#bc it makes me think that the whole fandom is really superficial and then makes me not want to interact w ppl who like the game

[agathabridgerton]

“why did this set suddenly stop getting notes at a really low number” and then it’s because only 7.4% of the notes are reblogs.

[elvisqueso]

Hi, Elvisqueso! I read your response in the lately ask for you AND WOW, YOU NAILED IT!!! I agree 100% with what you said. As a brazilian fan of Pocahontas, I can say with 100% certainty that this idea of 'Pocahontas is a racist movie, it’s a movie that romanticizes colonialism, etc.' has really grown within the Disney fandom here (not that the Pocahontas fandom is big here—counting me, I think there are like... 5 people, lol), but this idea that Pocahontas is a movie 'that glosses over colonization and that it was wrong for Pocahontas to get involved with a white, blond, standard guy and so on...' has started to gain attention here, and that Pocahontas is 'just a Native woman who got charmed by the colonizer who invaded her lands and now is all lovey-dovey with him,' completely ignoring the entire story, development, and message of the movie.

I think nowadays, people’s perspectives are very superficial and ideological. People don’t know how to separate fiction from reality anymore—only when it suits them. I totally agree with the part where you said the justification for all this hate is 'because they’re seeing an interracial couple on screen,' YES! And, as incredible as it may seem, this is what makes me love them and the movie even more—the fact that they are 'in the eye of the storm,' but still, they stay together and are stronger than ever in their love, DESPITE BEING TOTALLY DIFFERENT! The difference in ethnicity, in cultures, all of that is THEIR CHEMISTRY, it’s what makes them perfect as a couple. And, again, we’re talking about FICTION. (Interracial couples are amazing).

I’m not saying that these discussions aren’t valid—they are. But, to throw the whole story, narrative, and everything about the movie in the trash because it goes against your ideas without recognizing all the investment, work, effort, RESEARCH (a lot of research on Disney’s part), is unfair. It’s sad. You recommend Pocahontas, make art, a story, and people see it as something twisted and see you the same way... like, (?), this movie is a work of art, so beautiful... And as you said: at no point is Pocahontas portrayed as a victim, quite the opposite, she is SUPER ahead of her time and a very bold woman, she literally CHANGES John’s perspective, SHE drives the plot, everything revolves around Pocahontas, and at no point is John a jerk to her (well, maybe just a little bit before he learns how to paint with all the colors of the Wind...)

I'm not an expert on the subject, I just watched the movie (more than once) and formed this critique and perspective on my own. In fact, I was one of those people who watched Pocahontas for the first time with that completely distorted view that was spread on the internet about the movie. At first, I THOUGHT their relationship was SUPER PROBLEMATIC, but as I kept watching, I realized it wasn’t quite like that and now I abslutely love them.

That’s what I wanted to say... I really liked that ask and your response, and I wanted to contribute too. Let’s keep being the resistance of the Pocahontas fandom on the internet, LOL.

Hey there!

You're right; it's very difficult to get people to see past the racial dynamics and it's really concerning how that point of view seems to be getting more popular (especially in online spaces). It doesn't help that the usual portrayals of interracial relationships we see on screen are either fetishized or played for laughs.

And oh man is it tough being in such a little fandom. I'm pretty sure I'm the only blog that shows up as "recommended" in any of the fandom tags (not counting the general tag bc it's a minefield). I've been hoping to drum up a little activity around here. It's still pretty dead in terms of new fanworks 😅

But Yes! Let's keep enjoying what we love without guilt or anxiety about what other people think!

[diamondcitydarlin]

far be it from me to interrupt the unnecessary character hate train some folks in this fandom insist on having but I have to say, what seemed a little unnecessary but still somewhat understandable from a separate POV in season 1 just doesn't make any sense now- that is, of course, a time-honored fandom pasttime of trying to force a character into the role of villain against the actual narrative. it's nothing new ofc I've seen it happen in just about every fandom I've been in and I've learned that there usually isn't a point in trying to debate with people that have made up their minds this way and with the way I've tagged this I'm probably just preaching to the choir but like...it seems to me this whole season is ALL about being flawed, the ways in which every character in the cast (beloved or otherwise) has flaws and issues that have hurt others, but most significant, the ways in which a person can grow and learn and mend and still deserve to be loved despite everything. this isn't really a story where you can pick out the 'good ones' with completely clean moral slates from those you've decided are irredeemable unless you're choosing to ignore the actual themes being presented (which like, fine, but that's a choice of interpretation that goes directly against what's actually there). Everyone has been victim of someone else. Everyone at this point has inflicted some kind of hurt on someone else. Stede hurt Ed, Ed hurt Stede, Ed hurts Izzy, Izzy hurt Ed, Ed hurt Lucius, Lucius hurt Black Pete and so on and so on and so on. There's really no one here who is just a completely blameless uwu victim and that's actually a good thing because most of us just fucking aren't either, as much as we may want to believe that or think of ourselves as morally superior to others bc of fictional characters we like or don't or whatever, as much as we may be caught up in our own victimhood (which I absolutely get I've found myself there many times too) we're all flawed, we've all hurt people, there's no getting through life without doing it at some point. it's not really about having or trying to manufacture the image of a clean moral slate, it's about learning and growing and trying to do better the next day and accepting those flaws with a gentle grace. the sooner some of yall wrap your minds around that truth the better off you're going to be, and maybe a good start is learning from these flawed, imperfect, sometimes hurtful characters that we've grown to love because we see ourselves in their actions.

some poignant takeaways from the last couple of eps I think are 1) when Fang suggests to Ed he should try sitting with himself for a bit instead of trying to talk through and shallowly justify everything. I think everyone can benefit from doing this, as so often we think of things from an external perspective rather than internal. It can be hard to introspect rather than blame the world or others and construct little superficial rituals that make us feel momentarily superior (like, idk, deciding one character in a show is the 'bad guy' and anyone who likes him is bad but not you you're not bad bc you don't like him so you must be a better person even though this involves you picking fights and harassing people trying to enjoy themselves, idk, just a random example). It's so much harder to ask yourself why you feel a certain way in the first place, to ask yourself if it's possible that you see aspects of yourself in a character you despise that you're not willing to face within, things about yourself you've buried deep and pretend don't exist at the cost of being 'morally superior'. It's possible, isn't it? Would it hurt to be still for a moment and think about that? I mean, maybe it would, quite possibly it would hurt a lot at first, but I think it's worth it in the end, far more than the effort to put up a morally superior front that no one even has.

the other one that I think the people I'm actually addressing won't appreciate because of who it involves- when Izzy gives Lucius the carved shark and explains that not moving on is worse than doing what is necessary to actually move on. Not necessarily advocating for lying to oneself (tho if I were a more reckless person I might say this can be a genuine bandaid tactic when you're in survival mode and just need to get to the next day, I get that too) but I do think there's a good point here about learning to let go of the things that only gnaw away at us inside. holding on to anger and spite can feel like a form of justice in the short term, but over time it only corrodes the host. at some point, at some time, to truly heal we have to figure out how to let go of certain things, if only so it won't poison us further. Lucius threw Ed overboard the same way he did to him, but ultimately it didn't help, did it? What changed was seeing the way his obsession with his hatred hurt the man he loved, what changed was introspection.

So, idk, really good show, very educational and emotionally aware and I think some of us could benefit from paying more attention to what's actually there than what we want to believe. Idk, it's a thought.

[notafunkiller]

cringey, embarrassing and tacky - this whole "relationship" has made me look at seb in a different light, allowing this talentless "influencer/part time actress" to piggyback off his success just makes me sad.

It disappoints me he is so desperate for awards that he does this. It's not surprising, but still... he is so talented and hard working, and he can do other types of PR.

