#especially with what's going to happen on the fandom side of things with racist new ocs

[olderthannetfic]

Update on the Bridgerton stuff: the online fandom is so homophobic and horrible, and the mods of stuff like the main subreddit refuse to do anything about it (but will remove comments by people upset about the homophobia for "generalizing") that LGBTQ+ fans have had to make their own spaces. There's a whole separate subreddit that bans homophobia called r/bridgertonlgbt, and of course the ones from the main one keep trying to get it banned with false reports by accusing them of "heterophobia" and "doxxing" (re: complaining about their homophobic comments in their own spaces). Assholes who are mad about them making a straight romance from the books lesbian in the show are also doing petitions and flooding like every Instagram post including one by the original author about how she was initially skeptical about such a big change from her books but she's had lots of talks with the showrunners and she trusts them, and has always supported greater diversity in the series. People keep misusing that stupid fucking George R.R. Martin quote (about how creators these days don't do anything original but just warp other people's existing works) when he himself has condemned "the show must be exactly like the books" fan attitudes, especially the racist tantrums around House of the Dragon casting a couple years ago. And on a post by the author HERSELF where she explains why she gave the go-ahead, supports these changes, and condemns homophobia in the fandom! How is she "warping" her own work???

I've heard about this all secondhand from my friend and it just makes me so glad I don't go on Insta or Reddit and instead keep my fandom activities to Tumblr or AO3. Where for all the drama over other things, at least this kind of rancid homophobia you get in spaces where everyone is cis and straight feels entitled to only ever consume straight and cis romance stories (they'll claim they "are okay with gay characters but new ones!" but their example is always like a side character who has an unhappy ending, can you really not get why queer fans are not satisfied with that?) at least that's not so much a thing here. Instead I'll be happily writing Francesca/Michaela and Benedict/male characters slash and ignoring and blocking the haters. And remembering that that show has way more fans than use social media and everyone involved is continuing to refuse to listen to the loud idiots online. Like everyone I talk to about it who isn't super online, most of whom are straight women, think the change is really cool and can't wait to see what they do with it. Some of them have read the books, but most have not.

But god, it just seems like toxicity from top to bottom over there. I really wish a lot of the straight women fans would just admit they don't like a lesbian romance because there's no one for them to find hot. And maybe consider why it's not a big fucking ask to "find something relatable" in gay romances, like gay people have had to do with straight ones for all time. Why must we continue doing that but you're entitled to whatever you want all the time? It's just so weird to see these attitudes still and in fandom in 2024!

--

These attitudes never went away.

On the fanfic side of things, the slashers just happen to have built the currently-popular platform, so the haters have to deal.

[iwasbored777]

I know I already posted something like this but I wanted to be more clear and I gotta say it again: the writers completely effed up Peter and Gwen in ATSV and it wasn't Peter and Gwen to blame at all.

(Sorry if I made any grammar mistakes, I write English for years but some mistakes still happen)

Ok, with Gwen, I know she didn't have a choice and blah blah blah but it's heartbreaking to see how much people loved her and now I see such horrible posts about her (some are so unhinged) that it makes me wonder what the writers were thinking when they did what they did with her character. After so much time has passed since the movie was released all I hear is "Gwen is a traitor". I rarely see a person clever enough to explain the situation and many people don't care enough to explain or understand. They love what happened because they hate the idea of her ending up with Miles anyway so this is perfect for them. I swear I had no idea what they're gonna do, I thought she's going to be with Miles and on his side the whole time. And while I know that she's so much more than a love interest and she deserves to be more, in the first movie she was only the love interest and that's exactly how people see her now and will always see her like this. According to the audience she exists only to please Miles, she has no room to have a story of her own, which is why her storyline in this movie was kinda disappointing even to me who really loves her.

But Peter also... At least Gwen has a reason and he just doesn't. You can't tell me that a guy with a character development so great from the first movie, the guy who loves this kid and who started his own family because of Miles, who was depressed and desperate when he lost someone he loves, would tell the same kid he apparently loves "you know it's ok if your father dies bad things happen lol". It's crazy. And him receiving the hate that Gwen receives too, people going from loving him so much to hating him because the writers forgot how much they tried to develop him and Gwen, how amazing their team was in the first movie, and then destroying their dynamic for the sake of drama because they needed a conflict but the first movie was so perfect the only way to create it was to mess it up.

Yeah sure they'll be friends later, yeah Miles and Gwen will end up together, I don't have a problem with it because I love Peter and Gwen and I still ship Gwen and Miles and I don't want anyone who hates them with passion to show up here and tell me about how much they hate them. But they already ruined the relationships and the angst will always be remembered. Fandom is so goddamn toxic that they will keep hating on them, using any racist and misogynistic expression they can think of, and to be honest the movies aren't as enjoyable to me as they were at first because the reaction of majority of the audience made me realize how bad you gotta ruin your characters for fans to go from loving them to hating them so so much. Now every time I see news about BTSV I'm not looking forward to it that much because the story is already effed up. You can fix it but you can't erase what happened. The ending can be satisfying but the journey is not, at least to me.

And it's a shame that no one is talking about this, all haters (and there's so many of them) act like Peter and Gwen are characters capable of making decisions for themselves when they're just products of their writers. But, no. The writers are praised everywhere while Peter and Gwen apparently suck because their characters are ruined by someone who's controlling them against their will. The kinda got the similar treatment to Wanda in MCU, whom I also adore, she had character development and learned how to move on in WandaVision only to go through the exact same thing all over again in Multiverse of Madness because they didn't know what to do with her now.

I don't hate these movies, especially ITSV cuz it's a masterpiece, but I'm just so sad with how the story turned out. I will watch BTSV and I will make tons of posts about it just the same, and I won't make hate posts about this movie, that's for sure. I just wanted to say this. I look forward to hearing your opinions in the comments, as long as they're respectful to the characters. Basically I already said all I had to say here.

[sidewayspeace444]

LONG ASK.

There is a reason 'the crazy fans' narrative was thrown around and reiterated by His brother Scott on a podcast that was strangely very eager to post on all their socials, repeatedly. Articles were written too. 👀

There is also a reason DM put out a narrative about his family not standing/liking her. Trying to keep some out of the controversy, maybe?

There is a reason why there was a Bermuda vacation where some of his friends were suspiciously present but not in the same place. Why they posted on a platform that they never used before. There is a reason why Justin dad made that Facebook post about the wedding and marriage , there is a reason Justin posted that invite and then deleted.

Notice how everyone of these people would keep the post up long enough for the fandom to pick it up, make some noice and then delete or go private. But claim harassment,repeatedly.

There is a reason those photos of him golfing with his buddies the 'same time period' the 'girls and gays' were on a 'hot girl summer' vacation,were released .The friend who posted, did what exactly after they were out there.

There is a reason she cropped out her hand. It created a buzz about a possible engagement ring and therefore being a bachelorette vacation with the girls including some of 'his' friends.

There is also a reason that on Saturday, there was a lot of commotion here. Alot of drama from one side especially. A PRIVATE AND EXCLUSIVE EVENT DOES NOT HAVE THIS MUCH ATTENTION esp where there were supposed NDAs and confiscated phones.

EVERYTHING HAS BEEN PLANNED FOR A WHILE.

We can argue about the validity of the wedding, whether it happened or not, whether they are married in real or it's just a PR stunt. The fact is the news is already out there that HIS FANS ARE CRAZY. HIS BROTHER WHOM THEY ARE VERY CLOSE SAID SO.No matter what evidence there is that something is fishy, it doesn't matter. The GP has already bought into it. People keep asking why the many articles; because the public NEEDS to buy into the wedding having happened. Who is being talked about the most, Alba! Why? Chris is already famous. So they never needed to sell her to his fans but to the GP.

The 'AVENGERS FRIENDS' that were 'present' are the ones who DO NOT have any current MARVEL WORK coming up; THOR, IRONMAN and HAWKEYE!!! We know how tightly Marvel runs it's ship. NO controversy.That Should have raised some eyebrows that Mackie and Seb were each in different places doing things that they could have easily cancelled for their buddies special day(???) Yet a few months ago they could make cameos in his film?Then the ADDITION OF SCARLET to the mix AFTER people started wondering why his closes film buddy of over 20yrs wasn't present.

SHE'S FAMOUS NOW!!

Now, IF ITS REAL, Chris showed himself to be the MAN HE REALLY IS, A HYPOCRITE. But the public doesn't care. They are already saying she needs security and what not. Turning her into a victim of his 'toxic fandom's. Funny enough, the ones rejoicing that 'they were right' were at the forefront of stalking, analysis of photos and all the crazy fan behaviour.

BUT GUESS WHO ARE THE TOXIC CRAZY FANS NOW: THE ONES WHO ACTUALLY HOPED HE WAS BETTER THAN ASSOCIATING WITH RACIST.

Whether it's a real marriage or a PR stunt, she got what this whole thing was about. EVERY SINGLE TIME, THERE WAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH HIM, SOMEHOW THERE WAS ALWAYS SOMEONE RIGHT HERE MAKING IT ABOUT HER.

EVERY SINGLE TIME.

I really hope that the people who loved him & being in the fandom and are hurting will heal. Those who ' were right' there is literally NO PRICE.

A lot of good points.

[antianakin]

What are your thoughts on the Soft Wars fic series? Personally I hate the take that the clones love Anakin and Ahsoka better than the rest of the Jedi.

I've actually given some of my thoughts on this series in a previous post I made here.

I'll put a quick TL;DR on those thoughts in this post, and then put some new ones under the cut to address your specific question.

All in all, Soft Wars is exactly what it says it is. It’s soft. It’s soft towards Anakin, it’s soft towards the clones, it’s soft towards the war and the worldbuilding. It’s definitely worth a read just for the way it handles the clone worldbuilding and the clear impact it has had on the way the clones have been written in fic ever since. At this point, I don’t regret reading it but I also don’t go back to it very often anymore and there’s a reason I don't rec Soft Wars for pro-Jedi fic recs when people ask. Soft Wars is not what I would consider fully Pro-Jedi but nor is it anywhere near virulently anti-Jedi and it has some really neat writing for the clones while obviously being really pro-Anakin Skywalker to the point of smoothing out most of his more uncomfortable flaws to make him a more sympathetic and likable character.

To address your specific complaint about the clones loving Anakin and Ahsoka better than the rest of the Jedi, it's fairly clear to me that the author has a soft spot for Anakin and the rest of the fic is sort-of written around that in many ways. The majority of the focus of Soft Wars IS on the clones themselves, and their relationships to each other rather than their relationships to Anakin and Ahsoka specifically, but the big fix-it of the entire thing is that the clones save Anakin from the dark side and allow him to truly be himself. Which definitely ignores that Anakin was a full-blown fascist at this point, not to mention a complete racist (at least against the Tuskens), and arguably sexist as well as a sexual predator.

This is kind-of what I was referring to when I mentioned in the previous post I made about this that the author "smoothes out" Anakin's flaws to make him more sympathetic and likable. Soft Wars is by no means the only place this happens in fics, Anakin OFTEN has to get smoothed out in fix-it fics where he's allowed to live and just get a happy marriage with 2.5 kids and a white picket fence with Padme.

Soft Wars Anakin is... not really canon Anakin. He's got hints of canon Anakin, sure, but he's a LOT better of a person than canon Anakin was at this point in the story. The author had a soft spot for Anakin and wrote an entire epic around Anakin being saved by the clones, so you have to sort-of view Soft Wars from that perspective. If you are someone who doesn't like Anakin much and prefers a more realistic take on Anakin WITH all of his flaws at this point in his life, Soft Wars isn't going to give it to you. I find myself at a place these days where it can be really hard to read fics where Anakin is portrayed REALLY positively and without a lot of his canon flaws, especially with regards to the clones.

