#and considering in my fandom that person is very racist and had the worst reading comprehension

[futuretrain]

incredible to wade into the replies of a post about a story you don't even go to, see people absolutely rip into shreds a person you know from your own fandom for having just the absolute most batshit takes, and realize that they are exactly as justifiably shunned in other places. we may not have shared interests but we have a common enemy

[wizardpink]

3, 22, 25

3. Screenshot or description of the worst take you've seen on tumblr.

LOOOOOORD where to even begin. Truly my brain chews these up and immediately sends them to the trash bin to save me from remembering them but hmm. You know I have to go back to Mando fandom and remember the person who called dinluke shippers racist because dinluke is a "white ship" and bobadin wasn't. Like I really think they considered Pedro Pascal white in one ship and latino (not a race) in the other, their logic made no sense. Also when I looked around their blog they were primarily an obikin shipper, two dudes who are not only 100% white but also coded as brothers, so this person really had the moral high ground to dictate problematic ships to the masses.

Also the person who read The Children of the Watch / The Armorer as Buddhist coded which is totally cool, but insisted that their headcanon was so airtight that there's no way that wasn't the writers' intention and therefore it was canon, and to see any other religions reflected in them was anti-Asian / anti-Eastern and western-centric bigotry. Despite there being -zero- textual evidence or word from writers that Buddhism was an inspiration for their religion, let alone the only inspiration.

I doubt I have to tell you that the first person was white and the second specifically British.

22. Your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores.

Ooooh... Since it's on my mind from earlier, Louis, Lestat, and Claudia celebrate Christmas! They put up a tree! Do they hang stockings? Did they have favorite carols? What other holidays did they celebrate? I want to see Armand with the trick-or-treaters from QOTD more than I need friggin air...

Also I'm just fascinated by all the world events they lived through that we never saw. How did Armand, who lived in Italy before Galileo was born, react to the moon landing? What was it like for Louis seeing the Civil Rights Movement unfolding in the 60s as a Black American but also as a vampire disconnected from humanity? Where was Lestat during Hurricane Katrina? How did he make sure he had a safe place to sleep while the sun was up? I need to see everything.

25. Common fandom complaint that you're sick of hearing.

Honestly I'm tired of hearing complaints from Nandermo shippers about not getting explicit Nandermo romance in the 22 minute absurdist vampire comedy mockumentary show. Like it would be cool, for like five minutes, but the show is funnier when everyone is losing and having a bad time. Nandermo falling in love and living happily every after aint funny! Sorry! The Office sucked after Jim and Pam got together. I hope all of you get Nandermo in the very last episode but not a moment before lol.

[antihero-writings]

Waving Through the Veil (Ch 1)

Fandom: Dear Evan Hansen (Book and Musical)

Summary: Evan is haunted by Connor. No, literally haunted. His ghost shows up after hearing Evan's lie about the Orchard, and Evan can actually see him. But, as weird as this situation is, maybe this is how they can become real friends after all.

Note: The one thing I’ve always wanted to see from this franchise, ever since first watching the musical, but even more so after reading the book, is the ghost of Connor being able to have a relationship with Evan. So...I decided to write it! This is written in the style of the book, and will probably mostly follow the book, (I even include some passages from it), but I will probably draw from the musical at times too, depending on what portrayal of something I like best. For those of you who have read the book, the fic begins in the middle of the first scene of chapter 9. I hope you enjoy!! If you do, please don't hesitate to leave a comment to let me know!! It's your comments that fics like this going <3

Chapter 1: All we See Are Ghosts

I didn't bother turning the light on as I flopped down on the couch with the signature groan of a man who’s hit rock bottom. Well maybe not rockbottom, but sediment bottom at least. I think we learned about that in science class; it’s where the fossils are get stuck…That’s pretty much how I feel at the moment. 

I'm not sure why I keep reporting back to Jared after every new disaster. I never feel better after our chats. Jared has a way of highlighting my errors so they seem even worse than I first realized.

But I'm so lost right now, sitting alone on the couch in my dark living room. Jared is the only person in the entire world who has even the slightest appreciation for where I am.

I bring Jared up to speed with what happened at the Murphys. We end up texting for a while, and, at this point, my stomach is still churning from the conversation, especially the prospect of making fake emails. Fake emails...to continue the lie I didn't intend to start. 

What is wrong with me? Seriously. Why do I keep fooling myself into thinking that the worst that could happen has already happened? Things always get worse. It's guaranteed. That's how life works. You're born and you keep getting older and grayer and sicker, and no matter what effort you make to reverse the process, you die. Every single time To repeat: worse, worse, worse, and then death. I have a long way to go before the worst. This is only the beginning.

And these emails...I'd be giving them what they want—what they need. I'd be helping them.

It's tempting. It really is. But it's also...sick? I can't keep doing this, deceiving these poor people. I'm not cut out for it.

At one point tonight it felt like I was sweating from my eyes—that's how anxious I was. Had I perspired another drop, I might have mummified. I can't go on like this. I'm all drained out.

I turn my phone over so it's facedown. The light from the screen waves over my cast. The memory of the story I conjured up for the Murphys hits me anew. They were talking about the orchard, and I guess the way they were talking about it made me think of Ellison Park. And I can no longer think of Ellison Park without thinking of the tree, and my fall. Connor wasn’t there that day, of course. But I guess...he could've been. when I was telling the story…it was almost like he was. Suddenly thinking of him being there to come get me…everything felt okay. Or at least not not okay. And 'not okay' is how I usually feel. 

I’m considering going up to my room when I hear a voice speak:

“So you took my advice after all. It was a nice story, I’ll give you that. No racist-punching, but better than the truth at least.”

I fall off the couch and let out a scream that I’ll admit isn’t very manly. 

 I realize I probably should have turned on said light, because if I had, I might have noticed someone in the room. And that would have been scary, yes, but probably less scary than simply hearing a disembodied voice suddenly talking to me. 

 I’ve prepared—well, not so much prepared as worried, which masquerades remarkably well as preparation—for people breaking into my house longer than I’ve worried about the Murphys. Though, to be fair, I expected them to come with knives and/or guns and threats...not talking about advice and punching racists. (The people breaking in, not the Murphys).

The living room isn’t that far from the kitchen, I probably should be going for a knife. Instead I just try to scramble away on the couch and don’t make much distance.

“Who-Who are you?!” I demand, (or, at least, I try to demand, but it sounds more like a squeal), “Why are you in my house?!”

The perp makes a noise like a scoff. “So you can hear me. I thought you might have seen me the other day but I—“ He stops himself. 

I stop in my scrambling too, because it’s starting to hit me, like spice that takes a second to set your mouth on fire.

I know that voice. It isn’t the voice of a strange burglar or serial killer—or at least, I don’t think he is but I guess I can’t rule it out, because it’s— 

It’s a voice that can’t be speaking to me right now. Literally can't.

“Still,” He’s not disembodied after all, because his shadow walks over to the shelf. Despite the realization, or maybe because of it, I resume my scrambling, finally making it off the couch and onto my feet, (not without falling over first). “That’s some psychotic bullshit you barfed up. One moment you’re writing some creepy note about my sister, trying to make everyone to think I’m crazy, next thing I know you have dinner with my family, talking shit about how we were friends, telling stories about how we went to the orchard together. I’ve never been very good at math, tell me,” I can’t really see him but something tells me he’s turning to me with those blue death rays, “how does that add up?”

Somehow in my scrambling I’ve made it to the light switch, and my fingers clutch it like its a lifesaver thrown out to my pitifully struggling body at sea. 

I’m not quite sure I wouldn’t rather drown. 

I flick my finger, turning on the light.

I already knew I’d regret it before I turned it on, and, when I did, the regret hit me instantly and intensely, like the spice finally kicking in. 

Standing there in his thick boots, and ripped jeans, and long, messy hair, and eyes that analyze my soul is Connor Murphy. 

I cover my mouth, breath gaining about ten pounds, heart gaining a hundred, but still running anyways.

“Holy—Holy shit.” I say into my hand. “Holy fuck.”

Connor smirks. “At least someone has the decency to react.”

“You’re—but you—You’re alive?! You’ve been alive this whole time?!”

His eyes darken, dart away. “Not alive, no.”

“Well w-what else could you be?!” I stutter, reaching my tremoring hand into my pocket for my meds, my Ativen—maybe I’ll find my sanity in there if I dig far enough. He’s walking towards me and my heartbeat has gone past the hundred mile-per-hour mark to the speed of light. “I mean, dead people don’t just show up in people’s houses—!”

He leans forward and swipes his hand at me, and I tense, thinking he’s going to knock the pills out of my hand, but instead his fingers go right through me. 

I let myself look up at him, finally understanding. 

Up at the kid who I always tried to avoid. The kid whose sister I have a crush on. The kid who pushed me at lunch the other day. At the kid who took my letter in the computer lab. The kid I was terrified would ruin my life with that letter (well, more ruined than it already is). The kid who I'm pretending was my best friend. The kid who killed himself. 

At Connor Murphy’s ghost. 

“Excuse me for a moment.” 

The pills scatter on the couch before I have a chance to attempt to get even one down, and I scramble to the bathroom to empty what little of Cynthia’s dinner I actually ate into the toilet.

In between heaves I try to think, to wrap my brain around this, to just have a second to breathe, not really able to do or have any of the above. 

Step one: Connor Murphy steals my letter. The letter I wrote to myself. One that was more honest than it strictly should have been. 

Step two: Connor Murphy kills himself. 

Step three: Connor Murphy’s parents think my letter is his suicide note. 

Step four: I can’t bring myself to tell the truth, so I end up going to the wake, and going to dinner at the Murphys’ house, and fabricating some crazy story about us having a picturesque friendship, and planning on making secret emails—

Step five: Connor Murphy’s ghost appears to me in my room. 

Like an actual ghost. Yesterday I didn’t believe those existed. I think my mom does, and I always liked watching documentaries about haunted houses. But what I like about the documentaries is they often include a scientific explanation.

And aren’t ghosts supposed to be like…scary? I mean, don’t get me wrong this is scary, Connor is scary—he was scary before he died. But I always thought ghosts were supposed to be like something out of a horror movie, covered in rotting flesh, unable to do anything but moan and scream. Not the kid you happen to be pretending you were best friends with showing up in your room. 

No, no, actually, I think I know what’s going on here. Yeah. There’s no ghost. This isn’t happening. The stuff with the letter didn’t even happen either. There was actually a step zero in there: 

Step zero is I went insane. 

When I manage to get the courage to come back into the room. He’s disappeared. I’ll admit, I was kinda hoping for that. I’m half relieved—more like fifteen sixteenths. Perhaps he was a hallucination after all. All those skipped dinners getting to me, when I actually ate something my body couldn’t handle it. I do my best to clean up the scattered pills on the couch, and the scattered thoughts in my brain.

But then I walk upstairs to my room I find I was wrong.

“I’ve gotten a lot reactions over the years,” he remarks when I get back. “Can’t say I’ve ever had that one.”

“Sorry, I—It’s just—I just—you’re…you’re here.”

“Not because I want to be, believe me. I’d rather be practically anywhere else.” His hand passes through my shelf. 

“And you’re dead.”

“Come on.” He feigns offense. “A little respect for your dearly departed. I mean we were best friends, after all.”

“Oh god.” That’s right, the dinner. I'd tried to block out the fact that he mentioned my story earlier. “You really heard all that?!” 

“Didn’t intend to go back to my house. Died to be rid of it, after all. But I did, and I saw you there, and I couldn’t fathom why. And here you were spouting the most incredible fucking bullshit about how we were friends.”

“Yeah-Um-So-Well—“ I breathe out, trying to get my lungs to work properly. I thought the Murphy’s house felt hot earlier. This is a couple degrees hotter than the Sahara. 

I just want this day to end. What demon (if ghosts exist, those probably exist, after all) marked their calendar for Torment-Evan-Day? I mean, that’s kinda every day, but this is a specially-crafted brand of torture. 

“The-” I swallow. “The-The letter? You know, the one that you took from me?" Then, realizing that sounds accusatory, I add, "I-I’m sure you didn’t mean to.” I shake my head. I’m trying my best to tell the truth without making him upset. It feels like a futile endeavor. “Your parents think youwrote it. T-To me, I mean. They think it was your”—I don’t know how or why, but I manage to look him in the eye—“suicide note.”

His eyes widen, but they narrow quickly afterwards. “So you just sat there and fed them bullshit about how we were friends instead of correcting them?” 

“Well, no-They—they—” No, not the Sahara, I’m ninety percent sure I’m standing right in the sun. “I tried to tell them—” I swallow. “I promise I really did!” I wipe my sweaty hands on my shirt. “I mean technically I actually did tell them you didn’t write it—they were just…they didn’t understand. They wanted me—They were looking to me for help, for answers. I couldn’t—!“ 

Once again, I don’t know how I manage to look into those soul-sucking eyes. But once I do, I realize something. 

An hour ago, I thought of him as the dead kid. The kid who killed himself. He was a concept, a symbol, more than a person I knew. But before that, as little as we talked, I did know him. He was Connor Murphy. He was real.

And in the second it takes to realize that, I’m replaying our conversations, and I’m realizing that’s wrong too. This isn’t Connor Murphy, and this isn’t the kid who killed himself. This is Connor Murphy…who killed himself. That is to say, the symbol, and the real Connor I knew, coalesce into one. 

