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broomsticks · 2 years ago

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me, seeing if i can bait anyone into diving into BL fandom drama with me 😈

transcript (pdf) here

v interesting episode bringing together some really different perspectives! podcast hosts are australia-based academics who usually focus on china politics—i haven’t listened to any other episodes but they’re definitely on my to-do.

they also brought on an american(?) scholar of chinese history/ art history lecturer at HKU, who reads fanfiction and is interested in chinese tv dramas from the state censorship/regulation pov — and a(n asian?) BL (+ thorki, johnlock, etc) fanfic author 幻想症患者 (love the nick. means smth like ‘suffers from delusions’)

it’s no easy feat to be the lone fanfic writer in this discussion, to have to fairly represent the many aspects to these really complex issues, and there were a couple of rather - honestly not even fandom 101, more like fandom 100-level type questions you’d only get from people with no fandom experience.

on the whole though the hosting was good, you can tell the hosts did a lot of prep on the untamed show and the controversies re. the actor and his fans/his real-life fans fandom

though, on that note, i thought the discussion was a bit muddled between these different groups of ‘fan/fandom’. i have no doubt that everybody in the discussion was clear that these were separate things and which they were talking about at any point in time, just maybe didn’t have the language to signpost/ organize it more clearly, but i could’ve used more structure imo.

• • •

i especially appreciated huanxiang’s point about how (very grossly paraphrased) there is safety and protection and freedom in nicheness and obscurity and (less grossly paraphrased) drama draws unnecessary attention from outsiders who don’t understand fandom - particularly this bit:

I would be very, very careful to link [fandom trends and phenomena to anything (LGBTQ issues etc) in real life], not that it cannot be done. But please don't do that before like, before you have finished like 100, 200 BL novels or something like that with like a full understanding of the space

understanding before judgment! please! yes!

but also — while n=1 is just that, n=1, but i’d be lying if i said i didn’t giggle a little at the undertone of the cultural value(?) that attention, standing out, is a negative thing and viewed with this like default-aversion/suspicion. idk

that said, my main thought re. this hesitation wrt people who don't belong to this community and understand the norms of this community wasn’t so much kinks and fantasies and premier zhou/chairman mao RPF, but rather not showing celebrities rpf of themselves / creators fic of their characters. neither type of wank is great, obviously, and the two types do often go hand in hand, but i’d almost rather wank be brought into the community than leak out of it

• • •

another point alluded to (not really discussed) on the pod that might be new to western media fandomgoers/ my usual mutual circle is that the untamed netflix tv show originated as original fiction published on a site that hosts both OF and FF both pay- and free-to-read. there were fan translations and all, that were taken down after official translation rights were sold (there is a lot of wank & drama on this issue. a lot.)

a 2019 censorship crackdown on the site, unrelated to (predating) the untamed/xiao zhan controversy discussed on the pod

anyway, point being - the coexistence of the two camps — intended-for-commercialization amateur fiction, presumably sanitized and lowest-common-denominator and all that, and niche not intended for wider popularity-type writing — is fascinating. good to know that they can stably coexist in some form, given how much concern there often is re. commercialization of fanworks that the former will outcompete the latter!

• • •

BY FAR THE BEST TAKE - MY FAVE part of the podcast - was dr angie baecker’s response to the question is BL (response is also applicable to slash fic) subversive?

BL is and can be an extremely subversive space. But I also think BL can replicate a lot of structures that are not subversive. I also want to draw attention to the fact that many people in the LGBTQ community, some enjoy BL, some read it, some don't, some hate it.

when you have largely straight women writing romances about gay couples without having much access to knowledge about what those relationships are like, I think that there is [huge potential] for misunderstandings about queer identities and the LGBT community

It can be really freeing to see [to see the range of different types of M/M relationships], to explore not just homosexuality, but also homosociality

But at the same time, when you have such an emphasis on the male relationships, like everyone in the Untamed is a gay man or in an M/M relationship, that often comes at the cost of erasing a lot of female characters. And so you have this drama that may have started in some ways from the lack of agency given to female characters, but then it replicates a lot of the erasure of women as centres of agency within stories, too. So, I think it can be subversive, yes. And it could be very unsubversive, actually.

definitely some food for thought there. obligatory (and i do mean it!!) preface that fandom is not meaningful activism, does not have to be, you are not a bad person for not engaging with it — but i do wonder… in my view, there’s an element of - ‘with how oppressive the power structures of mainstream media, wider society, etc can be… why not take the opportunity to push back against them a little, here in this space where we can?’

• • •

also had a laugh at dr baecker’s unfortunately prescient prediction, their hesitation, that while I feel like right now we're really on the cusp of a rising trend in terms of seeing BL represented in pop culture - we're only going to see more and more of it -

I am a little worried that there might be some kind of like a foreclosing of this space because there's always this kind of Icarus phenomenon of when something gets too popular, right, it gets clipped back a little bit. So, I do worry about that.

😬 hahaha. that aged well.

• • •

misc pieces of fun fandom drama:

whether character name tags should include diacritics/tone marks! on the side of no: convenience - up until recently, tone marks wouldn’t autocomplete correctly. and for all the incorrectness, it’s not (any more) ambiguous. on the yes side: tone marks are objectively (more) correct. does their omission amount to racism?

it seems like (some sections of?) chinese webnovel fandom apparently have the fandom culture of not messing with the creator’s stated preferences — not just canon ships, but sexual preferences (topping and bottoming). fascinating!! fandom etiquette 👀

#fandom podcast #fandom meta #the untamed #acafandom #fanthropology #fandom history

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solavelyan · 1 year ago

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intro.

It's a Dragon Age sideblog! My main blog is @bogunicorn, and I go by Bog (or any type of nickname you can wring out of "bog unicorn"). If you're looking for more info about me as a person, that'll all be over on my main.

This blog and my main are both 18+. Please do not follow me if you're under 18. I don't keep close track of my followers, but I do check out blogs that follow me because of the spambots, and I block minors on sight.

eta oct 2023: given The Bullshit happening at bioware following their mass layoffs and their leveraging of the next game against former employees' requests for proper severance pay, please assume that none of my posts or words are an implicit or explicit endorsement of the company itself. i mean, they already weren't, i just want you to imagine that all of my reblogs have an invisible "EA/BW execs fall off a cliff challenge" tacked onto them.

what to expect here.

Gifsets, fanart, jokey jokes, and sometimes (reblogged) meta posts.

My own Dragon Age thoughts, feelings, theories, random whatevers. My original posts of all kinds are tagged #bog post.

A general positivity toward queer shit, weird shit, horny shit, and kinky shit.

My fanfic and my OCs. I don't post fic too often, at least not in the last few months, but I have a ton of OCs (roster TBA). I write notes and profiles and little ideas for them as a hobby even when I'm not actively writing fic. Anything relating to my own writing will be tagged #bogfic, anything involving my characters tagged #my ocs and then #character name (oc).

Generally, I'm a multishipper at heart and can find something to love about any given ship, PC choice, character, or type of storyline. Chances are if I'm spending my time talking about something or speculating on it, it's because I'm having fun or enjoying myself.

Commentary on fandom trends and behaviors (and, sometimes, common sense reminders not to be a dick to each other about fake stuff).

To get blocked if you put rude or annoying shit in my mentions, including using any of my posts to character bash or otherwise go off-topic in order to air your personal grievances underneath my stuff. I don't care if you don't like Solas, or if you have strong opinions about Anders vs. Fenris, or if you think "supporting" the mages/Templars/Chantry is good/bad, or if you feel like your personal favorite character/PC option/romance isn't represented by my posts and you feel your specific criticism is the exception. Do not cite the deep magic to me, witch, I was there when it was written (like 8+ years and two US presidents ago). Mind your manners and blacklist or scroll if you need to.

what not to expect.

Untagged Veilguard spoilers. All my Veilguard posts with potential spoilers will be tagged #datv spoilers or #veilguard spoilers, since the latter seems to be what people are using across multiple sites now.

Consistent character bashing or character hate. I simply do not spend a majority of my online time thinking about stuff I hate.

Anonymous asks. Anon is always turned off, both here, on my main, and on my AO3.

Real world politics and news, or general (as in, not-DA-specific) Disk Horse. Honestly, probably not even that much Dragon Age Discourse, either.

Equating in-game choices or fandom opinions with real life politics and morality. I don't "support" any group in Thedas because Thedas is fake. My politics and activism are for real people, not Wizard Politics or whatever.

Egg or cheese jokes.

the tag system (tm).

#timeless posts - Anything reblogged from the depths of @bogunicorn in the last 10 years. Usually queued.

#bog post - Any and all of my original posts.

#bogfic - Anything involving my writing or my OCs.

#my ocs - My OCs. Often accompanied by #[character name] (oc).

#spicy bog - Ye olde horny tag.

#bogcrit, #[character name] critical, #dragon age critical, #[game] critical, #fandom bs - These are my Complaining Tags. If you never want to see anything truly critical or negative, just blacklist #bogcrit. If you want to avoid grousing or critique of a specific character, the games in general, individual games, or the fandom itself, blacklist whatever listed tag is relevant to you.

#fic, #art - Fanfic and fanart that I didn't make.

#meta - Meta or speculation posts.

#da au - Any kind of alternate universe post.

