#and Nilsh. and moonlitboar. and fantasyinvader. and OP.

[butwhatifidothis]

Hoo boy if this ain't a doozy.

To start with: it's been some time but I don't think I've linked to Cap'n's fic before. Going through my older posts I have yet to find any that do. If anyone does find anything like that, I will immediately delete it.

But, yes. I'd only gone over the fic due to seeing how influential it was in the fandom, and I had continued going over the fic due to the various problematic elements OP listed out.

And, well, yes, that does very much include how Byleth, as she is presented as a mixed-race person, is portrayed in this fic. And I say this with no ill-meaning directed towards Cap'n as a person, since I'm pretty sure he wrote pretty much everything problematic in this fic due to ignorance and not malice; reading Byleth's character arc in his fic was genuinely extremely uncomfortable for me, as a mixed-race person. Here's a doc that breaks down why that is in a more detailed fashion than my critique does.

Off of that: the main issue I see with Raxis doing this with Reyna is that he seems to take deliberate actions to spread his critiques around as far as possible. He makes his pinned post on Tumblr a table of contents for his critique of Reyna's fic (which includes links to the fic he's critiquing, the series the fic is in, and her AO3 profile - these links also appear in his critique of the first chapter), he keeps bringing it up on his Twitter, he brings it up on the public Edelgang discord. It's not that it's wrong of him to vent or rant about things he doesn't like, so much as it is... kinda weird that he's doing it to a fic that has such minimal impact or influence regarding anything in the fandom, and doing so on at least three different platforms.

This isn't like Cap'n's fic, which was known to some degree to large portions of the fandom, or was taken as meta. Reyna's fic that Raxis is critiquing isn't touted out as required reading, no one is recommending it to VA's, it's incredibly new and was released during a low-point in 3H's general fandom activity, and it involves crossing over with a title fewer people in the general FE fandom (and especially 3H fandom specifically) have played. The only reason he'd likely even know the fic exists at all is because of Reyna's other much more popular fic... which as OP stated didn't seem to have had the same impact as Cap'n's did, and if it did then it'd make sense for him to critique that one instead of the no-name-nothing fic.

So honestly? It really comes off as Raxis targeting an easy fic to try and get attention. Especially when his spork has something like this passage in it:

(and to make clear, yes, I am still not blocked by him, despite what he's said in the Edelgang discord)

Bringing up my name in a completely unrelated fic for basically no reason but to bring me up... it's just very strange, in my opinion.

There's also the fact that Raxis has a history of both having it to where people harass others directly off of the posts he makes of them, and of harassing people himself. He's bragged about driving users off of Tumblr, and the people who used to send a shit ton of anons like this to us

are the exact same people who would go on to do similar things to Reyna's new fic, hours after he'd make his spork - down to copy-pasting his words verbatim again:

And while yes, Raxis can't exactly mind control everyone who reads his posts into not harassing people, he also, well. Has a history of this sort of thing happening with him, and one that has been made known by those affected by it for quite some times now. Given that, from my reading of his spork, his only real main gripes are that Reyna writes Edelgard poorly in a fic that no one but him cares about (in a way relating to "meta" that is), it just seems like it's... uncalled for? For him to so continuously go on about this fic on so many different platforms, especially when considering said history he has regarding harassment

Edit: Referring to OP saying I would delete certain parts of my critique: yes, that's entirely correct. I was asked if I would and I said yes, which was relayed to people who said they had contact with Cap'n, but no one was ever told which parts I should edit/remove. I said that I would delete everything if given the chance to speak with Cap'n and discuss with him all of the more problematic elements of his fic - not the strikes against canon, but all of the racism, sexism, homophobia, victim-blaming, etc. that was unintentionally being presented in a harmful way. Again, I was never given this chance to go through with this.

I am still willing to do this, by the way. But nothing has ever happened yet

It's okay if butwhatifidothis risks leading people to harass Captain Flash by going over his fic but it's not okay if Raxis does the same to reynaattheend?

Okay I feel like I want to get one thing out of the way before I go into this.

BWIIDT agreed to remove parts of the old reviews that were particularly rude or offensive if they were pointed out to her, something that was literally promised to the MODS of the Edelstan discord server (who claimed to have a direct line of communication to Cap).

So the guy literally had a chance to air his grievances with the posts and have the parts he didn’t like removed within reason, and we never got any examples of things to ask her to remove. So either she’s not as rude as people make her out to be, or they never actually cared about her critiques and haven’t bothered reading them, even when handed the literal opportunity to edit things out they didn’t like.

Additionally BWIIDT has said that she would be willing to remove all the postings completely if the guy would just hear her criticisms and learn from them, so he could better handle the racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. in his fic. Of which there is a lot.

I don’t know how you could possibly compromise more without just straight up being a door mat and pretending like this white man never had any issues with the way he wrote race and women.

Anyway as for why I view these as two completely different situations that are not really comparable IMO:

1) Cap’s fic is/was at the time literally being shoved at people. We were told to read it to “understand canon better”.

This isn’t just me saying this. I remember around the time before/slightly after BWIIDT started giving her criticisms of the fic I was seeing it getting recommended to a bunch of people. There were people on various social media sites complaining about the Edel crowd shoving the fic down their throats. I had it recommended to me on some different platforms, etc.

And that’s not just fans of the fics’ perception. Cap himself has stated that he views the fic as meta commentary on the game/discussion of canon, not just a fun little fic he did. And he’s happy people view it as essential for understanding canon.

As far as I’m aware, Reyna’s fic has never had that sort of culture around it, nor has she wanted it to have that kind of impact on fandom. I’m pretty sure she’s even explicitly stated that she KNOWS it’s not always aligned with canon and she doesn’t care, because it’s just a fun little project for her.

