#but maybe the two fandoms just don't overlap much

[not-the-living-ghost]

I cannot be the only one seeing the parallels between Willie from JATP and Monty from DBDA. Like they're both side characters who are in cahoots with the antagonist, and are also also potential love interests for the gay ghost main character ?? hello???

[cepheusgalaxy]

look guys i very strongly disagree with the "trans men hold privilege over trans women" point of view and i'm finally able to articulate why:

I think trans men don't hold privilege over trans women, because privilege is kind of a consistent thing.

Like, bear with me: I'm an abled person. I have privilege in relation to disabled people. Because, if me and a disabled person are in a Situation where this distinction is relevant in some way...I'm literally never gonna come out with the worst hand. Never. No matter what the situation is. This is a consistent fact.

Now, when we talk about different transgender identities, I think this gets more shady, because the "who has privilege in relation to who" is a relative statement. One example I saw of people explaining why in their view trans man have privilege over trans women is kind of like this: Imagine there are two passing and stealth trans people, a trans man and a trans woman, in a workplace. Then, it comes a coworker, being blatanly misogynist. Regardless of their views on trans people, in this situation, the trans woman is gonna get the worst of it, in relation to the trans man, because he will be viewed as a man.

It makes sense, and I don't think this hypothetical situation is inaccurate or anything, but I'd also like to point out why it doesn't work as a good point to why transmascs have privilege over transfems. Imagine we change about any variable in this situation. Let's say the trans woman is closeted as a guy, and the trans man is openly transgender. The misogynist coworker then would very much target the trans man in their points, especially if they are particularly transphobic. Now imagine both of them are out and openly trans, with the bonus that now both the man and the woman are gnc. Depending on other specifics, the misoginyst coworker might be bigoted to just one or both of them.

Like, do you see? In different situations, the different trans people have the worst hand. So that doesn't mean that because of the first case, trans men have it generally better. Because there are many kinds of trans men, and simply not all of them have privilege over trans women. In some cases, they might even have it worse precisely because they are trans man. So the privilege the trans man in the first example has is not a consistent thing over trans man! Maybe it's common, I don't know, but when we compare it with someone who has real privilege, like me, an abled person, I ain't ever encounter myself in a situation where I'm having it worse because I am abled in comparison to someone who is disabled.

That's why I think trans woman and trans men simply don't hold privilege over one another, simply because it varies. It depends on who the trans men and women are, it depends in what situation they are in, it depends on the people around them, it depends of so much!!! So saying that trans men have privilege over trans women sounds simply surreal!

I think that, also, the different patterns of the situations in which trans woman have it worse are important to be discussed, and that's why we have the word Transmisoginy, to discuss these issues pertinent to the nuanced oppression trans woman face (and on a similar note, that's why it's also important to have fucking words like Transmisogynoir, because a black trans woman's Situations will be different from a white trans woman's Situations and it's important to to recognize that). THAT's why I also think that we need words like Exorsexism and Transandrophobia, to identify the patterns of situations where trans men have it bad precisely because they are trans men and not something else or because nonbinary people have it bad precisely because they are nonbinary.

SO, in short, my opinion on the "trans man have it generally better than trans woman and that's why they have privilege" debate is that trans man don't generally have it better than trans woman, but some trans man in specific situations have it significantly better than trans woman and that in other situations trans woman have it significantly better than trans man and that is basically a case-to-case scenario and that's also why we need the specific words for different shapes and faces of transphobia to better understand these cases and why x happens with y at z situation. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

[anistarrose]

So the thing is, if people ship characters who are explicitly not into romance (whether aromantic or otherwise), that ultimately doesn't affect me on a level beyond "annoyance" — I can blacklist tags, and blacklist or block people who don't tag it. What I have to ask myself every time I see these things, however, is this:

"Does this reflect how this person feels about romance-averse people in real life? Does this reflect how this person treats romance-averse people in real life?"

Because how someone engages with fiction doesn't have to be a reflection of how they treat real people, obviously — and in this case, I would of course hope that it isn't. But if you know anything about what being aromantic is like, in real life or on the Internet... you'll understand why I'm not optimistic.

Thinking two characters are so cute together that you reject a bunch of their characterization to make it happen is just annoying, not a crime! But the second you make the leap to telling a real human person things like:

"I don't care how much you say you're not interested, because you just won't realize that you and X would make such a cute couple,"

or:

"I don't care how much you say you're not interested, because you're clearly just in denial which the Right Person has to come along and fix,"

or:

"But — but — but not falling in love is just so tragic! I want you to be happy, not sad and lonely your whole life!"

like the rationales that apparently motivate so many people to ship? Then that has crossed the line into harming real people.

I don't actually think that shipping aromantic characters is the primary cause in the cause-effect diagram, when it comes to the correlating the shipping with "likelihood to say these terrible, invalidating, autonomy-undermining things to real people." Precisely, I don't think it's a cause to a meaningful degree when you compare with the opposite direction — I think people who say these things to real aromantics (or anyone else who just isn't interested!), because of what they think about these real people, are in turn more likely to think amatonormative things about fictional characters. I think that there exists a feedback loop to some extent, because fiction can influence people's beliefs to some degree, but it's not symmetric. Real-life amatonormativity causes mass amatonormativity in fandom spaces.

So... at this point, do you see why aromantic people in fandom get a little defensive about aro characters, and about other characters who overlap with aro experiences? You see why we get kind of pissy when people very selectively throw a very specific part of their characterization out the window? You see why we maybe don't want to associate with those people? Why it makes us so uncomfortable?

"Stop shipping romance-repulsed characters," in my opinion, is a understandable outcry from the community that I obviously sympathize with — but it nevertheless conceals the core of the issue, especially from non-aromantics who aren't living with amatonormativity shoved down their throats at all times, and therefore might not be able to read between the lines. At the core, this isn't actually a debate about the morality of shipping in fiction, despite overlap with that discourse on the surface.

