#also i wanted to keep fandom discourse out of this bc i dont got time but this is like

[monstersinthecosmos]

As a fellow Marius lover, I always find it kind of disheartening how most of the content/fandom talk about him (meta, fic, fanart, etc.) revolves around m/m ships (Marius/Armand in particular but I’d even go as far to include Marius/Daniel here) when, in my opinion, Marius is like the one male character in the VC universe whose relationships with women are far more interesting than his relationships with other men (the only other character might be Lestat but even then it’s pretty 50/50). They’re so monumental and so full of complexities and pain and so much love and they define him and inform his character in ways that I think, his relationships with men simply do not. Interesting/hot under the right circumstances? Sure but like ARE YOU GUYS SEEING THIS MAN??? AND HOW HE RELATES TO WOMEN??? It’s one of the best things Anne ever wrote and I can never get enough of it and it makes me sad how little content there is of it and I feel I can never say this out loud because I would never want to make people feel bad about what they ship (truly not my intention here) but ugh SO MUCH potential there for life changing discourse and meta about Marius and the women he’s loved and lost and have shaped who he is and there’s like… nothing.

Tl;dr the reason I’m sending this ask is because I’m a firm believer that you must be the change you want to see in this world and because YOU get it! And every time you post or write about Marius/Pandora (or Marius/Akasha! Or talk about Marius/Bianca) an angel gets its (black) wings. You are seen, you are loved and appreciated tysm <3

OKAY FIRST OF ALL THIS WAS SUCH A DELIGHT TO GET IN MY INBOX, SECOND IM GOING TO BE COMPLETELY HONEST AND ADMIT I FEEL TOO INCOHERENT TO TACKLE THIS TOPIC HAHA. I don’t feel articulate enough to do it justice. And I don’t say that to be obnoxious and self deprecating but like in all honesty idk how to synthesize it neatly but I think you’re sharing some GREAT IDEAS. 

I have to say this in bullet points because I don’t feel equipped to string this into a cohesive post:

Marius was based on Anne’s husband, and Marius/Pandora was based on their marriage!!!!! And I think it explains a lot about why their relationship feels so fuckin POTENT to me, like it’s so genuine!!!!!!! And like knowing that I think it makes sense why she wrote him so HOT lol. Like she’s just writing thirsty stuff about her husband right? LOL

Also like insofar as there’s a lot of genderfluidity in VC there’s also something vaguely misogynist about it at times. And Anne Rice was a mega feminist and her work had so much womens lib in it!!!!! So I don’t think it’s intended as misogyny at all vs. Anne having conversations about gender and maybe her own relationship to gender. I think enough characters have said vaguely misogynist stuff that it makes me think it’s an Anne Problem vs being Watsonian. (This is also a historical/time period issue and we can discuss another time if and when vampires are supposed to break out of that when they transcend humanity and social constructs even when they’re still saying weird sexist shit at their big ages.) But I say that to say all VC characters are a tad sexist, even if perhaps she was writing with the intention of her own male power fantasy/male superiority/penis envy. AND THAT MAKES MARIUS VERY INTERESTING. 

Cause like really the three main ladies in his life (Akasha, Pandora, Bianca) DO define him so much! And we don’t see him pine for Armand the way he did for any of them! Why!!!

Like there’s that aspect of sexism where women can be infantilized by men who don’t think they’re being unkind and it makes me wonder, especially when the author is a boomer, like where is that line between condescension and respect? I don’t have an answer here, this is too big-brained for me LOL but like he is SO devoted to the women in his life and I just wonder like if he sees them as creatures unlike himself, you know? 

This is headcanon territory but I bet he’s such a fucking sub to Pandora lol and it just thrills me that he spent 2000 years begging Akasha for affection and she ignored him the whole damn time wow. And he continued to simp!

AND ALSO LIKE, I think people DO NOT DISCUSS THIS OFTEN ENOUGH, but did we forget that he chose Armand because he needed a Bianca rebound? He was absolutely TORTURED by his love for Bianca and picked Armand because he didn’t want to kill her oh my god. Oh my god!!! HE KEPT HER LETTER IN HIS POCKET OVER HIS HEART OKAY??? HE DIDN’T WANT TO DRAG HER INTO HIS COLD AND FATAL DOMAIN????? Fuck lol

It’s so fucked up that he didn’t go after Armand but spent like actual fucking millennia trying to find Pandora. HE KNEW EXACTLY WHERE ARMAND WAS AND LEFT HIM THERE LOL BUT PANDORA HAUNTED HIM EVERY NIGHT OF HIS LIFE FOR CENTURIES.

After everything he wound up spending like 200 years with Bianca or something and ?????? CORRECT because Bianca was the fledgling he actually wanted!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But it’s odd, I know I’ve said this 337589235 times, but Marius like. Has an idea of the person he wants to be and he tries SO HARD to live by logic & reason and he just can’t reconcile with the fact that he has EMOTIONS. And so like part of the person he wants to be like, open/empathetic/wise and he begs his lovers/students/fledglings to CHALLENGE HIM when he’s not actually healed enough to be challenged? And to me there’s something kinda like, extra spicy about it when you’re in Rice World and you’re a lil sexist; how much that burns EXTRA when it’s Pandora or Bianca sticking up to you or AKASHA FUCKIN IGNORING YOU. 

Just really incredible that this person who is like the epitome of a patriarch has such fucked up relationships with all the women in his life. And like he underestimates these women, like the way he tries to manipulate Bianca and she leaves him! PANDORA AND AKASHA ARE UNAVAILABLE TO HIM AND BIANCA FUCKIN LEAVES.

akasSHA JUST IGNROING HIM!! JUST STRAIGHT UP FUCKIN IGNORING HIM FOR 2,000 YEARS!!!! HE'S OBSESSED WITH HER!

Anyway Enkil is ignoring him too but he doesn’t give a shit about that guy tbh lol 

Also the amount of space he gives Eudoxia and Zenobia in his book like there’s more here too but tbh it’s midnight and I can’t start unpacking. I just think like, in 2000 years it’s interesting how Eudoxia wound up having such a lasting impact on his life. 

I did just peek at the Eudoxia part and I’m dying, he goes “Her face was small, oval, and as close to perfection as anything I've ever beheld, even though she bore no resemblance to Pandora who was for me perfection itself.” CERTIFIED WIFE GUY.

What kinda mommy issues are we dealing with here? HIS MOTHER WAS A SLAVE THAT DIED IN CHILDBIRTH AND HE INHERITED HER GENES AND LOOKED LIKE HER AND DIDN’T LOOK LIKE HIS FATHER & BROTHERS? AND HE’S SORT OF AN OUTCAST AS A HUMAN LIKE ? THE STIGMA HERE? AND THEN HE SPENDS 2000 YEARS WORSHIPPING HIS NEW MOTHER??? PERHAPS YOU COULD SAY ENSLAVED TO HER? IDK MAN. 

IS THIS ALSO WHY HE WAS SO OBSESSED WITH LOSING PANDORA?

The irony too, and something I think a lot of people miss, is that he DIDN’T WANT TO MARRY PANDORA LOL. He wanted to be betrothed to a child so that he could FUCK OFF and NOT get married because she wasn’t old enough to get married! He fucked off! He went exploring! He said this is not for me! 

AND TO GO OUT INTO THE WORLD AND BE MURDERED BY HIS MOTHERS PEOPLE???? IDK. 

I’m not sure how these last two points tie into anything but I just wanted to mention his complicated relationship with Pandora and his own heritage lol. And then Akasha like DELIVERS Pandora to him because she’s like “wow this guy needs somebody lol and I am not emotionally available” — Akasha who was famously a violent genocidal radfem and who would not approve of his relationship with Armand but explicitly allowed him to have Pandora and Bianca. IDK WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN! 

Did Akasha approve of these women because she knew Marius was completely pussywhipped and would worship them and she wanted to see someone mommydom the fuck out of him and she knew that Armand would never be that person? 🫢

And again I want to say like, taking the author into consideration!! Anne Rice had a HORRIFIC relationship with her mom so you see these themes pop up occasionally in her work. DESPITE ALL OF THAT SHE IS STILL A FEMINIST AND WRITES ABOUT MATRILINEAR FAMILIES like The Great Family or the Mayfairs. But thinking about Mothers in Anne Rice Works makes me think a lot about this like, the damage they can do and the voids they can leave even when you’re a feminist and love women! You see a TON of this with Gabrielle and I always think that Lestat & Marius are such similar characters that you can do a lot of extrapolating or backwards engineering to ask questions about them and how they work, since we get SO MUCH Lestat POV in this series to work with and how we can zoom out sometimes and ask like, what is common across her entire body of work and what is more specifically common between Lestat & Marius and WHAT EVEN MORE INTERESTINGLY is a result that they were both based on her husband in their inceptions. 

Like how much of this has to do with Marius’s actual feelings towards men vs women on purpose, or how much was subconscious author bias, how much was simply that Anne Rice based him on her husband and she was THIRSTY, idk. It’s always hard to say in VC because Anne was such an intuitive and self-indulgent author and the stories are so weird!!! So your mileage may vary!

But I agree with you that these are FASCINATING relationships!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And I like Marius/Armand too (I recently made a post about how I didn’t “””””ship”””” them but then I spent 2 months working on a M/A fic every day and now I think I’ve corrupted and converted myself LMAO) but yeah like. There’s such a lack of substance between them in the end. He treats Armand like he’s temporary, fucks up and moves on, and it’s such a departure from how DEVOTED he was with all his other partners. 

Wow I didn’t think I had a lot to say, sorry about that. !!! EVERY TIME I BROUGHT A POINT UP I THOUGHT OF 5 MORE POINTS GOSH I COULD TALK ABOUT MARIUS ALL DAY.

[floatingshark]

This has been in my head for like weeks and it's what makes me struggle to actually finish arcane LMFAO. For context ive been mostly interacting with arcane stuff on tiktok and ive seen some stuff and opinions that doesn't sit well with me.

also on another note i havent fully finished arcane, i stopped at s2 ep6 so ep7 to 9 i have no prior knowledge apart from spoilers i got bc of arcane edits.

and on one last note, if you disagree or agree with me in this you're free to express it. just be civil. we can all be adults and we know how to understand so just mind your words bc people on tiktok state their opinion so aggressively, it is not needed. we dont need that energy here.

okay so with that out of the way, like i said ive seen a lot of tiktoks lately and i want to kind of speak my mind (technically rant) about some of the discourse regarding characters and whatnot. This is going to be long.

also, spoilers.

so first up is caitlyn. How do i start?

Caitlyn:

I do love caitlyn... in season 1.

in s2 not so much but hear me out. a lot of people have been debating on her actions and how half the fandom hate her, half love her (some a little,,, off putting but ill get into that later) and here's my unneeded take. I don't think its valid. like her actions in s2 are so morally wrong it blows my mind.

first of all, Im not going to say that its ooc of her because that doesnt make sense to say. this cant be ooc (in my perspective) because we have never seen caitlyn angry to the point of doing this. this is our (or my) first time seeing her go through grief this bad that it has her making decisions we dont particularly agree with or is objectively right to do. we cant say that this is "out of character" because we had'nt had prior idea or knowledge to how she'd cope with her mother's passing.

second off, like i said i dont think its valid. yes, i understand her actions are a result of her mothers untimely passing but we can't keep saying that it was right of her to do what she did.

we can empathize and we can understand that what she's doing is because she's had enough of jinx putting the people of piltover in danger because obviously she cares about these people, and it put her over the edge the day that her mother died because of jinx. but it doesnt mean that her actions were right objectively (i say objectively because we all have different moral compasses).

lets get into what she did

her actions consist of:

-gassing the undercity (even after watching an entire documentary/history lesson about how her mother built the ventilation systems to keep the grey out of the undercity)

i dont want to hear people saying that it never showed people dying, it was only used on the gangs, the goons, and jinx. people, we dont need to see people dying to know that the grey has been a problem zaunites have had to deal with for years until cassandra (cait's mom) built those vents.

yes, you can say that they didnt show people dying, doesn't mean that using it wont have consequences if anyone that was innocent does get affected. gas spreads, it moves, it can and it will affect anyone in the vicinity or anyone that comes across it. how do you know that it didnt affect anyone?

even in a moral lens, isnt it just wrong to use the grey ( which in the real world might be equal to something like tear gas. theory tho, going off of tear gas effects) to "clear out" the streets of the undercity where homeless people litter the streets, where children, old people, and people with disabilities roam freely?