If you want more fics where the clones have good relationships with Jedi that AREN'T Anakin (or Ahsoka or even Obi-Wan), please check out blackkat's fics on AO3! A lot of them feature more niche Jedi or just focus on Jedi that tend to go more ignored in popular fandom. I've absolutely gained a love for a few Jedi characters that I'm not even sure I KNEW before I started reading these fics as well as gained several new ships! They're 100% Jedi-friendly, and they never shy away from the reality of who Anakin is and what he's done.

And if you want a series that focuses on the clones more and still gives them a pretty soft ending WITHOUT glorifying Anakin or infantilizing the Jedi, please check out the Reconstruction Corps AU by cacodaemonia (et al). Caco is an INCREDIBLE artist, so the series is worth taking a look at for the art alone, but the writing is wonderful, too, and is one of the few places where I've seen someone explore clone culture without just re-appropriating Mando culture, which is really awesome!

[thegeminisage]

STAR TREK UPDATE TIME. we have finally watched the voyager pilot! short verdict: nothing will ever be as good as ds9 but i enjoyed it!!

longer verdict: i will go through it character by character, in order of appearance, saving the maquis crew for when they have more than .5 seconds of screentime in the little opening. this feels like a REALLY big cast, by the way?? am i counting right? 11 recurring characters and we don't even have seven yet? tos has 7 with chapel and rand appearing sometimes, tng had 8 with o'brien and guinan sometimes, ds9 has seven with...man, jake nog rom garak AND keiko as recurring extras, and we don't even have worf yet. so i guess ds9's is technically bigger! anyway.

JANEWAY: i was surprised at how janeway sounded...her voice is different than i expected even though i've heard her be flemeth in dragon age. i was also kind of surprised to see her in the bun and her head looked So Big. like dax's in season 1-2 of ds9. i'm used to seeing her with it down in gifs which looks better but personally i also think she could have rocked the kira cut. that said, i like her so SO much. she has a couple of speeches that remind me VERY strongly of kirk - when she's lamenting harry left his clarinet behind and not getting to know him, when she decided she couldn't sacrifice an entire people to get one ship home. she's got the kind of compassion kirk did - when she pulled up a stool to listen to the caretaker's troubles, when she held his horrible little corpse, she was genuinely filled with real sadness for what had happened there. (as a side note, speaking of tos, the ship voyager also reminds me of the original enterprise WAY more than the tng enterprise was - especially their little cafeteria.) i was really surprised she had a boyfriend, because i feel like i've heard she gets with chakotay! sorry to her bf, she is gonna cheat on you (and i support women's wrongs), but the worst part is the dog. if they pull some odyssey shit with the dog i'm gonna be so upset. ALSO, i love that she insists on "ma'am" instead of sir (that always bugged me) and even that will only do in a pinch. YOU WILL ADDRESS HER AS CAPTAIN. even when her hair fell down she fixed it on her way down the hallway. she's such a badass. when she says she's gonna get them home I BELIEVE HER. she's got an iron fucking nerve and balls made of titanium.

TOM PARIS: i hate this man so much it's insane. i googled to see whether he died and found out he was played by one of those cadets wesley got in trouble with...girl, he was in prison, why not just make him the same guy?? anyway, he was kind of shitty to both harry and chakotay (oh boy we are already being racist to chakotay) and i cannot believe THIS is the man janeway is gonna have salamander babies with. he's extremely obnoxious all the time (him harassing that betazoid lady...fuck off lol) and i just KNOW people are writing paris/chakotay slash because of their whole deal which makes him more annoying. the "your life is mine now" thing is racist as hell. i'm not prepared to sympathetically see this man's hidden depths bc i know that as a snarky white man he already has half of whatever voyager fandom happens to exist doing that for him already. sadly, we will have to put up with him for all seven seasons. LUCKILY, aside from the racism, half of which came from this guy anyway, he was my only real sour note.

HARRY KIM: love this dude. i like how he managed to talk sense into b'elanna when she was wigging out and despite my wishing he didn't have to be friends with tom paris him going "i can pick my own friends" was a great way to show that he's not afraid to stand up for himself. i wish i wasn't feeling so anti-quark lately bc otherwise his scene in the bar with quark (and why is it always quark doing these surprise cameos!!) would've been pretty funny. i think it was a nice touch that harry, on his first EVER mission, got to be the one to deliver the news about how far from home they were. i absolutely love his whole deal of being completely green and meeting everything head-on anyway, he is so brave. as i said before, the way he is just charging through despite being out of his depth reminds me a little of chekov, if chekov had brain cells. he's very charming. i think he and b'elanna could get it also.

HOLOGRAM DOCTOR: he is so funny, i love him. like, i don't really know how he works? is all of medbay a holodeck? but it's kind of hilarious that he's sentient enough to get annoyed when people are randomly beamed away and when people forget to shut him off (he needs a nap!)

CHAKOTAY: oh i am already feeling how rough this is going to be. that "can't you use some magic to turn into a bird and fly away" and also the "your life is mine now" were rrrracist. (that said, "you're too heavy" was a really good comeback.) can we please be normal. that aside: i really like him. i like how quickly he came to grips with the situation and i like how much he hates tom paris (NOT SEXUAL!!! NO!!!!!! i just agree with him) and i especially like that he has a set of titanium balls to match janeway's like did we SEE that doomsday machine-esque suicide run he almost went on? he cut it even closer than kirk did and kirk cut it that close ON ACCIDENT chakotay was yelling at them not to beam his ass back until his ship was already on fucking fire. also, he's very handsome. ALSO, when tom paris asked him "you'd rather die than let me rescue you?" i had to laugh because quite literally 10 seconds prior out of mine own mouth was "if it was death or tom paris i might let go." i really hope there's more to chakotay than "tom paris's antagonistic buddy" because 1. a fate worse than death 2. this is not humans and vulcans this is real life racism you cannot spock and bones this. STOP THAT.

TUVOK: ALSO VERY HANDSOME. very like. he reminds me of spock so much because he's extremely bitchy but also very dialed down about it. i like that leonard nimoy was like yeah im gonna go stupid crazy and all vulcan will be like this from now on, including my funny little eyebrow thing, in which girlies will still see spock long after i'm dead. like what misha collins tried to do with cas but it actually worked. tuvok strikes that perfect balance of dignified and kind of above everyone else without feeling stuck up or prissy (though his scene where he tries so hard not to look at neelix's junk was great, he was justifiably a little prissy there), and with that undercurrent of wryness that nevertheless doesn't truly betray any emotion - you don't get the same sense of repression/unease with the self from him (at least in the pilot, who knows what will happen later) that you do from spock so it doesn't feel like voyager is copying tos's homework, and it feels nice to get to know another vulcan who's gonna be a main character instead of a one-off. i hope they are more normal about a black vulcan than they have been about chakotay so far bc we have got to get out from under all of that. i am a little worried janeway might kill him. i feel like i see people on reddit criticizing her all the time for killing some dude who i am pretty sure is tuvok and like. can someone tell me if he dies if he dies i will be SO mad

B'ELANNA TORRES: she is stupid hot. i'm a little "lol" when she's like yeah my klingon half is HARD TO CONTROL!!! (super saiyan scream of rage) bc like worf does fine (most of the time...) but i will never turn down a chance to watch a beautiful woman be insane with rage. i like how she calls harry kim "starfleet" derisively and then goes out of her way to give him breaks when he needs them and help him up the stairs when he can't make it. big tsundere energy. also like that she was questioning janeway's decisions. not that i disagree with janeway's decisions necessarily i just like that janeway will have to earn her respect from some people the way any male captain would. equality. also, potentially, girlfights.

NEELIX: i forgot to add him to "the things i know about voyager" post because i had only heard him mentioned a couple of times and got the idea he was just a horrible little gremlin there for comic relief. a rygel, if you will. a quark, if you won't. was pleasantly surprised to like him better than rygel and quark combined, though that's a pretty low bar. not only is he clever enough to outsmart the slavers, he was brave and caring enough to go back and rescue his girl. HE RESPECTS WOMEN. also, his water indulgence was pretty hilarious, as was, again, his scene with tuvok. i feel like those two could do straight man funny guy all day long. a dynamic duo. i hope they wind up having screentime together. i don't mind horrible little gremlins so much when they're charming and when they aren't trying to take holosuite videos of kira.

KES: i feel like kes hasn't done much yet except lecture her people on the dangers of having a cult-like mentality. but i like her! she's sweet and compassionate and pretty brave. she does a lot to humanize neelix, at least! maybe it's just me but i feel like she was barely in this. for now i am trusting that they do more with her later. or, idk, maybe they don't. we DO have janeway AND b'elanna AND seven eventually so i can't be too mad about it as long as they're not turning her into a holodeck sex toy like poor deanna

other things of note:

BANJOS? i counted three different southern accents in this section. it would have been offensive if it wasn't so funny. the people holding hands and jumping around in a circle like animated robin hood characters was a great touch. so was the corn on the cob. the emotional whiplash from an otherwise very serious episode was. certainly something.

the empty barn reminded me of this side of paradise <3 i love, in general, how voyager just FEELS a little bit like tos. certainly more than tng did, even more than ds9 does. like this FEELS like it's set in the same universe, it kind of bridges a mental gap between ds9/tng and tos for me, worldbuilding wise.

water thing reminded me of mad max. really good.

slaver aliens.......are these guys really our antagonists?? i thought our antagonists were the borg but maybe we don't do that until seven gets here. i feel like possibly a bunch of semi-primitive people in the desert who enslaved and beat (potentially raped, depending on how you want to interpret that dialogue) a pretty blonde girl is maybe um. not the best idea. maybe they'll get written down into side villains and eventually just guys. like the ferengi. siiigh, the ferengi.

that said, i kind of loved the story of the caretaker and the ocampa, enough that i almost forgot the caretaker was choosing to appear as a banjo-playing hillbilly. i like to think him and his wife were from andromeda like those guys from tos...and it's very nuanced that even after he fucked their planet forever he still didn't really learn to value life because he's kidnapping people and letting them die or stay stranded in order to attempt to procreate. NONETHELESS he is filled with remorse, and janeway's scene with him, comforting him that children could learn to grow on their own, was really sweet. i also like that when he died his little horrible goop body shrank down until it looked like a hunk of dried snot. do not take that to the ocampa.

i just like the PREMISE of voyager. a 75-year journey that they have to cut down by any means possible...it's like the odyssey, but it space. in tos and tng they wandered from place to place but always over the same stomping grounds in general. we have the same old players, like klingons and romulans and vulcans and andorians etc etc. in ds9 we stay in one single place and it's to our benefit because we get deep character work. but voyager is going in a straight line back to earth, and we've never been out here before, so whether or not it lives up to the potential right now it feels like anything truly could happen. we don't be running into the neutral zone and we can't call the klingons for help or stop by quark's for another cameo. we are just out here. it's VERY neat.

major concerns so far include of course tom paris and potentially him being handcuffed to chakotay as banter buddies. racism in general but also with chakotay in particular. and perhaps a lack of interesting points re: kes. rip girl.

stuff i'm looking forward to is janeway getting to be a person instead of A Woman, seven eventually, getting to know chakotay and tuvok better, and the salamander episode, someday.

okay. this concludes my voyager pilot write-up. TONIGHT: "parallax" and "time and again."

[coraniaid]

For the fic ask game, 5, 10, 20 please!

Fanfiction author ask game

5) The fic you’re most proud of writing?

I think the answer has to be Coexist, my season 3 rewrite.

It was the first fic I started writing in the Buffy fandom; it's the (completed) fic that took me the longest to finish [the first chapter was posted in February 2021, but I'd been planning it and drafting it for a while before then, and the last chapter wasn't posted until April 2023]; it's (by some distance) the longest single fic I've written [it's a bit over a quarter of a million words long].

