#critical of all fandoms tbh

[dreadfutures]

I hope and pray Bellara is not the ditzy woman in STEM people are already characterizing her as. 😭 we don't even know her yet at all!!! why we gotta just blatantly stereotype. I hope she has her bearings with her at all times. I hope she remembers to bathe. I hope she has normal social skills.

I am so tired of fandom and media making every smart woman in fiction into a helpless gets lost everywhere socially awkward baby who only knows how to socialize with robots. it's done so much damage to our fields and makes all our lives harder and discourages smart and charismatic women from joining the field because they think they don't belong or they don't want to belong because of who they think they'll be around.

I'm so sick of the bazinga-fication of us okay

And when you make women scientist characters I hope you remember that most scientists are fucking normal people who communicate normally and have exceedingly normal hobbies like rock climbing and can cook and can make art and like the humanities and have families and friends and have to work on TEAMS science is TEAMWORK it is no "lone genius in a lab" anymore it requires communication and social skills 😭 I'm so tired

this post inspired by seeing people already hoping for Bellara to be an absolute airhead. it's not cute anymore!!! put that one on someone else!!!

[srslylini]

ok let me turn this shipping discourse stuff on its head. We always see the "shipping is getting destroyed," notion. "By people saying you can't ship those people because this and that"

Yeah but did we pause and think that it's also getting destroyed because people, who ship certain characters, seemingly can't do shipping without acting like it just has to be canon anymore? To the point where they viciously attack anyone who says "uhm actually cool that you ship it, it isn't canon, though"

I promise you, you don't have to find ten thousand unrelated reasons and ways to ship people and you also don't need to make up some weird shit for it to happen. Ship your ship and let others not ship it. Stop fighting over how "canon" it actually is. Especially when it isn't and turns out to not be canon by the end of the media you consume and ship it in.

It just isn't canon, you are also destroying the fandom experience by being a weird little shit about that. That also translates in how the canon relationship then gets hated on/treated. I beg you to ship your ship in peace and leave the other stuff alone.

There is absolutely no need to hate another (canon) ship and act like it sucks (which happens I know ships can suck, but not always, be so for real) or even be misogynistic as a result of this. Just ship your non canon ship in peace and let others do the same.

[paperglader]

it hit me again yesterday- literally as i was about to fall asleep- how stupidly cute it is that marisha as beau randomly burst out "i could be her beacon [that guides her home]" all awkward and earnest about jester, for then one campaign later, finally, laura as imogen come back to her with "you're my tether, laudna. sometimes i feel like i’m about to float away, but as long as you’re there" and i just think that's beautiful and another reminder of how in so many ways CR continues to be endless love letters from the cast to each other.

[sapphic-boyfriend]

ppl who are unable to criticize or accept/see the criticism of their favorite media literally just proves that consuming media isn’t for everyone. 🤷

[rawliverandgoronspice]

Actually I think we should all collectively work harder at misunderstanding TLoZ canon and simping for Ganondorf and I'm not even kidding.

[galedekarios]

it's been a year and i still don't understand why ppl are deriding the astral sea version of gale's act 2 romance scene so much, trying to paint it as the "lesser" choice.

there's nothing even remotely practised or choreographed imo about baring your soul literally and figuratively to someone you're in love with.

[throwawayasoiafaccount]

i am reminded once again that people are so weird about rhaegar.

it’s interesting but nauseating to see the shift about him on the anti-rhaegar side of the fandom as it’s clear that people are still wildly and crazily deep in their fanon versions of him, but have decided he’s somewhat useful to them as the fandom becomes less accepting of the ‘targaryens are bad and all mad’ narrative that was floating around for years, so some of the antis have slightly changed their tunes.

i should clarify that the shift does seem subtle right now, so maybe it’s not going to affect the way the antis discuss rhaegar that much, but i find it interesting and a bit annoying so im gonna discuss it.

the shift is basically starting from ‘rhaegar was a moron and killed his family by fucking his whore so he deserved death’ and seems to be heading to ‘rhaegar was secretly really cunning and cruel and actually loved elia but she was iffy/neutral of him and he only got with lyanna to have a baby and left her to die cause he was always gonna go back to elia.’