#ask meme - Blanket tag for any put-it-in-the-tags posts, as well as actual ask memes.

Characters are tagged by their full names. Origins and Inquisition PCs are tagged #the warden or #the inquisitor, as well as by surname. Hawke is always just #hawke, Rook is always just #rook. I don't specify gender in my character tags, this system is already complicated enough.

Ships are tagged #[character] x [character] in alphabetical order, with the PCs just using their surnames. I also use the more portmanteaus (like Solavellan, Fenhawke, Adoribull, etc) because that's what people are inclined to click/search, but I would still slap "lavellan x solas" on a Solavellan post just for consistency.

contact.

complain to my manager

send me an ask

read my fic

#pinned post

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trerti · 2 years ago

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Honestly I kinda like how the collective narrative of the users of this site has calmed down a lot in the past 10+ years. I’ve been on this site since 2010 (not as a active user most of the time, I like to observe) as a wee Gen. Z kid and watched some Gen X and Millennials progressively change and morph from being very young and passionate to more chill and calm. And yeah it’s because the population here is aging blah blah blah but it’s an interesting shift now more than ever from what I’ve seen because you can literally see the exhaustion and maturity shift set in the user base of everyone here in the changes for discourse, fandom dynamics and political/societal from here so rapidly. It’s really fascinating to me. I grew up from the millennials progressing from posting poor quality gifs in long drawn out fandom posts and commenting “if you’re not angry at this (insert large scale societal issue) you’re not paying attention” on every other (insert bigoted whatever -ism/ist term here) critique post and obsessing over random white boys/men to becoming basically the primordial soup progenitors for fandom culture and progressive politics.

Now that I’m at the point of the beginning of my adulthood, I’m glad to have seen and experienced what I did. It’s still so weird to see the shift from 2014ish when everyone started to be emotionally exhausted with the way their all lives were heading collectively that is was literally tangible in the way that intersectionality is incorporated, and then started to be applied in social/political discourse became the foundations for online behavior today for a lot of ideas and humor concerning all online spaces, like YouTube comments to Pinterest posts reels. Like, it was a very VERY USA oriented white fandom men space focused space where there was young and fresh 20 year old something (usually, on the surface cis and straight oriented) millennials were just obsessing on the same 3-4 major fandom things at a time or so was into a very admittingly prominent site for gender and sexual orientation terminology and concepts development that are now being practiced and in use are implemented on a societal level. I feel like I’ve aged x2 fast too just being here lol.

Now I mostly just see millennials and a vast majority of the more older gens blogs chilling and just focusing a bit more on living in adulthood in the strides they wish they had earlier and (usually) cheer on and encourage Gen. Z youngsters and slowly raising and preparing Gen. Alpha as of now. Gen Z is just mostly geeking over the aesthetics, trends and terminology/concepts now, especially in identity politics laid down earlier from others in discourse in our identitys as adults. Aka; Cancel culture and policing is the same hurdle we have to face head on and navigate as a generation for the next one to come after to work, tweak and improve on a societal level.

Of course the echo chambers here and the discourse are still annoying here and there but I feel like now more than ever I see a lot of settling? happening now. It’s very chill; like the tones and way people talk changed, lowkey it’s kinda a nice even if there used to be and still is strife in certain spaces I guess.

I’d argue being on here is the most tolerable concerning the younger gens here being discreet (as in I don’t see younger people always focus on output here and more so relaxing and not engaging in large fandom wars or whatever like I’ve witnessed before, it’s only be very slight if not tedious buzzword identity policing and gatekeeping callouts but that’s as far as I’ve seen) and just focusing on creative content, and gaining inspiration in lieu with Tiktok and Instagram and Twitter as the main avenues for content content (ironically as there was a great migration in 2018 to Twitter due to policy update and back here on tumblr for the same reason Lmaooooo) being a whole thing… also to be fair the UX of this specific platform is actually nice because you have the ability to actually extend and spell out our own coherent ideas about things as need be compared to the other platforms where content creation forces the users to be hard pressed to not be able to flesh out and materialize their ideas and posts aside from Reddit or something.

Also? To see blogs that are like 10+ years old and scrolling though the older posts of like, idk a blog dedicated to providing insight into Wicca or a set interest etc. for a subject you are researching and have those same popular older posts (‘the president stole my shoe laces’ and ‘do you like the color of the sky?’) be in its ye olden archives when you search for something accidently is really entertaining to me. I can see why everyone here lowkey kinda remanences and cringes at those times, it’s truly iconic in every way possible before and after if you were there lol.

#millennials #gen z

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hanzi83 · 2 years ago

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Just Another Random Mental Check In (That no one asked for)

I figured I would do another mental check in for the sake of it, I think I am actually kind of liking writing blogs again over doing some of the podcasts, I mean it might be easier for the remaining of my following to actual follow along with, like would you rather waste time over accumulated rants over several days to just be put out there where you have to suffer through my stuttering, where some days it really gets bad, or would you rather a more direct message in written where the most you will have to deal with are run on sentences, suspect spelling etc, sometimes when I do the blog and certain words just stutter out and I struggle to spew it out, sometimes it feels like that scene in Bruce Almighty, where Jim Carey is fucking with Steve Carrell during his news broadcast, I know, I know, a 20 year old movie reference, and on a dated blog site that is deemed uncool because the new hard hitting shit is on substack, this is just a blog going off of vibes, but since world war 3 is trending, again, it feels every other day for the last 6 years that has happened. I keep thinking every day we are getting there sooner rather than later, you can just see how people and institutions are positioning themselves and how every day there is more trauma porn and if it is not that, there is more promotional corruption where we spend the discourse pointing out the hypocrisy of that institution and public figure where they become more cartoonish, you know people used to reduce me to just being a Howard Stern Wack Packer, and it is hilarious to me how much everyone, who used to at least sell themselves as being a respectable human being partaking in society, have now become a complete parody. It is why the entertainment world, while it still makes money, most of that shit is in the political discourse now, and anything exciting about celebrities is the real life drama and comedy shit that is happening. I feel we have manifested all our favorite entertainment and now we are getting the real life version of this entertainment, I have to remind myself of that since I am not watching every single movie and television show released because sometimes I hate missing out and caring about wrestling more, when that fandom has gone to complete shit. But maybe getting exhausted of these things is a good thing, I don’t need more entertainment in my life, I have a lifetime worth to consume and perpetuate tropes in my personality from absorbing this shit since I was a kid, I just observe how the discourse goes and what repeated tropes get repeated and beaten into the ground. Speaking of beating shit into the ground, I wake up every day and it is another day of sports entertainment easing into a more fascist world. Like the world we were living in before all this didn’t have normalized fascism that existed but now it has reached another level with how sophisticated it is by manufacturing consent with the entertainment and sell out celebrities, we have wanted to reboot our society to reestablish attitudes and ignorance from the 90’s mixed in with some truth, but not realizing all that shit that used to mean shit on the surface has become inflated since there are advancements in the game now that we have to pretend doesn’t exist so we have the narrative of the establishment being more liberal and having a bias towards woke shit, so anyone who says anything anti woke, or pro Trump is seen as the “just an opinion” and “cutting edge” because ever establishment hack has kayfabed their hatred and dumbed shit down, so other alt media places can constantly use it to dunk on since that has been their personality traits for the last 10 years, where it meant a bit more, but now most of the shit online is MSM level funding going on, maybe they are using other currency since the dollar doesn’t mean shit anymore. Again let me clarify if the previous sentences were not obvious, I am not some expert on shit, I am a pretty dumbed down guy who would try to go to smarter people to see what their narratives are, and now I am at the point where I can’t trust anyone, like am I allowed to be alarmed about other corrupted governments and what they might do, and not do it under a US imperialism mindstate where discredited public figures who never address the long list of what the US has been built on, and continues to do, just continue to fear monger about other corrupted governments, I at least get out of the habit not to generalize all the citizens in any country because that doesn’t solve shit, and I think we make the mistake of looking at the conflict in a 80’s aesthetic of pro wrestling where it is country vs country when I feel the far right wing movements all over the world have some alignment, it is like the fundamentalism the US has helped perpetuate in other countries was just practice before they bring it to the US officially. It is basically like ECW and other promotions who oppose the WWE, but in my opinion WWE always needed other promotions to establish shit before WWE finally borrowed from it and brought it to their company and that is how I see the political world wit how this shit plays out, people who are snooty and think of pro wrestling as low brow, I mean they already dumb down entertainment’s influence in general, but wrestling has always been the ugly stepchild of showbiz, but there is a reason why these politicians and celebs have always been fans of it, maybe not because they actually enjoy the actual product, but rather taking notes on how to use the elements implemented for their own personal gain, trying to manipulate a reaction by saying what needs to be said, depending on the role you are playing. So I don’t know which stances to really have on the impending doom now because it is hard to know who is telling the truth, and who has an agenda, and I feel like lately I have more vitriol to the online contingent because MSM has already been established as being a joke and it has been clear but that is all the material for the online shit, other than some people who used to claim being a left person is now perpetuating on the “underground internet platforms such as youtube” that Tucker Carlson is the only one telling the truth. I can’t keep up with the complexities and specifics of who worked for what think tank, or what obscure faction they are a part of and I wish sometimes the smarter ones could actually dumb down the messaging to get the general public to know, because the dumbed down sports entertainment that has more of the new age fundamentalism/conservative shit under the guise of super political correctness is what is running amok, because you find the right guise for the presentation and apolitical people won’t realize they are taking a politically motivated message that has an agenda, it has always been a regressive agenda but once you start hinting at progressive shit, it feels like that is the overbearing agenda that is getting out of control, while I feel that has helped the default agendas that have always been in place now stand out, which is why anyone is praising Trump will be seen as someone who is brave since it seems everyone fucking hates him and they clearly have an agenda because they are focusing on his corruption.

