#and it’s not about the racial dynamics of the characters and relationships she writes bc who tf am i to say whether that’s ‘OK’ or not

[boylebingo]

not to wade into murky waters on purpose but… while i 100% believe that me loving something doesn’t put it above (thoughtful) criticism and in fact often agree with critiques of things i enjoy, some of the twitter discourse around mindy kaling recently has really demonstrated a complete lack of media literacy and critical thinking among the people issuing those criticisms.

[ca-suffit]

same anon… thank you for your response, i take your point and don’t rly disagree with what you’re saying… the nuclear family analogy is definitely there and i think bc of the time period they were somewhat boxed into this heteronormative dynamic but i still see shades of like a mother/daughter dynamic with lestat and claudia (he “made” her for example, baby traps louis in the book which is seen as a more feminine thing, kind of gives strict helicopter mom to louis’ more “chill dad” vibe) and i don’t see why those interpretations can’t coexist and why that reading automatically “masculinises” louis. there is definitely an issue w this fandom hypermasculinising louis/black men and i would definitely never consider louis to be “the man” in the relationship or whatever. it’s the same with top/bottom discourse when in reality i don’t think it’s that binary. but tbh what i mostly don’t like is when people get into the territory of “lestat weaponises femininity” or arguments that his feminine traits are inauthentic/a facade to conceal his real self being a patriarchal abuser. it feels very terfy and icky considering his misogyny/toxic masculinity is learned but his queerness/femininity is genuine

(context)

I'm glad I didn't scare u off! so much of this fandom (and prbly in general) ppl leave if there's any disagreement in opinions. they only want an echo chamber. it's pointless. idgi. anyway tho.

I kind of got lost whether ur talking about the show or book at a point. between them all tho, I do agree there's multiple interpretations in ways, especially if ur going across *all* of the versions. if it wasn't so antiblack here, we could prbly more easily talk about a lot of things more openly. when ppl shut down one discussion then it puts everyone on edge and we can't talk about much of *anything* else bcuz we aren't even addressing the main thing yet. a lot of this show's fandom issues are that white gays takeover every conversation and aren't interested in hearing about any racial aspects at all, even tho the main character of the show is a BLACK gay man. all ppl want to talk about is lestat and how louis should just listen to him and stop being so "mean" and on and on. it's prbly gonna be insufferable for S3 but I'm trying to avoid thinking about that lol.

"what i mostly don’t like is when people get into the territory of “lestat weaponises femininity” or arguments that his feminine traits are inauthentic/a facade to conceal his real self being a patriarchal abuser. it feels very terfy and icky considering his misogyny/toxic masculinity is learned but his queerness/femininity is genuine"

what the fuck?? well, I do know this fandom has sides to it that are v "phobic" to all of the LGBT community. tbh anne rice's writing about gay men isn't as progressive as ppl think either, so it's rly not surprising some of her fans are fucked up about it. I forget a lot that she wasn't a huge conservative bcuz her writing makes her sound like one sometimes.

but anyway. ppl need to learn all the ways that literally everyone can be a shitty person and for what reasons too. there's rampant abuse and racism in the LGBT community too, from any identity. there's no way to spot an abuser and say "these are the traits of an abuser and these are traits of a victim." lestat is never shown using any of this stuff to avoid accountability for his harmful shit...or weaponizing it?? I haven't seen these posts so idk what exactly they're saying, but based on what u wrote. tbh, as u said, it sounds like ppl just wanted a way to be homophobic and/or transphobic in a dog whistle way. this fandom *loves* doing that shit.