I fully agree with what both of you said (anon and blog host) If you believe the rumors & Annabelle is Sebs PR to clean up all the negatives attached to him from his previous PR Ale (if you believe that was PR too) it just looks really bad on Seb. Because it’s 2 girls back to back to have too many similarities & leeching tendencies. Although I believe Annabele is far worse because she’s more manipulative & calculating about it, it looks bad for Seb to date 2 women back to back who are so similar in many ways. Makes it seems like that’s his type and that maybe he was wearing a mask before. Like now he’s made it big the masks are coming off and he’s into vain, superficial, fame hungry socialites. It’s very disheartening to see when he’s so talented and doesn’t need this kind of PR (if it is PR).

Either way, real or fake, it definitely makes me question who the real Seb is. Like is he really as nice and sweet as everyone says. Yeah people on set say he is too but he’s working, we all wear a mask at work too, to some extent. The fact he’s chosen 2 very similar women to allow so close to him (even meeting his mom) makes me wonder if this could really be his type and we’ve all been duped into thinking he’s a sweetheart but he’s actually more like these women he’s dating than we realize. 😔

I think there is a huge difference between Ale and Annabelle, though... the personality.

Ale displays hers publicly in posys amd doesn't need to show 47457 freebies she gets, yl what I mean?

I saw she is respected in Spain for modeling... I watched Alta Mar and I actually enjoyed it (before they got together) so she is not a bad actress at all. Much better than Annabelle at least.

I do not think it was PR with Ale. Did they do PR together? Of course!

But it's interesting she visited Romania twice long after the break up, too.

Yes, she had problematic behaviour, and his fandom nade sure to go wild on her, yet they stay silent on Annabelle and praise her for things Ale would've been hated. If she had done half of the things Annabelle does, they would write letters like Chris Evans' fans.

But Sebastian's behaviour speaking, with Ale he really seemed really happy (just like he was with Margarita and Leighton) and so much younger and fresh despite working quite a lot. With Annabelle his behaviour shows that he does not like her or if they were together for real... that he is a very crappy boyfriend since he turned 40 bc who would want this trashy treatment besides the people who ship them?!

The difference between how he treated Margarita and Ale vs Annabelle is huge. Look how he treated Daisy (and Annabelle and him were together already)!

If this is how he treats his real girlfriends now (as in how he treats Annabelle), he is 😬, but I doubt someone can change his behaviour so drastically overnight.

Of course we do not know him personally, but it's sad to see such desperation, especially since he has such talent and he's hard working. The fact he wants to get an Oscar (which is so meaningless in a way since the lobby and the academy are the way they are) so badly that is willing to sacrifice many things is really sad.

Also, I do not think the self help books he reads are good at all or meaningful amd they do not seem to help him. I tried reading a few he recommended and they are not giving info for real. Atomic Habits, Dopamine Nation etc are surface types of books. If these are the books his therapist suggests then 😬.

[boypussydilf]

God i want to hear your putata thoughts. He's MY specialest little guy forever and ever (@killjpeg btw)

HEEEELLLLLL yeah. i fucking love putata. superficially. the putata & mekeke episode is one of the most banger shurara corps episodes, theyre REALLY fun characters even in a limited amount of time, and i love what surface level lore i know about him

Sexuality Headcanon: i have no strong specific thoughts on the matter but hes probably gay

Gender Headcanon: Putata is so full of gender. I want his gender, to be honest. I just dont know what gender that IS. Gender called “Pretty Colors”

A ship I have with said character: putameke is the absolute default and thats bc its a winner. power couple

A BROTP I have with said character: HMMM. Huh. ive never thought about putata interacting with anyone else in my life. He doesn’t have other friends. I think he could make pretty good friends with Gyororo though. Evil gang 😈 Evil gang 😈

A NOTP I have with said character: nothing comes to mind. my notp is putata x any space that has a lack of color. give him bright colors or he will die. Putata x minimalism evil ship.

A random headcanon: He seems like he eats sour candy religiously. Sour anything, probably. Fucking horking down the airheads sour strips like it’s the end of the world. I don’t have anything with more substance than this

General Opinion over said character: Oh what a fun silly entertaining little guy *glances at half of the fandom content for him* oh shit? He’s fucking great. i wish the keroro wiki was more organized and had more than the barest surface level explanation of His Whole Deal. guess i gotta go dig up the lore on my own someday. i only know a little about him but conceptually he is literally so interesting so fascinating. And, in practice: So Much Fucking Fun. My Favorite Type Of Character. He’s just DEEPLY entertaining. Funniest little bitch around, I love him. *turns to face you and my followers with a dramatic swoosh of my villain cloak* People of the land! Give me your Putata information and thoughts! If you have them and want to!

[redxblueihateloveyou]

I'm surprised people see Tadashi as the victim in his relationship with Ainosuke, when it's Tadashi the one who time and time again takes away Ainosuke's agency, without being able to see that he is throwing him unto unhappiness. I can't help but think that if Tadashi was not working at Shindo's house, Ainosuke would have maybe left or broke with the family. But he can't do that if he wants the relationship with Tadashi going on, seing how Tadashi is set on enforcing the family rules...

Hmm.. I def agree with the fact that Tadashi is not what most fandom makes out of him, my man (I mean, Adam’s man) is a 100% Slytherin. But I disagree with blaming him for this, after all the revealed info. The environment they were both raised in made their situation complicated.

I like Tadashi a lot, he’s probably my fav thing about this anime, bc he’s a dark horse, and I’m once again surprised, that so little ppl see him for who he really is, portraying him as an innocent puppy, which he is definitely not.

Now to why I think both Tadashi and Adam are victims of the dad and aunties in this situation. 

We can of course say “if only they told each other how they really feel...”, but like we can say it about any love story really. Every author knows it’s no fun. The truth is that yes, they both hurt each other, and yes, if they were honest about their feelings things would’ve been different, but as I’ve already wrote under that “toxic” commentary on YT, lets look at the whole situation from both of their point of views:

We know that Adam when he was little always treated Tadashi as an equal, he never ever thought of him as someone lower than him and after their fall out, the only reason for this “harsh” treatment (well, besides their confirmed kink) was that Adam tried to get a reaction out of him, so Tadashi would stand up for himself, bc Ainosuke got mad about Tadashi caving to his dad’s wishes and abandoning him, when he needed him the most. 

But now, knowing the fact that Tadashi was his dad’s secretary and was under his control, let’s see it from his perspective: Tadashi wanted to stay by Adam’s side, Adam’s dad implied that if Tadashi did say smth, he’s gonna be.. well, dismissed and they won’t see each other ever again. That’s what caused Tadashi to stay silent in that moment. Ainosuke instead saw this as a “he’s not on my side” thing, well, because. Tadashi won’t tell him his problem, bc dad and aunties control everything, so even if he does tell him, what a teen would do really? He didn’t have any powers back then to make his dad do anything. 

And that’s when it all gone to shit, since they both were hurt for their own reasons. It’s easy to say leave the family, but 1stly nobody explained to Adam still that he’s physically and psychologically abused by his family, he sees it as them “loving him” and sadly also loves them, bc nobody told him, that love wasn’t supposed to be like that really. He definitely feels that smth is not right and feels emotionally exhausted there bc of this treatment, but did he ever consider leaving? I really don’t think so. He feels obligated to be worthy of a family, who “loves” him.

Do you think, for example, that Akashi Seijuro hates his dad for what he did to him? No. Does he understand that he wasn’t at fault for what happened to him and that his dad instead of comforting his child after his mother’s death, who was his only safe haven, made everything worse? I don’t think he does. Like his mom gave him basketball, an escape from all that family’s obligations and strictness. After her death, it was the only thing left that brought him joy, but his dad ruined even that, saying that if he’s gonna be bad at it/lose, he’d take it away from him too. Does Akashi see this as emotional abuse? No, he sees it like “well, I have to be the best bc I was born in such powerful family, so if my dad says that I must be best at everything, then I must.”

