#esp the popular fandom perception of it

[eff-plays]

Honestly a lot of the romance pipeline joaks just aren't relatable to me at all.

Zevran > Fenris > Solas > Astarion? What is the man of mid Solas doing among those kings? He's nice like they're not, powerful like they're not, and doesn't play into the trope of being mean/"evil" and sexy. He also has so much power over Lavellan, which the others do not have over their love interests. Get him out of there. Yes they're all sad elves but that's it. Surface level reading.

Also I don't think Cullenites who are now obsessed with Astarion like Astarion for the same reasons I do. That is all I will say on the matter because I am seeing a large gathering of people outside my window and they seem to be chanting wishes of my death and gripping pitchforks.

[stormblessed95]

Hi Stormblessed (dope name btw),

Don't know if this is the best place for this essay or the right time but I need to word-vomit this out, or I'm gonna be a JK-style spaced out zombie all day.

It's a truth universally acknowledged that a big part of the fandom tends to mis-characterize the members based on edits, fanfics and out-of-context clips. Something probably mostly to do with how social media platforms have been pushing for these short videos over the last few years. Why watch 300 hours of original content (some of which is behind a paywall) if you can get the gist of it (you think) from TikToks?

My particular point has to do with how that allows for the narrative (aka made up shit) especially around Jimin to grow. All of the members get that treatment, the maknaes worse due to their popularity, but due to how a big part of Army are also tkk shippers, Jimin is the one who's portrayal often skews more negative. The others' perceptions just are neutral or fantastical in a sense that they're more like badly written male leads. Don't get me wrong, solos throwing around bs is nothing singular to him but no one gets accused (said completely seriously btw) of sleeping his way into BTS or the release of his album.

After I saw this vitriol for the first time I had to actually sit down because wtf.

And then I started wondering why that is, and came to the conclusion that it is:

(Internalized) misogyny and sexism

Blatant homophobia

Jimin is the member the most obviously in tune of his femininity. He hasn't subscribed to gender norms for a decade at least, and once his hyper-masculine-esque persona from the debut days was dismissed, he ventured further. (That isn't to dismiss the growth they all have shown in that area.)

But antis, akgaes, Solos and shippers take that femininity and apply every stereotype and misogynistic idea to JM.

Traits they f.e. hate:

He is openly flirty with many people (members especially)

He is very physical, and touch is arguably one of his love languages and go-to way of comforting smn

He is pretty af and knows it

He's sensual and sexy and knows it

He's cute

He's sweet (aka a good fucking human)

But why does that make "them" hate him so much?

Because they have been taught that these traits in women (like themselves) are bad. What makes it worse, however, is that the men around JM all know these things to be true, acknowledge them as true and compliment him on them. In the case of JK (since this is about Jikook at the end of the day):

He loves flirty JM despite sometimes not knowing how to handle him (ehem the 'shameless convo'). He flirts back (fe the whole live where he was in bed begging for JM to come over)

Tkkers and such love pulling the "JK hates it" card. Which is nonsense, considering how he seeks JM's comfort when he's down (esp during concerts), actively cuddles JM (In The Soop) and never uses all his big muscles to shove JM but rather to just carry him around. Compare that to the jokingly disgusted face Yoongi pulls when Tae tries to hold his hand, and it becomes glaringly obvious that no one who says the members dislike touching each other has a leg to stand on. Calling it harassment goes so far beyond any line of sanity...

JK - like all of BTS - acknowledges that Jimin's beauty is simply out of this world. They are regularly stunned by his appearance

Just gonna point to JK's reaction to Filter, Blood Sweat & Tears, Black Swan, and Set Me Free pt 2 here. JK calls JM sexy so often it's hilarious

* inserts clip of absolutely WHIPPED JK after JM cutely punches him during that performance of Boy With Luv *. Also we know that "cute" his JK's type as he himself admitted.

Jimin has been Jungkook's comfort person for so long, and with such depth that he dedicated a whole trip and video to him. They care for each other so deeply that the only logical conclusion was to go to the military together.

Aka: he is all that they hate in the girls/women in their normal life so they can't do nothing but tear him down. They envy how comfortable he seems in his own skin, how easily he goes from sexy to cute, how loved he is by those around him. On top of that is how gay people are still perceived and treated by a lot of countries around the world. No matter what they say, being an army and shipping men doesn't make you automatically an ally and non-homophobic.

They treat Jimin like they would most likely treat the lgtbqia+ people in real life: something to be careful of, someone dishonest and slutty.

They conflate everything they hate about themselves and gay people and * boom * out come frankly terrifying tweets, fanfics and shit.

Contrast that with how these very same people fetishize the relationship between Tae and Jungkook - either viewing them like men who watch p_rn involving two women, or a self-insert with how little character they have - and that's the state of the army shipping community. They could be Barbie dolls getting smashed together and you wouldn't know the difference.

I'm not saying Jikookers are better in that, but the language they tend to use is incredibly different.