-the scene where she insisted she wont miss her shot at jinx

for this one, i think she said this because she was obviously frustrated. she believed in her abilities and she had jinx right in front of her and obviously she wasn't thinking straight.

but people, i cant defend her when i saw her miss her shot just a minute prior. she can think that about herself, that she can shoot past isha and hit jinx in the head, i cant. like i said she missed, it is absolutely not a guarantee to her that they wont move once she pulls the trigger, which is exactly why she hit jinx in the finger instead, and almost killed vi before too.

like its more understandable for me that that statement would come from her, than if it came from someone that was watching the show.

with that, i think i covered mainly my thing with caitlyn. i do empathize, and i do think that for someone thats grieving and angry, her actions can be understandable in that perspective. i do not however, think her actions are justified, especially bc its borderline fascist (if not already). she's a dictator in simpler terms and its just so wrong no matter how i look at it.

i mentioned earlier as well that there were caitlyn supporters that were off putting, but honestly even caitlyn haters can be the same so really its not just a one sided thing going on. the least we can do with this topic, especially because its not black and white, is be civil and just talk about it properly we dont need aggression.

Jayce:

I love jayce, i truly do. well, for the most part.

this rant simply started bc i saw people saying he's privileged, he's egotistical etc, etc.

here is my take.

some people (might just be one actually) see jayce as a minority, or an immigrant and believe that that erases his privilage. but let's talk about it.

no matter if jayce is a minority, or an immigrant, it does not erase that he is from a known house (even if its small) and lives in piltover. he is in the academy, a known scientist and inventor, and he's part of the council. where is the privilege? right there.

he has privilege, why are we erasing that? he has the privilege to live in piltover, to study and learn, to meet with the highest of the highs that control and lead their entire nation, to be known as a great inventor and scientist who, through hextech, has improved the lives of many, who bears a name that is recognizable as a house, and even if he is not equal in wealth with salo or mel, is still equal in status because he now stands amongst them in the same rank and has mel beside him to get the other counselors on board with his plans or ideas.

he has privilege, we cant erase that just because he's an immigrant, because objectively he's living a life better than anyone in the undercity does. hell, viktor has privilege because he's living in piltover now, he no longer lives in the undercity where people struggle, get hunted down, and killed.

thats mostly what i wanted to talk about, i cant say if he is egotistical because i cant remember him being one? arrogant in a way, maybe. but egotistical im not so sure.

with that note.. thats all the word vomiting i can do. but mainly my main gripe is how s2 loses what i loved with the s1 storyline and its the oppression that piltover has on the undercity. it could have been even better if they had handled it properly but i guess it just gets erased like that..

anyways, like i said im up for discussion. you're free to dicuss, to correct, to agree because i can admit i might be forgetting about certain scenes or diaogue or whatnot and its good to be educated and to learn from other people as well.

so, idk, dont take this too personally. at the end of the day it is a show, with important storylines, but still just a show nevertheless. we dont need to be so personal and so aggressive with debates, we can have it like adults, and we can have opinions and thats okay.

thanks for listening lmao

[gontagokuhara]

Just went on Instagram to look at more DR art (because tumblr won't let me see a lot of DR art for some reason) and saw hinanami discourse out in the wild which made me say, out loud, "oh, are we still doing this 💀"

Like idk if I've just aged out of the fandom (on Instagram) but just seeing that hinanami rant made me realize I've been spoiled by the DR community on Tumblr bc I'll scroll on here for 2 minutes and see a text post that will literally SHIFT my entire view of a character/ship and CHANGE my LIFE in just a small analysis that was probably written by op while they were on the toilet💀

Anyway it made me think of the post about Maki and Chappel Roan that I actually recited by memory out loud to my friend last night [gooning over wlw content together after watching Muriel's Wedding], And also that one post abt Monomi and Monokuma being Junko's satire of her own rivalry with Mukuro, and Junko not liking that her friends don't appreciate her fursona doing stand-up 💀💀 and like compare that to Instagram discourse and it's like "Komahina is stupid bc hinata isn't straight" like 💀

Anyway maybe it was the same on tumblr before [it probably definitely was] but now that I'm older I'm really appreciating mature convos/takes about danganronpa because good fanfiction/fanart/fan interpretations are truly adapting the story+characters in much better ways than the creators could ever imagine circa 2010 [pointy objects] [peaches and cream] [anything w/autistic nagito] [anything w/transmasc hajime]

number one rule of modern fandom experience (at the very least with media that has a propensity to draw Certain Crowds [looking especially hard at danganronpa and p5]) is CURATE YOUR OWN SPACE AND STRAY NO FARTHER ‼️‼️‼️ i personally escaped the early era dr fandom (pre v3 localization/the 2019 Danganronpa Renaissance) but time capsule posts tell me i dodged something of a bullet there ❤️ in that vein 2019/2020/covid era discourse was still crazy insane (<- was a part of it for sure LMFAO) but it had a much different Flavor than it did way back when. and the same is true of present-day: still a little kooky if you search hard enough (insta/tiktok/twitter/tumblr all have their own demons). but at least This go around i have largely avoided that by picking my people that i trust not to be Weird and just living in my own bubble wrt the dr fandom at large. and thats served me very well the past year+ since i got back into dr <3 and i have also seen MANY of those perspective-altering posts in that little curation circle that has deepened and made better my experience THE GOOD IS OUT THERE ‼️‼️‼️

THE JUNKO FURSONA POST ALSO LIVES IN MY BRAIN its so real and just one of many takes i’ve seen fly by in a post and been like This is so real and it’s mine now. many such cases <3 i follow people like that and simply block people expending energy on discourse i DOOOOOONT care about. like simply enjoy kmha (I SURE DO ‼️‼️‼️) if you like it and ignore hnmi/kmnmi if you dont (cant relate I LOVE YOU TOO HINANAMI + KOMANAMI ‼️‼️‼️) and live your life happy not angry ❤️

like re: maki lesbianism (which was written on the toilet no lie) she is The most lesbian of all time i could write 10,000 scholarly articles on her comphet + traumatic past of being made to hurt people keeping her from fully coming to terms with herself as a lesbian and as someone who wants to Protect the people she loves (an integral pillar of butchness!!!!!!!!) and it is so important to me. and MANY people disagree! and i simply just dont worry about it <3 but i DO think about the people that agree (and the people who i Influence to agree…..that makes me so happy to hear you talking about it with people :D) and that makes fandom FUN!!!!! not arguing over word of god or whatever that isn’t going to change anyone’s opinions anyway 😭

there is a LOOOOOT of good discussion and character/scene analysis and genuinely fun unique takes on tumblr (+ im sure other places but i rly only interact with dr on her & Occasionally by liking a twt post on my main) and that’s where i’ve made my niche <3 people having fun with the media they enjoy and trying to salvage its shortcomings and missteps because they love it!!

and putting little old Me up amongst the dr goats (transmasc hajime) (autistic nagito)………..framing this ask tbh the HIGHEST honor 4 me……..thank you my beloved cider as always KISS MWAH MWAH

[buckymilf]

you titled your ask "let it out" and thats what im gonna do <3

you are under no obligation to respond to this, of course, i dont want you to get into trouble bc of fandom drama regarding polls

also a disclaimer - i condemn all sort of typical-tumblr-anon-hate behaviour and i always had. i will never get behind *anyone* sending death threats to *anyone* under *no* circumstances.

that being said.

i keep scrolling through the tags and replies on the poll post. wasnt the point of it to celebrate fandom *history*? everything regarding stucky has already been said by other ppl - the impact this ship had - on the fandoms, fanfics. tumblr in 2014 was the stucky site. it trended on twitter in 2016 thus scaring the executives and forcing them to backtrack out of *any* scenes between steve and bucky bc they were so so scared of a gay fanon ship. the ship still has this impact, bc now mcu is pushing ste*gy while using stucky thropes and scenes.

if we are talking about celebrating fandoms history - we have a fanon ship going back over a decade and a one year old canon ship.

and this is the only thing im salty about. i watched [pirates show] and i loved it. i really did. but i dont see how a ship being canon makes it better than fanon, especially in this context.

(also i dont understand ppl saying that stuckies voted against pirates bc "we hate taika" and that we are racist? and all those mentions of stucky being a white ship - are we racist bc both characters are white?)

(on the other hand i missed most of the discourse under the poll post, so maybe this statement is justifiable, i have no idea)

(also, this one person saying that yeah, [pirate ship] is toxic, but what about bucky's war crimes, steves oposition to the accords and them leaving poor tony in syberia - we've been over this so many times... im just gonna leave that like that)

thank you for reading my rant, stay hydrated, dont post it if you dont want to <3

well... today was really something wasn't it?

some shippers are nasty no matter where they're from, some of them don't know how to lose, and some of them clearly don't know how to win, the whole discussion is pointless since it was just a poll, but people hold a fucking grudge somehow, and you're right, there's no point into comparing canon with fanon because that was never the case, stucky was never meant to be canon or something like that

and no! we are not racist for shipping stevebucky instead of *insert interracial ship here* because shipping is NOT activism and it will never be.

those people are just too young to behave properly and don't know how fandom and shipping properly works, so it's just sad and poor behavior of them, no one is hating taika or something like that, i literally didn't saw anyone from our fandom being racist or hating a real actor for a tumblr dead website tumblr poll lmao, some friends of mine on the other side, got real nasty anon asks from that other side,

but I won't blame a whole fandom for it and i have nothing against the show or the ship, the pairing itself seems nice to me and my most dear friends likes them and they're real nice people! unfortunately that's how internet works, some people are real bullies online over... not real people haha

[just-before-dawn]

i shouldnt be stressing out so much about this and this really shouldnt be a major concern of mine, but i keep getting responses on the form saying how people are scared of joining and how uncomfortable they are with this project. it wasn't my intention to make anyone uncomfortable. i know there's been some past drama or whatever that i never got to witness and i know i cannot change the thoughts and minds of people.

but please dont be afraid of joining the zine. i literally want this project to showcase as much talent as i can from this fandom.

i have experience with monitoring hate, harassment, bullying, etc. if you fear of joining the zine bc of hate from other creators, i will try my best to make sure that the zine space is a comfortable space for contributors.

as a person who has been wrongly accused of being something im not in a past fandom, i know how you feel. i also know how it feels to accidentally pass by a post i didnt want to see. so i know how it feels from both sides.

however, i am not one to promote hate, im not one to allow hate. im not one to allow any problems to occur with the projects or spaces i run.

if you truly want to contribute something to the zine, please do. i am literally only judging your art and writing, nothing else. im not judging if you've made an accidental mistake, im not judging if there was random discourse that led to nothing. i just want your art and writing and see if it works well with the zine.

lowkey regretting addressing this problem the first time bc it led to more problems that im like AHHHH. but it just kept coming up.

anyway, please join my zine if you want to (god i hate cancel culture)

[aroaceacacia]

(Acacia, feel free to not post this ask if you think it's too much, bc I am quite angry, also the use of "you" is generic and not directed at anyone )

Listen!! I have been in fandom spaces for a long time and I never NEVER got the point of these arguments.