And I realize that those eyes aren’t analyzing my soul, or trying to suck it out, or hating me, or anything like that…they are so vastly, so perfectly—

“You...You didn’t give them anything else.” I don’t know how, where, I got this random shot of bravery. “I didn’t want to take away all they had of you, even if it was—“ I laugh a little, not because it’s funny, but because I can’t figure out what else to do. “Even if it was just some stupid letter I wrote to myself.”

His eyes widen. I think it’s because he’s surprised at, angered by, my boldness. I get ready to apologize, but he says: 

“You wrote that to yourself?” 

My eyes widen. 

That’s right…I didn’t exactly let that on last time. Didn't have the chance. He thought I was messing with him.

“Y-Yeah. It…” I sigh. There’s no use denying it, and, well, it's not like he can tell anyone, right? Dead men tell no tales, after all...Except for the fact that one is talking to me. Right now. “It was an assignment from my therapist.”

Besides, if anyone’s going to understand…it’s him.

And...that's when it hits me.

Along with the realization that this is Connor Murphy, who killed himself, I realize I’ve been focused on the wrong thing. 

I was worried—certain, really—that Connor would something terrible with it. All this time I was focused on covering my ass, I was focused on the fact that the letter was mine, not Connor’s.

This whole time, even after he was gone, it didn’t compute. I didn’t realize. The reason he took it. He didn’t take it because he wanted to use it against me. 

Was it possible he took it...because he felt the same way? 

“I bet he always brings things back to some shit that happened with your father.”

“Yeah…Yeah he does do that.” I laugh a little. 

“Mine liked to equate my drug use with suppressed sexual frustrations. I told him I didn’t think they were very suppressed.”

I laugh, but quickly stop myself, remembering what happened last time I laughed at something he said, but when I turn to him he’s actually smiling. A little, at least. 

“Into the Wild.” As far as abrupt subject changes go, that one might take the cake. He turns to my shelf. 

“I’m—I’m sorry?”

He runs his finger along the spine of a book...or maybe just tries to. Or pretends to.

“O-Oh! You’re talking about the book!”

“I have a copy of it too—had," he scoffs, then mutters, seemingly more to himself than to me: "It feels weird to talk about myself in the past tense."

I'm sure it does feel weird. 

I feel weird. 

This whole thing is weird. 

Even without the whole ghost thing, it feels weird to be in my room, talking about books with Connor Murphy. Like, to actually talk to him, as opposed to nervously and pitifully trying to defend myself, fearing I'll have a black eye in the morning.

“What were you and Zoe talking about?” He asks, changing the subject yet again, like that one hadn’t satisfied him enough.

“W-Oh, you saw us talking in the car. She—“ I grimace. “She wanted to know if we, uh, if we did drugs together.” 

He snorts. “Always a charmer, that Zoe. My biggest fan you could say. You said we were friends and her first assumption was that we did drugs together. Can’t say her suspicion is unfounded. At least on my end. Though something tells me you’re not the type.”

“No—No I’ve never—“ I swallow. "No."

"So." Yet another subject change, it sounds like. "I had a secret email account, huh? I used it to talk to you all the time?

I freeze.

Yup. Just when I think the worst has already happened, I'm reminded hell has nine circles, and I haven't even arrived at the lobby.

When he was dead, he was a symbol. And, really—as terrible as it sounds—I could say anything about a symbol. I mean he wasn’t going to hear me. But now that I know he’s not dead—well, he is dead, just…undead, as insane as that is to think—and real (as far as I can tell), and he very much canhear me, I remember, despite the sadness in his eyes, this is still Connor Murphy, the kid who thew a printer at Mrs. G in second grade. 

What the hell was I thinking? 

His eyes darken. “Like, what? Secret lovers?" He shook his head. "Why the fuck would you say that?”

“Oh god, yeah I….I did say that.” Somebody just end it. “It was the only thing that made sense.”

“What kind of fucking sense does that make?!” There's a curl to his fingers. 

Even though I know he can’t hurt me, my body doesn’t; it’s been trained to run away, and can’t help but stumble backwards like there’s a corporeal person in my room. 

“Well they wanted to know how we could be friends without them knowing it.”

He scoffs. “I took you for some kind of loser. But now I see.” He leans forward so his eyes are level with mine. "You’re a diabolical mastermind, Evan Hansen.”

“I’m really—really—not. I just—” I hit the wardrobe in my backing up. I can’t believe he really thinks I intended any of this. My head falls into my hands. “Everything’s so messed up.” 

“You saying I messed everything up?!” There’s a snarl in his voice.

“No—No!” I stand, waving my hands. “I didn’t say that! That’s not what I’m saying! I’m saying I messed everything up!”

I expect him to keep advancing, to try his best to punch me, but instead he stares at me, then sorta…falls onto bed (I’m both surprised he does this, and surprised he can) laying back, sighing. He puts his arm over his face and, to my even greater surprise, he begins to laugh. Not an actual happy laugh. I know this laugh: it’s the kind of laugh I laugh when my body doesn’t know what else to do. 

“Sure, people always ignoring me, always treating me like shit, like I had some disease, that was your fault.” 

“Well, I—“

“Me pushing you, that was your fault." 

“Well that’s—That’s not exactly what I meant.” 

"Me killing myself, leaving nothing but a letter you wrote to yourself…that’s totally your fault.”

I freeze again. I think hell might have frozen over.

He sighs. “You’re right about one thing: everything is truly fucked up.” 

I sit on the bed next to him and look at my hands. I’d like to say something. To do something. To offer some words of comfort. But I’m well acquainted with the fact that 'comforting' words (like 'Chin up! It'll get better!' or ‘It’s not the end of the world.’) really aren’t comforting at all. 

I’d like to at least say ‘It’ll be okay’ but…how can I say that? Maybe, for me, everything will work out in the end (…I think this is the first time that thought has ever crossed my mind) but he’s already dead. There’s nowhere for him to go. Except the afterlife. …If that even exists. 

The world’s already ended for him. 

I’d like to comfort him. To argue against him. To show him at least one nugget that has been unharmed in the fuckage that I could present to him. But I can’t disagree with him. Like…at all. 

Like I said. Things get worse and worse.

And then...you die.

I realize something.

It's not truly comforting, but it's a positive, at least.

I jerk my head up to look at him.

“Hey, maybe-maybe you could help me!”

“Help you?” He lifts his arm a little so he can raise an eyebrow at me. 

“Help me set things right! Help me tell your parents we weren’t really best friends! I’ve been wanting to tell them the truth this whole time I just—I can’t seem to get it out. You could help me figure out how to tell them!”

He sits up, studying me. “I could do that. I could help you set things right. Put an end to this charade.”

I nod profusely. 

“Help you tell my parents that the only thing they have of me is a letter you wrote to yourself. Dash all their hopes and dreams, make them miserable, you know, all that shit.”

It sounds bad when he puts it like that. Maybe the truth won't set you free after all. 

“Or.” His mouth curves into a smirk, and I smile back—not because I’m happy, not because it’s an actual happy smirk, rather because it’s the kind of smirk that makes me nervous as all hell, and when that happens my body picks from a wheel of stupid reactions. “I could watch you continue your little farce, watch you suffer as you invent more and more ridiculous ways to cover your ass.”

No, no, that sounds equally bad. Let’s not do that either. “Is there an option C?” My voice cracks. 

He considers it a moment, sits back on his hands. “I suppose we could compromise. In your little stories about me, it might be nice if you actually portrayed me accurately. I could help with that. Right now your impersonation is laughable. I don’t know how it fooled my parents.”

“I vote for option C.”

“What’s in it for me?”

“I mean…What do you want?” 

“Ohh you might just regret that.” He smirks again. 

“Wait, I wasn't agreeing to giving you anything you want! I was just asking—!“

“Too late.” He puts his finger to his lips. “The deal is sealed.”

I keep digging myself into a bigger ditch without even saying anything. Let alone when I open my mouth.

“So what’s the next step of our little game?”

“Well…” I swallow. “Jared told me he could write fake emails. You know because your parents will...probably want to see them.”

“Jared, huh? Kleinman?" (I’m guessing he hasn’t forgotten about the incident from the other day.) “Good thing I’m here. If I’d left you to your own devices I’d end sounding like a—”

“Did you eat already?” 

I nearly scream—well no, not nearly, I do let out a sort of strangled cry—at my mom’s voice. I had been so focused on all of…this craziness that I forgot she was heading home. 

“I didn’t think I was that scary.” She laughs to herself a little, then she looks around the room, brow furrowed. “Were you talking to someone?”

She can’t see him. Good. I don’t have to explain why a dead kid is sitting in my room. 

“N-Nope! Just uhh—Practicing.”

“Practicing? For what?” 

“Uhh, for a play,” I say because what else could I be practicing? I can hear Connor stifling a laugh behind me. 

She blinks in surprise. “Oh, Honey, you’re in the school play?” 

She’s going to say it’s a bad idea. Because it is a bad idea. Because it’s not true. 

“That’s fantastic!”

I blink. What?

“I always thought you hated public speaking. You know, from that time you fainted?”

“I do. That’s, uhh, that’s why I signed up!” I feel my face burning, I make a thumbs up with my casted arm. I know Connor can’t exactly use this against me, but him hearing me stumble through my lies to my mom in my own home isn’t something I signed up for today. Though, I didn’t sign up for any of this. Can I unsubscribe? “Yeah, I wanna get over that fear.”

“I’m so proud of you!” She clasps her hands together. “If you haven’t eaten yet, why don’t we have a celebratory meal?”

I’m shocked. Usually she’s the police on making sure I’ve eaten. 

“Oh…Darn,” I say a little over-emphatically. “I already ate.”

“Darn.” She repeats. 

“That was fun the other day, right?” She says. “Going out for breakfast?”

So much has happened since our breakfast it already feels like ages ago. “Yeah. Definitely. It was.”

“I was thinking, how about I bag one of my shifts this week. When’s the last time we did a taco night?”

I can’t remember, but I’m pretty sure those tortillas in the freezer have turned by now. “Oh. You don’t have to.”

“No, I want to. Maybe we could even start brainstorming those essay questions together.”

The essays. Of course. Her face waits expectantly. “Sure,” I say. “That would be great.”

“Oh. That’s exciting,” she says looking victorious. “I’m excited now. Something to look forward to.”

“Yeah.”

“‘Practicing’?” Connor snorts after she leaves. “‘For a play’? You? You really need some coaching on this whole lying business. I thought you were a terrible liar with my parents but this is fucking priceless.” 

“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” I bite.

Something dark enters his eyes. “I think hell will wait for me.”

"Well that's not what I—Oh never mind."

[three--rings]

Something I want to contribute to this conversation as someone who was never in the canyon, never considered myself any kind of Izzy stan, (I've always enjoyed him but he's never been of particular interest to me to explore in fic, etc) is that the hostility of the fandom over the issue of Izzy just drove a lot of people out of the fandom entirely.

I was always, always sympathetic to the Izzy fans because I hate antis of any kind and have been in fandom for 25 years and know people attacking fans for liking a character or ship are always the bad guys.

When I MENTIONED Izzy Hands on my blog I got deranged anon hate in my inbox. As I'm sure you all understand. Last year, I mean.

It got to the point where sometime late last summer I just didn't want to see the words Izzy Hands and unfollowed anyone who had any discussion of his character at all on either side because reading the discourse infuriated me so much.

Which means I basically unfollowed most of my OFMD people and ended up drifting quickly away from the fandom into things that didn't pain me to interact with. From the general amount of discussion and fan content over time I don't think I was the only one who was like yanno fuck this shit life is too short. If you think being an Izzy fan was lonely, try being pretty exclusively a Blackbonnet fan who can't stand people talking shit about Izzy.

Only when the trailer dropped did I try to reengage with the fandom and quickly realized oh, yeah a lot of these mainstream people are still completely deranged by hatred of Izzy Hands and I followed and unfollowed people extremely quickly once I saw it. It was so unavoidable in the buildup to S2 airing that I wrote this post.

And got a death threat within hours, which eventually tumblr said they removed the sender for fwiw.

So then I was like fuckit I'm getting death threats, I'll be more explicit. Which post got such insane responses that people not in the fandom were messaging me and commenting like OMG what the HELL is wrong with that fandom. Legit people were like I was going to watch the show but now I'm not because those people suck.

At which point I basically decided to start following Izzy fans because they were the only sensible people I could find. Hi.

But my feeling, as a whole, watching the people who were in OFMD all along who were hostile to Izzy fans, watching Izzy fans, watching people like me who haven't been active for a year or more until this season.

I think most people are positive to neutral on Izzy and always have been. Or dislike him because he was an antagonist but not as a character if that makes sense. I think some may have been persuaded by the hate or simply ignored it in order to engage in fandom, (or were afraid of being labeled problematic and racist) but I think a lot of people simply decided to just read fics they liked and hang in very small circles if any and ignore the greater fandom drama because it was so unpleasant.

I feel like if people who hated him now feel more positive it's not because they feel like they were wrong, but that he has changed and his writing has changed. I don't see a lot of remorse personally.

But humans are always very bad at admitting to themselves or others that they were wrong. Their opinions of Izzy might continue to change when they go back and rewatch, but I doubt you'll see many posts about how wrong they were. I doubt you'll receive many if any apologies.

Certainly anyone who actually did the worst of the harassment will not admit they were wrong because they would not be able to face being that bad of a person.

The blockwalls are unfortunate but unlikely to be undone. The most you can really look for is that the Izzy haters become fewer and fewer over time and as people return to the fandom and new people enter, the old wars will fade into memory.

Also, do not underestimate how hostile a small number of people can make an online space feel. You may feel like the numbers are overwhelming and that everyone had blocked all Izzy fans, but I doubt that is the case.