---

That was a lot.

To end on a sweet note: I saw a quote on Twitter "If you want to find out what someone fears losing, look at what they photograph."

And...well. that just screams Jikook

Hi! Thank you, I like my name too 🥰

And yeah, basically I agree. I think there is more to it as well, but that a lot of it could be boiled down to all this. And yeah, jikookers are just as guilty of this too, but not always in the same way. Sometimes in a way that is more fetishizing but is just as harmful. Take it from someone who has seen it all in my inbox from people who feel safe on anon 😂😂

Thanks for sharing! And your quote at the end is SOOOOO cute!

[mamawasatesttube]

just thinking out loud here but i feel like a lot of popular perception of kon esp in online fandom spaces is colored by his joie de vivre and all the times he's silly and goofy. which i do of course adore!! i love when he's silly and goofy. but comparing that perception to, that of like, clark or kara, i feel like kon gets shunted into the box of "dumb comic relief character" a lot more easily. lots of factors probably contribute to that (sb94 having a bad rep, while no other kon comic really goes into a lot of his tragedy; conflation with the side of the fandom that doesn't read comics; the fact that comparatively postcrisis kara doesn't have a team the way kon has yj and clark is seen as a more capable adult, so other characters in the jl get the "dumb comic relief" short end of the stick more often; etc) ...

... but what really gets me about him is that he does embody a lot of the same traits as the rest of the kryptonian superfam. he's so extremely kind. he's got that same noble heart as the rest of them; he cares about everyone and he wants to protect everyone. and he's so, so lonely. he struggles between cultures and worlds where he feels like he doesn't belong to either. he is so strong and capable and holds so much power that it scares him.

cradles him gently in my hands. he contains multitudes... come closer don't you want to love him 🥺

[anghraine]

petty ranting about the LOTR movies

I've been in various fandoms where an ostensibly "faithful" adaptation was frequently held up as the One True Version of the text, the author's vision brought to life, the one nothing could ever compare to and the reason no others should ever be made, how is it possible to envision the characters or interpretations of them differently blah blah blah. (1995 P&P fandom is very frequently like this, sometimes Faith and Fear fans are, esp wrt The Borgias, etc.)

But I'm not sure I've ever seen an adaptation so uncritically adored by so many as the Jackson LOTR movies. I don't think any fandom is so insistent on an adaptation as people are insistent on the movies as the one true version of Middle-earth, even where they're radically different. Even when people agree with criticisms, it's been really noticeable that people often also add disclaimers about how they love the movies, they're perfect in almost every way, they're super faithful apart from this thing, of course the reason for [choice that was made] was understandable it's just that... etc.

And the thing is, I may hate some of the interpretations in other allegedly faithful adaptations. Like, speaking of the 1995 P&P, I dislike a lot about it and its influence on popular perception of what P&P is, of what adaptation should look like, of the brooding version of my fave hero Darcy, and so on. But I do understand why it's often held up as a faithful adaptation.

It uses a lot of the original text (though it can be subtly or glaringly different in execution), it's able to blur the lines between its own inventions and material from the text in a way that's often convinced audiences that things from the adaptation are actually in the novel, and it's more successful at doing this than any other Davies version of Austen IMO, it has a very convincing cast, blahblah. Like, I disagree that it is as faithful as it's reputed to be (by a long ways), but I get why it has that reputation, at least.

But I genuinely find Jackson's LOTR so different from the book! The movies certainly draw from it in significant ways, but dialogue is heavily altered or manufactured, motivations and characterization are simplified, altered, or just outright transformed into something entirely different, themes are shifted around, the structure is seriously changed (something Tolkien specifically did not want to happen), the relatively compact battles in the book are turned into big action set pieces taking up major swaths of screen time, a lot of the lore is heavily contracted, changed, or simply absent where it casts heavy shadows over the dynamics in the book, and oh yeah, they manage to be even more racist.

Some of this (not the racism) is defensible even if I don't personally agree w/ those defenses in a lot of cases. But there are a ton of differences between them! And you can talk about the films as their own thing cinematically and that's its own discussion. But the conflation of the movies with the actual things Tolkien actually wrote is even more widespread and absolute and annoying than with things like the 1995 P&P, with not half as much reason for it.

[okidenshi]

Realizing that the surge in popularity of "Content/Media", especially when it comes to content things like movies, tv shows, video games, etc, means to me that western society at large enjoys media because we are told to, rather than naturally enjoying media for the insight and/or inspiration it can provide to us.

When I was a kid and was bullied for liking anime, it was because I talked about it and the character's I liked in a very genuine and personal way. Sure maybe a bit of that was "cringe", but it was ultimately out of appreciation for the story/characters/art form; it was my way of communicating how I felt to others, and also a way for me to learn more about myself in relation to the world.

