#deeper than ppl in the fandom realize?

[roakkaliha]

the fact that im slowly getting more comfortable with video editing n the general process of making a video is making it more n more likely that i will make a video talking abt how everyones interpretation of the writing n characters of stardew valley are Wrong and also racist/classist/ableist/etc. and also uninteresting n doing the actual writing in the game great injustice.

[musicalmoritz]

do u hc any character on the aro/ace spectrum?

I love this question!! Unfortunately since TBHK is so heavily focused on romance, I don’t have many. Ofc aroace ppl can still date but fandoms tend to ignore the nuance of that statement and put them into relationships without considering what that means for them. I like to look at it a bit deeper because aroace headcanons do have some importance to me. My sister is aroace so every time I see a headcanon for a character being aspec I have to let her know lol. So before I get into this list I just wanted to say to any aroace ppl who see this, I love ya’ll, ya’ll are doing great <3

Nobody murder me, I’m going to explain. Typically I’m not a fan of aroace villains bcuz the trope has some nasty implications. That doesn’t mean no villain character can ever be headcanoned as aroace but I need some very good reasons before sticking with a headcanon like that. And for Tsukasa, I have my reasons!! A lot of fans tend to agree that he shouldn’t be in a relationship with anybody and that used to really annoy me because I don’t like the whole “this character is clearly mentally ill therefore they get no love” thing. I know it goes deeper than that with him being generally abusive but still. Eh. There are people with disorders that make them bad partners and those people are still very capable of getting therapy and improving. Plus most fans who say that claim to love toxic ships to like???

I’m not really a fan of any Tsukasa ships tho (I used to crack ship TsuAoi but those days are over) so I figured I would actually put some effort into giving a reason as to why he doesn’t do relationships. Rather than go the whole “he could hurt other people” route, I wanted to focus more about how Tsukasa himself would feel about dating. And to be honest? I don’t think he’d like it! He’s definitely interested in relationships as a concept but I don’t think he’s the type to take them seriously. I try to use this headcanon to humanize Tsukasa rather than demonizing him like a lot of people do with aroace villain headcanons. Love is very important to him on a platonic level but romance just isn’t his thing. And it creates a nice contrast in fics between him and characters whose lives center so much around romance. My sister actually is the one who introduced me to this hc and every aroace hc she has is law so I abide by it lmao

This one is way more recent but it makes so much sense to me. If you want to talk about characters who are more realistically potentially aroace, Tsuchigomori has never expressed the desire for a love interest in canon. When most adult male characters are single in fiction it’s seen as a problem (at least in a comedic sense), but with Tsuchigomori none of the characters question it. I feel like he has some level of interest in romance, maybe demiromantic?? But overall romantic attraction isn’t something he experiences easily

This one is more based on vibes and me hunting down every TBHK character that doesn’t have an arc connected to romantic attraction. I don’t think he realized it when he was alive because the people in his village didn’t talk about asexuality/aromanticism much. Maybe he thought he was gay but that didn’t quite feel right because his disinterest in women extended to everyone. He seems like the type to love being surrounded by people and be generally very personable, so his platonic relationships are very important to him. Just no romance

I know you specifically asked for aroace characters but I 100% see this man as demiromantic, and maybe demisexual too. Possibly completely asexual, though leaning more towards the positive side of the spectrum (or just neutral). Emotions don’t come easily to this man so love is a complicated subject but I do believe he’s capable of loving people romantically, just under specific circumstances and not in the traditional sense

I hope you liked these headcanons!! I’ve seen some others that interest me too. I once wrote a Sakuhiko request where they were both aroace and queer platonic, that was very fun. I’ve also seen both the Minamoto brothers written as asexual which is cool to me. Tbh I’m open to most types of headcanons unless I see one that inexplicably gives me the ick…but even then I mind my business bcuz I don’t have to agree with every headcanon I see. I may not have many aroace headcanons for TBHK but I have more for other fandoms, completely unrelated but I could write a whole essay on why Jean Valjean is aroace lol

[ganxiously]

know that i read ur post and went 'exactlyyyy' because like... do ppl not realize that some people literally ship characters that have less than 1 second of screen time? and characters that haven't even met (to the point where cross-fandom ships happen like do we all remember jack frost and elsa because i sure do!)??? i dont get why people need to keep asking to 'understand' when they could just... accept that people don't need a reason to ship anything. i randomly went 'lmao eddie and linda could be cute' to my friend when i was watching because i thought they had cute energy in their scenes together! i wouldn't need any deeper reason to ship them if i wanted to put more energy into it! its just annoying always having to see people be like 'justify it for me right now so that i can tell you your wrong' bc thats definitely what some of the 'genuinely explain' people are meaning--one of them literally said they already had rebuttals ready so they weren't JUST looking to explain/have a convo but to try and be like 'and heres where you're wrong!' :/

you are so right, anon. and I'm sure most of these people will have no problem turning around and going to another fandom to ship people who are not canonically linked. maybe some of them already do that. and they might think they are being oh so cool by putting us bucktommys in our places but at the end of the day, all they have contributed to the fandom is their bad attitude and toxic mindset. and to be honest, that is such a sad existence. you can do so many things, spread so much joy and love and cultivate a sense of community among people without even knowing their names, all because you love the same thing. and instead, what you do is become the harbinger of hatred.

[iminyourwallsbabe]

Pride and Prejudice, Shipping Gone Wrong

Alright little side thing after my last reblog that I think is important to talk about

I ended that last post by saying I don't think ppl who ship queer ships are better than those who stick to canon, and even said some were monsters that shouldn't be allowed to vote and I'mma get into that. Let me break it down for you.

Okay jokes aside, this is actually a very serious issue that does not get addressed the way it needs to.

The way you ship says a lot more about you than you think. It can highlight some prejudices you may not realize you have and there's layers to this shit too. (side note: I will be using examples. If your favorite ship is mentioned, it's not an attack on you or that ship as a whole, I'm talking specifically about how people engage with these things. Don't think I'm trying to police you, and if you're truly offended maybe you should be. Do some thinking)

IS IT LEGAL?

If you ship children and adults together or promote canonically abusive relationships, you're automatically weird. We don't need to look any deeper into that, you said all that needs to be said about you.

Morally Dubious Ships

Now, this one is a little more subjective and there's more forgiveness to be had here. Sometimes people don't realize a ship is kind of problematic. Sometimes that's a writing issue. Like you ever look back at a show or movie you watched as a child and go "oh my god how the fuck were these the heroes"? It really could be that and I'm not gonna judge you for interpreting something the way the writers wanted you to. Sometimes relationships that are abusive or just unhealthy are portrayed as something to strive for.