It feels like since the internet has become a lot more right wing with propped up accounts you have to cater to them for the entertainment or public figures to get some support and I feel the funded types online have made it seem they were calling out shit because it is neoliberal etc, which is a valid thing but it was not designed to get to a more progressive side, it was to bring in their own gimmicked right wing shit that people will not consider right wing since we give everything a cartoonish definition and put shit in a box. So now anyone who is not sharing the “liberal establishment” message feels like their message could never be compromised. It doesn’t feel we are in the business of actually exposing and explaining it because we insist on pretending we live in this regular world where the weird things going are just random acts playing out and we are just gonna compare it to whatever entertainment we watch, that is how committed we are to the entertainment, we have to pretend that saying there is organization into the imploding end goal and just the overall impending doom is some out there statement, and then these people from these alt media establishment like shows then pretend like anyone who thinks beyond the narratives presented are the ones who are insane, not the people who insist on playing their favorite television characters so they can give us gimmicked narratives so people can act out their sitcom dialogue and banter and then pretending the answers they have to countering the policies that the most wicked and corrupt politicians carry out, like this is not all planned to fall on its face. This is why I am not motivated to understand the rules that are advertised, literally everyone breaks the rules, there are inconsistencies, so why would I even learn the fucking rules. It is like when the wrestling world advertised traditional rules in their world, and trained you to understand what the standard protocol but then when the attitude era came, all those rules went out the window, and you broke stipulations.”Hey someone lost a match and said they would retire or not challenge for the title” but then crash television took over so those rules and stipulations didn’t even matter, and now I see that in politics. Normally when you are associated with a rapist, or a pedophile, you were kind of outcast from society, now you can just keep your high profile job and just exist for people to boo and hiss at you for. So it is my fault for looking at what is happening, but when I can’t have honest conversations about my concerns where this shit is going with people in my life, or people from my past etc, I have to rant and rave on social media. And that shit is dangerous because there are people who monitor me with great hatred and keep an eye on anything I say. Like I have stated, even if I come up with something that has legs, who is gonna give a shit because my message doesn’t reach the masses, everyday my followers list is decreasing more and more, but make no mistake dangerous people monitor my shit but if I am buying into your world of kayfabe, then no one knows who I am and I am a nobody so what threat do I serve, I am just some fatso rambling and creating bad AI Art while tweeting about wrestling and going on irrational proclamations of never watching the show again, and then I give back in. Again what threat do my theories serve if I am a nobody? You wanted this way. You get off on the fact that I am suppressed but then also then get upset that I don’t care how suppressed I am and continue to write down my thoughts, because I am supposed to feel isolated and neglected even online, like the people who run shit let me be isolated for the last 10 years for the last 10 plus years, but there was interaction going on with the Stern and wrestling fandom, but now they have made it possible to be isolated online and if I actually gave a fuck about my future, maybe I would be more insecure about it, although I am writing a blog at late hours of the night to talk about it so maybe there are some issues there, who fucking knows?

It feels like the same tropes and discourse goes on and it will continuously be on loop until it all officially goes to shit, every day I think we have reached that boiling point but we just go back to business as usual, we manage to create more discourse that use the backdrop of valid systemic shit but gimmick it for other grifts and causes that gets focused on more so than the actual systemic issue. I know even this blog has probably repeated the same shit I have said before, but maybe the world has gone to such a shitty place where it is repeated shit nonstop that now I am going so insane that now I am repeating the same shit over and over and expect to maybe think that this one blog will magically just change shit by the luck of the draw and maybe we can expose and explain what is truly going on, and not this fake Project Veritas level of “exposing” shit, but actually exposing these narratives and getting people prepared for what is to come because as far as I can see, the far right has always had their messaging to seem anti establishment and they amplified it and then there was some progression over the years, they fear mongered about that kind of change while also connecting it to the shady shit the democrats would be doing since the right wing trajectory system will book the decisions and have their figure heads, so now the far right can take advantage of calling out an already flawed system, while advocating for their deeply disturbed propaganda, and they can use their public figures to manufacture a lot of consent which will persuade people to move more right because they can count on the MSM to cover sensationalist representation that the right then can weaponize. That is how I see it, I could just be like everyone else and be alarmed by Clarence Thomas getting donations which will serve as a gimmicked way of bringing more villains to the forefront, like it is hard to get shocked that a donor to him would be into Nazi shit and it is like we know what these people are, but we have to act shocked and then we have to talk in circles with people who always have to hammer home that just because someone has an autographed copy of Mein Kamf, it doesn’t mean they support it because they could be in love with history, but is there not any other shit in history that you could collect? When you get some politicians speaking out about it, no one will take it seriously, even if the message is good, like not going by what the rulings are when the right never goes along with a bunch of rulings, these people will normalize their bigotry and racism etc be allowed that freedom, but people who represent the left have to limit the answers on the surface, because much like pro wrestling it is only interesting when the villains keep winning. So after all of this shit they have done, when one limited politician wants something done about it, it will be shat on, especially someone like AOC who is sports entertainer but she can do and say good things even if it is limited on the surface, so if in my fucked up head I know the world is supposed to implode, then it is more complex than “They voted against the people’s interest” and then have people who have dangerous ties and permitted outrage to react and not disclose their ties to corruption and questionable unethical tendencies with who is bankrolling them it becomes harder to trust their call outs of the system. So any kind of change does have to come from within that helps the outside carry that shit on, because nothing on the surface now will ever get better and that is on purpose because the real work is being done behind the scenes. I don’t believe anyone is truly 100 percent anti establishment, as much as they want to repeat the same old tired catchphrases etc. It gets exhausting, I have made the mistake in being so disillusioned by the MSM over the last 15 years, that hearing actual criticism of US foreign policy and other fucked up laws they are passing to fuck over its citizens was refreshing to hear it because back when I was a kid, anyone who didn’t praise a country 100 percent were labeled horrible people, so yeah me and probably a lot others gravitated to something other than the status quo and now the same people who would bash the status quo, have now become status quo by today’s standards, because the same shit 10 years ago that may have sounded revolutionary doesn’t mean as much coming from people who are sophisticating their grift to become more right wing because instead of just saying “We are sell outs who want to be associated with the Hollywood types and hang out with very powerful people so we will act like the wokeness is getting out of control and use sensationalist shit to convince people who are supposed to be left to embrace a more far right leaning mind” look no further than Ana Kasparian and Cenk from TYT, I have been pointing out for a year or so that they are slowly finding their reason to now think wokeness is getting too out of control, they will complain about culture wars issues, but they will boast about how they are better than MSM they are, they have record for everytime they were right about things, but yet when you have video of Ana defending the term birthing person within a medical conversation, she then all of a sudden brings on this issue of people referring to her as a birthing person like people are really doing that in her personal life, and she is doing this while there are fucking laws being passed to fuck over those communities, she could’ve went private to anyone who she feels is reducing her to a body part like she claims, but she purposefully did that, and then she has a bunch of far right wing accounts defending her, Candace fucking Owens is defending her and she gets mad at other people in the leftist space for critiquing her, and these critiques were fair but one woman thought people were coddling her when Ana knows better, so Ana didn’t mind giving a shitty “hot take” unprovoked and now she can do the pro wrestling shit of “YOU PEOPLE MADE ME DO THIS” so she and Cenk can become shitty sports entertainers who are not even funny, I hope the talented people from TYT leave and call this shit out but Cenk/Ana are probably like mob bosses of their institution and they have been waiting to have a mutual meeting spot with Jimmy Dore, David Rubin and other far right wing grifters, they will never admit that, because one of the things about sociopathic cults and very fucked up people is they never admit what fucked up shit they have done or will do, and they have gotten used to people enabling their shitty behavior that if you point out what unethical shit they have done they will lose it and deny it because they are fucked in their head, I have that shit in my life, I have jotted shit down whenever I need to vent off what I need to say and whenever anyone in my life denies what they have done or what they have said, I look back at the comments time to time when I jotted shit down, on a spiritual level, they will never fuck with me despite having the hive mind behind them who have enabled their shitty behavior of putting me through mental fucking hell, and these people still think they can be part of my life, like I can be my best self with people who have worked hard to suppress me so they could make backdoor deals and put things in place in case I do get vindication, so they can be around me then they will cater to people who hate me so they can oppose me. These sociopathic cults have that level of thinking and I might not have the back up to be able to say shit in person because they have connections with law enforcement or whatever power Mr Stern gave them, and they can shut me down, but they still monitor what I fucking say, they compromise anyone I make friends with but I would rather be dead than have to be around people who will never admit their wrongdoings and still get to act like they are better because of their aesthetic, and I see how people want to justify that a lot more, and people who oppose me will oppose anything I stand up for. When I was falling for regressive right wing talking points sophisticated under the guise of “celebrity just giving their opinion” like they are not a paid propaganda tool, people who have hatred for me would want to be on the opposite side but now that I have caught myself mentally from going further into the cult of what would be another right wing shit, people would rather be on that side to be part of the regressive side, and the funny thing is these people in general want to be stars in their own right but any negative opinion or pushback towards them they lose their minds, if me pointing out calmly what people have done or said gets so much sociopathic and vitriolic pushback, how will you handle it when people call you out for your shitty beliefs depending which billionaire is paying you. I have to be subjected to people who have had a lavish and luxurious life and have secrets to keep from me, get triggered by me having the views I have even though they don’t have to be involved, you think when people read this, you think any of them will reflect? Or will they jump in a group chat and take turns mocking my stuttering and making shitty jokes for their echo chamber because they can’t face how much more horrible they have become and how much more elitist they have become. People from my past who were not there for me when I had no one, will make me come out and beg for them to be part of my life again so they can know how much money my family supposedly and allegedly have so they can try to take and take and take, but they excluded me from monumental moments so they could hang out with celebs and partake in orgies because that is how you get bought off, they sold their souls for the good time but yet still need me and get mad at me if I don’t want it in my life. I won’t be able to escape this and I won’t be able to escape more and more people turning to the right wing and align with this new fascism that has been forming and I would rather be dead than have to see people I respected become these shitty sports entertainment characters that don’t mean shit because the entertainment is watered down and yet everyone thinks they have to become one, that becomes the number one goal while the systemic shit becomes a backdrop.