I personally hate such parents a lot. To me it doesn’t matter if Adam’s dad didn’t know about aunties hitting his child. Like if he was too busy to notice this and have no time for his kid and made his childhood miserable, it doesn’t make it any better really. 

Same as with Akashi’s dad. Some are like “he was probably also grieving about his wife”. Emm? He was like this from the beginning, bc he treated Akashi not as his son, but as his heir. And yes, that’s different things. Same with Endeavor and Todoroki. Your child is not your post production thing.

2ndly they were too young, even if they knew about each others feelings and he didn’t feel obligated and told everyone to fuck off, they’d be on the streets now, but also Adam’s dad doesn’t seem like a guy who’d leave them alone really. Also eloping seems very romantic, but I don’t think it is, esp when you’re teens. Did you want him to sell some expensive watch and go live on Hawaii or smth? Bc finding a decent job there would be difficult at this age, esp with everyone knowing who your dad is. Chen Ke from “Antidote” survived bc he was 27 and had connections and some great friends. Adam was in high school, where would he go exactly?

Now let’s go back to now. Obviously all this time it didn’t even cross Tadashi’s mind that for Ainosuke he comes first and that he would throw everyone under the bus to make Tadashi stay with him. As we see at the end, he legit believed that Adam was planning to send him to jail and didn’t get that he said it just to shaken he up and that he knew who he’d set up for this from the beginning. 

To Adam obviously it doesn’t matter whether they’re in a quarrel or not, he would never him go. Yes, he’s mad at him, he’s angry and hurt, but Tadashi’s still the person he needs the most, he’s still the person who brightens his days, even tho he deliberately behaves like he annoys him. He always looks at him and looks at him and looks at him, but then hisses smth to hurt him. Bc he knows that he needs him, but he also hates that he needs him, bc he thinks it’s unrequited.

And that’s how their classic romance goes in hellish circles. No one wants to talk as usual. Adam is mad Tadashi is like that bc his dad turned him into a slave with no opinion, while Tadashi is scared that Adam would be taken away from him bc of his ugly family. 

Now I still think that no one and I mean no one can take Tadashi from Adam now, he is his precious. So my plan is... if Tadashi made aunties do smth against him or to get rid of him, aunties will go for sure. The problem is Tadashi still doesn’t get that he comes first, so we’re stuck in this hell still.

So anyways, my point is Adam’s heart basically sings “you got a hold of me, don’t even know your power” to Tadashi, but he doesn’t hear it, bc of his insecurities, the way he was raised and his status. But yes, he holds all the power. He’s both Adam’s sanity and insanity. No matter how cheesy it sounds he was basically his only ray of sunshine in the darkness, if you take it away, that’s what it leads to, that’s why Ainosuke-sama needs more ppl who care for him. I don’t want anyone to die next time, just cause Tadashi and Adam fought about where to put their new couch lmao. I’m kidding, but you know what I mean. And kill the aunties, pls seriously, we need to be free.

Also ppl need to remember that like lots of animes/characters are parcially inspired by some other animes/characters, also the chosen seiyuus are also very important, there are lots of stuff like jokes and references, that creators use, from characters being fully inspired by smth like “Assassination classroom” characters based on KNB, to little stuff like Levi dressed in Akashi’s uniform in chibi AOT bc Hiroshi Kamiya. Utsumi already said before stuff like she sometimes think of a perfect voice for the character and then fully forms him, we also know her clear love for sports animes. So yes, I doubt Tadashi/Kuroko thing is a coincidence and even tho someone was like “zone? is this knb or smth?” I was like no, zone is actually a common thing in sports, even tho most associate it with KNB including me, it’s not like its their invention, but there were things inspired by this for sure, and from other sports animes too and no, I don’t mean the basic sports anime tropes, I mean, like way too specific things, some character designes, too. And yes, Langa appearence and personality wise is a rinharu child for real, I can literally split his scenes in “that’s Haru”, “that’s Rin”.

That’s why I’ve said that this situation in fandom reminds me of Kuroko/Akashi situation a lot, bc same as here in KNB ppl for some reason automatically thought that Kuroko is this innocent sheep and Akashi is the wolf (but also like it was Akashi who chose to dress as red riding hood, while Kuroko was a wolf lmao), not even seeing who is in reality more dangerous and who can easily control who. It just buffles me bc it’s not some deep analisys really. I mean once again there’s a reason for the saying that the sub holds all the power over the dom. 

And like just bc someone yells or threatens ppl constantly doesn’t necessarily mean he is a psycopatic killer, and just bc someone is quiet and doe-eyed, doesn’t mean he isn’t. I didn’t think we needed to explain this to someone, but aparently we do?

And it honestly kills me just how superficially ppl are watching things these days. It really gives me war flashbacks to stuff like the last mdzs s1 episode, where ppl started to comment things like “how LZ can be so heartless” lmao. Or that anonymous ask “do you think haru misses rin?”. Like you don’t see thing at all? Grey substance no needed, while watching things?

P.S. I also would die to see Adam vs Tadashi race just bc I for some reason can bet all my money, that it’s the same situation as with Akashi refusing to ankle break Kuroko, no matter how mad he is. I just can’t imagine Ainosuke hitting Tadashi in the face with a board. Like 100% sure he wouldn’t even try tbh.

[firelxdykatara]

not gonna lie I would love to hear more about the drama and infighting that went on in The Vampire Diaries fandom if you have the time (and also want to use that time to give your experience with the fandom, which from the snippets you've told sounds Not Fun so I get it if you don't want to lol)

oh god, there was like, SO MUCH, i just

i really feel like tvd is one of those fandoms that is so hard to describe without a lot of ‘you’d have to have been there’, but it really felt like this huge and all-consuming beast for about five years until the show finally imploded and the fandom basically turned on it en masse. (you ever see that post going around that’s like ‘if you ever want to know what true regret feels like, ask someone who once called tvd their favorite show’? still a mood, all these years later. basically the entire fandom thought the show should have just bowed out with whatever shreds of dignity it had left at the end of season 6, and became more of a hatedom than a fandom for the last two seasons. when you have an entire fandom cheering news of your show’s cancellation, i think that’s a sign you done fucked up, julie.)

first and most infamous, of course, are the ship wars. which are pretty much inevitable in any teen-centered drama, and i really think the CW fucking thrives on them, but it was particularly egregious in TVD’s case because not only was the base premise of the show a love triangle, but the two main romantic leads were brothers that the show constantly pit against one another--in pursuit of elena’s affections, but also because it kept up this insistence on the ‘good brother/bad brother’ dichotomy which stopped making sense after about season 2 (by which time we have found out that the good brother was never as good as he appeared, and the bad brother has been growing and isn’t nearly as bad as he pretends to be)--and the question of which brother ‘deserved’ elena (and no, what elena wanted very rarely factored into these discussions, especially in the team stefan camp because they turned on her when what she wanted was no longer The Good Brother, but i’ll get to that in a bit) was hotly contested.

i’m not kidding when i say the shipping wars were vicious. i started watching tvd shortly after it began to air, which was late 2009, and kept up with it fairly sporadically over the years. i didn’t come onto tumblr until 2011/2012, and by then, the fandom was already pretty much a garbagefire. there were anti ship and anti character blogs, any time something bad happened for one ship the rival ship would invade the tags to gloat about it (seasons 3 and 4 were especially rough, and i’m not gonna pretend delena fans weren’t just as bad about tag invasion and shit, but as that was my side of the road i saw a lot more of the stelena shippers being assholes, which soured my opinion on the ship a long time before i started rewatching and realized the red flags were there from the start), confessions blogs were popular also toxic as fuck (so much fighting happened in the notes of those posts, good gods), and this was right around when twitter’s popularity was on the rise and the line between Celebrity and Fan was thinning, so the fandom was absolutely atrocious to much of the tvd cast and crew.