They are meaningless! You have MORE important and REAL things to worry about ships, fanart or fics..etc etc.

I just...HOW can you spend your time ARGUING ABOUT something so stupid!!!

Nothing comes from it and in the process, multiple people are hurt, badly... And for fucking what ???

I swear people try to instigate these things on purpose... You wanna feel something in your life??? Go splash yourself with a bucket of cold water and them MAYBE you'll get something out of it.

You CAN'T EVEN SEE the person you are arguing with and that tells more than enough!!

This goes for both sides btw, everyone should keep a little bit more to themselves and NOT go and try to AGITATE each others.

Just... i am extremely hurt to see people suffering over....well.. nothing...

It's tiring...

- a very heartbroken anon

thank you anon! this frustration is SUPER valid. and also similar feelings inform a lot of my takes on discourse that happens. fandom should be fun and if it's Not fun, try taking a step back

on my end sometimes I just have a lot of thoughts about a situation, so I share em, and then other people want to pitch in, and its interesting for me to hear other peoples perspectives and have that discussion, but it can also get exhausting Quick especially if it's as big of a discussion as that dream discourse day was. I'd love to be able to chat with people more often about things that arent just discourse, so nobody should hesitate to send me an ask or anything! i dont bite I prommy

[gringolet]

that italian?

okay okay okay i think it happened long enough ago that i can dish about the drama. she changed her url and im not including it anyway so its fine.

prepare for a fuckin. essay in responss to a TWO WORD ask but anyay

so once upon time there was an italian who hated children and loved reylo. she also hung out in the arthuriana tag and got a bunch of asks about it. so one day some poor anon comes in and asks if she has any trans headcanons for arthurian characters, and she, instead of being a normal person and saying like, no, she goes off about how trans characters in fanfic is forced representation and she cant talk about trans people bc surgery is triggering for her.

found this in the archives lol. so i rbd politely explaining that while it was fine to not have trans hcs, her justifications for it were a little offensive.

hey i dont want to start discourse or anything but i see ur asks in the tag a lot and i wanted to politely address this. firstly obviously no one is under any obligation to hc things, and headcanons and fandom is not activism. if you’d just said “no, not really” it would b fine. i mean, cringe of u, but fine. but u make a couple of points here i want to look at a bit critically. then there is “I don’t like when headcanons are pushed up as ~representation, especially when… Ehm, it’s just fandom stuff?” i dont want to misinterpret you or put words in your mouth, but the implication that theres no need for trans rep in fandom and dismissal of that is a very cis take. My initial read of your intention there was a complaint of ‘why should something like fandom spaces, which are for fun and not serious, be filled with non fun serious (bad) trans stuff that i have to see when im trying to enjoy myself.’ now that could be incorrect, you were a bit vague here. if that is what you meant, i think you maybe should examine why you feel that way. if it isnt, im unclear on what exactly youre trying to say here. the idea that trans hcs are performative wokeness and “representation” in fandom is completely ignoring the actual trans people making and wanting them. there is so vanishingly little representation of trans people in actual media and even less thats good, and i think implying trans hcs are being pushed on people and fandom for, ~representation (a world of meaning in the ~ i shant speculate on) is very dismissive and ignorant of that fact. honestly the main thing im troubled by is the idea that trans bodies are inherently disgusting and triggering, which is an incredibly harmful and hurtful idea, and since you yourself acknowledge that trans people and hcs dont predicate surgery i question why you bring it up, except as a justification for disconfort rooted in unexamined prejudice. im not accusing you of being a terf or anything, i dont believe you meant harm by this or have bad intentions, and im definitely not saying anyone has to hc anything. it was the uncomfronted insidiousness of your justification that concerned me. this is not a personal attack at all, you just have a lot of influence in this fandom space and i wanted to make you aware of some of the surely accidentally harmful things ur saying.

so she flips out and rbs that yelling at me and cursing me out in italian (she moved blogs so i dont have her whole response just bits)

basically she completely derailed the original topic and accused me of calling her a horrible person for her triggers? which i never did and would never do, and then tried to make it a wierd anti v proshipper thing

third: I never said there’s no need of trans hcs in fandoms, BUT I’ve noticed that there’s a tendency of condemning people on the basis of what they ship / the dynamics they write. ( like the infinite discourse about how ‘I ship only mlm enemies to lovers because f/m enemies to lovers are Inherently Bad and Abusive - something I personally heard on Twitter sigh ), so I feel the need to say it. blame the current fandom climate.

and were like wow, this lady is unhinged, so we look around her blog and find a. a lot of stuff like saying its racist to not like incest?? and that italians arent white?? also shes a swerf?? and kind of deniel italian colonialsm? and reblogs from a bunch of out and out terfs} there was more but this isnt a callout post lol.

valentine lanzelet made a post about this crazy italian we found and she flipped out on him (this is one of several cursey italian tag rants)

roughly means: GO SHIT YOURSELF (italian alternative to go fuck you), RACIST TERF IS YOUR GRANDMOTHER IN A WHEELBARROW (italian saying which does not translate well) AND WHAT HAS ITALIAN COLONIALISM TO DO WITH THIS YOU UGLY SHIT, and anyways lancelot sucks

(translated by claudio beheaded)

anyway so then. and this is when it gets unhinged. she goes on this server me and a lot of my mutuals n friends r in, camelot, and starts complaining about me.

(in red is the server admin, who was lovely) i asked her to move this convo to dms if she must bc it was rude to bring drama into the server, and she refused, and started insisting that she was being bullied and just wanted to be left alone, so i was like okay lets all block each other and move on, and she refused, continuing to defend everything she was being criticized for

they also said claudio was making them look bad by translating their rants which like... queen if that made them look bad they were already a bad look.

so she keeps pinging people and replying to shit despite everyone else at this point begging her to just drop it and call it a stalemate

imagine this but around n around for like an hour. also she repeatedly got me and valentine confused it was super funny. also she claimed it was an invasion of her privacy for valentine to go on her public blog and look at the things she openly said and rbd there

so the server got put in slow mode and she KEPT GOING even though everyone was just begging her to stop and not even responding

as u can see, around this point we just started spamming her with emoji reactions. she announced she was leaving then went back to arguing a full three times before finally dipping from the server

then she continued complaining about us and calling us puriteens in her tags (trying to make it a proshipper v anti thing i guess lol?)

for literally months before finally remaking. also in that time she got in an argument about how the crusades were fine actually. italianphobia works hard but she works harder i guess

anyway i prolly left out a lot but thats the italian saga

[creepyimagines]

Me Rating the Creepypasta's and Marble Hornets Characters based on Fan Interpretation and content of character

《《 Because im original like that. Long-ish post warning.

Lemme know if you want a part 2 bc I can't do all the popular creepypasta's in one post》》

Jeff the Killer~ 6/10

Buff asshole who you wished you hated. Got some style to him, longer hair you dont see often. Interpreted as punk rock and I love that. -4 points for being emo

BEN Drowned~ 8/10

Love this boy. I love Legend of Zelda, especially Majora's mask, but that has nothing to do with this rating scale. He's always drawn and written as a punk-y gamer and lemme tell you when I said "mood" I meant "kin". But yeah glitchy aesthetic, cool ass tunic, and a short king. -2 points for age discourse :/

Eyeless Jack~ 9/10

Demon man go brrrr

but in all honesty, I can't find much wrong with him. Loner wolf style but medical genius, has some humor, but the tongue headcanons get weird. Love his mask though. Blue is his color. Also, "bUfF deMon mAn tAke mE by tHe hANd leAd ME to The lAnd-"

Laughing Jack~ 2/10

Bastard clown. Do not like. Not a fan. Im sorry all the clown simps for follow me. Keeps 2 points for being a weird and pretty original character all around. His goth clown aesthetic is pretty killer but I Do Not Like.

Jane the Killer~ 11/10

Crispy, iconic lesbian out for revenge. I cannot and will not go into more detail because she's perfect the way she is. Next.

Nina the Killer~ 4/10

We do be loving simps, but she's just a bit.... Eh. I love how the fandom reclaimed her and I absolutely adore her scene aesthetic, I just cannot get over the whole Jeff Simp thing. so -6 points for bad taste

Slender~ 8/10

Tired eldritch father trying to keep his homicidal kids alive. He tries his best and he hates his job. -2 points for not having a "Best Boss D A D" Mug.

Im not bothering with the other slender brothers sorry

⚠️MARBLE HORNETS SPOILERS⚠️

The Operator~ 5/10

Not exactly slendy in the sense you'd think but the more Marble Hornets centered fandoms interpretation of him. I personally like him as he's a force of nature that has no care of human emotions or lives. He is manipulative and power hungry. A good villian. -5 points choosing Alex to corrupt.

Alex~ 8/10

Craft bastard. I like his character for a few reasons. None of which I'll get into now but might later some other time. Fandom portrays him as some kind of mastermind and I love that no matter what. -2 points for incel vibes

[Lolol THE funniest thing to me is Joseph canonically saying, "Ah yeah, Alex fucks." on a stream]

Tim~ 10/10

College dude with PTSD just trying to have a normal life. He never got the ending he DESERVED but the fandom is merciful and so many fix-it fics exist. Tim is absolutely 100% a wonderful character.

Masky~ -100/10

WHAT HAPPENED DURING THAT TIME WHEN EVERYONE COLLECTIVELY WENT "OH YEAH HED A TWINK" AND NO ONE SAID ANYTHING???

Brian~ 3/10

Hes baby but everyone likes to forget that he's also bastard who can and has taken Alex down. He might not have been in co-con but he buff boy.

Hoodie~ 5/10

[siezure mention TW]

Bastard man who everyone loves. But the more cp part of the fandom is like "UwU he's quiet shy boy" forgetting that yeah he almost shot Alex and yeah he broke into Tim's home to steal his pills and watch him seize, knowing it would happen. But I digress. Still a complicated character that I do like.

Jay~ 8/10

My analysis on him is too extensive, excuse me while I go die. -2 for being dead but also Skully?

[lillupon]

So, I've got a very long rant/opinion here and Idk really know how to say this without coming off kinda bad but I'm gonna say it anyways. I agree with the fact that the seventeen tag has been kinda dry lately on most fanfic places, but it's really only in the smut area. It's the sane way with other groups too I feel like. All of the nice little innocent tags are boomin to this day and thats completely fine. I think the smut tag is dry tho bc lately I feel like a few social issues (like sexualizing people and disrespecting them and their identity) have crossed over into kpop and have been ?blown out of proportion? Lately there's been a rampage of people who like to say that writing smut about someone is disgusting and is dehumanizing because people want to assume that it would make the idols uncomfortable which could equate to some morality issues on how you are reducing someone only to their body without their consent and a bunch of stuff like that. It kind of pisses me off bc this is fiction. About grown adults. Clamping down on horny people who simp over hot asian men isn't going to solve the issues we face in real life. I think a shit ton is wrong with the world we currently live in, and deciding to come after something that isn't even real bothers me. Like what does that actually accomplish. But yeah, I think thats a reason why smut has been dying down. I mean, on youtube almost every video about unpopular opinions, or things they dont like about kpop will include something about shipping idols in fanfics. And then everyone in the comment section will talk about how its all fine and dandy in moderation, but once people start writing smut it's crossing the idols personal boundaries. It's something I've been seeing a lot more often and I think people who are interested in writing smut are being turned away from it bc we've gotten to a point where people are being called disgusting for having fantasies.

Hi Anon, thank you for sending in this Ask. 