Anyways I know it is another blog that is all over the place, but when you have so many thoughts in your head and then old thoughts circulating in your head while you are still trying to process the fresh ones, my brain starts to malfunction. This is just a fatso in his mother's basement venting about the world so pay me no mind, but sometimes I just need to get shit off my chest, I know my journal thoughts are monitored so I at least will try to put this shit out there for an official publishing . It makes my haters’ leg up of monitoring me feel less than if I am putting out these thoughts in the public sphere because the one thing they get off on is monitoring what I say and thinking I have no fucking clue, in fact as I write this, they are not doing anything overly transparent but I notice I am getting a lot more “junk mail” being spammed towards me, it is a little bit of a nuisance but just the mere fact they have to fucking keep this shit going, and look I got another notification for 2 more emails with the junk shit just popping up. It is small and little thing that are done to try to annoy me, they constantly show they can hack my social media, they have not done anything too bad with it, but just the fact that they can show they can do that shit, they even report accounts I never interacted with or even saw the tweets from. As I write this another mass shooting fucking happened and you know nothing will fucking get done about it, we will find ways to weaponize the political motives behind this, because it feels like factions behind the scenes have forgotten to tell the masses they have their shooters ready and people will not give a shit because the culture war issues will have carte blanche while more mass shootings fucking happen, the people who act like they are doing due diligence by pointing out about gun laws etc, good attitude to have, but those insiders know they are never passing any good good legislation, it has become clear so we will get mad at the villains of the week and nothing will get solved whatsoever. The world is constantly falling apart, and this is why 20 years ago, when I was even more dumbed down, I could envision what the world was gonna turn to, that was very early on when the war on terror started and it felt we were going to get a bunch of ignorant talking points on television, the only art form that I found didn’t make me feel like a piece of shit for being a Muslim was probably hip hop, but then in 2004 when people turned against Bush a lot more, it gave me some hope even though my understanding was extremely limited, but maybe I could see a grand view of this world just going to shit, like I had experienced this shit in a past life. And now I am stuck here, more people are dying and being oppressed, they limit how much you can help on the surface, I don’t feel I can trust people anymore who used to be close with me, I am rewatching old episodes of Sopranos, and wondering if this world is just a big fucking nothing. Nothing will ever fucking get better it seems, and in the midst of all of this horrible shit happening, you know what gets traction online? All the shitty sports entertainment personalities who try to get canceled and have these stupid fake debates so both their clicks can feel they are useful and fighting this great cause. Complete and utter horsehit, the most mediocre personalities can be propped up and it isn’t because they are some great talent, it is because they are willing to become a regressive shit head first while dominating left spaces and getting all the points before they turn into fucking heels.

#Hanzi Howard Stern Show 2023 Mental Illness Sports Entertainment fascism heel turns gimmicks pro wrestling opinion theories no facts

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cubikzoa · 6 months ago

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Felt like I should post a polite reminder about the nature of creative media based on recent trends in fandom, because it’s good to get a refresher from all the social media chaos sometimes…

When I was really little, I used to play with Barbie dolls, like a lot of kids do. I would pop off the limbs of the Barbie dolls like I was an evil overlord as a joke, because I had a medieval phase and was an eccentric little kid overall. Now here’s what’s relevant: When I went to elementary school, me having fun popping the plastic legs off my dolls most certainly did not translate into wanting to yank the actual legs off of my classmates. Such a thought is never something that would cross my mind at all.

Now, that is essentially what fandom is: once a creator puts their work out in the world, other people perceive it and create off of it as they will. There’s no code to make people interpret things all the same way, because everyone is fundamentally different somehow. Fandom, in essence, is playing around with dolls in a more complex, media-related way. Characters and creations are fictional, and they're very much like the childhood Barbie dolls I’m sure many of us had. Something that people love and enjoy, something that people interpret and pose as things differently.

However. It becomes an issue in fandom when people start seeing their ideas and those of a fictional figment of a creator’s mind as something more worthy of respect and careful consideration than real people and reality. It’s like hugging a stuffed toy dog and then stomping on the paws of a real one. Unreasonable, right? The idea of fandom as some black-and-white idea space or something that can have a singular, homogeneous school of thought is the antithesis of fandom itself. That, as a plain fact, is impossible, socially, personally, psychologically and otherwise, because people will always have their own unique ideas and views to some degree of another.

And yes, there will always be people and things that others disagree with. Everyone is different. But it’s very very easy to simply block or filter tags or block other users on many fandom sites or apps like Tumblr if something is truly bothersome to you, mentally triggering, or 18+, for a few examples. I do this, it’s really the reasonable option that ends unnecessary conflict before it starts. It’s always good to put TW’s and CW’s for serious things, out of, once again, consideration for real people. People who, believe it or not, exist on the other side of the screen, despite the illusion of unburdened distance presented so conveniently online. You are responsible for your own online experience. Nobody can use telepathy and some kind of irrefutable, rock-solid method to help regulate everything possible for you, parents, blazed posts, anon asks and comments or otherwise. And overall, fandom, by definition, is a sandbox, an arts and crafts table where we can all share what we make and do with each other or not.

It’s something that’s supposed to be enjoyable, interesting entertainment of a billon different kinds to peruse, not a source of conflict. Think of it like a farmer’s market: you might have a grocery list of things you like or want, you might like one stall because they have cookies, and want to try another for their produce, or always step around one because you don’t like their tomatoes or onions or whatever. Creativity and fantasy is wonderful until people start to view those things as synonymous with reality. That has been and should never be the case, because it’s a fundamentally delusional and harmful thing, both for the person and others around them, when someone starts viewing fiction and fantasy as a sort of secondary reality.

So take a break. Take a breath of fresh air. Grab a drink of water, think for a minute, and then get back to posting and creating stuff about your favorites if you’d like. It’ll help, I promise. Let’s all help ourselves, others, and help along the good idea of helping make fandom mean fun, fantastical fiction, and an online family again.

#Before anyone asks I do not support one side of the “shipping discourse” or another. Both r narrow and conflict-oriented in my opinion. Thx.#And frankly I have better things to care about and do than fight over things like that. Sorting things in opinion boxes always turns out ba #Fandom #fandom news #Fandom family #Fandom connumity #Tumblr community #tumblr discourse #fandom commentary #Cue speaks #On cue #fandom content #tumblr fandom #Simply some friendly advice for everyone in these trying times #Text post

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foxnate28 · 2 years ago

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Intersectionality on the Internet is Coming to a Red Light

Social media has been an integral part of the human experience over the last two decades, and it's not going away any time soon - what can we say? We love our little boxes that let us talk to people all over the world.

But something I've noticed over the last few years is a decrease in intersectionality on social media like Twitter and others - whether it's the algorithm to blame or something else, something has changed.

We're becoming more and more divided.

TikTok is a prime example - many accounts specialize in a certain type of content (ASMR, cats, pranks, ant farms, science, etc) and when something other than the primary category a person follows gets recommended, they'll often comment something along the lines of "How did I end up on _____ TikTok?"

On TikTok, this is harmless for the most part. More traditional social media like Twitter and Tumblr is where the harm comes into play.

We're on Tumblr, so I'll talk about it first. In recent years, the concept of the DNI (Do Not Interact) List has become an integral part of many bios. The concept is that you don't interact with that user if you meet any of the criteria on their DNI List.

DNI Lists can range from the mundane "minors only" for kids on Tumblr to the hyper-specific, usually fandom-based. Something like "DNI if you think X character should be with X character," for example.

It's a similar experience on Twitter, although due to the different media format of Tweets versus blogs it's a bit different. It also has to do with the fact that sites like Twitter and Facebook are primarily algorithm-based. Tumblr's feed is chronological and based only on what a user follows.

