#everyone woman who /gets in the way/ of a mlm ship this one’s for you

[bloodlessdeity]

[starcurtain]

I wish everyone collectively understood aventurine’s character like you…things would be so much easier! I genuinely don’t understand how people keep getting his motivations wrong??? Could it be because some of the most popular Aven fanfics were written prior to his release? That could have contributed to some of the takes we tend to see about him…thoughts?

I struggled all day to come up with a concise way to answer this and couldn't think of one, so here, have a long-winded ramble:

I don't think early fic writers have much impact in the situation with Aventurine's character now, since most people can look at when a story was posted and go "Oh, this was before we had ____ information."

I think that Aventurine's problem is being a male character in a gacha game. Gacha game characters are designed to sell. Hoyo can sell female characters very, very easily. Give her huge tits and a visible underwear strap and you're good to go. I love all my guy friends, but I'm not gonna sugarcoat it: straight men are not the hardest audience to please. Hit a particular fetish (feet, spandex, dommy mommy), and you're gucci.

Nah, we all know why Jade's trailer is Like That.™

Male characters in gacha are harder to sell because women as consumers are a little harder to predict. Does every woman want a tall, ripped hunk? Shit, no, small cute boyish models like Aventurine are selling better now? Why?! Would a bad boy be more popular than a nice guy??? It's harder to account for women's tastes, especially because they are often (a little) less visually-oriented.

Hoyo is good at what they do though, and they've figured out that male characters sell very well when they possess at least one of two specific traits:

Endearing vulnerability/helplessness

Gay ship tease

Give a character both, like Aventurine? They might as well be printing money.

That sound you hear is Hoyo's stock prices rising.

So, from the very beginning, Hoyo is incentivized to create a character that appeals to people, a character people will want to crack their wallets open for. And they achieved this, first and foremost, by giving Aventurine traits that female players (in particular, but men too), find especially appealing: emotional and physical vulnerability.

We see Aventurine's pain. We sympathize with his grief. We identify with his struggle to make meaning of his difficult life. He's our woobie, blorbo, babygirl, whatever the hell they're calling it now.

He can't hide his suffering anymore. He's on the very edge. He's a dude in distress. He's surrounded by enemies! He misses his mama! He's been betrayed! No one understands him like you do, dear player!

The ultimate feeling evoked is: He needs to be saved.

When people talk about male power fantasies, I think they forget that women can experience them too, and "Emotionally vulnerable man that only I (or my favorite character) can fix" is actually a female power fantasy.

And from there it's really easy, right: the people who shell out cash to buy warps for their harmed-husbando feel like they've saved him; the people who are into mlm ships look for the nearest hot dude to be the savior Ratio was waiting for his time lol.

Morally and intellectually, this type of deep-down-golden-hearted, emotionally-wounded male character is very easy to digest. There is nothing to dislike about this type of character or role in the story: this character is a good guy who has just gone through so many terrible situations, whose victim status makes him endearing, and whose lack of agency means that any of the questionable or downright bad things he does are always the result of someone else forcing his hand, and never something he would have chosen himself.

His motivations are always clear and consistent: get free, heal, and live happily ever after.

Insert the Wreck-It Ralph meme: "Do people assume all your problems got solved when a big strong man showed up?" But to be fair, a big strong man did kind of solve Aventurine's problem, so--

Anyway, it's simple. It's straightforward. Morally, it's pretty cut and dry, black and white: Aventurine is our hero, which means everyone dictating the course of his miserable life is evil.

Hoyo is not remotely discouraging people from literally buying into this emotional appeal.

And trust me, I get it. I'll be the first to admit that hurt-comfort is its own entire genre in fandom because it is so appealing. People eat up Aventurine's tragic backstory like candy! The idea of watching a character go through hell at the hands of bad guys just to finally find a happy end is like the definition of everyone's favorite story.

In fact... people love Aventurine's suffering so much, they have invented whole new ways for him to suffer that aren't even in the game.

This is where we get all the headcanons that Aventurine was a sex slave, every single person he meets hates him because of his race, the Stonehearts are executioners holding knives to his throat, Jade enslaved him to the IPC with a lifelong contract, his material possessions belong to the company, the IPC is forcing him to take only the most dangerous missions where he is being required by his evil jailers to continually put his life on the line... You name it and I promise you, I can find a fanfic where Aventurine suffers from it. 😂

Bro can't even sleep in on his day off; life is so hard for this man.

Being serious: if the game is telling us that Aventurine is a victim... Why not make him the perfect victim?

Why not envision an Aventurine with no freedom, who bears no responsibility for any of the horrible situations he is in or any of the dubious things he does?

It's so natural to like that version of Aventurine, so appealing to see a totally powerless underdog use his own wits and charms to claw his way up to freedom. Or, if you're the kind who really relishes angst: It's even appealing to see Aventurine lose more. To delight in fics where he loses his wealth, where the IPC punishes him for past crimes while he's powerless to stop them... (I assure you, this is many people's cup of tea and the fanfics prove it!)

Ultimately, there's nothing wrong with liking characters who are exactly this straightforward! It's completely fine to embrace characters that are intentionally written to be morally above-board, whose primary role in the story is to generate angst by being a good person who suffers, or those characters who never show unlikable traits, bad decisions, or contradictory actions.

The problem is that that's just not who the game is telling us Aventurine is.

Hoyo may be capitalizing off people who love to envision poor Aventurine still living his life as a slave... But the game also needs to tell a complicated enough story overall to appeal to people who don't care about this specific husbando--Aventurine's role in the actual game's plot has to be interesting enough for almost everyone to appreciate it, not just Aventurine's simp squad. (Don't get mad, I'm in the simp squad with you.)

So his character doesn't stop at just being a pure-hearted victim who is still waiting to be saved.