Now that anime/nerd stuff is more accepted and even celebrated in the mainstream, I find myself feeling stressed to look or behave a certain way in a 'community' I once felt universally understood and accepted by. And I think it's because the "normies" (im tired i cant think of a better word) are implementing false authenticity and their own perceptions of genuineness onto a community that typically celebrates and discusses cheesy yet genuine nerdy feelings/characters/etc (not that fandom spaces dont have their downsides, but all in all, I felt WAY safer approaching/being friends with someone wearing a sailor moon shirt in middle school than anyone else).

I'm not like, upset or mad at the fact that "anime/nerdy culture is popular now", what I'm upset by is that creative media/content is just consumed and talked about like peanuts now. The content mills on shorts who start off with "your favorite characters motivation explained! and then proceed to explain nothing about anything for a minute and thirty seconds. The pressure to look nonporous and wear colored contact lenses if I cosplay because my photos "wont look as accurate".

Let me be clear i dont have an issue w/ people who genuinely LIKE to do this stuff- power to you. But some of us just want to vibe and not worry about how character accurate or "aesthetically pleasing" we look to others.

Anime/nerdy isn't suddenly popular because a majority of western culture is just now coming to appreciate the mediums. It's popular because it's been idealized and marketed as a way to feel better about ourselves in the most hollow way possible: buy the merch. buy the merch. do the dances to the music audio clip of the week, relate

And Listen! I like merch! I enjoy buying blorbo things, i get it! But dear god I've never felt so PRESSURED to PERFORM my enjoyment of the media i like. As a kid, I did it from a genuine place, but when im scrolling down reels an seeing all the other "nerdy" people are yelling at me about how this should be that and tha tneeds to be this and this is how youg et it to be perfect and to get likes and the algorithm and the beep beep boodobop- like I DO NOT CARE. I do not care.

I like the concept of making ita bags, of collecting merch, even having display shelves or rooms dedicated to collections. Again, inherently there is nothing wrong with this- and esp as an adult, I think it does bring me genuine joy to buy ye old merch. But i'm tired of pretending I don't feel the external pressure to be a "cool" kind of nerd. Cool nerds begone.... cringe nerds prosper. I will enjoy my nerd things in such a genuinely cringe and authentic way, and I will not care if im "doing it right" or not. Boo you whore.

[cursedpinterest]

ed tw

i'd argue that the waifspo/coquette stuff is more of a branch off of thinspo/edblr than a reincarnation, if only because it's almost the exact same posts, photos, memes, etc, just with different tags. argubly, its even an evolution of it

unfortunately, I was on edblr for a long time (2014--2020), so i sorta witnessed the gradual evolution from triggering posts in self-contained tags to triggering but #aesthetic posts that were cross tagged. at first it was relatively mild--like cross tagging 'grungy thinspo' in the main grunge tag, etc.

but weirdly with the kpop boom of the late 2010s (esp 2018 and 2019) there was a big explosion of cross tagging into kpop fandom tags, and then into anime tags, and other """delicate pastel stuff""" as well as other aesthetic tags, esp dark academia and instagram it girls

there was always an uh 'market overlap' so to speak. like a lot of people would use anime characters or k/jpop stars as thinspo, but they never crossed tagged them before. they'd tag it like #anime thinspo or whatever, but not the name of over character along with it, yknow? i know right before the pandemic there was a migration from edblr to edtwt, plus since the beginning of tumblr edblr got a lot of their thinspo from pinterest. since cross tagging is more common on those sites maybe some users assumed it'd work that way on tumblr too?

so maybe the coquette nonsense is just a congealing of all that that leaked elsewhere online. that's just a guess though

sorry if this is too long. im not even sure why im telling you all this but ig since you have to deal with it a lot of the time you deserved some context. anyway, i love your blog

first i just wanna say im sorry you went through all of this, and i genuinely hope you are doing well 🫂

& yes i think you are correct with it being an evolution more than a reincarnation, i just couldn’t really think of a way to promptly describe it in the tags at the time. i luckily escaped from proana/ed spaces before i got onto tumblr, so i didn’t know much of edblr apart from the weird shit that escaped containment, for a lack of a better word, but once i started using pinterest more often after polyvore died, as many young people (esp girls) did, i saw a kind of rise in the “aesthetic” side that was probably, looking back, just thinly-veiled thinspo.

now i feel that the shit im seeing on tumblr with the coquette girls and the whisper pinterest girls is much more blatant, like im getting flashbacks to when i trolled proana forums, back before tumblr or pinterest were popular. although, im sure that kind of brazenness always existed, i just wasn’t as aware of it as i am now, probably bc i avoided that shit as much as possible, and now i kind am more perceptive to this shit i guess.

i know that waifspo is used instead of thinspo since it isn’t censored like thinspo is, so i feel like “waif” and “coquette” are recent labels that are attached to stealth ed content. pinterest has been trying to crack down on thinspo lately, but it’s just relabeled now to post about it sneakily. it’s sad that there are so many little thinspo dog whistles floating around since most social medias have cracked down on the obvious terms. i fear for the young people just now getting on the internet and potentially being brainwashed into this shit.