Twitter and Facebook use their users' interactions and likes (among other data, but that's a story for another time) to curate a feed for them. Suggested posts are thrown into the feed, with suggested friends and suggested groups and pages. Twitter now even has a "For You" feed which primarily shows the algorithm's suggestions on what it thinks you would interact with.

The problem here should be pretty clear.

The algorithm is killing intersectionality on the Internet by forcing us all into boxes and creating infinite echo chambers.

Only showing things a user is most likely to enjoy is a great idea from a business standpoint. The happier your user is with the content you give them, the longer they stay on your site. Hence, The Algorithm - a complex set of instructions that uses a metric ton of personal data collected by social media companies designed specifically to feed you content you like.

Users will often see themselves being proverbially shoved into a box based on their interactions, making their feeds one-dimensional. I've seen it with my own feeds.

When I first started my professional Twitter in January, I followed a few things and it didn't know what to show me - it started showing me tech news, which I wanted, but it was also blasting politics and local news stories at me, and feeding cultural posts in every once in a while to see if it could box me in with a specific identity.

Three months later, my feed is nothing but tech news. The trending hashtags are nothing but tech. Why? Because tech news is the only thing I interacted with on that account. If I lived in a vacuum, I wouldn't know anything else existed. I wouldn't know that most people don't care about tech as much as I do, because, well, everyone on my feed is talking about it.

So I'm boxed into a profile based on a single aspect of my identity, because that's what The Algorithm thinks I want, thinks will placate me enough to keep using their app. And it's the same for most other users, I'd assume. We aren't shown things outside of our comfort zone, or things others are interacting with (unless it's someone we follow), and as a result intersectionality on the Internet is dwindling.

People on the Internet who often have more in common with each other than they think might never get the chance to interact with each other because of a set of instructions controlling what they see.

It sounds oddly dystopian, and maybe it is. I don't think it was done out of malice or desire for control of the population, but more likely the reckless abandon of morals and ethics by companies in search of fattening their wallets.

#algorithm #intersectionality #I kinda went on a tangent on this one #sorry professor #I'm just really passionate about the way that social media and The Algorithm has a stranglehold on our lives

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avarindigenous · 2 years ago

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I’m sort of peripheral to silm fandom- I’ve read it enjoyed and I like that people make things about it but I don’t remember enough about the characters to really engage, I just hang out. Also I’m white. When I first found the silm fandom on tumblr one of the things that seemed really exciting about it was the racial diversity in fan works (HEllo Black Galadriel) but I also agree that I’ve noticed a decrease in the diversity of characters in the fanart I’ve seen recently. I wonder if it has anything to do with the new show? I wasn’t in the good omens fandom before the show was made but the impression I’ve gotten is that the characters were much more regularly portrayed an non-white before white actors played them. I wonder if fan artists/writers who were not particularly dedicated to diversity in arda are seeing the predominantly white cast (except for random ocs? What’s up with that?) of a Silmarillion-adjacent show and going oop! guess they were white all along! I don’t know if that’s what’s happening, but I’ve wondered what the effect of the show is going to be on fandom and this might be one of the first things we see. I’m glad to have found your blog and I hope that the trend doesn’t continue.

I think there are a lot of factors at play when it comes to the question of why this has happened, and the frustrating part is that most of it has very little to do with conscious racism.

as I mentioned in other reblog chains of the post you’re referring to, there’s been a downgrade in general fandom activity the past two years or so. the Silmarillion fandom tends to have a “cycle” of three to six years when people are most active - a new blog comes in and starts posting about a particular topic, it attracts attention and other like-minded blogs join in the conversation, the same points get rediscovered and newly discussed and litigated by each group of people, and then eventually people cease actively posting as much, either by leaving the fandom, leaving the site for somewhere else like Twitter, or by simply being less present online. because the conversation can get very toxic and political (from an intracommunity perspective) those of us who do manage to pay attention for years, even by lurking, usually refrain after a while from taking part in discussions and focus on content creation or on appreciating others’ art and fanfiction.

on that note, I don’t think it’s much of a secret that the Tolkien fandom is not a particularly chill or calm fandom space, even excluding questions of bigotry and prejudice. people get very attached to their interpretations of canon (myself included) and many will react very harshly to perceived bad takes or bad-faith engagement, or will take someone disagreeing with them over a characterization detail or a plot point as a personal slight. friendships have been ended, harassment campaigns have been launched, and groups of people have been bullied into lifelong trauma, all over questions of textual analysis. even if there’s no harassment present, a larger blog posting a “controversial” opinion is almost guaranteed to lose followers and receive anon hate or passive-aggressive DMs. you’ll note I’m not giving specific examples of what kinds of opinions trigger this behavior, and that’s because no one is immune to it. the reason I separate this from bigotry is because it truly is about scholarship. it’s the equivalent of giving a controversial talk at an academic conference and having all your friends cease to talk to you because they’ve decided you’re abrasive and rude simply for voicing your own opinions. why this is relevant in a conversation about diversity is that I need to make it clear that in order to be comfortable in this fandom space in the first place, you need to be comfortable with everyone in the world finding fault with your ideas and interpreting them in the most bad-faith way possible even if you’re white and you never talk about racism or diversity or LGBTQ+ issues at all. the people who endure this (which is anyone and everyone who develops some sort of large following on Tumblr and probably Twitter as well) and who decide to stay in the fandom will usually become extremely uninterested in anything but reblogging other people’s work and shitposting, or will else block everyone they never want to see their posts and threat monitor to avoid discourse and backlash.

fanartists, more than fanfic writers and editors and meta writers and analysts and even shitposters, are the backbone of the Tumblr Tolkien fandom. all of the other kinds of fanworks - including songs and fanvids! - are significantly less likely to get serious engagement. what the Silmarillion fandom “looks” like is crafted by the artists, and fandom activity lives and dies by fanart. graphics, fanfic, and other works get more engagement if there is an active fanart scene. the trouble here is that fanartists never stay in the fandom long, usually averaging two or three years. right now, almost all the fanartists regularly posting are drawing white characters, and there aren’t a lot of fanartists period. as a result, nothing is really getting noticed - @arwenindomiel mentioned trouble getting graphics to crack a hundred notes, and other friends of mine who aren’t white and make diverse edits have had trouble for years getting more than twenty or thirty people to like and more than five or six to reblog. even when they include white people, the situation isn’t much better.

as mentioned once more in other posts on the subject, being a POC and not having anyone engage with you is depressing. no asks, no fanfic prompts, no edit prompts, no interest in the creative work we do - even if we never face racism through direct slurs or criticism, the silence is exhausting and isolating. additionally, since several of us had a limited platform only a few years ago that now seems to have dried up entirely, we face the question of why we bother, why we create. this becomes even more frustrating if we love the canon and aren’t constantly angry about Tolkien, and want to reblog and talk about the things we like rather than assuaging white guilt, validating posts made by white allies about how they noticed something problematic (which also comes under assuaging white guilt; no one is helped by self-righteous “look, this thing in the text is bad!” posts because nothing in the text is mysterious or hidden, and fans of color have been aware of the problems for many years), or talking about how the text has problems. I genuinely like the story and the worldbuilding and it is my right to choose not to engage with the racism in ways dictated by an online fandom because I am always engaging with the racism in everything I do, but the posts that get noticed and that start conversations are posts about the problems in the text. this creates a space where fans of color are only allowed to be fans of Tolkien if we always hate him and hate being in these spaces, which is a negativity that takes a serious psychological toll and makes fandom feel like a duty. on top of this, we’re uniquely vulnerable to being singled out for bad takes as mentioned above, which makes wanting to speak out in the first place a daunting proposition. there’s very little room for error, or for opinions that go against the grain, and what little room there is is usually reserved for white fans.

the end result is where we are now - very little fanart, relatively little queer content, and almost everything featuring white faces. I’m unsure if I want to blame all of this on the show, as it’s a consequence of people cycling out and people being less proactive as well as general unexamined bigotry (it’s as if we reserve our vitriol for our fellow fans’ perceived bad takes and not actual structural problems in the community). it’s a frustrating problem that could be solved both by an attempt to be kinder to people we disagree with (and I am including myself, I am making a conscious effort to be as calm and as compassionate and as understanding as possible, but I’m certainly not perfect) and by resolving to champion diversity and diverse voices.

but this is a mess, all told, and I’m not sure how we can solve it.

#fandomconvo #replies #fandom racism #sort of

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spn-season-16-chronicles · 4 years ago

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SPNews

13th January 2021

No official info from the writers/producers/company

People still on hype caused by Jensen's post. Supernatural staying on trending for a long time. Misha Collins roasts Bruce Willis via twitter for not wearing a mask.

People against spn stopping trending - re-examining old trends. Discovering again that somewhere in early days Sam had mail address visible on screen - [email protected] and Dean had dating site nick - Impala67. Fandom proceeds meming shit out of it, sends spn back to trending.

More memes emerge - Jussy Jower confuses general public. Gig created and escalated (mostly) by @heller-jensen, to know more/see funny stuff go there.