And, now that I've had some time to think about it, I think it holds up pretty well? There are certainly a few sections I'd be tempted to rewrite slightly, and probably some bits which I should have just edited away, and (because I hadn't quite planned things out in as much detail as I thought I had) there's a few moments where the wider timeline doesn't quite work [secondary characters will say things that are meant to be cryptic references to events that I later decided hadn't happened yet], but overall I think I did a pretty good job capturing the story I'd been daydreaming about for a while. I'm still really pleased with the chapters The Price, Reactions and Undertow in particular, and I think the overall story is surprisingly coherent, both structurally and thematically, for something I spent more than two years writing.

10) Best/funniest comment you’ve ever gotten on a fic?

It still kind of amazes me whenever I get ... well, any comments at all, really, but especially comments that take the story I've written seriously as something worth engaging with and analyzing? I'm especially grateful to anybody whose leaves detailed comments or reviews on each chapter as they go, or who leave additional comments to point out things they noticed or enjoyed on a reread (not naming any names but you know who you are). Not to be sappy, but those are the types of comments that I go back and reread when I'm struggling with writing something new and trying to motivate myself to finish a difficult section.

Funniest comments, in hindsight, are the reactions to ... well, there is a certain chapter about a third of the way into Coexist where a Thing happens. I remember being really nervous about posting that one, and I still feel a little guilty if anyone really did stop reading at that point, but looking back the reactions (which included repeated variants on things like "damn" and "what the fuck?" and "I'm so angry right now" and "... ow :(" and "this is some real game of thrones shit") are exactly what I was going for.

20) Hardest character to write/get the characterization correct for?

I think Jenny Calendar is basically impossible to write 'correctly' because she just doesn't have a consistent characterisation in canon (is she a capable practicing technopagan who has a perspective on the supernatural that challenges Giles' own assumptions, or is she Giles' cool teacher girlfriend who helps with research in the library but is hurt and betrayed when the magical side of Giles' past endagers her safety, or is she a walking racist stereotype who [sort-of, somehow] betrayed Giles and Buffy [in ways that never quite make sense] and who has the bad luck to be written by a group of writers who ... well, let's just say that Angel doesn't ever attribute his soul to a Romani curse).

I don't think you can really reconcile those three contrasting versions of the character -- at least not in a way that I personally find satisfying -- so you just have to pick one to be the 'real' version and gloss over the other stuff as best you can. (And I think my summary above makes it clear which version of Jenny Calendar I like.)

[qcellbit]

while we're on that topic, I don't like how most of the fandom handles toxicity

like yes the Brazilian fandom is the one with the most toxicity but that's due to proportion. however it's one thing to acknowledge that and it's another thing to everytime there's something related to it going "oh it's the Brazilians again" when the same energy isn't kept for other communities.

The toxic part of the Hispanic community harassed pomme/pomme's admin over the landmine thing, but I never saw I single comment like "oh it's the Hispanics"

People were being aggressive in the quotes and comments of the Cellbit English update accounts when they briefly mentioned the possibility of nerfing armor, and no one cared about it.

Some people somehow twist and try to blame the Brazilian community for having ccs no longer being active in the project, when the ccs that stopped being active for a while mostly left after being harassed by the toxic part of the Hispanic community over the eggs, when there weren't even any Brazilian CCs in the project. People get mad at the Brazilians by possible situations that aren't even happening.

Again, I do agree that there's a large rate of toxicity and that's something that needs to be solved within the Brazilian community, but I hate that the energy is completely different when other communities are being toxic. I also hate the generalization of people going "oh it's the Brazilians" when the Brazilians are also the ones that triplicated Fit's sub goal and constantly help Maxo with his subs so he can keep his contract with twitch.

^^^ YUP i was literally just about to make a post about this after witnessing history repeating itself once again with spreen's comments yesterday/today. (tldr: spreen engaged in racist jokes in a video a few months ago and when prompted by brazilian fans to apologise or at least offer an explanation for his hurtful behaviour, he immaturely doubled down and blamed the brazilian community for his absence from the qsmp which is petty and false because he wasn't active well before the brazilians even arrived.)

the fact that this vitriol is always most prominent every time brazilian fans have called out racism from content creators and their communities speaks volumes of where this attitude actually comes from. the desire to actually criticise certain topics and open discussions being generalised as "toxicity" in fandom spaces isn't anything new, nor is the phenomenon of content creators refusing to apologise for jokes in poor taste/disrespectful behaviour due to ego and instead directing hate towards adjacent communities, but the unfortunate side effect of the qsmp having multiple communities split by culture and language is that people now have the ability to direct all that hate towards a specific group of people based on what country they're from and what language they speak. existing unchecked xenophobic and racist ideals from these people have resulted in fingers being pointed exclusively at the brazilian community. and for that same reason, when a brazilian content creator is being unfairly harassed for nonsensical reasons inside roleplay, it's often only ever the brazilian fans who show solidarity whilst other communities either turn a blind eye or are the ones engaging in that harassment themselves.

and while yes, there are toxic parts of literally any fanbase because fanbases are inherently made up of multiple people with differing ideals and opinions, what is often being labelled as excessive drama or toxicity by people outside of the brazilian community isn't even drama or toxicity - every time anything like this happens it's just another case of brazilian fans not exhibiting the same tolerance for bigotry that is normalised in online fandom and streaming content and demanding apologies for that behaviour.

you touched on it at the end, but yeah! all of this phenomenon is especially heartbreaking when you consider the amount of kindness exhibited by the brazilian community towards all aspects of the project, and the brazilian content creators making an effort to actively call out and minimise toxicity towards other content creators themselves. cellbit compiling a blocklist of chat members spewing hateful messages during intense roleplay to then share with fellow content creators was unprecedented in the realm of livestreamed minecraft roleplay.

the general attitude towards the brazilian community is absolutely fucking atrocious and unwarranted - just plain racism and xenophobia. an unforgivable act of using an entire ethnicity as a scapegoat for every problem under the sun. it hurts me to see comments from the brazilian community expressing fears of exclusion and that brazilian fans only have each other to rely on in times of distress - despite how difficult a lot of people want to make things, you're not alone and your presence in the qsmp fanbase is immensely appreciated. never forget that the qsmp would be nothing without you.

[atelierlili]

What happened in the thg subreddit?

I didn't want to continue stirring the pot, but honestly I'm still miffed about it so I'm gonna answer. I wouldn't care if it only happened to me, but it didn't and that makes me even more angry lmao. It's why i've been quiet for a few days. I had to simmer down.

I will not provide links of any sort, I don't want this to spark about shitstorm and draw more any more attention it than I already have. If you know, you know, you know?

But the tHG subreddit are guilty of but are not limited to:

Thinly veiled racist remarks regarding fan/artist interpretation of character's skin tone. As if the skin colour of one's skintone doesn't further add to the class disparity that is VERY canon in the books. Then downvoting when people (especially the OP) give their justifications on their interpretation, which is actually supported by the book. Look at a fucking bowl of olives, they come in all different shades and hues. This issue only scratches the surface we talk about race, skin colour and its relationship with the books AND how the community handles it. It's a shit show all around.

2. Unsolicited criticism of fan art. (This is what I'm most upset about.) If someone isn’t asking for criticism, it’s wrong to offer critiques, especially if it’s a stranger. I don’t care if the person critiquing is an artist of whatever skill, don’t even care if it’s Da Vinci himself, it’s inappropriate. Art is time consuming and its is personal even when we say it isn’t. Someone people like to draw things a certain way and sometimes they prefer to use colour outside of conventional means. Who cares. When they share it to their community, they’re sharing something they love and care about, ripping it apart with criticism and critiques spoils that joy. I don't care if you're an artist yourself and you just want someone to improve, if I didn't ask for critiques, I don't want it. You're not an artist at that point, you're a hemorrhoid. Completely unwanted. Gonna need a cream for that.

I view my fanart differently than I would an art assignment I've giving my art teacher for mark. Different frame of mind, different goals. All of which I get to decide if I want criticism or not.

This is how a bad apple spoils the bunch. THG is over 10 years at this point. While the new books and movies bring in new content every now and then, for the most part we're on the smaller side of the fandom. If you ask me, fanfic writers are the backbone of this fandom and we're extremely lucky to have so many talented writers who still continue to write for us. We have a small handful of fanartists in comparison. Go to the THG subbreddit and you might see at least one or two new fanart artwork once a week thanks to the self promotion Sunday. Might see less if this sort of behaviour continues. Sorry, not sorry, but being a total asswort to and dogpiling on your content creators are a surefire way to never get content from them again. In all of this i forget to mention that 95% for fanwork is given away for free to the community, for the community to enjoy.

I didn't think it was that bad until I saw it first hand and in development. If I didn't have my friends here on tumblr and on the discord server, I'd probably straight up leave.

Of course, these issues aren't exclusive on reddit. My first encounter with some nasty individuals began here on tumblr. But its different if one singular user on tumblr leaves an nasty ignorant and racist comment compared to that user getting upvoted a bunch of times and any sort of justification by the original artist or OP gets DOWNVOTED to hell. One asshole is fine, but seeing the dogpile is something else.

Anyway, my relationship with how I viewed the subreddit has drastically changed this week. Not for the better. I'll keep posting to piss people off and let them get a twist in their panties, but I am more certainly going to limit my interactions with users there.

[paperstarwriters]

hey i’m the anon who sent in that long critical ask to the queer characters blog; what discord harassment group is that other guy talking about 😭 sorry to use you as a go between, but multiple people can have the same criticisms of a piece of media. hello?? i haven’t interacted with the arcana fandom since i was in high school, i usually just block and move on if random people put it on my dash. if i sounded like i was upset or heated it’s because the arcana is like bordering on being a trigger for me lmfao but i don’t endorse harassment campaigns

anyway, in regards to the bird thing — it harkens back to the historical antisemitic jew nose/hawk nose imagery used prolifically by the nazis. and julian’s normal nose is already drawn rather large and hooked, and i’ve seen jewish arcana fans say that his design in general makes them uncomfortable, especially since this game is written/developed by goyim. red hair, sleepy eyes, hooked nose; all rather stereotypically caricature-esque features. also portia and the mother character whose name i forget fall into antisemitic design/personality stereotypes as well. uh i wish i could link you some academic articles or readings or something but i’m kind of worried tumblr is going to eat this ask if i keep leaving it idling in another tab LMFAO, if i can i really would like to dig up some actual texts about it, but um i’ve mostly just heard personal anecdotal evidence about the bird depictions being linked to antisemitism which is kind of hard to find and link as a credible source. but imo i don’t think it’s hard to link the whole bird motif thing to the antisemitic jew nose stereotype?

and to address the point of engaging with the fandom — i mean do what you want but i personally don’t really see any merit in the actual game when you strip away all the awful stuff, and to build a fandom around that and continue to promote/bring publicity to the game feels. icky. sort of like HP enjoyers, in that you can denounce the problematic aspects of it all you want, but you’re still banding around the dumpster fire and warming your hands on it, you know? maybe the new content brings more to the table, i left right about when the first three routes were ending, but. last i was there, idk what of the game/plot are left when you ignore all the shit.

anyway um finally i don’t mean any of this as like. attacking or harassing anyone. i don’t usually do things like this, usually i just block and move on, but (in regards to the queer character blog i sent the original ask to) my hackles sort of raised when i saw someone mention wanting to promote the game. people deserve to know what they’re getting into and i don’t want any poc/jewish people/abuse survivors/etc getting blindsided by the content in what markets itself to be a pretty fantasy otome game

Hello! thank you very, very much for the information! As for your questions and comments, the discord harassment group, I can only povide anacdodal points to this as I wasn't a part of the discord group, but I belive what happened was that someone had taken the position that shipping two characters was morally wrong—the ship between Asra and Julian specifically I belive, and they started a whole harassment campaign towards an individual who shipped the two of them together, but through an entirely new au exploring the uncertainty of a relatioinship without explicitly accusing one side or the other (again, anecdotal, I haven't exactly read that yet, so I can't exactly conform currently.) And while their point on the toxicity or racist undertones of the ship was likely well-founded, they went too far, accusing the person who shipped Asra and Julian to multiple other bad actions which were eventually revealed as false.

but yeah, 100% two people can have the same two critiques of a media and one can express those critiques in a more harmful way than the other.