Sometimes it's not a writing issue and more of a "where do you draw the line" kind of issue. For example, take Otayuri. It's the pairing of Otabek Altin, who's 18, and Yuri Plisetsky, who's 15 going on 16 around the time that they meet. Now, if someone my age (I'm turning 18 in a month) said they had a 15 year old partner I would definitely have some questions, but I'd need more context before outright saying "oh ur a creep". The age gap isn't the issue, if you're mad over three year age gaps you need to get off the internet and go outside. It's more about where they are in life. The reason a senior in hs dating a freshman is strange is because the freshman is fresh out of middle school, and the other is literally about to go to college. Those are two wildly different worlds developmentally. My personal opinion on Otayuri is that since they've known each other for a while, they both seem to be equal mentally, and the way in which their relationship grows is not predatory in nature, I don't see a problem with it.

But that's just my way of viewing this ship. Other people might think those ages are unacceptable no matter what. And that's great for them. The bottom line here is that it's up in the air. You're not wrong or right for thinking any sort of way about the morality of it. No one gets hurt by the existence of this ship.

Bakudeku is a little harder to argue for. Right off the bat, shipping a bully and their victim together is kind of crazy. Like if you told me you were a Bakudeku shipper from SEASON 1, I would run away as fast as humanly possible because dawg, WHAT THE FUCK??? A relationship where one party doesn't even respect the other as a human being does not work and should not be promoted. In my eyes, the only way this could happen is with a lot of character development on both ends and with Bakugo apologizing at some point. That could actually be very interesting, it's great when fanfic or comic writers do that and do it well. When I was in the MHA fandom, I enjoyed the ship but it was by no means my favorite and the top reason is that the characters weren't in the right place for that to happen properly. If you think that's wrong, then again, more power to you. I have a lot of respect for people who can draw hard lines like that. Either way, it is very much up to debate as to whether or not this is okay, we're getting into "this may hurt somebody" territory.

But Sydney, what does this have to do with prejudice?

Most ships are inherently harmless. People are just having fun. Sometimes amazing content comes out of that, but other times... it's not that cute.

I'm gonna go back to the MHA fandom for a bit, not to trash on y'all cuz there are by far worse fandoms but I have more personal experience there. I wanna avoid speaking on a fandom I've never been in. One of the most irritating things for me was the mischaracterization of a lot of the main characters in MHA. No, I don't think everything needs to be exactly canon and if they do anything out of character in your fan work, you're evil. There's a certain breed of mischaracterization just REEKS of stereotypes.

A thing I've noticed is that in a lot of fan work, especially ones that have more sexual content, the character that's the "bottom" or whatever other words you wanna use for that, is typically made to be more feminine, less muscular, and they lose a lot of their personality to be an "uwu innocent smol bean". The other one will be hypermasculine, be super protective and dominating even if in canon, they are none of those things. The twinkification usually happens to characters like Deku that are more emotional and treated as though they're weaker, but he is not the only one. That's happened to characters like Bakugo too. FUCKING. BAKUGO. THE MOST AGGRESSIVE MF IN THE DAMN ANIME. The second he gets put into that submissive role, it becomes his whole personality.

Are we starting to see the problem here gang?

People are taking these characters and altering them to fit into their idea of what a queer relationship "should" look like or what they think is the hottest kind of queer relationship. That is fetishization without a doubt. This shows me that you don't see gay people as people and refuse to.

This bleeds into another issue. One of racial fetishization. As a kpop fan, I've seen kpop ship art and fan fics. Now, whether or not shipping real people is okay or not is a conversation for another day. We're focusing on how these people are written/drawn. One of the interesting things I've seen is that people will sort of use idols as a vessel for another story. They're not necessarily writing about them but more so building off of their persona or how they're generally perceived. So "accurate" depictions aren't something you're gonna see. The most worrying depictions are ones like what I described previously. The difference is, it's indiscriminate. Idols have been written into both roles before, it just flip flops between whoever fans think is the least masculine. This is already weird as is, but consider that Asian men are often seen as "lesser men", more feminine, weak, etc. Consider that Asian women are seen as shy, innocent, submissive and things of that nature. These are the ideas on which these "uwu cinnamon roll" characters are built upon.

Now, you're probably thinking I'm reaching, but peep this. What if we move out of Asian-centric media? Does the same apply? YES. VERY MUCH SO. In fact it's MORE OBVIOUS THAN BEFORE.

One of the more popular queer ships in the Spiderverse fandom is Hobie x Pav. A black man and an Asian man (South Asian specifically but still very much Asian). Now, one would expect that a movie that has so much diversity and puts an emphasis on looking at people past appearances would create a fandom where all the characters are treated like people. WRONG!!!! Pav is constantly smol baby twinkified to death and Hobie is made to be meaner and more aggressive than he ever was in canon. Here's those silly little archetypes again!

And here's a reminder of the stereotypes around these races, just in case y'all forgot.

Asian men = not manly, unathletic

Black men = scary, dangerous, hypermasculine

Mind you, neither of these characters are any of these things in canon (I mean for fucks sake PAV BACKFLIPS OUT OF BED IN THE MORNING, HE IS IN NO WAY "WEAK"). And to deviate this much says only one thing. You don't actually see these characters and people like them as individuals. Your idealized version is literally awful fucking stereotypes that get people, especially black men, killed. Tell me again how you're not racist?

Headcanons (oh lord)

These homophobic/racist characterizations bleed into headcanons as well. They are in no way mutually exclusive. If you're drawing or writing a character a certain way, you probably have headcanons to match that. And a lot of you have shown your real selves this way.

For example, this has less to do with shipping and is moreso a general fandom issue, but ppl be headcanoning Miles as poor or that he steals spray paint. Bitch, what??? Miles has a cop for a dad and a nurse for a mom, that income is fucking insane. PLUS, he goes to a private school in one of the most expensive cities in the country. They go out of their way to emphasize this in ASTV, there's a whole scene about it. He is not poor. Miles G is, but not Morales. No sir.

So, if there's no evidence to say he's poor... and it's been explicitly stated that he's not... hmm... I wonder why people would think that?

Surprise! The answer is racism.

Same thing for the stealing headcanon. He fights the spot in a deli in ASTV and still asks how much his food will be. And if his uncle was in the graffiti scene already, why would he not supply Miles with spray paint? Y'all skipped through not only his actual characterization but all the possible, legal ways he could've gotten his hands on that and went straight to stealing.

But noooo, you can't be racist if you're a Spiderverse fan, right?

But let's bounce back to sexuality for a minute. Those headcanons directly affect the way someone ships a character. Sometimes your sexuality headcanons are not coming from a good place and y'all need to know that.