DJ Qualls records a vid after being asked via cameo about Bi interpretation of Garth's and Dean's relationship. Starts with "Hello Hellers", calls the relationship strictly platonic. Doesn't think that famous dance scene had deeper meaning. Ends video saying that there was romantic relationship in she subtext (most likely meaning season 15 and obviously Destiel). People proceed proclaiming canonic meaning of the lamp anyway, half joking, half serious. Proceed to meme the shit out of that too.

Said Video also on @heller-jensen blog.

Kings of Con podcast, recorded on 6th, with Rob, Rich and Tina uploaded today on Spotify (entertaining and political). Announcement of next episode with Misha's presence - probably will drop on 20th (on Biden's Inauguration day) or around that date.

All that crazy stuff takes place while Trump is impeached for the 2nd time, as a first president in history. Many folks gather those news (again) from supernatural posts. Supernatural's link to US politics becomes even tighter.

What will happen tomorrow?

And now weather

#SPNews #supernatural #misha collins #DJ Qualls #jensen ackels #Garth #Dean Winchester #Why lamp?#Jussy #Jussy jower #Spn season 16 #Spn metafandom #Why is supernatural trending?

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fandom-oracle · 3 years ago

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Wait wdym? Do you think fic is bad?

i'm getting canceled tonight i guess.

if you actually did a good a faith interpretation of my post you know it's not really ABOUT fanfiction at all, i actually write fanfiction myself. i'm not sharing here because it's overwhelmingly bad fic that i write exclusively as wish-fulfilment or for self-projection, but at least i'm self-aware about it. i am ALSO one of the people who reads ze Books™️, although most of the academic material i consume are nonfiction, so this whole thing is particularly annoying to me. the crux of the matter is that, if you're a little younger you might've missed it, but this website was a hotbed of scalding takes like 'dante's divine comedy is literally fanfiction', 'something something is literally fanfiction' when the thing in question barely counts as a transformative work and, in fact, it weakens the definition of transformative work in itself to try to apply it to literally anything that exhibits an ounce of intertextuality. plenty of takes that are... true, but require some nuance, focused on the idea of transformative fandom as a place defined by its presence of overwhelmingly female and disproportionately queer (occasionally, though disputedly, nonwhite) content creators and the ways in which transformative fan content could be interpreted as a space of defiance to cisheteropatriarchy in the way it permeates traditional media. a third, less common but still relevant take was the focus on how certain fandoms such as trek and doctor who have a long history of involvement in real-world civil rights issues and progressive politics. so this kind of take has been the dominant view on tumblr and transformative fandom for a good decade now, perhaps longer, and the people with this kind of takes can sometimes be a little... obnoxious. and the majority of people on transformative fandom (regardless of wether or not the fandom is disproportionately composed of nonwhite individuals or not, by sheer virtue of american demographics and this site`s heaily skewed userbase, the majority will still be white) are white, and like any other space dominated by white people, fandom has often been a vehicle for white supremacy. "Stitch Media Mix" talks about this in-depth. the discourse on fandom racism and ways in which transformative fandom as a whole contribute to racialized stereotypes, hierarchies, and deeper problems within online culture has led to a lot of people with grievances with fandom, many of whom are women of color, to develop an entire online identity built around the concept of being "critical of fandom", which is a very weird thing to do with fandom is literally billions of people, not a unified demographic, and that being critical of something can mean a WIDE amount of things; which in turn has led to a lot of people insulating themselves completely from any criticism of fandom as being inherently in bad faith, which a weird thing to do when literally ANY sphere of society should be open to criticism. people taking critiques of media they consume and taking critiques of their own critiques as personal attacks are abound here and make everything worse. so a fairly recent (mid2018ish, definitely post the insanity of reylo discourse but before sarah z blew up in popularity) trend has been that people in these communities isolate more and more and the general discourse has effetively resulted in people with differing takes in fanfiction specifically but fandom as a Whole (which is, again very weird to say because fandom is not 'a Whole' because there's no unifying element to different fandoms) only interacting with each other in hostile ways. and increasingly, in my personal sphere, a lot of people are positioning themselves in the "fandom critical" (AGAIN, WEIRD THING TO SAY, WHAT DOES IT EVEN MEAN, PLEASE USE WORDS WITH PRECISION) sphere, and I tend to take that "side" myself, but i specifically do not think framing this as a team A or team B thing is useful. this culture war was in the buildup.

last week a post by a user i follow recently became popular. the post itself was a critique that i.. do not necessarily agree with. it was ultimately about the idea of easily-consumable popular media being seen as an acceptable form of exclusive media engagement by people in the "pro-fandom" sphere, and how the insidiousness of this line of thinking has to do with how capitalist media production is designed to spread, and how fandom AS A TREND, not specifically any individuals or any fanworks, can empower capitalism. the post specifically did NOT use the kindest possible words, but that was what they were trying to say. howelljenkins also has really good takes on the subject, albeit from a different angle.

anyway because this is a circular culture war, the result was as follows: 1) a bunch of pro-fandom types refuse to actually make a charitable reading of the post and insist the user in question hates fandom and thinks people under capitalism shouldn't have things that are Fun, and should Only Read Theory and keep sending anon hate to several blogs in the opposing sphere, therefore proving the point that fandom sometimes prevent people from being able to engage critically with things; 2) a bunch of anti-fandom types who defined their entire identity on hating fandom being like "haha look at these cringe people" instead of trying to understand why a demographic overwhelmingly composed of marginalized people would feel strongly to posts that use inflammatory language against an interest of theirs, thereby proving the point that most criticism of fandom is divorced from actual fan content and is vaguely defined. the reason this is a culture war that actually deserves attention (unlike most fandom culture wars, which are just really granular ship wars made into social justice issues for clout) is that, for the most part, both of these groups are mostly people with college degrees, many of whom will contirbute to academia in the coming years. fan studies is a relevant field. these discussions have repercussions in wider media criticism trends, and this is why i can't really stand it or just passively ignoring it the way i do with most other inconsequential discourse. like it's genuinely upsetting seeing almost every single tumblr user, most of whom should know better, patting themselves in the back for their inability to read things in a way that doesn't feed into preexisting cultural hostilities in fan spaces.

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soupwife · 3 years ago

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Assuming this website lasts that long, 2023-2024 will mark the height of the next tumblr golden age

The evidence:

1. US Elections: The most culturally impactful years tend to happen during the run-up to the U.S. general election (*1). 2012 was possibly the best year in living memory for tumblr-native memes; spiders-georg being one of the most notable. But 2016 and 2020 had strong showings as well (randy your sticks, and november 5 respectively are just some examples)(*2). Whether election years are direct cause of excellence or just a coincidence is a subject of hot debate.

2. Mass Exodus: It takes about 2-3 years to recover from a mass tumblr exodus; note the 2013 yahoo acquisition and the 2018 porn ban. However, the population largely benefits from losing a portion of its weaker posters, and within a few years the populace is even healthier than it was before, with a more coherent culture and a bond over shared trauma. You can see a smaller-scale examples of this bonding pattern when the population endures a mass staff-incompetence event such as the outages of 2012 and 2016, or the removal of replies in 2015/2016. The cultural impact tends to take place in a shorter time frame as there is typically not a drop in users during these smaller-scale events.

3. Andrew Garfield posting: Much like an exodus, Andrew Garfield content has a bit of a long fuse. The social network, which released in 2010, was arguably one of the first major tumblr fandoms and marked the beginning of his popularity on tumblr. Even before the release of The Amazing Spiderman, Garfield was easily the top pick for a variety of tumblr fancasts, and was, in the author's estimation, more popular than Ben Barnes, Emma Stone or Emma Watson in terms of fancast selection. Andrew Garfield posting reached its peak in 2012-2014 with tasm, about 2-4 years after his initial popularity.

4. The Nostalgia Cycle: Due to its completely unscientific nature there is some debate about how long the nostalgia cycle is, but for traditional media we often see a 40 year cycle (*3). However memes have an unusually short life-span. While a TV show can run for several years, a meme will usually wear itself out within a few months depending on quality and versatility. We posit that memes have about a 4-8 year nostalgia cycle as evidenced by heritageposts, worldheritagepostorganization, and mosticonicposts popularity in 2020 and 2021, with most of the cited posts originating from the 2012-2016 period.

The conclusion:

The 2023-2024 period will see a confluence of several tumblr cultural trends and socio-political events that tend to provide optimum posting conditions. It will be the run-up to an election year and we will have fully recovered from the #girl ban (whether we see a drop in users remains to be seen, however as posited above, staff incompetence alone can create cultural cohesion with or without a major exodus). Andrew Garfield posting will be set to reach its apex in 2023 if past trends hold, and nostalgia for the 2016 to 2020 era of posting will begin its run, which will include echoes of the more potent 2012 era as much of our modern culture relies on recycled memes and nostalgia, and a veneration of old tumblr cultural relics.

It should be noted that this golden age may arrive early due to the acceleration of meme lifespans and the shortening of nostalgia cycle. I theorize that the golden age may begin as early as mid-2022, especially if the ios debacle does not result in a large decrease in users. Additionally, while less potent, midterm election years have also contributed positively to site culture so it is not necessary that the golden age begin in a general election year. In addition, a few upcoming media properties may serve as a catalyst: First, The Teen Wolf movie is expected in 2022, and even the smallest hint of sterek will generate a significant increase in posting regardless of quality(*4). And secondly, 2023 will see the release of Star Trek 4 meaning we will be witness to the Chris Pine/Zachary Quinto press junket, which has historically been undervalued for its contribution to tumblr cultural peaks as background support.