I know a situation in another fandom where multiple writers were hounded out of the fandom by hundreds of messages over years and it turned out to all be one person's doing and only by finally comparing notes was it revealed and they were named. People who felt like a significant group was coordinating attacks on them across multiple platforms were actually just targeted by one very ill person.

So, yeah, these are unfortunately the kinds of things that happen when we forget to live and let live and when fandoms get bored during hiatuses. Eventually canon will be complete and the period of in-between S1 and S2 will seem like a distant memory and the fanon associated with it will probably be laughed at. That's how fandom goes.

TBH the fandom has reacted better to S2 than I feared, though that could always change at any moment. Even now it feels like once we get to Tuesday and Wednesday that people start getting antsy and try to start shit with baiting hot takes.

slowly moving out of my smug phase and transitioning into a "okay... so what happens next?" phase.

cuz like... what does happen next? i really really think the fandom as a whole needs to address whatever the fuck was happening for more than the past year. and i guess i'm wondering what does that actually look like? and what are you supposed to do if you spent a year and half being awful to people about a character you were wrong about?

and ik a lot of people will just brush it off or dig their heels in deeper that they weren't wrong and they didn't do anything bad, but i like to believe that not everyone will, ya know?

but idk it feels like part of a larger convo on fandom, antiracism, fan activism, and harassment.

[macaronnya]

Just giving my 2 cents to the "Rollo discourse". I have not read any direct TLs yet so I'm just gonna talk about what reactions I've seen so far.

Honestly, I think people are getting heated up way too early. Like, I know writing your thoughts and opinions on current events is how a fandom works but how the hell did this big quarrel came to be when not everything is out yet? Especially if one considers how the other villains have been treated until now.

...

People are absolutely justified to be wary of Rollo. His character is based on Frollo, who in turn is based on real history, people and sadly current reality. Racism AND religious trauma usually make a very difficult object to portray correctly. And considering it's not only Disney but also Japan working on this game, it is quite fair to be even more wary as there have been plenty of times, where such problems are downplayed or not taken seriously enough. Whether it be to ignorance or conscious intentions.

The other villains have done terrible things as well but they do have a more detached feel to them bc of whooooooo~ ☆magic☆ and all or it's just way too long back. And...

With that said, we've already seen how The Great Seven have been handled. Their legacy has been twisted but the truth has always been shown to Yuu and their corresponding characters have always learned to move on from their mistakes (without knowing it ofc). Not saying that Rollo is definitely going to become a good guy or that any wrongdoings are excusable bc of a tRagIc BAcKsToRy.

Riddle probably gave quite a few students a lot of anxiety and breakdowns, Leona almost turned Ruggie into sand, Azul made a lot of very shady and definitely gruelling deals, Jamil almost killed us and brainwashed a bunch of students, Vil almost poisened Neige, just to list some things here. All had their reasons but that doesn't strip them of their responsibilities.

Riddle vowed to maintain order in a more just and less tyrannical way, Leona tries to be more of a responsible leader to be proud of (for his dorm), Azul realised his unreasonable idea of revenge, Jamil learned to be more open again and to communicate to solve problems, Vil picked himself up again and realised his tunnel vision of success. All with the help of trusted friends (and Overblot Service inc.). (Btw if it wasn't already noticable, I haven't watched ch. 6 yet heheh....)

...

Now, this event is, well, an event. So Rollo might not get as much character development as the overblot gang or at all in the worst case. But how about we try to stay calm and just WAIT patiently until everything is out.

There is no need to attack any developers or fans of Rollo. The majority aren't in support of persecuting any Romani people or white racists. They just want to enjoy this new content of a beloved game and are aware of his delicate nature while having fun.

And there is also no need to attack any of those who feel uncomfortable with Rollo. Not everyone is a party pooper who wants to shit on this game given any opportunity. They just want to continue to enjoy this game they've become invested in and not see real life problems, maybe even personal trauma, handled in an a familiary unfair way in a game supposed to comfort them.

Everyone just wants to have fun and enjoy this cool game about hot and hilarious animefied disney character, so let's wait and discuss in a civil manner when the time comes ^3^) / 🌸 Haven't seen any yet but just to be safe, sending death threats and bullying people out of the internet is not accepteble E V E R!!! Fiction does have a certain effect on real life but your direct actions hold a much larger impact on real living breathing human beings.

[twin-books]

Your post about that moment in Syren, plus all the salt fics I've seen caused by that episode as well as Chameleon made me realize that a big problem with the ML fandom is their Never Live It Down attitude.

On one hand i understand, there are moments and episodes in the show that do make the characters look bad and it can be irritating when the show and certain parts of the fandom glosses over them, but on the other hand, the fact they keep bringing it up these moments again and again and again, most of the time without either the context or the nuance these moments have, or sometimes making up headcanons to make these scenes worst than they actually are just makes me want to shout at them to get over it!

I'm glad you read my post. And yes, a big issue with the miraculous fandom is not letting go. On both sides, really. It's not just salt.

Multiple times I have seen salt die down for something but someone into sugar just has to go on and on about how much they hated that take which sparks it all over again. Which is why I also tried to point out sugar people as well and how I'm bothered by the discussion in general.

It's also the lack of any compassion with people that even slightly disagree with you in this fandom that very much bothers me. I joined a survey recently of someone doing results on miraculous stuff and the person gathering the results was so snide and rude when it came to takes they didn't personally agree with. I understand being bitter about the number of toxic salters but nowadays the miraculous fandom just brands anyone who happens to dislike a character they like as a toxic salter. No one wants to hear them out and people constantly make fun of them. It's awful. It's absolutely awful. It's awful to even think I used to be a part of this and didn't even realize it. Had an incident not have happened with my friend I wouldn't have truly known how bad and toxic this blatant flaw in the miraculous fandom is. If you say you hate Adrien? You're attacked. They don't want to hear you out. You're stupid. And if they find your reasons "stupid" they just consider you toxic. If you say you hate Marinette? Guess what? You're stupid. It's such a horribly toxic take but no one points it out because no one likes salters right? Some of my close friends are salters. They are not terrible people. I don't always agree with their takes and yeah, frankly I don't always see where they get their opinions from but I respect it. Because they're allowed to dislike characters and things that I like.  But then of course, there is real toxic salters out there like those who stalk your blog and look for any little disagreement with their ideals to pick at and harass you with. That or they just have a very unhealthy take which makes you more worried for them than anything. And yes, that is awful... but we just love to mistake that as the majority, huh? People always complain it's just the salters who can't let things go. But it isn't and that's the huge issue here. We're constantly bitter. We're constantly feeling the need to defend characters for issues that happened years ago against people with takes that may or may not have changed. We constantly feel the need to belittle people who disagree with us and it's frankly sickening. Yes, salters bring up scenes with no context or nuance but guess what? So do sugar people about salter's takes. Hence why I tried to make it very clear in my post, "Feel free to correct me. Maybe I'm missing something." The huge problem with the miraculous fandom is they can't let go, they can't spare an ounce of compassion to listen. And they can't just block people and move on if they would rather not hear it. They just have to keep calling each other stupid, mean, racist, sexist, awful... it goes on and on. Yes, I'm sure there are some people like this in the fandom but often times the terms are just tossed around. What I wish miraculous people could understand is... the writing in this show isn't good. It isn't. We can't kid ourselves and pretend it is. We can enjoy it, still, of course. But people have every right to complain about it. And even if it was good writing, people still have every right to complain. People have different tastes. People have different ideals. That doesn't make them terrible people. This fandom has just hurt my friends and myself quite a bit. It makes it very hard to enjoy the show anymore simply because sharing an opinion in this fandom is almost like a death sentence. I get both takes usually. I can usually see what salters are upset with as well as sugar people. I just don't get why we have to be such jerks to one another. I don't think I will ever understand. It's such a waste of energy and all it does is make this fandom more and more bitter. I have watched my friends go from small complaints to downright rage mostly because of how this fandom has treated them. Though I suppose that's the same with every fandom, isn't it? That's just the sad reality... ain't it?

Well... I'm going to keep trying to give people the benefit of the doubt, try to hear them out and help them out if they need. Hence why I made a salt server designed for people to vent freely without having to worry about such a terrible backlash. I'm not perfect and I never will be but I don't ever want anyone to feel the way I and my friends felt so if I can at least try to prevent some of that... I think that’s good enough. I think everyone in this fandom is lovely (with the exceptions of a few actual harassers), I just wish... we weren't so bitter and I wish we could just let go. Staying angry forever isn't good for any of us. I just wish I could hug everyone but I sadly only have two arms and not everyone is gonna want my hug which is fine. They are allowed to feel however they want. I may not always like it but that's okay. They don't have to always like me either. We're flawed, we're human, we're different. It would be no fun if everyone thought and felt the same. And at the end of the day... this is all just fiction but the people behind the fandom... they’re real. Let’s treat them like the real people they are. I thank you for coming here with a very healthy vent and you're very nice. It was wonderful to get such an ask and I'm sorry for the rant. I would love hear from you again. Have a lovely day. <3

[galemalio]

3 Examples of Racial Bias in Animation Storytelling

It’s not hard to grasp that a white person, while not explicitly or consciously racist in the sense we might usually imagine, is still inherently racially biased because they benefit from and grow up used to white supremacy.” - Scottishwobbly, Tumblr

This is nothing new. This is something POC (People of Color) have been talking about in separate fandoms. Nevertheless, it needs to be acknowledged by those unaware.

This article is not made to say that some of the animations that I will use as examples are bad. But in the hopes that we, as consumers and creators, will do better in the future in handling characters that are POC. 

Most often, racial bias in storytelling is when the narrative treats white or light skin toned characters better than darker skin toned characters. The darker skin toned characters are often POC-coded or actual POC.

White creators often do not notice their racial bias in their storytelling as they benefit from and grow up with white privileges and white supremacy. This can also apply to light-skinned POC who have light skin priviliges. 

Some of us don’t often see it but real people who relate to the characters of color do. Especially when it reflects from their experiences with racial bias, microaggressions, colorism and flat out racism.

So when they speak up, it’s important to listen to them to unlearn the racial bias we may have in ourselves. 

I will be emphasizing “the narrative” for I am criticizing how the story treats its dark-skinned characters and not because I am criticizing the characters themselves.

This article is critiqued by @visibilityofcolor​ as a sensitivity reader once and then additions were made before publishing. If you’re looking for a Black sensitivity reader, you can contact her. 

This article is a 14-minute read at average speed so buckle up. Unless you want to skip to your show mentioned below. External Tumblr Resources will be put in the reblog.

Here are three examples that I was made aware of. 

Example #1: The Narrative Treats the Light-Skinned Character at the Expense of the Dark-Skinned Character

Steven Universe was one of the animations that pushed lgbt+ representation in cartoon media. However, there are narratives here and there that showed racial bias. 

SU creator Rebecca Sugar was raised with "Jewish sensibilities" and both siblings observe the lighting of Hanukkah candles with their parents through Skype.[1] Rebecca Sugar also talked about being non-binary.[2] 

But as a white person, she (and the rest of the SU crew) is not aware of the inherently biased values from growing up and benefiting from white privilege. 

One example is the human zoo. There are people that have spoken up about this such as @jellyfax​​ of Tumblr who pointed out that the Crewniverse mishandled a loaded topic and reinforced a white colonist propaganda where the captive humans of mostly black/brown people are naive, docile and childlike in order to subjugate the people that they colonized. .

What I’m here is how a character of color from the main cast is more obligated to the lighter-skinned character. 

In the episode, Friend Ship, one fan had spoken out about how Garnet, who had been validly angry at Pearl, was compelled by a dangerous situation to forgive Pearl. Garnet is a Black-coded character. While Pearl is a light-skinned character.  

Garnet was mad at Pearl for tricking her into always fusing with her. Then they were trapped in a chamber that was going to crush them. In this situation, they have to fuse in order to save themselves but Garnet refuses to because she was still angry at her. 

In the end, they were forced to talk it out, for Garnet to understand Pearl’s reason for wanting to fuse with her and everything worked out well.

The narrative focused so much on Pearl’s self-worth issues at the expense of Garnet’s right to be angry. 

Yes, it showed that Pearl is trying her best to make up for it but Garnet should have been allowed to work at her own anger at her own pace instead of being obligated to consider Pearl’s feelings over her own. 

I wouldn’t have noticed it until someone had mentioned it. Because it was never my experience. 

But it’s there, continuing the message that it’s okay to put the emotional labor on Black people and disregard their own feelings for the sake of the non-Black people who have hurt them -particularly light-skinned women. 

White Fragility and Being Silenced White Woman Tears

Again, racial bias in animation storytelling is often not intentional because white creators do not experience it due to white privilege. 

Without meaning to, that scene alone shows Garnet as the Angry Black woman trope that is ungrateful and rude to Pearl who then ends up in tears. Without meaning to, Pearl with her light skin, became the tearful white girl trope that had to be sympathized over.

The Angry Black Woman trope is a combination of the worst negative stereotypes of a Black woman: overly aggressive, domineering, emasculating, loud, disagreeable and uppity.[13] 

The Tearful white girl trope comes from the combination of the stereotypes of white women being morally upstanding and delicate and therefore should be protected.[13] 

Which, unfortunately, many white women have taken advantage of.

These two tropes are harmful to WOC (Women of Color) because they experience the "weary weaponizing of white women's tears". This tactic employed by many white women incites sympathy and avoids accountability for their actions, turning the tables to their accuser and forcing their accuser to understand them instead.

