#avoid trends

[max-1mum]

Israeli Miku Israeli Miku Israeli Miku!!!

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

i vote that next year instead of reading Dracula we do a Jeeves & Wooster Book Club. those two never got the rabid tumblr shipping fandom they deserved (disqualified for the sheer technicality of being published a century too soon). we must correct this injustice

[charlietheepicwriter7]

"Nightwing."

Dick froze halfway across a rooftop, the lights and gunshots of Bludhaven disappearing in an instant. A scowl flashed across his face, teeth clenched and bared, before he forced it back. His face smoothed back out and his voice took on a pleasant, amused tone. "Slade. How did you get this frequency?"

"Nevermind that," Slade scolded. "We have more important things that need discussing, and information to be revealed."

"Is this about Constantinople?" He asked with a lilt, propping one hand on his hip. "Because I thought I told you, those geese totally counted as villains and deserved arrest--"

"I found a child vigilante. What do I do with it?"

"Ex-cuse me?" His fist clenched. "Is this a trick question?"

"No."

"What do you mean, 'what do I do with it?' You know what to do with it; you become its nemisis when their 15 and haunted them for the next decade." His voice was thinly-veiled rage. He couldn't stop himself from shaking. That poor kid, Slade has his sights set on them. He's going to torture that kid, or worse, and now I have to track Slade's trail back to wherever he found this kid--

"I can't do that! He's only eight years old!"

"What?"

"There's this eight year old meta brat running around a Mid-West town in his pajamas while adults shoot at him. There isn't a mentor in sight, and one of the kid's rogues has threatened to skin him. What. Do. I. Do?"

[crowlixcx]

my biggest dream for good omens S3 is that they release it weekly so that we have lots of time to discuss and play and create and prolong the joy as much as possible

[bonefall]

Is Heartstar being small typical to Shadowclan, or is she just independently tiny? Which clan would be the largest or smallest?

She's actually just tiny, and it's very odd for her her entire bloodline. Her grandfathers in BB are Tigerstar and Brokenstar, who were notoriously massive. Her parents, Tawnypelt and Rowanstar, inherited that size.

Maybe Heartstar inherited it from Rowan's mom, Newtspeck. Her uncle Littlecloud is also pretty small. Heartstar is smaller, though.

By weight, ShadowClan is actually the smallest though. It's a result of the harsh winter conditions of a freezing marsh, and the benefit of being less heavy on soggy, unstable ground.

RiverClan is the shortest Clan, though. I try to consistently design them so that they're longer than they are tall. Thick tails, stout legs, small ears. Notably otter-like.

[ask-shane]

Shane. English or Spanish?

for the record… i’m openly bisexual.

[certified-egg]

this session was both more tame than everyone is making it out to be and really insane characterisation wise. the contrast between gem being all „lots of people sacrificed for me last season [and it kinda sucked] so i dont want to give up easy“ (horrifically paraphrased) vs pearls whole ally devotion thing + Literally Giving Impulse An „Extra Life“ is so funny to me. especially given that their main conflict this time being that gem wants to 1v1 pearl to settle the beef and pearl just. refuses? doesnt that sound familiar? oh boy

[cuddlytogas]

an incomplete list of terrible but extremely popular Our Flag Means Death takes that I would like to never see again please

(and I do mean popular, as in, lots of people seem to think they're canon, to the point where I feel slightly insane and like I was watching a different show to everyone else)

1. Ed's mum was loving and nice and supportive, if hampered by her bad situation

this comes up more in fic than analysis, to be fair, but good god, what show were some of you watching? this isn't to vilify her, because yeah, she's clearly a product of colonialism, white christian supremacy, and domestic abuse, but like. that doesn't make how she raised Ed good. clearly she was trying to keep him safe, but "we don't deserve nice things", and especially "it's not up to us, it's up to god", speaks to me of someone who squashes down any ambition on her son's part, has fully bought into the lies of christian colonialism, and tries to pass them down to her son.

as does happen in colonised communities, particularly among older generations. I know us white people like to think that every indigenous person is a perfect left-wing anti-imperial activist, but that's simply not the case, and Ed's mum is so clearly an example of an older conservative christian indigenous parent who had to believe the lies told by their coloniser in order to survive, but is now passing on that trauma to their children. and I just...

if I read one more fic where Ed's mum is a perfect loving supportive angel who always believed in her kid and always supported and protected him, I'm gonna scream. yes, it's sweet, and it's fun to sometimes veer from canon and give your blorbo nice things, but it's still veering from canon. and yet, I see very few people acknowledge that, or actually talk about the nuances of Ed's mother, and how she definitely tried to protect him, but was far from sweet, doting, and unconditionally supportive.