The real cry for change isn't "stop shipping that character." It's "start accepting me for who I am, without trying to either undermine or mourn it at every opportunity." Because at the moment, the overlap between people who erase fictional aromanticism and real aromanticism is significant — and even where they don't overlap, you know what? Romance-averse folks just trying to live in peace can't fucking tell the difference.

[my-autism-adhd-blog]

Hi! I have a question: can a person be autistic *without* having a special interest? I have identified with a lot of the posts from the autistic community, and the online tests I've taken suggest the possibility that I could be autistic (which I know should be taken with a grain of salt), but the main thing that keeps me from taking the possibility more seriously is that I'm not sure I have a special interest? I mean, I've had plenty of (usually fandom-based) hyperfixations over the years, but they've all been just that—hyperfixations. The only two things that I could remotely think of as being special interests would be bugs (with a heavy emphasis on isopods, which aren't technically bugs but fit the vibe) and the Legend of Zelda series. Both of which I feel like I don't actually have enough real knowledge about for them to be special interests, and there have been stretches of time where they did not have any active role in my life. Maybe I don't have a clear understanding of what hyperfixations are, and/or maybe I am only ADHD (because I know there's quite a bit of overlap), but mostly I really like reading and learning from your posts, and so I thought I'd see if you have thoughts on the matter! /gen

Thank you!

Hi there,

A special interest is basically something someone is a very focused point of a topic. Hyperfocus/hyperfixation however, is a bit different. It’s where you focus on something so much that it even interferes with your ability to do common things and tasks and it doesn’t last as long as a special interest. Like how I’ve loved collecting rocks a a kid and I still do to this day.

Please keep in mind that individuals can have hyperfocus and have a special interest at the same time. While others only experience one of these.

(To my other ND friends, feel free to correct me if I got something wrong. I wish not to spread misinformation).

I’ve found some sources that help differentiate between the two. I hope it helps. Thank you for the inbox. I hope you have a wonderful day/night. ♥️

[vladdyissues]

I feel like there's a good amount of the Danny Phantom fandom that would prefer the Space Ghost franchise if they knew what it was and the Space Ghost fandom wasn't a few dozen, not even 100 people, including the few people who worked on Space Ghost Coast To Coast that are still active online (Start with C2C and ignore all comics until you finish it and at least the original series and Cartoon Planet)

Maybe. Probably not. Space Ghost and Danny Phantom are two very different cartoon shows with a massive 40-year gap—four decades' worth of innovation in animation, writing style, humor, character design—with very few similarities.

Speaking as someone who watched Space Ghost: Coast to Coast in the early 00s, I can tell you that people who enjoy DP are probably not going to enjoy SG, especially the original series, which was the product of 1960s Hanna Barbara animation (read: low-budget, corny-to-the-point-of-camp writing, mediocre voice acting). It would be extremely dated now. And scientifically inaccurate. I mean, this is a cartoon that predated man setting foot on the moon. How well is it going to hold up in 2024? Probably not well.

Furthermore, many DP fans are too young to remember the Coast to Coast era. They may enjoy the humor; I know I did. But one would already have to be a fan of—or at least appreciate—old animation and its fuddy-duddyness to be both a DP fan and a SG fan. And I just don't think there's that much of an overlap. Maybe a few pixels.

I know you've sent several people this same ask, and the fact that all the ones I've seen have been some form of "I have no idea what Space Ghost is" should be answer enough.

[cerosin-bis]

might I ask for a handful of just random cod trivia ..

and/or ! just your thoughts on the games and reboots, if you’re comfy w that?

I feel like you always have some random notes or tags about weird trivia in the game but obviously this isn’t specific At All so feel free to just ignore this if it’s weird sjdndjhd

Hi! no this isn't weird 🥺 I think what gives this impression is "just" that I played most of said games a lot and got interested in the lore that's not necessarily accessible to people who, big quotation marks, are superficially in the fandom. as in people who aren't interested in multiplayer or secondary gamemodes, let alone lore and are more focused on the main cast or one particular mp character (such as könig)

This got VERY long so, my rambles and opinions about the Modern Warfare games and their reboots below.

I played mw2 and mw3's campaigns in 2010-2013. I wasn't playing multiplayer at the time, I started it with BO4 in 2018. But I fell hard into MW's multiplayer with the first reboot, mw19, in early 2020.

Just so that my words have a bit of "the player's weight": I have around 900 hours on mw19, 400 on MWII and I believe 200-300 on MWIII.

Regarding campaigns: Call of duty is Call of duty. It's literally funded by the US army. it's blatant propaganda, and I expect no less when I run a campaign. With that being said, what I expect from a CoD campaign is either being over-the-top and extra (like the original trilogy and in some ways MWIII specifically), or rooted in reality and wanna be serious like mw19. This is minding the blatant history 'rewriting' it's doing (eg. chemical attacks in syria, highway of death mission). My honest opinion on it is that the reboots don't know what they want and it's especially visible in MWII. In my opinion, the original games nailed that "american action movie" feel that the reboots kinda lost by instead veering towards something overlapping with real-life maybe a bit too much while still wanting to include crazy shit. Like, I don't think it's a balance that can work. I do like that we had more character development with MWII and it felt fun to play (in that regard I have no complaints, and I even liked the semi-open missions that a lot of ppl disliked), but it feels a bit less like call of duty. I'll be curious to see what direction they take for the next MW game, but I sure hope IW get their shit together and have a clear direction.