(Image by Виктория Бородинова from Pixabay)

In "Weapon of lass destruction: The tears of a white woman", Author Shay described that white tears turns a white woman into the priority of whatever space she's in. "It doesn't matter if you're right, once her tears are activated, you cease to exist." [11] 

White woman tears have gotten Black people beaten and lynched such as Emmett Till. Carolyn Bryant who had accused 14 year old Emmett Till of sexually harassing her in 1955, admitted she lied about those claims years later in 2007.[15]

In Awesomely Luvvie's "About the Weary Weaponizing of White Women Tears", she states that the innocent white woman is a caricature many subconsciously embrace because it hides them from consequences. [10]

In The Guardian’s article, "How White Women Use Strategic Tears to Silence Women of Colour", Ruby Hamad shares her experience:

"Often, when I have attempted to speak to or confront a white woman about something she has said or done that has impacted me adversely, I am met with tearful denials and indignant accusations that I am hurting her. My confidence diminished and second-guessing myself, I either flare up in frustration at not being heard (which only seems to prove her point) or I back down immediately, apologising and consoling the very person causing me harm."[4]

This is not to say that all crying white women are insincere. But as activist Rachel Cargle said:

“I refuse to listen to white women cry about something. When women have come up to me crying, I say, ‘Let me know when you feel a little better, then maybe we can talk.’”[3]

One of the most quoted words in “White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism.” is this:

“It is white people’s responsibility to be less fragile; people of color don’t need to twist themselves into knots trying to navigate us as painlessly as possible.”[3]  

When white women cry in defense, instead of taking accountability, People of Color are then gaslighted into thinking they’re the bad guy. This is emotional abuse and a manipulation tactic. 

People of Color shouldn’t have to bend backwards to accommodate discomfited white or light-skinned people who have hurt them. 

How She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (SPOP) Did It Right

Despite SPOP having good lgbtq+ representations, there are other biases in the show. Such as Mara, a WOC whose only purpose was to sacrifice herself for the white protagonist. There was also the insensitive joke in their stream regarding Bow’s sibling that perpetuated an Anti-Black stereotype which Noelle Stevenson has apologized for.[14]

But the scene I have encountered where the Black character was validly angry and his feelings were treated well by the narrative, came from SPOP.

Bow, a black character, was validly angry at Glimmer, a lighter skinned character. Glimmer made a lot of bad decisions, one of them was using Adora and their friends as bait, without their knowledge, to lure out and capture Catra.  

Glimmer tearfully apologized in Season 5, Episode 4. Adora readily forgave her. But Bow didn't. 

They faced dangers along the way but the story didn't put them in a dangerous situation where Bow has to forgive Glimmer in order to get out of it. 

This was Glimmer's words of apology:

"Look, I know you're still mad at me. Maybe you'll be mad at me for a really long time. I deserved it. And maybe... maybe we'll never be friends like we used to be. But I'm not going to stop trying to make it better. I made a mistake with the heart of Etheria. I should've listened to you and I'm sorry. You get to be mad. For as long as you need to be. But I'm not going anywhere. And when you're ready, I'll be here."

In short, Bow was allowed to take the time to be mad and not just get over it for someone else’s sake. The story validates his feelings and he was allowed to take his own pace. That is emotional respect the story gave to him.

Example #2: The Narrative Gives Better Endings or Portrayals to Colonizers than Their Victims

Avatar: The Last Airbender has handled dark themes well such as genocide, war, PTSD, disability and redemption with great worldbuilding.

However, I never noticed the racial bias in ATLA until people spoke up of the double standards in ATLA’s treatment of light-skinned colonizers compared to their dark-skinned victims-turned-villains.

The characters in question -Iroh, Azula, Jet and Hama- are all flawed and well-rounded in a believable way. But how the narrative treats them is unequal.

General Iroh is an ex-colonizer who gets to redeem himself and not answer for his past war crimes, living a peaceful life as a tea shop owner. The only reason Iroh changed was when he was personally affected by the negativity of their military subjugation -his son’s death. It wasn’t the harm of the Fire nation ravaging Earth kingdom villages or cities and affecting millions of people that opened his eyes.

Azula, the tyrannical daughter, had closure of her mother's rejection when she was a child and was able to escape imprisonment.

Jet and Hama, victims of colonization who have done bad things, did not get similar conclusions to their stories OR compensation for what they have gone through from the Fire Nation's colonization. 

Jet was given a second chance but was arrested for trying to expose Zuko and Iroh being firebenders -firebenders who were their enemies for conquering their villages. Then he died from the injuries of the person who had brainwashed and mind-controlled him. 

Hama was imprisoned for life. 

Compared to the sins of the light-skinned colonizers, the narrative didn’t give Jet and Hama the development where they could heal from their trauma, receive compensation for what happened to them and really have a chance in life. 

The dark-skinned victims of colonization just became a lesson to the viewers how they shouldn’t hold grudges for being colonized. The end. They have received consequences for their actions but there is no continuation to their stories after that. 

It almost seems like the narrative is saying that because they have harmed colonizers who have no part in their trauma (and in Jet’s case, some Earth kingdom villagers), they are therefore unworthy to be given an actual chance in life. 

While Azula and Iroh, who have actively participated in conquering, colonizing and attacking the Earth Kingdom itself, were.   

Someone once said that if indigenous people have control over Hama’s story, it would have been done differently. But the ATLA crew are white, non-indigenous people who prioritized redeeming colonizers instead.

The narrative has also affected how the ATLA fandom thinks. If most fans are asked who they would want to be redeemed, the popular option would be Azula over Jet or Hama.

Once again, I don’t think the ATLA crew noticed it due to their racial bias. But still, the harm is done and the racially biased message is continued: 

The colonizers and their descendants don’t have to make amends for the colonizers’ crimes. Or if they do, only lightly since it’s in the past (no matter how recent that past is). 

The colonized who rebel will tend to hurt innocent people and then get a grisly end for getting in way over their heads.  

I would venture as far as to say that the narrative may have the  added subconscious desire to quiet their white anxiety on the vengeance of the colonized. As I have learned when writing about Vodou stereotypes and how they have stemmed from the history of white anxiety of Black vengeance, of Black fetishization and of dissolution of the white race through intermarriages.

In @visibilityofcolor’s blog, someone asked:

 “So I saw some of the really heated debates on here and on twitter about how if Iroh and Azula can be portrayed sympathetically despite their actions then characters like Jet and Hama should've been given a chance too. Do you think that the writers understood the implications of only redeeming characters from the colonizer/fascist nation but not giving the characters who suffered because of their fascism a second chance too?”

To which VisibilityOfColor replied:

“No, because at the end of the day, the writers are white. When it comes to stuff like this, it’s no surprise when we see white writers redeem problematic characters before they actually redeem victims of those racist problematic characters. For instance, Dave Filioni, who worked on both avatar and star wars rebels, did the same thing when redeeming agent kallus who was an soldiers in the imperial army and took credit for a genocide. where as victims of the empire were still painted in negative lights. i really don’t think they understand.

They have this ‘be the better person’ view on things, which is what a lot of white people tend to emulate when it comes to people of color standing up to their oppressors. and unfortunately, these are ideas passed on to children, esp minorities. that they should forgive people and communities who hurt them and ‘be the better person’. this is why white ppl don’t need to write narratives for people of color.”

Example #3: The Narrative Favors the Light Skinned Character Than Dark Skinned Character in Similar Situations

I would like to reiterate that racial bias in storytelling is often not intentional. I am not saying the creators and the people who support them are bad people. No.

However, I encourage that once a racial bias is made known in our work, it is our responsibility to change them to stop the perpetuation of its harmful message.

Hazbin Hotel is a popular cartoon with whimsical designs and its concept opens the conversation about redemption. The creator, Vivziepop may not have noticed the racial bias in her cartoon as a white Latina [5] that grew up with and benefits from white privileges, along with the Hazbin crew. 

In the Youtbe video, "Hazbin Hotel - How Art took over Writing", Staxlotl states:

“I understand that there was a lot of time and effort put into this pilot, almost three years worth of effort. But I think most of that time was spent into the art and visuals when it should’ve gone into polishing the writing in the characters.”[6]

Once again, I’m not here to critique the characters but how the narrative treats its dark-skinned characters.

The story treats Charlie, the white-skinned, “Disney-esque” protagonist princess differently from how it treats Vaggie, the dark-skinned, more outspoken and protective Latina girlfriend of Charlie who supports the princess’ cause. 

In its pilot episode, both girls experience humiliation. While Charlie is portrayed by the story as someone the viewers have to feel sorry for...

...Vaggie is portrayed in her humiliation as the butt of the joke for the viewers.

While they both didn’t like what Angel Dust did, Charlie was sympathized over in the narrative as a moment... 

...while Vaggie’s angry but valid callouts were dismissed and ignored as part of the comedy.

While Charlie was someone that needs to be protected in the narrative... 

...Vaggie is left to fend for herself. 

Again, I don’t think the creators noticed the racial bias of their cartoon. However, this racial bias is reflected in the harmful perceptions that dark-skinned women, particularly Black women and Black girls, are more mature, tougher and need less protection at a young age.[7] 

This adultification bias perceives them as challenging authority when they express strong or contrary views and are then given harsher discipline than white girls who misbehave.[8] And this continues when they grow up.

In a 2017 study, Black women and girls aged 12-60 years old confirmed they are treated harsher by their white peers and are accused of being aggressive when they would defend themselves or explain their point of view to authority figures.[8] 

This bias also coincides with the Spicy Latina trope of a brown-skinned, hot-blooded, quick-tempered and passionate woman.

Everyday Feminism described this trope as "Although objects of desire for many, the spicy Latina may have too much personality to handle. So much so that she is often viewed as domineering or emasculating." [16]

Sounds familiar? (Look at Angry Black Woman trope above.)

Why is it that a light-skinned character, Charlie, is allowed to be vulnerable and be sympathized while the dark-skinned Latina character, Vaggie, is mocked, dismissed and expected to tough it out?

Severina Ware had to remind the world in her article that relates to the bias against dark skinned characters:

“Black women are not offered the protection and gentleness of our white counterparts. We are not given permission to be soft and delicate. We are required to exhibit strength and fortitude not only because our lives depend on it, but because so many others depend on us. Black women should not be charged with the responsibility of saving everyone when nobody is here to save us.”[12] 

As @cullenvhenan​ of Tumblr has said in her post:

“if you're a white creator and your brown/black characters are always sassy, reckless, aggressive or cold and your white characters are always soft, demure, shy and introverted you should think about maybe why you did that”

(Image above from Iowa Law Reviews’ “Aggressive Encounters & White Fragility: Deconstructing the Trope of the Angry Black Woman”)

Detecting Your Own Racial Bias

It would be hard. No matter how much you edit and create, you may miss it because it was never your experience. 

So how do we prevent our racial bias from creeping into our creations?

Listen to POC and their feedback.

As @charishjb from Instagram has shared, here is one of the things that we can do (tumblr link here) [9]:

Consider POC voices. Listen to their experiences. Hire sensitivity POC readers. Put multiple POC voices in positions of leadership in creative projects.

Then we can stop the racial bias that perpetuates again and again in the media. I hope for that future.

[saint-starflicker]

Your novel sounds really interesting!

If you like Austen, then you've probably read Northanger Abbey already that's an affectionate parody of pre-Frankenstein/Vampyre gothic. I think the 2007 movie adaptation improved on some parts by making Henry Tinley genuinely disappointed and offended by his girlfriend's inappropriate speculation on his family life, whereas in the book he just thinks it's funny. I don't know where that falls in your People Choosing Cruelty tolerance scale, because I think the Thorpes are a necessary evil to the story.

Manor by Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, I found in German on Project Gutenberg and only had Google translate it...and I love the story. Even through the robot translation, I thought the dark nautical was very atmospheric, and I understood everybody's motivations even as they operated at cross-purposes.

The Fog Horn by Ray Bradbury is another moody, dark nautical short story.

For a more "cozy gothic" I always think of Frances Hodgson Burnett's novels. Be warned that she was writing at a time that British colonisation of India was a whole thing, and that Burnett herself apparently considered it fascinating without levying any criticism. Brace yourself then for the tone that cultural appropriation for British kids is cool and quirky: That aside, A Little Princess gives us a protagonist confined to her boarding school of horror after a bereavement, and there is some supernatural element in it. The Secret Garden gives us a protagonist confined to a manor in the middle of nowhere (gothic), going ghost-hunting at night with her candle and nightgown (very gothic), and also there's a disabled person secretly sequestered away (very very gothic). Little Lord Fauntleroy is unbearably, insufferably twee but I do notice that the story is still in keeping with a lot of gothic tropes but in a cozy way: vulnerable young person in a strange country, family secrets and tense motivated rivalry... it's all there, it's just in my opinion Burnett's very worst book.

Back to technically more adult classic literature, The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux...ermm, I think the Broadway musical adaptation was better. The book version has characters flattened into detectives, which is fine, I don't hate pulpy tropey detective fiction...but if you were looking for sublime emotion and aesthetic then this is not it.