As for the points about continuing to engage with the game I do agree that it can feel discomforting to continue to connect to media that has this many problematic issues, and while yes continuing to engage in bad media or bad pieces of work can be discomforting because of it's origin, there are still people who found a lot of worth and comfort certain aspects of the story. Personally I never engaged as much with Julian or Portia or their respective routes so I cannot say for certain, but in Muriel's route, the story is a little different thatn the initial three, and there are some clear gaps that can be explored more or simple traits that can be engaged with in a better light which can foster discussion rather than present a bad steryotype. Again, this may not be as easily applicable to Julian or Portia since they embody steryotypes and thus may require more adjustments in order to move beyond those steryotypes but it is still something to be considered.

Furthermore, at least part of why continuing to engage with fandoms like Harry potter may be discomfroting is that the problematic creators continuet to get revenue for their creation, Nyx hydra has since disbanded and while Dorian has put little effort into considering or developing awareness of these characters and their problems they at the very least were not the one to create the problematic traits of the characters. It is still a little bit of a questionable group but besides vibes, and the possibility of using ai art I cannot say anything for certian.

My arguements are not encouraging you by any means to re-join or re-engage with the fandom, it's mostly just an explanation as to why I'm still here or why other people may still be here too, but I do agree that people should be aware that there are many problems in the game concerning representation when engaging with it, especially since it presents itself as a seemingly inclusive game. If I were younger at the release of Muriel's ending, or if I played through Asra and Julian's route then, the representation of abuse could have been..... let's just say unhelpful for me. More than anything I don't want someone else who may be in an uncomfortable situation attempt to find solace in escapism only to end up feeling worse than before at the bad represetntation, or at the fandom regurgitating this bad representation rather than trying to dismantle or change it.

Anyways, I'm sorry for dragging you back into this discussion about the Arcana for a while, especially since you mentioned that it's triggering for you. I wish you well in enjoying your other fandoms, or other forms of media.

Thank you again though, for providing me this information on the issue of bird imagery and antisemetism, and thanks for also providing the info about Julian, Portia and Mazlinka and their steyrotypical representation I will take care with writing them if I ever chose to do so.

I do belive you were justified in your concern at promoting the game, but I also thank you for emphasizing that you didn't want to attack or harass anyone who does enjoy this content despite it's many problems and flaws.

[startledstoat]

i’m literally just pointing out that people in the fandom have noticed that the apparent standard in their fanart is hourglass figure, 0% body fat, massive thigh gap lol. i am obviously not hating on those bodies (that is literally what i look like!!!), just wondering why none of their characters have any sort of meat on their bones, especially regulus who canonically looks to be at least mid-sized

with what you said about remus - i agree! my favourite fics are the ones that delve into his body image and eating disorder as a result of his lycanthropy. with regulus, i don’t like it as much, mainly because people (cough cough jegulus writers) use it as a way to be like “well yes he was a massive racist prejudiced death eater voldemort fanatic but he had an eating disorder :((((( so it isn’t his fault he needs jamie to come save his wittle self :((((“

anyways thank you for your nuanced response i do appreciate actually debating with people on here instead of people just going “SKINNYPHOBIC AND MEAN LMFAO” which is like. yes maybe i am mean but skinnyphobic?? 😭

Love that you responded nicely!

When I think of Reg with those HCs I think of the EDs going along with the trans Reg idea, stemming from his body dysphoria and also having to do with him being raised with the pressure of being an upper-class pureblood "girl" who was expected to be the picture of flawless beauty, which would've been a very toxic beauty standard for someone in that position during that time (flat stomach, thigh gap, hourglass waist, full hips and chest). This is definitely not a HC that works for everyone, expecially those who don't HC Regulus to have been abused in his childhood or don't HC him to be trans.

The addiction is a separate HC and I'm not saying your take on it is wrong but my thoughts on it are a bit different. It's more what I think would have come around the same time he started realizing that he was on the very wrong side of the war and wanted out but couldn't see a way that he realistically could get out bc Voldemort isn't a dude you just go up to like "yeah man listen we had a good run but now I'm realizing that this is so much more fucked up than I thought and now I don't wanna be part of it anymore". (I like to think that he didn't betray Voldemort just because of what happened to Kreacher, but more like his doubts and fears were building up for a while and Kreacher being tortured was just the last straw)This guilt and self loathing that would likely have ensued would have been a very slippery slope, especially when paired with the pressure of being the new heir following Sirius being disowned and their father dying as well as the trauma from his potentially abusive childhood, I think he could have turned to things like calming draughts and dreamless sleep to initially calm his nerves and moods, but then fell in too deep. And it's fine that you don't like that as much! As long as you're being respectful to the people that do, because it's not a HC that's harmful to any real life people.

His redemption arc, both the canon and the fanon parts, definitely don't just erase the fact that he was a death eater that likely tortured and killed people, but the fact that he tried to do the right thing in the end does count for something. Not to mention that he was literally a teenager that was raised in that environment and was taught nothing else until age 11 when he went to hogwarts. 11 years of one type of propoganda being taught to him, during his developmental years no less, doesn't just go away. Yeah he was 18, and as a 19 year old myself I can say that he was both old enough to have learned right from wrong as he went through school, but still young enough that it's perfectly normal for him to have been terrified of turning his back on the family he knew and outright defying a genuinely horrifying maniac that killed people for fun. 18 is still a child in so many ways even if it's also an adult in some other ways.

It's unrealistic to think that Sirius and Andromeda didn't struggle themselves with nature vs nurture when they first started being taught other things in hogwarts and started hanging around other people, even if we wanna say that they were morally perfect right from the beginning and didn't have any internalized prejudices to work through.

I got off track lmao but anyway

I've actually noticed that more artists now draw plus sized characters than there used to be, and maybe that's still not a lot, but it's not a change that's going to happen overnight. It's like the difference between white james in older fanarts and indian james in newer ones. HCs come and go, and I do really hope more people get on the plus sized characters idea because I think it's great, but even people who do share that idea are still going to have different ideas of which characters it fits based on their own HCs.

The most important thing is that characters who are plus sized in canon stay that way in fanon. Characters who were never given a specified body type in canon (or maybe were specified to be skinny but not given a real reason to be skinny) are fair game for however people want to think of them.

[divergentexarchickeyblade]

I never really post on here. I'm just a fandom account, really, and I tend to dodge the news like the plague, as it has a habit of negatively affecting my mental health. But I just need somewhere to shout into the void, about what's happening in the UK. This might be a long read, so I'll add a read more. If you just want some advice, it's after the TLDR.

Also, trigger warnings: racism, riots, current news. I know it's too much for some people, especially today.

Right now, in the UK, there are far-right groups doing scheduled marches, touting some anti-immigration shit. It's stupid. It's infuriating. It's scary. There's one down the road from where we live.

None of them actually give a shit about migration, or the socio-political-economic side of migrating vs. living nationally. This is all about racism (and a dash of classism). How do I know that?

Both me and my partner's grandfathers are not from the UK, or have a family background outside of the UK. They would only hate one of us. They'd think I'm one of them, because I'm paper white, and my grandfather is Southern Irish. My partner's grandfather was Romani, and my partner is (as they themselves say) 'not entirely white'. Both of us were born in the UK. Both of us have English parents.

And yet, they'd absolutely hate my partner, but be fine with me. Because I'm painfully white.

Maybe to some people I'm stating the obvious. Of course these riots are about racism. Racism, from a country that notoriously conquered half the world, had an empire, and were surprised that the people of those nations came to the UK. From a country with a high amount of ex-pats. From a country with entire cities built from multiculturalism and diversity. From a country that, in academia, encourages us to look at sources from a variety of locations across the world.

Yet, here are the riots. Here are the racists. Some places in the UK have had to EVACUATE their workers, like it's a bomb threat, such as Sunderland University. People living in the cities have been told to avoid the centres and find alternate travel measures. Town centres are being plastered with stickers, covered in racist remarks.

I'm reminded of the Nottinghill violence. If you don't know what that was, please read about it. It was a horrific event, and the victims of that violence should never be forgotten.

We are a nation that says 'never again' when we see WW2, but are happy to be just as vile to others who don't fit into our little idea of 'UK'. We are a nation that prides itself on the quality of our degrees, and their popularity across the world, yet reject non-nationals. We are a nation built of years and years of fighting for freedom and rights, yet snatch them away when it's convenient for us. We are a nation that is about the people and collective, when we are threatened from exterior forces, but when that dies down, we attack each other.

It's brain-dead. It's terrifying. It's the stuff of nightmares. And I'm not even the demographic being fucking targeted. I can't imagine how much worse they feel.

TLDR: Fuck racists. Fuck your 'protests'. Go read a fucking book. It's not 1960, anymore - the web has so much free information you can access, like archives, documentaries, etc. Fucking use them. Then, grow up.

As for people like me, who are worried for their families, spouses, friends, etc. Please, check on them. Text them, call them, anything. Even if they've just been hanging out at home, make sure they're okay.

To the people who are being targeted, I'm so sorry. This is such a BS situation, and my heart really goes out to you. The only thing I can do is offer the following advice:

- Avoid city centres and areas with large crowds. Try not to use public transport that links cities, too. Rioters will likely be taking these routes.

- Please, stay home, make sure all of your windows/doors/gates are locked, even if you're in the house (moreso at night). Considering how hot it is, close your blinds/curtains to block out sunlight. You can, also, use fans or dehumidifiers to keep your house cool.

- Make sure you have a torch/flashlight/candles/etc., just in case the power goes out. People like that tend to be looters, or looters hide in the crowds to go unnoticed, and will steal copper wiring out of electrical pylons and stuff.

- If you're still outside, make sure to keep your phone on you, and record ANYTHING that happens. If anyone attacks you, physically or verbally, record it all, and hand it to the police. Chances are, you won't be the only one, reporting that person.

- Take longer, quieter routes home.

- If your public transport breaks down, get yourself a taxi. It'll suck, but your life and safety are worth more than money. Uber works in the UK, and local areas have their own taxi services.

- Keep cars in a garage, or somewhere quiet/difficult for other people to get to.

- Try not to travel alone.

- Please, above all, STAY SAFE.

- Keep pets indoors.

- If you have nice neighbours, let them know where you are. Try to stick together, and keep each other safe. Their company can, also, do wonders. Maybe do go round for that cup of tea you both keep putting off.

- If your home has CCTV, security alarms etc., keep them on. Even if you live in the nicest neighbourhood, keep it on for now.

- Try and keep your kids at home. They will target children, too. A lot of people have pointed at the Southport murder as evidence of this.

- If you, or someone you know, is homeless, or needs somewhere safe to stay, the charity SHELTER is a great place to start. On top of that, each area has local charities that might be able to help. Sometimes hotels will, also, offer a safe room for situations like this, but it is hotel dependent.

- It might sound obvious to state, but the number for emergency services in the UK is 999. You can call this number, even with bad signal. You'll be asked if you want police, fire fighters, or an ambulance. If it's a medical issue, but not urgent, call 111. This number directs you to an NHS health department, that can advise you, or escalate the problem to Accident and Emergency, if they feel it's appropriate. These numbers are FREE, even from mobile phones. 111 has seriously saved my ass with medical problems, so don't be afraid to contact them. They just wanna help.

- If all of this is getting to you, and you take a crash in your mental health, you can contact the Samaritans charity, or MIND charity. They're not long-term, but can help you in times of crisis. Much like the hotels thing, some areas have their own charities that deal with this sort of thing, and they can help you.