I actually had a conversation with my lesbian friend today. She said a friend of ours had told her "you're going to love One Piece, there's great lesbian representation.". Like she straight up fed her the idea that Nami was a lesbian. She even told her she had a girlfriend in one of the movies. Whether that's true or not, I don't know. I'm not a One Piece fan. She also told her that Nami hated men. I read the first four volumes of One Piece. Nami does NOT hate men. She's not as friendly to men around her because she hates pirates and has a very specific dynamic with her crewmates, who are mostly male. That's two different things. So, she was telling me that she felt really disappointed that the only thing that made this character a lesbian was the fact that she didn't have a love interest and "hated men". Now, from what I understand, there are some interactions she has with women that can be read that way, again, I'm not entirely sure since I don't watch that, but the fact that this other friend's main selling point to my friend who's actually a lesbian was that there was a mean lesbian main character that hated men is kinda crazy, don't you think? (Also, side note, things are kinda weird with the one piece friend rn, we're working that shit out. So if you're wondering why we're even friends I literally found this out today so yk).

Let's think about common stereotypes about lesbians. One of the big ones is that since they're not attracted to men, they must hate them or that they're gay because they hate men. Newsflash buddy, it's kind of hard to find a woman nowadays that doesn't hate men at least a little bit, gay or not. If that was a prerequisite for being a lesbian you'd probably see a hell of a lot less straight women. Another stereotype is that if a woman shows no interest in men, she must be a lesbian. Like, no, she could be ace, she could just not want a relationship in general. I even double checked to make sure she wasn't canonically confirmed to be one so I wasn't talking out of my ass. She could be bisexual, pansexual, literally whatever kind of sapphic but your mind jumps right to lesbians because you think she hates men and she's mean? Right...

But I'm not done here, let's get into one of the more common acts of stereotyping I've seen. My ace buddies, I am SO SORRY oh my god.

Every time there's a character who is nerdy, not as social, and doesn't explicitly show attraction to anyone, they get headcanoned as aromantic and asexual. I actually wanna applaud the One Piece fandom real quick because the amount of people who fuck with the Luffy is asexual headcanon is great. He's the exact opposite of the type of character that commonly gets headcanoned to be asexual. This is the kind of stuff I want to see. Headcanons based on things the character actually says and does and not stereotypes. Shout out to y'all, back to the ranting I guess.

One of the more annoying things I've noticed is that autistic coded characters are usually the most likely to be headcanoned as asexual. Now, if you know anything about how autistics are viewed in society you'd know people think we don't have sex, don't know what it is, all sorts of other shit. So to see that constantly, it really bothers me and I'm sure it bothers the aces out her as well. The idea that the only way you can exist is as a socially awkward "undatable" character must be really awful to see. It's either that, or they attach that label to characters that hate love or look down upon people who have romantic relationships. Or maybe you might get someone who thinks a character is too cute and innocent for sex and gives them that label. Again, more negative stereotypes.

But when there's actually an ace character and they don't fit people's idea of what an asexual looks or acts like, or if they're attracted to them, they just ignore that part of them and do whatever they want.

It's 3:30 in the morning, why are you still yapping about this?

First of all, I would like to thank everyone who made it this far. This is a very necessary conversation and I know it's gonna ruffle several feathers but in times like these it's important that we recognize how our hatred affects others.

But yeah, onto *why* this is important.

The post I reblogged and responded to was somebody comparing a certain type of canon shippers to Trump supporters. I explained why they weren't right but not exactly wrong either. There's a direct correlation between the way they thought about shipping and the rhetoric of the right. Remember, the same people fetishizing others and disguising stereotypes as headcanons and creative liberties were right next to you in the voting booth deciding whether or not you should have rights.

The truth is, this election showed us that we truly cannot trust each other as much as we thought we could. The people we thought were our allies sold us for their own validation or to make their groceries cost less (which won't even happen btw but I digress). The people who were holding our rights over our heads were busy taking that from others in other countries, and also just straight up murdering them (free Palestine y'all. And Congo. And Hawaii. And Sudan. And Haiti. There's a lot. Colonialism knows no bounds). And after the election? Poc were continuously excluded from the conversation even though we're the most affected on every front, and when we were brought up it was to tell ppl some of us voted against our own kind.

This post is to make y'all better allies. This post is to make you more conscious of the things you're saying and doing. This post is to remind you that art has power and you need to use it responsibly. It's here to show you that just because someone identifies the same way as you or is okay with the idea of your identity, does not mean they're on your side. And your vote does not absolve you of your own biases. You can still vote blue and be racist. You can still like media with a bunch of representation and still hate the groups of people in it.

And in a way, this post is kind of for me too. As a black queer person who's been in fandoms since they were 10, I've only become more frustrated. It's become such a hostile environment for minorities of all kinds and I'm tired. I needed to get this out somehow. Y'all can't keep getting away with this, you're ruining it for everybody in these fandoms and in the world.

[nightcourtreader]

Hi<3 hru?

can I rant with you a little? I feel like you're the most reasonable person in this fandom (and this platform) haha or maybe we share same opinion idk but:

I am so tired of seeing this fandom painting Feyre be bad at everything... her talent in painting? "not very good she didn't have a teacher or anything" (mind you I'm an artist and self-taught). her being a high lady? "she can't even do her job she a bad ruler" her being equal to Rhys and powerful as fuck? "Nesta is way more powerful than her" her being beautiful in Rhys' eyes? "no everyone say Elain is more beautiful than all of them" Feyre being a mother? "oh she will be a bad mom and can't raise her child" to the point I've ppl saying Eris (ERIS OF ALL PEOPLE) who apparently had 6 brothers and knows better than Feyre how to calm a baby and we all know both Feyre and Rhys won't let him get near him at any scenario. or how there's fanfic where Gwyn is the one telling Feyre how to pull it together and calming Nyx and Rhys just sits there and agrees with her... it's funny how ppl want to show Feyre as a incapable mother so some ppl like Eris and Gwyn should come and save the day.

I love Gwyn don't get me wrong (and I'm neutral about Eris since it's obvious he's a another version of Rhys lmao) but to show a softer version of them through bringing down Feyre pisses me off... and in none of this Rhys is portrait as a bad father... interesting! or how I've seen more fanart with E/riel and Nyx more that Feysand and Nyx is bothering me to no end. them babysitting him or a older version of him have a sleepover in their house or them literally raising him bc apparently Feyre is busy being a high lady and doesn't have time to spend it with Nyx. and no one say Rhys is also there being a high lord and have a job like Feyre ruling their court no...

and it won't stop on her being a bad mother she's also a bad painter and that rages me. we have Azriel going through continent to buy her paints, Cassian watching her paint and cries over them and Nesta she also cried when she saw Feyre had a painting of her and lets be honest if Feyre was a bad artist Nesta would've already told her in cabin but she said nothing and let her paint on everything. or how Mor loved what she did to the Cabin but everyone only focus on her drawing on the walls without permission and make fun of it. or how they have always something to say about sjm bad writing means they look deeper in it but never notice the artistic way Feyre describes things...

but we don't see anyone saying Nesta is a bad dancer or Gwyn a bad singer or Elain's a bad cook... Like ever... I've never seen it at least!

it's funny how they bold their fav Character through bringing down another... and think sjm would or doing the same :)

Hiii 💜 trust me you can rant to me all you want! Thank you 😂

I always found it crazy how Feyre was the only character to be made fun of about her hobby. I know people say oh it’s a joke, lighten up, I just thought it was funny. But is only funny to a certain extent, you know?