Speaking of detective fiction, I enjoyed reading some Agatha Christie mysteries until I finally got to her most-recommended one, And Then There Were None—and, the best thing I can say about that one was it was short. It's lauded as this innovation in the detective mystery genre and having major gothic vibes but I think that doesn't make up for the recurring racism (same applies to The Affair at Styles. If you're studying literature trends and influences, then I guess Agatha Christie is the poster girl for the golden age of detective fiction, but as reading for pure entertainment and vibes the Product of Its Racist Time aspect really gets in the way a lot—a lot. It's the 21st century, we can all move on to whatever Gillian Flynn or Riley Sager are writing next.) I anti-recommend And Then There Were None. Instead, Crooked House is my personal favorite, even though it is adjacent to People Choosing Cruelty, as I recall Sophia Leonides is the best girl. I also thought the 2007 miniseries adaptation of Ordeal by Innocence improved a lot from the book.

Finally, for modern gothic horror—Fraternity by Andy Mientus is in this blog's header list of fandoms because of reasons. There's architecture. There's confinement horror. There's vengeful demon-summoning and ghosts (the bully gets a redemption arc). Zooey Orson is the most dynamic and complex character I have read in a long while. If you still want modern cozy gothic, The Backstagers and the Ghost Light also by Andy Mientus made me cry when 700+ pages of A Little Life failed to.

I have not read The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White but I have heard nothing but good things about this Victorian-era asylum horror that I was already prepared to love because it's Victorian-era asylum horror... except that Andrew Joseph White as an author does not pull his punches. Like, the Author Bares His Teeth in every book he writes all the time, allegedly, the situations these fictional young people get put into are horrific.

Recommend Ghost Stories To Me!

Need book recommendations. I'm a weenie about horror movies, and get awful secondhand embarrassment. I'm also trying to work on a novel featuring a feral little blender mix of Lost Princess Anastasia/Julie of the Wolves/Stephen Maturin/Fanny Price protagonist. One of the things I'm struggling with is how her upbringing/history informs her personality. I figure it's part psychology and part Haunting the Narrative.

So! I think I need help from the Ghost Stories and Gothic Horror readers around here. I need recommendations please. I can handle harder material in reading than in film, and I generally can squeeze more reading time into my day anyway.

If it helps to understand my general literature tastes and who you're pitching to: I've been trying to work my way through Dostoyevksy's "The Brothers Karamazov" this summer and that's been an awful slog. By comparison I sped through Les Mis and the Tale of Genji years ago, so it's not the length that's a problem. I'm a massive fan of Shakespeare and Austen. I probably have to credit my most gruesome reading to Batman fanfiction though.

Ugh, this has been rambling.

TLDR: Need recommendations on what novels to dip my toes into Gothic Horror when People Choosing Cruelty is not usually my jam.

[autisticandroids]

"Emotional in*est"- Do you even hear yourself? There's no such thing as emotional in*est. Just say you're a win*est shipper and go. I hate how freaks like you always try to grasp at straws to seem all "intellectual", when you're nothing but a freak who faps to things like ped*philia, best*ality and in*est. THAT'S why Jensen hates shippers. You don't want to see a positive queer relationship, you just want to read about Jensen getting fu*ked no matter who or WHAT it is. You're disgusting

now, i want to be clear, i received this ask at 2:46 am, about an hour after posting this answer. i want you to read that linked post. it’s a discussion of familial abuse. specifically, anon was talking about how upsetting they found the nature of trauma in supernatural - how none of the characters ever break the cycle. they mention how i had talked about sam and dean as a potentially emotionally incestuous relationship as something they found relatable to their own situation of familial abuse. i responded by agreeing that it’s upsetting that supernatural did that, and trying to comfort them a bit.

this anon saw that, and immediately not only accused me of incest fetishism, but sent similar anons to my mutuals.

@steveyockey messaged me this anon that he received, seemingly at about the same time i did. it’s clearly the same person. now, i love ziz, but we don’t have a significant public relationship. we don’t, say, talk about each other in posts or tags. i think i’ve mentioned her once. i reblog a lot of his posts and he reblogs a few of mine, but i have many other much more obvious public relationships, some of them with other BNFs like ziz. i expect that as they start to wake up, they too will notice that they’ve received anons like this.

all of this over explicitly talking about the familial abuse dynamics legible in supernatural, a show whose perhaps most persistent theme is toxic and abusive family dynamics.

the obsessive moral panic over the existence of wincest is fascinating to me, especially coming from destiel shippers. i’ve discussed in the past how i personally don’t think there’s anything wrong with people shipping wincest, as long as they do it far away from me, because i find incest gross and don’t want to hear about it. 

sam and dean have a dynamic in the text of the show that you could reasonably read as emotionally incestuous - they fill the role traditionally filled by a romantic partner. this is emphasized by the fact that when sam tries to escape dean, which he does with some regularity until season eight, which is when he just gives up, he always immediately finds a romantic partner, and is then eventually dragged away from her by dean. sam knows, on some level, that in order to escape dean, which he wants to do, he needs to replace dean in his life with someone else, in order to make it more difficult for dean to reclaim that role by force. 

this stuff is all in the text of the show, with not that much interpretation. it’s a pretty solid depiction of cycles of familial trauma and abuse. john parentifies dean (which is a form of abuse related to covert incest), dean turns around and does covert incest to sam. 

when i’m analyzing supernatural seriously, one of the things that interests me the most is the theme of familial abuse. this interpretation inevitably comes up when i’m discussing that, because it’s an intensely plausible interpretation of the text. the fact that i immediately get accused of being an incest fetishist (and a pedophile and zoophile?) for mentioning it seems to indicate that there is, frankly, something wrong in the destiel fandom.

but frankly, i don’t like this defense of myself. it’s a little too “no, not me! you have the wrong witch!” for my tastes.

even if i were an incest fetishist, it is intensely creepy to me that not only did i get an angry message about it, other people did as well. the wave of purity politics that has overtaken fandom spaces is intensely unsettling to me, especially the anti-sex bent that it’s taken in recent years. 

when i was a teenager, there was still a very damaging purity culture in tumblr fandom, but it was around social justice - how do you be the least racist, least sexist, least transphobic, least homophobic, least ableist person, and so on. this culture was intensely damaging to me, psychologically, exacerbating already present obsessive compulsive and other anxious tendencies, but at least i agreed with the basic project: i do think it’s good for people to try to become less racist, less sexist, less homophobic, less transphobic, less ableist. i think that participating in a terrifying, abusive purity cult is a bad, damaging, and ineffective-in-the-long-term way to do that, but i think the intent is in the right place. 

however, because of certain changes in online culture, that kind of social justice has kind of become “cringe” and therefore fallen apart. like, it’s still present, but far less strong than it used to be. but the purity cult has remained, only now it’s explicitly only about sex. people will try and hunt down the most deviant expression of sexuality they can find, and put that on trial. it doesn’t matter what that sexuality is. i am frequently on record as saying that if wincest didn’t exist, destiel would be considered the irredeemably problematic ship of the supernatural fandom, and in fact i’m constantly surprised that i, personally, have never been cancelled for romanticizing abuse, something which i try not to do, but walk a pretty fine line on. but no one cares about the toxicity of destiel because rather than having a sensible barometer of reasonable behavior, everyone is simply fixated on finding and persecuting the most deviant option available. thus, since destiel is by comparison less deviant than wincest, it’s fine. 

but this culture doesn’t actually have anything to do with, like i said, a sensible barometer of reasonable behavior. it just goes for the most deviant option available. the same culture that comes for wincest shippers is the culture that comes for, i don’t know, people who ship the wrong she-ra ships. as you can probably tell, it’s been a while since i’ve been in a giant fandom full of youngsters. it’s not actually about the specific morality of shipping wincest, it’s about asking “who is it okay for me to hurt” and finding the most deviant people available for an answer. 

this is why they reached so hard to try and accuse me of being a wincest shipper. they wanted to bully someone, or perhaps they had a problem with me (though given that they don’t seem to have searched my blog, because if they had they would have found better ammunition, i suspect it’s the former), and so they accused me of shipping wincest - the worst possible accusation, an accusation that makes it okay to accuse me of anything and do whatever they like to me. 

like, you, The Girl (GN) Reading This, should be creeped out by this behavior. no matter what your opinion of wincest. even if you post “wincesties die” every day. because you will more than likely at some point in your life find yourself on the wrong end of this culture, for something which you consider totally innocuous. that, or perhaps you will be coerced into participating in some kind of bullying campaign, which is traumatizing in its own sense - even if you enjoy it at the time, it’s likely you will grow to regret it. hurting other people sucks.

i’m going to bed and i’m going to leave this as my last post until i wake up in like, four hours, so as many people can read it as possible. i would love for people to think about the kind of fan culture they’re participating in where not only me but people i interact with get sent these kinds of messages.

i don’t know, i feel like this *checks notes* fifteen hundred word essay i’ve written is a touch pearl-clutchy. anon hate is something normal on the internet. i get it about once a week, and normally i respond with jokes. some people are just assholes. i’m unusually sensitive about this kind of thing because like i said, i’ve had some formatively bad experiences with social justice purity politics. i also put a lot of value on having my cards on the table - if someone is going to get mad at me for saying “i don’t think wincesties should die” i would like them to get mad now, and not wait until i trip over a landmine. so those things were definitely part of the reason i wanted to write this.

but in this case, this person who decided to be an asshole was also sending messages about me to other people i know, which is creepy in and of itself, but also: i don’t necessarily trust the people i know in this fandom not to decide to shun me on the strength of an anonymous accusation of wincest shipping. that’s how strong the purity culture is in this fandom in specific. and i personally find that incredibly distasteful. like, you’re gay people aren’t you? you’re aware that mainstream society will always consider you sexual deviants no matter how respectable you are? yes? like this person wants to intentionally destroy my social connections and reputation. which is much more threatening than just saying nasty shit to me on anon.

[ouyangzizhensdad]

i've debated with myself so much about madam yu and saw you rt that post defending her and i read it but it still didn't sit right with me, i'm not chinese but i am from one of those taugh love mom cultures and still find her extra bad, i asked a few chinese people who don't stan the book and they were horrified at the defense and said that it was not normal, sure she shows regular ch mom characteristics but she's like the hyperbole of a ch mom so does anyone own the monopoly of wha's normal?

Hi there anon, 

This is only my pov and I cannot speak from the perspectives of Chinese and Chinese diasporic people, nor for the people who wrote on the topic of Yu-furen (I can only speak of how I interpreted the posts I came across).

My understanding of the situation, however, is that they are not attempting to do with these posts what you are suggesting. You ask “does anyone own the monopoly of what’s normal”, which suggests you believe the posts meant to give a definitive answer on what is ‘normal’ behaviour, when in reality the posts seem to have been made with the opposite aim in mind: to remind people who do not share the cultural background of the intended audience of MDZS that there does not exist a single definition of what constitute “normal” behaviour and that fandom discussions dissecting every single action or word of Yu-furen’s toward any character to portray them as “clear signs of abuse” has been difficult to stomach and might even feel imperialistic for people who have been raised by parents who came from a cultural background where some of these very behaviours are not regarded as abusive.  

These posts, in general, have also seemed to attempt first to explain the nuances of Yu-furen’s relationship to WWX, which often gets wrongfully portrayed as her unequivocally being his adoptive mother or a legal guardian. She is not a mother figure to him and does not act toward him from that position. These have also aimed to remind people that the behaviours and care we feel are “owed” to “children” as a group are spatiotemporally specific, and influenced by a variety of factors--in this case, WWX being the child of a servant and a disciple of the sect. By reminding people that, in her position, in that specific spatiotemporal moment, Yu-furen would have been allowed to be much more extreme in her disciplining or could have simply refused to let WWX stay in Lotus Pier, what I feel these posters are doing is not telling Westerners that they personally think it would be appropriate behaviour towards a child, but rather highlighting that this means something wrt how Yu-furen is characterised in the context of the novel considering that the intended audience of the novel would be aware of that reality. Differently put, that it suggests a framing of Yu-furen as someone that does bark more than she bites even if she does bite. And aside from the irrelevant surface-level readings of Yu-furen as a sort of “girlboss” that seem to originate mostly from the CQL-verse in any case, I’ve never seen anyone suggest that she is irreproachable. All the serious analyses I’ve seen acknowledge that Yu-furen is meant to be a complicated figure or acknowledge that she abuses her authority in the sect by giving WWX punishments she does not bestow on other disciples. What they seem to disagree with is the ways western fans make sweeping generalisations and accusations without the relevant context, which comes off to them as insensitive and coming from a place of cultural ignorance.

Maybe it is time for a discussion that humanist thought, that which underlines so much of our modern understanding of rights and social progress, flattens spatiotemporal differences (or, as they often talked about, cultural differences), staying deeply rooted in Western supremacy when it aims to provide a single answer to what is right and what is a right. It can verge very easily into the evangelical and the imperialistic: we have only to look at the influence of the “global” LGBT movement has had on erasing  localised social organisations and identity markers by superposing themselves unto them as more intelligible ideas through which to barter for rights with the political class. Or worst, by having the “global” LGBT movement frame localised expressions of queerness as not progressive enough or harmful (sometimes I think back at Gaudio’s ethnography of queer men in the Hausa-speaking region of northern Nigeria, and how the men who took on the penetrative role in sex  generally switch to self-reference and being referenced in a feminine way and using “women’s talk”, and thinking “wow, they would be so cancelled or condescended to by tumblr kids 😬”). 

The point of this tangent is not to underline that everything about humanism or its influences on modern life are bad, but that it is an intellectual “tool” that can be do harm and be imperialistic and racist (since it is generally the White, Christian-adjacent, Western standards that are posited as the moral truth that defies differences in cultures and material contexts). And most of the discussions of what “adults” owe to “children” (ideas that are generally treated as homogeneous and clear-cut across time and space, as apriori categories), of what rights are owed to children, exist within these frameworks. Or, they might exist within the framework of “science,” as if science itself cannot be influenced by Western imperialism and researchers’ biases. Reading western language acquisition research and comparing it with cross-cultural ethnographic sociolinguistic research on language acquisition really highlights how some of the science that informs “good parenting” in the West is incapable of realising how much the material and cultural context of the West influences the results that are supposedly controlled. 