(some of them deserved a lot of the later backlash, but in the early years a lot of it was ‘how dare you write the story in a way i dont like, you terrible fucking person’, and gods don’t get me started on the dobsley vs nian Thing)

i think what really encapsulates my feelings on the tvd fandom as a whole, though, is the way they (to this DAY) treated elena gilbert, which can be summed up in one meme that gained a lot of traction around season 3 if i remember right: that gif of pam from true blood, with the text altered to read “i’m so OVER elena and her precious doppelganger vagina!”

i swear at one time i had over half the active tvd fan accounts on tumblr blocked, because i got to a point where i would no longer tolerate elena hate, and she was (and still is, in what remains of the fandom; you’ll see a lot of ‘elena was one of the worst things about the show’ takes from ex-fans, too) one of the most widely despised characters in the entire fandom. because she -checks smudged writing on hand- was a traumatized teenage girl who -reads off a crumpled notecard- couldn’t always perfectly sort out her own feelings and -squints at the ceiling- sometimes made mistakes or bad decisions. (except a lot of the fandom also insisted that she was a mary sue who had no character traits or flaws or faults and it was like....make up your fucking minds???? is she a calculating conniving bitch whose somehow manipulating these centuries old vampires to tie them around her little finger or is she a boring flat character with no depth and no flaws??? jfc)

there was this massive double standard, too--like, stefan and damon could fuck whoever they wanted and that was fine, but elena was constantly raked over the coals for the crime of developing romantic feelings for the two men who had become constants in her life and whom she cared for deeply, and oh my GOD the slut shaming that happened when elena slept with damon was fucking wild. (and also happened in canon lmfao. like the show had one of elena’s best friends basically call her diseased on screen for falling in love with someone other than stefan. it was gross and ridiculous and the friend in question was also being a giant hypocrite at the time since she was happily flirting with someone who was directly responsible for the deaths of like four of elena’s loved ones and her own boyfriend’s mother but that’s beside the point) but like elena was called a slut and a bitch and a whore for ‘cheating’ on stefan (she hadn’t, and she had in fact broken up with him on screen the episode earlier) and ‘immediately’ jumping into bed with damon, even though none of them said fucking boo when stefan had one night stands or damon had fuckbuddies or whatever.

shit, caroline didn’t get any of this treatment when she started falling for tyler while dating matt! which isn’t to say i think she should have, just that i think it’s fucking ridiculous that elena was absolutely demonized by the fandom for daring to have feelings for two guys at once and eventually acting on them--despite the fact that the entire premise of the show was a love triangle. it’s not a love triangle if both sides don’t eventually get explored, and the crew had been pretty explicit about the fact that delena was going to happen at some point--but when it did, a huge chunk of the fandom absolutely threw a fit.

and a lot of these elena haters were alleged stelena stans, and i say alleged because they hated her so much for not wanting stefan’s dick anymore that it was clear they were really stefan stans and only wanted stelena to be endgame because they wanted stefan to ‘win’ at the end of the day, because ‘he’s the good brother’ so he deserved elena more.

it was all very gross and very misogynistic and very sex shaming (apparently delena was a ‘shallow’ and ‘superficial’ relationship because they had sex after two years of unrequited feelings slowly becoming requited and then pining for ages on both sides, and because they had a lot of on screen chemistry that the show capitalized on for years so of course they did a lot of making out and shit but it’s not like stelena didn’t have its fair share of making out and sex scenes, stefan was just too much of a coward to let elena top i’d apologize for that joke but i’m really not sorry because it’s true), and when i say it was egged on by the crew, that’s because they refused to let the love triangle die back in season 4 when it should have.

they insisted on stringing stelena fans along, dropping little bread crumbs to keep them invested, like dreams of a future where they were married and revealing that stefan was also a doppelganger and he and elena were descended from a pair of star-crossed lovers (a plot that ultimately went nowhere, to no one’s great surprise), and then fucking like. julie plec turned around and threw nina under the bus after she chose not to extend her contract and pretended that stelena might have happened again if she hadn’t left the show, which....i mean frankly i wouldn’t put it past her, but it would have been shitty writing. then again, she thought having a vampire pregnancy where a uterus was magically transplanted from a witch into a vampire that could somehow......carry the babies to term.... made sense and was a good way to accomodate candice’s RL pregnancy rather than like literally ANYTHING else, soooooo. but anyway julie saying that around like, end of s6 sparked off a new wave of nina hate and elena hate and ship wars bc they SEers took it as ‘confirmation’ that stelena was REALLY meant to be endgame and it was all just a hot fucking mess

another thing is that, while tvd was in its prime before the anti/purity culture shit started picking up any real steam, there was still this pervasive attitude throughout the fandom that if you liked Damon, you were A Bad Person. liking damon was apparently grounds for insults and harassment, and apparently he was The Worst Person on the Show even though literally nothing he does on screen is any worse than shit we know stefan has done (and frankly every other vampire too, but i mention stefan specifically because he was always held up--in the show but especially in the fandom--as the Good Brother while damon was the Bad One, and if you liked damon more then that had to mean your morals were dodgy and you clearly couldn’t appreciate what a heroic and saintly figure dear stefan was and....oops, i’m sorry, my salt keeps leaking -cough-).

meanwhile klaus quickly became a fandom darling despite not even really having much of a redemption arc (on tvd anyway, he just became more ‘affably evil’ as the show went on and more inclined to work with the main characters rather than try to kill them; i have no idea what went on over on his show, though), and like i can 100% appreciate liking villains and not caring that they do dodgy villainous shit, even just liking them bc they’re hot and wanting them to kiss a main character bc they have insanely good chemistry (yes i ship klaroline, no i won’t apologize for it, they could have been Really Great), it’s just really the double standard that gets me.

and all of this, incidentally, required ignoring some truly gross shit stefan was responsible for wrt his relationship with elena, that frankly it has always bothered me never really got addressed in the show. i get why elena herself would never be able to actually call him on it, but the fact is that he stalked her for months after he first saw her and thought she was katherine (meanwhile it only took damon .5 seconds to realize she was someone else entirely, but that’s another topic entirely), and then he deliberately inserted himself into her life because, in his words, ‘i have to know her’. he never gave a thought to how his presence in her life might affect her (or rather, he did, and tormented himself about it in his internal monologue, but never let this actually dissuade him from disrupting her life), and elena would wind up blaming herself for every tragedy that befell her friends and loved ones as a result of getting mixed up in vampire bullshit even though none of it was her fault--she literally blamed herself for existing but most of the fandom didn’t give a fuck about that lmfao--and stefan did shit like find out that she was adopted and then withhold this information from her until she got pissed about another secret he was keeping (her resemblence to katherine) and drop it on her to try and distract her from her very reasonable anger, and like... i should stop before this becomes a whole rant about how much i hate stefan fucking salvatore, but the point is, he did a lot of really sketchy shit he never answered for and elena never really took him to task for, and the fandom just kept eating up his insistence that he was the Good Brother and therefore he deserved to have elena, and if she didn’t want him anymore it was because she was a heinous bitch who didn’t deserve him.

uh.....i think i got off track there. and there’s probably a lot of shit i missed, like i think i was incandescent with rage for most of seasons 5 and 6 so i missed a lot of the interfandom shit cause i was too busy being increasingly pissed off at the show itself, but if nothing else this should give you an idea of how much of a goddamn cesspit the fandom was while the show as in its prime. there’s a reason both the show and the fandom have such a lousy reputation lmfao.

