#fandom fuckery

[headtripparade]

Hi. I have thoughts.

Fandom is… something, for lack of a better term. It’s a family some days, while others it’s a wretched pit of mutinous fuckery. It’s exhausting and exhilarating; comfort and misery.

No matter the state of your fandom affairs, at the end of the day, there’s a reason you sought the community—because a character or a ship or a whole ass show/film got your heart in a vise grip.

So you came and you created. You wrote fics, poems, even songs. You drew, you painted. You researched topics you otherwise would never have thought to look up and you’ll carry that new knowledge with you for the rest of your life. You curated playlists and books for AU inspiration. You made moodboards and gifsets.

And if you didn’t create, you interacted. You made friends. You shared others’ art with the whole of your heart because (big cliche coming seek cover) that art matters.

Lines can get blurry between the fiction we love and the people/networks that bring it to life, but we have to do everything to not let that happen because we can’t let shitty comments and actions take our joy and our beauty from us.

We are how our fandoms stay alive, not them. We control the date and time of death.

And I say… fuck death. Don’t stop creating because someone is acting like a monster. We built our fandoms for us, not them.

And that’s beautiful. ❤️

[tofixtheshadows]

Being in any fandom:

[queerly-autistic]

I keep seeing posts on social media thanking the OFMD cast and crew for their work and not mentioning Taika, and it's driving me to distraction because Taika is absolutely fundamental to the existence of this show.

There's a huge chance the show wouldn't have been picked up at all if Taika hadn't attached his name to it. And he didn't just attach his name and walk away - he played a key role in developing the show. David has said that he was looking at the history with Taika and they both went 'omg Stede and Blackbeard were fucking' and decided to centre the show around that. Taika pushed for Rhys to play Stede. Taika saw Nathan's comedy on instagram and went 'yep that's Lucius'. Taika was desperate to play Ed, and fought to play him. Taika has spoken about how much he loves playing Ed, how it made him fall in love with acting again, to the point where he wears some of Ed's jewellery and has gotten some of Ed's tattoos actually inked on him. He poured everything he has as an actor into Ed (some of the stuff he had to perform, particularly at the beginning of S2, is difficult) and the show simply wouldn't work without it. Taika directed the pilot. He loved the show enough to juggle filming S1 with post-production on Thor: Love and Thunder. When the show's budget was slashed by 40%, and could no longer afford to film in LA, Taika would have been key to moving production to New Zealand - and if that hadn't happened, S2 wouldn't have happened. When a director went off sick with Covid during S2, Taika jumped in to direct half an episode and then didn't take a director's credit on it.

You do not have to like Taika. You do not have to agree with everything he does/says. But what we are not going to do is erase the absolutely key fundamental role that Taika has played in OFMD. This show simply would not exist, probably not in any form, but certainly not in the form we see and love, if not for Taika's continuing and multi-level contribution.

[chuplayswithfire]

lmao i saw multiple mentions of this show burying their gays, not being a queer show anymore, etc, y'all.

It's not burying your gays every time a queer coded character dies. Lucius and Pete married each other. Edward and Stede are going to build a home together, and they kissed like five times. Archie and Jim kissed again and stayed together and have made it clear they're a package deal.

Izzy didn't die because of his queer coding or because he confessed having love for Ed. He died because his storyline came to the end the writers felt was most true to the character they'd written, and because his death would have the most impact for Ed, as primary love interest. Disagreeing with the necessity of that death is one thing, trying to claim it's homophobia or queerbait or burying your gays is another.

[glamaphonic]

i shouldn't have gone on twitter (i know)

but definitely feeling some kind of way about ppl going on screeds about how dangerous and harmful the show is to suicidal queer people bcs izzy dies (despite, crucially, the idea of suicidality on his part being tenuous, and largely projected/inferred, not an actual narrative feature)

but somehow not caring about the fact that ed, queer man and main character whose gay relationship is the central storyline of the show, had a full multi-episode arc specifically and explicitly about him being suicidal with the resolution being that no matter how bad it feels or how much you hate yourself, you are still loved, you have a reason to stay, you can make a different choice and who then continues his search for fulfillment and change and ends up happy with the love of his life

i'm not going to pretend i'm surprised that fandom is being like this but like damn mind the empathy gap

[naranjapetrificada]

if you plan to talk about Ed and Stede's bodies in fic look at this image first

so that I never have to read someone describe Ed as "several inches taller than [Stede] and at least a stone heavier" or anything like it again.

now where is that post about how with interracial couples fan artists twinkify white characters and depict their nonwhite partners as taller and larger than they are

[giallos]

there's new bait fic in the bucktommy tag. Don't engage with it. Just block/mute/etc. user Alice_is_failing.