Aventurine is not that easy to label, and I think the biggest struggle in this character's fandom right now is between people who prefer the even-more-angsty, still-a-slave Aventurine versus people who want a morally grey, self-destructive character instead.

To me personally, while I greatly understand the appeal of fanon!Aventurine and the joy of a really juicy angst fic where characters lose it all, I think that missing out on the depth that canon is suggesting would be a real loss on the fandom's part.

The character motivations that Aventurine shows in the game are complicated. They cancel each other out. They're basically self-harm! He makes almost every situation he's in worse for himself--on purpose.

He is a good person, but also a person who has done unspeakable things. He does have morals, but he's not above allowing those who don't have them to use him to their advantage.

He's both the victim and the victor. He's his own worst enemy. He's a lost little boy who's been making terrible decisions for himself since he was like eight years old, and a grown ass man who is barely managing to fake his way through an existence that destiny is not letting him quit.

This kind of character is a lot harder to embrace. He's done things that most people would find appalling--like willingly joining up with the organization that let his entire race be massacred. He's invented a whole new peacock persona to frivolously flaunt riches he doesn't even care about (Poison Dart Frog Self-Defense 101). He actively plays into racist stereotypes about his people to manipulate others through their preconceived expectations. He's made a mockery of his mother's and sister's hopes and dreams by endlessly trying to throw his own life away.

He has flaws! He bet everything he had on a ploy without doing his homework to find out if the people he was risking his life for were even still around. (Maybe he already knew, and couldn't bear to admit it, even to himself.) He's intentionally off-putting and obnoxious to everyone he meets (Poison Dart Frog Self-Defense 102). He terrifies everyone who gets close to him by (seemingly) carelessly throwing himself into the jaws of death without the slightest provocation.

He knowingly allows the IPC to exploit his power and talents for profit. Did everyone forget that his role in the Strategic Investment Department is asset liquidation?! Like, his actual day-to-day job is ruining people's lives. Canonically, Aventurine kills people when his deals go bad.

His motivations change off-screen in two lines of story text. We're told in one line that his biggest reason for joining the IPC was to make money to save the Avgin, then in the next line we find out that's impossible. And... then what? What motivations does he even have now? The whole point of his character arc from 2.0-2.1 is that he was on the edge of giving in to utter despair and nihilism because he couldn't even perceive a single reason to stay alive. He has no purpose in life before Penacony, and that didn't start with the Stonehearts at all??

People keep saying Aventurine was held in the IPC by golden handcuffs, but how do you tie down someone for whom profit is meaningless? What can you offer to a man whose only desire is to bring back something already lost forever? How do you imprison someone whose only definition of freedom is, canonically, death?

Working for the Stonehearts is obviously not healthy. But that's why Aventurine was doing it--because taking dangerous missions allowed him to put himself at risk. The job that he originally pursued hoping to save his people became a direct means to self-harm, and the IPC's only real role in that was just happily profiting off the results.

The journal entries for Aventurine's quests are there deliberately to tell the player what is on his mind, and none of it has to do with escaping from his job:

Like... Work is the least of this man's problems.

At really the risk of rambling on too long now, he's also just a massive walking contradiction:

Aventurine is among the most explicitly religious characters in the game, yet he's one of the only people in the entire game that we have ever seen actively question his people's aeon.

You might be tempted to think Aventurine's risky gambles with his life as an adult are a result of giving up after finding out about the Avgin massacre... Butttt no, Hoyo makes sure to tell us that even at knee-high in the Sigonian desert, Kakavasha was already willing to risk himself in a fight to the death against monsters because even back then he found his own life to have less value than a single memento.

He's the "chosen one" who will lead his people to prosperity... except they're all dead.

He's explicitly suicidal... andddd also a pathstrider of Preservation.

He wants to die... He doesn't want to die. He wants to make it end, yet goes to staggering lengths to continually survive. (Every plan risks his life on purpose--but every plan's win condition is also to live.) He life is the chip tossed down, but his hand is trembling beneath the table. When faced with an otherwise unsurvivable situation, Aventurine literally became a winner of the Hunger Games. He beat other innocent people to death with his own chain-bound hands just to come out alive.

He knows the IPC failed the Avgin and left them to die... and he still willingly sought out a position of power in their organization. Maybe he really is after revenge... but maybe not.

He starts his journey in the IPC with a truly noble goal in mind: to help his people using his newfound wealth and power. He's a good guy who did genuinely want to save the Avgin and repay all those who helped him. But once it became clear he was too late, once it was obvious he would have no use at all for that monetary wealth and power he risked his life to get... What did he do with it? Unlike Jade, we don't see him over here donating to orphanages. (I'm not that heartless; I'm sure he does actually do a lot of good things with his money on the side, but the point is that the game does not show us that--it shows us, over and over again, Aventurine putting on a wasteful, over-indulgent persona toward wealth. We've supposed to feel how meaningless money is to him, how meaningless everything is becoming to him.)

He outright refuses to use underhanded tactics or to cheat at gambles, which is meant to show us that's he's more morally upright than his coworkers. There's an entire exchange where he says that he'll never stoop to using manipulation the way Opal does. But... he doesn't have any issue fulfilling Opal's exact agenda. He was never remotely morally conflicted about denying the Penaconians their freedom by dragging Penacony back under IPC control.

He's willing to risk his own life, which is one thing--but he's also willing to risk other people's well-being. Topaz accuses him of constantly egging their clients on into dangerous situations; we've actively seen him shove a gun into Ratio's hands and pull the trigger with no care for how Ratio would feel about that on their very first meeting... Dragging the Astral Express crew into the entire Penacony plan in the first place was exceedingly dangerous...

To me, I just think it's vital to understand his character through the lens of these contradictions because they demonstrate the extreme polarity of Aventurine's life: from rags to riches, from powerless to empowered by multiple aeons, from willing to kill to survive to killing himself... He has quite literally lived a life of "all or nothing," and while he is the victim of many terrible situations out of his control, his arc as a character involves facing the truth of himself and the future his own actions are hurtling him toward.