and re: the kpop thinspo, i made a post about that like a month or so ago but it’s truly darksided… like i got into kpop during the pandemic like a lot of people and every so often when i would look up content about groups i liked, i would see pictures of idols with captions like “omg weight goals” with proana hashtags. the saddest thing is that a couple of these idols have opened up about being forced into extreme diets by their companies, or how they developed eds bc of the industry, and ppl are still tagging pics of them looking unhealthily thin with “body goals” like it’s just such a blatant disrespect, they aren’t fans they’re fetishizing these idols suffering.

sorry for getting into it lol… i just have a lot to say, as im sure a lot of ppl who have also lived thru this do as well. but don’t apologize for this ask i really really appreciated it!!! i honestly think there needs to be more discussion about eds, specifically re: the online communities garnered around them and how they promote people to basically self harm, so yea, thank you for the ask💞

[daz4i]

Ppl who make Chuuya solely the bottom imho also tend to make him more outwardly emotional and “good” I’ve noticed. Like they have him crying or talking about his feelings, sometimes with like therapy speak, and they sort of act like he’s a more moral person than he is? Like they focus more on the fact that he’s generally an amiable person, esp off the clock, than the fact that actually he’s a workaholic who doesn’t really lose sleep over killing ppl and like, very much would have let Dazai kill Q. Like he’s not an innocent secret do-gooder who craves life in the light most ardently?? He’s been an executive in the mafia since he was 18 and he’s the second in command. He’s a badass who is comfortable in his own skin and secure in his skills, and he’s never cried in canon, and imho he would rather chew glass than talk about his feelings openly

honestly that's a common ooc thing i see in top chuuya stuff (or non-smutty fics) too unfortunately 😩 BUT i do think there's a connection between the fandom perception of top/bottom "personalities" (in fanon. on god this whole discussion is gonna be in my future callout post if i don't clarify that) and this type of characterization but it's more like. a chicken and egg situation

as in, people who write bottom chuuya don't necessarily make him ooc. but the ppl who do write him in this ooc way, tend to make him a bottom in their fics, bc these are traits that are commonly associated with bottoms in fanon (in every fandom, like as a general concensus thing many ppl tend to fall into without thinking. you know those people who look for the same ship dynamic in every fandom they join? these guys)

all that being said the same is true abt dazai too (and making him more mysterious and suave), in both directions actually (like making him more whiny and spoiled and have less of a backbone or agency). this sort of thing happens to all characters in all fandoms i think, where one thing feeds into the other, it's just. ig. louder with skk bc they really really /don't/ fit those common character traits you see in many generic popular ships

hope that made sense 🙏

[roobylavender]

So I'm pretty new to comics and the DC comics fandom and I've been noticing this interesting parallel in the cultural ideas and fandom discussions with the star trek fandom, specifically the concept of Kirk Drift. In brief the term was coined by an article talking about how the cultural perception and modern conception of Jim Kirk is completely made up and utterly divorced from the Kirk we actually see in the original series. And your analyses of male characters as they were portrayed in the 70s and 80s (Hal Jordan and Bruce Wayne in particular) really reminded me of this article.

It's interesting how similar the warping of these massive cultural icons is given the similarities (being a part of a decades old property and having been written by multiple writers over a long stretch of time) and the differences (the sheer volume of material that dc characters get as opposed to 3 seasons of a tv show plus some movies, the mediums, different industries, and being a part of a genre that kind of espouses different ideals). Another interesting commonality is that they're both media that everyone knows about but very few people have actually engaged with.

I don't know how much of star trek you've watched but the idea of a hotheaded, rash, womanizing dick is wildly different from the canon Kirk who was a nerd, pretty by the book, utterly devoted to his ship and his duty to his crew as a starfleet officer, was on really good terms with his exes who were all accomplished and intelligent women with lives and aspirations of their own, sensitive, and extremely professional.

The reason why I'm explaining that is that it's really striking how the imagined version of Kirk and various superhero characters ends up diminishing the point of these stories and the progressive themes that they actually did have and ends up creating a version of the story that is significantly more regressive than the source material. This not only affects the character in question but often also ends up flattening and erasing female characters that actually existed. For instance the whole purpose of star trek is to imagine a better future, a world where we've moved beyond the issues of today. It wasn't always great at it but the intent was always clear. Similarly the superhero comics genre to my limited understanding is meant to inspire the idea of regular heroism in the readers, to make you feel like you could be a hero too. And I get that these male characters get treated significantly better than their female counterparts but the destruction of their characters doesn't just affect them it also affects the overall story and the world of the story and ends up destroying anything good these stories had to say in the first place.