I want to preface this by saying: when I write or talk about Mingyu and Wonwoo fucking on my blog, it is a fantasy. I am not speculating about what the real Mingyu and Wonwoo might be like in bed. I am imagining the versions of Mingyu and Wonwoo that I have created in my head, that exist only in my stories. None of it is real. I understand that this can be a blurry boundary for some people. But for me, the separation between fantasy and reality is well-defined. Now, on to your Ask!

You’ve hit the nail on the head with this one. You’ve also touched on many of the issues I have been struggling with myself as of late. It’s difficult to argue about morals since everyone has a different set of values, as well as different comfort levels. Some people think real person fiction (RPF) is a gross invasion of privacy. Others are fine with it. And others don’t care one way or another. There is no single answer; I can only offer my answer. Which means, of course, people are welcome to disagree with it, or parts of it. 

In this essay (LOL But forreal: this is an essay), I will be sharing my experience in the k-pop fanfic community from 2014 to present, the etiquette I personally abide by as a reader and writer of RPF, as well as my stance on RPF in general.

I started reading and posting fanfics back in 2014/2015 on a website called AsianFanfics (AFF). Obviously, no one on that site had a problem with RPF, since AFF is a platform made specifically for sharing stories about Asian celebrities. For many years, I read and enjoyed RPF with zero guilt. I scribbled away by myself in my own corner of fandom and curated my own content. I didn’t interact much with other fans, readers, or writers. I didn’t have a Twitter, and I only used tumblr to reblog memes. As a result, I’ve been able to avoid a lot of anti-shipping discourse, as well as purity and cancel culture. I had no idea there were so many negative opinions about RPF. It wasn’t until I became active on the subreddit r/Fanfiction last year that I learned about all the discourse surrounding RPF. 

This newfound ‘awareness’ does make me feel guilty at times—but only because after mulling this over, I still don’t think this is something to feel guilty about.

Here’s what I remember, first and foremost, when I create and consume RPF: fanfics and my favourite ships are fictional, and fiction is fantasy. This is basic etiquette when it comes to RPF, and most people in the k-pop fandom understand this. Delusional fans exist, of course, but they are not representative of the entire k-pop community. 

Another point of etiquette is to keep fanfics within fandom spaces. I would never push my fics into celebrities’ faces, or go around claiming that my fanfics are accurate representations of a k-idol’s life or personality, in any way, shape, or form. I would also discourage directing ship-related questions to official accounts, or bringing them up during fansigns or other face-to-face interactions; I believe that in these instances, shipping does have the potential to strain real-life relationships.

So with basic etiquette out of the way, let me share my approach to RPF in general.

As much as we like to think we know our favourite celebrities, we really don’t. All we see is their public persona. And this public persona is intentionally controlled, managed, and curated by a team of people: directors, tabloids, editors, makeup artists, publicists, etc. How “real” are these celebrities? We are so distanced from them that they may as well be fictional.

I draw from the public persona that idols project, and I work them into my own writing. But at the end of the day, these personalities are my own interpretation. My interpretation is probably nothing like an idol’s actual personality. I just use the “public persona/character” that idols portray as inspiration for my own stories, which are set in wildly different universes.

More than anything, I think of k-pop idols as “actors” in my fic. You know how when you write an original novel, you scroll through Google images, looking for the perfect person to portray your original character? RPF is literally that, except you might build upon pre-existing dynamics and personalities.

When it comes to explicit fanfiction, two main concerns are prevalent: one of consent, and one of sexualisation.

If we argue against explicit RPF due to lack of consent, we should be willing to apply the same lens to all explicit works. How do we know that the creator of a movie, book, series, etc., is okay with us using their characters in our stories, explicit or not? We don’t. Perhaps some creators encourage fanfiction, but don’t want their lovingly crafted characters engaging in sexual acts or experiencing trauma. We just don’t know. I feel this line is even more blurred when we talk about characters from movies or TV series.

Let’s take Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes, as portrayed by Chris Evans and Sebastian Stan, from the Captain America movies as an example. I am willing to bet that when people consume and create explicit fanfiction about Steve and Bucky, they are imagining Chris Evans and Sebastian Stan in their heads. I doubt many people are imagining the 2D cartoon versions of Steve and Bucky, even though they’re technically the exact same characters. Why? Well, it could be because movies are more readily and easily consumed than comics, and so people are unfamiliar with comic book Steve and Bucky. But it might also be because fans find Chris Evans and Sebastian Stan attractive. Is this really any different from RPF, where fic authors make up everything about a celebrity’s life?  

When readers and writers of fanfic talk about how hot Steve Rogers or Bucky Barnes is, those comments are about Chris Evans and Sebastian Stan’s bodies. When reading explicit stories, fans are going to picture Chris and Sebastian’s bodies in their head, doing sexual things. Can we say, “Well, it’s not really you, Chris/Sebastian”, when in a way, it is?

The reality is, people are going to thirst over celebrities, regardless of whether or not explicit fanfiction exists. They’re going to post thirst tweets on Twitter. They’re going to talk to friends and strangers online about how hot [insert celebrity name here] is. They’re going to fantasize about dating and having sex with their favourite celebrity. Or, as it is in my case, they’re going to make up stories in their heads about their favourite idols dating and banging each other. People are going to do all of this without ‘getting consent’ from the celebrity. Cracking down upon and shaming writers of RPF isn’t going to change any of that.

To be honest, I’m not sure why people think it is disgusting to imagine sexual scenarios about real people. It is okay and normal to have these kinds of fantasies. I suppose the alternative is to fantasise about having sex with cartoon characters instead? It’s a very binary way of thinking to say that if you imagine/write real people in explicit scenarios, you are immediately sexualising, dehumanising, or objectifying them. There is more to dehumanisation than writing smut about our favourite celebrities. For one thing, you can love someone and appreciate all parts of them, and still want to fuck their brains out. And generally, fanfics come from a place of love—love that is not only sexual in nature.

Is it the sharing aspect inherent to fanfiction? The possibility that a celebrity might stumble upon explicit works about them? The chances are very low, I think, of the k-pop idols I enjoy writing about coming across my English fics. But I also believe in curating your own content, and that applies to celebrities too. Perhaps a celebrity should not go searching for fanfics about themselves. And of course, people should not show celebrities their fanfics, unless invited.

Another argument I hear against (explicit) RPF is, “How would you feel if someone wrote fanfiction about you?” First off, I don’t like this argument because there’s a difference between someone who decides to be a public figure versus someone who decides to remain a regular private citizen. Celebrities should and do know what they’re getting into when they choose their occupation. (This is not to say, “They are celebrities; sexualise them all you want because that’s what they signed up for.” Here, I am only acknowledging that people might have sexual fantasies about celebrities they are attracted to. Presumably, celebrities are cognizant of this.)  

If someone (whose existence I am not even aware of, mind you) decides they want to write explicit fanfiction of me in some tiny corner of the Internet, I wouldn’t care so long as: (1) they don’t shove it into my face, and (2) they don’t harass me and ask invasive questions about my personal life and relationships. It’s not hurting me or negatively affecting my life, so it wouldn’t even register as a blip on my radar. When fanfiction remains within its appropriate spaces, it is largely harmless. 

Now, if a k-pop idol were to ask their fans to stop writing fanfiction about them, would I? Yes, I would. However, I can’t imagine that happening. Judging by the number of ‘sexy’ concepts, fanservice moments, and variety shows such as ‘We Got Married’, I am certain that k-pop idols realise they are the stars of many fantasies—some of which are explicit in nature. Considering the prevalence of shipping in the k-pop industry, I would argue that shipping is subtly encouraged.

It’s sad that so many talented writers are shamed out of fandom, or feel that k-pop cannot be the medium through which they tell their stories, or explore their sexuality, or cope with trauma, or simply have fun. Professional works and Hollywood love their RPF—readers and writers of fanfics should be able to, as well. 

As you said Anon, “clamping down on horny people who simp over hot asian men isn't going to solve the issues we face in real life” (this is a lovely sentence, by the way). The kind of person who dehumanises another and reduces them to a sexual object will do so some other way, if not via fanfiction. I don’t think the issue of fetishisation can be fixed simply by telling people not to write explicit RPF. In my experience, people who read and write RPF are more respectful and thoughtful about these things than the general public. We’ve all seen the general public say highly sexual things about celebrities in the media and to their faces, or tag celebrities in their thirst tweets. Are these things less invasive than fanfiction? Personally, I don’t think so. And in my opinion, there are more pressing and damaging issues in stan culture than fanfic.

In conclusion, I don’t think there is anything wrong with creating and consuming RPF, both explicit and non-explicit so long as we:

Remember we are writing fiction

Keep RPF within its appropriate space, and

Do not harass celebrities about their personal lives and relationships

RPF is not for everyone. There may be people who enjoy RPF, but draw the line at explicit stories. This is fine. Everyone has their own personal preferences. What is not fine, however, is attacking people for creating things you don’t like. I’m not sure what kind of moral crusade people are on and what they hope to achieve by shaming writers of RPF, explicit or otherwise. Ultimately, fic authors are writing a fantasy. It’s not real; no one is being hurt. I think it’s important for people to curate their own content, and AO3 makes it very easy to filter out explicit works and unwanted tags. 

Maybe this is me trying to justify my own participation in explicit RPF—I don’t know. What I do know is that I love k-pop, and fandom is an important part of my media and entertainment experience. I adore the k-pop idols I write about, and I just want to imagine them being happy and getting lots of love and orgasms. Let a bitch be horny, goddamn… 

Some bonus fun facts!

At the time I am writing this, on AO3:

26.2% of Stray Kids fanfics are rated M or E

26.3% of Seventeen fanfics are rated M or E

29.0% of Merlin fanfics are rated M or E

34.9% of Captain America (Movies) fanfics are rated M or E

40.1% of BTS fanfics are rated M or E ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Coincidentally, I saw this post on Reddit this morning: Can we have a RPF positivity post?

[periwinkle-sky202]

Your own ocs

tmy favorite female character

Out of ALL my ocs,,, thats so hard. I adore Mary, Isabelle, Chords, Anna, and Ezra a lot tho!!

My favorite male character

*points at the jones twins* can i get more of these little traumatized bitches even tho jasons nb-

Man fuck it in adding this

my favorite enby character

Jason, Artie, Kas, Them. I love these guys. Theyre all wild

My favorite book/season/etc

Im gonna do this as ‘what story i’ve made is my favorite’ and thats probably the old fantasy world i made with my friend!!! It was so much fun to make and develop, i love making stories and worlds with people

My favorite cast member

Haha thats me

My favorite ship

I could write an essay on the ships i adore.  And i will they’ll be under a read more at the bottom,

A character I’d die defending

Uhhh None!! My characters have unlikable qualities and fuck up all the time! My favorite ocs are assholes! I dont feel the need to defend them, some of them are bastards and should be addressed as such

A character I just can’t sympathize with

Im not sure! Not all my characters are sympathetic at all, but I have next to no characters that I like,,,, despise? Besides Gerald whos a shitty abusive dad but thats abt it!! Fuck gerald. I don’t ‘sympathize’ with many of my characters tbh!! I feel bad for them sometimes, but they usually get good endings!

A character I grew to love

I SWEAR JASON HAS THE BIGGEST GLOW UP IN TERMS OF CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT AND REWORKING LIKE MY GUY IM SO SORRY YOU WERE ORIGINALLY JUST AN EDGY ‘gonna kill people cause im evil’ BUT ITS OK THEY’RE BETTER NOW.