There are people literally shitting on Feyre for painting. And I think that comes down to not liking the character. You don’t have to like her, but making up lies because you don’t like the character is crazy to me. Like people have to realize that SJM is writer not an artist but I think she did pretty with describing Feyre and her painting.

And like you said. Why is it that Elain is so good at baking even tho she just picked up the hobby in acofas but Feyre is a bad painter. Why is nesta so good at dancing but Feyre is a bad painter? Why is Gwyn such a good singer but Feyre is bad at painting? We see that Azriel also sings, why is he a good singer already and we haven’t seen him sing yet?

Cassian AND nesta said how much the black dress Elain wore to the court of nightmares was an ill suited dress for her. If they can critique Elain’s fashion choice, why haven’t they critiqued Feyre’s painting if she’s so bad? I could have sworn nesta was upset because there wasn’t any paintings of her in the river house.

It has been stated by numerous characters that Feyre is a damn good painter. It doesn’t matter if she’s self taught and so is my nephew who is a teenager and he can outdraw my on my best day.

People get so upset about the cabin but nobody cared. Mor even brought her more paint to encourage her to continue! If it’s Rhysand’s cabin, then in turn it’s Feyre because what’s his is hers and I think Rhysand made that pretty clear. I can even see the IC in the cabin making little drawings around Feyre’s painting like Mor did to mess with each other and add more color to it and laugh about it later.

With the whole Feyre not being a good ruler thing kills me because she just literally got into the role in acomaf. They had a war in acowar where we couldn’t see her be a ruler but Feyre was actively helping in the war. She saved prythian twice by defeated amarantha & rebuilding the cauldron. She saved the damn rainbow of velaris! Nobody was over there but her. She even talked about the paperwork side of being a high lady in ACOFAS, but this is the same novella people say they don’t like.

Tarquin just got to be a highlord in acotar but he’s such a great ruler? Why people are acting like Feyre can’t be further taught? She just got into the role. She’ll be fine.

I do think if nesta had her full power before she gave it away she would have more power than Feyre, some people also have a hard time understanding that nesta literally didn’t want that power and she stated that she slept with numerous men to keep that power away/at bay. But now since she doesn’t have as much of her power I think that Feyre and Rhys are once again more powerful than she is.

I get it that Elain is the most beautiful sister but all the sisters say the same thing about Azriel, does it make Cassian or Rhys less beautiful? Cause I could have sworn nesta didn’t think Rhys was ugly and she didn’t even like him. Aelin saw Rhys and she said he was beautiful too. So why does saying Elain is the most beautiful Archeon sister take away the beauty from Feyre & nesta?

The whole she a bad mother thing is just crazy because we haven’t even seen Feyre be a mother at all in the series! Just because we got that one scene at the end of acosf, that doesn’t tell us anything.

SJM said in CC3 the acotar characters are going to be very protective of Nyx, if they are so protective with him why would he be around Eris when they don’t even trust him? Eris is allies with the night court at best. We’re not even sure if eris himself even help raised his brothers because based off reading it’s clear that the autumn court siblings are not close (they are all killing & hurting each other) and they had a fucked up upbringing.

I love Gwyn but Gwyn is only 28, I know she defended the children in sangravah and I have no doubt my girl will be a good mommy, but I don’t think Gwyn is the right candidate to tell someone what to do when it comes to a baby.

Having Nyx was something Feyre and Rhys wanted. SJM is a mother to 2 kids and just recently had her second one, so I’m pretty sure she’s excited writing Feyre as being a mom herself, so why would Feyre be a bad mother? Feyre knew how she grew up, she literally has all the chance and opportunity to give Nyx the opposite of what she had growing up, so why wouldn’t she?

If they’re only attacking Feyre since she’s supposedly going to be a bad mother and not Rhys then that tells me all I need to know, they don’t like Feyre.

I get being a new mom is hard and trying to balance work can be difficult and no I’m not a mom personally myself, but it has proven time and time again that first time moms and moms who have more than one kid can take care of their mother duties and work at the same time and still be a good damn mom but for some reason Feyre can’t?

[clacing]

Do you think Harrow would ever hit Homura levels of "girl who is just fine, everyone else is the problem"? Or do you think she's surpassed Homura in that area?

From what I've seen of the TLT fandom, Harrow seems to be almost universally loved, so I wonder if she'll do something that ppl will say is too messed up and start writing posts about how she's actually the devil. I think if that happened it would make me like her more than, or at least as much as, Homura.

THAT'S A REALLY GOOD QUESTION 'cause I've said repeatedly that Homura and Harrow are the same character but I never considered that Harrow doesn't really have an equivalent to Homura's "becoming the devil". She might still get one since she's literally going to be in hell for the first part of ATN but I honestly think it's too late in the game for her to do something that's actually unforgivable. The rift between Gideon and Harrow is already as large as you could make it because of Harrow choosing to forget about Gideon and even that is only a Wraith Arc Homura level of offense. With only one book left I don't think there's time for the rift to grow even deeper and for it to have a satisfactory resolution. She might do something terrible against John at the very end I guess but that'll be far from shocking unless she like, blows up a planet in the process or something (as I am writing this I just realized Harrow actually already blew up several planets so actually that won't cut it)

Even if Harrow were to pull an actual Rebellion, it would be framed and received differently, if only because I trust a target audience of mostly sapphics won't jump to "She's a horrible person and literally the devil" the moment she makes a morally ambiguous decision. I mean, look at Ianthe. She's absolutely awful and everyone loves her for it. Gay people are starved for complex characters like that and I'm sure if Harrow just went fucking apeshit everyone would love her even more.