I don't really have anything to conclude this with just noticed this similarity and thought you might find it interesting given your interest in looking at stories within their cultural context and would love to know your thoughts. Have a nice week!

i unfortunately never got into star trek! i do think i've watched the first chris pine movie but i imagine going off of what you're saying here that it wasn't entirely accurate to who kirk is as a persongjkdfjlhdf. still though, this totally resonates and i couldn't agree more! i really believe there is a huge issue with with the life span of various media allowing their core message to deteriorate over time, esp bc that life span means they evolve in response to political changes in the real world. we are progressively moving into a very conservative time period in our history right now and that could not be reflected more than in what is being propagated via popular, long-standing source material. it's a very worrisome and disheartening phenomenon and i imagine much won't change unless the public political spectrum changes first :/

[selamat-linting]

so, last time i left off on homestuck, i was introduced with the cherubs, and meenah peixes' bizarre (afterlife) adventure. as always, some thoughts :

-i kinda feel bad for dirk lol. out of all the group, he was the one caliborn felt is the most tolerable to talk to. and worst of all, he kinda let him play his shitty games. eugh, if that was me, i'd just scoff at caliborn's threats on killing his sister and accidentally kickstarted the apocalypse too early since my ignorance pissed him off. to be fair, the porn drawing game feels like a pretty lackcluster attempt at trolling. its so cute how dirk draw himself kissing his crush.

-poor calliope though. last time i saw her she's very much a ghost, maybe stuck around the furthest ring along with the other very dead ghosts, but is somehow able to subtly influence things like guide caliborn into doing his quest from the viewport, and allegedly maybe stop meenah and vriska from having their duel and waking up john. this is only a maybe though, im not very convinced at my perception of events here.

-speaking of calliope and caliborn, this is where things started getting meta right? homestuck has always have a bit of metafiction elements to it, and a lot of its themes seems to be deconstructing and examining popular culture. act 6 is where things started getting off the rails, i mean, where references to internet subcultures gets more blatant, more up to date with the current time it was made (direct meme references instead of making its own inner jokes derived from irl shit like sbahj), and started to put a mirror on homestuck since it has grown into a notorious major fandom now. it makes sense that hussie would start writing about homestuck instead writing about the internet in general. there is no way act 6 can be something else. and it has its negatives just as much as it has its positives

-first of all, meme references in media has always been hard to do right. remember that burger ad fiasco? some of the jokes on act 6 doesnt land as well as in act 5 and 4

-wait shit i went off the rails. i want to talk about caliope and caliborn first. caliope is a hypothetical fan of hs meanwhile caliborn is a hater right? he was also a representation of misogyny which fits with the times. a lot of cringe culture ppl in the 2010s, at least the loudest ones, tend to be misogynists. i've seen the case over and over again. people who said they hate the fandom when actually they just hate to see teen girls having fun. they also tend to be ableists esp their attitude around bullying and autistic ppl but hussie is also an ableist too, so even though he was the one being bullied by cringe culture people online and benefitted from autistic kids making fanworks, he made caliborn to be the guy with a learning disability. hilarious bitch ig.

-but other than that, caliope's insult to caliborn implies that the murder he did was detrimental to his growth as person. not just metaphorically, but literally. im not so up to date with cherub lore and alien biology, but killing your headmate before their natural death and integration Sounds Bad. and based on calliope's word alone, it might even make caliborn perpetually stunted in cherub equivalent of puberty forever, unable to reach maturity. poor dude. but, is actually a pretty good commentary on toxic masculinity preventing one's full growth as a person because he can't allow himself to gain emotional maturity and do so called female activities.

-okay, moving on from the cherubs. the dancestors. personally, i like their designs, i spesifically love meenah, porrim, and aranea. meenah is scratching the vriska itch but with a different flavor. and i guess kankri, despite his massive annoying factor was nice too. i know a kid who actually act like him. the kid in my town went drunk with his friends and when his friends started being sad about his ex, the kid called him a sexist pig. a few weeks later i got news that this same kid persistently try get girls into having sex with him. educating him was a bitch and a half yknow and im not even that sad the kid decides to withdraw from organizing for now. but it is a bit hopeful to see that a kid like kankri, in another timeline, if given the chance to grow up and learn would be a terrific leader. maybe a few years later the kid in my town would change too?

-but other than that its... man how do i say this. okay, its bad. a lot of the characters are just there just for the sake of having to be there. hussie, you dont have to complete all 12 of the dancestors its okay. youre just wasting more energy animating stuff that you obviously dislike by now. like idc what they says, but the 12 dancestors wasnt even a good mirror of tumblr subcultures. its just there as a one off gag instead of something they wants to delve into later on. the jokes wasnt even that funny like, i've spent two years on reddit making fun of softboy nice guys and gamer gurls the joke is old at this point. and hussie seems to delve deeper into being an ableist asshole the more people criticize them. its pathetic to make a strawman character of your haters and criticizers. honestly, caliborn would have been a better character if its just a stand in for toxic masculinity instead of a homestuck hater. the story is too bloated at this point. just give it a rest.