[tiredguyswag]

i cant scroll the monkey man tag for too long ill get so mad

[nikkiruncks]

Azula and Zuko are both kids who were emotionally and physically abused by the people who were supposed to love and protect them, yet there are still debates on which sibling was “worse”

Fuck off. Everyone deals with abuse differently.

[freyjas-musings]

I would like Elriels to stay the hell away from events that don't concern them or at the very least fact check. As a co-host of the Gwynweek I will clarify a couple of things since someone very irresponsibly wrote things that were not true . First and foremost Gwyn week was conducted in the most inclusive, respectful and professional manner. We did not discriminate against people , ships or even type of content that we let people post on our page .

This was one of the Targwyn entries which we accepted and enjoyed reading , there are more happy to share links .

The artwork in question was not tagged as an event entry, it was sent in the DM by someone. This was after the cut off date for the late entry . We then politely let them know that while the artwork was stunning which it was , we would only post Gwyn art on stories and that would not include Valkyries or ship related art . So , stop lying about shit you haven't verified .

Happy to post the SS Of the entire conversation let us know.

Now about people shipping Gwyn and Tamlin we actually did have Entries with that combination which we gracefully accepted and appreciated the person for participating.

I don't care for your event or the drama that's been in play but you better keep Gwyn week out of it because that event had nothing to do with you lot .

[lunainfortuna]

The fact that there wouldn't be any debate on Nesta's decisions in HOFAS if they were Feyre's says it all.

Be fuckin honest. This is getting old as fuck.

[yennas-stuff]

When you think about it, Elriels and Eluciens/Gwynriels have this crazy enemies to lovers tension. 🫦 Come on, guys, let's kiss.

Who's gonna write this fanfic?

[bluespiritshonour]

I don't like Lu Ten.

He shows contrast in how the fandom treats women compared to men.

He's only a name and a photograph used to initiate Iroh's redemption arc, and even that happens offscreen. Iroh himself was the imperialistic crown prince, and while it's possible to be a good parent while being a warmongering tyrant, it also means imparting those same values to your child.

Lu Ten was an adult soldier of the Fire Nation who likely believed in their cause just as Iroh did.

We know jackshit about him.

Despite this, if you go by the fandom alone, you'd think he was a fully fleshed-out character in the series. Where as characters like Mai and Ty Lee rarely get that privilege, even though there’s enough material to develop them.

Heck, even Azula doesn't get that privilege.

Suki might not be hated in the fandom, but we don’t see headcanons about her relationships with Aang, Katara, or Toph the way we see headcanons about Lu Ten’s relationship with Zuko.

[chuplayswithfire]

genuinely surprised people are holding the murders of the npcs against ed when like literally every pirate on this show is a murderer multiple times over lol this is the murder doesn't make you unloveable show.

[glamaphonic]

people watching a romantic comedy about pirates, who are all murderers, full of slapstick violence and the presentation of said violence as a standard part of the job

yet somehow holding the indigenous male lead and only him to real world standards of morality so that they can paint him as an unstable abusive monster victimizing poor unsuspecting white men

but it's totally not bcs racism tho!!!!

k

[ilikepjo24]

This is your passive aggressive reminder that being able to lie really well doesn't, under no circumstances, have to always be related to psychopathy. Sometimes you just have really strict, abusive parents that want you to be a prodigy instead of a child and therefore if you want to get away with doing normal child stuff, you have to be able to come up with a believable lie in a matter of seconds and deliver it flawlessly, to cover up the fact that you were child-ing instead of prodigy-ing.