Readers should be cautioned that a golden age of posting is often followed by a major hubris event, such as Dashcon in 2014 following the 2012-2013 cultural apex. With the recent rise in popularity of both praising tumblr above other social media sites, and the fascination with trying to eliminate self-deprecating humor, we are uniquely primed for a crisis of pride. Humility will be key in maintaining a healthy population going forward.

Finally Sherlock Season 5 has the potential to completely obliterate all hypotheses listed here and, should it occur, will either completely wipe out all other subcultures or, if handled appropriately, will kick off a cultural renaissance akin to the cambrian explosion.

-----Footnotes under the cut-----

*1. Midterm election years also produce notably good content with particular attention to the years 2010 and 2014. Think old school image macros, aw yiss, and all the things in 2010 and madden gif generator in 2014.

*2. Note I refer only to tumblr-native memes in these examples. 2016 in particular saw a marked increase in non-native memes such as harambe, arthur's fist, strangerthings/retrowave text generators, and others. And 2020 given the lockdown, saw a significant increase in cross-platform memes, especially with the advent of tiktok which is both a massive appropriator and content generator, and can be credited for the wide appeal of sea shanties in the early-mid pandemic

*3 As the pace of media consumption has increased this 40 year window appears to shorten every year, however there are still notable 40 year cycle properties. Interestingly we have largely skipped the 70s nostalgia content in all but fashion. Mad Men set in the 60s aired in the 2000s, while Stranger Things set in the 80s aired in the 2010s.

*4 The picture of Dylan O'Brien sleeping on Tyler Hoechlin on a plane in July 2012 made the site nearly unusable as it became the only image available to reblog for approximately 36 hours.

#this is all a joke im just bored lmao #oh no the late 20s tumblrina misses school so much she writes an essay for no reason at all #she cry so much!!!#FYI finding the OG picture of tyler hoechlin and dylan obrien took me about 45 minutes #and it was just for the footnotes #please clap

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phantomato · 3 years ago

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As a writer, what do you think about the discussions on HPfanfiction and HPSlashFic where people openly talk about fics that they don't like and how so many of those fics are bad from a writing and moral standpoint? I'm not sure if that's just the nature of Reddit and the users, but I was surprised to see that people so openly bash ships and fics. In the other fandoms I'm in, it's usually courtesy to keep your dislike of a fic/author to yourself or in DMs with your friends 😬.

Interesting question. I have a bit of a meandering answer for this one, if you’ll bear with me.

So, in general, shitting on fannish content you don’t enjoy in public discussion spaces is a dick move. Shitting on it such that you call people who do like that content immoral, depraved, etc. is even worse. It isn’t any one person’s place to set a definitive line on okay/good/allowable content and not okay/bad/forbidden content. Save the petty rants for DMs.

There will be community norms, though. Any gathering of people will have tropes/genres/pairings that they coalesce around, and rules of decent behavior will fray a little at the edges of this. A discord server for Tomarry fans might be kind of snarky about Tomione, and yeah, ideally, everyone would be totally kind and open to ‘ship and let ship,’ but there isn’t a huge degree of overlap in Tomarry and Tomione audiences and the handful of people who also ship Tomione might learn to either shut up or leave. HPFF has set a community norm that slash ships, ships with Death Eater characters, and Hermione/men other than Harry ships aren’t the focus. I don’t like this norm, I think it’s needlessly limited and pretty darn regressive, but it is the standard that most community members use and I’m not shocked that content for those ships is so thoroughly bashed whenever it comes up. And community norms can be used for goals that I like, so it’s not the ‘communities come up with their own standards’ thing I have an issue with. I love when communities coalesce around things like “we reject bigotry within fanwork,” for example.

Reddit is a shithole. I say this fondly and also with great hatred. I’ve been using the site for a decade, I ran a contentious subreddit years ago and know how the site tends to work. It is a place that prioritizes confrontation and attempting to ‘one-up’ other users as a form of play. Threads geared towards making people say controversial things will always be popular because it provides fertile ground for the player-versus-player interactions that redditors love best. And if this is your thing, it’s a lot of fun! I’ve gotten good at this. I enjoy dropping into a ‘bad ship’ thread and saying something that I know will upset people, just so I get to have pointless internet fights. I would be sad to see HPFF become totally sanitized and back away from these sorts of threads because I honestly don’t expect that it would happen alongside the bulk of HPFF users suddenly becoming open to slashfic or DEs or Hermione. HPFF seems to be predominantly approaching fandom from a cishet male lens, and thus a polite/respectful HPFF is a boring one to me. Give me my PVP, if the main fandom sub is always going to favor Indy!Harry and harems.

And then, finally, I think there is value to being able to talk openly about why a ship (or a fic!) doesn’t work for an individual. ‘Bashing’ isn’t what I envision for this, but I also think that the line for ‘bashing’ will be different for everyone, and discussions that are undertaken with good faith from all involved might still be difficult for someone to read. I’ve used this blog to express the reasons I don’t enjoy every mainstream use of Tom’s character (Tomarry, Tomione, x Reader), and I would hardly expect a fan of those things to like what I say. But I share those posts because they help me understand my preferences and I think they are useful and interesting commentary on trends within parts of fandom. I would love to read more of that! Breaking down ships and tropes and poking at why they work or don’t, what people like about them and why that might make them unenjoyable for others, is valuable analysis. At some point, if an individual is unhappy to see this analytical lens turned towards their favs, they should back out. It’s perfectly reasonable thing to want fandom to be a relaxing space where you don’t have to think about the whys and wherefores of your escapist fantasies, but, eh, that analysis is half of fandom for some people. There’s a time and a place. A personal blog or a public fandom forum are good spaces for this; the discord server dedicated to a specific ship is probably a bad space for it.

#ask #fandom meta

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max1461 · 4 years ago

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I think one of the ways all this culture war business has shaken out (here in the US, at least) is that, rhetorically and emotionally speaking, the left has become puritan while the right has become carnal.

[I know, I know. Take of the century, right. You've heard this all before. But bear with me!]

Of course, these things aren't universal descriptions. But I think it stands that the major emotive trend on the left for the past decade or so has been the desire for purity. Ideological purity, linguistic purity, etc. This is emotional undercurrent that has driven "wokeness" to take its current form.

On the other hand, the emotional undercurrent of the right is one of carnality. The issues that really get rightists going, the way leftists get going over decade old problematic tweets (again, generalizing here on both counts), seem to me that they can more-or-less be summed up as race, meat, and baby-making. "You're not allowed to be white anymore", "they're gonna make us all eat veggieburgers/bugs", "the lizard people are trying to sterilize us / kills babies with abortion / etc". It's all very... raw and bodily, in a way. And perhaps not coincidentally, the right has also been much remarked upon as the coalition of wearing-your-sexual-insecurities-on-your-sleeve ("cuck").

It seems to me that these two rhetorical positions have basically reversed since the bush years, but again that's been said before.

What's fascinating, though, is that here on tumblr (whence left-puritanism arguably entered the popular discourse), I think I see the same rhetorical distinction starting to shift again. Not a full reversal, more like a 90 degree turn. It seems to me that the real two tumblr factions (ignoring all the fandom people and maybe most of the site... idk this thought is still in beta) are starting to shake out as "rat-adj" and "anti-liberal".

Just as in the case of the contemporary online left and right, both these groups are defined more by aesthetics and rhetorical style than by actual policy positions. Among the "anti-liberals" you'll find everyone from anarchists to Maoists to self-professed fascists and white-nationalists. Among the "rat-adj" you'll find mostly social democrats, and libertarians, and ancaps (with a couple notable exceptions).

The "anti-liberals", I think, broadly represent what happens when you introduce a transplant population of disaffected Marxists, who've felt ill-served by the mainstream woke coalition, onto a substrate of carnal rightist meme culture. And both parties were irreversibly changed by that fateful meeting, or something like that (again, this thought is in beta). It's highly syncretic.

The common features of this "anti-liberal" aesthetic are, I think: hatred of respectability politics, hostility to authority and "mainstream" society, glorification of violence (to varying degrees of irony), a writing style marked by obscurantism, and opposition to liberalism.

The anti-liberals may all hate each other, but they all seem to reblog the same posts and say a lot of the same sorts of things. If you took away all the obvious markers (pronouns, hammer-and-sickles, pepes) and handed one of these blogs off to the average normie American, I think it would be a serious challenge for them to figure out if this person votes Republican or Democrat.

The "rat-adjs" are, counterintuitively, not actually defined by being rationalist-adjacent. Plenty of people in the anti-liberal group are "rationalist-adjacent" in a literal sense of the phrase. Rather, it's an aesthetic and rhetorical definition again: they adopt the rationalist writing style that emphasizes clear exposition and precision, they're generally more likely to be unilaterally against violence, and (again, generalizing here) I think they're much more likely to be friendly to the status quo.

Another facet is that I think the rat-adj group tends to be much more amenable to the idea of applying a computer scientist's eye for optimization to the social realm, whereas the anti-liberals tend to view attempts to optimize society as authoritarian and deserving of skepticism.