Or, again, the idea that science can help us define clearly and once and for all where the line between shitty actions and abuse, or discipline and abuse, should be drawn, is to me one that cannot be dissociated from a belief that science can provide us with definite truths about our existence as social animals as if these sort of truths were not inherently positioned and negotiated. It is an uncomfortable idea, isn’t it, to realise that two people can be against abuse but at the same time not draw the line at the same place? How do we best grapple with the discovery that “abuse” is not an apriori category but rather one that is constructed according to varying forms of positioned and shifting knowledge and experience? I do not have an answer, but I certainly think that fandom arguments will probably not be the best place for that level of philosophical discussions. 

To conclude, anon, I do want to acknowledge that your ask seems to come from a place of concern and perhaps even hurt. And that is perhaps why the posts from Chinese diasporic people in the fandom might appear to you as dismissive or flippant towards the interpretations of other fans of the novel. But perhaps without this prism of concern and/or hurt through which your perception of these analyses are filtered, you might have been able to notice a lot more nuance to their points than what your ask suggests. And that is not a criticism per se, but simply a reminder that, sometimes, some topics are difficult for us to approach clear-headed and to receive differing perspectives in good faith. In any case, I am certainly not the arbiter whose opinion on the topic will finally settle these debates, as such you might want in the future prefer to direct your questions (politely of course) to people who penned such analyses or who can speak from the relevant cultural perspective. If your aim in sending me this ask (because I reblogged a post you disagreed with) was to judge whether I passed your litmus test for being “morally just” to decide whether anything I have to say on any other topic is still worth paying attention to, well I suppose you now have your answer. 

[esther-dot]

Hey Jon fan who became Jonsa anon here, I would definitely love to share how I became jonsa, sry for the late reply, IRL is busy lately, also I fear this will be very long answer. So I binged watched GOT till s5 bfr S6. Even though I am Jon fan I have never hated Sansa or other starks. I liked sansa in s1 but started stanning her when she played ppl around her with the whole 'I am loyal to my beloved Joffrey' thing. I never knew so many ppl underestimated her strength & smartness till I joined the fandom. During s6, I knew ppl were shipping Jonsa. There were many articles, videos abt it but I didnt. Not even when R+L was revealed bcs I always saw them as siblings. But I admit kit & sophie had chemistry. Some of their scenes were filmed weirdly & made me all👀 ( especially that s8 feast scene convinced me abt jonsa - Dany love triangle lmao)

But s7 happened & poor jon lost all of his personality. Jonerys was very very cliche for me. I couldn't believe this was GOT, felt like CW show. They had no development, interacted for 2 episodes but we were told they loved eachother so much. Kit & Ec's nonexistant chemistry didnt help either.

Most consider them ice/fire, central romance but I dont. For me Jon is a hero and Dany isn't. She suffered at the start of s1 but after? I noticed all her crimes bcs I binged watched the show within very short time. Final nail in coffin was the racist mhysa scene. I am WOC and watching white women worshipped by POCs filled me with rage. I couldn't believe ppl saw that and thought this person is a hero? How? And then they showed my fav character who mercy killed Mance, falling for this person who's solution to any problem is let's burn it? They are foils, stand for opposite things.

Then s8 aired & Jon got worst ending possible. I started looking for fics so in character Jon could get some happy ending.  Ngl initially I read both Jonsa & Jonerys fics. But I didnt like how Jonerys authors treated Jon. He was so ooc, used as sperm donor to create targ lookin babies, burned all starks alive to keep perfect queen Dany happy 😂, supported targ restoration, was happy living in KL/Essos etc. I stopped reading them. Jonsa fics though? Perfection❤! Jon who like canon chooses starks, gets to take stark name, feels happy at his home in Winterfell, is KITN or consort to Sansa. Queen Sansa also gets a brave, gentle, strong high lord who is as good looking as her ( she doesn't need to end up with a ugly abuser for 'growth' lol), She can stay at Winterfell without the fear of someone using her for her claim.

All this made me realize that Jon and sansa are perfect fit for each other. Their dreams match. They were right in front of my eyes but I never even realized it. I read a lot of fics in few months, rewatched their scenes, got convinced abt pol!jon, then read metas, ended up reading the books too. I am hopeful we will get canon Jonsa in books bcs both Jon and sansa deserve to be happy

So yeah this is how I started shipping jonsa. It is only Jon and sansa ship that makes sense when we consider their canon characterization and overall plot of the series. That's what I meant by previous ask abt ppl shipping Jon with his abusers like Dany and ygritte accusing us of self-inserting into Sansa and not caring abt Jon & his dreams, when anyone who likes and understands Jon at all would know he can never be happy by living like wilding with ygritte or becoming targ restoration supporter for his crazy aunt after she burns Kl in books. Jonsa is the ship for ppl who love & care abt Jon and Sansa, as they are in the canon.

Thank you so much for taking the time to share that! I love hearing about how people got into Jonsa/interpret the characters/their dynamic. Your experience is similar to a number of others I’ve heard. 

Once you see Dany for what she is, it’s impossible to go back and being force fed how wonderful she is by characters who would have known better was nauseating. I’ve heard several people who binged the series after it ended say it was obvious where this was all going by s2, so I think what the cast/crew said in interviews/all the marketing really shaped how fans thought. In a few years when people watch it I don’t think any of them will be surprised by her turn, although I know they’ll be angry at the sidelining of the Starks/treatment of Jon. I would scroll through twitter to see the general reaction to things as s8 was airing and everyone was mad about them making Jon defend Dany burning KL. Abhorrent. @visibilityofcolor wrote about Dany and the white savior trope (link) and @sayruq has an anti daenerys tag with lots of posts about the racism in her story (link) as does @jonskory who is also a jonsa! (link). 

The feast scene in s8 was definitely suspicious. There was absolutely no reason to include that except for Jonsa. I remember freaking a few people out by pointing to that. It’s one of the things that makes it feel like there was weird editing to alter the story as much as possible after shooting because Dany and Sansa already had the political tension, she’d definitely make a move to protect Jon, why throw in the jealousy? They should have cut that unless they were going to deal with it later. It was such a tropey scene I had people who hate Jonsa freaking out the show was going to deliver. 😂

I’ve been so curious how jxnerys shippers wrote post canon fics (I mean, Jon killed her), but burning all the Starks alive...👀 I know they routinely wish/write death for Sansa, but yikes. The thing that haunts me about s8 is Jon because Sansa, while I wish she had gotten better writing, was still within her previous characterization, but Jon...unless you use the pol!jon interpretation, being banished is only the beginning of his nightmare. How is he supposed to live with himself if he was genuinely trying to make a Targ restoration happen? I really care a lot less about him having sex with Dany/believing himself in love (I mean, he did think he loved an abusive/violent girl before) than I do about the idea that his loyalty/motivation was changed from the Starks/protecting them. That’s what’s unforgivable to me, so pol!jon is the only way I can deal. 

I love post s8 fics too because there are so many ways you can followup the events of s8/interpret the emotional story to fill in the gaps, and give Jon and Sansa the ending they deserved. Their matching dreams is such a beautiful touch. Love that. One of my favorite post canon fics is Homecoming because the moment when Jon breaks and confesses his feelings is just...perfect. 

[the-blue-fairie]

On pitting characters against each other and bad media criticism in the Frozen fandom:

So, I made a post a few days ago about undue negativity towards Elsa in the fandom where I criticized a comment someone made on one of my posts The comment said that Anna deserved to know that she was loved and the deleted scene where Elsa shows Anna the memory of her parents should have been left in the finished film (something I agree with), but also said that, “Outside of Kristoff, Anna can count on everyone else using her, leaving her, and manipulating her” (something I do not agree with and I feel throws not only Elsa but Olaf, Mattias, and the Northuldra under the bus.)

But today this same commenter reblogged one of my analysis posts and praised it, so I thought, “Hey, maybe I was too harsh on this person. We seem to agree on certain things.” So I looked over at their blog to see if I misjudged them and...

Oh dear, where to begin? First of all, I don’t believe Lee and Buck “hate” Anna. I think they love Anna very much, just like they love Elsa very much. People in this fandom, when talking about flaws in the writing of F2, always want to claim that the writers/directors/actors are conspiring against their favorite character. You see it with certain people claiming that the filmmakers “hate” Elsa and you see it with certain people (like this individual here) claiming that the writers “hate” Anna.

Writing doesn’t work like that. Making a film is a long and difficult process and sometimes the filmmakers make mistakes or make bad choices or end up creating a scene with negative ramifications all while having the best intentions. It’s not malice, it’s just an unfortunate circumstance or, at worst, poor writing. And I’m not saying we can’t talk about flaws in F2 or scenes that are badly written and might undermine certain characters’ arcs. I do that all the time myself. But saying that those flaws are because the filmmakers hate one of their characters is... That’s not a valid way to go about film criticism.

I also don’t think that Lee and Buck “destroyed [Anna] to promote Elsa.” Now, I do feel that there are flaws in the writing of F2 and that has negative consequences sometimes for both of the sisters’ arcs. And I do have conflicting feelings about the fact that so much of Anna’s arc is about suffering, about watching her world crumble about her while she tries to keep it intact; whereas Elsa’s arc is so much bout validation. As someone who connects deeply with Anna’s pain in F2, Anna’s arc hurts to watch. And sometimes, on an instinctive level, I feel that Anna’s arc is cruel to her and that I can’t watch this character that I see myself in go through pain after pain after pain even when she is going to pick herself back up - and I do feel that the film should have given her more validation at points.

But even with my misgivings about Anna’s arc, I don’t think the filmmakers “destroyed her.” In fact, I think Anna’s arc is far more cohesive than Elsa’s in F2. (When I say this, everyone, I am NOT saying that “the filmmakers hate Elsa and that’s why Anna’s arc is stronger” and I’m NOT saying “something something conspiracy about KBell” - but I do feel the writers weren’t quite sure what to do with Elsa because she means so much to so many people and she’s kind of “too much for Disney: too powerful, too traumatized, too independent, too gay,” as a writer put it recently, and the writers are trapped having to write Elsa within the confines of the stifling Disney system - just as they are trapped in the same way when writing Anna.)  But anyway, I feel this person is completely wrong when they say Lee and Buck “destroyed” Anna. Anna is still Anna. She’s still brave, fearless, resourceful, struggling with her trauma day by day and striving forward to do the Next Right Thing. In my personal opinion, The Next Right Thing is the true spiritual successor of Let it Go and one of my favorite songs in the franchise - even if it hurts me so much to watch the scene that I hardly do... because it feels too real. But the fact it feels too real only goes to show the love that was put into it. The filmmakers didn’t destroy Anna.

Also... “Elsa should have been killed off and not brought back”? WHAT? That’s just... deliberately incendiary, trying to push people’s buttons. And I know Elsa is just a fictional character so you might say I should calm down but... that’s the thing. Elsa is a fictional character, so this person should calm down about her. How can you expend such hate for a character who has a good heart, who tries over and over to do the right thing and who, like Anna, has suffered trauma? Elsa isn’t a deliberately cruel character. Elsa is an incredibly loving and empathetic character. And while, yes, I’d argue that there are aspects of Elsa’s arc in F2 that are poorly written, that isn’t Elsa’s fault because Elsa isn’t real. As hb-pickle put it recently, if you have issues with the way Elsa is written, focus your energy on saying something like, “These and these aspects of the writing fell short and although it seems like the filmmakers wanted to convey [x], they actually ended up conveying [y] and [z] because of these and these flaws.”

As I’ve mentioned previously, it’s interesting to me how much this person’s attitude parallels someone like Isa’s attitude in key ways, in spite of the fact that one person ships KA and the other EA. It’s actually really interesting how much extreme KA shippers and extreme EA shippers have in common sometimes even when neither side will admit it because they hate each other’s ships and see themselves as utterly opposed. 

 And sometimes, it’s not even commonality in negative behaviors but in critiques that actually show a positive common ground between these two groups, if anyone paused to consider that common ground. I’m not saying we should be trying to find common ground with someone like Isa who behaves so corrosively though - just that there’s sometimes commonality in critiques from opposite ends of the fandom that I find surprising. Like, the post that this person praised in the tag was a post where I talked about Elsa’s conclusion in F2 feeling unearned because the film focuses more on Elsa’s connection to Ahtohallan than to human beings. I was saying that, although we have no evidence that Elsa literally lives on the glacier (something BEH proponents sometimes suggest), we DO have evidence that the film cares more about Elsa’s connection to the glacier than to people.

So my argument, this person’s agreement with my argument, and the BEH argument all align in strong ways, actually. We’re all trying to make an argument about flaws or frustrating issues with the way Elsa was written. We all agree about core aspects of what we are discussing. 

But where I try to say, “This is a flaw in the text that I feel distances Elsa from her humanity and, as an Elsa fan, I have mixed feelings about that,” this person feels, “This is a flaw in the text that means Elsa is bad and emotionally distant and the filmmakers don’t criticize this emotional distance because the filmmakers are bad and don’t care as much about Anna’s pain as they do Elsa’s validation and the filmmakers... love Elsa and hate Anna.” And then someone like Isa feels, “This is a flaw in the text that distances Elsa from her humanity and that proves the filmmakers hate Elsa.” And also, knowing Isa, she’d probably blame it all on the malice of Kristen Bell in a similar way as this person blames things on the malice of Lee and Buck.