2) As far as I’m aware, BWIIDT never linked to Cap’s fic? I don’t even think she gave the title of it at first, it’s just that most people figured out what fic she was talking about BECAUSE of the aforementioned it getting shoved down everyone’s throats. But I wasn’t really following her in the beginning so I don’t remember, I’m sure she can reblog this posting if she wants and further clarify.

Raxy has literally been linking to Reyna’s fic on every posting and spelling out the full name of the fics and the author. Given his followers’ propensity for harassment (which he claims to not support) he really should have known better. He wasn’t “risking” sending her harassment it was basically a foregone conclusion.

He definitely should have taken all of the links down and stopped linking or naming the author or fic after it became clear people were literally going and harassing her, using his posts and material to throw at her. But as far as I’m aware he hasn’t done ANY of that.

3) I know from talking with BWIIDT since Raxy started harassing everyone here that she wasn’t going to bother with Cap’s fic originally, but then the annoying fans shoving it down people’s throats + she noticed a lot of very problematic handling of race that she wanted to talk about in greater depth = her discussing the fic at length.

I haven’t read through Raxy’s criticisms, but I feel like there’s a BIG difference between a woman of color pointing out the problems regarding race and gender in a fic (written by a white man) that’s being recommended to everyone as ESSENTIAL FOR UNDERSTANDING THE GAME vs. Some Guy Who Doesn’t Like A Random Fic

Additionally, I don’t really feel like it’s my place to tell her to shut up because, uh, it just feels kind of gross to tell her to just not be mad about the way the white guy is butchering the biracial experience when she’s a biracial woman and I’m not? Which again, very different from telling a 35 year old cishet white guy who is acting like a dick about anime chess to be less of a dick about anime chess.

4) And again, I also know for a fact that BWIIDT is just interested in critiquing/venting about the fic, and would be willing to stop making postings about it if Cap actually bothered to read the critiques and learn from the mistakes he’s made regarding the racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. in his fic.

But like, he keeps doubling down on it insisting that because he grew up next to a reservation and he has one queer woman doing his beta reading there could never be any problems with his handling of any of these sensitive topics, so he doesn’t need to listen to any of us ever, and people are still touting it as essential for understanding canon, and he’s still okay with that, sooooooo ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It’s VERY different from what Raxy is doing, which is basically just calling Reyna’s fics “cringe” and “not canon” from the snippets I’ve seen. He’s also blasting them over LITERALLY every social media platform he has for some godforsaken reason. Which like. If your goal was just to critique the fic why are you posting that shut EVERYWHERE?

5) I really don’t think Raxy is that bothered by the criticisms of Cap’s fic. He harasses people regardless of if they’ve talked about Cap or his fic, and after his aborted attempt to drum up harassment against BWIIDT on GameFaqs he came to Tumblr and started begging her to “do his fic next”

Like honestly I don’t even know what goes on in that guy’s head. Weird ass behavior. I really don’t care what he has going on, it’d just be nice if he’d act like the 35 year old he actually is and quit being so petty and childish.

Even if you think what BWIIDT did with Cap’s fic is wrong, why would it EVER be acceptable to drag an uninvolved third party into the mix and bash their fic and send them harassment as “retaliation”? Reina has nothing to do with this. She doesn’t even have fucking social media accounts outside of AO3. I know because I literally left her a comment to warn her about this clown and she told me.

What BWIIDT has done with Cap’s fic is admittedly a bit of a grey area, but ultimately I fall on the side of “whatever” with it because of the notoriety and influence on fandom fans of the fic desperately want it to have, and because of just how problematic elements of it are for various communities.

I mean you can’t go reccing a fic as essential for understanding the game and shoving it down the entire fandoms’ collective throat and then expect it to be treated like a 14 year old’s silly self insert fic when the people you told to read it critique it with the gravitas you assigned to it.

If you wanna critique BWIIDT for what she did with Cap’s fic, or critique me or anyone else for interacting with her, or you just think my logic is stupid and you want to critique that, then that’s… fine? I’m an adult, I’m a person, I know there’s places I can grow. But I’m sick of people acting like it’s okay to be a shitty person just because you got your feelings hurt once, so now it’s okay to go making it everyone else’s problem. And I don’t know if it was your intention to defend the guy with this ask anon, but it’s definitely happened too damn much with this guy and the Edelgard fandom as a whole.

That was another thing that really fucked me off in that conversation with the Edelstan server mods. I had one of them acting like I run fucking Reddit and I’m somehow responsible for some trolls calling Edelgard fans Nazis four fucking years ago. You can bet your ass I would get crucified if I tried to shit talk some random ass Edeleth fic and tried to justify it with “but it’s ok cuz some Edelgard fans were mean to me once :(“. There’s a reason why the fic being touted as essential for understanding canon is the one getting critiques and not any of the THOUSANDS of other Edeleth fics in existence. Because no one fucking cares about fanfics when they aren’t getting shoved down your throat and touted as “essential”.

I mean fuck dude, I got called a fake queer and an r-slur and intentionally triggered with genocide bullshit and had people talking about killing me. Am I going around harassing random fic authors over it? No, cuz I’m a grown ass fucking adult and I know how to act like it, and I know that 99% of the people who write/have written Edeleth fics had absolutely nothing to do with that.

So if you’re justifying going after Reyna with “but BWIIDT was mean to Cap!” Then knock it off, Reyna has literally nothing to do with this and you’re being shitty by trying to drag her into it. If you just did this to spork a fic, then you’re currently being a dick over a fanfic for no reason and clearly it’s leading to the author being harassed.

@butwhatifidothis if you wanna add onto this feel free.