2. Ed's loving look when Stede is picking food from his beard in 1x07

like most of these things, I enjoyed it as a joke or exaggeration at first, until I realised that people were actually being serious. but every time I watch that scene, I see Ed looking absently-mindedly over Stede's shoulder, because a) that's what you do when someone leans in to pick something off you, and b) surely the point of the scene is that they're so comfortable and easy together that they don't notice the intimacy of what they're doing, but Lucius, an outside observer, thinks it's obvious. right?? I can't be the only one seeing it???

[sigh]

anyway. finally, the really really big one:

3. Ed is a soft uwu babygirl princess femme bottom sub who loves her cat collar and is teaching Stede how to dom him in the "say you're the captain" scene

I mean, there's not much to say except to link to duke's absolutely phenomenal twitter thread about "how the 'babygirlfication' and infantilization of ofmd ed teach is an extension of racist perceptions of indigenous men being inherently violent and thus needing to be emasculated to be considered sympathetic"

but especially That One Fucking Scene, good lord. talk about taking shit out of context. everyone looked at a slowed-down gif of one shot in the trailer and cried "babygirl!! he's such a simp, he just wants to be dommed!!", when actually that scene is about how a) Stede is cringefail and terrible at being a typical harsh, commanding pirate, and b) Ed is lovingly embarrassed by this. he encourages Stede to assert himself (and give Ed something to do during his probation/help him make amends with the crew), but like. normally. he's acting perfectly normal in that scene, and mostly annoyed by the outfit and embarrassed by how badly Stede fails. but just because he's sitting down while Stede is standing, and he happens to take a breath in that one shot (because, you know, people breathe sometimes), everyone's doubled down on their "submissive babygirl" bullshit, and I can't get the fuck away from it.

which - listen, it's fun for me, too! it's fun to explore exaggerated aspects of a character, it's fun to read/write/draw that angle in smut, I get it! but I keep seeing people keep claim it's literally canon, and I cannot stress enough that that is Straight Up False. for the love of god, please just watch the show without your (potentially kinda racist) bias glasses on, and remember to treat the characters with respect instead of projecting onto their every interaction a shallow dom/sub binary just because you find it hot.

Our Flag is a show very specifically about masculinity, and what it means to be a man; how assumptions about that can harm and restrict men; and how men can grow beyond them. it's a nuanced and sympathetic examination of this. the whole point is that Ed is allowed to like nice fabrics and be tired of violent piracy and still be a man. the point is that two men fall in love - equal, honest, sincere love - and are still men, still exactly who they are.

(on that note, insisting that Ed is canonically trans or femme because of these things often ends up just leaning into gendered stereotypes: men are harsh and active and dominant, and women are soft and passive and submissive, and if Ed's not the former, he must be the latter, right? it also tends to hetero-ify the central relationship, casting Stede as "the boy" and Ed as "the girl", needing one to be masc and one femme. not always, and again, I understand and have enjoyed transformative works that take those elements and run with them, and explore what the story could be like if Ed were trans/nb/etc - but it's still a transformative interpretation. it's not canon.)

relatedly: those fucking wedding toppers! it seemed blatantly obvious to me that half the point of those scenes was that Ed is distraught and blaming himself for Stede leaving because he wasn't the ideal partner. it's his entire arc for the first half of season 2! Ed hates himself and believes there's something wrong about him that makes him unlovable. so he keeps and then discards the wedding toppers, painting himself onto one of them, because he's projecting himself onto an image of ideal/successful romantic love that he thinks Stede wants, and in which he doesn't fit. he's trying to mould himself into someone else to make himself lovable, not realising that Stede already loves him for himself.

so it's important to the whole narrative that Ed's yearning for/projection onto the wedding toppers is false, and born from his insecurity. he gets drunk, and play-acts a stereotypical image of romantic happiness into which he doesn't fit, but real love looks nothing like that, because real love isn't found in stifling hegemonic cultural structures, but honest, emotional connections between people allowed to be their whole, vulnerable selves. Stede is not like the groom, and Ed is not like the bride, because they shouldn't have to be. Ed should not (and does not) have to warp himself into a demure bride in order to be worthy of love: he's already lovable and loved exactly as he is! that's the point!! of the scene!!!!!!

like, it's important that the groom figure isn't actually like Stede, either. yes, it's blond and has a nice, peach-coloured suit, but a) Stede was very specifically unhappy in the posh, heterosexual, married state the figures represent, and b) Stede by this point looks nothing like that figurine. it's directly contrasted with the image of him in the rowboat, scruffy and plain and earnestly in love, rather than fancy, cold ceramic.