[roobylavender]

theres been a discussion of reeves vs nolan take on selina recently. someone said the nolan one was better and theyre currently getting dogpiled.. what is your take on whos better?

nolan unequivocally. i feel like people get caught up in nolan selina’s occasional sexy lines (which are cringe and i do dislike, to be clear) as a means to discredit the character altogether despite the fact that there’s so much emphasis put on selina having agency and liberty to do as she chooses, which is a quintessential aspect of her dynamic with bruce. he disapproves of her actions and methods at times but he respects her personhood and he doesn’t make choices for her bc obv he doesn’t have a right to but she would also never allow him to. their dynamic in the dark knight rises is great bc it is holistically predicated on a respect for her decisions, her bitterness, and her compassion. i do think there are other criticisms you can make as to how nolan selina sort of subtly reinforces the propaganda of the trilogy; i do not have the link at the moment but when reeves’s batman came out there was a youtuber who made a video comparing reeves selina to nolan selina and talked about how the latter’s whiteness did play into her ability to escape confinement and consequences easily, which when you juxtapose against the racism driving nolan’s casting and the recent shift to acknowledge selina as a potentially biracial character, can spark valid concerns as to limiting the potential class commentary she was actually capable of as a character (and i will address this later with respect to reeves selina). but that valid criticism aside my preference for nolan selina has to do with maintaining her character and relationship integrity, which to me is the most impt thing you can do in an adaptation. if the plot and circumstances will change, what you should at least try to do is maintain the core of the character, and nolan does that marvelously with selina and bruce (likely bc dixon, whose work the nolan movies are largely adapted from, actually tended to write these two well)

now, obv with reeves selina a huge reason for supporting her in comparison is the racial visibility, esp when you, again, consider why nolan originally rejected zoe for the role in his movies. and i do think that’s highly valid and frankly i want non-white selina, bc it makes her contentions with and distrust of the state as established in catwoman (1989) that much more palpable and worthwhile to explore. but a racebended casting doesn’t automatically do the work for you and there’s still a character integrity you have to maintain. and i think this is something not only reeves but dc writers at large tend to understand poorly. there’s so much racebending happening in comics these days and i do think it’s a useful vehicle but not as it’s actually used in practice. the changes are superficial rather than going to the root of the character. so i personally find reeves selina to be a huge insult to the character, bc rather than use that racebending as an opportunity to expand on selina and her hardline opposition to bruce and the state, it’s not really used to do much at all (which honestly can likely be attributed to the fact that everyone involved in making this script and plot was white!) and selina is instead regressed from what she was in the comic that reeves’s take on her was based on. catwoman (1989) and catwoman (1993) for that matter are huge novelties in selina’s history bc they are near insularly focused on her. we play by her rules and everyone else in the picture is a reactionary. the reeves movie turns this on its head bc now selina is subservient to bruce’s arc and to his decisions. he dictates what she does until she’s finally fed up with it, which we’re supposed to applaud despite the fact that bruce does nothing short of condescend to her and victim-blame a sex worker, and bc he ultimately saves her from her anger in the end so it’s romantic. the romance is the priority throughout the entire movie. there are brief moments of selina’s rebellion but as a whole she has no control over her arc bc bruce’s arc comes first. i also think the final scene where she says “the bat and the cat. has a nice ring to it” (or whatever it was, close enough) to be a complete misunderstanding of their dynamic at its inception. this movie purportedly based its selina on mindy newell’s work but somehow fails to recognize that mindy newell’s selina expressly disdained the idea of being associated with batman bc her independence and defiance was the entire point. even if you want to argue their dynamic in the movie is a reflection of what it has become in the comics now, those are depicting bruce and selina’s relationship with each other more than twenty years after they first met. it makes no sense to make selina so amenable to bruce in the beginning bc it completely undercuts the fact that she’s right in her class stance from the start. and it also seems to reiterate the prevalent misconception that for a romance to work between bruce and selina she has to soften her edges and anger, despite those being the exact things that made bruce attracted to and sympathetic of her

[sovpologist]

i’m not into drifteris or whatever their ship is called, in fact it’s kind of a notp of mine bc i just can’t do ships based on people who unapologetically and purposefully annoy each other. but i do think that’s what it is: purposefully annoying each other. in one of the previous seasons, idr which, eris says she’ll stop calling him ‘rat’ when he stops calling her ‘moondust’ and then neither of them ever stopped which is kind of frustrating given that both of them just before this express not wanting to be called ‘rat/moondust.’ and they have this weird begrudging friendship thing. i think in the line you posted, ‘but you keep calling,’ that’s part of their begrudging friendship, purposefully goading each other until the other walks away from the conversation. eris’s goading is more subtle than drifter’s though so i think a lot of people miss her doing the same to him? they do it to each other over and over and over and it’s not just one-sided drifter annoying eris. idk how to explain all this. hope it makes sense. fucking sucks eris nickname for him is an antiasian slur too. its not a common one and rat is a common insult in general so i think its usage as a racial slur just gets buried and therefore unnoticed by bungie. wish it would stop especially since they have both said they want the other to stop and could easily mutually agree to do so like wtf. its been on my mind a lot and drives me nuts bc they still use it in game

okayyyy i see where you're coming from with this but i kind of disagree for a couple reasons.