But again, it’s not malice. At worst, it’s bad writing emerging from good intentions.

For years now, people in the Frozen fandom have had a bad habit of tearing certain characters down to prop their favorite characters up. But it doesn’t have to be that way. You don’t have to tear Elsa down to prop up Anna up. You don’t have to pit the sisters against each other. You don’t have to tear Anna down to prop Elsa up. You don’t have to tear Kristoff down to prop Elsa up. You don’t have to tear Elsa down to prop Kristoff up. You don’t have to tear Olaf down to prop Kristoff up. And you don’t have to tear the Northuldra down to prop up your “vision” of Elsa.

You don’t need to tear characters down to celebrate those you love. 

And, if you read this and think I’m trying to order you to like certain characters or trying to stop valid criticism of characters or of the franchise, recognize that you’re approaching this post in bad faith. Because I value valid criticism and I engage in it myself... but extremist takes like these undermine valid criticism. They don’t help it.

(Also, I’m not equating people with Isa. Isa’s racist rhetoric sets her apart and makes her worse than other extreme people within the fandom, but that doesn’t mean other extreme people don’t have similarities to her behavior in other ways. And people should pause to check the extremes of their own biases.) 

[off-in-the-moors]

Joseph Kavinsky analysis, part 1

aka how did I get here and why is he the reason

Warnings: spoilers for the whole Raven Cycle, mentions of: drug-use, abuse, death, murder, homophobic slurs, xenophobia

Part 1 // Part 2

After finishing The Raven Cycle and analyzing every chapter, character and the overarching plot with my friend, we were left feeling empty. It's been few months, I kept looking-up more TRC related things, other people's opinions, look through fandom content and even read some post from the author's, now deleted, tumblr account, trying to find answers to why I'm feeling like this. Why the books seem to decline for me in quality as I kept reading? Why I can't see Ronan in the same light as the rest of the fandom? Why I couldn't like the author? And the answer was looking me in the eyes the whole time.

"Depending on where you began the story, it was about Joseph Kavinsky."

I loved his character from the moment we met him in The Dream Thieves and still think about him to this day. But why? In a way, Kavinsky is too familiar to me, from his attitude, through appearance to his voice. It’s like I knew him, and this isn’t surprising. I met/saw Kavinskys on the streets, I know Kavinskys, and I was a Kavinsky once in my life. Although I'm the opposed to him, I still sympathies with him and understand how it feels to be in dark places in your life. And I'm not the only one, many people adore him and don't deny his actions to be terrible. But on the other side, the majority of fans hates him and titles him "the worst/most evil antagonist of the series". But why? What about K makes him so polarizing? The simple answer is: the way he was presented and the function he played in the plot. Even then, K's whole arc in TDT was handled horribly and damaged the way readers will view, not only people like K but also themselves. This and also future posts, I’ll be analyzing everything relied to K, including his treatment after book's release by the author and what some deleted scenes and unused ending can shine on.

This is part 1 of a series of posts to come.

This part is about the narrative and characters views of Kavinsky.

Narrative and characters

Narrative is a powerful tool of telling a story, well crafted and coupled with character's internal-voice makes the reader view the story under different light. In a PoV of one character, one thing might bring-up different emotions and ideas, than the others. Exploring relationships and events differ, because everybody experience it differently. But problem begins when the narrative forces a reader to a opinion, without backing it up with reasons or giving a opposing one. In case of Joseph Kavinsky, before we properly meet him, we are told by the characters to hate him and the narrative backs them up in reasons to hate him. All the reasons given to us at that time, boil down to "I heard a rumor."

Gansey hates him, because "There was nothing about Kavinsky that wasn’t despicable" and "he thinks life is a music video". He doesn't want Ronan to associated with him, which is connected with him covering and getting Ronan's ass for the mess he made, having him project his anger and frustration he has with Ronan on to K, who part-takes in the same activities and probably with Ronan, is understandable. But I didn't expect much from a guy who: payed the school officials so they won't kick Ronan out; insulted Adam and throw Adam’s abuse at his face, just to instant of apologizing to him, make a pity party for himself (also having Adam apologies to Gansey for his rightful outburst isn't okay), is fine with having a romantic relationship with Blue while she's still with Adam, hurting him even further but makes it all about himself, etc. Him hating K, just because of his lifestyle, made sense. But were the line was crossed, was when he started to decide on other people's worth. Lines like "we matter" (on which I'll extend later in the post) or "Ronan is fixable and has a soul [Kavinsky doesn't]", were used not only to show what Gansey himself thinks of K (he isn't a human being to him), but also demonize K and make the reader not consider him an equal to the Gangsey (a teenage).

Blue hates him, because he's yet another Raven Boy. Her hatred comes mostly from her distance for them, rich boys with privilege to which Gansey gang is an exception (although two out of four are exactly the kind she hates, and she told Noah directly she wouldn't be friends with him if he was alive) (There can be made a whole post about Blue's hypocrites regarding Raven Boys, but this isn't it). She also talks about how she doesn't feel comfortable around K and "if she couldn’t forgive Kavinsky for always managing to make her feel so insignificant", which makes sense. But while describing him, she calls him "a import from somewhere else", not only lessening him as a person but also making a xenophobic comment, noting his long nose as one of the factors (you could say, she meant him being from New Jersey, but you don't "import" stuff from inside a country, you only "import" from abroad and K is Bulgarian, doesn't matter if he's an immigrant or just has Bulgarian roots). Later, while discussing what to do with K draining the ley lines, Greyman offers to talk to him, to which Blue asks him "can you make him feel worthless while you do?”. Yes, she asked a hit-man, who killed not only Niall Lynch but also multiple people (including three on pages, which was described in the case of the ones breaking into Montmouth) for money. (Yes, fans say it's fine he murdered Niall, because he was a dick and horrible father, but what we forget is that it wasn't a fast death. It was slow and brutal, having him bludgeoned to send a message to Declan. No "he was a weapon in Greenmatle's hand" can excuse it.). Plus, he beat-up and threatened Declan with a gun if he doesn't give him the Greywaren. "Making him feel worthless" can only mean the worst. Kavinsky was a asshole, but he didn't deserved that. Also Blue gives the idea to give Kavisnky to the Greyman instant of Ronan, which was shot down, but not because it's horrible, inhuman and they can't decide on someone else's life, but because they think Greenmantle's people will come back also for Ronan. They were ok, with K being basically a scapegoat so Ronan will live.

Adam just "hates that prick" and "looked at the table with a studied disinterest" when K approached their table at Nino's, those are his only interaction in anything Kavinsky related (In a part regarding the "original" ending, we'll see it wasn't always the case.).

Noah barely exists in the series after The Raven Boys and never comes in contact with K or gives any opinion on him, outside of "ducked his head down into his shoulders, but couldn't take his eyes off the newcomer".

Ronan's relation with K could be its own post all together and there already are some good post about it, but for this one, I'll only mention few things. He gives us a very "I hate him but I'm into this lifestyle" attitude. He races against K but doesn't want to have anything to do with him or he's "dogs". (Yes, Dream Packs canon name is "Kavinsky's pack of dogs" as Ronan calls them. Ironically, Ronan gets angry then Declan and K called him "Gansey's dog" but is fine when Gansey calls him "his dog".) He never thanked or acknowledged K saved his life from the Night Horror. He accepted K's help in dreaming-up the new Pig but afterwords ditches him without even a slit gratefulness (his motivation being remembering Gansey's words), and mocks that K thought there could be anything between them (friendship or relationship, it dependents how you interpret it), turning this into just using K to get what he wanted. And yes, what K did while Ronan slept (tracing Ronan's back tattoo with his finger) was unacceptable, if it really happened and wasn't just phantom-touch while falling asleep (if it was real, it can be interpreted as K acting out of his internalized homophobia, letting himself a moment of “curiosity”, but it still wouldn't make it fine).

Ronan and K insult one-another multiple times through-out the story but the difference is quite showing. K's insults are mostly homophobic, calling Ronan a "fag" or implying Ronan and Gansey are together. This is a typical teenage insults, but are also showing of K's internalized homophobia if viewed through "Don’t say Dick Gansey, man. Do not say it. He is never going to be with you. And don’t me tell you don’t swing that way, man. I’m in your head." and "It's a bomb. Just like you." scenes.

But Ronan, excepting the typical insults like "ball-sack", goes after who K is. "Bulgarian mobster Jersey trash piece of shit" or "Russian" (to the latter, K responded "Hey now, let's not make this ugly") are personal, referring not only to from where K's from, implying he's a mobster like his father and just calling him "a waste". Unfortunately, K's whole character is already one big stereotype of Slavs as viewed not only by Americans. But insulting someone for being "Bulgarian", something they had no control over, is xenophobic. (And for "Russian", as a Slav myself, let me tell you. Calling a non-Russian Slav "Russian" is a quick way to get on their bad side.) And if you're like "Ronan isn't xenophobic, because he's Irish" or "Maggie isn't xenophobic, because Ronan...", you have no idea how things work in Europe. This is the same argument as "He can't be racist, because he's black". TRC fandom is always ready to bring-up all K's sins and even enlarge them, but when in comes to Ronan, all his sins are either forgotten or excused.

One more thing I want to touch on is one of K's parties. After Monmouth got broken into by people looking for Greywaren (which Greyman broke into first), Gansey thinks it must be Kavinsky's doing, because of the fake ID left in front of the door. Him and Ronan go to K's party, he tells them, it's a substance party and asks where are theirs. As an answer, Ronan hits him in the face and throws through a car, just to show him his blooded knuckles with "This is your substance.". The rest is Gansey and Ronan not believing K, that he didn't trash their place, and a "different Gansey" throwing a Molotov cocktail at K's car. After that, they leave. But one thing isn't sitting right with me. The "This is your substance" is a beloved, may I say iconic, scene that is glorified by fans and cited as this "Ronan is so cool and K soo deserved it" thing.

Here's the thing. K is in full right. It's his party, on his rules. Gansey and Ronan just came from nowhere, probably for the first time, so the rule is stated for them. And Ronan's response? Physically assault K. Even if he's angry about the apartment, still he shouldn't just assault him. And Gansey does nothing. And one more thing: K never hits Ronan back. Not in next chapters, not at the end. Never.

Before the chapter ends, we get probably my most hated line from this book:

"Closing his eyes, Gansey leaned his head back on his seat, chin tilted up, throat green in the dash lights. There was still an unsafe sort of smile about his mouth — what a torment the possibility in that smile was — and he said, “There was never a time when that could’ve been you and me. You know the difference between us and Kavinsky? We matter."

We matter. And he doesn't. I could talk about this line and how damaging it is to people who see themselves in Kavinsky, but instant I'll say, why I hate it.

I have anxiety mixed with being introverted and back-in-the-day I felt isolated from my classmates, desperate for friends but only had toxic ones who dropped me so the popular girls would talk with them, just to be friends with me again after some time, bullied to the point of breaking multiple times, and hating myself for not fitting in, unable to connected with my peers in anyway. The line "we matter" echos my worst fear and thoughts from that time. "Everyone matter, you don't". I was too young to even have those thoughts, but they were always there. In the back of my head, like a recurring nightmare.

Just the idea, someone can say with confidence that someone, anyone, doesn't matter, makes me sick. No one has the inside to what's going on in someones life, to what thought are plaguing their head. Everyone's life matter and to say something like this in a book targeted to 12-18 year olds, who are at there most vulnerable stage, is not only irresponsible but enraging. Gansey is saying this about a guy his age, who is drug-addicted and self-destructive, because he doesn't like him and wants Ronan to stay away from. No one calls him out on it. Not Ronan, not the narrative. Nothing.

Until the kidnapping of Matthew and the paradox/question "did the tattoo tracing scene happened?", Kavinsky did nothing to earn hatred from the reader. He was living his life, being a stupid, reckless teenage boy with a power to get everything he wanted. Ask yourself a question: "If you had the power to pulled anything* from your dreams, wouldn't you go crazy with it? Maybe in a very selfish way?"

*  Throughout TRC and CDtH, we see no limit to what a dreamer can pull-out. From a pen or working car, living creatures (animals, copies of real people or purely made-up) to abstract things, like a word with power to animate the dead or an apocalypses.

Yes, K's dreaming drained the ley lines, causing Cabeswater to disappear. But did K knew about it? He knew that he needed to wait for it to recharge before dreaming more things and he did just that. The over-draining was cause by preparations for this Fourth of July party (dreaming many copies of his Mitsubishi) but same did Ronan’s dreaming (but Cabeswater acts as weird gatekeeper, so Ronan seems to be forgiven). But did he knew about Cabeswater? Or furthermore, Glendower? We can't confirm or deny it, but considering K isn't from Henrietta and probably is there only for school, he's there for about 2 years. Would he be interested in some random forest or some Welsh King, which just idea of him being in America is so far fetched to believe in?

No. All he was interested it, was parting and wasting himself away.

We don't get any other or opposing opinions on Kavinsky, only the ones given by Gangsey. They are the outsiders looking in, not having any inside, just rumors and their shallow observations/interactions. But we don't even get any "inside", not from other Raven Boys or even the Dream Pack (who are barely characters). After K's death, the only thing we get is Gangsey's not caring or being glad K's gone. Aglionby is silent and Henrietta, doesn't even acknowledge Fourth of July's Party even happened (but to be honest, the town feels like a theater stage than a living place). The only mentions about K that gives some idea someone noticed anything, was his name alongside Whelk’s and Dittley's in the newspaper at the end of BLLB (but this plot point is never mentioned again).

