#fandom wank lol

[deripmaver]

just out of curiosity, for reasons apropos of uhhhhhh nothing dont worry about it, i went to peruse the captive prince fic tags on ao3. the top three pairings in the fandom are:

1. laurent/damen (2923 fics) 2. auguste & laurent (194 fics) (as in not lauguste lol) 3. ancel/berenger (155 fics)

when you sort by “most hits” and exclude lamen, the top 10 fics are:

1. honeyed poison (lauguste) 2. the oath (genfic with laurent, damen, and auguste) 3. higher education (berencel) 4. uncle, part ii (laurent/regent) 5. non, je ne regrette rien (damen/laurent/nikandros) 6. on a pedestal (auguste/nikandros) 7. after the okton (damen/laurent/nikandros) 8. sent away (genfic with laurent and damen) 9. twenty-five (lazar/pallas) 10. sweeter than sugar (lauguste)

if you sort by hits and specifically include laurent/auguste, of the top 10 lauguste fic in the fandom, only two of them include absolutely no laurent/damen content. (this is excluding linecrosser’s art masterpost, which has the #1 most hits if you sort laurent/auguste->most hits, though this also includes both lamen and lauguste). those fic are #1 most hits, honeyed poison, and #4 most hits, sweeter than sugar. again, of the top 10 most read lauguste fic in the fandom, eight of them also include laurent/damen.

i think it’s valid to want to avoid content that triggers you for whatever reason, and i dont blame people for disliking lauguste necessarily, that’s their prerogative. but it’s strange that lauguste is this fandom boogeyman that apparently is clogging up the tags and showing up in people’s feed all over and is created by anti-lamen writers when there are <100 lauguste fic on ao3, when of the top 10 non-lamen fic it only accounts for two of them, and of the top 10 lauguste fic eight of them also include lamen. this isnt an academic survey or anything but ya know, here are some numbers

[monstersinthecosmos]

Why is Armand depicted as looking like he's 12 in so many fanworks? I know 17 is young, but I don't remember myself or any of my classmates looking like fetuses in high school. I can't remember anything in the books describing him as looking like a little kid either so where did it come from?

Ngl I'm fine with any casting that doesn't follow this fanon description because I don't want to see anybody who looks that young sucking and fucking.

Gonna be real with you, I've personally never seen fanart where he looks 12, so I'm not sure where you're seeing it.

What I have seen, overwhelmingly, is that most artists in this fandom don't use veristic art styles. I've been reblogging Armand art for years and there's not a ton of realism in here lol. If you see any of these random Armands and think he looks 12, I feel like that's a You thing.

TVL does describe him as being chubby and there's a handful of artists who draw that a lot! Like having baby fat in his face still, that's so tragic lol. A lot of characters describe him as cherubic. I think the two extremes of Armand art are either his chubby face or his complete waification. I think it's also always worth asking the creator why they depict him as younger. It could be a point of catharsis to exaggerate for their own storytelling purposes, it could also be their style or level of technical skill. I'm not the person to answer that for everybody.

I see this conversation in anime fandoms a lot, too, this idea that the art or animation style is so far removed from the human form that it becomes whatever the artist says it is. And you as the viewer make those decisions, as well, even if it's subconscious. Like lol -

I reblogged this pic of Louis the other day, too; does he look 12 because he's chibi or can you look at it and understand it's just cute and that he's a grown man?

It really gets into this kinda hairy conversation about art being coded and I don't think you can draw those lines without falling into some problematic traps. I can't recall what the anime title was but a while back there was this big controversy with fandom antis upset that this adult character was "child coded" because she was short and had small tits. It gets into this area of saying that women are children if they have small tits. In Armand's case, it gets into rules like "skinny people don't look like adults" or "people with chubby faces don't look like adults" and whether you're intending to say this or not in your ask, in Fandom Wank Olympics this conversation always concludes with: You are a predator if you're attracted to someone who is too skinny or who has small tits or a chubby face. Likewise, if you are too skinny or have small tits or a chubby face you do not have the agency to enter adult relationships because everyone attracted to you is a predator. Same goes for the infantilization of short people.

(Cough, looking at you AMC and how Claudia is doomed for having small tits.)

So anyway not to get heavy but that's where it sounded like your message was going.

In the end, it's art, it's 2D, I'm not sure where you're seeing 12 year olds in the Armand artwork but I'd wonder if that's your own lens and your own bias. I've been a hardcore loser Armand stan for most of my life and I haven't seen this fanon that people treat him like he's 12. The opposite, in fact.