Transitioning to multiplayer with that. This feeling that the MW games are now an amalgamation of things sewn together hastily started with the Warzone fusion and the BOCW implementation. It became especially visible in multiplayer with the addition of crossover bundles, providing less and less "mil-sim" skins, and it was obvious that by MWIII IW would step away and let other developers (treyarch, SHG, which are both turned more towards arcade gameplay) take over the multiplayer development. Which is kinda insane: MW was always Infinity Ward's flasgship initially.

In my opinion the MW multiplayer started feeling different (in my eyes, falling off) for 3 reasons:

Catering to a younger playerbase, notably the "tiktok crowd": younger gamers want games that are incredibly fast-paced (mirroring their use of social media and those yknow "adhd videos") and like extremely flashy skins. Therefore, they'll spend money to get them. I'm not saying this to say "it's bad!" it's just an observation

The absolute success of mobile games and fortnite-like collaborations. This is mostly due to the current way people "consume" social media and games, with everything being quick and instant and fleeting. The sheer impact that these two things have had on video games as a whole is absolutely insane: they started adding microtransactions in games because it started on mobile & they realised that if you let people buy skins with real money w the press of a button, spendings increase tenfold. Same goes with the battle pass model: it's incredibly lucrative.

Crunch, changes of leadership, writers and artists probably being allowed less communication and therefore focus; and, in MWIII's case, the arrival of AI giving us some tasteless slop in cosmetics. That they sell. For real money.

I've said it countless time but I really regret mw19 multiplayer's artistic and narrative direction. It had a story that's completely absent from MWII where characters are just empty shells with a few lines of marvel-like, mary-sue grade bios. Where's the cohesive story? Where are the outwardly morally grey or flawed characters, the sub-squads, the interaction lines, the bundles that made sense with the characters' backstories?...

Long story short, I don't know if the MW series will ever go back to what made it MW. I hope so, but seeing how between 2020 and 2024 the multiplayer entirely lost its soul & the campaigns don't know what they want to show, I'm afraid it might either never come back or take a dozen years so that a reboot of reboots gets out or a new series takes over.

'til capitalism and cashgrab leadership ruins it again and the cycle begins anew.

[batsarebetterthanpeople]

#edward teach#im an adhd ed truther & this is so fucking true.#also shows how you view people w/ adhd if you’re specifically using it as an excuse to do this. (via @ourflagmeanscatboy on this post by @jaskierx)

I don't want to derail a post about racism, but I do feel like this shit needs to get talked about.

Because people will say literally the most deranged shit about Ed. I've heard the idea that he's gonna lose interest in Stede because he views people as hyperfixations floated. He's volitile and unstable (citation needed) he's messy (but he thinks pets befoul the ship and he couldn't believe he was living like this after letting Stede's cabin get covered in maybe a weeks worth of depression clutter) he needs a minder (despite constantly minding other characters). And all of that shit when pointed out as racist invariably gets explained away with "but I think he has ADHD"

And it's like, first of all that's a headcannon you have, where as his race is very much cannon. so I think even if you have the adhd headcannon, which to be clear, I do, you still need to lend more credence to the marginalized identities that are in fact cannon about him. That's not to say that these two things are contradictory it's just to say that you need to treat your headcannons about a character of color with awareness for how their race overlaps with other identities they might have and how their race might be impacting their behavior, and how projecting issues onto them, even if those issues are things you yourself struggle with, might be perceived by fans of color who are already constantly fielding racism both in fandom and in their every day lives.

but second of all, and I cannot stress this enough, yall are ableist as fuck.

Like, I simply do not know how to explain to you people that Ed losing Interest in Stede like that would not be a symptom of ADHD because treating PEOPLE like HYPERFIXATIONS is not a symptom of ADHD. If someone loses interest in you because they have adhd, and I feel like I've said this before, one of three things happened. A. they did not lose interest in you they are just forgetful and do not experience friendship decay so they think you are still friends, B. You were never a friend to begin with you were someone they exclusively did their hyperfixations with, or C. you are blaming the ADHD for something completely unrelated friendships fall apart all the time.

And it's like that example is just the most egregious. half the time when I see ADHD headcannons nobody's talking about like... Ed picking up a brand new activity on a whim, or him tattooing himself because he's experiencing the evil boredom. It's all gotta be traits contradicted by canon. And often it has to be about pain and suffering, and often it really just feels like an excuse to make up bullshit about Ed while beating the racism allegations.

and there's two enormous issues with this. The first one is that if you're gonna have a headcannon about a character you have to figure out how to apply the headcanon to that character without making up a brand new guy. Ed is in the 99th percentile in terms of executive function. His executive functioning skills are genuinely a strength for him. He can't stand mess and he keeps a clean ship, he doesn't get angry unless directly provoked. He also has a large number of shitty tattoos on his person, he stims, he's probably got some hyperactivity going on, and some emotional dis-regulation in terms of managing his disappointment and catastrophising. You have to actually look at the character and figure out what cannon things translate into ADHD and what adhd traits are contradicted by cannon and if you're just hollowing him out and putting an ablist idea of ADHD in as a stand in for a personality.

Like.. ok. My favoriate cannon ADHD rep in the world is the Percy Jackson series. Every one of those kids has adhd and dyslexia. This does not stop Annabeth from being a very functional character with a million irons in the fire who's an avid reader and a Smart Girl TM. Percy by contrast cannot focus for five seconds especially when you put a book in front of him, but he can think on his feet really well. Both of these characters are fairly realistic representations of ADHD because sometimes ADHD is severe executive dysfunction and mess and emotional dis-regulation, sometimes ADHD is having a million projects going at once in a desperate attempt to beat the evil boredom and sometimes it's being able to pick up new things with relative ease. Different people have different levels of these things, which is why in my favoriate childhood book series Rick Riordan was able to have so many different diverse characters with distinct personalities and have them all believably have ADHD.

But a lot of people who headcannon Ed as ADHD don't seem to be interested in figuring out how Ed's personality is compatible with that headcannon, they just want to hollow him out and give him every symptom ever and it's just like... oh, so that's what you think of us then. got it cool.