[darksidekelz]

Feeling kind of irritated tonight with a combination of things, since I spend a lot of time on social media.  There was, of course, a big buzz about a creator I’ve been watching for the last decade, but also, the fandom I’m currently active in is particularly bad about this too, so now I’m here.  Writing rants no one is going to read.

I’m increasingly annoyed that it’s not enough for every public figure online to not be an actively bad person.  They must also have never done a single bad or off-putting thing, or a thing that could be construed as off-putting if you really try to, in their entire life.  And this must also account for things they’re doing now that are not currently problematic, but may be considered so in 10 years time (’cuz language and culture changes).  They must also be very knowledgeable about any and all political issues and use their platform to come out for or against all of them, but they have to do it in a perfectly educated way, regardless of how much expertise they may have on the matter.  And if they fail to live up to these standards, regardless of how much good they may have otherwise done, they are a bad person, and if you happen to be a fan of them, then you are a bad person as well.

It’s fucking exhausting.

Like, sorry I enjoy the content of a guy who once made an off-color joke when he was 17 years old, which he has since condemned and actively strives to do better.  I mean, he’s a horrible racist who appropriates Mexican culture by speaking Spanish sometimes on his streams, despite, y’know, being Mexican, so I can understand why I’m a bad person for liking him.  I know that yes, I am apparently a raging homophobe because a teenager whose content I sometimes watch once joked that he and lesbians have a lot in common because they both like women, apologized when called out, and then when a lesbian fan later called him an honorary lesbian, joked that he would be very honored, but doesn’t think he can accept the title (which he also had to apologize for because making any jokes at all involving lesbians is harmful).  He is a homophobe, no matter how supportive he may act, and how baffled he may be by homophobia, and so am I, regardless of my own sexuality may be, because I didn’t find his jokes particularly offensive.  And I am an absolute monster for enjoying the content of someone who has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for charity because he “sometimes can’t read a room,” whatever that means (literal condemnation I read yesterday.)

I really wish folks could find the damn line between “actively and intentionally harmful” and everything else - be it poor taste, ignorance, a case of being edgy but ultimately harmless, a complete misunderstanding, a case of speaking too concisely on a broad issue, or anything else we’re condemning people for.   People in real life get the benefit of the doubt, but social boundaries don’t exist on the internet, so we’re so prepared to immediately think the worst of people - we write essays about how bad someone is and to go into their inboxes and threaten and harrass them, and we trend twitter tags about how awful they are, for the sin of being a perfectly ordinary person; we make blanket statements that an entire group of people are horrible and should die, because they happen to be fans of folks whose biggest controversy may be something as grave as “being a non-native English speaker who made a mild joke about the meaning of an unfamiliar expression someone wrote to them in a donation, only to later find out that they’d accidentally made a joke about AAVE, and which they later apologized for once they found out.”  What a horrible person!  

No conclusion.  I’m just tired of complete strangers on the internet telling me in their shouts to the void that I’m a racist who needs to be beaten/killed (comments I’ve seen while perusing the tags for a certain fandom) because of the youtubers or whatever that I watch.  ‘Cuz if I watch them, then I support them in their horrible, horrible efforts to occasionally say things that could potentially be read as problematic when taken out of context and with the intent to read them as harmful.  

I hate the internet.

[angeloncewas]

yeah i totally agree with what you said about satire and schlatt basically taking the easy way out. it seems like since that video he's kinda eased back from doing that shit, either bc the backlash or bc his friends have started verbally calling him out on it, both to his face and through making comments about him on stream (comments as in like saying they dont agree with what he did and saying they thought that video was terrible, not like them shading him or whatever ajsksk) which is good but also i wouldnt be surprised if something like that video happened again just bc like. it is his career and at this point he has to know what his larger fanbase is like to an extent, which means he also knows those terrible fucking jokes will make him money. i dont like that, but im also not gonna sit around and pretend like i cant see the fucking obvious, ya know? from what ive seen of him when he's not putting on a show for his main channel, or when he isnt around people who both encourage and enable his bad behavior (not saying this to shift blame, ive just noticed how he goes from making actually funny jokes that are harmless or, at most, a pretty obvious example of him poking fun at shitty people, at least imo, to like. straight up just being offensive when he's with people like swagger, miz, etc. vs ted, charlie and so on), he seems like a pretty good guy and its pretty clear to me that he doesnt hold the same views as the character he plays up for his main channel but that doesnt change the fact that his audience is now full of the worst kinds of people and that is how he makes money.

as someone who, again, watched idubbbz, as well as filthyfrank, they both stated they were playing characters and they didnt agree with the shit they were joking about, joji especially, but them saying that isnt very well known by even their own fanbase who just watches their main channel stuff, bc the one video where joji made that explicitly clear what he was doing, he later deleted for people harassing him in the comments (it was an old ass video where he basically said that playing those characters was giving him literal health problems, specifically stress induced seizures, and his comments were so bad that he never made an ooc video on his main channel again) and the one video i can think of where ian explicitly said he was playing a character was like an hour long podcast with h3, which most people dont even wanna watch bc it is a painfully uncomfortable one hour, considering the fact that they are supposed to be friends. besides that, the only other time they were really out of character was in vlogs with maxmoefoe, and they still did their offensive bits from time to time bc it was still going up on youtube, even if it wasnt their main channel. compare that to schlatt who has, as far as i know, never explicitly said he's playing a character, and the closest he has gotten to saying that was in some weekly slap video that i cant remember the title of bc all those videos kinda blend together if im being honest. like they definitely show a different, better side of him, but they are also all really short videos with only gameplay to watch and he never even promotes the channel, so its not like the shitty people watching him are like "hm time to take some time out of my day to go watch big man schlatt give people advice and be a genuine person for once", right?

idk. schlatt is just such a weird person for me bc like. he is a big comfort for me, i really do enjoy his content when he's not making bad stabs at satire (bc sometimes he does it right!! but a lot of the time, at least recently, he has just missed the mark entirely, to the point where it feels like he wasnt even trying to hit the mark at all), but he is also so uncomfortable to watch sometimes just bc he seems to either not know where the line is, or thinks crossing it is okay bc its him playing a character and that's not fun to watch as a minority who often ends up being apart of that "punchline".

that aside tho...yes, unfortunately idubbbz does still make content (and i say unfortunately bc it is not very good) though it seems like he is very slow to upload and last i checked, the views arent too great, but ive seen worse. probably the only thing that could bring back his views at this point would be a content cop, but like a year or so back he said he has no plans of continuing the series bc he finds it boring now, which is fair enough. i dont really keep up with him anymore, but as far as i know, he just got married to anisa and he streams on twitch sometimes, besides that the dude is a mystery to me!

—🦷 (also im sorry if this is formatted weird, for whatever reason tumblr has indented each of my paragraphs with one of those grey line thingys and it wont let me remove it. if it doesnt show up in the actual ask then ignore this!)

This is kind of old now (sorry), but I still wanted to respond because I really appreciate your perspective :)

> I always wonder how people not involved in the fandom view Schlatt. Because wasn't there this thing about Hasan genuinely thinking that he was conservative? And like he obviously doesn't now, but does that not impact how he sees him and his content? I don't mean to dictate friendships - of course - I'm just curious as to the impact of having that audience from an outsider pov. I remember being shocked what that thing happened with the pdp fan, but I later found that many people weren't because they knew the nature of the audience he cultivated; maybe I'm just stupid, I had no idea. (Not that Schlatt and pdp are the same, it's just a loose comparison.)

> No one should face harassment, but I doubt Joji deleting that video helped his case. (I mean ig it worked out in the long term considering everything that happened with his music, but yk.) I'm very sorry for the health problems he faced with the characters themselves though. I don't know much about him but that sounds awful.

> I have thoughts on The Weekly Slap, but I think they make me sound bitter and don't add much so just know that they're there ajfdkjdf. I will say that he doesn't seem like "Jschlatt" in them, and moreso just a guy. I know that he quit it for a number of reasons and one of them was not being comfortable with that kind of connection in relation to his increasing fame, but honestly I think his complete dislodgement from his fanbase isn't healthy either.

> I mean, I get it. I've watched a lot of content from a lot of people - ranging from kind of unpleasant to very unsavory - and it's kind of a weird feeling with YouTube and Twitch stuff. Idk it's like - when I go to the grocery store, I'm not wondering if the guy checking my things out is a racist. When I see a commercial, I don't wonder if that guy advertising chicken nuggets is a secret creep. But with content creation of this kind, it's just a weird thought in the back of my mind. I don't know if this makes sense lmao

> Weird that Idubbz finds content cop "boring." I guess the formula is kind of stale and half of the content was the edge, but it seems like the kind of thing that'd be perfect to capitalize off of around now. Cool that he got married... I think. I mean if he's happy ???

> Don't mind the formatting, and sorry to respond like WAY past when this conversation was relevant T_T. I read it right away but the timing got off with actually being able to type stuff out.

[elizabethrobertajones]

Hey! Feel free to ignore this long question but it was just something I was thinking about. I’m interacting with this fandom for the first time since about mid season 12-ish, I was an avowed deancas meta reader and I’m trying to catch up on some goings on. Something that’s really been bothering me since it went canon was something I was trying to figure out since I left: what happened during the carver era? Was he setting it up to be canon, because I can’t not see that when I watch s8 and 9, but post-Charlie dying it all seemed so disorganized, and bad. He set it up perfectly then lost the thread totally. Do you have any insight on what happened there? And 2, if I couldn’t stand the first half of season 12 but really liked 15x18, do you think I’d like the rest of the dabb era? How does it compare to peak carver era? Thanks for reading and no pressure! Forgot how much I love this meta stuff and now it’s all I think about again lol

Hi there! 

I think Carver era behind the scenes might end up being something we have to wait for tell-all interviews to understand... At least Dabb was there for all of it so maybe after the show is over, someone might grab him for a sit down to explain some shit and go over the old territory :P I’d guess that Carver was not committed to canon in the same way but he was open to exploring and expanding the relationships and Cas’s character just because he liked Cas and these dynamics, and definitely wasn’t adverse to at least ironically thinking of Dean n Cas in a certain way, hence the “jilted lover” thing. 

I think also there was generally less of a cohesive overall voice to the show from season 8 onwards, which is not a bad thing in that it meant we began to really see each individual writer putting their talents out there (or not-talents) but does mean the interpretation of Dean n Cas or gay subtext in general was an absolute rollercoaster, depending on who was writing, because combining looser control on the creative direction per episode along with a deeper focus on character overall... Bobo could roll right up in season 9 and immediately start serving Destiel but Dabb had been writing since season 4 and it was still season 8 where he first starts flexing any what would become shipper muscles :P 

Considering how Carver era fizzled out and Dabb took over with a stronger sense of what to DO with the dang show and what radical burn-it-all-down steps that involved to take it to a conclusion, including absolutely freewheeling the plot for a little while, throwing spaghetti at the wall and even letting Buckleming serve total curveballs and all, for the sake of really digging into character stuff instead, I do think the change is obvious again. I don’t even know if Dabb took over MEANING to make Destiel canon, but that he was absolutely of the mind that Cas was important and a TFW ending would be necessary. And then once he spent some time on that, the obvious answer that Destiel was integral hit at last through some sort of self-reflection on what the fuck they’d been writing all this time as it came to tying up loose ends. 

Honestly the writers he picked kinda do obviously compliment Destiel but maybe it was even just having so many fresh young voices at the table all at once that LATER shifted the conversation into “why the heck wouldn’t we do this?” after they settled in. 

Anyway, I’m not caught up on the current season, but I would say that Dabb era was as far as I watched, loosely written on the plot front and managing Buckleming nonsense about as deftly as a bunch of excellent writers who are trying to have a consistent vision but need to constantly work around someone lobbing bricks at the story can do. But it got better and better as it went on, because it was focussing more on the emotional stuff and the character dynamics, and taking them all seriously. Season 13 was an important shift in really taking Destiel seriously, and from the sounds of things Dabb was maybe considering Destiel by season 14 and ready to hit the ground running with 15? 

I personally think that Dabb era really started to be very very good as soon as Jack was properly introduced, especially as I spent a whole hiatus dreading him and convinced this was a terrible idea (he’s buckleming spawn, from one of their worst episodes overall behind their true classics like the racist truck) but Dabb wrote the first episode with Jack and it made him instantly endearing, and his whole story was well-handled from then on, making even some of the more garbage characters at least temporarily interesting or at least relevant or to make the scenes they were in easier to endure. 

So I’d say try again and power through until you’ve given Jack the 4 episodes at the beginning of season 13 they use to introduce and explore what he means to the show, and see how you’re feeling about those dynamics and storylines, as they really are where the show goes from then onwards. 

I also have to admit that season 9 is my favourite Carver era season, and overall I don’t like the seasons so much as loving certain episodes, and having a whole lot I don’t like in between. Dabb’s crack team of writers demonstrated what it was like to enjoy every single writer except Buckleming, and have a much more reliable run of episodes in a row consistently so if I was comparing them, especially with hindsight, Carver era is really left in the dust for me. My only regret is that Buckleming never retired early and left the show in the hands of competent adults for a full season.

To really emphasise how much I trust the writers these days, I’m pretty much assuming without watching them that the dozen episodes I haven’t watched will be good and I’ll have a great time watching them, and that Bobo’s last episode will be amazing quite apart from the bizarre mark it left on the historical record.