The puritanical/carnal dichotomy doesn't quite apply to these two groups in the same way it does for the, uh, woke vs. pepe distinction, but I think there's some level of inheritance at play. The anti-liberals seem to have an aesthetic inheritance from the right, while the rat-adjs have some level of inheritance (or maybe just independent innovation?) from the woke sphere.

This is the part of the analysis I'm least confident on, though.

Anyway, I'm not really sure where this was intended to go. Just some thoughts on late imperial tumblr culture.

#if you're wondering #i'm an enlightened centrist #navel gazing

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idreamtofmanderleyagain · 4 years ago

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Morality-Focused Frameworks Of Discussion As Acts of Control

This is a post in response to a larger conversation I’ve been having with @eshusplayground. I have a perspective that I think would be really relevant to the conversation but I also don’t want to derail the specific focus of the following posts she’s been making recently.

(Trigger Warning For Abuse Discussion and Brief Mentions of Rape)

---

So I’m in the Hellraiser fandom. More specifically, I’m a Pinhead/Kirsty shipper.

For those of you that don’t know, Pinhead is a demonic torturer from hell who’s design is inspired by the BDSM community. Characters who open a magical puzzle box have unknowingly given themselves away to his violent underworld community of eternal torment and depravity. Hellraiser is a film about romantic and sexual horror, and there’s quite a lot in there about abuse and trauma. Kirsty is a traumatized person, and in my personal opinion, very likely a CSA victim.

And I ship these two characters together.

So the subject matter of my particular fandom is extremely intense and niche and complicated to navigate, although YMMV (I have no trouble with this franchise, but I cannot really handle GOT or American Horror Story, for example). After I grew interested in Hellraiser and integrated into it’s fandom, my perspectives about the way we have conversations about villainous characters started to have a major shift.

I often see people have these intense conversations (and arguments) about where a particular character exists on a moral scale, with the subtext (or outright text) that if they tip too far one way or another, they can be rendered unworthy of their own subgroup of fans within their own fandom. People who love those characters or find them shippable are then subject to moral judgements.

So how does one apply such logic to a psychosexual torture demon?

The answer is you can’t.

The frameworks people online use to have these discussions do not make any sense when talking about my fandom. Hellraiser is a dark horror fairytale presenting disturbing, surreal images and behaviors in order to discuss complex and difficult experiences and perspectives. The monsters within it, like Pinhead, are more metaphor than anything.

Now, my follower count is too low and my fandom is too niche for me to really be on the receiving end of a lot of the cruelty that manifests online about the moral validity of the fiction I enjoy. That said, between the anti-kink TERFS and the younger folks involved in purity culture on this site, I can imagine exactly what it would look like. You know what they would look like.

“You’re an Abuse Apologist!”

“You’re an Abuse Fetishist!”

“You’re reinforcing sexism!”

“he’s an irredeemable torturer, you’re probably okay with literal real world rape lmao uwu”

“This is bad kink representation and you’re complicit in the abuse real men do to women because you like this!”

Now, setting aside the fact that the canon lore context of Pinhead involves him having a human soul brainwashed by a monster god to become what he is, and is also in a roundabout sense “redeemed” in canon, I think most people utilizing this kind of framework would assume that I believe Pinhead can be redeemed in the way online Discourse (tm) means it, because that’s how we talk in fandom about the villains we really like.

I do not want to redeem Pinhead. I don’t think he even needs redeeming. I don’t even see value in that conversation at all. Redemption is not a concept that makes sense for what he is, or what he could become as a character. The framework of Pinhead as a Real-World-Equivalent Human Male Abuser who Cannot Be Redeemed From His Actions would inevitably dominate all conversation, regardless of the fact that it is inherently incorrect and detrimental to real, robust literary analysis of the narrative he exists within and how brilliantly it actually interacts with male on female abuse as a subject. By nature of it’s gross oversimplification and misrepresentation, It ruins the potential for greater, more nuanced and complex conversations.

And that’s the thing: my engagement with this particular story and it’s characters has a lot to do with the potential in the narrative to examine how trauma interacts with love, desire and gender politics. Hellraiser has a very unique way of exploring that kind of subject through a storytelling aesthetic that appeals to me (horror/fairytale, gothic romance, etc).

This is about to get personal, so strap the fuck in.

I am the victim of gendered abuse, in that I had an emotionally abusive step father and sexism was absolutely a factor in why that manifested the way it did. I am also a second hand victim of gendered abuse, in that my biological father was a serial stalker and rapist, and other male abusers (or just self-centered family members) caused severe emotional destabilization in my childhood. I grew up viewing adult men as unstable, selfish children. My family endured a lot, and I came to resent the men in my mother’ life for not taking on the role of protector and nurturer when she needed them most. I had discovered the great lie of traditional masculinity: in the face of real crisis, grown men were not protectors. They did not hold together the domestic space. They abused or faltered and abandoned us. This was a repeated pattern among several men in different roles. I was often left picking up all the pieces, taking on roles as a child that these men could not. I had to have strength they did not.

My experience of desire for romantic intimacy with men and men in roles of stable, nurturing authority now inherently involves a jumbled emotional soup of fear, pain, and a deep longing that comes from a place of feminine vulnerability, a desire to be taken care of instead of being the caretaker.

The narrative of Hellraiser pushes a lot of buttons for me. It speaks to my own trauma experiences in a very specific way. In an effort to further that conversation, I’m trying to create a piece of art (a fic) inspired by the deeply personal feelings this film gives me.

For me, Pinhead represents the Jungian shadow masculine, a simultaneous mix of fear and desire, the potential for suffering and pleasure, and everything in between. These experiences are inherently intertwined for me. And Kirsty’s experiences mirror many of my own.

In other words, in order for me to get out of Hellraiser what I get out of Hellraiser, Pinhead has to be exactly what he is, and everything that he is. Which includes monstrosity. Which includes the potential for change. His place in the narrative must fully, truly embody this conversation I need to have with masculinity, which inherently involves painful, scary things.

Anybody demanding that I either denounce my interest in him as morally offensive because he’s a monster in the full sense of the word (and not just the aesthetic one like what is currently trending in Monster Boyfriend fandom), or force a traditional redemption arc upon him as if he were a real life human person who must repent for his real life sins, are essentially saying that I am not allowed to engage with this work of fiction in a way that is transformative for me. And that’s very unfortunate, because honestly, I think my perspective is so much more dynamic and has so much more to offer.

This is not just about basic catharsis. This is not even a power fantasy about emotionally transforming a powerful (white) dude, or “bad boy” fantasies, both standard arguments for villain stanning that feels like it has never truly represented me or the complexity of my experiences and interests. This is a full-on conversation and act of self expression I want to have through art about the experience of fear and trauma when dealing with men as a woman who desires men.

And I don’t think a person has to be traumatized in order to want to engage with this type of fiction. I want to be clear that my experience is not a justification for my interest (I do not need to justify myself), it is an example of a perspective that gets erased by the framework of these conversations.

To me, the framework of moral validity for enjoying fictional villains and monsters and whatever you please feels incredibly stifling to the complex, dynamic ideas and analysis that I want to engage in, because I, and many people I know, are consistently pressured to structure their thoughts with this framework as the only acceptable baseline of discussion. This is so ubiquitous that when people I’ve known have tried to engage in ways that diverge from that framework, the responses they get are outright confused or direct the conversation right back to the original framework they tried to avoid. Complex conversation gets steamrolled.

Somewhere in the conversation we were all having about acknowledging and discussing abuse and oppression, and acknowledging troubling patterns in media which reinforce the normalization of abuse and opression, some people decided that there was a very serious moral discussion to be had regarding the mere act of liking things which involve dark subject matter and complex, or even monstrous characters. They now argue that there are very clear cut, simple moral frameworks for A) telling stories and B) enjoying stories, and most importantly, that this moral framework is a valid justification for the social treatment and silencing of certain people.

A framework, by the way, which I think is actually not functionally a framework, because like the toxic American fundamentalist christian groups it’s thinking is structured from, it does not account for the vastly diverse moral landscape within it’s own space. There is no objectively consistent body of knowledge anybody is working from, because morals are derived from the human experience, which is inherently subjective.

Interestingly, no where does this have more of an impact than with marginalized people, and people like me, who want to express something deeper and more meaningful in the conversation about abuse and oppression than what this framework really offers us. To be honest, The more I see this kind of conversation making the rounds, the clearer it becomes that it’s a means of control and power game playing. It’s not about morality, but about how morality can be leveraged in order to silence truly diverse and nuanced perspectives and uphold people’s sense of self-comfort. It is a means of supplanting more convenient and easily digestible understandings of these highly complex subjects that require more intensive, thoughtful engagement, especially when it gets challenging. This kind of rhetoric absolves people of making room for complex and diverse experiences, and reinforces an (at face-value) easy to follow set of moral rules of how we are all allowed to think and feel.

The implication of all of this is that if we all adhere to the One True (alleged) Moral Framework of Fandom Engagement, then we will somehow come out on the other side with all the Good People having a Great Time having Squeaky Clean Fun. And I don’t think I should have to tell you at this point how stifling and disturbing the implications of that kind of mentality really are.

Quite frankly, I think a lot of us are very tired of constantly speaking on other people’s terms.

#abuse tw #rape tw #Fandom #Hellraiser

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