both of these are crazy interpretations imo, but the second one is even worse than the first. the first interpretation is at least a tad bit understandable, but the second is completely based on fanon land nonsense.

because… how is rhaegar seen as cunningly cruel when he’s only been paralleled with dany and jon, two incredibly kind characters? one of the first times dany is directly paralleled to rhaegar is when dany was protecting others! while we do learn a lot about rhaegar through these parallels, there’s also an on page interaction that completely contradicts the ‘rhaegar is cruel and callous’ interpretation. it starts when jamie is recalling rhaegar’s departure to the trident, he remembers when jon darry snapped at him, telling him to obey and stay with aerys; then rhaegar takes the time to console a teenage jamie and ease his worries before he leaves. we have all this and yet people interpret this character as cunningly cruel and willing to use others for his own ends?

like bsffr… this is a character who prefers writing songs and singing them instead of violence and the song of swords. that says a lot about rhaegar, and it’s all good things.

speaking of good things said about rhaegar: barristan as whitebeard, when he was still sussing out dany, calls rhaegar able, determined, deliberate, dutiful, and single-minded. these are all positive descriptions. barristan also later says that there’s a lot of good to be said about rhaegar, more than any of dany’s other relatives. this is not the description of someone hiding a nasty personality behind a perfect facade, it’s a deliberate set up preparing us readers for the big rhaelya reveal and to contradict roberts anti rhaegar propaganda.

i also want to mention the other side of rhaegar. he was described as melancholy and was said to have sad eyes, and according to cersei he looked wounded. it seems like he suffered from depression. and based on the parallels between aerys and viserys, i think it’s safe to assume that aerys was likely abusive to rhaegar like viserys was to dany. what’s written in a world of ice and fire supports my case and shows that things were always very very tense between rhaegar and aerys. things were so tense in fact that aerys even brought varys in as spymaster partly because he mistrusted rhaegar. that is a very terrible environment for someone to grow up in, and yet rhaegar still pulled through so much so that characters still sing his praises years after his death. that’s impressive and shows how good of an impression he left on so many characters.

now, i also want to discuss the rhaegar x elia ship as it’s getting more popular as the tides keep shifting. one quote that these shippers use to support their ship is the “rhaegar was fond of elia” remark made by barristan, but the context of that conversation is specifically left out by these shippers. basically the conversation began when dany is telling barristan that she’ll do her duty and marry hizdahr, so she asks barristan if rhaegar wed for duty or love. barristan hesitates and tells her that rhaegar was fond of elia but says nothing about love. context is key here. and while it’s not surprising that these shippers need to strip away the context as they have to go up against rhaelya, which has a lot of textual support, it is deceitful and proves that their case is weak in compassion to the build up of rhaelya.

anyways… yeah… this shifting tide is weird af and seems like a huge backwards dive into fanon land, and while i can’t control anyone i think i’ve done my best to stay true to canon by mentioning what we know about rhaegar and trying to keep my interpretations grounded.

tbh… i don’t even like this character that much, but i think his impact on the fandom is so cool. cause it’s like… here is rhaegar, a sad boy, and yet so many people treat him like he’s satan incarnate responsible for everything bad. it’s like so wild and so far from what little we know of him. so, basically, because of this fandom discourse, i became interested in this character and am now one of his defenders. yeahhhhh….

also, because so many people liked to basically shit on rhaegar for ‘doing nothing’ and ‘just letting war break out’ i found it kinda fun to theorize about what he may have actually been doing at the time of the rebellion. as of now, i’m pretty set in my belief that he specifically went to dorne to conspire with house martell and potential allies in order to overthrow aerys. my theory is based on what we know of his personality, and i think his last words to jamie clearly hint that he had some sort of plan in place; and since he was last in dorne, it’s only logical to conclude that there was something going on.