- If you're ordering a prescription, you can ask for it to be delivered to your address. Even if it's just a temporary measure. They'll understand. I'm not sure if you have to pay for the delivery, so be mindful of that.

[kataraslove]

your entire post is clearly biased towards certain ships and, sorry to say, very misleading. i would like to attempt to clear up a few of your assumptions (especially because you clearly declare that you’re not against any ship when it is so obvious that you are):

zutara shippers are not the only ones that create university-style analysis. it’s easy to say this when you’ve clearly only consumed zutara meta and content. i’ve scene great analysis posts for various atla ships, especially kataang. not to mention that in a lot of zutara meta that you praise, the shippers will outright lie about what happens in canon. “cinderella katara” headcanons - essentially the interpretation that the gaang does nothing for katara and she only experiences freedom and liberation when zuko comes along - is spouted a lot from your side of the fandom, which i am deeply against. such meta needlessly adultifies katara and presents racist undertones. i’ve seen a lot of arguments from your side of the fandom that essentially excuses all of zuko’s past behaviour and actions (which the show itself does not do) and infantilizes him. i’m not going to even go into all of the takes that agree that the hypersexualized play version of katara is an accurate representation of her and of female sexuality. or the amount of defense i’ve seen about natla katara, even with some claiming that she’s more empowering than the animated version, when natla katara is only 0.0001% of her show’s counterpart. these are from the same group of people that have sworn for years that they love katara’s arc and that the canon did her dirty by removing her anger, rage, and agency by pairing her up with aang. why would you defend a netflix show that did the exact same thing? it’s clear that with many zutara shippers, their priorities have never been about what katara deserved, or about her empowerment and agency, but instead of their desperation for some (any) form of canon validity - all the while frowning down upon any shippers who like the kataang ships because it is canon.

“on this day and age, the tropes for kataang would be unacceptable, for example, lack of consent or lack of meaningful conversations.” if you are referring to the ember island players, then i’ve seen absolutely no kataang shipper defend that non-consensual kiss. non-consensual kisses (from surprised kisses to characters being kissed against their will) is a persistent problem within the avatar franchise, and one that i hope to see removed with new content. however, the poor communication leading up to the kiss should not be representative of kataang’s overall dynamic, especially when katara and aang have plenty of meaningful conversations throughout the series, such as “the avatar state” and “the serpent’s pass.”

frankly, if you are to state that kataang has tropes that are unacceptable within this day and age, then so does zutara. i’ve never seen any kataang shipper defend the ember island player non-con kiss, but i’ve seen plenty of zutara shippers outright claim that they started shipping zutara after the disgusting “i’ll save you from the pirates” scene - a scene in which he kidnaps her against her will, uses her most valuable possession to taunt her, and circles around her like some predatory vulture while katara is defenceless and disgusted. many shippers are quick to sexualize that scene, which is confusing to me since so concerned with katara’s agency (and the lack thereof that she apparently has with aang). additionally, many ships (especially from the 2000s) have elements and tropes that would not fly in this day and age. hell, kanthony and polin (which actually did air in this day) even have elements that the twitter warrior would be against. i do find it ironic that you’re claiming the morality argument against kataang, when i’m certain if i looked at your shipping history, there’d be tons of ships i’d raise my eyebrow to.

“i’ve personally not witnessed zutara shippers bullying or harassing others, therefore i deduce that they are the most honourable out of all the atla shippers.” wow! see what bias does to the brain? for years, zutara shippers across all social media - especially tumblr - have harassed anyone that didn’t agree with them, harassed anyone that liked the canon ships, or harassed anyone that defended aang’s character from their ridiculous takes. now that more and more people are no longer tolerating their bad-faith arguments, they constantly claim to be harassed by the rest of the fandom for not “understanding their media literacy skills” when that could not be farther from the truth.

in my personal experience, i’ve seen zutara shippers:

call people slurs over zutara

state that all kataang shippers comprise of misogynistic cisgendered men and that any women that likes the ship is a pick-me

send death threats to the atla crew for not making it canon

state that they will harass the natla crew if it does not become canon

have sent death threats or rape threats to other shippers

diminish woc’s valid concerns (especially the ones within their own fandom) over certain racist tropes popular to the fandom

treat katara like some sort of self-insertable white oc and ignore her culture and heritage (the amount of whitewashed fanart i’ve seen of her is INSANE).

make multiple accounts on social media like twitter to harass kataang shippers

… and so on and so forth.

the zutara fandom grows more and more unhinged day by day, especially now that the general fandom tolerance for their mischaracterized interpretations of atla is at an all-time low threshold. even among current zutara shippers and former zutara shippers, many state that there isn’t much room for different interpretations than the universal fandom headcanons among the zutara fandom. take it from me - i used to be a zutara shipper growing up, entered into atla fandom and then became more and more distanced from the ship as a result of the fandom aggressive behaviour. as zutara continued to drive me away, kataang pulled me in (more so out of confusion than anything else, something along the lines of ‘huh wait i don’t remember that. has this person even watched atla in years’). i soon began to learn, understand, and appreciate kataang so much more. you won’t like to hear this harsh reality, but a significant factor contributing to other people moving away from zutara are zutara shippers themselves. you wouldn’t believe the amount of people i’ve encountered that have said that they’d otherwise be fine with zutara, maybe even ship it, if the fandom wasn’t so inhospitable towards people who enjoy kataang, aang, maiko, and mai - and now recently zukka.

not to mention the sheer entitlement oozing from your argument when you state things like “why can’t kataang shippers be more open to zutara :( like the good old days” all the while justifying that zutara shippers have no reason to be open to kataang. it’s a two-way street, pal.

you also won’t believe the amount of zutara shippers that scoff at canon shippers for stating that canon itself is justifiable enough to ship something, all the while in the next breath going “zutara should’ve been canon!!!” as someone once put it, “we don’t WANT shitty canon” is the fandom equivalent of “well, i didn’t like you anyway!!” after getting rejected by your crush.

(from my personal experiences, it’s become quite apparent that the zutara fandom has become synonymous with the zuko fandom - and the version of him that’s their flawless dream boy rather than the flawed individual that he is presented as in canon. this is very evident by the amount of bizarre fics that has zuko giving aang a lecture about sex - as if zuko himself isn’t the most awkward person alive who stutters on a date).

Everywhere I see, there's always a ship pairing battle between Kataang vs Zutara vs Zukka. But what I have seen so far in both Tumblr and Twitter (or X 😒):

Kataang (Katara/Aang) shippers are the worst bullies you would ever see. With their childish excuses and constant harassment. There's even worse things from them that could be triggering for some people. I understand it's canon (I know man, it's everywhere 🙄), but don't boast it. On this day and age, the tropes for Kataang would be unacceptable, for example, lack of consent or lack of meaningful conversations between two people (both from Aang, sorry kid). In contrast, I like their artworks; it's fun and cheerful. In the past, I had seen Kataang shippers who were neutral to other ships, but that's rare these days.

Zutara (Katara/Zuko) shippers are humble or passionate (depends on the person), supportive and have the best resilience than all the ships. I've seen some people writing University-style essays about why Zutara is better, with actual evidence and quotes from the show, that would make literature professors proud. Also, I love witnessing how they defend or provide comfort whenever someone is bullied or harassed. Additionally, they create beautiful artworks. Unfortunately, I hear a few Zutara shippers bullying others, but I've not witnessed it so far. I would be disappointed and angry if I do see it.

Zukka (Sokka/Zuko) shippers are chill. I love their quiet emergence and possibly overtaking both ships, like a renaissance. They don't argue or bully, rather just stand back as wallflowers; I would like to be with them in that situation as well. Besides, Zukka is Zutara, but with more man-to-man tropes. I like their artworks - it's comedic like a rom-com style and it does make me chuckle - and their neutrality to anything. Fortunately no homophobic comments from other ships against them, but I'll be very pissed if someone would do that.

[I acknowledge there's also Taang (Toph/Aang), Sukka (Suki/Sokka) and Jinko (Jin/Zuko), but I always see positive contributions to all of them, with no negativity. So I don't mention them. There's also Maiko (Mai/Zuko)... but that's another story to tell.]

But come on, let people enjoy their favourite ships or even just the show! I'm not against any ship pairing as everyone has their own favourite thing and all of us are unique. I've seen way worse in Bridgerton shipping wars between Kanthony (Kate/Anthony) and Polin (Penelope/Colin) on Twitter, but I like both ships!

[snifflesthemouse]

This morning, I read an article titled “I went undercover in the sinister world of Meghan Markle hate accounts" posted to Refinery 29. The title gives the impression of a journalist disguising one’s self as a “Meghan Markle hater” for the sake of getting to the bottom of something. However, the content of the article is nothing like its title.

Before I go further, let me stress the importance of perspective. My post isn’t an attack on the article’s author. I’ve never even heard of the author before now, and I’ve no right or reason to attack a perfect stranger because I vehemently disagree with the content of their work. Making assumptions about someone solely on what they write is lazy and sloppy in my opinion. I may be lazy and sloppy, but a hypocrite I try not to be. Therefore, go forward remembering my issues are with content, not creator.

The article starts out explaining the origins of the term “Megxit”. It continues with other hashtags, conspiracy theories, and so on. The article even mentions various media platforms “attacking" the Duchess, as well as crude posts witnessed by the author.

Then the name dropping begins. First with Murky Meg, then Sue Blackhurst, then According2Taz, then Skippyv20 on Tumblr, then Yankee Wally. Eventually, names of Royal Rota journalists are dropped. Then people like Angela Levin and Omid Scobie get mentioned, with interviews from the latter. Instead of an undercover sting, we get a “Who’s Who" of Megxit, a few anonymous Sussex Squad quotations, and Omid trying his best to be fair.

What this article accomplishes is very little when it comes to objectivity. The title is a misconception, and the content essentially paints targets on the backs of the people the author carelessly considers “Meghan Markle Haters". The article reduces anyone who disagrees with Meghan’s behavior as racist, misogynist, conspiracy theorist nutters. So, not only is the content of the article sloppy and lazy, it also lacks originality. We’ve all heard this sad song-and-dance number a million times.

I guess at face value, it becomes very easy, effortless really, for outsiders looking in to reduce an entire group of people with similar views to the basic stereotypes as old as time. It takes very little thought, consideration, or critical analysis, to assume things because they seem to correlate. But correlation is not causation. Just because some people opposing of Meghan Markle’s behavior happen to be racist doesn’t mean every single opposing person is also racist. Again, lazy and sloppy.

Just like assuming every single Meghan Markle fan is also vegan, anti-monarchy, feminist, woke warriors is downright sloppy and lazy. This author has personally interacted with and found common ground with Sussex Squad people many times. Some even became social media friends. They believe what they do, and I believe what I do. We do not agree with most things regarding Harry and Meghan, but we do agree to disagree and be civil.

So, contrary to the article, not all people “hate" Meghan Markle just because they detest her behavior. It’s important to remember extremes exist for all spectrums. Every topic, especially those politicized or made popular by media platforms, have extremes. There is no denying the fact that there are people who hate Meghan Markle because of her ethnicity. Those extremists who hate Meghan for her ethnicity ironically do not discriminate, though. If they hate her for her ethnicity, they hate ALL people of that same ethnicity.

On the flip side of this coin, is the other extreme. The face is the same on each side because the face represents extremism. There is no denying the fact that there are extremists who see anyone opposing Meghan as racists. Extremists who, by default, view every issue in the world through the lens of racism. While racism is a serious problem that deserves no place in society, assuming racism is the root cause of every conflict is also lazy and sloppy. And the same could be said that these extremists do not discriminate, either. If they see race as the only issue for why people “hate" Meghan Markle, they see race as the only issue for most everything.