Frankly, the Aventurine that canon is suggesting is a little annoying. You want to grab him by the shoulders, shake him, and say "Why are you like this?!" And he won't even have an answer for you, because he doesn't even know why he's still alive.

In the end, to me, this is so, so much more interesting. I can read an endless supply of hurt-comfort fics where Aventurine escapes the evil IPC and Ratio is there to fill the void in his life with the power of love and catcakes and be a perfectly happy clam online, but I want canon to continue to serve us this incredible mess of a man who constantly takes one step forward and two steps back.

Who is fully aware of his role as a cog in the grotesque profit-wheel of cosmic capitalism and still manages to say he never changed from the rags-wearing desert rat of the Sigonian wastes.

Who over and over again flirts with nihility but, ultimately, even if he has to wrest it from the grip of the gods themselves with bloody, chain-bound hands, chooses life.

[stormsbourne]

alright listen

I know we're all having an evaluation of how eagerly we believe people who present with even the slightest air of authority and frankly good! we all need to be less credulous of people on the internet who tell lies.

but I think there are also other lessons to learn from james somerton. namely about his raging and blatant misogyny, which I've often seen similar forms of in fandom and on this specific site. to paraphrase bombs himself in the ctrl alt del video, if you see shitty behavior within your sphere, it's important to recognize it and try to fix it instead of rejecting it and asserting that no REAL members of the ingroup are like that. and nerds have a misogyny problem. including tumblr. so let's reckon with it.

do you append "white" or "straight" to your comments about women even when those things have little to do with the topic being discussed, just to make your comments seem more legit? (and no, m/m shipping discourse does not give you a ticket to say it's all straight women -- it's fictional characters, james.) do you often theorize about how (hurriedly appended "straight/white/cis") women are responsible for a problem in fandom, nay, all problems in fandom? have you made up a guy based on a single post that annoyed you and extrapolated to say that all (appended signifier to make it ok) women in fandom are like that? do you see women as uniquely fetishizing, uniquely stupid about politics or social issues, uniquely annoying to talk to? do you assume when there's an issue, even a real one and not the fake ones james made up, that a woman is probably at the root of it?

all of this still applies to you if you're a woman. it also applies if you're gay or a person of color or trans. being an oppressed group doesn't mean you are immune from sexism, and sexism is still rampant in everyday life for pretty much everyone.

your shipping and fandom discourse isn't immune from this. no, I'm not talking about how not enough people like yuri. I'm talking about how women who like "bad" ships like r*ylo or whatever are seen as open targets for harassment. how women who are into "bad/problematic" fandoms are seen as idiots and enablers who deserve what they get. how there's an attitude that women who like shitty bad porn must think it's good, must be too stupid to know better, and must need to be handheld and taught about good, acceptable fiction. I've already talked a lot about tumblr's complete refusal to admit that fujoshi wasn't a term coined by delicate japanese mlm to complain about evil women (and I wonder if james contributed to that idiotic concept), but the way I've seen people assert that women into m/m must be straight, must be stupid, must be lying about their identities, must be hurting gay men in real life in addition to wanting some anime boys to kiss ...

I've seen how some of you people talk about amb*r h*ard, is all I'm saying, and I've seen what you've tried to do to dozens of female creatives that, for some reason, you've decided deserve to be taken down or taught a lesson. I've seen the descriptions you use. shrieking, bitchy, whiny, uppity, shrewish, karen (don't get me started on how karen has been turned into an easy excuse for misogyny). you're not bystanders to what james did and is doing, you're a part of it. sure, you might not have the nazi fetish, but you've said things about women that put somerton to shame.

just a thing to keep in mind while the plagiarism discourse is ongoing. somerton is a shithead for many reasons but this is one that's important to remember because I think people often treat misogyny like a lesser crime, a smaller concern, and it's not. just think of what laws are passing and what views popular movements have of women and then, for one moment, consider that maybe your reflexive need to blame women or pick them apart might have been influenced by the Society In Which We Live.

[ironunderstands]

Rant about how yall perceive Dr. Ratio bc I’m tired

I really wish people would stop projecting their hatred of debate bros and egotistical college students onto Dr. Ratio. Like yeah, they suck we know we are tired but please he is not a frat boy trying to convince you that 12$ being minimum wage is a good thing actually. The funny thing is that most of Ratio’s haters would probably have him agree with them on a lot of topics, but the problem is people don’t use their brain, hear “ratio is racist” and run with it without ever questioning if it’s true or makes sense for his character. Y’all cannot handle a character being kind but not nice, and honestly I’m so happy ratio isn’t a woman in canon bc oh my lord the misogyny that would happen if he was.

And honestly, I can’t even blame them considering how OOC half of Ratios “fans�� write him.

Like please the next time I get hit with stoic, emotionless, unempathetic, uncaring, self-centered, narcissistic asshole (and even racist slaveowner ew god kill it with fire) ratio FROM HIS “FANS” I’m done. Stop, please get your grubby hands off of him. I’d rather read 10 dead dove fics in a row than be subjected to the horrors that is fanon Ratio. Especially mfs who write him this way in Aventio, I despise how a genuinely loving ship dynamic got warped into “toxic yaoi” bc people can’t read and/or be normal about mlm ships ever. I’m genuinely begging for a new popular gay ship to exist so all the weirdos can go run to that one and I can enjoy Aventio in peace.

To everyone who writes him correctly, thank you I love you, begging for more wholesome Aventio and Ratio content in general pls it’s the closest to canon (if you care ab that) I beg

[qu0rky]

Just saw the stupidest argument on tiktok and felt the need to rant about it.

Why does it matter so much if i ship Jayvik and ship Mel with another woman??? You claim that i’m being misogynistic, but have you considered that i just don’t like straight ships and am a lesbian??