[janiedean]

i find it funny that all the arguments against sansan or sanrion is about the age gap being problematic and then people ship her with jaime who's OLDER THAN TYRION and i think also older than sandor OR they'll ship her with jon who she grew up considering a brother and is actually a cousin making it incestuous. oh and when the books start theon is like 18-19 years old while sansa is like 11 i think? but yes, tell me more about why your sansa ships are superior to sansan or sanrion LOL. oh also let's not forget the ~pure~ ship of sansaery where margaery basically pretends to be friends with sansa and acts nice for her own advantage which is easy to do since she's lonely in king's landing but drops her th emoment it gets convenient, not to mention pretty much framing her from joff's murder which like sure, sansa escaped cuz LF had it planned but if not she would've been killed then :) a very healthy dynamic indeed. they really don't want to admit that they only care to ship sansa with canonically hot guys and their real problem with sansan and sanrion is both sandor and tyrion are supposed to be ugly and physically quite the opposite of the prince charming she's looking for (but they are more prince-like in character) and ignore that her whole arc is learning to look beyond appearances and names and superficial stories.

I mean other than confirming you that jaime's older than sandor bc jaime has seven years on tyrion who's three-four years younger than sandor and sandor's like 29 in agot... he's older than both of them and I'd like to add willas tyrell to the list of people that are seen as better options.... and he's also older than both sandor and tyrion, I... can't disagree with anything here because like we don't even wanna touch my beef with sans*ery but it's for the same reasons as you said and at the end of it I also can't disagree with the last paragraph because that's... like... the point of the narrative like sansa is obv ending up with someone who doesn't look hot for standards but is actually good on the inside which both of them fit the standard for, and again while I think sandor's it for obv reasons if sanrion was endgame I wouldn't be complaining (ngl I was hoping lowkey for them to get the show bc it was obvious sansan wasn't gonna be a show thing so might as well have a 50/50 split even though I guess having the show wouldn't have been that great in retrospective BUT ANYWAY) yeah what you said about the whole arc and again like... sansa/jaime is top five most hated ships for me too bc it's doubly ignoring that sansa and jaime have LI that aren't standard attractive so I'm not even touching that but yeah like

sorry but when it comes to problematic ships again there is literally nothing in asoiaf that's not somehow problematic - again the most wholesome thing in there is sam/gilly and I reiterate gilly has a baby because her father raped her and her own mother was the same so................. like no one has any leg to stand on when it comes to MY SHIP IS WHOLESOME bc no ship in here is 100% wholesome or has characters who are themselves 100% wholesome so the fixation about how these two ships are specifically bad is suspicious like really really sus

also I'd like again to point out for the umpteenth time that while there are things that I really don't vibe with (and in this fandom esp I can't do incest ships) I don't go around judging ppl for being into unhealthy dynamics or being like EW IT'S INCEST BAD because honestly I have better to do with my life, but my problem is people going like AH MY SHIP IS MORALLY BETTER THAN YOURS when it's a badwrong/ish dynamic and trying to sanitize it - like own up to it no one is gonna judge in this damned fandom and if they do good luck being coherent and don't go at other people like 'ah yeah mine is better than yours because it's so much more wholesome' X°D

also like... again there's limits and limits - I can absolutely get why someone would not like sansan or sanrion because they do have problematic elements like if someone reads blackwater and feels uncomfortable ofc I'm not gonna tell them WELL YOU HAVE TO ACCEPT IT, if they blacklist sansan and they don't come at me telling me I'm a pervert then all good? but like to do the comparison I can't get over how in the show sansa told theon she'd do to him what ramsay did all over again after he didn't help her when she didn't even tell him WELL WE SHOULD RUN AWAY TOGETHER just help me run away because for me that is like... I can't ship it when the show narrative never asked sansa to be accountable, I won't ever go to a the*nsa shipper telling them EW HOW CAN YOU LIKE IT WHEN THAT IS A THING because... the way I can like sansan with its problematic elements or secondarily like sanrion with its problematic elements (nvm that the superior tyrion ship is tyrion/bronn anyway) they can like th*onsa with its problematic elements? but just don't go around harping at ppl because everyone has their limit to something and it can be glaringly obvious or not (I mean if I tell you that th*ramsay isnt my cup of tea anyone could understand why seeing the background, or idk for me brienne/hyle hunt is a way bigger nope than brienne/tormund ever could have been but a lot of ppl in jb fandom feel the contrary which is absolutely fine again I can't stand the idea of b. with someone who bet on taking her virginity because of personal reasons even if he realized he was wrong but for others the way they wrote brienne/tormund in the show was uncomfortable to that degree and so on) and as long as you behave like an adult... then who cares what you ship

meanwhile instead there's the... fixation on those two esp within the context you mentioned and honestly I'm kinda tired of the 'gross old dudes' rhetoric thrown at them when neither of them is old or gross and they both are abuse victims with trauma never mind the ableism in spades (that one more glaringly at tyrion for obvious reasons and on tumblr I wish it wasn't like......... 80% of the general fandom but people dismissing sandor's shitty coping methods as HE'S A VIOLENT DRUNK when like..... he's the only one who's actually not violent with her sansa and he has thirty years' worth of ptsd on him are also a peach) like... can you please realize the implications of what you're saying please and thank you

[randombubblegum]

glad you said the f word so i don’t have to. does he really, truly think this album is gonna get anywhere? like. if it does then i’m really happy for them of course! but i feel like it’ll be like how imhs got more famous that stupid for you bc of tiktok. like. yeah it’s a great way to go in the charts but also like...that’s not the best to me? it feels superficial? and also like!! back on the twitter thing!! he only retweets from like 6 people and those 6 peopke are all fans who eat his ass!! i’m not dragging them i don’t want drama but like....he only retweets from them he only replies to them like of COURSE he’s gonna get in his head about it because they’re in THEIR head about it!! they’re starstruck and affectionate because he feeds them attention

yeah dude exactly........ okay and this gets deeper into the roots of all of this like as a fandom, which is that the boundaries of fan/creator have blurred with the way awsten gets cozy with people who regularly hype him up on twitter, meaning they think they can be friends with him, MEANING they do it more and more and he interacts more and more because it feels good!!!! it feels good to be praised and validated by people who like your stuff. but do you know why they run themselves ragged singing your praises? because it feels good TO THEM to get noticed by the person they stan!!!!!!!!!!

and then everyone else in the twitter fandom sees this is what gets your attention, and tries to cozy up to these fans, and also go nuts also praising you because Thats What You Do If Youre A Parxie now. quick like his tweet! quick inflate the streaming count! quick tweet him a picture of the merch you spent $200 on and maybe hell like it!! for releasing a whole ass album called “fandom” you really dont see the first thing about what youve morphed your own into!!!!!!!!!

of course i hope this album does well, of course i hope it makes him a million dollars or gets nominated for a grammy or whatever he wants, i care about him, i like this band, i do; but this is an untenable fandom relationship that blinds him to the real state of what people who like his band think about his new music, and its not a good benchmark!!! also tiktok fame means literally nothing and you didnt even get That Big on tiktok PLEASE WAKE UP

[masteremeraldholder]

bro, i got so many problems with metroid fusion.. 