The problem with both extremes is when everything and everyone is reduced to racial identity, racism only continues to exist. A racist using skin color as a disqualifier perpetuates racism. Assuming racism is the only reason behind disdain for someone only perpetuates racism. Focusing on race or racism allows no room for content of character.

Especially when people defend Meghan Markle being the victim of racism with a racist rule. When opposing critics say “I didn’t even know she was Black" or suggest her physical features, her Hollywood CV, or past involvement with Black causes were nonexistent before she became a duchess or stepped down from being a working royal, the extremists on the other side often resort to the One Drop Rule.

Which means their defense for calling Meghan Markle “haters" racists, even though they might have never knew she was mixed race, is a form of racism. The One Drop Rule was borne from the Reconstruction Era post-Civil War. The “rule" essentially said anyone who appeared to have Black features were considered Black.

The One Drop Rule was the precursor and eventual backbone to Jim Crow Laws of the South. It was used to oppress and segregate Americans based on physical appearance. Considering most people who never heard of Meghan before Harry came along were ignorant to her mixed heritage, it seems grossly negligent to assume race is the real issue. How can one be racist toward Meghan when they didn’t know she was mixed race? This author wasn’t aware of Meghan’s ethnicity prior to it being pointed out (by her and Harry. Repeatedly.), mainly because this author didn’t care.

Like so many, when I first saw Meghan and Harry together for the engagement interview, I was more excited about a fellow American joining the Royal Family. After learning she was biracial, well it was even better. It represented change and progress. Does that mean I saw the Royal Family as racists beforehand? No. It means I saw them as exactly the opposite. Had they been racist, she’d not be a duchess. Her being American and divorced was more a shock to me than being mixed.

The point of all this is there are extremists on every spectrum. For a journalist to say they went undercover, when in fact they did not, to expose the true motives behind Meghan Markle “haters", only to find they did very little to really understand the other side was disappointing. Not surprising, just disappointing. This could’ve been an excellent opportunity for someone to take the reigns and make bridges between two very passionate factions. Instead it became nothing more than a hit piece.

The article fails to acknowledge the possibility – no, the probability – that most people who object to Meghan Markle do so because of how she behaves. The article only considers one possibility behind this “hate". And by calling the objections “hate", the article in turn defines all criticisms as hate speech. Again, unoriginal, sloppy, and lazy.

So here we have it, yet another article grouping and stereotyping anyone who disapproves of Meghan and Harry as racist haters. Yet again, another article name dropping people “deemed racist haters", essentially painting even bigger targets on the backs of those people. Like they didn’t already have enough hate mail. Yet again, another sloppy, lazy, article that never digs below the surface to understand why instead of assuming it.

This isn’t new, it’s just another slop drop from the sensationalism machine that has replaced fair, legitimate journalism. It would be different if there weren’t so many questions surrounding the births. It would be different if Meghan Markle actually lived by the example she so vehemently preaches. It would be different if Meghan Markle would make amends with her own family before telling the world how they should treat people. It would be different if Meghan Markle were a strong woman instead of claiming to be one.

But it’s not different. She hasn’t spoken to her father since two days before her wedding three years ago. She denies the family connections that existed before her fame. She ghosts people once they are no longer of benefit. She preaches equality and universal service while using her title every chance given. She and her husband criticize the “family she never had" while naming their second child after that family’s Matriarch. All of those are behaviors that incite strong emotional responses. Behaviors. And behavior has no racial identity.

A final note… hypocrisy is the main reason people have issues with anything. When one group of people tells another group to stop attacking a public figure, while using assumptions as their crusade call, it’s hypocrisy. One cannot say “if you can’t take the heat, then shut up!” to another without being a hypocrite. When that happens, don’t be surprised when the same exact thing is said back. If Meghan or her fans can’t take the criticism, they shouldn’t participate in it. We all have the right to choose. Just like if I couldn’t handle the criticism, I’d not be writing this.

Life is not fair. The world is a dark, cruel place. When we expect the world to bend to the will of a few, we are setting ourselves above the majority. A strong woman would know this. A strong woman fighting for others would also know that the only person responsible for how one feels is one’s self. External feedback isn’t responsible for internal turmoil. Internal feedback is. That is all.

REFERENCE:

Amoako, A. (2021 June 11). I went undercover in the sinister world of Meghan Markle hate accounts. Refinery29. Retrieved from: https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/2021/06/10518195/megxit-meghan-markle-anti-fandom

[bookofmirth]

I saw your recent response to an anon where you mentioned the drama that occurred the other day based around bookprofessor’s post. Obviously you don’t have to respond to this or publish it if you do not wish but I just wanted to bring up that while it is important to focus on the real life issues at hand, the OP was hypocritical in her post which is why people were getting upset. She was preaching against ableism while simultaneously flaunting her IQ and degree which is a form of ableism. She was speaking out against racism while ending her post using the racial slur “cracker” when talking about the possibly Caucasian Twitter elriels.

Obviously she had some important points but it was completely overshadowed by her participation in the hate speech and prejudice that she was speaking out against.

This does not in any way justify the nasty messages she received but on the same hand, I do not blame anyone that called her out for her hypocrisy. I hope you can understand why her post was so negatively received and how flawed it was. My hope is that one day everyone can just ignore the negativity, report those who are being racist/prejudiced in any way, and block those who are just being loud and who you don’t wish to see content from. But unfortunately I do not see that happening any time soon.

There are a few things I want to address in this because I think it's a good moment for the fandom to step back and reflect on how we treat one another, how we react to such issues, and how we behave moving forward.

First off, thanks for explaining your point of view without being antagonistic. I do think that everyone's emotional reactions to the post were valid. I do NOT think their responses, in terms of words and actions, were valid. Now before I move forward, I want to clarify that when I use the word "you", I am referring to anyone who may have had the response I am describing - not you personally, anon. Also please don’t freak out about how long this is, as a majority of it is a response to the fandom in general, not you in particular.

What was - and wasn’t - said in the original post

In this post, there were completely valid criticisms of the way that people in this fandom behave, and it wasn’t “generalizing” a certain group, it was literal, actual proof of things that had been said, by multiple people. I’m not going to get too into what Alyssa argued because her critiques of those tweets was flawless. The original post had very valid criticisms of what was happening on Twitter. Alyssa exposed the actually racist, homophobic, and imperialistic underpinnings of those tweets.

However, a lot of people are stuck on the bits before and after those critiques. @bookprofessor apologized for different aspects of her post in a few different asks. There were perhaps better ways that some of those things could have been phrased, some things that could have been left out. And she apologized. People can accept that apology or not but we can’t act like it didn’t happen. Like she didn’t reflect and learn to do better.

However, the people she was calling out have not done the same thing, and if anything, comments that focus more on Alyssa’s tone than why she wrote the post in the first place lets those people off the hook.

On cracker - Using the word "cracker" is not racist in the same way that using racial slurs against POC is. Is it prejudiced? Yes. But you cannot say that it is the same thing when that is demonstrably untrue, given centuries of oppressive history. No one has been oppressed for being white. Those are not the same. Reverse racism is not a thing because a white person punching down on POC is NOT AT ALL the same thing as a POC punching up at white people. The actions look the same, but the impact is so unequal it’s not even funny.

Racism is a systemic, institutionalized problem. It is not defined by individual actions, though those actions can either support or challenge racism. When someone calls a white person a cracker, there isn’t centuries of oppression giving power to and reinforcing that statement. That is not a “gotcha” moment.

Saying “I have x IQ” or “I have X degrees” is not ableist. I’m sorry to whoever told you it was ableist (again, not you specifically anon but people who had read the “aw shucks guys” vagueblogs about it), but it’s not. Those are facts. I have no idea what my IQ is, but I have five degrees from institutions of higher education. Me saying that is in no way ableist. 

Often, people mention those things to be elitist, yes. Sometimes, they can be used to say “hey I know more about this than you”. They can be used in a way that tries to make themselves feel superior. I suspect that this is the impression that a lot of people got of the post. However, there is a fine line between saying “hey that’s elitist” and professing anti intellectualism. Which is perhaps a side issue so I’ll let that go for now.

Another reason that people mention their degrees or qualifications is to establish their background knowledge and credibility. If I were to say “hey y’all I have two MA degrees” (which is true) I am not being ableist! It is a fact! It is factual! And I worked my ass off for those, I will be in student loan debt until I die for those, I have every right to mention them if I want to, and often I do so in order to establish my credibility, to explain the position I am coming from. And my prior knowledge of these topics is relevant when we are talking about literature since that’s what my degrees were on - literature and linguistics. That is why Alyssa mentioned her background, though she did pair it with comments about other people, for which she has apologized.

My final point about this is that I 1000% understand feeling insecure or less than because of educational attainment. I dropped out of high school. I had a complex about that for a long, long time. But I also know that if I took offense at someone else saying they had a PhD, then that offense is about me, not them. Someone else’s inferiority complex is not reason for people to pretend to be less than they are.

If those two comments are what overshadowed the bigger, more important issue for a lot of the readers of that post, then y’all allowed them to overshadow those more important issues. I am 99% sure that someone right now is reading this and thinking “but Leslie, it was the way that she said it!” Boy have I got some news for you!

How we react

This next section is not specific to this ask; instead, it is a discussion of how the fandom responded. If it were only one person who had said “but her tone” then I wouldn’t need to make this point. The fact that multiple people are exhibiting the behavior explained below is what makes this a cultural problem within the acotar fandom.

The main argument I saw on the post itself, and indeed any time I see people bring up how nasty Twitter can be, is that “it was a joke” and “that’s how stan Twitter works”.

No.

Those responses were quite useful for this post, though! So buckle up everyone, because I am going to talk about gaslighting, racism, respectability politics, and tone policing. While I understand that some people might have taken personal offense to what was said, there is a much bigger issue at stake that has nothing to do with individual feelings, and everything to do with ensuring that POC stay silenced and white supremacy is upheld. 

Back to the “but it’s a joke” thing. Thanks for gaslighting! Great example of that, person I’m not going to tag! Gaslighting is when you make someone question their experiences, when you try to make them think “wait, did I really feel that way? Is my feeling about that valid? Do I need to re-evaluate my response to this?? Am I blowing this out of proportion???” And saying “it’s just a joke” is a perfect way to do that. Did I say something accidentally sexist? It’s just a joke, nbd! Now you’re the problem, because you didn’t understand my joke and laugh!!! 

Saying “it’s a joke” or “oh they are old/young/ignorant, they will learn” is not a good response to... anything. It takes the responsibility off the people who are doing the harm, and putting it onto the people who were hurt. And in this case, anyone who read those tweets and found them harmful (which should be everyone?) is completely valid. You aren’t lesser for being angry or emotional or for seeing a problem where other people saw a joke. The people who see those things as acceptable jokes are the ones in the wrong.

This is a tactic that is used against women all the time. Any time a woman is sexually harassed at work or online, for example, and she gets upset about it, and someone chimes in with “oh they weren’t serious, can’t you take a joke?” So you can imagine what this is like for women of color.

It is a very, very common tactic for people of color to be silenced via tone policing and respectability politics. Tone policing and respectability politics are very closely related, especially in this context. The idea is that if Alyssa had just written that post in just the right way, it would have been more palatable to white people, and therefore okay to write. The idea that if she had tried to be “understanding” or “see it from their perspective” or understand that it’s “just a joke” are all ways to silence and de-legitimize any accurate, valid criticisms that were made of those tweets. It effectively re-routes the conversation away from the real issues, and to the person trying to bring them up. It’s essentially an ad hominem attack in disguise. 

We see respectability politics in media when people of color who act or dress or speak like white people are afforded more respect. Or any time that a person of color is pulled over and people say, “well if they had just done what the police officer asked...” There is a pervasive idea that if people just “act” properly, aka if you act white, then the police won’t feel antagonized and try to kill arrest you. If we are nice enough, meek enough, smile enough, etc. then we will be accepted.