Sure, i don’t like Mel nearly as much as i like Viktor, and she’s about the same level as Jayce for me, but i don’t give a genuine fuck who you ship her with, because at the end of the day these are fictional characters and everyone’s allowed to have opinions about them.

“female characters always get sidetracked and shipped with characters they never met just so they don’t get in the way of the gay ship” Do you understand, genuinely, how shipping works? If i ship a couple, ANY couple, i don’t want ANYONE to get in the middle of that, fucking duh. Especially when it comes to otps. If you’re that pissed off about it, you’re in luck! Because most of the time, these mlm ships that are super popular aren’t even canon. Have fun!

And by trying to have this weird moral high ground, you’re completely disregarding the fact that rare pairs (or even popular wlw ships) are very much real and not just shipped out of convenience or spite, but because people like the possible dynamic, and exploring new things with hot characters.

Same thing for Bkdk and Togachako, personally i don’t even ship Bkdk (Kiribaku ftw) but if you actually think people only ship Togachako so Uraraka doesn’t get in the way of Bkdk, i’m sorry but you’re an idiot. People HAVE been shipping her and Toga. There’s tons of content for them. It’s one of the most loved ships and it absolutely stands on its own. Don’t piss me off.

It’s fine to want nuance in fandom discussions, but sometimes you read too much into things, sometimes fandoms just do things because they can, because it’s a fandom space, and it shouldn’t be limited.

It is so easy to curate your own fandom experience, the block button is right there!! Use it instead of starting arguments for no reason.

[pokemon-radical-red]

I hate it when I headcanon a character who’s canonically a girl as a trans man and make ships of him and a character who’s canonically a guy and I refer to it as a gay/mlm/guyxguy/whatever ship and someone gets mad. Like omg let trans people have FUNNNNN. Why are queer headcanons and genderbends cool until they’re saying that the character is trans???

“OMGGG you’re so misogynistic I can’t believe you would erase FEMALE representation!!!”

and like half of the characters in the franchise are women, and a total of… NONE of the characters are trans men. Also, my headcanon doesn’t change the source material. If my stuff upsets you, you can block me and go engage with the source or maybe every single other fanwork, since mine is the only trans man hc for this character that I’ve ever seen.

or when people are like “WTF??? this is so transphobic!!! how dare you imply that a character who looks like that could be a trans man?!?! do you think that trans men are women or something??? she uses she/her, and you’re misgendering her!”

No, I don’t think that being a trans man makes you a woman or vice versa. That’s why it’s a headcanon, and the headcanon is that this character is actually a trans man and not a woman at all! You’ll never guess what pronouns most trans men had to use at some point in their lives, and you really won’t like it when you find out about pre-(or no-)transition trans men… or trans men who are in the closet… or trans men who don’t know that they’re trans yet.

“But the character is a kid!!! Saying they’re trans is sexualizing them.”

I’ve seen this one from other queer people. Like did you miss when all of the homophobes said this about your identity, or do you think that bigotry is only bad when it’s directed at you?

“Why would you say ‘testosterone could fix her’??? Are you trying to call her a delusional woman?”

Why would your brain even go to that first? This literally has to be a bad faith reading, because there’s no way that someone could see what I said and get this unless they were specifically looking for something to be mad at me for.

(Note for anyone unaware: “Estrogen would’ve fixed him!” was a meme going around at the time I said this. I’m not sure if it’s still super big, but this was a joke to the effect of that.)

“So girls can’t be tomboys anymore? You just wanna trans everyone?”

This is like actual real life transphobic rhetoric. This isn’t even just shitting on my headcanon, but in fact, sending transphobic hate to a trans man. Thanks 👍. Maybe you should go send JK Rowling another message about how much you loved her essay instead of bothering me.

[victimsofyaoipoll]

Round 1

Propaganda Under Cut

Kairi

kairi is the third protagonist of the kingdom hearts series and the third member of the destiny trio, alongside fan favorites sora and riku. sora/riku shippers HATE kairi, and will go out of their way to discount her at every turn. the hate for her ranges from typical "she's a boring bitch" to fans of soriku making five-hour long video essays reassuring their fellow shippers that the big bad kairi won't show up in the next installment – to quote one video, "she's in a box. she's on the shelf. four walls, no door." kairi is the greatest bogeyman the soriku fandom has ever known, to the point where most of said video essays and fanon meta posts focus not on why sora and riku should get together, but rather on why they don't like kairi.

Literally has a 100+ page Google doc fan theory writing her out of the narrative and putting all of her (few) canonical accomplishments onto half of the popular m/m ship (soriku). Don't even get me started on how her memory was completely written out of the canon plot of re:coded. KH is a nightmare to explain so dude trust me she is THE victim of yaoi

She is so fundamental to the plot and themes and narratives of game and yet it is near impossible to find anything about her thats not ship bashing pre-mlm with the other two characters. I dont even care if she ends up with one of the main characters i just want fans to see her as a cool character to love or like, anything other than “annoying comphet girl.” You can write your mlm but pleaae stop inventing comphet where it doesnt exist. She does not even get to spend time with sora ever?? Why does everyone see her as a threat and a thing to destroy?? Let her have friends so help me

Winry Rockbell

One of the most badass women you could hope to meet, competent, smart and sweet (and hot of course), canonically gets married to Edward Elric, and yet is put on the sidelines in order to ship him with his superior officer.

edward's love interest and later romantic partner. cast aside by the fandom cause you all hate woman in STEM

SHES AN ENGINEER/MECHANIC!!! she works on automail, delivered a baby in an emergency, and was both the strongest and most empathetic, kind character in FMA(B). and she often gets shunted off to the side so that Ed can be paired with Ling Yao and mischaracterised to be annoying and/or mean

[popstart]

Misogyny is so incredibly normalized its actually insane. Theres batshit levels of casual misogyny thrown around in td, and im fine with it for plot and stuff, but that tweet of terry mcgurrin saying there's no homphobic characters or whatever. Like okayyyy i see your priorities.