[EDIT 29/12/24: I ended up writing a whole Twitter essay about the wedding cake toppers that I then gussied up for Tumblr; so if you want a clearer, more substantial, and better supported argument about those, check that out!]

but no, I have to wade through swathes of art and fic and meta about how badly Ed wants to be a sweet little demure kitty princess, how he wants a wedding night and a ring to prove he's Stede's property, and acting as if this is somehow canon, because people on the internet have zero reading comprehension and are scared of brown men.

the whole point of Our Flag is that you don't need to compress yourself into prescribed social roles, and in fact, doing so will only make you miserable; and that racist, patriarchal, colonial institutions should be resisted and dismantled at every opportunity.

so tell me again why the ultimate message is that Ed and Stede should get married under an arch in front of an altar and their lined-up friends, with flowers and rice falling around them, all dressed in white, one in a suit and one in a dress, with rings and a kiss and a honeymoon after, before they move into a detached house with a yard and a fence and re-adopt the kids that Stede abandoned? and this isn't about promises, fidelity, or even monogamy - I'm specifically talking about everyone in this fandom who seems to think that the ultimate goal is the most stereotypical 20th century cisheteropatriarchal christian wedding, but with the name "matelotage" slapped on top, as if that takes away all of the underlying baggage.

just - I know we're all meant to hate men and masculinity and yadda yadda yadda, but actually, to be earnest for a second, men deserve respect too, because all people and all genders do. and two men are allowed to be in a relationship and still both be men - complex men, with their own, layered relationships to their gender - without having to fall into neatly-arranged dom/sub masc/femme roles, or seal the deal with a hegemonically-approved ceremony.

so please, stop reducing an indigenous lead character to a caricature of a femme uwu princess bottom just because he has long hair, wore a robe once, and you're too scared of brown men to imagine him with proper agency. and then please, for the love of god, stop claiming that that interpretation is canon.

[okaratauri]

There’s only one thing Bill could bribe me with…

edit: first one is the updated version, the one below is the OG I posted

[itsmeimcathy]

{ 度华年 - The Princess Royal } ep. 17 ending cards

[ilovedthestars]

and also just. the way ambiguity in relationships is assumed to be romantic, too. see, i wrote that whole post a while back about how I loved ambiguous fictional relationships, with deep devotion but no clear label as to the type of relationship. i called it love as in significance--that's where my tag comes from. love as in being important to someone, in whatever form that takes.

and what I said then about how this applies to romance still applies--when I'm reading about a fictional romance, I'll be much more engaged with one that feels built on that foundation of significance than one that isn't. flirting, the trappings of modern courtship, those feel empty to me without the feeling that these characters already matter to each other. (this is why in real life I'm so perplexed by things like dating apps, or people who actively seek out romance with strangers--I just personally can't fathom the idea of wanting that kind of closeness with someone you don't already know and care for.)

but in regards to ambiguity....I feel like I've been burned a little. I loved ambiguity because it meant you could take many things away from it. other people could see romance, but I could see the kind of deeply devoted platonic relationship that, let's be honest, is incredibly rare in fiction. but I'm starting to feel frustrated by the way ambiguity is assumed to be romance, without an explicit statement that it's not. (I've joked about the obligatory "no hetero" moments that have to be inserted into the start of a piece of media that has a male and a female protagonist with any kind of relationship other than romance--the "not with those lips" moment in the D&D movie, for example. It's funny, and i appreciate it being made very clear, but it's kind of sad that it has to be.)

and...okay, there's an elephant in the room that i really should acknowledge. I was talking about it in that first post, but I made a point of never mentioning it, although i'm sure plenty of people guessed.

I haven't watched Good Omens season two. I'm not sure if I'm ever going to. When I first wrote about my love for ambiguous relationships back in February of 2023, Aziraphale and Crowley were at the top of my list. When I wrote about how ambiguity left room for anyone to see themselves represented, and how i wished that a little more space was left for aro voices, I was talking about them. I was frustrated by people who saw that ambiguity as "queerbaiting"--didn't they see that the story was already queer, that Aziraphale and Crowley cared so deeply for each other, and whether they kissed or not wouldn't change anything?

But they did kiss. And it did change something. I don't feel like there's a place left for me anymore. And there's social pressure to celebrate, to be happy for another canon queer love story on TV, and god I'd love to celebrate that, but I can't help but feel a little betrayed by a story that I thought would leave space for me.