When we tone police, we refuse to allow marginalized people the right to be angry. We say that "hey, we can only have this discussion if you leave emotion, which you rightfully feel, at the door, and we can only continue this discussion if you behave in a way that makes me feel comfortable." But guess what? It isn’t about you! These discussions are often highly uncomfortable. There is no nice way to tell someone they are being racist. And yet somehow, that is the ever-moving goalpost. It seems reasonable, right? “Just be civil, be nice, don’t insult each other!” And there is that. But those criteria change constantly, to the point where anyone (white) at any time can say “WHOA WHOA THIS IS MAKE ME UNCOMFORTABLE???” Then we find ourselves at zero, and suddenly the focus of attention has shifted away from the actual problem.

Before we go further, I want to say this: people have a right to be angry. They do not need to make their anger palatable or tasteful for the consumption of others (read: white people). 

We saw this last summer, and I’m not sure how the message didn’t get across. But people are rightfully angry about racism. They are angry about the murder of people of color by police, they are angry about lack of quality education, or clean water, of centuries of oppression that have led to this very moment when all of that ceases to matter because a white woman’s feelings got hurt one time. 

And that is what pisses me off so much. There is no way in this world that we could criticize tweets like those that everyone would agree with, and that everyone would “approve” of, that would be “nice” enough and yet still be impactful and make the authors of those tweets understand the gravity of what they have done. 

The least we can do is allow one another to express our anger, our outrage, because it’s highly likely that those people know exactly what the fuck they are doing, and they do not fucking care. By criticizing a woman of color for the way in which she chose to engage with this topic, we are avoiding the issue and letting the people in those tweets off the hook. 

There were many responses to that post that were positive, that agreed with Alyssa. There are a ton of people who disagree with those tweets, who find them disgusting, who understand exactly how and why they are problematic. That should be what we are talking about. Getting to the core of the argument, on that post or any about racism or other problematic behavior in fandom, requires getting past our own egos. It requires us to be able to step back, say “hm this thing is frustrating but there is a bigger picture here”. It’s not easy, and I recognize that. 

The fact that it is a common tactic though? To say “hey this hurt me personally and so I’m going to ignore any valid points you made?” That feeds directly into centuries of white supremacy because it, once again, silences POC and makes them try to play a losing game. And they will always lose, because no matter how hard they try to play the white game, the goalposts are constantly shifting. So you know what? Fuck the game, and fuck respectability politics, and fuck tone policing and “uwu be nice guys” because when it comes to things like racism and sexism, I don’t expect the people who deserve to be criticized to be nice. In fact, trying to be nice only serves to fuck POC over in the end.

Indeed, in response to that post, certain blogs have taken the opportunity to position themselves as “the nice ones” or “the ones who would never” or “uwu let’s be nice guys” while completely ignoring the fact that a woman of color was attacked for calling out racism. And yes - that was the point of her post. People getting hung up on mentions of her degree are (intentionally or not, it doesn’t matter) completely obfuscating the fact that that is not what her post was about, which was to call out disgusting behavior. idk how many words the post actually was, but essentially, people are focusing on 5% of it to the detriment of the 95% that was actually really important shit. These types of vagueblog posts about the issue fall into exactly what I am talking about - these are people who have decided to look at this issue, see how Alyssa (and anyone else who dares speak up) has approached it, and intentionally try to act like they are “better” because they can be “rational” and “kind”. Newsflash, if you don’t have something to be angry about, then being “nice” about racism isn’t that much of a flex. If it didn’t bother you, then congratulations. That doesn’t make you better than people it did bother. You just got lucky this time, and decided to use that to your advantage to look like the good guy.

I am not saying that all calls for peace are doing this. Obviously it’s what we all want. This is the worst I have seen this fandom in the 4+ years I’ve been here. But we cannot have that by ignoring the real problems and pretending that if we are all just nice to each other, then we will solve racism and sexism and all bullying in the fandom will stop. 

So combining all of this - the gaslighting, the tone policing, and what do you get? You get a fandom that refuses to actually engage critically with its own problems and take accountability for them. You get a fandom that decides that it’s easier to be distracted by this one mean comment over here than it is to engage in the fact that you know what, the culture in this fandom has actually turned incredibly disgusting and a lot of people are just okay with it. You’ve got a fandom that is using the tools of white supremacy to avoid the discussions that should actually be taking place. Maybe people don’t realize that that’s what they are doing. But if someone still thinks that after reading this post, then godspeed my friend, I hope you enjoy Twitter.

Okay so my last thing I want to say is that I didn’t come to all of this knowledge fresh from the womb. I do a lot of work, in my personal life and my professional life, to be better. So here is a list of books that I have found particularly helpful:

How to Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America also by Ibram X. Kendi

White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo (side note, I was kinda meh about this one but the chapter “White Women’s Tears” is particularly helpful)

So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo

Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment by Patricia Hill Collins

I’m not going to talk specifically about Alyssa’s post anymore, but if anyone wants to continue talking about these broader issues going on in the fandom, I am game. (I really should be grading papers though, so it might take a bit.)

[greensaplinggrace]

honestly THANK YOU for saying all that abt baghra bc i thought i was going crazy from not liking her??? bc i haven't read the books and only summaries of them on wiki and like. i dunno why ppl like her actually even in the show bc this guy, her son, is like "i wanna make the world better for us grisha" and she's just like "no." even tho he sees that she's MAKING HERSELF SICK from suppressing her powers! she's literally like in bed coughing in the flashback yet seem much healthier at the little palace. also like after everything, after her disapproval, after the fold, after centuries of waiting for the sun summoner.. he never abandons her. he makes sure she's cares for. he doesn't harm her. and i have to wonder if baghra has ever thanks him for that, for just not leaving her alone. like i dunno how im suppose ro believe aleks is a heartless villain when he still cares for his abusive mom like this. like has baghra even told her she loved him (honestly she reminds me of a classic emotionally unavailable asian parent but maybe that's just me). also im wondering if baghra ever told aleks that he had an aunt.. bc like.. now that u bring up her isolating him it's like hmmmm...

not at me being like alina... why do u trust the bitter old woman who literally beats u with a stick and verbally abuses u every chance she gets.. just bc she showed a bad painting... like.. pls use two braincells to see that who u figured out as his mother... is also using his protection..

like baghra could've upped and left with alina. but no. she stayed bc she knew she was safe under aleks's protection.

alsoim just impressed that after his first friend tried to drown him and harvest his bones... he didn't go into hiding???? he still wanted to make a safe heaven for grisha!!! HE STILL WANTED TO PROTECT GRISHA EVEN AFTER HIS GRISHA FRIEND TRIED TO KILL HIM FOR HIS FUCKEN BONES. like... this is the guy im suppose to believe is the villain???

honestly i feel like part of the reason why LB's plotlines seem so bad and disconnected (and sometimes outright racist but that's another rant) and why darkles is disproportionately more violent and villainous in the later books is bc she didn't expect the darkling to be so popular and wanted to stick with her guns of making him the villain. but also wanted the money from aleks's popularity. but like you can't have ur cake and eat it too.

Well thank you for sending this ask! It's very sweet and very passionate. I'm glad you liked my post! I didn't put as much thought into it as some of my others lol. I kind of just talked. But it was nice to be able to finally talk about some of the problems I have with both her character and the fandom/author's perception of her.

HERE is the post this is referring to, in case anyone's wondering.

👀👀 You've hit the nail on the head for so many things, here!

Baghra is extremely emotionally unavailable, basically to the point of neglect. She's also verbally and physically abusive, traits which I doubt were only reserved for her students and not her son. Baghra claims she would do anything to protect him, but I've known a lot of parents who have that mindset and yet still harm their children because they think it's "good for them".

Aleksander stays at Baghra's side for years, and even when they're opposing each other she's never too far away from him. Idk if you've read the books but he does eventually hurt her. And as much as I don't like Baghra, I think his actions were horrid. But I'm also honestly kind of surprised it took him so long lmao.

Yeah I mean, in terms of isolation, let's not forget that she never wanted to introduce him to his father, either. Baghra's sense of eternity clouds a lot of her judgments on relationships, which means she views most people as dust and therefore teaches her son to as well. The problem with that is that he's a growing child, and he needs those social and emotional attachments for healthy development.

I would bet quite a bit of money that Baghra has either never told him she loves him or she has told him so few times it's practically forgettable.

And everything becomes more complicated because so many of Baghra's actions are understandable because of her life and her history, but the impacts they have on the people around her, especially Aleksander, are permanently damaging. And the fact that that's never gone over in critical depth in the books or how it's glossed over in fandom is just very disconcerting. Like, acknowledging Baghra's failings doesn't mean we're excusing Aleksander's actions, it just means we're holding Baghra liable for her own. Which the fandom should be doing, considering she's the epitome of an abusive parental figure.

And Alina trusting Baghra over Aleksander is even more confusing! Especially in the show!! This is the woman who beat her and abused her and tortured her friends when they tiny little children (and who probably still does so now that they're adults). This is the woman who mocks you and harasses you and insults you on a regular basis. Why does Baghra revealing she's Aleksander's mother make Alina change her mind?! Like fuck, I'd just feel bad for Aleksander. No wonder he kept it a secret, I would too! And that painting is enough evidence?! Really?! A random painting shown to you by this abusive mentor that's been making your life hell. That's what you're going to betray your new lover over?

The friends trying to harvest his bones thing is a good point, too. I think Aleksander, especially show Aleksander, is incredibly idealistic. I think he cares too much for others - those he's deemed worth his care (a sentiment given to him by Baghra). Despite everything she's tried to teach him about hiding and abandoning others and never caring and never doing anything to help or reach out or connect with people, Aleksander still continues to do so. It's likely because he never got it from Baghra growing up, and so is desperate for those emotional needs to be fulfilled elsewhere.

His turning point, when Baghra tells him it was understandable that those kids tried to kill him because the world is such a hard place for them - that's crucial. And the reason it's possible as a motivating factor is because of that idealism and that desire to help and that desire to be everything his mother isn't. Baghra tells him this trauma he just experienced was because of the oppression of his people, and instead of following her lead and accepting that, going into hiding and abandoning everybody to their misery, he goes I can do something about that. I can make it so this never happens again. Which is usually how trauma like that combines with one's core personality traits at a young age, especially when there's none of the essential support systems in place to aid in recovery (ie, the role Baghra should have been filling but wasn't, because she decided to exacerbate the problem instead).

And yeah, one of my biggest problems with the ham-fisted "beating you over the head with a sledgehammer of evil deeds" look-how-bad-this-character-is! portrayal of the Darkling in the later books comes from the impression I get that Bardugo doesn't trust her readers. She's so desperate to have us hate this character and think him an irredeemable villain, not trusting any of her readers to engage critically with a morally gray character, that it feels quite a bit like condescending fucking bullshit. Which ew, I know how to engage with literature, thanks.

She really does seem to look down on a large part of her fandom, and imo, the infantilization of the female characters in her books seems to carry over to her impression of most of her female readers as well. Which is why the Darkling's character arc gets fucking destroyed. But he's still a good cash grab, of course, so she'll shake his dead corpse in front of the fandom for money every time she wants something from it.

Also! Another reason I think her plotlines feel disconnected (I'm sorry Bardugo I respect you as a person, but shit-) is because the writing in SaB is just bad. I mean, nevermind the absolutely nauseating implications of the way she portrays the Grisha as a persecuted group who's situation is never actually fully addressed as it should be, considering Grisha rights is what her main villain is fighting for (imo for a series called the Grishaverse, LB seems to be pretty anti Grisha), but her characters and story alone are just wrong for each other. They don't fit together.