that’s all

[goldenspringmornings]

ig imma be the one to bang this drum (despite my many critiques) but it’s actually super Weird™️ that sjm made her mmc’s men of color- heavily black/indigenous coded ones at that- just to turn around and romanticize their abusive behaviors towards their white female love interests. not only is that painfully stereotypical- white women having to be “protected” from scary brown men while still sexualizing their bodies🙄😒- it’s next level gross and definitely not talked about enough when analyzing why fey/sand and ne/ssian are problematic. sjm purposefully made Illyrians (and male fae in general but I’m focusing on the Illyrians rn) to be hyper violent, hypersexual “s*vages” with a culture only focused on war, power and breeding but then holds up rhysand, cassian and azriel as the “exception” and is constantly telling her audience that they’re “not like other Illyrians” (another heavily damaging stereotype) when she also explicitly and textually raises them inside of this culture that she’s condemning constantly as “backwards” propping them up as the prefect men who would never disregard their mate/girlfriend/partner’s wishes, desires or demands all the while showing almost the exact opposite in most circumstances, especially in regards to ne/ssian and how nesta still feels she needs to earn cassian’s love by the end of an 800 page book. all three of our main Illyrian males are presented as bestial, aggressive, dangerous and brutal consistently across the series and it’s only their white, delicate (at least in comparison) love interest that “tames” that innate sense of…dominance ig into something good and lovable. they can’t just be good enough on their own- they have to be good specifically to and for their white partner otherwise they would be just like any other Illyrian presented thus far in the text.

idk I definitely have more to say about this but it’s also starting to short-circuit my brain the longer I think about how deeply entrenched the racism is in this series so maybe I’ll talk more about another day

[thousandyearphantombunker]

CW: I'm mean here about shows and stuff people like

syndrome from incredibles, Thanos in the comics, mad hatter from Batman, tighten from Megamind, frollo from Hunchback of Notre Dame, Red Hulk, parasite from superman and Ozai all of these villains are pathetic but they work for some reason I cannot place. A lot of stories try and write villains that are pathetic but also scary and it doesn't work- I love Starscream he can be an amazing character (he can be sympathetic or a straight up monster he can be lame but still threatening etc) and I like most versions but God can writers screw him up and he can fall flat (i love tfp i swear but god i hate their starscream! He just didn't work for me! Megatron and knockout are cool tho) Belos for some reason doesn't work for me at all- I know he should be scary while the fandom is wrong about him being a colonizer/cult leader/a dictator (he's not stop using words you dont understand the meaning of)and how insane it is that he's in a kids show (watch more cartoons there's villains darker than him) he's still trying to commit genocide and he's abusive and he's at his core got very little depth or complexity- he's really just an isekai character gone wrong- a pathetic guy with a hero complex and emotional baggage who becomes a villain- but he just didn't work for me. Neither does Jacob Hopkins- he's just Ronaldo from SU if he was written to be a straight up hate sink. I'm a lesbian latina with autism and was raised with a different sect of christan beliefs from him- I know historically this guy would have murdered me and i know he should work but something about him didn't stick the landing! The main thing I think about with belos isn't 'wow this guy is a great villain' it's 'can y'all stop being weirdly ableist toward this old man' or 'why do so many of y'all wanna fuck this man he's ugly' and dont get me started on mcu villains - their version of the mandarin, she-hulk's dumb men rights activists on reddit (seriously that's the scariest villain you can come up with? Like revenge porn is evil but really? I don't like the term man-baby- I have personal issues with how the term has been used in ableist ways- but yeah erm man babies on reddit are the best you can do for a villain? That's freaking stupid) and OMG Sutur in Ragnarok was terrible etc etc- these villains all suck!

How do you write villains that are pathetic but still work? How do write villains who are at their core whiny insecure losers but still work as detestable threatening villains? Like marvel made a character whose whole thing was that he's an incel work but so many other stories fail to write that stuff. Part of me thinks it's because these stories are desperate to make their villain into a hate sink joke but still make them scary and it fails but Tighten and Red Hulk are right there and there's no way the writers weren't purposely writing hate sinks with them! And they work! Why doesn't belos?