[surelysilly]

@potatoeofwisdom

#I love this beyond words#but lads#do we think maybe we have seperated so far from the source material we are now just playing with oc’s of our own design?#not a complaint#loving the uptick of this crossover btw#I’m a bit confused as to how it hasn’t happened sooner? unless it had and I’m only now hearing about it#wasnt DP and supernatural two of the pillars of tumblr a few years ago? no? am I crazy? probably#potatoe rambles

sure, separately DP and SPN were/are very popular in their own right (Dannypocalypse, SuperWhoLock / I Love You news meme), but the superphantom xover was alwayyyysss much, much smaller and most active in the early to mid 2010s. (don't quote me on that, that's when I was most active and contributed to most of the fic then with some others and where my ideas still come from)

superphantom is kinda like a sleeper agent sort of fandom nowadays it feels like, and it boasts somewhat under ~200 fics on ao3 and FFN (who knows where else, and with what overlap to art), but it still relies heavily on the source material to work!

my king of hell Danny would not work without danny phantom or supernatural lore to fall back on even if he seems to be divorced from those origins (i promise he isn't!) ^w^;; but im glad you like him anyway!!! <3

hope this helps!

[justanotherhh]

Hi! Love your blog! I have a question:

Maybe it's because I listen to a lot of crime podcasts, but I have never associated psychopathy with being aro and/or ace (despite or maybe because I'm on the aroace spectrum myself?). Is this one of those things where there are people out there equating – I imagine especially aromanticism – with being emotionless? I feel like I've mainly heard the – also horrible – comments of aroace people being "like robots". Then again, I'm not "fully" aroace, nor have I had the need to be super open about it, so I don't pay much attention to this stuff.

Anyway, while I agree that calling Alastor an "evil psychopath" is simplifying things something that frustrates me in parts of the Hellaverse fandom in general....or just fandom in general, tbf...I don't think considering him to be on the ASPD spectrum is incorrect?

Enough rambling and onto my main question: in your opinion, should I always clarify that when I call someone a psychopath and that person also happens to be aro and/or ace, that the two things are not correlated? I don't want to accidentally imply something hurtful/feed into a horrible social mentality. P.S. I want to be clear that I don't want to imply that all people with ASPD are murderers/rapists etc either. Though clearly Alastor is the former. Of course they're not. And I can only imagine how much of a struggle living with such a disorder might be.

hello hello, thank you for the questions. i shall try to be methodical and not rambly (we'll see how it pans out)

yeah there's a big ableist and queerphobic cliché around "emotionless" characters being psychopaths who don't love -- basically it's an oversimplification of psychopathy and often conflates it with being psychotic, and of course, it assumes a correlation both between psychopathy and being evil, and being aspec -- especially the kind that's further down the end of repulsed and loveless and aplatonic -- as being evil (with "love" being the opposite of these things, which, tangent, do have a whooole other post on with this show, because it's done some very fun and potentially future-interesting things on love and sex)

the key here is that aro and/or ace is often never spoken of in narratives when this happens because well... people don't know wtf that is, so it's got that similar flavour to "oh well buffalo bill isn't transphobic, because actually the character isn't trans, the cisgender psychiatrist said so!" (actually... whole other thing on that too, but not on this blog... basically jame gumb is underrated and i root for them every time i watch the movie), but it's the Idea that "love makes you human, and sex is always assumed with love, and if you don't feel those things, it's a clue that you're evil, and the shorthand for that is psychopathic" -- generally the person writing this has never actually researched the words psychopath or psychotic, it's not about being interested in those concepts in characters, it's just a synonym for Bad

and yeah, the "like robots" fully ties into this -- the other side of the coin is aspec people as children, but alastor sooo far doesn't seem to be read this way, although the whole "but if he just discovers how to do Love/Touch/Sex in [insert whatever is wanted for this narrative] he'll become better" does play into some of those tropes too, that there is inherently something mentally ill about being aspec, and that being mentally ill is a sign of Badness (there really is a whole Essay i could do on this, and the general overlap between aspec-writing and trans-writing but! i will resist!), and it's about whether or not the Badness can be cured. if not, he's a psychopath, if yes, it's through normative relationship structures/fundamentally changing the character

it all comes down to actual curiosity -- hc'ing alastor as ASPD is totally fine (i also hc blitzø from helluva boss as BPD) and can open up a lot of doors for interrogation and interest, it's whether someone is using mental health as shorthand for shutting down further interaction with the character (think Psycho's "ah yes, this character is schizophrenic and has mother issues, hence why wearing women's clothing, the end"), or if this allows further play with the character, opens up potential doors, considers the character as rounded, rather than one-note. some aspec people do have a history of trauma or have personality disorders or are autistic, but is someone actually interested in exploring the rich variation of queerness within a character, or are we "explaining it away" as something that's merely a symptom (often one that is imagined to be fixable)

generally, im so into poking at villains and i think alastor is one of the juiciest characters ive had to play with in awhile, mainly because it feels like a lot of his writing is intentional and isn't me deciding to delve into the motivations of [slasher/monster/villain/etc] that doesn't actually exist in the text -- and i think alastor definitely does have some Stuff that could be unpacked from a neurodivergent and mental health perspective, even and including parts of his aroaceness

so in the end, picturing him on the ASPD spectrum and even linking that to aroaceness... I mean, totally chill. al-old-pal does have low empathy, and a pattern of reckless, violent behaviour, and fundamentally views relationships differently from the norm. im making arguments that he hasn't been able to create the kind of intimacy that works for him, except for perhaps with rosie and maaaaybe mimzy and niffty (@creepysora has had some very cool ideas of him connecting in alternate ways that work with his way of being and boundaries), but that doesn't mean he's suddenly More remorseful or empathetic about how his actions affect others