And the ending is one of the main pieces of evidence in that regard! You can’t say the ending where Alina isn’t Grisha anymore is her “going back to where she started” when she’s always been Grisha. She just didn’t know she was Grisha because she denied that part of herself that she was born with.

Alina is reluctant to move forward or change, she struggles with adapting, and she’s very set on the things she’s grown attached to throughout her life. She also has some latent prejudices against the Grisha, and so denies the possibility of being Grisha for those reasons as well.

Alina’s lack of powers in the beginning of her life because she willfully doesn’t learn about them to avoid change versus her lack of powers at the end of the book when she’s accepted them and then they’re stripped away from her by outer forces are two entirely separate circumstances. You can’t make a parallel about lost powers and lack of Grisha status bringing her back to the start when she was always Grisha and she always had powers and she simply refused to come to terms with it because of personal reasons.

The first situation is an internal conflict that indicates a story about growth and a journey of self acceptance. Denying herself the opportunity to learn about her heritage and to find acceptance with a group of people like her because she’s tied to the past and because of the way she was raised is the setup for a narrative that tackles unlearning prejudice and learning how to connect with a part of her identity that was denied her and learning how to grow independent and self assured. It’s the setup for a different story entirely. The second situation is an external conflict that centers around the ‘corrupting influence of power’... for some reason.

In a world where Grisha do not have social, political, or economic power and they are hunted, centering your heroine’s journey of self acceptance and growth around an external conflict about... the corrupting influence of power (in a group of people that don’t actually have any power?!) just doesn’t work. It is literally impossible to connect the two stories Bardugo is trying to push in Shadow and Bone without seriously damaging the main character’s developmental arc.

The only way a narrative like this would work, claiming that she has gone back to where she started, is either a) if the Grisha weren’t actually a persecuted group and instead were apart of the upper class, or b) if the one bad connection between the two instances is acknowledged - that Alina denied a part of herself crucial to self acceptance and growing up, and that losing her powers at the end has also denied her. It is a tragedy, not a happy ending.

Alina suffered because she didn’t use her powers. She grew sick. It was bad for her. This was not a resistance to 'the corruption of power and the burden of greed', it was her suffering because she couldn’t fully accept herself.

Framing the ending as a return to the beginning can’t be done if you don’t address how bad the beginning was for your main character. You brought her back to a bad point in her life. You regressed her. This should be a low point in her arc. It should be a problem that’s solved so she can finish developing organically or it should be something that is acknowledged as a tragedy in it’s own right, for the future the world (the writing) denied her.

This is a ramble and it makes no sense and I’m really sorry, but my point is that Bardugo put the wrong characters in the wrong story. The character arc required for organic development doesn’t match the story and intended message at all. The narrative doesn’t fit the cast. She's got two clashing stories attempting to work in tandem and she ends up with both conflicting messages that fans still can’t comprehend in her writing and an ending that doesn’t suit her main character to such an impossible degree that it’s almost laughable.

So yeah, there's a few reasons why I think the story and the plot feels so bad and disconnected. I hope you don't mind me making this answer so long! 😅 I was not expecting to write this much.

[stubbornjerk]

Why people keep telling you to block them if you support Pholo (Penumbra Edition)

Or: why jitterbug-juno really deactivated

I love when people categorize this as fandom wank. Really makes you feel like you’re putting the onus on either side of the conversation.

I’m making this post not because I want to stir up spoiled milk, but because I want it out there that this wasn’t a purity culture war.

The TL;DR version of this is that fans of color tried to tell Rab (prev. jitterbug-juno) not to post her Omegaverse (or A/B/O) fic. And instead of taking the L, she posted it on Ao3 and deactivated.

But, if you want context, well, buckle in. CW for mentions of racism and transphobia.

What did jitterbug-juno do?

Before I get into this I do want it out there that I will not be linking Rab’s fic, but I will show you this screenshot of the summary of it.

[ID: It is a screenshot of a fic, “As You Are” by Pholo.

Summary: Peter can hide his scent glands behind cologne; makeup; concealer pads. He can quash his heats with suppressants. He can divert the urge to nest and fawn.

But he can’t feign another gender’s subvocals. He lacks the anatomical capacity. Mag taught him to distract from his silence with fast, flashy words. For longer heists he relies on social convention. Traumatic mutism is uncommon, but remarked upon by enough war vets and soap operas to be widely recognized. Peter’s marks assume he’s been harmed long before they assume he’s a closeted omega. It would take quite the backwater brute to ask why he doesn’t murmur or chuff or growl.

On the 'Blanche there are the usual furtive glances. Juno makes clear to Peter that should he ever want ��to talk about what happened,” he’ll be there to listen. The gesture annoys Peter more than comforts him.

‘Nothing happened,’ he wants to scream. ‘There’s nothing to talk about!’

There are 14 comments, 85 kudos, and 11 bookmarks /end]

You decide what you’re doing with that information, but honestly, I’d rather you don’t give it anymore engagement than it deserves.

There was a period earlier this June (yes, even though it’s only the 10th, at time of writing) when Rab was posting snippets of the aforementioned fic on her blog and tagging it appropriately, putting it in the attention of pretty much the entire Penumbra fandom.

What’s Omegaverse or a/b/o and why is everyone so against Rab for it

If you know what Omegaverse is, I don’t have to tell you why it’s controversial. If you don’t know what Omegaverse is, well, Fanlore said it best:

a kink trope wherein some or all people have defined biological roles based on a hierarchical system, with the terms originating from animal behaviour research. There may be werewolf, knotting, or other animalistic elements involved, or the characters may be otherwise purely human.

The term is generally written with slashes (a/b/o). Many fans, particularly ones from Australia and New Zealand, are uncomfortable seeing the term without slashes because it is also an Australian slur for aboriginal people.

I won’t get into the history or the heaps and tons of other discourses (mostly about fictional male pregnancy, homophobia, transphobia, sexual assault, etc.)  that go on within that. We’re here specifically on Rab v. Penumbra fans of color and we’re staying there.

Anyone who’s been in Penumbra enough to realize that everyone draws the Junoverse characters in a certain way knows that a) Juno is black, b) Nureyev is Asian, and c) as a fan you have to be aware of what you’re subjecting or saying about either of them because of the political repercussions that come with it.

And despite that, Rab proceeded to write Peter Nureyev, a gender nonconforming gay Asian male character that is widely headcanon’d as trans, into a fic using a kink trope that relies heavily on animal behavior.

Unlike most people new to fandom, Rab is aware of what Omegaverse is and is very much white. She is (and if she isn’t, should be) aware of the racist undertones that writing him in would get.

I couldn’t get a screenshot of what snippets Rab was sending out into the ether, seeing as a majority of my friends would rather not have seen any at all (I have all of the usual tags blocked so I wouldn’t have seen it either way), but needless to say, Rab got attention for it. Both positive and negative.

Anne (@hopeless-eccentric) even posted a satirical fic, in the odds that Rab was just writing this thing to be “the first” to write Omegaverse fic in the Penumbra tags.

But, I’m assuming more than one fan of color came into Rab’s inbox and messaged her about it, but someone I know (who would like to remain anonymous) was gracious enough to take a screenshot before he sent his in and let me use it for this post:

[ID: A message to jitterbug-juno about to be sent by a sender whose name is censored with a black bar. His messages says:

“as someone who is a person of color i think the nature of the fic you are writing right now is extremely racist and attributing animal characteristics to lgbt people of color is not at all appropriate, especially when you are someone who is white. i have to ask you to not publish this fic and to reflect as to why you would want to write this in the first place, these tropes are extremely harmful and”

There are 33 characters left to write into the message. /end]

I can’t speak for whoever else sent asks about the fic she was writing. If anyone was actually not-so-gentle with her, well, minorities don’t really owe it to you to be gentle about what they can tell is bigotry-tinged behavior.

But, the message was clear: this is different from your garden variety, lily white straight male character m/m kink fantasy. This is an actual queer Asian character that a lot of queer Asian people feel attached do. Do not post the fic.

What happened next: the beginning of the end

The next morning, I woke up to most of my friends being frustrated by this post on Rab’s account:

[ID: Dated 5 June, a post by jitterbug-juno:

“Gonna leave the fandom for a while. Wishing you all well.”

The tags say the following: not sure if i’ll be back, thank you so much to everybody who’s read my fics, and who’s sent asks or engaged with my art or any of that, you’re amazing and I’m sending love /end]

That... was not what fans of color wanted, but it was definitely an action they took. Some celebrated, as they were very much wary of Rab for having caused much of the same category of drama in fandoms like Voltron: Legendary Defenders and Warrior Cats. This also meant that she was probably not going to post the fic either.

Some, myself included, were relatively pissed, as they’d wanted even just the measly bit of accountability. An apology or an acknowledgement of having been called out in private and that they’ll take time to consider why. But instead we got Rab leaving in the face of fans of color telling her not to post her Omegaverse fic.

Well. The next day...

[ID: Dated 6 June. A post by jitterbug-juno titled, “Well... that was short-lived”

“I gave the situation a lot of thought yesterday. The reaction to my omegaverse previews made me figure I should leave the fandom. It seemed like the safest option.

But you know what?

Hell.

I don’t want to leave. The fic discusses the tropes of omegaverse and I spoke to several POC on Twitter, and I’m going to post it with plenty of tags so people can avoid it if they wish. I’m not going to be chased out of this space.

Thank you to everyone who sent messages yesterday. I shouldn’t have made that post about leaving. It was really reactionary. I’m okay and I appreciate your support so much.

(bolded on the post) To those who are angry and uncomfortable with me: Please block me. If you’re going to talk about this fic on Tumblr and Twitter– and this may sound odd– PLEASE NAME ME as Jitterbug-juno or Pholo. Don’t vague me. That way people who don’t want to see this discourse can add my name to their block lists.“ /end]

That certainly was short-lived, she wasn’t kidding.

This got a lot of outrage. Again, the fic is up on Ao3 and she has not taken it down. A lot of POC were pissed and I didn’t see a single fan of color actively support what she was doing, at least, not in my friend group. Everyone started making those posts to block them if you liked the fic or Rab’s content in general, in accordance to what Rab wanted.

Perseus (@mraudiodrama) noticed/pointed out that Rab deleted the part where she said she spoke to several POC about releasing her fic, as well as the part where she said she refused to be chased out of the fandom. This was an incredibly pointed detail to edit out, according to some.

[ID: A screenshot of jitterbug-juno's last post taken 11:00PM. Much of it is the same except the following bolded words are removed: "The fic discusses the tropes of omegaverse and I spoke to several POC on Twitter, and I’m going to post it with plenty of tags so people can avoid it if they wish. I’m not going to be chased out of this space." /end]

That same day, Rab deleted her blog. I actually caught this one on tape, believe it or not.

[ID: A screen recording taken at 12:01 PM of someone scrolling down jitterbug-juno's account. The posts and asks about Omegaverse and her post about leaving and coming back are conspicuously absent. /end]

Initially, I thought she deleted all mentions of it. I wanted to see firsthand if the rumors about her deleting portions of it were true. If she added things where she was saying that she wanted to write it because she was autistic and wanted Nureyev to be autistic too, regardless of the numerous QPOC telling her not to do it.

Instead, it turned out, she deleted her blog.

And now, we're here. The fic is still up. Her blog is down. Rab's public Twitter account @nataclinn is quiet about this. Her @cushfuddled Twitter account is on private after her run-in with the Warrior Cats fandom, according to a friend. And her Tumblr @cushfuddled account has nothing but memes.

Again, I didn't make this post to stir up drama. I wasn't even obsessively making this post as a call-out because she isn't in the fandom anymore. I just want it out there that this isn't a purity culture thing that got out of hand in a fandom as niche as Penumbra. This was a case of someone being called out and failing to acknowledge it before running away. And I want all that out of the way before I say:

If you are on Rab's side of this debacle, I, a queer person of color, want nothing to do with you either.