my main worry with metroid dread--besides yt men always glorifying samus being half nude--is that it will be too similar to metroid fusion for me to enjoy it. i literally do not get the hype behind that game?? like super metroid, okay, i can see why y'all still have a hard-on for a thirty year old game. it created the blueprint for metroid games to come, you can adventure around on yr own, it's got a ton of bosses, decent plot, good music, it's just really great yada yada sooo, fusion is literally the opposite of everything super metroid stands for. there's no autonomy. from the start, the ship tells samus everything to do, guides her every step of the way, all while managing to give off a major dickhead vibe. and samus just goes along with it, even after another near-death experience. (btw hasn't samus had to deal with too many of these? like girl, there comes a time when you have to think about yr own mental b4 others.) samus' characterization has been a little different in each game, nothing too drastic--not counting other m--but what bothers me about fusion's samus is how she comes off as a bootlicker. but i fault the ship's computer for that. let's talk more about the computer since it has got to be my least favorite part of the game. i am not lying when i say the computer is an asshole!! at one point, adam goes as far as to suggest samus should have died in his place. um, idk how to tell y'all this is a problem??? another thing; samus goes on to say that adam often called her "lady", and that it was a sign of respect and trust when truthfully, it came off as incredibly condescending. tbh, idk anyone who wants to be referred to as that. the only way i could see it being the least bit acceptable is if nintendo went ahead and said samus was canonically trans. (bc the fandom already know she is) and that part at the end where it's revealed that the computer really is adam was... so awkward? their exchange was so stiff. it read like a bad fanfic. i remember thinking that it was a joke the first time i played the game, that the computer was playing her.. i feel like the game would have gone a bit better if the computer hadn't really been adam. one thing i actually liked about fusion is that its play style is pretty much the same as zero mission, which is one of my favorite metroid games. other than the play style, fusion sticks out among the other games in the main series, mainly bc of all the changes they brought about in it. but even samus returns introduced new changes, and it still meshed with the rest of the series. that brings me to my next point, one of the biggest changes in fusion; samus’ appearance. the whole point of the game is that samus' genetic make-up is altered when she is injected with metroid dna to save her life. she essentially "becomes one" with the baby metroid. okay. i'm fine with that. a result of samus' dna changing is that her powersuit changes too. (it's quite horrid, sorry not sorry.) okay. i'm fine with that too. what bothers me is what samus says. that "her appearance is greatly altered", but the game doesn't bother to clarify if it is just the suit or her physical appearance underneath it. it is truly baffling how nintendo manages to make samus seem "other" with all these different types of dna in her, yet superficially, she retains her lithe yt woman appearance. it's no secret that nintendo has problems with colorism/racism, so it's not shocking to me that they chose the ol' "blonde hair, blue-eyed" design for samus, especially considering she was a product of the 80s and 90s. at least in super metroid it wasn't so bad; she actually looked six feet tall. zero mission and fusion's ending pictures turned samus into this petite, sensual bombshell, this tiny, dangerous yt woman, and it just makes me want to pull my eyeballs out, sldkjdkddd the zero suit in particular is so shitty. especially its introduction to smash. the fact that they treat zero suit samus like a completely different entity from samus in her suit is wrong on so many levels, ugh, don't get me started. samus' appearance is one of the many plot holes in fusion. there are other minor things like where were the ten other sa-x that adam told samus about, and why did the galactic federation even send samus to the bsl to work if they didn't want her to figure the shit out, etc. the game just seemed very rushed to me. lastly, the "social justice" note the writers tried to take at the end of the game seemed very misplaced. it just reminded me of crime shows and other police propaganda where they try to make cops look good. it wasn't samus' decision to blow up the station that bothered me so much as what she said after the fact. when she tried to get all philosophical and explain why adam wasn't, in fact, a piece of shit. i don't think nintendo of now is in a place where they can talk about corruption in the military/legal systems/law enforcement or even has the balls to do it correctly, so ik 2001 nintendo couldn't do it well either. i guess sakamoto and the other writers tried to redeem samus' bootlickery-ness by making her do something this drastic, but it just rubbed me the wrong way. i'm hopeful that dread won't be exactly like fusion and more like samus returns, but at the same time... i'm kinda wary bc so many elements of fusion did not sit well with me.

[meggtheegg]

Cobbler mo- I mean Connor Murphy?

favorite thing about them

his depth, for sure. it would have been so easy to make connor a one-note "bad" kid or an overly-pitiful wreck whose suicide felt inevitable, but there's this very realistic balance to him, where he acts out and it's not okay, but you understand why, and you feel like there is some possibility that he could grow and heal, given time. he's depressed and angry and a little paranoid, but he makes jokes, he smiles, he apologizes in his own weird little way. this is a kid who dies fifteen minutes into the show, and yet, there is so much to him that makes him feel real and makes you truly care about him, which is so important for the rest of the show to have any sort of impact

least favorite thing about them

on the other hand, a lot of scenes surrounding him are kind of clumsily done. the whole scene before wtaw with jared calling him a freak and him pushing evan makes me cringe every time, and is the biggest moment in all of deh where it's like "yeah, this was written by adults," because teenagers don't,,,talk or act that way??? anything involving his relationship with zoe feels really clumsy, too, and it's been up to the fandom to kind of decode what that relationship actually was, and even then, it feels like there's something missing

favorite line

bc he's pretty much split in two, i'm gonna give one for each version of him...

real connor: "you fell out of a tree? well, that is just the saddest fucking thing i've ever heard, oh my god..."

the one time we really see him trying to reach out, and the poor kid is so awkward. but he's sincere, and the way most actors let him genuinely laugh, here, is really endearing and says a lot about him, as a character

fake connor: "if you really believe that, then why are you standing here, talking to yourself? again?"

i know there's a lot of love for "did you fall, or did you let go?" but this one sometimes hits even harder, for me. because it really calls out how much evan's "growth" has been entirely superficial, if not artificial. at the end of the day, he's the only one aside from jared who knows the truth, and with him and jared falling out, he is left completely and utterly alone. the world where he isn't alone is entirely made up. there's still so much work he has to do.

brOTP

connor and evan, probably. in another world, another lifetime, i think they really could have been friends. also love to see healthy murphy sibling stuff :)

OTP

connor/miguel. i know the novel is unpopular, but i think they're really sweet together

nOTP

luckily i've never seen connor/zoe, but that would be it, if i ever did see it. among popular ships, connor/jared. these guys do not get along or like each other, and that's okay

random headcanon

if he had lived, i think connor would have really figured some things out, in college. as well-meaning as his family was, they bombarded him with quick fixes that did nothing but tell him that he was broken. given a little bit of freedom, i think he'd have been able to grow and sort out some actual coping mechanisms and find the help he needed

unpopular opinion

the casting for connor is maybe the most important in all of deh. it's a deceptively hard role, with very limited time to make the right impact, and every moment is extremely important. if connor isn't any good, the show's impact is diminished significantly in ways that flaws in the other characters don't have much effect on (and i am very certain of this, as someone who's seen the show with an evan i didn't like with a connor i did like, and a connor i disliked with an evan i loved. one made a surprisingly bigger dent than the other)

song i associate with them

thanks to the novel, slip away by perfume genius will always be a connor murphy song, in my mind

favorite picture of them

[virtuemoired]

drop ur top TSCO moments

ok this is literally gonna make zero sense to anyone here but since u asked i will indulge!

1. canada in a day

this is 1 min 54 secs of tsco, no filters, just pure unrivaled joy. they open with “hello, canada!” and scott sings “it’s meeee” which is like the cheesiest thing ever BUT he makes her laugh which is a win for all of canada. in the next scene scott asks the iconic “what do you love?” and tessa is like “canada!” bc cmon they r doing this vid for canada in a day! little does tessa know that virtuemoir IS canada and scott rightfully calls her out by saying “ooh, thought it was gonna be me!” and i 100% AGREE bc they did not spent 20 years of their lives being announced as “representing canada, tessa virtue and scott moir” for tessa to say that, i rest my case. moving on, do u realise that after every question scott manages to make! her! laugh! and also i love this format where they ask each other questions they should do this all the time and i’m filing this video in my folder titled “reasons_why_vm_should_host_a_podcast”. there r many more moments esp all the eye contact but literally tessa laughs every .2 seconds and they r obvs v happy and therefore i am happy! listen, i don’t know what they ate before this video, but can i have some of that plz bc i want to be this happy all the time & even though there’s uncopyrighted music playing in the background it is truly a piece of art and will 4ever be my fav video of them.