Fanart of a vampire who has never existed does not hurt anybody. You cannot victimize Armand, he is not real. So whether people make him look 12 on purpose or not ........... who cares?

As far as the show goes, they hired a 19 year old for Claudia and made it obvious that they're not willing to work with minors, so I wouldn't worry about it. They're not going to hire a 12 year old. And like you said, 17 year olds don't look like that anyway, so I'm not sure what the issue is.

As a final bonus meta point: I think it's funny when people get grossed out by Armand (or Claudia's) age because it's exactly the reason their stories are horrifying. You're supposed to be uncomfortable lol. Their lives are difficult because people think they are children. Armand manages because he looks a bit older, but every character describes him as being so disarmingly beautiful because he seems young, when he's in fact so cold and shrewd and dangerous. That dichotomy is where the flavor's at, baby! That's the point! He's 500 years old bro!

But if it makes you uncomfortable I'd suggest just blocking artists whose styles look too young. Curate your dash! I know sometimes a blocked OP shows up in reblogs and whatever but I'd suggest muting the OP's name on XKit to prevent that, it works really well for me!

[qprstobin]

Every time a fic says something about how Steve doesn't clock as queer to people and half the time this leads to people being like wary of him in gay clubs or something I'm just woebejdk please be so serious rn. Look how well dressed that fucker is. He matches his shoes with his outfit and wears little polos. He third wheeled his best friend and his girlfriend for years. None of these make him queer but people acting like there haven't been gay rumors about him from the moment he hit middle school are lying to themselves.

[holyfreaks]

sorry but the "trying to get rid of us" part.... like we were here from literally day one. you came into OUR house and decided the show was about something that it's not. also, even if we weren't here from the beginning, we deserve to be here every bit as you do. why are you trying to gatekeep fandom, when it's always been for the freaks. especially on the incest family horror show

[the-darkestminds]

PLEASE LMAO Y'ALL ARE WEIRD AND FOR WHAT

[hussyknee]

I'm really not a villain enjoyer. I love anti-heroes and anti-villains. But I can't see fictional evil separate from real evil. As in not that enjoying dark fiction means you condone it, but that all fiction holds up some kind of mirror to the world as it is. Killing innocent people doesn't make you an iconic lesbian girlboss it just makes you part of the mundane and stultifying black rot of the universe.

"But characters struggling with honour and goodness and the egoism of being good are so boring." Cool well some of us actually struggle with that stuff on the daily because being a good person is complicated and harder than being an edgelord.

Sure you can use fiction to explore the darkness of human nature and learn empathy, but the world doesn't actually suffer from a deficit of empathy for powerful and privileged people who do heinous stuff. You could literally kill a thousand babies in broad daylight and they'll find a way to blame your childhood trauma for it as long as you're white, cisgender, abled and attractive, and you'll be their poor little meow meow by the end of the week. Don't act like you're advocating for Quasimodo when you're just making Elon Musk hot, smart and gay.

[sticky-bros]

It's always “Wincesties DNI” and never, “Hey, Wincesties! It's been a while. You good? Still writing about those brothers having sex? Nice, nice.”

[athina-blaine]

kb/ms is truly transcendental yaoi, spectacular, amazing, 10/10, no notes ... from the perspective of a mithrun enjoyer

as a kabru enjoyer, however...

I'll start off by saying that of course Kabru doesn't want or need a romantic relationship to be fulfilled, especially not with a white man, none of them do, it's all non-canon, Dungeon Meshi isn't about romance or shipping, yes yes yes, but none of us are here for that right now!! We're here to fruitlessly argue why my blorbos kissing makes more sense than your blorbos kissing!! You know it, I know it, none of us are free of cringe!! Clown on clown violence!!

That being said ... 🤡

I just don't see what Kabru gets out of kb/ms. With Mithrun, it makes sense; Kabru has a huge impact on him and ultimately helps him reaffirm his will to live. That's very exquisite drama and excellent character writing. But with Kabru, I just don't feel that Mithrun's character interacts with his personal flaws and would instigate his growth anywhere close to the same degree. I have to imagine most fics involving them focus more on Mithrun's baggage and how Kabru helps him heal from that ... because that's mostly all that happens between them in the main story, lol!