The misogyny that is just casually in the show can get genuinely upsetting to watch sometimes. Women are constantly disrespected and paraded around as objects. Duncan saying to courtney whats for dinner woman. The double gold at the babe Olympics shit. The men are allowed to pull two girls but as soon as a girl pulls two guys shes the devil and should kill herself (gwen, bridgette, even courtney in the case of scott) And characters are reprimanded for being sexist in the show, but it doesnt feel like it happens enough

And again, im ok with it for the plot and stuff. (Also its a show from 2007. Its gonna be far from unproblematic) but it reflects HARD in the fandom. The people that blame Gwen and Courtney for the love triangle stuff? Insane. Actually genuinely insane. They either actually believe it can be someones (that just SO HAPPENS to be a woman) fault for being cheated on, or they just say that to piss people off who sympathize with courtney (or even gwen in the case of duncan fucking Breaking Into The Bathroom to kiss her. She was coerced into that kiss)

The list could actually go on and on and on.

The way people say bridgette is a bad person for getting coerced into a kiss even after apologizing while they completely forget geoff making eyes at other girls and calling them hot

The way people fawn all over noah and cody despite being in a minimal amount of episodes and/or never having that large of a role, while hating female characters in similar alleyways of screentime or usage

The mass popularity of mlm ships compared to wlw ships. Total drama has a pretty wide array of female characters that are just as developed or even more than the most popular male characters/ships. The usual excuse of female characters just being underdeveloped/bad characters and therefore unfun to ship doesnt apply.

I saw someone called homophobic for saying a lot of mlm ships feel like mlw ships but for people that dont want to write a woman

And its not like thinking one of these things automatically makes someone a misogynist, but it feels like everyone harbors some kind of misogynistic thinking. Its exhausting. Like you have to fight back so hard only for no one to care and for people to tell you youre exaggerating. the moment theres any SEMBLAMCE of homophobia, people dogpile them, but the rampent misogyny gets nothing done about it. Im tired

[suncchaser]

PLS I HATE THE MARAUDERS FANDOM I NEED TO HEAR ABOHT THE MISOGYNY IN IT 😭

I was about six when I became a Harry Potter fan. I have watched the films countless times, and did several re-reads of the books. I have engaged with the fandom in online spaces, on and off, for over 10 years now. I have seen the fandom in many different phases and I will say this - the fandom has always been incredibly misogynistic and paid the female characters dust. But it's insane how, as the years went by, we managed to regress even further rather than to make any progress and be better. 

The first point is the overall lack of attention the female characters receive. I am aware that the four main characters in the era are men. So, Sirius, Remus and James (I am excluding Peter from this because no one really gives a fuck) will inevitably get more attention and more content compared to everyone else and so will any ship involving them. However, there is no excuse for male characters who were barely mentioned and irrelevant to be getting more attention than characters like Lily, who is arguably more important to the series than someone like James. Furthermore, the fandom loves to pick up names from the books and flesh them out, give them lore and presence and that’s wonderful, I love that, I do that. But why is Evan Rosier, a known Death Eater, more popular in the fandom now than women like Marlene and Dorcas, who we know were incredibly capable witches that fought against Voldemort? If you don’t think this has anything to do with misogyny, I don’t know what to tell you.

Second point has to do with the overall treatment of women and wlw ships. I am so tired of seeing headcanons and fanfics where the women are treated like absolute shit to further mlm ships. Why are you writing Mary being SA-ed and having it covered up by Regulus? Why are you writing Remus and Sirius using Mary as an object? Why are you writing about James cheating on his pregnant wife with his little Death Eater ex-boyfriend during a war where people like her are being persecuted? And most importantly, WHY IS A GIGANTIC PORTION OF THE FANDOM GLORIFYING THIS SHIT AND COMING OUT OF READING THESE FICS AVID SHIPPERS OF THESE COUPLES? Stop using the female character to add a little bit of drama in your mlm fics and then throw them to the side when that’s resolved. 

And now about the wlw ships. Let me just say, I am a bisexual woman, who loves men and women just the same. A lot of your wlw ships are nothing more than smoke screens to 1) get women out of the way of your mlm ships or/and 2) try to keep a facade of caring about the girls and about anything other than mlm ships. Because you don’t talk about them, you don’t engage with content about them, you don’t create content for them. Especially with Lily, the only times many of you talk about lesbian Lily is always relating to your favourite mlm ships that conveniently involves her husband. It’s bullshit. It’s cynicism and I can’t stand it. 

So many people in this fandom sit on their little bubble, exclusively talking about men, with no interest whatsoever for the women but refuse to think about why that is. Why is it that I have absolutely no interest in any female characters?

It's misogyny because, unlike what some people think, misogyny is not shouting out from the rooftops that you hate women. It's the little things that we all have rooted inside us that makes us look and treat women a certain way without often realising we are doing something problematic.

[zorilleerrant]

I think it's less that you shouldn't ship them, and more that you shouldn't make comments like "there's no heterosexual explanation for this" or "straight men would never do this" or "friends don't act like this". Like, shipping is fun, exploring queer identity is fun, but at a certain point, you're not simply having fun, you're making an opinion statement that certain words or actions are inherently erotic.

Which is not just a problem for straight men, even though they're an easy target, because we're not "supposed" to care about their feelings. It's the same attitude that makes people think any man and woman who are friends must either be dating or want to date eventually. It's the same attitude that makes people disbelieve anyone who doesn't want a partner, or wants non-monogamous partners, or wants casual/short term partners. And, yes, it's the same attitude that makes people assume any two mlm are automatically fucking if they know each other, and any two wlw are automatically trying to get each other to dump their girlfriends for them.

