#afraid to tag characters because it will look like I'm bashing them when the whole point is I'm not

[haunted-phantom-student]

Petition to allow more female protagonists to be:

- selfish

- short-sighted

- irrational

- weak-willed

- unintelligent

- misguided

- egotistical

- untrustworthy

- superficial

- anti-heroic

- someone you wouldn't want to hang out with in real life

- someone you would want to hang out with in real life if only for the entertainment value

- realistically flawed

without these characteristics turning them the villain.

Petition to give them even stereotypically female flaws that are explained not by their gender, but by their human lack of perfection.

Petition for female characters to be allowed to be shitty without giving up their status as the hero of the story.

Petition for female characters to not have to be stronger, wiser, and smarter than their male counterparts in order to be considered a "good" character. To let them do boneheaded things. To let them hurt people when they aren't trying to. To let them hurt people when they are trying to. To let them be not naturally skilled at caretaking, motherhood, and emotional support. To let them be damaged.

Petition for heroines to be allowed to be *humans*

[wajjs]

i hate batstans who spamming hal jordan tag ughh

I know this is related to the now deleted poorly written post about Hal/Arisia, in which Jason chases Hal threatening to murder him for being a "pedo freak" and Hal is somehow scared of Jason when in reality Hal has no reason to be afraid of him since they're not on the same power scale.

I was saving this ask to post a good answer, but I'm very sick and ultimately it boils down to this:

The infamous "not a child molester" panel is purposefully shared out of context because it has inflammatory language and it's the best way to rage bait people + it prolongs ignorance in fandom circles (already known for never looking at the source material) by not explaining the whole situation like it should be explained.

It is an incredibly scummy thing to do considering how sensitive and delicate the topic is. It is also incredibly telling that it's mostly antis the ones who share this panel out of context and without nuance. Antis LOVE to use words like "child molester" and "pedophile" like they're candy and like these words have no real weight behind them.

I have seen antis pile on a survivor of child molestation for saying they do not agree with calling Hal a pedophile, because in context he's not, and using that accusation as a blanket statement "gotcha!" only helps to water down the complex terms and alienates survivors. I've witnessed antis tell survivors to "get over it" and that "maybe they (the survivors) are the real pedos" for "defending Hal Jordan".

I'm gonna break down the context in simple terms so that it can be understood:

Arisia joins the Green Lantern corps as a preteen/young teenager

Hal consistently, repeatedly, explicitly, calls her "little sister" across multiple issues and treats her like family

Arisia develops a crush on Hal that starts off Innocent and turns into an Obsession

Hal explicitly, repeatedly, consistently, turns her down

When they're trapped in a cave, Arisia cannot take Hal's "no" as valid answer and uses her willpower to age herself up into a full-fledged adult. She must have Hal

I repeat, she's NOT a child. In text, in canon, she's now drawn and written like an adult — a very precocious young adult, yes, but an adult nonetheless.

ONLY AFTER she turns into an adult does Hal show interest in her, and they make out in that cave to then develop their relationship

What's the REAL issue?

I am aware that the context is far from good, but what is most important from it is that the relationship is very clearly out of character within the same run it develops from. Before Steve Englehart, the writers consistently kept an older brother/little sister dynamic between them. Englehart was the one to add the ""romantic"" twist to it and directly contradict not other writers, but even himself. Moments before making out with Arisia, Hal is written turning her down. Again.

This is clearly not a character trait of Hal. This is a self insert situation in which the writer, and with support of the editors, decided to put his fantasy on page. It's not the first time this ever happened in comics, it will not be the last — it just is, unfortunately, infamous all around the internet.

To sum things up before I pass out again from the amount of meds in me:

Hal is not a pedophile. He only develops a romantic relationship with Arisia AFTER she's grown into an adult (in the blink of an eye, yeah). He is not a child molester. Nowhere in the run before or after was that ever a thing. It is beyond me why Englehart wrote that dialogue. Who knows.

His relationship with Arisia has its surprisingly sweet and stable moments, though it quickly deteriorates because Arisia and Hal are at different life stages. They break it off. It was retconned. I repeat, IT WAS RETCONNED. IT'S NO LONGER CANON. And for good reason.

I am TIRED of Batstans, mostly Jason Todd stans, using a clear example of bad writing to bash on a well beloved character. As if Jason hasn't suffered from atrocious writing as well.