-also, act 6 weakness is that most of the story elements would fly over someone who never know the heydays of 2012-2015 tumblr. okay, this applies to homestuck as a whole honestly. like its about the internet and american 90s nostalgia. only a terminally online person would fully appreciate it. but dear god the mental illnes you'll get if youre one of lucky demographics to understand... hussie might have hit and miss on some things, but when they're right theyre right. i do think there are merits on making things that will never have mass appeal.

-okay, now thats out of my system im gonna say that from now on, im not gonna take homestuck as seriously as i did yesterday. i can see this is the point where things started to fall apart. bloated character sets, too many authorial self inserts, plot is becoming overly convoluted, the social commentary are becoming incoherent. hussie can make an entire page about dirk explaining the downfall of western civilization using historical materialism to jake but this will always be the webcomic where the 'scariest' troll is a rapper who made vodka pie, slept in a bed of honks, and taped wings on his godtier cosplay.

-okay this is getting too long. on to facking part 2 of my post!!!!

[numbknee]

for the fic tropes - genderswap, bodyswap and de-aging 💛🤍

hmm ok let’s have a go at these!

gender swap: a solid B rating for me. I don’t necessarily seek it out but if I see a good piece of art or an interesting fic premise I’ll click on that shit no question. it’s interesting to explore how the characters would develop if they were a different gender and had different outlooks on presentation, their expectations from society, how they deal with potential sexism/newfound privilege, etc. good shit!!! it’s also great to see artists’ takes on different potential character designs

bodyswap: full disclosure, I was (or rather am currently in the process of) writing a kyman body-swap AU (of which I posted a snippet on twitter lol) but I ADORE this trope. solid A for me as long as it’s done with care. It’s such a good way to explore characters’ personalities and to challenge the characters’ perception of each other that I eat that shit up every time. weirdly enough it’s such a common trope in western cartoons that I didn’t bother to question it from a very young age??? (esp cuz western cartoon tropes are like… objectively weird??? for example the eastern anime-based trope of a generic beach episode is as common as the western trope where they shrink down to microscopic size to explore another character’s body??? like wtf??? loooool). I think I was first indoctrinated by that teen titans episode where raven and starfire swapped bodies and learned so much about each other in the process that it impacted their interactions significantly (with starfire understanding why raven needs to keep such disciplined control over her emotions, and raven understanding how starfire’s abilities depend on her emotions for their power). it was an amazing character exploration and I strive to replicate that feeling I felt all those years ago for my potential readers (if and when I finally work out the story for that AU…maybe someday lol)

de-aging: I’ll admit I don’t have much information for this particular AU! the first and only time I was exposed to this concept was “the curious case of benjamin button” which I saw in theaters in 2008 so I’m sort of unsure how popular this trope is with more contemporary fandom spaces. so maybe a solid B rating for me? I do see how it could be pretty interesting though! age is a crucial component of a character’s design, so changing it gradually over time though reverse aging could significantly impact a character’s trajectory in the narrative in a very interesting way. cool concept!

[liedownquisition]

Lays down, staring at fics.

I think the worst part of writing, for me, is my struggle between my strong stance/preference on unreliable narration to varying degrees (for me, it's built into, like, three out of four narration styles: 1st, 2nd, and 3rd limited... which is pretty much all styles I write in on the regular, esp the last one with an emphasis on character perspectives) and the, hm, objectivity-perception of the reader?

I don't really want to tag everything I write with unreliable narrator unless it's an extreme example, but it's nonetheless prevalent. Not to mention the dialogue.

I think there's a lot of "x said it, it's true" or "x said this we know it's not true. Y said this, which contradicts it, so it HAS to be the truth that x is missing." esp as we are influenced by other works in the fandom or popular fanon.

Just to take a non-random example that keeps me up at night, in No Peeking Dick tells Clark "B’s the one who talked me out of trying to kill a man at the age of nine."

Now, this sentiment is a bit controversial. Arguments about how angry & violent Dick was as Robin - whether by actions or impulsive thoughts - come up a lot (esp as a counter to the in-universe dilution of Jason as the "angry, violent Robin"). I included this line because it serves, tbh, multiple levels of characterization.

Dick is canonically a master manipulator. Even without his whole stint as a spy, he's very good at getting what he wants. It's not always a necessarily malicious act, it's just part of what makes him a powerhouse. Sometimes it bites him in the ass (Chemo), and others it works out perfectly. Clark isn't necessarily actively expecting him to lie to him, but as they're in close quarters, it's not like Dick expects to get away with doing so. Everything he tells Clark is true... to an extent.

I am, a Dick Grayson fan and was for a long, long time before I liked Jason. I am ALSO a big fan of nuanced and flawed characters. Do I believe Dick Grayson is capable of murder without butchering his character or compromising his ideals as Nightwing? As an adult, in the heat of the moment, yes. We even have proof with that time he killed Joker. Which I... know I've rambled about somewhere but maybe that's one of those posts that I never actually made, but did touch on it a bit on this post about Bruce's rejection of killing Joker.