It's not bigotry for people to want their sexuality to be perceived or acknowledged how they label themselves. And while it's obviously different making assumptions/headcanons about fictional characters, stating things as if they must be a certain way simply because xyz happened precludes the idea that there could be other ways to interpret the actions. And in real life, there's a lot of nuance to human relationships. People do all kinds of things, and those can mean different things to different people; not all of those things are sexual or romantic. And people really do generalize this to all circumstances; they begin to analyze celebrity relationships as if they were comics panels or screenshots from a TV show, a way of invading privacy and dehumanizing other people.

This is, of course, part of the much larger problem that society prioritizes erotic relationships over any other kind of human social experience. But just because someone is straight doesn't mean they're free from the negative effects of society dictating how relationships should work. So when people say something is definitive proof - often to the point of calling someone a bigot for not shipping something - it won't stop at the boundaries of fiction. This is why it's important to discuss the problem while it's still in the realm of fiction, and not yet violating personal boundaries.

Keep in mind that most of fandom is queer. Most people who are stating any kind of opinion of what someone should do in fandom are queer, and they're also mostly women, so someone telling you they're uncomfortable or their friends are uncomfortable is very unlikely to be talking about straight men. When people are stating that something can be read platonically, they're often defending their own right to do so; other times they're objecting to the language of things being 'inherently gay' etc.

There are a lot of ways in which these attitudes negatively impact mlm, and also a lot of ways in which they negatively impact everyone by prioritizing erotic relationships over platonic ones. But I think the biggest problem is that a lot of people have decided that it's homophobic not to want to be perceived as gay, even when someone isn't gay. Or homophobic to want one's relationships perceived correctly, even when they're not gay relationships.

It's pretty important to a lot of people to have their sexuality acknowledged. If you can understand queer people being upset over being misoriented, even though there's nothing wrong with any other orientation, then it should be pretty clear that it's a personal boundary, not a political stance. It's also important to a lot of people not to be treated like they're in erotic relationships they're not actually in. If someone says two people are dating when they're not, they usually get upset, regardless of gender or sexuality. Saying you think two fictional characters are dating doesn't do any of that. Saying you think two fictional characters must be dating, because they would only perform those actions if they were dating, places assumptions on real people in real life.

So ship whatever you want! Just be careful about stating whether it's impossible for something to be platonic, or impossible for people to be 'just friends', and if you do state things like that, make it more clear that you're joking or exaggerating. Sorry for the long response, but this is a widespread problem in fandom that's uncomfortable (and even potentially dangerous) to a lot of groups for a lot of different reasons, even though people don't mean anything by it. That's why people keep objecting to this specific way of stating things; it's not about the ship at all.

[starwarssapphicweek]

Hello! First of all thank you for hosting a sapphic SW event and promoting a community and content, I've been excited about the upcoming Sapphic SW week event--but I do have some concerns about the "genderbending" day. I want to preface by saying this is not an attack on the event or anyone running the event, I understand this is a lot of work and time and in the end it's all just for fun. But I would be remiss if I did not voice my concerns on who we are excluding from sapphic spaces and who we are prioritizing with the inclusion of this prompt. While at first I took this as a day as "genderbending" canonic men into women to make a mlm or m/f ship into a wlw ship so that it would shift focus to the value and exploration of relationships between women or imagining characters as trans women, I have found the explanation of this day increasingly worrying in the context of a sapphic and women centered event and space. First of all with the term and practice of "genderbending," while it can be fun it is also steeped in gender binary thinking and stereotypes and often inconsiderate of trans people and how the complexities of gender and gender nonconformity play out. I think celebrating and exploring masculinity in women and sapphics is fantastic and can be done through butch, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming identities, we can celebrate those who are not only part of the community but often excluded from it without prioritizing men and relationships between men. Perhaps the "genderbending" prompt can be shifted in some way to reflect that? While I'm thrilled about the butch4butch and femme4femme prompt, I feel it is a bit reductive to use that prompt as the only avenue and placeholder for masculinity in women and sapphics and also still ignores the issue that by shifting binary women to binary men the focus is shifted away from women/sapphics and relationships between women/sapphics, which is vastly undervalued in not only fandom spaces--Star Wars fandom spaces specifically--but society at large. It's just disappointing to see some of the small space we have carved out to make more room for men and relationships between men.

There is no one being excluded by asking for a prompt that asks to explore the possibility of women being men. If anything the prompt can be amended to include nonbinary headcanons. If the prompt was cisswap as has been a suggested term instead of genderbending, the concern about trans identities being excluded would make more sense. But this is asking that women be men, if someone were to use a character that is already established as trans or non binary we aren't asking that those identities be erased, the non binary character doesn't even need anything to be changed about them. It is simply, if there is a woman in the relationship what would be the wider impacts on the story and universe of Star Wars at large if she were a man this time.

The implication that we are only thinking in binary thinking by putting a caveat of asking that women be men for this prompt, to let people who genderbend their mxm ships know that this is still not the space for their content, feels as if it ignores the ways that this event has been run in the past. Sure, trans headcanons have never been ask for specifically, there has never been a community submission for that prompt in the past, that doesn't mean that they haven't been allowed in the past. It is open ended and welcome to everyone to do at any point if that is what they feel like making.

This blog has always been about centering the female characters, we have a rule that allows for mxf ships to be genderbent to fit into the fxf cetegory because sometimes it's fun to imagine what if the mxf ship were sapphic. Because of the amount of content that is made where some of the most popular mxm ships are now fxf we have been adamant about keeping that content off of the blog due to the fact that the women of Star Wars by and large do not get nearly as much content or attention as the men do. We simply do not want to open the floodgates of having the most popular mxm ships become the center of sapphic week even if it's for a day.