[mermaidsirennikita]

I'm gonna need people to stop blaming BookTok for the election because of one dumbass outlier's frankly insane comparison of Donald Trump to "morally gray" dark romance heroes (because I'm gonna be honest, anyone seriously comparing any presidential candidate to a romance novel character is just... operating on a very specific level)

and start looking at the rightward swing of Gen Z, the same generation that has a puritanical fascination with censorship and fear of the depiction of sex

(and let's be honest, probably a fear of sex in general)

[bugwolfsstuff]

Tbh I don't understand the hate on Hera for the whole switch thing

My lady just wanted to survive and was the only god actively trying to deal with Gaia.

Sure her plan had holes but at least it was a plan outside of Zeus's 'lets just ignore it and she'll get bored and go away'

[valinoar]

the praise rhaenyra gets for being a “feminist queen” or someone who “cares about women unlike *insert character they don’t like*” is so unbelievably ridiculous it makes me laugh. so many team black stans love to paint alicent as a misogynistic demon who hates her daughter and will then use rhaenyra as the antithesis of this as if that woman didn’t deliberately undermine baela and rhaena’s own very much legitimate claims to driftmark to further her own agenda. she passes them off as contenders all for the sake of her sweet illegitimate son, whom she knows genuinely has no claim, and thinks all is well after proposing a lousy betrothal (which she makes BEFORE consulting either girls).

[simplepotatofarmer]

This is something I was wondering for a while, but where does that entire claim about Dream being a cult leader come from because to me all I see is that there’s a guy who is extremely popular who got a bunch of fans and stans around him. like yes, there are certainly some crazy people like any other fandom, but one can make the same argument for some of the other Minecraft players, or even some celebrities and I don’t see people call them cult leaders all the time (even when they do, it seem as ridiculous!)

I think the reason why I’m saying that is because maybe I’m a bit biased because I listen to a bunch of true crime and I hear about how cult leaders act and then I just look at what I see and now I saw it it was just how the fans reacted to their favorite creators and I just think man that’s not being a cult leader that’s just being a creator on the Internet. Could you explain where that accusation come from and why?

it took me a moment to realize you weren't talking about the character.

but the accusation comes from people who just really hate dream and his fans and have a desire to feel morally superior about it and if you say 'this fandom is basically a cult' well then, it certainly sounds bad! and it certainly makes you look better when you're deeply hostile to anyone who likes him.

in the end, the whole thing comes down to the same thing: they hate dream. they hate his fans. they want an excuse to do so because if they just bully and harass him and his fans for being cringe, they've lost the moral high ground, yeah?

and the cult thing is extra insidious because one it's severely downplaying what a cult is while putting in place an excuse to never believe anything a dream fan says or have to examine their biases and the lies told about dream. so it doesn't matter if dream proves his innocence or apologizes for his past mistakes, when his fans bring that up, they're just crazy cultish fans who can't accept the truth! if fans (like myself) speak out about the mass harassment faced, we're lying at best or deserve it at worst.

because you're right: there are shitty dream fans who have done things i deeply disagree with but everything people accuse dream and his fans of can be found in other fandoms as well. good and negative.

but it's never been about the truth, it's always about what they can say, what words they can apply to him and the fans, to justify the way they act towards him and the fans.

[lightofjedi]

I wish people understood that a female character being written by a dude who objectify and sexualize her is not her fault but the writter's, and that going on about the importance of not sexualizing female characters while simultaneously using said sexualization as a reason to sprout misogynistic remarks about and dehumanising sexualized female characters just shows your hypocrisy and how little you actually care about women.

[sad-endings-suck]

“Zuko would have jumped in front of Azula’s lighting bolt for anyone!”

Yes! And? Katara would’ve given the “I’ll make sure your destiny ends right then and there, permanently.” speech, to anyone who threatened the life of a loved one. Whether it be Aang, Sokka, Toph, Hakota, etc. Hell, she’d defend an innocent stranger that way, and she has. Besides, it’s not like we haven’t seen Zuko take a lightning bolt for someone else besides Katara— oh wait, we haven’t (he still would though ofc).

Regardless, it’s the same point, inverted.

“Zuko would die for any of his friends” and “Katara would kill for any of her friends” are foil characterization traits; not opposing arguments.

[currantlee]

Why is there a dollar sign in the absolutely most unfavorable spot of his pants?

(Image Source: Oddlyhale)