Homura on the other hand is in a show targeted to adult men who have no idea what it's like to be a teen lesbian and can only spout misogyny and homophobia out of their ass. I also think a lot of the criticism coming from queer people is simply due to Rebellion coming out at a time when everyone still criticized morally ambiguous queer representation because of how few gay characters were actually around back then, and so everyone was understandably up in arms at Homura becoming the devil because of her feelings for Madoka. I love Rebellion to death and think it's the best movie ever made but I know if I'd watched it back then I also would have hated it, and people who first watched it in 2013 probably still can't shake off their first impression of it even though times have changed. But queer representation is definitely at a point where we can want something more than perfectly sanitized stories and it says a lot that people will usually be much more receptive to Homura if they watch Rebellion now

So yeah I honestly don't think Harrow will ever beat Homura on that front. Maybe she'll do something bad but in a series where everyone does bad stuff and in the context of what Harrow has already done I honestly think barely anyone will even blink. The reason Homura's actions are still debated today is that no one saw it coming and so everything felt so much more shocking because of how abrupt it was

[wanderingwriter87]

Violence asks 12, 13, 18, 20, 24

12 unpopular character that i like, and why ppl should like them - i think i gave an answer to this but i will do another! so i do think while kai winn is obviously an antagonist for a lot of the show, she's a great character and ultimately pays a higher price for her hubris than anyone should ever have to. my heart actually broke for her when it became so painfully obvious how much she truly wanted to serve the Prophets and could not understand why they had chosen some random Starfleet officer as their emissary (from her point of view). like yeah it's all informed by an overgrown sense of entitlement, and she is ruthless and selfish and harms people on her way up, but ultimately she stands by her convictions, immediately turns on dukat's bajoransona once she realizes it's him, and then poisons him in the fire caves. it doesn't undo the damage she did but still. queen

13 worst blorboification - well i don't really like this concept, but i am going to risk it all by saying that if anyone fits this, it's jadzia. she actually has the potential to be such a fascinating character to explore in fanon because the actual writers did so little with her, never established a backstory or consistent characterization, or really dealt with any of her deeper issues or gave her any growth. not that you NEED any of those things in an ensemble cast necessarily - it's fine for her to just be hot and bisexual and trans-coded and everyone's favorite party worm. but every time i hear about things they ALMOST did with her character but didnt, i am infuriated. she deserved better, and if berman was going to insist on casting terry seemingly just bc he found her hot (there's interviews with the writers saying she didn't fit their concept of who jadzia was supposed to be and that her performance just straight up didn't fit the character they had developed!!!) then they should have developed the character to fit her performance. anyway it's not up to fandom to fix the sins of canon but i think it would be cool if people did

18 it's absolutely criminal that the fandom has been sleeping on - I think there are a lot of potential answers to this but today i am going to focus on the incredible writing of tellino.

20 part of canon you found tedious or boring - i think if there's any part of ds9 i truly found tedious i have simply blocked it out. i think its usual crime is the opposite - failing to delve into things that would be very interesting if they did

24 what brings up the most rancid discourse - shipping wars my beloathed. all ships are good, yes, even my notp (and only my close fandom friends even know what that is, because i am not going to ruin other people's fun!)

[navysealt4t]

hi blue (explodes in your ask box)

i provide letters with the intent of seeing your opinion on fandom things, please enlighten me

I / O / S / Z

thank you 🙏

HAUNNTT HI

I - Has tumblr caused you to stop liking any fandoms, if so, which and why

not really? for the most part its just made me get deeper into fandom lol. like ive started reading botw fics bc of the tumblr fandom and its been very fun

O - Choose a song at random, which ship or character does it remind you of

ooo i shuffled my liked songs and got the song "after the war" by reinaeiry and. :( it reminds me of lizzie and ayva if they had gotten the chance to be together without any pirate or navy bullshit . oughhh now im sad :( they are so tragic like waghhhh i know u dont know them but. shaking my lil gremlin hands at you they were so in love and ayva just haunts riptide's story sm i love them... daily propaganda go watch jrwi riptide for tragic lesbians..... :(

on the other hand it could totally be about albatrio or polypirates. wagh.

oh and speaking of lizzie/ayva cafe 1930 is a them song. it has no words but. them.

S - Show us an example of your personal headcanon (prompts optional but encouraged)

RANDOM HEADCANON TIMES jay was taught the flute & violin as a kid and while she can play them super good she prefers playing random chords on the ukulele that sound good together :]

gillion he/she and neos pronoun user i will die on this hill sorry . speaking of this genderfluid chip & trans girl jay always. and butch edyn

chip loves singing he sings so much random words while he's doing chores and singing sea shanties arlin taught him or singing ollie to sleep. jay teases him endlessly about the lullabies he sings to ollie

animal lover jay is canon but. she loves animals so much. just adores them so much she will pet any animal that comes up to her she doesn't care about rabies. she's tried to make them get a pet other than pretzel so many times. im sooooo tempted to write a fic where jay smuggles a cat on board and yes it will be navyseal

jay loves sketching like mundane scenes in her life rlly colorfully and dramatic and with a lot of meaning behind it. like u know that one drawing that's like "i realized something about human connection but im too drunk to write it so i drew it" ??? thats how she draws. she dips her toes in landscapes :)

gill loves drawing ppl. his family, his sister, random ppl on the street, etc etc !!! he has gotten really good since when he first started but he goes through random bouts of self doubt where he refuses to draw

chip doodles random shit really and he does it on EVERY piece of paper he can find the corners of their map is covered in tiny doodles. these include angry doodles of niklaus looking very mischievous and pretzel with a big knife.

Z - Just ramble about something fan-related, go go go (prompts optional but encouraged)

I CANT THINK OF ANYTHING BUT UUHHHHH OH im working on a thingy that im hoping to turn into a youtube video :DD basically i love the game unpacking and the way it tells it's story is phenomenal and the casual representation and the art style and music and relatability and everything about the game is amazing !!!! i have been doing so much research and typing in google doc im so excited to get working on it :3 ive played the game at least 10 times i lveo it. this is fan related bc i am a fan and i say so <3

[av-potatogun]

as someone who was around for all the zu/tara and kat/ang ship wars, i never understood them.

the first go around there was definitely a lot of projection onto the lovely katara, which fair enough, she is amazing. it made me think that the projection played a role in the idealized relationships she would have tho. and i think it did play a part at one point, particularly before the show was done airing and everyone viewed zuko as just the bad boy character.

like there was not a lot of depth in my first interactions with either of these ships, and i think a lot of that was because everyone i met who felt strongly about them was projecting onto katara, which like i said fair enough. we were all kids and around their ages so it made sense.

as time moved on tho, i recognized both ships as flawed. of course they are, no ship is perfect. the hatred ppl had for them tho was awful. it was literally a stand back and watch the jabs, because trying to calm anyone down was liable for anons screamimg at you.

and it was all ridiculous, of course it was, these are ships involving 12-16 yr olds. but the amount of insistence on deeper proofs of who a person was based on which ship they preferred was insane. katara was (and is) the focal points in these ships and how ppl percieve them. there was even some attempted deepcut about how aang was for the male gaze and zuko was for the female gaze.

sidenote; but i dont remember ever seeing a post about how those terms were regetted by the creator, because she was just trying to come up with a way to explain hollywood sexism in the writing of characters, and people took it as something even deeper and added the female gaze as the opposer to it, even though it has been pointed out the male gaze only exists as a basis for pointing out oppression in hollywood. the female gaze is not the solution to the male gaze and is a term most often used by white women, which makes it more indicative of white womanhood specifically than of a general commonality in women.

anyway, it was always so confusing, because in the end you are arguing over which teen boy would be better for the relationship, not for katara. the arguments have always been about which ship was better, ignoring how each individual would grow or wilt in them.

like if you did look at the individuals, you would realize that all of these relationships are inherently flawed and it would take a lot of work, no matter who was in it, to grow in them. they were relationships formed during war, by children, of course they are flawed. of course theyre selfish individuals, of course they are stubborn and argumentative, of course they want an idealized form of each person.

im not gonna tag this for ppl to find among fandom posts, honestly i was just kinda ranting because i saw one of those tiktoks reading an old ass tumblr post abt how aang was always horrible to her as a way to attack that ship in favor of the other. like yeah he was inconsiderate, they all were, its called being a kid/teen.