2. newlywed game

firstly, on a completely self indulgent and superficial note, they look so good here. like this is latch!Scott and prince!Tessa united and i am so glad my parents found each other at last. i know i know, ofc we have to talk abt the “sometimes you’re just so restless,,,, I READ” quote that has been gifed to a ridiculous degree, history books will talk about this moment and i can’t say i’m mad about it. BUT we r here to talk about tsco not “shippy moments” so let’s get down to business. in this vid scott is clearly trying to make tessa laugh throughout and he SUCCEEDS so we get 3 mins of tessa virtue laughing and scott teasing her so this is tsco certified! also i want to personally thank whoever’s idea this was bc i googled and NO OTHER SKATER (besides the ummm shibsibs????? cosmopolitan i have QUESTIONS) did this so i am calling it right now that skate canada is a vmie thru and thru also idk what it is w putting uncopyrighted music behind these vids but u know what v/m really make anything work!!

3. 2015 canadian nationals

this is honestly what i want in life. i just want to skate around an ice rink w my soulmate when it is dark at night and have him compliment me IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK??? at 23 seconds in right before the camera cuts u see tessa leaning towards him and i’m not saying that it has to be anything but the camera cuts so we will never know! can u imagine turning on ur tv and being like ooh nationals is on and then seeing this? i just think that no other opening will ever top this one bc they don’t even say anything about the nationals for all i know this could be some ad bc it’s just them goofing around an ice rink but it WORKS and here’s to hoping skate canada will open nationals like this every year bc i would watch the whole thing. when scott tells me to enjoy my commercial break i will gladly do so bc i just witnessed the best 40 seconds in my life.

4. worlds 2017 post fd interview

the real tsco moment starts at 2:02 and even though it is only 15 secs long that 15 secs just extended my life span by 5 years. i watch this daily to get a free boost of serotonin and i highly recommend u do too!

5. the soi proposal

as u can tell, i do not have a video/gif to accompany this bc 1. i do not want to go looking for it 2. like scott, i prefer to think of it as a fever dream. this is hands down the most chaotic thing that vm has ever done and i don’t think i’ll ever recover. the power that that has, the intelligence that that has, the clearance that that has, the access that that has, the influence that that has, the profile that that has, the international implications that that has. omg. it is literally the COLLAPSE of the vm fandom i was watching it in class one day and one of my classmates yelled OH MY GOD SHE PROPOSED TO HIM and started freaking out even though i have mentioned vm probably once to her. 

side note: i didn’t tell her it wasn’t real.

[kunstpause-archive]

I feel like I am in a very weird position in this whole fandom mess, especially when it comes to Cullen.

Bc I am actually not a big fan of his character’s writing in the games. Hell, I am not even that much of a fan of Bioware’s writing in general. (Imo it’s messy, inconsistent and varies greatly in quality, but a lot of it falls very flat for me.)

And yet I have ober 600k of writing about these games on my Ao3 account and a lot of it does feature the current fandom discourse fav. But: He is not a comfort character for me. Nor do I find him particularly relatable. I think, for me personally, to a degree the fact that I find Bioware’s writing often very superficial works in my advantage bc I can kinda see nearly every fandom interpretation I come across as having merit - depending on how you set it up and how you interpret the source material. 

And some of those anons I got felt like a try at “stop shipping this/you’re doing it wrong” attempt that just... falls flat for me bc (in this case luckily) I am not really that emotionally invested? At least not in the foundation of this discussion - I am naturally very invested in the universe elveny and I wrote together and the characters that inhabit it. But I am invested in that bc of all the things we poured into it - not necessarily because of what was in the games.

But this is ultimately why I have serious trouble understanding why someone elses interpretation of what is basically an almost blank-slate character template gets people so mad? 

It’s fanfiction! It’s writing! The beauty of people being complicated and messy is that, as a writer, you can make nearly everything believable if you set it up well enough. Give a character enough motivation and background and you can let your story shape them into nearly endless variations of the original thought.

And if you feel that a character, any character really, can only ever be a certain way or thing for you: Perfect! That is your right and you should do what makes you happy.

But if you think (and need to constantly tell everyone) that a character, any character really, can only ever be a certain way or thing for everyone and it’s impossible for other variations to exist: You are lacking massively in the imagination department and are, frankly, an ass.

[disaster-fruit]

As an argie (hey, I haven't dropped by in a while) I must say that I adore lh Argentina, aka Tincho, because I think his creator (and the whole fandom through the years) really nailed his personality, even with all his contradictions. But yeah, the mayo yellow hair, iconic as it is, is kinda ridiculous lol. Chocolate brown hair with blue eyes would be a killer convo imo.

I think maybe in 2020 we just have to accept what we’ve known all along: Tincho is 100% a fake blond. Iconic, yes, but store-bought

Tbh yeah Tincho is my baby and I’m in no way criticizing the character bc I think he’s great in all that you said, his personality and his contradictions. in many ways I think when I read good fics abt him it’s very clear how many sides there is to him, it’s surprisingly hard to put him into boxes once you get past the very very superficial stuff, which I think is a great thing. tbh just like lu it wouldn’t make sense for me to make a my own character bc outside the haircolor there isn’t really anything substantial I’d change.

But yeaaah I really like that combination too, I think I’ve seen quite a few args with brown hair and blue eyes and it definetly looks great.

Also he’d look a lot less like Alfred lol

[koalas-koalas-everywhere]

Regarding Vulcans and autism

Since why the hell not make it a series with recognizable titles that will make it easy to look up and create links for if I ever make enough of them for it to be worth it. Disclaimer: it might be hard to understand what I’m getting at without reading the other posts since this isn’t supposed to be, like, a comprehensive analysis on how one is like the other.

Thing is, as an Aspie woman, I can see perfectly well how Vulcans expressing nothing but neutrality gets twisted in reception and interpreted as smugness/disdain, and autism (or at least Asperger’s, I am sorta more knowledgeable about one than the other) does tend to include self-awareness issues that leads to feelings of superiority and/or inferiority, and with the most recognizably “autistic” (either explicitly or through coding) being the Sheldon Coopers and the BBC Sherlock types, the assumption that anyone like them in some ways will follow in others (heck, might be why pop culture has accepted Holmes as an asshole at all, since he wasn’t that bad in the stories but he WAS smart and eccentric and every once in a while disdaindful of the people whose jobs he did better than them) is not unexpected.

The problem’s not really there because I actually have faith that we could have talked about it and raised awareness of not only this case, but also made people question why seeing a smart(er), seemingly cold but all-around just neutral characters or races made everyone raise their hackles to such a degree, assume that they’re actually mostaken about their skills (literally have seen people go “but what if Vulcans only think they’re some of the best scientists around bc they’re supercilious assholes and it’s just not true”)and wrong about life in general. Don’t get me wrong, I do get the impulse ever since Star Trek (2009), but, well, that’s just the thing, that’s where the problem is. Because we could have talked about it in fandom and be friends about it, but now there are TWO official canon sources that depict the Vulcans as intolerant, xenophobic, racist, ableist hypocrites, and not only is it harder to argue with actual canon telling you that you were right about your worst assumptions, but now you’ve seen them be actually WORSE than you first thougt, and to your faves, and in such a way that none of their positive/redeeming qualities (say, being all of that stuff sorta kinda messes up the whole IDIC thing, but it wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t doing it out out of malice, but out of ignorance and genuine misunderstanding, and if the only members who were shown to be sorta kinda decent weren’t at least partly from a different species (u.s., uh, I mean, us) and/or implied to have been influenced by a different culture) were shown. In fact, those good qualities, such as their pacifism, reverence for life, belief and respect for diversity, their curiosity and constant push for knowledge that probably wouldn’t let them just let a kid fall by the wayside becuase he was dyslexic (“there is no other wisdom, and no hope for us, but that we grow wise”), their deep attachment to their morality that’s even more important to them than to be liked by the other members of the Federation COUGH COUGH AUTISM MUCH COUGH COUGH were the first to be dropped in favour of what’s anathema to all of this, the last one in particular was turned on its head so it wasn’t that they used their logic to arrive to the most compassionate and fair choice, and it had to be logic since emotion would resist a sacrifice in a way logic won’t, making logic the compassionate choice (as they saw it, I don’t think it’s universally true, but also not universaly false), but that they were mich more willing to let people suffer and to look the other way and not be affected at all because, I don’t know, they mistook logic, which is a tool, with efficiency, which is a goal, I’d guess.