My anti otp

obv anything goin against my ocs sexualities and also anything just,,,, grody i Despise. its never happened but i amn ready to fight

ALSO

I dont think i can ever forget the time i was talkin to someone(dont remember who) abt Hell Office and the comment was made that jonas and jamison would be cute together and let me tell you that was a one hit ko for a multitude of reasons. The main one being that it made me realize if Hell Office was an actual story with a large enough fandom,,,, some people,,, somewhere,,, would ship them. No Matter What I Would Say they are two white men with a power imbalanced relationship, someone would ship them. the discourse would be Unbridled. My sorrow unlimited. Good thing im bad at focusing long enough to make a popular comic and jonas is in a Healthy Relationship that is on the list below!

Also jamison is aro/ace but that feels less important than the fact hes the worst esp to jonas

ANYWAYS to the ships i like

Jonas/Phoenix

Obvious one! Love these dumbasses. i just think they’re neat and im glad they wound up together. i cant comment much on phoenix’s side of this since they’re not my oc, (Owned by my pal @theartsyskeleton !!)  but its a great thing for Jonas. Jonas is a grumpy jackass who up until now didn’t know what he was going to be up until he met Phoenix. fuck, i didnt either!! but they’re together and i think they’re great together. Phoenix’s kindness works well with Jonas’s. y’know. Grumpiness. and they make each other happy!! its fantastic!!

Maia/Glacius

i wont go completely off on this one but i love them!!!! they’re great parents!! again! cant comment too much from Maia’s side bc she belongs to Willow, but Glacius saw a lady who was genuinely kind and he fell in love so fast, but just didn’t say shit bc he didn’t wanna bother her and he loved being her friend!! This ship is just.. friends to lovers in the sweetest way

Jason/Desmond

THEY GOT THEIR ISSUES BUT,,,, They’re good. or. they try to be good! I like this ship because im biased they’re just. two hurt people trying to hang onto someone they can trust who shows them love. On Jason’s side, they’ve been on their own for so long and has never had anyone see them as anything other than the ‘weird person down the street’ or ‘childish.’ Desmond is someone who 1. Showed romantic interest in them, 2. treated them as a mature equal, and 3. was just,,, the first person they made an emotional connection with in a long long time. On Desmond’s side, he’s spent his whole life trying to look after everyone around him and keep them safe from people like Xiana and Isla, and Jason is one of the first people that have been willing to protect him, and they make him feel safe and heard when he wants to talk/vent about everything hes been through.

Their relationship definitely isn’t perfect, though, and I know this! Jason has convinced themself that Desmond is a perfect person who can’t be wrong, and Desmond still tries to take care of everyone and fix everything around him, including him not wanting to tell Jason things they’re doing wrong and just wanting to help them out of every hard situation they’re in.Their relationship isn’t great!! They’ve decided each other are their only emotional support and want to go through everything with each other so they’re also pretty clingy! But! I still think this relationship is interesting and i like them they just need Work

[jewpacabruhs]

hi guys! so this post is gonna be a rambly mess but fuck it, here ya go. if u dont wanna read all of it, u dont have to; skip down to underneath the tl;dr in bold text for the important bits :)

(there’s a brief & non-graphic mention of a triggering topic in the next paragraph. please be sure to skip this next paragraph if the thought of suicide is going to upset you.)

alright. so i didn't share this originally, but i spent some time in a psychiatric unit this month. suicidality related. 1000% unrelated from anything online, i've just struggled with depression for a very long time & shit happens. i didn't intend to share that at all & i certainly don't want pity; i'm telling u guys bc my time in the unit was extremely eye-opening, and i have some insight to share. since i've gotten out, with the help of my newest anti-depressant (fourth time’s a charm lol), i'm seeing the world in a better light & i finally have the energy to and the interest in exploring what it has to offer, which frankly i've never had before.

with that has come the realization that i’ve come to do something very unhealthy, and i want to break out of it. and that’s how much i’ve come to rely on my fandom life. i don’t want to get too candid publicly, but mental illness took a lot from me, and i lost most of my life, my future, and my options in the last few years. next year will involve a lot of working on rebuilding things. but in the time that i let things fall to pieces around me & i absolutely couldn’t get out of bed, i had a phone and i had a laptop. so when i couldn’t get up and physically face the world, i built up a new world online.

and i don’t think that’s a completely uncommon experience. most people are able to better manage things, and evenly juggle real life with an internet life (like i did back in middle school), because most people can’t abandon their real lives entirely like i managed to; but i do think a lot of people nowadays rely on their fandom life and their fandom friends when their irl situation isn’t ideal. and that’s an excellent coping mechanism in theory, but i think it’s debilitating in the long run.

forgive me for sounding like an old person, but i’m a heavy nostalgist and a bit of an anarcho-primitivist in that i resent modern technology's influence on society - but that hasn't stopped me from letting it be a big part of my life out of accessibility. the internet kept me occupied during my low points, and i became dependent, but i've realized i don't wanna live like that anymore. i’m vaguely grateful that it usually kept me busy enough that i wasn’t thinking the bad thoughts as frequently, but more than anything, i’m resentful that my grasp on reality got lost somewhere along the way, and i let time get away from me, too. because, again, an internet life should be a fun hobby, but when it’s a lifestyle and it becomes an excuse to avoid dealing with our real lives, bc our real lives aren’t as rewarding or as exciting, then it’s unhealthy.

everything’s at our fingertips these days, but i deeply believe human interaction, fun, and fulfillment shouldn't be spoon-fed to us through a screen. it's easy access, sure, but at the end of the day, is it any way to live? compared with how much world there is to see, i’m no longer satisfied with the thought of sitting behind a screen for another five years. i used to be, when i had no hope and no drive, but not anymore. i’m not gonna let myself settle for staying busy with the thing that takes the least amount of work & movement. not only because i’m a whole ass adult who needs to start sorting my shit out for the long run, but also because i deserve better.

and it’s fucking hard! especially for those of us who are neurodivergent. i dropped out of school three fucking times due to crippling social anxiety and utter lack of ambition and energy. i lost all my friends through that (making friends post-school is hard af); the thought of having to go out and remake friends makes me wanna fucking cry. i have a hard enough time making friends online, i’ve even come to struggle with correspondence thru text & email. phone calls? outta the question. but that’s therapy shit, and i know i’ll get there. i just have to stop putting life off by staying in a comfort zone.

and it’s interesting; depression and anxiety really took everything from me, and while i was dwelling in my own misery, my adhd worsened and decided to make my entire brain revolve around my fixations, so i didn’t have to deal with my own life. can’t think about how much you wanna die and how much you can’t function in society if you’re busy thinking about a ship you like or a character you find interesting. so i latched onto the safety of that. aggressively. problem with that is that once you let your “happiness” (as much of it as you can feel in the midst of your depressive episode, anyway) revolve around an interest, that’s all you have. so you become dependent and reliant, and that’s never good, especially if you’re someone like me who feels pathetic & ridiculous when you realize it’s all you can bring yourself to care about. 

and i think that’s what i realized in the psych ward (where there’s legitimately nothing to do; i did soooo much more thinking than usual, and i already think too much haha); mental illness will try to fuck up your lifestyle, so you have to eradicate the things that’ll let that happen in the first place. for example, like i said, my adhd tries to counteract my depression by making me hyperfixate and/or hyperfocus on something else to protect me from bad personal thoughts, and that’s good in theory (doing something you enjoy when you feel bad, to distract urself, is the number one most basic coping skill you learn), but i can’t do it in moderation, i let it run my life, and that’s made me worse in the long run. so i have to force myself out of that completely and not let myself fixate on things that make me happy in the short term, but don’t ultimately further me as a person. having fixations helped me through some awful times, but now i need to force myself to grow up, you know?

and while tumblr and other social media is an excellent way to indulge those fixations, it’s an aggressive enabler, in more ways than one. what i mean by that... okay, so while i’m the type of person who self-destructs while unhealthy, i do occasionally lash out. and i know some people completely explode rather than implode when they’re not doing well. and that’s how you get discourse, i think. because when mental illness makes us care much more about our interests than we ought to, and someone has a differing opinion about that interest, the instinct is of course to attack, if you’re that kind of person. i don’t think i am, but depression and boredom go hand in hand, and i might be inclined to care more about discourse than i would if i were healthy, purely because it’s entertaining and something to do. 

that’s a long winded way of saying, while i stand wholeheartedly by my past positions, i do regret starting shit in the first place. i’m not the kind of person who genuinely cares about much and i have little to no sense of morality (im a chaotic neutral bastard), so the fact i was bored enough to start shit really goes against my character and says a lot about how bad i’ve been. so i apologize for all that. but, again, i think that's just what happens when something is truly your everything. and i think the chronic negativity of modern fandom is a result of how damn seriously we all take it, because we care so much and we’re so dependent. fandom’s supposed to be fun, but it’s just too damn stressful this way.

idk my point in sharing all this, but i do think it'd be cool if this kinda got yall thinking. even if you don't engage in discourse, if fandom is just one of your only consistent sources of happiness, that's not healthy either. we all gotta break out & exist more & louder & more positively. and unfortunately i think tumblr fandom (and maybe all modern fandom) is no longer a place that encourages positivity and health.

but for all my criticism, i do just wanna say how eternally grateful i am that i was fortunate enough to meet the people i call my best friends through tumblr. they're my family, truly, and all the bullshit in this fandom has been worth it simply because it brought them to me. i love them to death and i always will, even if interests change, even if we grow apart, even if we quit speaking entirely in the next few years, i love them with my whole heart in a way that transcends a simple fandom friendship and i'm so glad we bonded over sp in the first place. that’ll never change.

i will also always love south park itself. now that the cat's outta the bag about my hospital visit, i can brag about my most pathetic and obsessive accomplishment; the fact that i've never let circumstance stop me from watching a new south park as it airs, and i've now watched sp on 1) an airplane, and 2) in a psych ward. i win for most dedicated fan tbfh. dsjkf & i'll keep that tradition, and i'll still watch this stupid show til it ends! it'll always hold a special place in my heart, & kyman's still my most meaningful & long-term ship. i'll never stop loving it. 

tl;dr

so, to recap; for 2020 i'm making myself step back from fandom (not just sp fandom, but fandom in general) and quit letting my world revolve around my fixations so i can enjoy the outside world a little more, mental illness be damned, and the first step is gonna be quitting tumblr. this blog won't be deleted and i may occasionally post (maybe when next season airs) but you're absolutely free to unfollow bc this'll be a mostly inactive blog. i’m also unfollowing everyone, so mutuals, please don’t take that personally. 

i will, however, try to write more prolifically, bc fic writing is something i'm able to do in moderation & enjoy, and i hope to get back into it. so if you'd like, you can keep an eye out for any upcoming fanfic i may post - my ao3 is leere. i also have snapchat, instagram, & twitter my mutuals can ask for asap (bc ill be logging out for good by the afternoon of the 31st, which is tomorrow) - though i'm not very active on any of them. still, if you wanna have access to me, i’ll be there.

i want some connection to the fandom still, albeit without letting my life revolve around it, so i'll be starting a new open-to-the-public kyman discord server! the post with the invite for that will go up soon. nvm im too anxious  

thank you for reading, thank you for the good times (thnks fr th mmrs), and i hope everyone has a good 2020! 

