way here, but they said at some point that during the VegasPete NC scene the audio was cut because it was too realistic, which is why that scene is only music. Sure whatever. Then on TikTok (though it started on Twitter) a clip of that scenes audio started going around. It first popped up months ago soon after that episode, but it's been making the rounds again, but it is a fan made clip. A very talented fan essentially ADRed/Foleyed the VP scene, and then posted it online. But apparently Daemi has been going around and harassing people commenting or sharing the clip saying the BOC and the actors are mad it got leaked, and blah blah blah. There's been no statement from anyone at BOC about the clips, since they know it's fake. But I keep getting videos on my FYP on TikTok saying don't follow the authors, not even for the drama, you need to just block them. And like, if I go on Twitter I might, I'm not against it they're awful, but I just never go there.

But one thing I really love about fandom in general is that when it's good, the fans will band together to exile any terrible people trying to fuck things up. It happened to a small extent with JKR. Everyone I know who's still into HP almost exclusively reads fics, and only buys merch from small shops, never anything officially licensed, which takes all the money out of JKR's hands. It's not universal in that fandom which is a bummer, but it's a pretty reasonable victory. I've also seen it with fans of the Whedonverse, where that man's thoughts and opinions don't matter in the fandom anymore.

So I never know exactly what people will have heard/read/learned about, so I'll give a brief explanation. There's a concept called 'Death of the Author' which relates to an author having no control over a piece of work once it's been sent out into the world. Once something is published or released, the intentions, beliefs, ideas, of the author no longer have bearing on it's interpretation by the consumer. Often these beliefs and ideas are subtextual, even possible accidental, since we all have inherent prejudice and biases that will appear in creative works. Sometimes those ideas are overt and purposeful. But once that work is out, the fan can change the narrative to whatever they want, and the author has no say. One of my favorite examples of this is the fan theory over Ron Weasley being trans, since JKR is a massive terf.

Now in general this will only apply to completed works, so it wouldn't apply to Daemi, who is still actively right the KP story. But they've been so terrible that KP fans have decided that they no longer desire to wait for that death, but instead have decided to take it up on themselves to wrest all control of KP from them by force. What I've decided to call Murder of the Author. Which is shockingly appropriate considering the genre of their work.

So...bottom line, don't support the authors of KP, they're terrible humans. If you see them on social media you should block them. They also do have separate KP merch that they sell, so if you are buying merch make sure it's from BOC. And I really enjoy being part of a fandom that has decided "we don't care if you created this story, you're being awful in real life and so we are confiscating it."

Daemi if you see this:

[i-like-gay-books]

lately been seeing a lot of pushback against the pushback against intellectual elitism, crying anti-intellectualism, and there are a few reasons this is bothering me which i’m going to try to list here to the best of my abilities all in one sitting because otherwise i’ll forget to finish it:

1. the whole attitude against consuming “easy” media like marvel or mainstream movies or books, etc, is intellectual elitism no matter how you sugar coat it. im not saying it’s intentionally malicious, in fact i believe most people doing it are unaware they’re doing anything at all. the thing is that privilege can affect you in many different ways, and the level of media you are able to consume and have an enjoyable experience with is one of those ways.

i am very well educated in language and writing, so reading experimental stories where the syntax and turn of phrase is almost more important than the actual plot or characters is easy and even sometimes enjoyable for me. however, i have next to no media literacy when it comes to films. i can watch something more artistic or experimental, but i likely won’t understand it even close to the amount i need to in order to enjoy it. it would take a lot of effort to fully understand and even if i got to the point of understanding it the effort it took would make the experience much less enjoyable.

i hope i explained that well enough. it’s kinda hard to put into words

2. it’s ableist. full stop. i’m not even joking here i saw someone seriously type out and post something that said people are using this callout of intellectual elitism as a way to hide the fact that they’re all just “jocks who don’t play sports.” that doesnt directly relate to this point in particular i just remembered it. 

yes, less artistic or intentionally intellectual/ thought provoking pieces of art are easier to consume. speaking as someone who has not only dealt with chronic burnout myself but who is part of a generation of people living day in and day out with chronic burnout, sometimes easy media is all i can handle. by which i mean, most times. and its easier to consume again. and again. and again and again.

burnout is just one example of course, many disabilities can cause a lack of energy to devote to activities that are for leisure. and even without disabilities, humans are meant to rest. nobody wants to be thinking critically or philosophically 100% of the time.

3. communities are much larger surrounding mainstream/ easy to consume media. obviously that doesnt make it more worthwhile, but it does come with its own certain set of benefits. also you know what mainstream fandoms have a shit ton of? fan work. look at fan fiction and fan art and fan theories and tell me those people are not thinking critically and engaging meaningfully with their source material. just try to tell me. 

some people work better with more hands on, creative pursuits. my favorite subjects growing up were always math and english, because there was a way to be involved, and not just be told the answers, the story. science and history never offered me that, at least not as openly. learning styles are different, and just because we’re talking about a leisure activity here doesnt mean that fact changes or becomes irrelevant.

this is just me word dumping onto a document because i didnt want to hijack a post at 12:30 at night, but these are a few of the reasons this “anti-intellectualism” accusation has been leaving a bad taste in my mouth for the few months its been going on. feel free to add on or ignore or whatever, i dont really care. i just needed to write it down and get it out there.