And like, that makes sense, because ultimately chapters 61-62 aren't about Kabru and Mithrun; they're about Kabru working through his conflicted feelings in helping Laios conquer the dungeon. I think it's ironic seeing people complain about kb/ms having Kabru be Mithrun's accessory when, if anything, Mithrun's main narrative purpose, outside of illustrating the danger of the Winged Lion, is to serve as Kabru's obstacle. I'd even argue Mithrun represents Kabru's personal bad ending; Mithrun wants him to kill Laios and surrender the dungeon to the canaries, preventing the short-lived races from ever understanding how dungeons function and returning to the status quo that had gotten Utaya destroyed. It's only when Laios practically forces Kabru, straight up puts his thumbs to the screws, to work past his reticence and be emotionally vulnerable that Kabru finally puts himself on the right path to achieve his goals (it's, uh, still a bit of a bumpy ride, but they get there in the end, lol!). If he'd been this way with Laios from the beginning, he might have understood Laios' intentions from the start and saved himself a lot of pain, but it's only because of Laios' influence that Kabru is able to grow as a character and get his happy ending.

(And even if one were a Mithrun enjoyer, ultimately the main source of Mithrun's life affirmation comes from the canaries. In that final scene, Kabru gets the ball rolling because he's outside of the canary hierarchy, but the scene ends with Mithrun being embraced by the canaries and as far as I'm aware the two don't interact with or reference each other post canon at all. Hell, it's Senshi who really drives the point home. Not that it matters when we're all wearing shipping goggles here, but it felt remiss not to mention it.)

At most, I can see how taking care of Mithrun would force Kabru to reexamine how poorly he takes care of his own body and that could make for some good drama. But even then, that change is ultimately instigated by Laios' influence on him, an extension of how Kabru wants to understand how Laios can see the value in monsters in an attempt to better understand his own trauma. If a person were to get into Dungeon Meshi specifically for Kabru and wanted to ship him with someone in a way that's most interesting for him, I'd be hard-pressed to argue there's a better choice than Laios (although who'd be cringe enough to do something like that haha right guys ... [sweating])

(Side note, though, I really don't vibe with the argument that kb/ms "reduces Kabru to a caretaker role" and that's why it's bad. There's plenty of instances where Kabru shoulders his friends' burdens (helps Kuro learn common tongue, listens to Daya's fiance about his relationship troubles, etc) and, more importantly, is seemingly happy to do so. I think Kabru genuinely enjoys looking after his friends and in the story seems to find plenty of personal satisfaction getting Mithrun to eat. I understand it has the potential to be more troubling considering Kabru is a brown man and Mithrun is a white man, but idk, it just feels on the same level as people trying to discount labru by saying Laios wouldn't take enough of an interest in people to want to start a romantic relationship, when his whole thing is that he does want to connect with people and just feels like he can't. It's not a bone I feel like picking, haha)

I honesty don't mind characters being "mischaracterized" in fandom or fic even to a large degree, I know it bugs a lot of people but I respect that ultimately fandom is little more than picking up the vague outline of a doll and playing with it and mashing their faces together. Besides, if I'm really worked up about it I can just write a fic and set the record straight myself, haha. This post is merely inspired by the supremely annoying subsection of twitter that acts like labru is the ship where it's just two dudes sitting in a room together. I'm just saying, Kabru ends the series whispering into the ear of another man as his day job and it's not Mithrun lmao

[piosplayhouse]

Just came across someone in the mdzscql/tgcf fandoms with an "anti fic recs" list where they just linked a bunch of completely unproblematic ao3 fics from established writers in the fandom without permission and extensive and unnecessary criticism (most of it just disagreeing with characterization) just to make fun of them, had "regretful recs" where they wrote maybe a paragraph about how they liked the fic and then listed the author's "problems" which were just whether or not they had written noncon/somno/etc kink work in ANY other completely unrelated fics or even just used words like "queer", and didn't even read some of their "anti recs" on the list but just wanted to make fun of them on the descriptions and I'm absolutely fucking livid.

Even if you don't like certain types of content that shouldn't lead you to compiling authors you don't like on a "shame list" in public stocks to humiliate them all for the grand sin of making a character a bit ooc. Genuinely ghoulishly evil behavior. It's so difficult for me to even fathom what the point of making any recs at all are since doing something like that 100% just discourages ALL writers, even the ones who make "good content", by telling them that the art they made of their own free will and time just out of a love for a piece of media is going to be mercilessly scrutinized and if deemed unacceptable your name will be blasted through the halls like some sort of mean girls burn book. Just some abhorrently poor etiquette that stifles the creativity of an entire community.