it's about whether or not one is using that as a way of minimising or pathologising aroaceness, and/or as a way of making aspec identities all about self-hatred (and that in turn fuels villainy), and/or generally as an explanation of his villainy as some inherent degeneracy, and/or using the word "psychopath" to mean something completely different from what it actually is... that's when we get into sticky territory

and in the end, it can be hard -- something that's perfectly reasonable to one person, could be crossing a boundary for someone else and we just have to live with that, so don't wait on my blessing, i just think as long as one's caring and curious it's heading in the right direction. i watch a lot of horror, and i can usually recognise when something is well-meaning and something is lazy, and even times when it's the latter i can still find enjoyment (think angela from sleepaway camp -- on the flipside the movie they/them was well-meaning and a complete miss in its final political statement)

i recognise also im bringing up a lot of trans villainy as-example, rather than aspec villainy. that's a. because my special interest is trans horror so go figure and b. because that overlap is soooo real

(another example, not horror unless you're a karate kid 3 truther, is the character terry silver, who is never stated to be aromantic, but whose villainy on the later show cobra kai is intimately tied to an unspecified madness that includes low empathy and... no love, vs all the happily monogamous (het) relationships around him. he's not aromantic, he's not diagnosed with anything, it's not of interest to the story that he may be mentally ill or have PTSD or be aro and possibly loveless or that he may be gay -- because yes, he's coded that way too and that overlap is also real, and a whole other tangent i could go on -- it's just subtext to add to the villainy)

now another tangent, but loosely connected: was reading a transcript of the 1974 TS/TV conference (the first of its kind that was organised in the way it was) -- a series of talks over the course of a weekend discussing trans rights, especially in healthcare, and it fully contained a section of someone saying that "true" transsexuals can be recognised because before they physically transition (into binary genders)... they're asexual. because they hate their bodies so much that they can't feel sexual attraction to others. lot to unpack there, but really in this little conversation as example, what i mean is that the roots of pathologising aspec identities run very very deep, including within the wider LGBT+ community, and since alastor is quite a complex character that has done some very bad things, it's worth really thinking about what headcanoning him as one way or another says about the character for oneself. what does it add? what does it potentially demonise or minimise? what does it allow?

the neat thing about hellaverse is the sheer amount of queer characters meaning we can go beyond "if x character is Bad this represents Every person within this group" but with alastor being (so far) the only character who's not doing the whole love-and-sex game (although i think striker counts in this as well, personally + listen... sir pentious givin' real demi vibes. and if we're looking for a link between trauma and asexuality, well, angel is right there. and, and, and...), it does bear going the extra length to learn about -- especially since a lot of people really don't know that these biases even exist in the first place, which leads to a lot of unthinking perpetuating

i think a good place to start would honestly be: "would this feel like a queerphobic and ableist coding if the character were gay? trans? bi?" not because we're totally over queerphobic writing in general (lol, can you imagine), but as a starting point: are we treating aspec identity in text in a way that makes the idea of being aspec in and of itself degeneracy?

but like. hell yeah villains. hell yeah neurodivergency, mental illness, low empathy, lovelessness, unhealthy coping mechanisms, Bad Mean Queers, cannibalism, and characters you just can't quite suss out. big into a fucked up little guy

how did i do on the ramblyness

[bettsfic]

Hi Betts,

Thanks for continuously posting helpful advice.

I just wanted to know— how does someone go about getting to the point in their writing where they are not so precious with words in hopes of taking off the pressure when drafting?(in reference to a previous post)

i remember a few years ago, there was this very well known and popular fanartist whose name i won't give because they're no longer on tumblr or even going by their handle anymore. they received an ask much like this one in which they said something to the effect of, they could spend hundreds of hours on a piece of art and be willing to throw it away, because (and this is from memory because i can't find the original post) there will always be more art.

i remember being aghast about that. how could you spend so much time working on something and just...not do anything with it? scrap it and start over? maybe even delete the file?

and more importantly, i remember wondering how an artist could even reach that point.

maybe everyone gets there in a different way, but for me it was the emergence of a bigger picture, that i don't write to be read or seen or understood, but so i can explore things that can't otherwise be explored, and live experiences that can't be lived. for me, the value is in the process, not the product. and, to the artist's point, there will always be more words.

more concretely, it was also spending an entire year working on a novel, only to realize that what i wanted it to be was not what fit in the market, and that to make it marketable i would've had to have made revisions that would've changed the thing i wanted it to be. so i realized publication isn't endgame; it's happenstance. a few things i write may be marketable, but probably only a fraction of them, and only if what i write overlaps with what is being sold. a venn diagram of "stories that will be published" and "stories that i enjoy writing" are often two circles about a mile apart. whether or not a story is marketable doesn't affect my personal opinion of it.

the same is true for fanfic. if i finish a fic, i post it for the sake of archiving it. i don't pay much attention to traffic (but i do read comments), and it's been a long time since i've written consistently in a popular fandom. in fact the last fic i posted only had one other fic in the ship tag. the point of writing fic, for me, is to get it out of my brain and onto a page, and if someone eventually comes upon it and enjoys it, great.

i'm definitely not at the point where i can just straight-up delete work, but i can write something for a very long time and be satisfied even if no one ever looks at it. it does bum me out when i care about something so much and nobody else does or will, but that's the nature of writing, and art in general. nobody cares as much as you do, and even if you write something that's wildly successful, read and loved by millions, award-winning, adapted to screen--still, all those people will have their individual, private relationship with the thing you wrote, will perceive it in their own unique way, and even if it changes their life, the story can never give them what it gave you.

i don't mean for that to be depressing or deterring. what i hope you take from it is that your feelings toward your work are more important than anyone else's feelings toward it, and not everything has to be seen and admired in order to be worthy enough to exist. sometimes you have to take the risk of being unseen to create your best work.