[macklives]

i dont technically hardcore ship kids buuuut i will say “fuck thats hecking cute” to any and all pairings and join in on the fun wholesome content. for example, if you give me fanart, give me fics, give me headcanons, then im already sold on how adorable that specific pairing will be bc theres now some quality content to explore. as long as its not toxic, disgusting or impractical.

god okay, get motherfucking ready guys.

now, i may rant a bit on the matter to further explain my point of view on shipping in this comic and how i will go around it lol. sorry for the long note. there’s a tldr at the end.

honestly, idc who gets together, bc i just want the kids to be happy and if the pairing is happy together, thats all that matters to me. i just dont like taking shipping to the extreme, yknow. (which means having nsfw stuff for kids and flipping out if one ship is canon when another really should be. similar to many other fandoms who have those problems and i just.. dont get why?) anyways, thats not to say i will freak out if a cute pairing of mine becomes canon and especially if the rep is nice. and honestly? ill probably freak out for any canon ship as long as its healthy and theyre both happy - as ive mentioned. keep in mind im still a fan lmao, i will prob participate in the recurring ship talk and discourse bc ugh it can be so fucking cute.

anyways, regarding what we have now, i honestly like all pairings atm (obviously between the kids only and not some cursed ones ive heard about which i refuse to get into). all their interactions are so unique and cute and quite adorable. davejade is wholesome. johnrose is valid. i also like jaderose, daverose and johndave. which technically is almost every possible pairing lmfao. sometimes my opinion can vary, sometimes things could happen to make my view on that specific pairing to change. and sometimes new people come into the picture which allows me to explore more potential candidates that i think would be better for that characters rather than just having a ship to progress the plot further. if that makes sense. it always depends, doesnt it? (so keep in mind you can ask me if i ever have changed my opinion on a specific ship, character, ect in the future)

and of course, there’s a big difference between who i think are going to get together and who i wouldnt mind getting together despite canonical evidence that it wont happen. which i wont get into unless yall want me to talk about in depth who likes who and how it will probably impact the relationships of the characters vs how it should be.. well, not “fixed”, but what could be another alternative if a specific relationship seems to have its downfalls. 

however, i doubt there’s going to be any “endgame” ships bc homestuck is more prone to story telling than romance. it’s a webcomic for plot and probable character growth rather than making people’s ships come true. meaning shipping is a concept that andrew will give you, and he will give you all types of interaction so you’re free to ship what you want. however, he’ll leave it open without giving us an ultimate pairing. which is where i think this comic will go. i may be wrong. but it seems the most likely situation.

so shipping is all fun and games but things happen, not everything becomes canon and even if i have theories on future relationships, i will only analyze what we were given and not necessarily based on non-canonical evidence. so as much as i like crackships (and boy do i have fun in crackships, lets be real), because this is a liveblog, i wont be able to get into depth with false claims on a ship if there’s literally nothing to go on. however, pls expect joke ships to happen. if i say cake #42 wants to be with john’s fake arms, so be it. that was a fun time on the discord, man. i love joking around but then again, they are just jokes. im not actually shipping them. its similar to how i view dave and AT. they got married duh. yet thats a joke. something i will bring up again, but that never means im serious about it. (besides imp soap opera. thats becoming massively real now, isnt it. a liveblog inside joke that got way out of hand and is now canon.)

anyways, romance is a nice bonus treat for everyone as they read a webcomic which is not centered around it. and of course ill analyse the possibilities of what we could get and how characters will go through it based on their personalities and past experiences, but i dont think itll become a main part of homestuck as of now. perhaps something.. could happen in the future? and ill keep my hopes of some pairings getting together. but, overall, i will be happy with whatever we get and i refuse to bitch about how some ship is better than the other and be mad at homestuck in its entirety. because andy here is not trying to portray a romcom, he’s making an actual story.

wow, i kind of went off a little on what you were trying to ask in the first place, but i feel this was a nice place to get that out there and explain how ill perceive shipping in homestuck. all so i wont have to explain this for the future when characters potentially start getting together. which is to say, ill enjoy shipping characters on my hs experience, hell, ill even participate in it, but they are 13 and i have my limits.

cool. i feel like i just wrote a philosophy book.

tldr; shipping is a nice gateway in a fandom, i like pretty much anything as long as its not toxic and theyre happy together. expect character/relationship analyses in the future. 

[actualbird]

yo you totally made me think about low empathy michael and it like totally makes sense and i think about it a lot when i listen to two player game bc ye like he OBVIOUSLY cares a lot about jeremy and he loves him and like jeremy's stating his problem and michael keeps saying the same solution cause like "that's the answer bro, don't be down" bc he cant wrap his head around the emotions and connect w them that well so in his mind he's just saying this completely fool proof solution i love this hc

yo i got this ask while balls deep in three books of discourse analysis i could only understand by like 10% but because of that was in the mood to just. keep thinking my brain in circles.

so heres a stupidly long answer cataloging canon instances of michael being low empathy af/exhibiting other traits related to this. along with like, characterization to extrapolate from that (at least by my own personal interpretation. obligatory disclaimer that how i see characters is not law, this is just My Take). 

but before that, im gonna define some terms outright so we’re all on the same page. empathy is a person’s capability to understand and feel what others are feeling. basically how well you can put yourself in somebody else’s shoes. this shouldnt be confused with sympathy, which is feeling compassion, pity, sorrow etc. for another. empathy is recognition/replication while sympathy is more on the caring about it. here i focus on empathy and the lack of it. 

im not an expert on Anything but speaking from experience as somebody who has very low empathy, this causes some complications. when you dont feel what others are feeling, sometimes you dont notice other people’s feelings at all. this results in stuff like bluntness, trouble reading social cues, insensitivity, etc. all things that 1) may happen unintentionally, 2) can be worked through via healthy communication, 3) are not inherently bad, just a result of how one reacts to external emotions and 4) things i totally think michael exhibits because hes a low empathy goblin i love with my whole heart. 

let’s get right into it. in more than survive, right after jeremy and michael discover their boyf riend backpacks, this exchange occurs

this seems pretty normal at first glance but it is the first instance of what seems to be michael’s go-to pattern for when he notices his best friend is feeling down, which, at least, kudos to michael, he very obviously noticed jeremy’s feelings. hurrah! so his process for how to fix this goes a little like “step 1: notice jeremy is upset. step 2: cheer jeremy up! step 3: unknowingly kinda mess up step 2“

jeremy is upset about the backpacks but then jeremy provides an out with something supposedly positive. michael latches on to it. it turns out to be negative. michael tries to salvage the situation by cheering jeremy up! by giving him a cool science fact! hell yeah! except it’s a shaky save at best because he does call the both of them losers but in an “it’s okay :D” way. 

all in all this is nothing really, just some friendly fast paced banter between best friends. whats important here is the 3 step pattern aforementioned because it 1) shows that michael Cares about his best friend and tries to make things better and 2) is BASICALLY the entirety of two player game

TWO PLAYER GAME is such a BOP and, at its core, is a song about how michael has got jeremy’s back and vice versa. but tpg is also textbook the 3 step pattern with added sprinkle of unintended invalidation. ive briefly spoken about tpg before so this might look a lil familiar but at its gist:

like you said anon, in tpg jeremy tells michael a problem he has, and throughout the course of the song, he continually makes it known that hes upset and has a lot of issues. step 1 has been achieved: michael knows jeremy is not doing too hot. time to do step 2: cheer him up!! and what better way to do that than to think positive with his trademark line “guys like us are cool in college” like, over and over again. because….it makes sense for michael. things might suck now, but just keep swimming yeah? it’ll be better later.

but it’s not better now and thats what jeremy actually needed validation on. michael thinks the solution is to look to the future but jeremy has his problems bothering him in the present. for all that michael says this is a two player game, he’s unintentionally dismissive because he doesnt understand that this isnt something that can be fixed with a simple “look forward to two years from now” mentality. neither of them are in the wrong, really. theyre just not on the same page.

onwards we go to something else entirely. the chili fries

this is a RIDICULOUSLY SMALL MOMENT but it stuck out to me because imo it is pretty obvious that jeremy says “leave me alone” because hes bummed and is being dramatic, but michael takes it literally and uses the opportunity to skedaddle and get his sweet sweet discontinued soda. im aware michael had to be gone for plot reasons and also the discontinued soda is foreshadowing for the mtn dew red, but taken at face value, this is something that happens a lot w/ low empathy: things are taken literally. 

jeremy is upset. jeremy said to give him some space. thats cool, i’ll go for a bit and come back with something neat that might cheer him up—hey, where’d he go?

and now let’s jump to something everybody and their dog knows about. michael in the bathroom. except not really. because mitb isnt what interests me so much as what happens before.

pre mitb is very, very interesting. before i say anything i’ll be clear in saying that literally nobody had even remotely a nice halloween night, it’s a disaster for everybody involved, but keep in mind that jeremy goes into the pre mitb scene immediately after the clusterfuck that is do you wanna hang and also getting chased down by a sloshed but aggressive jake. many people have said this before me but i’ll say it again: jeremy was not doing well. at all. 

and this is where michael fails step 1 of his pattern. he doesnt pick up on this at all. michael is kinda stuck in his own head right now. hes pissed. hes confused. hes betrayed. he cant understand other people’s feelings and now he has to deal with his own too. his head is a melting pot of AGH and he takes it out on jeremy. yeah, he tries to help jeremy, but he doesnt do it very well. it’s all very accusatory, and jeremy just had a terrible night, so jeremy lashes out.

teenagers are bad at emotions but theyre not bad people for it.  //cue mitb notes, we know the drill

to the play!!! 

recap for maximum contextualization: jeremy realizes the squip is bad fucking news and wants it gone. michael makes an entrance with the one thing that can kill it. and then this happens

AIGHT okay so the whole “i need an apology” scene is obviously played for comedy, and it does a good job at suddenly diffusing the end of the world stakes with some more down to earth teen friend drama but that aside, this scene is a good candidate to be listed under the definition of the phrase “bad timing” because michael, holy shit. BAD TIMING. like great timing for humor but bad timing as a human being. 

here we have jeremy clearly in possessed distress and michael has the antidote but he only wants to give it on a condition. it is absolutely a dick move. yeah, michael is is valid for wanting an apology, but not at this moment with the current stakes. this is michael thinking pretty selfishly. hes stuck in his own head and his own thoughts. he cares about jeremy and wants to help but…this apology important to him. it’s easy to get stuck on things like this when you cant empathize with others. the low empathy means that the only feelings you really get to really interact with are your own, so theres a tendency to focus on them. sometimes even at inopportune moments.

unintentional asshole-ery behold. in fact, this can be pushed even harder by this snippet in the score of be more chill that had some lines from an earlier draft. 

the fetus version of michael makes an entrance is hilariously low empathy, oh my god. this happens while jeremy is rolling around on the floor fighting an invisible-to-everybody-else squip and this is the first thing michael says. it’s positively dickish. 

SO with that done, a little bit can be extrapolated in terms of characterization. i think michael is low empathy so the dominos fall. michael is terrible at feelings. hes got a tendency to get stuck in his own head and not see what others are going through. his emotional periphery is abysmal, hes like a horse with those things that stop horses from looking to the side. in spite of all this, he still has a lot of love and good in his heart and he tries his best to show that in the ways that make sense to him. post-canon, the rift between his brain and jeremy’s brain can only be bridged by a big healthy heap of communication where michael learns that what makes sense to him isnt always what makes sense to other people. hes a good kid. he can do it. 

of course this is, again, all my take. the fun thing about transformative work and fandom is that all interpretations are valid and there will always be somebody out there who agrees. or disagrees. but on this blog, this is my michael. or at least one aspect of my michael. //shrug

ANYWAY im glad you like the hc anon!! ive obviously got a lot of feelings about it since i used your ask as an excuse to aimlessly ramble for, holy shit, 1.6 k words lmao. i hope you have a good day!!!

[joculatrixster]

I posted 7,601 times in 2022

That's 780 more posts than 2021!

581 posts created (8%)

7,020 posts reblogged (92%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

inkstaindusk

ace-in-the-quiver

doodlebeeberry

asavt

I tagged 7,549 of my posts in 2022

Only 1% of my posts had no tags

#mod trix - 707 posts

#reblog for l8ter - 552 posts

#loz - 517 posts

#lol - 440 posts

#cookie run - 437 posts

#pokemon - 359 posts

#link - 285 posts

#yup - 217 posts

#zephyr - 178 posts

#cookie run kingdom - 166 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#as long as they respect skintones acting like a black person cant have big eyes or tiny noses is wwell gross! especially in a stylized styl

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

The current discourse revolving around Affogato Cookie is literally just Aloe Cookie but genderbent.