[fireinanhourglass]

@an-apple-devs-terrible-blog

Apologies for writing this as a rb -- seems tumblr wont let me properly comment this out in the notes, but i think consumerism may be the wrong term here. it sounds like you're assuming that alienation from commerce is equivalent to the alienation from community, and that is a whole separate discussion.

i’m not in the furry fandom, but when i was first breaking into my local punk scene i felt like a poser because i didn’t have the $$$, health, or social safety net to adopt a lot of the fashion/performative signifiers associated with the subculture. i saw folks with these gorgeous leather jackets, spending insane amounts to follow bands on tour, throwing themselves recklessly into mosh pits while i was on the sidelines in my shitty flannel shirts and secondhand jeans, waving ppl off if they tried to pull me into the pit bc getting rocked in the wrong spot could actually cripple me (not to mention the fucking medical debt).

but after i got over my new kid syndrome I realized a lot of the things i was envious of were just proxies for what i actually wanted. I thought owning/participating in signifiers of being punk would grant deeper access to the punk community: i thought i needed to “look” the part before people in the scene would see me as legitimate and worthy of building relationships with. Capitalism teaches us that money = access = community, but fan spaces (aside from corporate fan spaces, like Disney theme parks) don’t run on that logic. i made friends with people because we liked our music angry and hard and fast and that gave us something to talk about, not because i fit the group aesthetic and spent $$$ on classic vinyls.

this also ties back to your comments regarding mutual aid. if, again, you presuppose that alienation from commerce is equivalent to the alienation from community, then I can see the logic of framing this as a mutual aid problem. but the underlying assumption that money is a gateway to community is not true, despite what capitalism insists. mutual aid is not a workaround to resolve the capitalist lie that money = access = community by providing the requisite money. mutual aid is a tool to fight back against socio-economic threats to the sanctity of community relationships: if you need support, the first step is to find your people. you always can meet people and celebrate art and participate in fan culture while spending $0.**

there will always be shitheads who gatekeep communities based on ownership of commodities or adherence to certain social performances: they are worth your pity, not your time. but if you are feeling alienated from fandom community i want to reassure you that commerce as a gateway to meaningful connection is an illusion and a lie. your contribution, even just showing up, is enough. i hope being a furry is joyous for you

**i can empathize with feeling left out of events/activities/etc for being fucking broke. i can imagine wanting to see this as just a facet of a pre-established community: fundraisers for folks to get discounted tickets/lodging to conventions or sliding-scale prices for commissions based on income. i get it.

but when it comes to (non-corporate) fan spaces, the relationship between creator’s content and their livelihood is much more complex than the scope of this post, and therefore so are logistics of a fan community setting expectations of discounts/“aid.” again, can’t speak for the furries, but i will say i have seen plenty of fan spaces make a point to reduce financial barriers to paid content when possible -- itch.io even has that whole “discounted copy/community copy” feature where creators can upload content for fans otherwise unable to afford full-price. it’s in everyone’s best interest for fandom to be accessible, and i’m certain furry artists want you to be able to enjoy their work

Does the furry fandom have a consumerist problem? Like it can feel like I need to spend money to be apart of the fandom, otherwise I’d just be considered “a fan of furries”.

It is absolutely absurd to describe a community of artisans making money on their normal work as "consumerist", or rather, in any way that the world at large isn't already consumerist. Someone making bank off custom fursuit commissions isn't a member of the owning class, not any more than the lady doing your nails at the salon is. Maybe it's expensive and out of reach for a lot of people but that's not their problem, right? What do you propose be done about this

[squirrelno2]

Apropos of nothing but

The thing people mean (or should mean) when they say "product of their time" is shit like this Agatha Christie I'm reading rn, where she is clearly trying to call out antisemitism in the text but also turns around and regurgitates some pretty awful antisemitism as though it's fact, like - I don't know where overall her beliefs fell, just what I read, and there's real sympathy and an attempt to dissect the English Christian attitude towards the Jewish characters presented unless I'm really misreading, but it's also deeply upsetting to see some of the shit that gets said in basically the same paragraph

(edit: actually more of this feels straight up antisemitic as I dig deeper into it, she did write from povs of characters that she clearly didn't agree with at times but I wanna make clear that I'm probably going to be retracting my opinions on her good intentions here. The rest of what I say still stands)

And I think this is important to recognise not just so we don't put ppl whose work has cultural contributions on a pedestal where we can never critique them, but also because like. She was probably saying all the polite, progressive things. We can all say the polite, progressive things. That is what makes us products of our time

The thing that helps us transcend that in our fights against bigotry is to really look at each impulse we have when discussing/describing/characterizing marginalized people, and to say "why did I choose this? Is there something else I could do that would achieve the same goal? Why is it so important to me to tell this story, and does it convey a truth or does it convey a theory I have built about the world that I always assumed is truth?" I started writing characters of colour as a teen because I knew I should, because I knew the world wasn't as white as my backyard is. I didn't know why it would matter to a reader beyond that. I just did it because that is what A Good Author does, and A Bad Author ignores poc. It's not the worst place to start, if you ask me - deeply invested in your own status as a good person or writer and therefore dangerously self centered, but a jumping off point if you're willing to learn.

The thing that took me farther was the moment I realised I didn't know why I had disdain for certain things (in my case specifically hip hop dance was the catalyst but that's a longer story). I sat down and looked at those things I ignored and claimed not to like and found that I had no tangible reason for any of that. I simply had never looked for something to love. I have found, in my time in fandom, that many people refuse to look for things to love in characters they do not associate with themselves. They might pay lip service to a character being great, say they deserve the world, but in the end these are not the characters who get endless fics and meta and art. (This is most obvious with fandom racism but it manifests with other facets of marginalisation as well) It requires an active effort, and a willingness to step beyond "I have said the right thing, the appropriate thing, the polite thing, and that means I have done it all right" into a space where you know you may get it wrong, but always in pursuit of doing something not just right but good

Anyway "products of their time" still fucked up, whether they were trying to do the Right Thing or not, and we all will fuck up, but you have to be willing to step further than politeness, and really start to conceptualize other people as being just as wholly human as you. Nobody is the guest star in an after school special about acceptance. We are, in fact, all the main characters of our own stories, constantly crossing over and spinning off, and the sooner you realize that your kindness to somebody else isn't about you being the protagonist who needs to be loved but about them being their own protagonist who deserves your respect, the better. Don't say things because you're supposed to. Say them because you thought about what they imply, and because you stand by those implications - or don't say them at all

[prompts-adrien-sugar]

Ain’t it real funny how some people in a certain fandom circle usually go out of their way to mindlessly hate on a character, then on the same grounds, turn around and say that this villain is morally better, or saying their rival for the love interest is better (even when all the attributes are literally from fanon, taking the positive attributes from said chara and projecting onto the rival, or just one-off scenes) all while taking this shit out of context?