[crimeronan]

On the topic of How Do You Handle XYZ Comment, I've always wondered how you handle terrible responses on your toh takes. Like I know the toh fandom doesn't lack piss on the poor reading comprehension and they also really enjoy wildly out of touch takes, but I've never seen any comments on your princess luz stuff of that nature. I'm sure they must be there but maybe I'm too early? But anyway, how do you tend to deal with the "acktually shipping luz and Hunter is incest" and the "ur not a real lesbian because putting amity in a poly ship is lesbian erasure" and the "as a white person kinda sus you make the poc woman an empress" kind of responses? Ones that are technically not hate and maybe if you squint could be from people who aren't inherently trying to do bad but just lack the maturity needed to engage with the internet at large?

this ask made me giggle. honestly, i haven't received as much pushback as you might expect! way less pushback than i expected. in the princess AU, i've gotten a LOT more "this is actually too grotesque for me to stomach" comments than "this is problematic" comments, which is fine. horror-thriller isn't for everyone, those comments do not upset me.

i have had a Few run-ins with bad faith people, whom i mostly block. there's one prolific commenter in toh tumblr fandom who would repeatedly write angry essays on my humor meta posts -- essays that were all about how belos is too evil to be sympathetic and/or about how hunter is a soft gentle boy who shouldn't be jokingly referred to as evil. then they'd go "i can't help my active and conscious decision to type a bunch of rude fucking words and then my active and conscious decision to send those rude fucking words because i'm autistic :(((" around the fourth or fifth time this happened, i was fucking done with that nonsense and finally blocked them. shoulda done it after the first comment tbh!! no more autism exceptions.

as for the rest of it, my main management strategy is to simply.... preempt the bad faith comments?

i had a LOT more unpleasant and conflict-filled fandom experiences when i was in the raven cycle fandom. that was my first exposure to "you can't ship multi-gender polycules if anyone involved is gay" and "queerplatonic het relationships are just heteronormativity shipping that you're trying to get away with." having dealt with those takes before, i've found a few different ways to disarm bad faith readers before they get started.

first is to be super open and honest about my interests. i talk about what i find compelling in different relationships All The Damn Time. it's really hard for anyone to accuse me of only wanting hunter to fuck amity if they've seen, like.... anything i've said about hunter and amity.

same with hunter and luz. the only negative reactions i've really gotten to how they're written in the princess AU is like.... two people being squicked by camila thinking they're romantically involved. i REALLY expected more pushback on the touchyfeely bed sharing stuff, but from what i remember, there's never been Any....? not even from people who consider them siblings.

i expected a lot of pushback on how mean hunter and amity are to each other, since it's taken So much farther than the canon. but it turns out that there's a very large overlap between people who like dark horror AUs and people who like hunter and amity murdering each other. (in a fluffy fic i don't think this characterization would fly Nearly as easily.)

i find that being funny really disarms people, too. when you look at any of my toh meta posts that could be controversial, they're basically all funny. people are a lot more willing to listen to what you have to say if you make them laugh, and it's harder for them to get angry at you.

and then the last thing is that i think i'm in sort of a privileged position in toh fandom. i've written a lot of controversial subjects and relationships and characterizations.... but i've also written some WILDLY popular mainstream fic. and people who like the mainstream fic don't really want to beef with me about differing niche opinions, bc there's a level of respect there. which they might not have for a writer they don't like.

but anyway. when things Do happen, i almost always just block and move on. there are so many people here who get what i'm talking about that there's no need for me to try to convert people who don't, you know??

[leoruby-draws]

in your training wheels AU w rose, jay, and eddie … i think it’s clear that eddie has a crush on rose, but who would end up being the pairing between the two boys with rose considering jason and rose are a “couple” in main continuity? also, love the au and amazing art! :)

Yes, there does seem to be something going on with all three of them, doesn't it? Atm, everyone's just kids, so romance won't really pop up (unless like, for a gag or whatever). Maybe as they hit their teens, there might be crazy love triangle drama going on. Its ok if it does, they are superheroes, dumb drama is the name of the game in DC comics lol. Lemme see if I can get my thoughts in order for this..

Your 100% correct that Eddie has an enormous crush on Rose, just like in canon. Also like canon, it was pretty much a love at first sight kinda thing. As for why, well there's the fact that he thinks Rose is very pretty and cute. But also he loves how skilled she is as a fighter and how dedicated she is to her craft. She can do anything according to him! Even as they grow older, that infatuation never really goes away. If anything, it grows stronger.

It's also extremely obvious to just about everyone on the team (and off!), only question is if Rose knows and just ignores it. Or if she's genuinely oblivious, she's pretty focused on protecting her mom and training her martial art skills.

As for Rose, she's not interested in romance at the moment (she is a kid after all), that might change as she gets older and gains more control over her life. And while she may or may not be aware of Eddie's crush on her, she might have a minor thing for Jason. It's not nearly as overt at Eddie's thing, so only some of the more perceptive team members might know. It's kinda of embarrassing for her to be all 'girly' like that.

As for why Jason, well not only is it a reference to canon JayRose, there's also the fact that in this au Jason was willing to help her out when he didn't even know who she was. He's a dedicated fighter like her, smart, and she thinks he's cute (at least once he reveals his secret id).

This crush is something that develops very slowly over the years, it kinda catches her off guard almost. I don't know if she ever tries to ask him out or anything, once Jason hits his fifteenth birthday, she might just miss her chance perhaps...

As for Jason, well that's just a mystery! But seriously, whatever his own opinions on all this, he seems to be keeping his cards close to his chest. Does he gain a crush on Rose too? Is it Eddie he has a crush on? Is he jealous of how easily Rose steal's Eddie's attention? Or does he see Eddie as competition for Rose? Every member of the Outlaws has a different idea on what's happening on Jason's end, and none of those idea's overlap lol. Just like in the fandom, every member of the team seems to read Jason differently (and for some, just straight up don't understand him).