This prompt is one day of the week, one prompt of 14 that have been put out this year. It isn't required to be used by anyone. It was simply a prompt to explore a thought experiment. If people want to explore deep and wide explorations of gender and the wider narrative through this prompt that is great! But if they just want to explore how aesthetics might change in a visual piece where Padme and Sabe are now men, that is fine too. It is an open ended prompt that is not telling anyone that they have to adhere to any gender constructs aside from what would it be like if this woman were now a man.

If anything genderbending has for a long time now been men being bent to be women. It was a tongue in cheek ask of the community to do the opposite of what the common trends are. It's a subversion of expectations and a space to queer the narrative in ways that may not have been considered before.

This will be the final post on this topic. If you feel like this isn't the space for you that is fine, we just ask that we all move on peacefully. This just isn't the space for having these kinds of conversations. This is a blog for hosting events around sapphic ships, not a blog about gender and sexuality.

[maoam]

I'm sorry for this long ass ask. I just wished to get a bit this out of my chest. Feel free to delete it if you would want to feel a bit more positive!

As you said once, if I remember correctly, there is no one more mysoginistic in fandoms (especially shonen) than the het shippers rather than the "fujoshis." In my personal experience, at least, I rarely have seen people hate a girl because she is in the way of their mlm pairing. But I have seen in het ships women be especially vile with their words like slut shaming, body shaming (flat chest vs busty discourses).

Especially in the Naruto fandom, I don't understand why NH and SS stans have to be on the march of war against each other, or why pit their favs against each other when they clearly are "not in the way" of their respective pairings, or even harass all other ships. In fact, I Hinata and Sakura are even in friendly terms. If not outright, they don't care about each other's existence for most of the time, I think?? So why so much catty?

Sometimes, I visit NH/SS/NaruSaku blogs out of curiosity, without doing anything but looking. Usually their content is all about shitting on other pairings but just that. They don't support other creators who appreciate the pairings, like writers or artists. Just shit on the rival pairing while be like "unlike that shit, this pairing has sense and is better". Like, they are more obsessive about what they hate rather than what they love. Absurd.

I have seen people call Sakura a cumdumpster (I swear to god that word-) and Sarada a hoe/slut, and considering Sarada is like 12 to 16 years old... well, it weirds me out. Or shame on the fact Hinata is a busty woman and usually that's the only bad thing they can say about her that comes to my mind, along with other slut shaming.

Or the weird obsession Sakura fans have about Sakura's body, like "THIS IS WHY SHE IS NOT FLAT." Why do you care so much if she's beautiful anyway?

I can go long but I won't because it sounds kinda frustrating.

But why can't these people just... stay in their planes? And ignore each other? Or if they love their one true pairing, just support artists or recommend fan fictions they like, or heck do something themselves and create a more positive environment not only for the fandoms but for themselves as well. Because most of the time, they go on anti - or pro tags and just harass people who think differently like they do with you or sneezemonster-

Again, sorry for the rant, and thank you if you had the patience of reading. Bless your day and keep doing what you do! What you write is always interesting to read <3

People mistake fujoshis (or just people who ship gay pairings) complaining about the het ships having no mutual development/how the female character in said ship has no individual development/revolves only around the guy she likes as "hating on the female character/misogyny". Which it isn't. Sure there might be couple who are misogynists, but that really isn't what I usually see. Meanwhile het shippers are indeed very vile in their ship wars.

"I don't understand why NH and SS stans have to be on the march of war against each other, or why pit their favs against each other when they clearly are "not in the way" of their respective pairings"

Because to them shipping is also a contest, and everyone is their competitor. They need to show everyone how they ship the best ship or how "their girl" is the best girl of the show. NH will talk about how Hinata is more "fertile" than Sakura (which is really misogynistic), how she is the heiress, how she is the richest girl in Konoha (lol). All very shallow things, none of them she even earned. And SS will go out of their way to "prove" Sakura is better looking than the other Naruto girls, because somehow that matters more than Sakura not having any dignity in the story... And yes, SS's crazy need to prove Sakura is not flat, sometimes they straight up edit Kishimoto's drawings so she would have a bigger chest.

This is also why these especially crazy people don't flock to shojo as much, since shojo doesn't usually have as big of a mainstream audience as shonen. And maybe they are addicted to one-sided interaction, because they relate to it? They can't relate to a female character that has reasonable feelings?

But yeah, recently I have seen a lot of Historia hate and it's all "she's spreading her legs to the farmer", "Whorestoria", "even her whore mother didn't like her", "blonde whore" and so on from certain het ship fandom. But sure fujoshis are the worst ones for saying Mikasa's character revolved too much around Eren...

[scarfacemarston]

Hi there! I'm kind of new to the fandom and was curious if you had any tips on how to get new followers.

Hey! I'm going to assume you mean Red Dead Redemption. I wish I could help, but I don't really know anything. I will say, be careful to not focus on popularity. I'm not saying that you are! Everyone wants followers! But I've seen people focus entirely on that and that always leads to disappointment. I think engagement is far better. I'd rather have 50 followers that like or comment on my stuff than 500 followers who don't interact with me at all. Unfortunately, I don't really have any advice except that if you produce content with the following, you may receive more engagement or followers: * Write for Arthur, Charles or Dutch. They are the most popular characters. John, Javier, Sean and Kieran are the next most popular. Sadie is the most popular woman. Molly seems to be a close second according to a poll I just did on my blog. * Charthur is the most popular ship with canon character ship. (Meaning, it's with canon characters.) (Charles/Arthur.) * Reader x Arthur is by far the most popular pairing in the fandom. Usually it's female reader x Arthur. * Smut is always popular * This is just me - but I feel like people don't like long posts. People are used to short and snappy like on twitter. I write really long posts and I think that turns off people. * MLM relationships are popular in general. VanderMatthews is another popular ship along with Jovier (Javier/John). Just be careful not to fetishize. * There is a lot of racism, homophobia and transphobia in the fandom. If you write anything with POC, transgender or other LGBT+ content, you might receive flack for it. * Be aware that WLW content or women centered writing tends to be ignored. * Be supportive of other content creators. It's a way to make friends /mutuals. * Be aware that a lot of people do NOT "like", reblog or comment. It just is what it is. BUT other posts that you'd think wouldn't matter gets massively popular and things that you put a lot of effort into may not receive the reaction you were hoping for.