[yumenosakiacademy]

begging ppl 2 realize what nuance is

[trixstriforce]

hey i get where ur coming from and i get i didnt explain well in my tags bc i didn't wanna derail bc ngl i tend to ramble and get off topic but i saw one of the the hc creator reply and i get how u can be offended from my tags which i am genuinely sorry about! i didn't realize it could come off as me being "oh blue bad so trans blue bad!!!" which was NOT my intent. as a feminine nonbinary person w/ a lot of trans friends i dont want ppll to think im some cis idiot who looks down on gnc trans ppl or dont like trans hcs for characters i think r gender conforming honestly i see the four swords links as all trans men tho she/her blue i genuinely do think is a good hc i only put it yhere bc i LITTERLY haven't seen she/her red which i did get told was also popular so from what i personally saw i was iffy if the hc was rooted in anything deeper bc i tend to be sceptical of fandoms bc of stuff im going to explain if u here me out, i know my cynicism was seen as me insulting a hc so i get why u were aggressive but pls dont assume my intentions based off one post.

now this is going to be an eassy fair warning bc that is just how i talk. which is why my tags I wanted to be short bc i struggle to get my point across w/out being verbose but like...clearly i shoulda just kept my og tags and not cut it down but oh well whats done is done ig pls read it through bc u were rlly agressive in ur reply which is fine but at least hear me out bf u label me like that ok?

to explain rlly what i ment i have to be clear that i am in the cookie run fandom and that fandom has a LOT of queer characters many r canon nonbinary and there r a lot of widespread trans hcs. in that fandom, in the past, i specifically was very uneducated on trans stereotypes so when a very masculine cookie who for years the fandom saw as a man but had no canon prounons was announced to be a woman the fandom for a hot minute(including me) saw them as a trans woman. some trans ppl in the fandom got uncomfortable w/ that including some of my friends and one of my friend's friend explained the possibile transphobia of the hc and in a fandom never adopting widespread trans hcs for characters unless the fandom assumed they were the opposite gender ie a he/him cookie in makeup and a dress was always hced to use she/her or be a trans man. and at that time i genuinely was shocked that ppl were making these hcs w/ those intentions bc i never considered that bf. and in general? cookie run fandom just has so many issues man ppl never respect the nonbinary characters genders or any lesbain codded characters so ive learned to look at hcs that i see get adopted w/ a cynical eye bc im like "is this hc popular bc ppl see trans ppl that way or bc they like the character?" i am heavily fandom critical bc ive been burned before so id rather point out a possible issue in a hc than ignore it bc im giving the op the benefit of the doubt, i dont trust ppl like that anymore bc i have to be more critical of the things i see nowadays

now loz fandom while not perfect, is leagues better than my past fandoms and im glad for that. thats why i put that in the tags not the main post bc i was genuinely curious if it was from a fic bc i did read a few fics w/ she/her blue so i was actually looking forward to reading a new one lol or if it was a post seeing how it blew up. my intention was never to say "oh only she/her blue is popular" or something it was to say "oh ive seen she/her blue around alot wheres that from?" i mentioned vio/shadow they/them bc ive also seen that a lot but didn't mention she/her red bc i havent seen that like ever tho i was told its a thing so yeah ig the point of my og post more so was i havent seen a lot of the four swords fandom which is true bc i dont check fandom tags a lot and read fics once in a blue moon nowadays

blue in itself was never the issue btw, i think i need to point that out that i never even had an issue. i just have seen a lot of ppl make blue out to be the angry violent one whos hard headed and never listens before swinging. these r sterotypicaly masciunle behaviors and while blue in canon is stubborn and brash hes not as bad as some fics have portrayed him which has in general made me critical of how i see him in fandom and one of the reasons i rlly do not interact w/ four swords fandom in general bc blue honestly has so much potential as the groups protector and ppl just...over look it.

which is WHY i pointed out it was stereotypical to make the most agressive one in the group trans bc it IS a sterotype even if u urself don't personaly mean it that way or lean into that trope that DOESN'T mean me as an outsider can not see a trope ove seen and be wary of it. that is not an attack on those w/ the hc that is me as a feminine nonbinary person w/ transfem friends that likes a character and is worried ppl might be steering into a direction ive seen bf. that is something while u dont have to acknowledge u gotta be a lil aware of even if u urself have never written blue to be the "agressive one." it is a trope ive seen a lot and this is to be clear not bc im saying u or others r writting blue like that, its bc i am wary in general. i can admit i didnt word that well at all i do like the hc and respect the ppl who use it! i was relieved it HASN'T been used that way which is why i said i gave a thumbs up bc it was honestly refreshing to see. let me be transparent and say i havent once seen a she/her blue i disagreed w/ or i felt was leaning into bad blue tropes every she/her blue ive seen has been written well and respectfully which makes sense if queer/trans writters are making her

has anyone so far that ive seen done such stereotyping? no, from what ive seen the fandom has done an excellent job writting her tbh bc the best blue portrayals have been in a few fics ive seen w/ she/her blue, i think one was called color theory? it was rlly relatable, ive always liked blue as a character and never rlly liked how some fans portrayed her bc imo it was one dimensional writing. which is why i was like hm where did this come from! its an interesting hc and dodges more toxic blue tropes, but that doesn't mean i cant be wary still it just means i in general approve of the hc and have my wariness on the back burner.

the implications that i dont like ppl making transfem hcs of their favs kinda points to me that u have never been on my acc bf or clicked on my pinned post. which is fair, if u felt attacked and just replied out of hurt then thats fine but pls be aware of who u r talking to when u wanna demean a person bc u assume they cant think critically about media and assume they dislike transfem hcs in general bc like man i have multiple transfem links and nb links in my hc pinned post i literally am not the one to tell about let ppl hc what they want my hcs r wild dude i know

i didn't know where the hc came from which is why i made the post i didnt know if it was made by someone unconsciously linking those behaviors in blue to that hc and not being aware of that or from someone trans in themself which is what i assumed regardless but i am a cynic w/ fandom bc i have literally had to have been told by trans woman friends in the past i wasn't seeing their issues and to be fair back then i wasnt. me as a person i can admit im rlly obtuse sometimes and my words never come off like i mean them too im sorry, i didnt put that there to offend anyone. i put it there bc i was scared the hc could have been something unintentionally bad and while i didnt think it was, i have in the past given ppl the benefit of the doubt w/ queer hcs widespread only to learn the orgin was something rooted in misogyny/homophobia/transphpbia. so i added those tags as a reassurence to myself if someone replied w/ something like "oh the op sucked so we just reclaimed it"(which, has happened bf in fandoms im in).