They lost the best things about them because freaking J J Abrams decided to make movies about a franchise he didn’t even like and then, even though all of it could have stayed in a parallel universe were, as many have proposed, Vulcans were worse because the Kelvin accident led people to know what Romulans looked like earlier so THEY were worse and everyone was just an asshole to each other, but then Discovery took a leaf out of his book and used his version of Vulcans and even changed old characters to fit this new version better (Sarek doesn’t disagree with Starfleet because of its bellicosity [you can’t even argue that he still disaproves of violence because he spent the worst part of the war following General Cornwell around and idk commiting mind crimes] or because he sees it as a rejection from Spock [since he says he’ll keep his distance because it’s what Spock would want and what the fuck even was that?] and he’s a cold bastard who’d take a child to a completely different culture than the one she’s used to purely for superficial beliefs and even then he’ll still prioritize his more Vulcan son, Amanda doesn’t think Vulcan’s is a hard but better way [and honestly she wouldn’t be justified to] so since she can’t be staying because of her children since they’re being mistreated, she must be doing it because of Sarek which is just so feminist, you guys, and ok, I better change topics before this becomes an “everything that’s wrong about Disco with a sidenote of everything that’s not objectively wrong but I still didn’t like”, but also, Vulcan brains can literally lobotomize themselves while dealing with trauma, don’t you think they’d take mental health seriously?) so now it’s canon in the original universe, too. Even with Enterprise (which, to be honest, I haven’t watched, I’ve only learned what was going on with Vulcans from Memory Alpha and the recounting might hace left events and/or the essence and implications of the plotline out), the tomfoolery was supposed to be Romulans infiltrating the government and twisting Surak’s teachings, all of this is supposed to be how things vecame after they got his katra back and went through the Reform.

And this got long, but the thing is: it’s not just about the Vulcans. It’s about the fact that some of the worst assumptions made about them were recognizable at least by this one Aspie as, among other things, a neurotypical’s response to an autistic trait and a long history of negative autistic coding, and now they’ve been confirmed by canon, so instead of having a nice discussion and maybe a bit of disk horse about this, we’ve gotta deal with the fact that now some people feel legitimally repelled by and resentful of Vulcans (insofar as any emotion applies to fiction) because they are now the bigots and oppressors - now it’s not a one episode race of black&white and white&black people ridiculously pointing at the obvious differences between each other, but Vulcans who have said and done bigoted things many people have been exposed to during their lives, and if they were ever willing to give them, and by extension us, a chance, now it’s ruined. I am not, of course, saying that if you hate Vulcans, especially now, you’re ableist, or that making them the Asshole^tm will turn people ableist. Just that it would have been nice to see people like me who didn’t end up justifiably despised.*

*Especially through character assassination, couldn’t you have at least made them unlikeable from the start?

[earths-roots-grow-up]

My Hetalia journey... kinda :D with Prussia!

So lately I found some very old stuff I wrote for Hetalia when I entered the fandom in 2012 and it blew my mind xD. It was pretty jarring, seeing how different I wrote Prussia then. It made me think about all the changes that he went through in my head and well I thought it may be interesting, as lately I read some ‘how I used to see this character vs now’ posts and they were super interesting to me :).

Prussia was always my fav character, but the way I headcanonned him was waaaay different from the way I see him today. Like a totally different person, both in look and personality.

Personality-wise, I bought into the whole 'Prussia is a crazy unpredictable force of nature, also super irresponsible' mindset that was popular in the fandom back then. Only with time have I started to actually analyze the culture of the country and ended up throwing that initial interpretation completely out. Back then I had this idea that Prussia was the crazy one and Germany was the rational one that had to keep his wacky older bro in check and that was the main axis (lol pun not intended) of their relationship.

Now I no longer headcanon this because all those stereotypically German characteristics like discipline, systematic-ness, obedience, etc, Germany got from Prussia, so him being chaotic and irresponsible just doesn’t add up, tho the ‘Prussia is the difficult, more outrageous one, and Germany the calmer one’ still stands imo, so it’s not completely gone. It can still stand bc Prussia is just more violent and cares a lot less what ppl thing about him than Germany does.

I used to headcanon their relationship as this beautiful, fuzzy brotherly-love fest, now I see it as close and intense, but with many toxic overtones and uncomfortable struggle for power and control, with a strong vibe of: young needs to replace the old, but the old really is not okay with that and is willing to weaken/hurt the young to remain in power.

I used to pretty much ignore historical facts, like that Germans after the WWII - and even today - having a problem with Prussia and its militaristic culture, because it went against my 'they love each other so much!' mentality and just didn’t FIT, as in that initial interpretation, “Prussia did nothing wrong” so WHY would Germany have a problem with him? It created quite a dissonance for me! Now Germany's anger and bitterns towards Prussia are an important part of their dynamic and their journey as a family and also completely understandable. And they need a whole arc of separating, growing and changing (during the Cold War) to repair the relationship. 

I used to headcanon that Prussia would do anything for Germany, because he loved him more than he loved himself. A good, giving brother who wanted to build him up. Now I see his behavior towards Germany as manipulative and also an attempt to build himself up using Germany. Which is connected to the fact that now I see Prussia as a very selfish person who needs to get over this fatal flaw, not a benevolent older bro who has sometimes an attitude problem, but that’s it.

Physically wise, I used to headcanon him as a slim, well build, but still rather androgynous albino. He was stereotypically pretty and even a bit feminine. Now I headcanon him to be this tall, very well build soldier dude with handsome, but harsh features, think Disney villain style, attractive but def. not pretty or cute. And not albino, tho very much a bleached blond with opal-like eyes.

So yeah, thinking about it from this perspective... so much changed it's crazy! All in all, I used to see him as a person with superficial flaws, like being chaotic and irresponsible, and now he doesn't have those, but he gained some very serious fatal character flaws that shape his actions and relations with others (and legit ruin them). 

Considering how much has changed, wonder where I'll be going with his characterization next XD I mean, at this point it can go anywhere.

Disclaimer: This post was not to glorify one interpretation and discount others, but just to look through my own historical characterization and examine how it changed. Change does not mean it’s better now or used to suck or anything like that! It’s just different and serves a different narrative purpose.

 And tbh I think that’s why my interpretation changed so much - for whatever reason, I have a different narration-needs in this moment of my life, that I used to have. The idea that he and Germany have a bad relationship really bothered me once, and the idea that Pru did something not-okay to Ludwig, and Ludwig is angry, upset me a lot (A LOT!). They loving each other and being super-supportive all the time and only having superficial arguments filled some emotional need of mine, but now it no longer does, which is something that I’m now starting to realize. Not the stuff I wrote about above does - so... yeah :D weird.

This is why I like Hetalia, the characters are so versatile and can be understood in so many ways that you can really make them - and their relationship to each other - change a lot to fulfill whatever emotional needs or specific interest you happen to have now, and later change it.