I'm Abigail focused and focus a lot on WLW content. I also write extremely long posts like this one, so I'm personally not what's "popular" on tumblr. However, hopefully something here helps.

[real-total-drama-takes]

https://www.tumblr.com/real-total-drama-takes/730444377691947009/this-is-not-ship-hate-i-repeat-this-is-not-ship?source=share

Okay so I actually just read this really amazing and emotional noco fanfiction so I thought I'd share to give you a better picture of where we're coming from. it's a high school au and essentially it's friends to lovers and one-sided pining (and then mutual pining) if you're looking for tropes.

(Spoilers)

Noah and Cody sit near each other in math class and Noah has a crush on Cody, but they're only friends. Emma is in it and she likes Noah, and they have a really complex on and off again relationship. imo the characterization is perfect, Emma liking Noah and him having conflicted feelings because he also likes Cody is so *chef's kiss*. There's also some elements of alenoah, it's implied that Alejandro has a thing for Noah and they have a cute little fake dating plot and end it as friends. The main antagonist is not even a woman getting in the way of their relationship like it is with other mlm pairings, it's actually their math teacher who's a religious conservative. I think he's honest commentary on the rancid state of blind hatred towards gay people. Anyway, in the end, the math teacher kidnaps Noah and Cody to take them to Bible camp, but he loses control of his car and drives into a helicopter, exploding and killing everyone instantly. It's such a heartbreaking subversion of the bury your gays trope, and the fact that the math teacher died too is obviously symbolic of how hatred is harmful for everyone. It's a really beautiful fic and you can read it on @total-noco-takes. Couldn't recommend it enough.

.

[thestobingirlie]

I'm rereading a Steddie fic that was one of my favourites. For the most part it's still good, I love the writing. But it's the way the background R/nance is handled. I never noticed it before, I guess r/nance didn't bother me as much as it does now.

In this fic it has Nancy being incredibly mean, and at times outright cruel to Steve, and by cruel I mean it makes her words in the bathroom fight seem kind. And Robin is just fawning over Nancy at every turn. No matter how bad Nancy is treating Steve, Robin is all over her, talking her up and making eyes at her.

And I'm just???? Robin wouldn't stand for someone being so mean to Steve, let alone be crushing on/making eyes at someone while they're being cruel to him.

It's again making me convinced that r/nance shippers don't understand the importance of friendship and platonic relationships.

i think this version of nancy is kind of an extension of a trope we see a lot in mlm fics. which is turning the woman standing between the gay ship into a raging bitch.

so, some steddie writers, in order to get nancy out of the way, present her as an exceedingly horrible person to steve. who abused him and loathed him for their entire relationship. who has no care for him at all. this happens in however many fics, people read them, and write their own, imitating this writing. until eventually fanon nancy just constantly treats steve terribly.

i also think something that kind of contributes to this is, like you said, people vastly misunderstanding what friends are lmao. this growing idea that no one owes anyone anything and who cares if what you do hurts someone you love. of course robin wouldn’t give the tiniest shit that her actions might have a negative affect on her best friend! because she doesn’t have to, so why would she.

it’s also just sad that so many people say they prefer platonic stancy to romantic (fair! everyone has their own taste), but then don’t actually explore platonic stancy. or by ‘exploring it’, they just turn nancy into a dick and steve into a doormat.

[rendellstreet]

i think there's not enough mlm eugene content because almost all eugene fans are new dream fans and they're very vocally anti cassunzel etc. i don't want to accuse anyone because i don't think they think this intentionally but sometimes it feels like eugene's (and rapunzel's tbh) bisexuality is just a quirky fandom trait

there's so many mlm varian content because he has that white twink energy 😪 i don't want to say that he's not an interesting character beyond that, as much as i hate fanon varian i think he's one of the most complex characters the show introduced. but like you know fandoms latch onto that archetype :/

but i always thought it was weird that none of the usual mlm fan crowd got into eugene/lance. they have so much chemistry and moments?? they literally get high and sing how much they love each other?? go on dates?? adopt children?? dance together?? childhood friends to lovers?? people open ur eyes!! wake up

Yeah that's a good way to describe it and it's kind of 🙃 you can meme about Rapunzel having two hands and everyone laughs until you're actually serious about it. Maybe because I'm older and not really invested into shipping like others but I wish more folks accept that Cassunzel / ND can like, co-exist, like Cassunzel isn't taking away the fact that ND is still the official couple, it's just alternate relationship to explore and stuff.

Varian also has the benefit of Hugo from that proposed sequel comic, so multiply that white twink energy by 2. From my outside observation, they kind of eclipsed the whole concept of V&7K itself? I can't remember the last time I've seen Nuru or that older woman with the scar (?) on her face? Dontella? Was that her name?

My beef with a particular batch of fanon Varian where he's just a perpetually angsty character who 1) either gets put through the wringer for the sake of... being put through the wringer 2) every other character gets vilified, especially Frederic / Quirin / Rapunzel / Cassandra 3) it's like what happened in "Queen For a Day" never ended so Varian's just stuck in this characterization despite the fact that he got so much better like wouldn't you want to see your fave get emotionally / physically better? 💀

I'm not going to even sugar coat it Eugene/Lance would be a very popular ship but the problem is the fact that Lance is a black character and fandom (not just tts in general) for the most part won't interact with a black character unless they really have to

Also I distinctly remember a kind of spillover effect of the whole "Cassunzel is incest" happing with Eugene and Lance too. I think that also happened with The Brotherhood too to a lesser extent, because Hector refer to Adira as "sister" at one point therefore they're actually siblings? 😶