im happy the hc came from a place of love like i assumed! i do genuinely like that and im glad to know some ppl i follow started it. im glad honesty im the only one who was a lil wary seeing it which imo means the creators r trusted ppl in the fandom so i didnt have to worry, pls be aware of all i said above tho and dont assume my intentions were sinister or i dont like the hc just bc of my fandom wariness its kinda unfair to me as a person u got agressive and projected what i assume r things uve also seen in the fandom onto me(ie "blue is the bad agressive one!!!") bc u think i was trying to attack a hc.

idk if thats why u replied that way or if it was something eles honesty im not upset u were mad or anything i get wanting to defend a trans hc from perceived backlash(lord knows ive sent my fair share of eassys defending my favs lmao). but also pls be aware not everything u see in a 2 sentence tag is how u first read it and u could have just pointed out where i offended u w/out being agressive bc ur upset i didnt give u the benefit of the doubt when u in turn also didnt give it to me.

i get me writing out a multiparagraph eassy is gonna seem like a lot for a reply but as i said in the beginning i am a verbose person and the way i get my thoughts in order is to write them out. since u personally misinterpreted what i meant bc of my admittedly lacking context tags, pls read this all the way through to actually get what i tried to say in my tags.

all in all...this was a misunderstanding bc i didnt think i needed to add context in my tags bc i thought ppl would have understood why i was wary which! was wrong to assume on my part!!! i get why it rubbed u the wrong way!!!! so let me just say this...

tldr: i literally as a nonbinary person w/ trans friends do not give even the most wholesome seeming trans hcs the benifit of the doubt if i clock they mightve fallen intona sterotype unless i know the origin which is partially why i asked and partially i wanted to see if there was a good fic i coulda got my hands on. its great the hc is a Thing tm rland made by queer ppl who like making their favs transfem! im queer and like making my favs trans as well! there is no beef only me pointing out a possible thing i was uncomfortable about bc i lacked the origin of the hc so pls dont take it as a personal attack it is literally just me not trusting fandoms to treat trans characters right even if the fandom is a majority queer 👍

where did the blue she/her thing come from in four swords fandom? i rlly wanna know bc i never see the other three??? called she/her??? Sometimes shadow or vio r given they/them but ive constantly seen she/her blue in some spaces so??

[equalseleventhirds]

see, that's actually the problem i have with tma, because... to me, tma reads as an incredibly white story? down to its specific themes and how it develops them. there are narratives, questions the story asks, symbolism and character moments that just... completely change in meaning if you imagine jon as a man of color. tma engages with power and agency in ways that feel like it's *aware* that it's a white narrative, and the fanon obscures that for me. it's odd.

POINTS AT THIS

like, it's not just tma that does this, but it IS a podcast with a very large fandom that has projected nonwhite identities onto... white ppl. and so fandom utterly changes the original story to, imo, one with a much deeper meaning than originally intended, bcos if jon is a poc then some themes CHANGE. (some white fans do not at all realize what these changes mean, tho... that's a different beef.)

and yeah like, me & several other fans of color have pointed out that like... this is a VERY white story. even the few characters of color are... often written like. white ppl. bcos unfortunately! as well-intentioned as jonny sims is!! he uh. he has had a tendency to use race as an aesthetic. and he is... white, and so clearly writing from a white perspective on things.

[panlight]

Canon never gave a good justification for Bella being afraid of marriage and having kids, but given her codependency, I headcanon that she didn't want to feel responsible for another person the way that she was responsible for Renee. Codependent ppl usually get exhausted from feeling responsible for their loved one 24/7, and so even tho their self-esteem is based on their value to others, they'll eventually reach a breaking point. It seems like taking care of Renee exhausted Bella, even tho she didn't want to admit it. Since she describes Renee as an "escaped convict" of Forks, Renee might have told Bella how trapped she felt in Forks and Bella interpreted that into Renee felt trapped in her marriage to Charlie. Also, since Renee isn't really the type to enjoy being a housewife or a stay-at-home mom, she might have told Bella how much she hated "keeping house" or something.

If you look at it that way, Bella isn't afraid of marriage or commitment, she's afraid of her and Edward's relationship changing. When she talks about how she wants to be a vampire, it's always because she wants to be Edward's equal. She doesn't want to take care of Edward the way she took care of Renee, because then they wouldn't really be equals. If she's worried that, as his wife, she'll be obligated to take care of Edward instead of just love him, then her aversion to marriage makes sense. This also explains how easily she took to marriage. Once she knew that her and Edward's relationship wouldn't change, she was cool with it.

It's the same with kids and motherhood. Especially in MS, it's shown that Bella sees herself as tying Renee down. Bella mentions that part of the reason she moved to Forks was that Renee was unhappy staying with her in Phoenix. Bella probably thinks that having a kid will impact her life negatively, the way that it impacted Renee. From Bella's perspective, she completely derailed Renee's life plans.

This HC doesn't really explain why Bella didn't want an abortion, but it does explain how she took to motherhood so easily once Renesmee was born. As soon as she realizes that Renesmee won't drastically change her life, she's cool with it.

There are definitely SO many different ways to fill in the blanks of these series with deeper explorations of psychology, trauma, co-dependent relationships, etc. I'm always so impressed by the way fandom will take details like "Bella is madly in love with Edward and wants to spend literally all eternity with him as a vampire--a choice she can't undo--but OMG marriage is a bridge too far!" and come up with compelling canon-compliant explanations.

SM could never.

I'm fairly sure if you asked her why Bella was so against the idea of marriage, you'd get either get an in-universe answer like: "haha well Renee always said early marriage was bad and also she's so shy and having all that attention on her stresses her out" or an out-of-universe answer like "well I wanted to skip right to marriage like I did with Forever Dawn but the publishers wanted to keep it more YA so Bella not wanting to get married was a plot reason they didn't just get married right away."

And that would literally be as deep as any of this goes.

Fandom headcanons are always so much deeper and it's so frustrating, but kind of sadly funny, how much more effort we put into this than SM does. I keep thinking of that book tour event where someone asked what Esme's baby's name was and SM literally had never come up with one and so just asked the attendees for suggestions and named him that way.

Bella's aversion to marriage being shaped by her experience with Renee as a parent and her lack of interest in kids because she's already had to be a parent to some degree would make complete sense and flesh out the story. But I'm sure with SM it was just like "I needed a reason for them not to get married right away" and "I wanted Nessie to be a surprise!" to be the reasons.