(and yes, a kiss doesn't have to mean romance--but in this, in hollywood, it's assumed to. the creators and the audience both understand it as such, unless someone stops to say no, we're friends who kiss each other the mouth, we're subverting your expectations. because the expectations are inescapable.)

I've been trying to give myself the space to feel upset about this. To remember that aro stories are queer stories too. And I think I'm raising my standards. I'll take ambiguity--I'll take any carved-out space I can find. But I'm not sure I trust it anymore. I want explicitly platonic relationships with the level of love and devotion and care usually reserved for romance. I want to read and watch and listen to stories about people who are significant to each other without romance even being in the picture. I want love that isn't synonymous with romance. I'm going to stop feeling like I have to settle for anything less.

[takemetodragonstone]

okay i’m going to be a bitch for a second but hear me out. i hate posts like this. i hate them so fucking much. they’re branded as “self-care” but they just assume so much. and if the things they’re assuming as givens happen to not be true for you, they make you feel even worse.

“everything that has ever felt like a hurdle, you’ve passed through”. except what if you haven’t? what if life has knocked you down, and you still haven’t figured out how to get back up? what about us?

i’m still afraid of the same things i was afraid of ten years ago (and five years ago and two years ago). i haven’t overcome anything. i haven’t pushed through. i’m alive, but that’s pretty much all i have going for me in terms of survival. i’m actually probably worse off than i was ten years ago.

posts like this have a place in the discussion of mental health, i’m not denying that. if this kind of thing makes you feel better, that’s great. i’m genuinely happy this resonates with so many people. i’m just exhausted with seeing this kind of message presented as The standard of mental health everywhere. this “look how strong you are! look how far you’ve come!” message just rings hollow to me. idk i just think when it comes to mental health we need to get more comfortable talking about people who genuinely aren’t progressing and “overcoming” too.

[thorns-in-daisy-fields]

Hey, uh... Sorry to bother you today, but have you considered that the only thing actually making you unlovable is how you let your self depreciation and belief that you're unlovable lead to abusive actions? That you've pushed all the love that's come towards you away and hurt the people loving you because you FELT unlovable and unworthy? Yeah, I'm sorry your parents weren't nice to you, but plenty of people do love you, and your developing track record isn't doing you any favors... You should really get that checked out

[ace-s-fav-dp-posts]

If you're sick of the current popular trope/story prompt in the Phandom or DPxDC fandom you just need to ignore it

I feel like the fans in the Phandom and DPxDC minifandom that's popped up, who are really grossed/creeped out by the genre of fic popular right now.

Where the set up is some variation of Outsider POV and the plot is based around the assumption that Vlad SAed Danny in order to create Dan and Danielle, are people who haven't been around that long.

Especially when they try to whine about none of it being based in canon. And how they don't like the shipping of Vlad and Danny (even though the people who write these kinds of fics are very obviously not shipping Vlad and Danny in them).

Because the Phandom has historically gone through phases much more gruesome and horrifying than that.

Especially when in this current micro-genre, all of the SA and grooming and other kinds of abuse are implied only, and within the fics themselves the assumed abuse never actually happened. As the plot is based on over heard or misinterpreted fragments of information that doesn't give the POV character the full picture of the situation that's actually going on.

There's the infamous vivisection fics, in which the child main character is brutally cut open and tortured by his own parents in the name of their biased views of science. Who in canon, both happily accept him no matter what every time a reveal is happens and never so much as rejects Danny emotionally.

Then there's the variation on the traditional vivisection fic in which Danny isn't emotionally rejected and stripped of his humanity by his own parents. But instead captured and stripped of his human rights by the government, either by his parents unknowing actions which they stay oblivious to. Or in spite of his parent's acceptance of him, and with them helpless to rescue or protect him from the government's torturous "research".

There's the already existing variation of grooming and SA fics, where Vlad grooms and or assaults Danny. Which have been popping up for years now, but in which all of this type of horrible abuse actually happens in the story, instead of it being an Outside POV misunderstanding what's happen like the current micro genre of fic.

There's the fics where the Fentons have just been abusive or just negligent parents Danny and Jazz's entire lives. And them hurting Danny, emotionally or physically, intentionally or accidentally, is just an extension of their already unacceptable parenting habits.

There's the edritch/body horror genre of fics where becoming half-ghost (or sometimes something else) involves at the very least the partial loss of Danny (or Vlad)'s humanity.