Do I think he could have done it at nine, on not just a physically "can it happen" level but a "would he actually, emotionally, be capable of finishing the job" one? No. Does Dick, who has a flawed perception of himself, THINK that he could/would have? Yes.

In Seldom, it's all about flawed perception of things & the nature of the truth. (or at least, it's supposed to be. I think I got a little side-tracked in the middle, it was supposed to be a bit surreal, and complicated) & ESPECIALLY in regards to things like people's feelings and perceptions. To quote the song I linked "The truth is that you can never really know. The truth is that you will only think you know."

I finished it in a bit of a rush because I needed it done and out of my head so it stopped distracting me. so the end is... not my best work, but the concept of it I have strong feelings on.

Basically, Bruce tells Jason he can't give him what he wants, but that he'll try to do everything short of that to fix their relationship. Whether or not Bruce actually will do so, he believes he is telling Jason the truth.

Jason meanwhile tells him it's not enough, but with the dialogue tag emphasizing that he is lying, because Jason believes it will be enough.

I wanted to leave it open, so people could good or bad dad it if they wanted, but, tbh? In my mind this is really just the setup that's really going to keep Jason "on the hook" so to speak. The same kind of characterization that has watered Jason down more and more and more until he's just letting himself take whatever he's given, no matter how terrible, because of that craving for familial connection.

If I was going to write it longer, or make a series of it, it would go more the latter, but I am emphatically trying NOT to take on multiple long-series in the same fandom at once, so it won't happen because Thigh Puns/Body-verse is gonna keep me occupied for a while, so everything else will be mostly one or two-shots maybe.

[hanszoe]

do you fluently speak Japanese? How has your knowledge on the language impact how you perceive the aot story? I feel that a lot of people who are only English speaks or don’t read translations lack context when it comes to characters, esp Hansi

hi, thank you for the ask!

i am not fluent whatsoever, that's actually why i haven't read the manga in full. i had a lot of exposure growing up so grammar and sentence structure is intuitive to me, but my knowledge of kanji is near nonexistent and i don't know much technical vocabulary, which is difficult with something like snk that has a lot of it. when reading/translating i use https://ejje.weblio.jp/ for example sentences to get a feeling of how a word is used and https://www.weblio.jp/ to check precise definitions of words. snk is great for me because all canon text has furigana that spells out the reading of words, i'd probably have a lot less patience for it if there were no furigana lol

as for perception, i have to give maybe a surprising answer and say that i don't really think any japanese fan interpretation is unique to japan; for example het ships with hansi specifically levihan is the most popular in japan and led to all of their feminization and fanservice in the anime adaptation

for fun here's the worldwide search popularity of levihan vs the ship name written in japanese (which doesn't change noticeably when limited to japan)

and the west is much more tolerant of queerness, for example i read a japanese fan response recently to the line "levi and erwin married" from this news article about the attack on titan musical saying that the press is so free in the west. the recent response to hansi being depicted in male obi is also related, as this is hansi violating a very strict gender rule that doesn't really have a comparison for those viewed as female sexed in the west anymore.

so i wouldn't exactly say japanese comprehension is correlated with narrative comprehension, i think the only difference is some mistranslations or language/culture misinterpretations don't exist in japanese fandom. words can still be interpreted in many different ways even if you're reading the source, and narrative analysis i think exists beyond language

but if one was looking for an exhaustive understanding of the text including how isayama himself may have seen it, i do think that japanese comprehension is necessary since he uses words really intentionally, the same phrasing comes up a lot of the time in ways that may have been translated differently in each case by the english translator. i actually do see this a lot, people trying to draw linguistic similarities across parts of a translation as if they were intentional where whatever was said is written differently in original language.

the one thing on hansi i would say is pretty much impossible to communicate in english is actually the issue of their pronouns and use of gendered grammar. isayama requested gender neutral pronouns be used for hansi in english, but because people addressing hansi in the text can see them, the use of "they" would be a refutation of their status as either gender and absolutely would not happen without inconsistency or establishment. whereas in japanese isayama is able to never gender them, which i think would have been his preference if it were possible in other languages.

hansi also speaks quite masculinely a lot of the time, but people viewed as female can still speak like that. i think actually a larger contributor to this is how others address them, especially men around them, mima masafumi who is the sound director for the anime and in my opinion absolutely essential to hansi's adapted voice since romi doesn't quite get it when he's not there told her to voice hansi as "unisex" based on them being called omae by others lol. so there is an element there about how hansi speaks and is perceived that i would say unfortunately does require japanese comprehension

[niceandbluept2]

no one besides me understands the acclaimed horror vampire series for 9 year olds cirque du freak the saga of darren shan by darren shan like i do . u all want to fuck mr crepsley but he is canonically ugly. u dont get it like i do like yes its funny vampire series but also its deeply devastating on so many levels and only i understand for why