YUP i said it in my reply to anon its not about HIM specifically its a FANDOM WIDE ISSUE the fact this keeps happening is the issue. as one of the only fandoms w/ MULTIPLE CANON nonbinary and gnc cookies we cant keep forcing gender roles on cookies then acting a fool when they dint align w/ our assumptions this kind of thing is what makes pll not want to explore their genders because then they'll feel like there something else to them like they have to be gay or nonbianry. like i get u guys want to express thise hcs but the problem is i NEVER see ppl say cookies like cheesecake or chocolate bonbon are nonbinary or trans women no its always sour belt or aloe. why does Affogato HAVE to be a trans man or nonbinary but not dark cacao...? think about why u guys chose the LITTERAL man in a dress for ur trans hcs but not the strong heroic kingdom leader. thats fucked up. and trans men can hc whayever the FUCK they want i dont care but cis ppl and other trans ppl are ALSO buying into it and being upset he wasn't a she/her or they/them. thats when i get the issue. because this shit never spreads in the fandom unless a cookie is gnc and yall wanted them to be the opposite gender or nonbinary. if u make trans hcs even subconsciously because u dont like the assigned gender of a character thats. fucked. up.

this is coming from a bitch w/ a mostly trans and nonbinary friend group who loves dresses, skirts, and leggings im very much fem irl but i do not use she/her online. anyone coming across this in the tags pls stop assuming if someone disagrees w/ u they r automatically an enemy to ur cause lmao just tell me if u disagree and we can have a talk about it

36 notes - Posted February 25, 2022

#4

btw if u think kumiho is a slut/whore genuinely i hate u so much if u think its ok to insult her like that i want u hunted for sport

38 notes - Posted February 5, 2022

#3

if ur harassing ppl over info that came in a brand new update ur a bad person i dont care if canonly or heavily implied the dragons r all related the devs JUST dropped this info and ships like Ananas x Pitaya have been around for years. let ppl hae time to see the new info and change their stances on stuff yall r too fucking rude and stupid to understand that sometimes ppl dont play updates or dont have all the info before u run ur mouths istg

46 notes - Posted July 14, 2022

#2

FELLAS IS IT GAY TO-

60 notes - Posted October 5, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

dear cookie run mutuals! i just got a reply on my post about how Cream Unicorn canonly did kidnap children(not even mentioning modifying 2 adults body w/out their consent) that was condescending and also woobifed cream unicorn cookie. once again fandom ppl assume when i point out the flaws of my favs it means im being malicious and misunderstand canon as if im an idiot newbie who doesnt understand what motivation is so i obviously make posts w/ouit understand that no bc ur fav was sad/lonely they get to do whatever they want

u know what that means?

war. this means war.

im gonna start Cream Unicorn cookie is a bit fucked up propaganda now. join me in my cause of being petty bc someone didnt bother to read my tags on my post for the millionth time!

Cream Unicorn cookie is a faerie who IS fucked up that DOESNT mean they r evil but it does mean they lack general human morales and will do things like *checks notes* kidnap children and keep them bc they r lonely bc they do not understand other ppl may like *check notes* not want to be trapped in a fantasy world forever! wow! look at that a valid interpretation of a character based off canon facts that doesn't woobify my fav or ignore their actions. ik its crazy to see it!

if u wish to see more of this join me in the cause!

63 notes - Posted July 28, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[janiedean]

(part 1) ur gonna roast me for this but im legit curious why mafia AUs are so bad? im asking in a non confrontational way, i get it romanticizing mafia is wrong, but i also believe that 1)most mafia AUs are a really toned down type of mafia;2)they do make for some interesting kinds of dynamics with fanart and with fics; 3)in a fic specifically u can create your own world and call something mafia and still make it so they don't kill innocent people but only idk members of other gangs or sth

(part 2) plus theyre a way to put ur charas in a completely diff context and see what theyll do. i mean i dont believe that writing ships in a certain context (like mafia) equals romanticizing that context. mafia AUs arent even my fav things to read (in fact i almost never do), im sure many ppl romanticize it and i obvs dont agree with that but im just trying to udnerstand bc i believe fandoms are a way to explore things that we normally wouldnt.

I’m not gonna roast you don’t worry xD okay wait let me check if I replied to this already if yes I’m gonna c/p because it’s half past midnight otherwise I’ll just go at it again wait *checks tags* fff obviously I don’t have a general post but anyway pls read this after you’ve done with my post and then this which is also choke-full of links. plus for a (not nice) laugh: here. AH WAIT I FOUND THE POST.

okay, so, let’s have it out of the way: I have nothing against mob aus or crime aus. I have a problem against calling them mafia AUs because in the US mafia = organized crime at large, in Italy mafia = ACTUAL EXISTING ORGANIZATIONS THAT ARE ACTIVELY HARMFUL. now that I introduced the topic I’ll c/p you the reply I gave to another anon who while discussing the issue pointed out that most writers don’t even know Italian mafia is a thing, which is pretty much on the same discourse so...

*The thing is - in the US it might not be enough of a deal anymore and I honestly do get why people make the mafia = regular mobsters, since the mafia was the first foreign organized crime being exported to the US via italian immigrants (sorry if this sounds horrible in English but I just woke up and I still didn’t have coffee) so I understand that mafia became the umbrella term.But the thing is that - as you said, these people don’t even know that there’s a mafia in Italy anymore or where the word comes from.

 I’m going to link to italiansreclaimingitaly’s tag about the mafia and its perception outside Italy because they posted about this extensively and it’s an excellent resource, but meanwhile I’m gonna do a very short bullet point list and about the topic:

Mafia might not be a big deal in the US, but it still is here. We have the beauty of four different mafias (Cosa Nostra - the Sicilian one, camorra which is the one in Campania but has tendrils spread everywhere, the 'ndrangheta which is in Calabria and the Sacra Corona Unita in Puglia) which are all active [especially camorra and 'ndrangheta] and whose actions have direct impact (negative) on our economy and on our society. Actually mafias are one of the main reasons we’re currently economically fucked up, and if I start talking about how mafia culture keeps some areas literally backwards I could talk about it for three months.

There are still people who are killed for standing up against them. These days the most prominent personality is Roberto Saviano who is a writer who dared to put together a book documenting minutely the way camorra works and he’s been living under protection for years by this point. Like, they want him dead because he wrote a book. And I’m sorta sure that he was talking about leaving Italy and going to the US after years of sticking with it here because he can’t take it anymore but I don’t know if it was a taken decision or if it’s still debating it.

It wasn’t even thirty years ago that we had the stragi di mafia - in english it’d be something like the mafia slaughters, basically around the beginning of the nineties there were a number of bombs planted by the mafia targeting people who were trying to oppose it including judges Falcone and Borsellino, actually the anniversary of Falcone’s death is like... tomorrow. And they’ve killed people for way longer than that. Here is a list of only Cosa Nostra victims including the ones from the eighties/nineties. And people are still dying because of it. The slaughters I’m referring to are just the ones in the nineties which are enough of a number.

They also perpetuate a culture where if you testify against your mafia-employed relatives you’ll be shunned forever. There are women who testified against their families and couldn’t see their children anymore never mind that they weren’t automatically considered a relative anymore the moment they sided against the mafia. Some people have committed suicide after becoming witnesses also because our police force/justice system can be terribly non-supportive in this kind of situation so they got left on their own. Never mind that back in the day - it was the beginning of the nineties? - I recall at least a particular story of - I think, correct me if I remember wrong but I can’t remember the names for the life of me - where this guy testified against the local mafia when he either used to work for them or was forced to pay them the pizzo and in retaliation his six-year old (or five? Anyway he had a son younger than ten for sure) got kidnapped, killed and thrown into acid to dispose of the body. That happened in what, 1993? 1994? It’s pretty much yesterday. And now the camorra is doing the same - there’s a list here of camorra victims among which accidental passerbys that got killed because they were in the way which I can tell just by glancing is not complete. And I’m not even going into the 'ndrangheta. That is to say, here mafia still kills people and cripples our country.

Now, I get that it’s a word, but the point was: let’s say that instead of the Italians the Japanese came to the US first and the umbrella word for organized crime was yakuza rather than mafia and let’s say yakuza was still what it was originally in Japan while in the US it stopped being a big deal and people write yakuza!AU instead of mafia AU. Let’s say someone Japanese gets angry at that and goes like 'listen the yakuza is a real deal it does this this this and that and it’s a plague in our country so can you please at least look it up before writing your fanfic’, which is what had happened way back then when this whole mafia and fanfic thing blew up. A bunch of people told us to get over it because it’s just a word and if it’s a problem in Italy it’s not in the US so why should they care? Now, if we had been Japanese (or Chinese or Russian or Mexican) would they have said the same thing? Considering the general tumblr attitude I’m pretty sure they would have received either an apology or 'this is an important deal let’s keep that in mind’ with signal boost reblogs and stuff. 

It’s the fact that we should get over people not knowing that it’s still a real problem for us and that they can’t take five seconds to google it that is the problem imo. Especially when instead of mafia au you can just say mobsters au or tag it as organized crime and everyone is a lot happier, mostly because as the tag above explains romanticising the mafia is a good thing for them because it means they can act outside Italy with less stigma because everyone thinks that the mafia is dead or not relevant anymore, if I’m explaining myself. (And it’s active outside Italy - like, there was a mafia kill in Germany in 2007 where six people died (sorry the link is in Italian but there isn’t an English wiki page, if you look the city up you’ll find something probably) and it was because of the 'ndrangheta.

I’d really like to not get worked over it because it meant it was a thing of the past y'know, but the problem is that it isn’t and I’d rather spread some awareness in hope some of these writers look it up (because it’s a good thing that people know what mafia is since as stated they have tendrils everywhere - if you read Saviano’s book the entire first chapter is about how camorra regularly deals with Chinese import/export in Italy for one) than shrug and figure that since they’ll think everything is good for fanfic then it’s not even worth my time.*

Now, ^^^ that was the c/p-ed reply that should answer most of your doubts. What I didn’t address was:

im sure many ppl romanticize it and i obvs dont agree with that but im just trying to udnerstand bc i believe fandoms are a way to explore things that we normally wouldnt.

aaaand as we say here in Italy, this is where the donkey falls (sorry we have weird sayings), because in theory there’s nothing wrong with that... except that in 99% of the mafia aus I’ve seen around the thing is that they’re supposed to be cute.

like, I see a lot of shit with TINY MAFIA BOSS STEVE ROGERS with RUSSIAN ENFORCER BUCKY (????? bucky isn’t even russian???) and the yoi thing I saw before had the japanese character being the leader of a russian mafia gang which is... like... guys it doesn’t happen it really doesn’t, and a lot of them re-use wrongly terminology taken from the godfather without context or knowing what the hell it means, and it’s always from the criminals’ pov and they’re somehow seen as criminals doing justice where the police can’t (???) and like... no. mafia bosses/enforcers/employees are bad people period, and at least here if you try to leave or repent they kill your family in retribution. like, not even ten years ago there’s been a woman who used to belong to a mafia family (or one colluded with the mafia) who testified and her entire town/family shunned her and she couldn’t take it anymore and... killed herself drinking acid if I don’t recall wrong. it’s not even special cases. this shit is not funny, it’s not cute, it’s not adorable and it’s not good fodder for your imagine your otp scenario (srsly I saw one like.. let me find it,