one, bungie frequently switches writers and it shows in a lot of character inconsistency between expansions/seasons (this happens to a lot of characters, not just drifter and eris). the way drifter and eris' relationship is written is fundamentally different in season of arrivals, the witch queen collector's edition lorebook, and season of the haunted to the present. in arrivals, they don't like each other bc they don't know each other very well and drifter is kind of annoying (love that about him) and it very much comes off as drifter antagonizing eris and eris only antagonizing him back when she can't take it anymore. he is the one instigating a lot of their confrontations and she only gives him a derogatory nickname when he refuses to stop using a nickname for her.

they're only briefly mentioned in the witch queen collector's edition lorebook but it seems like because they worked together in beyond light they've gained a greater understanding and respect for each other. drifter calls her eris and "three eyes" instead of moondust, which to me indicates that eris explained that moondust is a hurtful nickname to her bc it reminds her of a place that is the source of her trauma and he changed nicknames accordingly. he says that eris works "with me" (not for me, suggesting that he respects her as an equal) and says ikora wasn't giving her enough "chances to grow." again, this is a huge step forward in the way they treat each other and a much more interesting dynamic.

but all of a sudden in season of the haunted, they've taken three steps back to nothing but needless antagonism. for us to interpret this as friendly banter, there has to be some kind of indication to the audience that they are actually friends who like each other now, which is simply not there. this very much comes off as bad fanfic writing, where the author simply substitutes "banter" for any kind of actual friendship or relationship growth. or it comes off as the kind of playful rudeness with strangers that is common on the internet (and can be pretty frustrating and hurtful for the target of rudeness). i'm fine with mean jokes between friends, but there has to be a balance between mean jokes and genuine earnest character moments, which we just don't see (except for maybe ONE lore piece). drifter and eris have known each other for years at this point and still interact in exactly the same way, and have the same arguments and the same antagonistic conversations over and over again. from both a writer and audience perspective, this is just lazy and uninteresting.

two, their current writer ships them which makes it hard for me to interpret any of their current interactions without knowing the writer has romantic intentions. i know, i know, "separate the art from the artist," the author's intent doesn't need to be what i take from it, but it changes the way i view and read their interactions even though i dont ship them. i still know that the writer interprets their relationship as romantic and that impacts the way she writes their interactions. when eris calls drifter a derogatory nickname its meant to be romantic bc the writer thinks its romantic for them to have nicknames for each other. when drifter says "you keep calling" its meant to be romantic because the writer thinks its romantic for eris to hate him and yet be unable to stay away from him. and the thing is that the vast majority of people ARE picking up on this romantic coding and ARE reading their interactions as romantic. go to any destiny lore vault video of an interaction between them and all the comments will be "eris is such a tsundere" "'slur' and moondust!!! <3" "theyre so cute" "they need to get a room" etc.

i genuinely dont mean anything rude by this, because i do this to their relationship too, but i think what you describe is your own personal interpretation of why they act the way they do with each other, not the actual text. and again, thats not a bad thing! i do that too, because otherwise their relationship makes no fucking sense and is super boring! but imo, there is no greater meaning behind their interactions or some deep hidden and interesting friendship, it's just bad writing and heterosexuality lmao

EDIT: just read the new lore piece for this week and i actually like how their relationship is portrayed there. it’s “banter” that is respectful. again the problem still stands that there needs to be a balance, and two nice and genuine moments between them in lore books (which only people who really care about read) does not balance out the heap of negative ones that you get at the end of ketchcrash (which basically everyone is going to hear). idk if i’m just unwilling to give their current writer any credit but we do know different people write about the same topic so i can’t help but wonder if this and the eidolon lore (which is also a much more nuanced and friendly portrayal) was written by someone different than the person who writes their ingame dialogue