It seems for now, Jason would rather not think about stuff like that and just concentrate on having fun with friends! He's just a kid you know!

Anyways here's a funny doodle that's just perfect for this question:

Thanks for the question, that was interesting to think about! Have a good day!

[aalyre]

hi!! just here to say i completely agree with you. kevin has definitely done cowardly actions before, and arguably, so has everyone. however, one thing i don't think a lot of people realize is that he grew up in a place where what the ravens did was practically a norm. he grew up terrified. the fact that he managed to defy them while still terrified, is such a hard thing to do (coming from someone that has left an abusive household). i feel like a lot of people confuse being a coward with being afraid, which, while they do overlap in some places, they are not interchangeable. while he is still (understandably) afraid of the moriyamas, he still defies them, putting him in a position where he is likely to be hurt and/or killed, and he knows this. however, even if someone does still think he is a coward, i don't think him leaving jean behind in the nest should ever be the reason why. sure, there might've been better ways to do it, but leaving an abusive household is absolutely terrifying and difficult. the fact that he managed to do it, even if he left jean behind, should not mean that he is labeled a coward. taking jean with him might've meant that they both ended up dead. staying for jean or taking jean with him would not have made him 'braver.' people comparing neil to kevin, also don't seem to see the difference between bravery and recklesness. neil, while sometimes brave, is also inherently reckless. recklessness is characterized by a disregard for one's own safety, or the safety of others. neil is reckless. he takes unnecessary chances, ignores known risks, etc. yes, he would've stayed in the nest, but his situation is completely different from kevin's. kevin is cautious, he has much more care for surviving and living than neil does, and i think that is an important difference that we have to make. while we're on those lines, i see a lot of people comparing the characters experiences, and i hate it. you do not, and should never, compare trauma. how people experience and deal with traumatic events is completely different for everyone, and saying that jean had it harder than kevin, or vice versa, is just objectively incorrect because while there are different levels of trauma, a person's trauma is incredibly personal and heavily affected by individual factors that do not apply to everyone. two people could go through the same thing and one could still end up 'more' traumatized. anyways, i hope you have a great day <3

hi!! thank you soooooo much for your take i feel like it encompasses my thought almost perfectly if not fully!!

i won’t add much because literally i don’t have much to add ahah

and about the last thing you said, comparing trauma and all, i totally agree!! maybe it was my mistake to have put jean and kevin side by side in my post in the first place😅 ALTHOUGH i need to say my intention was of course not to compare their trauma/experience, but the perception that people have of them on the fandom!

wishing you a great day as well!!

[prismatoxic]

you get it. dont mind me, but this has been nagging for a few days when i saw mentions of chilaios has no 'canon basis' or along those lines or dont get why its even a thing and its really not that hard? like theres a ton of reasons why someone would gravitate this ship and for myself while i enjoy the height difference alot, its their deep mutual trust and respect that has me vice gripped. idk it seems like more ARE catching onto chilaios and its steady rising so its weird to still insist on its 'crackship' status

right??? it drives me insane. i don't know what the hell happened in modern fandom for people to dismiss ships with plenty of material to work with as having "no canon basis".

i guess it has something to do with fandom's increasing gravitation towards canon being necessary for shipping. in this fandom specifically you can certainly ship farcille by that metric, and like... god, i dunno what else. i assume they're just making shit up about how their ships of choice have a canon basis to make themselves feel better about it. bc at the end of the day, dunmeshi is not a romance, and the only kiss we ever see is from a relationship where one is in love and the other is like "aw, you're such a good friend." (kabru was real mean for that.)

either way, back to chilaios--back in my day (shakes cane), what they have was more than enough for a "valid" ship. so much so that no one would have questioned it except people who hated it. which... is probably true here as well, a lot of the time. like, dismissing a ship you don't like as being meaningless probably feels pretty good if you actually believe yourself.

you know what an actual dunmeshi crackship would be? (throws a dart at the wall) mithrun/dandan. makes no sense, right? they were in the same room maybe once, never interacted, and have no reason to interact. that's what a crackship is. it has no canon basis whatsoever.

crackships and rarepairs can overlap, and often do, but a rarepair can also be something with real canon interactions that just didn't take off in the fandom. chilbell probably still counts as one, though it does have fics and art, so your mileage may vary.

chilaios, then, with an entire fucking 14-volume-manga's worth of interactions, several of which were important specifically to the two of them, is not a crackship, and god knows it's no longer a rarepair either, if it even was back before the anime. (i know there was like, 1 fic on ao3, but the manga was being published for like 10 years so i assume the general fandom was just a lot smaller.)

calling chilaios a crackship is straight up just not true. not what that term means. they have the same amount of canon basis as multiple other popular ships, and imo they have the chemistry to back it up, but even that isn't necessary. all told it's a pretty standard ship. they're friends, there's tension between them but there's also a deep mutual trust, and there are very few chapters where they don't directly interact (either because the chapter isn't about the touden party or bc one of them isn't present).

sorry for rambling. i feel passionate about this, lmao... not even just because it's my otp but because misuse of fandom terms drives me up the fucking wall.

[araneitela]

🌿 Author portrait. Get to know the author behind the blog! repost, do not reblog.

Basics.