Hell there's one fic that's stuck with me for ages, that I read years ago, back in my teens, written from the POV of a Maddie who murdered Danny to prevent him from becoming Dan. Which is stated in that fic to be inevitable.

It's also heavily implied that Maddie had incestuous feelings for Danny the entire fic. And that she also possibly raped him in the midst of her extremely violent* vivisection murder of him. But that if she didn't rape him, at the very least, ripping him open to see his insides while he was awake and struggling got her off anyways.

So yeah, I don't know what other explanation there is to all these people who seem confused and freaked out by the various fics popping up where there's assumed SA/grooming, but actually nothing outside of canon actually happened to Danny, and the whole thing is just a misunderstanding.

Other than them being extremely new to Danny Phantom fics in general and therefore unaware of just how dark (and potentially triggering) they can be.

When there's been fics for years about SA and grooming, some of which is explicit, some of which is all implied and talked around and just as gut wrenching, and some of which is actually painted in that cringe forbidden love sort of way, for more than a literal decade now.

If you don't like it, if it makes you uncomfortable, you're just going to have to ignore or block those people, like everyone else in the Phandom who feels the way you do has done for more than a decade now.

Don't make comments to those authors that you don't like that trope, or that it makes you uncomfortable, or anything similar. Just ignore them or block them if it really bothers you that much. Because if you don't like their stuff, then rather obviously you are not their intended audience, so you need to ignore their posts and fics and keep scrolling if you're not going to block them.

*Also yes I must state it was a violent vivisection murder. Because it is clearly stated in the fic, that Vlad finds Maddie sitting outside on the porch covered in Danny's blood and viscera, and that the room she killed him in is in a similar state.

I wanna say the fic got deleted during the old Fanfiction.net purge of more adult content, even though all of the sexual abuse/incest parts of the fic where all implied and not explicit, along with the violent vivisectoin murder taking place off screen.

Though I could be wrong, and it's still out there somewhere, and possibly not exactly as I remember it. I read it more than 5 years ago now, so there's almost certainly some memory drift by this point.

[katyspersonal]

Sigh..

Soooo yeah.. I am genuinely surprised by how hard Tumblr is trying to destroy itself. Tumblr THRIVES on random reblog chains getting progressively cursed, someone making a random post about their fandom, a lot of personal interactions, people osmos'ing unfamiliar fandoms and characters through mutuals-in-law and other stuff like this. Like.. there are 0 reasons to make it another Amino.

Not to mention how much it nurtures things that RUIN fandoms, like "fandom leaders", "cool kids" groups, fandom trends, gospel headcanons etc. So, imagine if like, a cunt that hates your ship or your headcanons on a character or anything like that 'claims' the fandom community first! So now everyone that dares to have different tastes and interpretations from them will be excluded from active discussions because many users, instead of checking fandom tag and 'wild' dashboard will hang out in community bubbles instead and not see the takes which that bitchy control freak admin dislikes! People that disagree with that community's admin will be left with no choice but to create their own space, and either 1) Tumblr will disapprove multiple spaces for the same theme 2) their community will be less active since most fans WILL naturally prefer the one that came first or 3) in general, fandoms will suck more because of large amount of "us vs them" moods.

Nothing is worse for a fandom than giving someone power to decide who "belongs" in it and who doesn't. And there is NO way to prevent the situation where it is specifically a control freak that will exclude people with "wrong" ships or "wrong" headcanons that claims community. Like, yeah, different 'sides' of the discourse-torn fandom (so, ANY fandom lol) having to fight for audience because this audience can't be active in every community, even neutral ones that'd like to see any ships and any headcanons!

Did Tumblr staff not THINK about what this could mean? Like, do they want dens of scumbags proliferating behind the scenes? And don't even get me started on the morality of sanitising the posts into 'OnLy ReLeVanT cOnTeNt uwu' when so-called "meaningful connections" are formed EXACTLY when a blogger breaks the fandomry-posting routine to get personal or political, to show more of themselves! People don't need a new space where they can "escape" "uncomfortable" topics or news (cough cough), because they already have this space. This space is called 'their friends'! Once again, proves how corporations have NO idea now actual humans work.

[katabay]

top 5 fandoms?

oooh, okay! so my top 5 to hang out in (which is not necessarily the same as stuff I draw fan art of, but ones where I’ve gone to group meet ups at conventions, attended watch parties/events for, actively seek out the tags for on twitter, etc) are probably

-Kamen Rider

-the bitter Sam fan side of SPN

-DMBJ

-Pacific Rim

-Guardian/Zhen Hun or the Yakuza franchise