[thebad---catholic]

Lol u do realise how ignorant and subtlety racially offensive it is when u play the nonsense card of uhura is a nagging girlfriend or why is she a love interest considering black women have been stereotyped too much as nagging and in story historical context they were never beautiful or desirable enough to be a romantic patner to the main male hero. Please ship spirk if you must but your superficial arguments about uhura only works in the slash tumblr bubble of white girl dumb talk. Ironic u have an issue with uhura as a love interest for spock but not scotty. I thought she is not meant to be a love interest at all. Lol. So can u explain that laughable inconsistency. Please u ignorant self entitled white fan girls should stop didcating for black female characters calling us naggy and demanding we be sexless strong independent and no man especially when one of your cool white male characters likes us.

Can you maybe chill out?

My issue with Uhura and Spock being a couple in AOS have to do with my problems with the writing and characters, not with the idea of a black woman being desirable.

I didn’t find their dynamic compelling. I thought it came off as a standard on again off again b-plot romance, and relegating Uhura to that role felt like a misuse of her character.

It also doesn’t make sense why Spock would be dating a former student and current subordinate. Wouldn’t it be illogical to risk his career? Uhura also seemed legitimately annoyed by Spock’s emotional detachment, which is fair, but then why is she dating a Vulcan?

Ship whatever you want. If you like spock and Uhura being together, I’m happy for you. I thought it was boring.

I like Uhura and Scotty together in the TOS movies because I found it endearing. They had a very subtle chemistry, and I thought it was sweet. If AOS spock and Uhura had that vibe, I would’ve liked that too.

It’s also been literal years since I’ve seen AOS bc I don’t like the series as a whole, so I don’t remember every detail I liked and disliked abt the relationship.

[thatsjustsupergirl]

ur post about fic & racism in the supergirl fandom really got me thinking (especially about my own biases so thank you) but also like, how there’s this incredibly pervasive but subtle new form of racism I haven’t seen b4 in other fandoms? Like on one hand u have this loud condemnation of how racist monel is & how he was a slave owner blabh blah but no corresponding attention given to the existing Black characters. 1/4

I get wlw not wanting to write m/f fic but a lot of the fandom doesn’t reblog (or make) any of the gifsets, they don’t meta for him they don’t call for more screen time for Mehcad. Same for M’gann. SO many posts talking about how awful monel is compare him to Lena and strangely don’t mention the Black female character who also came from an oppressive society to become a hero? And there are like, idk, 4 people? Who write or post wlw fic with M’gann in it? 2/4

Same with Maggie. A huge segment of fandom decided Floriana is white (even tho hollywood clearly won’t cast her in roles for white women) so they use that as an excuse to exclusively stan the very light skinned white wlw. And the way it carries over to the characters, like, okay Flo is white? but Maggie is absolutely treated like a woc in how parts of fandom aggressively ignore her & find ways to demonize her character while overtly supporting lighter skinned characters ¾

And that same part of the fandom doesn’t ever seem to create content for Lucy or Vasquez either. IDK this isn’t something u can probably explore with stats but ur post really got me thinking and it just feels really gross now bc I see all these posts condemning racism but there’s still this extreme perpetuation of privileging white characters at the same time? & I haven’t seen this particular trend in fandom b4 4/4

Oh, anon, this made my day. I have a bunch of notes waiting in a doc to address the whole Mon-El thing with regard to the racist undertones and the rhetoric used by the show to frame his storyline, and I will do my best to write it before the season comes back again, because I genuinely think they tried to aim high and just … missed completely. (But I make no promises because my thesis defense is on Tuesday.)

To your first point re: fandom attitudes – I was surprised in the early half of S2 when so many people came out of the woodwork making posts in the main tag like “wait, why did they get rid of Kara/James??” because, oh right, nobody acted like they cared for almost twelve straight months. If y’all were so okay with this ship, where were you to acknowledge its social significance when it was canon? Where are you now? Why hasn’t there been an outpouring of tweets week after week at the execs and the writers for sidelining an interracial couple in favor of what we’re getting, especially since the storyline literally handwaved away human trafficking and slavery as minor plot points?