Name/nickname: Manon/Sae (see Lauri, I told you I share it by default) Age: I'll turn 35 only days after summer begins (... in the northern hemisphere that is) Pronouns: She/her Years of writing: I've always written little tidbits throughout life, and most of it in school notebooks. It's not something that I did consistently, but it started roughly around early high school, which is when I was twelve years old. Granted, I also did always, always keep a diary when I was young (one of those with a lock and key and all, I loved I dearly— it was also an extra way of how I was taught about privacy, and how all of us were entitled to it), which held not just writings about my day, but drawings, and thoughts of when I was as young as 5/6. I mourn having lost all of these really, but you can't take many things with you when you move abroad. As for when I started writing on Tumblr? Since 2012, and I started in the Vampire Diaries fandom.

Reflection.

Why did you pick up writing? It was a natural thing to do, because I'd always had this craving to write about things that I didn't know about and wanted to hypothesize on, so I'd write little stories of what life 'might be like one day', for example. But more specifically, I often finished watching films or shows, or concluded a book series, and simply wanted more of it and its characters. I wanted more chapters. And so I dabbled in writing little extensions of scenes that always get cut off too soon, or I'd write things that I knew would surely have occurred in between things, or simply hypothetical situations that made sense within canon. But it always drove me insane how this wouldn't be 'canon', which I think is why I always kept at it, as if I thought that maybe if I did good enough of a job, I could read it as if it was part of the canon itself (though of course I'm not the author so it was unattainable, but I could dream when young!) But maybe that's why I always seem to come back to wanting to be 'canon strict' within my writing. It's to try and do the most justice to peoples' creations in some way? I don't know. I just know authors make me feral, and it's like I want to pay my respect to them for having done that for me.

Do you have any writing routines? I've been thinking about this for a while, because my routines have always kind of changed over the years. But one thing I realized I always do, is that I like to find the instrumental (more often than not) that I'll be writing to, and reread the thread in question until I don't just see the the muse in my head, but hear them, hear their breath, how they sigh, or the way that they're smiling or laughing. If I can't hear any of those fundamental things, then it's difficult to get into writing them. And when that's happened, I kind of... I don't know, automatically envision my muse's current reaction, and condemn them when they show me a glimpse of a reply that's two, or three replies down the line that usually emotionally destroys me.

What's your favorite part about writing? I saw Lottie mention this in her reply, and I kind of want to jump on the bandwagon: being able to get into the headspace of someone who's so vastly different from myself. I've always been intrigued by what I don't know and don't understand, so it's only logical that I ultimately gravitate to those who're so different from myself. I like figuring things out, I like problem-solving, I love research. So while sometimes there may be overlapping commonalities between my muses and myself, it's always relegated to being no more than specific elements.

Three things you like about your writing.

One. This isn't about my writing directly, but it is what ultimately fuels a lot behind it as it's an intricate part of my muse portrayals, so I think that it stills counts: how much my brain will cook and cook on lore and references, without going 'outside' of the realms of what canon gives me. It's the intense need to dissect and understand. And I like to think that it ultimately adds a semblance of realism to my portrayals and thus, hopefully, my writing when I do my best to integrate all of it into, well, the thing that, well, 'presents them to the masses'.

Two. This is a tough and mostly weird one, but I want to mention this because I think being able to do so is a big one in terms of 'self-positivity', I suppose. The fact that I'm able to actually... like my own writing, is something that I like about it. It takes a long time, and I've been out of commission so much in the last 3 years that I don't like a lot of what I write. But when I get back into it, a few replies down the time, I can write something that I'll actually be happy with, or I'll look back at random replies I wrote a month ago, a year ago, and sometimes I go 'you know what, I like this', and I wasn't able to do that when I'd started. But I can do it now, my writing has gotten to a point where sometimes I actually can say that I like it. It's not consistent by any means, and not lately, but I know that I can and will get there.

Three. I like to think that my writing changes a bit voice-wise to fit specific characters, not overly much so, but enough so that I don't tend to struggle or get intimidated by voices. I either take to a certain voice immediately (Tony Stark, Guizhong, Jace Herondale, etc.) or it can take me numerous weeks (Yelan/Kafka, Dorian Pavus, Ezio Auditore), but they all inevitably seem to settle according to my writing partners. So while outward dialogue is always the thing that I struggle with the very most and longest, I think that when it settles, it might be one of my stronger suits.

A question for the next person.

Write a question for the next person to answer. Once you've answered it, leave a new question for someone else to answer.

What do you find the most difficult to write (eg dialogue)? I've always answered one of two things for this in the past, one being dialogue but I'm kind of getting over that nowadays. The other mostly stems from the fact that I have difficulty getting sentences to flow properly, it's the transition of one sentence to another. It's that no matter how much I may speak English out loud conversationally nowadays, it's this mental discrepancy I have between it and my native tongue when it comes to creative writing because I write so differently from how I speak. It's really the thing that'll motivate me to rewrite an entire paragraph sometimes, and also why one reply can take so excessively long. I'll reread and it sounds like one sentence is so far removed from the one that came before it, that I shake my head and redo it. It's quite honestly the bane of my existence. Flow, flow, flow.

New question: When life throws you lemons, and gets you down, does writing become something that you're drawn to as to get you through it, or do you feel like it does the opposite?

Tagged by: @daybreakrising (muah, Lauri! And thank you Aven for making this lil thing) Tagging: @spiderwarden @delusionaid @aventvrina @astrxlfinale and whoever else who wants to do it; feel free to steal it from me and tag me.

[purplepixel]

I love that you did the meme with Tony Stark and rise Donatello. Those two are in my top ten dynamics that don't exist. They really need a TV show together.

Thank you! I had to pair my last hyperfixation with my current one. Before I was consuming turtle content, marvel and specifically Tony Stark was my roman empire. It's kind of a mystery to me that there isn't that much Tony and Donnie fanart or fanfics. Maybe the rise fandom just doesn't overlap with the MCU? I would give ANYTHING for avengers 2012 era/rise content. But alas, it feels like one of those things that I gotta do myself if I want to see it.

Uggh there's so much potential and if I wasn't working on five different things, I'd explore it more.