LIKE. just look at this shit. in a regular context, the enforcer goes to the show owner to force them to pay a monthly sum to their boss lest they destroy their shop and their lives and their family’s life never mind that mafia culture is deeply homophobic so the mafia enforcer flirting with the shopkeeper is like completely fucking out of the question. I mean, people here like to shit on the sopranos but that show was actually excellent representation of Horrid Criminals Who Were Never Supposed To Be Good People and the small arc that happened when one of tony’s friends turned out to be gay (closeted) was REALLY well done. btw, it ended that when they found out he was gay most of the crowd rejected him and thought badly of him until I think they killed him also for other reasons, but that spiraled from finding out he liked dick. and that’s american mafia that they actually based on well-done research of the culture in Italy it came from, I assure you that here it doesn’t work that differently. like. the shit above is so inaccurate and frankly offensive, it’s like... I get people romanticizing problematic stuff but the thing is that when you tell them that it’s actually offensive you get brushed off as ‘ah well you’re being too sensitive it’s just a word u__u’. now, I’m all for exploring shit we wouldn’t be into, but not like THAT, because that’s like mafia romantic comedy and that’s not how it works. now, you wanna do a fic where the mafia characters are deeply flawed and bad people and the police tries to catch them? fine, great, go ahead. you wanna do a fic where the enforcer above deals with dunno an entire life of internalized homophobia when he finds the shopkeeper attractive and feels conflicted over having to con money out of him and doing horrible shit for a living and maybe understanding that crime isn’t worth it and then he actually collaborates with the police and gets shit from about everyone he knows and loves for that? okay, awesome, go ahead. nothing bad in that.

but the shit above is not exploring things we wouldn’t/writing darkfic, it’s THINKING THAT A CRIMINAL ORGANIZATION WHICH IS STILL A THING IN OUR PART OF THE WORLD IS CUTE AND ADORABLE. and that only plays in their favor because it takes the bad aura out of the word and we really should not let that happen. like. that is what is bad about mafia aus and mafia discourse, that people don’t realize the mafia is alive and well and thriving and not a thing that doesn’t exist or a generic word for organized crime.

you wanna write the shit above? okay, CALL IT CRIME AU or mob au, not mafia au.

btw, add-on: idk if I mentioned it in the above post or not, but in case I didn’t, I said that people would balk at the idea of a mexican cartel au. sadly since then I’ve found out a fandom where not only there is one but it’s also extra cutesy and people apparently love it and it has a bunch of kudos/comments and idek I’m not even touching that with a ten foot pole but like... I’ve avoided it and everything that author wrote because to me it’s just... nope. like, nope. if you do mafia aus don’t make them fucking cute. (also: in the same fandom I had to mute a v. famous fanartist whose art I actually liked but did cutesy mafia aus and.. like... haahahhaahahahahaha nah sorry. can’t go there. nope.)

[fishsupportgroup-blog]

Good Omens Fandom Welcome Pack (4/3/17)

Yo my dudes!!!! So I got a message from @dirktective-assassina who just found out that there’s a good omens fandom so I figured I’d try and pull together some resources as an up to date fandom welcome pack :D It’s pretty long and comprehensive so I’ve put it under the cut.

So first things first: the ship name of Aziraphale/Crowley isn’t Crowaphale or anything like that but is Ineffable Husbands. We also sometimes use Air Conditioning (like A/C if you see?) although this is less used now than it was, largely because of the way tumblr tagging works versus livejournal and it’s a bit of a hassle to traipse through posts of people’s air conditioning not working, but there are still posts on that tag and it's a good way to find older fan-works. Other wise we generally just tag as Good Omens.

As with a lot of fandoms with a slightly longer history, livejournal used to be the main site for the good omens community and we transferred across bc, let’s face it tumblr is a hell site but it’s also a hell of a lot more accessible than livejournal. However, there are still a lot of things going on with livejournal!!! my main resource there is the Lower Tadfield Air Base: Fighting off Armageddon since 2003! The Good Omens Holiday Exchange is also organised on livejournal, I’ve linked to this year’s entries :)

Which brings me onto fic!! (Some of these fic will be explicit but they all have warnings at the beginning). Two fics always recommended in older fic rec lists are The Sacred And The Profane, and A Diamond Sky Above Titanic (although, personally, they’re not really my favourites). Also, The Lower Tadfield Air Base has a good fic tag :) Finally there’s this post which also adds some extra links and info on joining the good omens fandom, it also has a gen fic section if that’s more your cup of tea.

My main source of fics however, comes from our Lord and Saviour, Archive Of Our Own. Just take note when you’re using the search tool you fully type in Aziraphale/Crowley rather than letting it autocorrect you to Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens) then you’ll only get 217 works in comparison to the 1178 fics available and all the fic of Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens) is filed under Aziraphale/Crowley anyway. If that makes any sense?

Personally, I’ve been horribly remis in tagging my own favourites because I’m fairly useless. However, I know I love Fridays by ylc. If you like human! aus then I also really love Ordinary People by daeger which has a wee Jewish painter Crowley :D

Ruby Tears by @not-a-space-alien is also a really good fic in highlighting the fandom’s perspective on Crowley: essentially in that he’s a HUGE FUCKING NERD who tries so hard to look cool and suave and is actually just very vulnerable and sweet and loving. Aziraphale, on the other hand, is very much an oblivious banana that’s too self-obsessed to really recognise this and has an incorrect view that Crowley is The Adversary and should be thought of as such. There has been A LOT of AMAZING meta on this, I would really recommend @futureevilscientist‘s essay on The Arrangement as p. much essential reading. They also have a tag for meta which I also really recommend.

My final fic to recommend is HAS to be the Crown of Thorns series by @irisbleufic (often shortened to cot). For me, this is The Fic, you know, and I feel like it really defines the Good Omens fandom in many ways. It’s based on the fanon that after the events of the apocalypse, Aziraphale and Crowley moved into a cottage on the South Downs together. All the details of the fic are in the introduction :D Other Iris fics to recommend are Regulars and What to Say (and How Not to Say It) if like me you’re trash for 3rd person pov. Finally as someone from York I’m honour bound to mention Promises to Keep.

We also have some Amazing artists in the fandom, people like @kogla and the like are just so great to have posting content for us!! basically just turn to the good omens tag and follow some of the suggested blogs (see below) we’re always posting everything :D One of my faves is this one by @6utton (who also gives me my raffles fix). @lunasong365 has also sent me this beautiful video and their playlist of other videos :‘) You also have the good omens tag on the hell site of deviantart

Also in terms of art, @askajcrowley is utterly brill, they don’t post much anymore but when they do I cry because they’re great.  If you want a really interesting view of how fandom has changed over time, go back through their posts as far as you can, it’s seriously worth it. In terms of fandom changing, the Good Omens fandom has generally imploded; it did used to be a very big active fandom, with a lot of ask blogs and a much greater focus on the other characters besides Aziraphale and Crowley. The current day fandom does feel bad about not talking about the other great multifaceted characters but we don't tend to do much to rectify it, as not-a-space-alien highlights in this post.

The older fandom also used to have A LOT of discourse surrounding fancasts. Oh God. Suffice to say if I ever see another post casting Bajkfbgjgiug Cskjfbgkjfba/Tom Hiddleston in all the roles I will actually throw up. This trend lead to our Worst Meme, Cage Omens: in which all the characters are played by Nicholas Cage. This meme likes to make a reassurance every now and again, so FOR GODS SAKE DONT SUMMON IT. (We all secretly love it).

Speaking of fancasts, we should probably mention adaptations. When the news of the latest adaptation came forward, a lot of us were very apprehensive because We Have Been Here Before. Lots. Like 5 Times. (I think in like ‘02 there was going to be one with Robin Williams but It was just after 9/11 and everyone ran as fast as they could from apocalypse based media). However, this one does look like it’s going ahead and will be airing next year maybe :) We do also have the beloved radio adaptation, which we will all suggest had it’s flaws but was also p damn brill. (The BBC sometimes replay it around Easter?)

However the discourse over fancasts did actually raise some pertinent points to do with race, with a lot of people feeling really uncomfortable with how white the suggestions were for characters that have no explicitly stated race. This is especially the case in regards to Aziraphale where there might be inbuilt preconceived conceptions of a white angel. This post and @a-poc-alypse‘s commentary on the subject I think is really important. I think the fandom now makes a concerted effort to try and produce more diverse art and the like, and I think we are better than we were, but it is something we have to actively work towards rectifying.

Other discourse of far, far less importance is in regards to their wings. Essentially, a lot of older fanart has Crowley with bat like wings which a lot of the fandom disagrees with, and there’s a lot of discourse about the colour of their wings too. Traditionally, Aziraphale is depicted with white wings and Crowley with black, but as is oft pointed out within the fandom, the colour of their wings is not stated and, given the significance of heaven and hell just being names for sides with no tangible distinction, and that demons are of angel stock, this separation has been questioned. Basically, the consensus now is play around with it!!!!! My head canon is that Az has owls wings and Crowley has duck wings :D

As for Hogwarts Houses, no one actually knows tbh either of them could fit into any house I think? We've had a lot of discussions and I think the ultimate conclusion we’ve come to is just go with what you want. At the moment I think I like Gryffindor Crowley and Ravenclaw Aziraphale. Some good Harry Potter AUs are Potter Omens by sadaf, St. Joseph of Cupertino, Home Life and Social Habits of British Muggles, and the Legacy of James Bond by Interrobam, A Look into a Magic Mirror by athousandelegies, and Saturday by Elvendork.

This leads to another point which is the links Good Omens have with other fandoms. There are Obviously the links with Supernatural given that their Crowley was literally named after ours, but there are also a weird amount of Wolfstar (Remus Lupin/Sirius Black) crossover fics and a lot of them involve them all sleeping with each other?? Anyway. I’ve also noticed that p. much all the Raffles fandom tend to be Good Omens fans too.

Finally you have the Shakespeare/Marlowe fandom so there are a lot of jokes in fandom at the moments about Crowley/Shakespeare (ship name: Snakespeare). I’m laying the blame firmly on @macdicilla and this post.

Music!! I LOVE @ajcrawly‘s The Ritz Does Not Admit Nightingales but 8tracks is useless for UK pals atm. Every playlist of Good Omen will have Queen and A Nightingale Sung in Barkley Square, I’m sorry I don’t make the rules.

And then there are the blogs!!:

@audiomens (with transcripts of the radio 4 adaptation)

@incorrect-good-omens-quotes

@thisbutgoodomens (taking posts and making them Good Omens, tag them if you think there’s a post they would appreciate!!)

@goodomensheadcanons

There are the blogs I’ve mentioned above, like @not-a-space-alien and @macdicilla (you can’t have one without the other), and @futureevilscientist, @irisbleufic, @kogla, @lunasong365, @askajcrowley, @a-poc-alypse, @ajcrawly

Also worth following are, @milkythefrozen, @pridoo, @maniacalmole, @ladylier, @thisisadecisionimayregret, @la-petite-robe-jaune, @sous-le-saule, @rocksalive, @nemeankitten, @everything-good-omens, @fyeahgo and tbh there are heaps more, I’m sorry if I’ve missed you off, I have a memory worse than like 99% of the population (according to my educational psychologist). If you want to be added just put a reply or message me or smth :D

Finally, I’d like to thank @not-a-space-alien for their welcome kit, @futureevilscientist for theirs, @ladylier for giving me ideas to talk about, @lunasong365 for showing me their playlist, and @a-poc-alypse for pointing me in the direction of their tags.

Okay. I think that’s it?? If you have anything further to add just post it below or message me or put it on the tags or replies whatever basically. If you disagree, or I’ve got something wrong, or you want to be added/taken away as a source then don’t hesitate to tell me!! (but please don’t send me hate, I’m trying my best and I’ll work hard to compensate)

:D