Not only that, when there’s unrealized potential for a non-canon ship there is typically an outpouring of fic in response, and while there’s been a statistically significant amount of new Karolsen fic in S2 because it’s pretty easy to top zero percent, the writing there is not keeping pace with any of the other dude-involved pairings. 

And you’re right, anon: it is not possible to prove anything with stats. HOWEVER, thanks to the addition of these new characters for S2, I *am* at the point now where it’s possible to see correlation between character race and fan engagement with different pairing choices. And the bias is there, whether it’s in the het pairings, the femslash, or even the m/m pairings. The whole reason I started tracking fic outputs in the first place was that any attempt to have this conversation last year devolved into yelling and finger-pointing because “you have no proof!” that racial bias is a thing. Except, yanno, all the POC who live with it daily saying that it’s a thing. Well, congratulations y’all: your choices leave digital footprints behind that are pretty easy to follow and chart for everyone to see.

This isn’t actually a new problem, by the way – racism and preferencing of white pairing happens a lot, in almost every fandom. The only difference maybe is that I’ve experimented with quantifying it, which is not something that people usually do when they study fandoms or fan behavior.

It pains me to no end that M’gann has been so overlooked, because her story has just as many dark character beats to it as Lena’s, if not more, plus the added bonus of her sharing a sense of “otherness” with Kara in a way that few other people can. And there is no way the disinterest in that pairing isn’t about race, because there are a whole bunch of ships from S1 between white women who’d never even met each other in canon that have more romantic fics than M’gann/anyone.

And the nonsense about Floriana, which I’ll remind everyone again was started by a white girl, had a demonstrable chilling effect on interest in Sanvers as a pairing. Like. I can actually show that on paper. And you’re absolutely right with what you said above, which bears repeating: Maggie is absolutely treated like a woc in how parts of fandom aggressively ignore her & find ways to demonize her character.

There’s also a treatment of Floriana herself that reminds me uncomfortably of how people went out of their way to demonize Naya Rivera’s personal life whenever she reminded the world she was black instead of just “very tan.” And a lot of the rhetoric people are using to talk about Floriana’s racial heritage is almost verbatim the same as what you’ll find on white supremacist discussion boards about Italian people. I’d love to think this is an accident, but I’ve made some people pretty angry for pointing this out in the past, so I suspect it’s at least partially deliberate.

Lucy was another case that drove me insane, for two reasons:

The vast majority of femslash fans flat-out ignored her as a romantic choice even though there were a whole lot of good reasons to ship her with either Kara or Alex, and a whole lot less negative reasons not to. (And it’s not like Supercat was already dominating the scene before Lucy’s character was introduced. That ship only became popular after the movie Carol came out during the winter hiatus of S1.)

People had the same fight last year about whether or not Lucy counted as a WOC and ultimately insisted that the answer was no. But then people kept on ignoring her anyway like somehow dubiously legal boss/employee relationships, potential treason, and incest were more logical bases for attraction.

Also, to the people who have been like “oh yay we could’ve had Dichen as Maggie, a real WOC” like somehow this would have made the fandom love her more – you’re full of shit. If you mean that, why has there been so little fic about Dichen as Roulette? Like, last year there were a whole bunch of shipfics featuring Livewire. There was Kara/Siobhan. And yet … no dark scenarios of Supergirl/Roulette? No Alex ones? There were even a bucketload of those for each Danvers sister + Max Lord, and this fandom isn’t even that into dudes. You’re telling me no one is interested in this kind of hero/villain dynamic with the Asian chick and somehow that’s not also about race?

tl;dr I suspect that a decent chunk of this problem is the result of subconscious bias, but some of it’s not. And what’s really sad about it is that, for all the talk on Tumblr about representation being important, we’re really doing no better as media producers than Hollywood when it comes to race. If anything, we might actually be doing worse.