Now can we stop with the obvious rage baiting and blatant spreading of misinformation?

short cbr article with a breakdown of events for those interested

[c0ffeebee]

Hi! I'm relatively new to the Fandom and want to start writing kliego, but I'm scared of getting hate 😭 how do you handle it? You mention getting it a bit and so I was wondering if you had any tips! Thank you! I love love love your blog. It's my favorite!

Hi there! Thank you so much for loving my mess of a blog, you are very kind to me. 😊💛

My apologies for answering late, but i felt like i needed to think about all this for a bit.

First of all I feel like I should say: I am so sorry your experience with tua fandom starts like that, with the fear of getting hate. No fandom experience should be like that.

Second there's an important question of: do you plan on posting your fics here on tumblr or on ao3?

If you are planning on posting it on ao3 i sadly don't know much about the site's rules and the situation with tua ship hate there, but I know there are kliego authors among my mutuals so let's ask them, shall we?

Guys, if you write not only for kliego but for any tua ships between academy members and post it on ao3 can you please tell us what the situation is like there? Do you get hate? How do you deal with that? Can you block people on that site? Please share the info.

If you plan on posting your fics here on tumblr or you are afraid people from ao3 might find you here to bully you, here's what I can advise you to do:

Block. Block button is your friend in this fandom. It's better to block not only people who are rude about kliego to you directly, but also anyone who posts any kind of ship hate or character hate. Even if they hate the ships between tua kids you yourself don't ship, like fiveya, alluther, horrance, luego, etc. It might be they just don't like specific ship because it's not their cup of tea, they may find it boring or maybe they just don't vibe with it, but if they hate some of those ships chances are they hate kliego too. I mean if for example you 100% know they hate fiveya for some reason but still ship alluther I don't think that's necessary to block them, because their dislike probably doesn't come from a place of "oh, I'm moraly superior than you, you are disgusting" unless they believe fiveya is pedo or something, but that's the whole other issue, and of course you can block them if you like fiveya and they actively hate it, then sure, why not lol. But that's just an example. You get what I mean, block all toxic people who hate on most tua ships because it's "incest, gross and problematic".

Don't engage in the discussion. They won't listen. Antis are close minded people, who are not interested in your position on this. They just want to bully you in the name of purity culture. Don't try and explain to them how the situation is not black and white here. They won't listen. They never do.

Avoid "the umbrella academy" tag. The characters's tags. Or even "tuaedit" because in this fandom people would literally spend hours on gifsets and edits not to show love for their otp but to bash yours. I myself never go to those tags and only visit ship tags like "kliego" and "fiveya" and so on. It's a lot better to just follow a lot of tua blogs that you know are safe. Like blogs who are pro-ship, or just neutral blogs with no ship hate. Trust me it's better to see less content on your dash than more content on tags but a lot of it is hate.

It doesn't mean you shouldn't tag your fics accordingly, you can tag it with "the umbrella academy" tag and characters's tags and etc, I do it with my art every time, so I won't advise you to just tag your fics with "kliego" and forget everything else, because I don't follow that rule myself. But if you do tag your content with main show tag and characters's tags be ready that antis might see it and be prepared to block them. So it's your choice honestly. You can tag it only with kliego to avoid negative attention, but you will possibly lose some positive attention along with it. Or you can tag characters and show, but then be ready for fandom's reaction and just block the haters.

Know that kliego fandom (and I believe other Hargreeves shippers) will support you. You have no idea how hard it is for me sometimes to receive the hate my kliego art gets. But through all of this kliego (and other Hargreeves ships) fandom was always there for me. Those people are nice and kind and just genuinely compassionate. They show their support with nice tags and comments and messages. I'm sure they will support you as well. And count me in too. I'm ready to support you.

If you do get hate and it gets overwhelming take a break from social media where people are being assholes to you. Do something nice for yourself, don't look at your phone. I know it's hard to do, but please try. In a few days when you are calmer and they moved on to another person to hate you can just look through their comments (it's better not to read those in their entirety, but just to see which ones of those are good and which ones are bad) and block all of them.

I think that's all the advice I can give you. I hope it was helpful. Again I'm so sorry your experience with this fandom starts with fear, but trust me, there's a lot of love in this fandom too and love is always stronger than fear. So if you want to create something, do it, don't let hateful people scare you away. 💛