[bsaka7]

I can guess given ur maxiel answer perhaps but lestappen? 😈

see my maxiel answer here... Ok I'll put my answer under the cut

yeah lmao so you can see my thoughts on writing max. Not super positive. But I feel like i GET the fundamental appeal and conflict of maxiel. like. i see what's interesting there!!!! I can't say that about lestappen. literally i don't get it at all. I don't think Charles likes max. I don't think max particularly cares about charles except as "some guy i can talk to at work." I really don't think Charles likes being constantly compared to max - there's maybe a frustration there but it doesn't seem active about max but more about the surrounding perceptions, and that goes all the way back to childhood (and i think is applicable of a number of those childhood Karting names. like u get este frustrated that he beats max in f3 and max goes straight to F1 and he doesn't even have a drive for gp3 til Toto wolff comes through). besides the point. they weren't childhood friends. mostly I don't get the fundamental conflict. like. to me they're not enemies. I don't think they've truly been rivals this season because max clearly drove away with the championship pretty early.

Idk I always think there's some way that most pairings can be done convincingly. There's obv the parallel destinies with rbr/ferrari. i think an argument could be made about fate. I could see a gen fic working about them - not together, necessarily, but parallel. However i truly do not get the predominant characterization at all. they are not a "sweet" pairing. they would not be good to each other. max is not that much bigger than Charles and Charles will not roll over and take it. it feels to me like they've been slotted into a classic fandom archetype that takes away literally everything interesting about who they are as people. the fact that they are insanely competitive. insanely driven. to the point of brutality, even. i also hate most the tropes i see commonly used with them (esp abo sorry) so there's that as well. Also I like charles way more than i like max so even tho i like to make him suffer and have read it done well in a few fics, for the most part, it doesn't work for me. i would say this is one of my least favorite pairings, partially because I don't get it and partially because it grates due to its popularity.

i will end on a more positive note (or try to). My third most popular (though much lower if you sort by comments lol) and first ever F1 fic is lestappen. why? God knows. i agree with my own characterizations about 0% hence why it has been on anon forever. as always i am deeply grateful for the response i got to that fic as it encouraged me to write more!

[padfootastic]

I hate when fandom turns a female character with little canon info into the perfect Cool Girl with zero real flaws. Putting Lily on a moral pedestal even though we know she was very ambiguous like nearly smiling when her bff was getting picked on by j/s? Staying bffs with Snape when he was apparently cursing muggleborns? And she wasn't a hot Hermione either bc again, the Snape friendship (Hermione's too social justice oriented to stay friends with a DE) & J/S were top of the class, not Lily!

heh i remember seeing a post a while ago that was probably the first time i ever saw lily evans criticism. until then, it was all very golden girl lily. it basically talked about this—how she was constantly defending her DE friend, ‘he’s not like the other ones’ style, while at the same time having a conflict with the more popular (and overtly’on the good side’) kids and how that could’ve affected her public perception.

(it’s an idea i wanna explore in fic tbh did others see her as a pick me girl? how was her relationship w her batchmates, esp with the war picking up outside, and her friendship w snape inside? we see her confronting him, yes, but it was very private and others wouldn’t know about it. would it have seemed like apologism wrt him? there’s so much we don’t know. i wanna write about a lily evans who spent years not building meaningful connections w her dorm/house mates in favor of clinging to the familiarity of snape, only to have to cut ties there and now she’s floundering, with people who’re wary and/or disdainful of her and how she navigates that terrain)

but, if i’m being honest, it was probably more complicated than that. a lot of people have ‘problematic’ friends they have emotional attachments to, and they keep justifying it until they can’t. and snape’s mudblood comment was probably the straw that broke the back for her. and we have to keep in mind, she was only 15, in a world that was unfamiliar and probably hostile to her. she stuck to what she knew best, which unfortunately ended up being snape. and she was remarkably strong in the face of his pleasing as well.

[anghraine]

I’m just thinking about how the vast majority of my fandoms are ones with a lot of good qualities but also some glaring bad ones (SW, The Borgias, Guild Wars, even Tolkien). But the one exception to this is also the one I’ve written for more than any other fandom but Star Wars (all of SW, by a difference of one fic), and which inspired two of my five most popular fics.

It’s Pride and Prejudice, of course, which is ... so popular, and so iconic, and so frequently adapted that I think people can overlook in a weird way how incredibly polished it is as a novel and esp a novel written in 1796 and published in 1813. P&P is incredibly good, with very few flaws, and yet I keep going back to it fannishly in a way that I don’t usually go back to things I respect that much.

I mean, I spent about seven years pretty much exclusively in Austen fandom before switching to SW because it seemed less wanky (really). I have Reservations about a lot of the adaptations and the way they dominate perceptions of the books (surprise, I’m me), but still, my driving impulse for Austen fannishness is love for the books and esp P&P. And I’m not quite sure why it’s such an exception to what usually draws me to fandom.