[antthonystark]

To add to the clary post: expect help when ur stepfather is dying or ur hand is rotting off, spend thirty seconds making out with ur boyfriend after going through a shit ton of trauma, and act a little reckless towards popular characters

i mean…..true lol

like i said in one of my posts on the matter, sometimes it’s not “making” someone else to help, but sometimes that someone else cares about the person or the matter at hand and actually wants to help them….u know…..

okay i was trying to be chill and vague but whatever idc let’s get into it lol so esp. with the 2x09 scene everyone’s like oh magnus was visibly annoyed and didn’t want them there bc he hates them but like chill if you look at it for 2 seconds you can see his annoyance phase out to concern literally the second he realizes that there’s actually something wrong bc….he cares about clary…..(and like more importantly in the narrative of that episode, clary and jace do solve the problem themselves. like, magnus was basically like ‘yeah idk man fix it yourselves’ and nobody was like ‘oh magnus how dare you not help us’? lmao?)

and with luke in 1x06 everyone’s always like oh man magnus and downworlders he protectes them and #g//arrobane and all that jazz…and then suddenly it’s magnus saving luke only as a favour to clary and for no other reason lol? like magnus is capable of, like, making decisions and having his own personal motivations to do things you know lol to me it’s weird that people just strip down his personal stake and motivation in so many of the plots because they want to bolster this weird narrative tbh…..honestly im just addressing the examples you named but for a number of them these are at least somewhat the case (some but not all obviously)

and like…yeah…should she/they say thank you every once in a while? of course they should lol. politeness is a good thing lmao and magnus helps them out a ton and he deserves appreciation not saying he doesn’t (and not saying it’s got nothing to do with shadowhunter superiority pls read the linked post). like i said before it’s not just one thing or the other but people just view it as one extreme or the other, and also o f note i elaborated on how niceties like that between established good people™ are usually not included bc they’re seen an extraneous unless serving a higher purpose (also that post includes some stuff about magnus and his relationship with the protags which also is maybe important lol idk)

magnus is an extremely good person lol and like i said in that post i made that i just linked it is definitely complicated and definitely is sometimes informed by shadowhunter/downworlder dynamics and people have taken advantage of him and his magnanimity so it’s not like it’s a non-issue but…. lord people need to chill sometimes tbh 

and finally the whole 2x09 thing with madzie…….honestly i agree with people about that. because it comes across as though they only cared about the fate of this little girl once it started posing a threat to their own well-being. but i’m going to maybe posit an argument that i don’t often consider, which is just….that maybe that was an instance of bad writing.  bc, my guy, everyone was at the party, everyone knows (including magnus, high warlock who protects his kind, and alec who were also just chillaxing before clary and jace came in) the issue with madzie, so honestly it was just a dumb choice to put that lull in between the end of 2x08 and the start of the save-madzie plot in 2x09 because it makes everyone come across as selfish, clary most of all. like i guess you could argue that i shouldn’t make the excuse of the writers and just take it at face value, so i’ll agree that taken at face value it was a dick move by clary specifically, since iris was talking to clary and it’s her blood oath, so the onus was largely on her. but it just doesn’t come across as a deliberate dick move like clary’s other dick moves, which are in order to establish her flaws, but more of as a writing oversight. to me at least. but that’s up to interpretation. like i keep saying, i’m never gonna argue that she’s perfect b/c she is far from

and then there’s the whole white saviour thing which i think - as usual lol - that this is complicated but overall holds probably less water than most ppl interpret it largely b/c of the function of the white saviour trope for the white people who consume it and also the way that the SH narrative is structured around clary in terms of other literary trope as well so that the common interpretation ppl have is kind of oversimplified and also how the quasi-racial tension in SH isn’t the main thrust of the narrative or clary’s motivation, b/c the narrative is largely very personal for clary as well outside of downworlder/shadowhunter dynamics and etc etc etc. like i said im not completely refuting the assertion that it plays into white saviourish trope but it’s….quite complex - in my view, at least, but what do i know lol im gross and ignorant apparently - and these are by no means my complete thoughts but lord jesus i really dont care enough to write an essay lmao it’s just sort of annoying when one person says something and then everyone echoes it and no one knows what it means tbh