I really wish the poster had linked their ao3 somewhere so I could warn ficwriters to block them immediately so they can't access anyone else's writing since they apparently hate it so much, but unfortunately they don't have it up. I don't want anyone to harass them because bad behavior shouldn't be fought with bad behavior, but if you want to know the account to block so you don't interact in the future and promise you won't contact them you can dm me.

[indelicateink]

been thinking a lot lately about IWTV's shifting POVs and "memory is a monster" as a foundation of the show, now and going forward.

bc storytelling-wise/audience-wise it's an interesting exercise in trust--and i'm curious to see how this exercise plays out: if can i remain emotionally invested if the property refuses to commit to the veracity of anyone's version of events?

if something devastating happens in the plot and I take that to heart for two years, and then they go back on it and i have to sit with that fallout, do I eventually become numbed to the ups and downs of the story? is it the-boy-who-cried-wolf heartbreak?

--genuine questions, I don't know the answer. I love the show. and people having conflicting POV about events is just life.

but as a storytelling conceit, it's interesting? Rashōmon was a movie of an hour and thirty minutes. IWTV is years (knock wood) of television. I adore the idea of uncertainty, but I am curious if I can sustain emotional investment if emotional beats, important facts, will all be ambiguous; if the default is to be on edge for the "gotcha" wet finger in my ear lol. i'm still game to find out.

[thefrogdalorian]

I think on this fine Saturday afternoon it's a good opportunity to take a breather and remember that there are really no ethical paparazzi pictures. Every single one is inherently exploitative.

Just because photos were taken on a movie set, when someone is 'working,' does not make the practice any less invasive and creepy. Imagine just going about your day, doing your job and having some weirdo snapping pictures of you to sell without your consent for others to endlessly repost online.

There are thousands of pictures of your favourite actor online already. Plenty taken with his knowledge and consent. I'd really like to see more of them on my dash, rather than the creeper shots.

And don't get me started how disseminating these pictures directly leads to people going to said sets. What starts off as admiring how good someone looks has real world implications.

No, hanging around a movie set and disrupting people doing their jobs is not harmless fun or a way to show your appreciation.

If you hang around a movie set, you are a stalker.

Don't tell me that it's okay to take your online admiration for someone offline. You may admire him but he does not, and will never, personally know you. He will never be your friend/boyfriend/daddy. He is a stranger.

The only way meeting your favourite actor is going to happen is at a convention or maaaaaybe a movie premiere if you're incredibly fortunate. You know, places they appear specifically to meet fans (or not in the case of premieres, where the purpose is to promote a movie. Which is also completely understandable if actors don't stop. You are not owed an interaction).

Of course, you cannot help it if you randomly run into someone you admire in the wild. Even then, consider that they probably won't be all too thrilled to be approached in public by a complete stranger. It's up to you to gauge the situation, but remember there is a person at the heart of all of this.

Boundaries and respect are a kindness which deserves to be extended to each and every human being regardless of their looks/talent/fame/wealth.

Fandoms blur those lines a little too often for my liking and I think just scrutinising what you're interacting with, or what behaviour you could be possibly falling down that slippery slope towards is nice to do every once in a while.

I mean no malice with this post and it is not directed at anyone in particular. It's something I cannot help but feel strongly about because I've seen this destructive cycle time and again in fandoms over the years. It's not healthy and it makes us all a little bit more disconnected from our humanity for it...

[qprstobin]

I'm gonna be frank, Eddie just does not give me the impression that he was bullied all that much in high school to me. Especially as he got older, like he was the school drug dealer, he was not getting beat up by the same jocks who were going to be buying from him later that week. It just doesn't make sense to me!

I'm not saying he was never bullied at all (personally I think he was probably bullied by the people in his grade in like middle school, but leant more into the satanic image by the time he got to high school (which is when the satanic panic wouldve been starting) and people became more afraid to mess with him or it stopped when BS started dealing) or that people can't headcanon and project onto pm. It's fandom, do what you want lol. I've just gotten to the point where fics lose me whenever they claim Tommy/Steve/Jason was going around beating the shit out of him or shoving him in the halls every week or the like. Eddie just does not give the impression that he is scared of the jocks normally. He looks down on them and thinks he's better than them! He taunts them openly in front of everyone and pontificates on table tops.

I think if you take it in that context too, it makes the town turning on him more sinister? Like obviously, satanic panic was only growing at that point, and it was within the last year or two they started pointing at metal and D&D as recruiting centers for satanic cults. (Eddie also like an asshole is walking around with a satanic symbol on his jacket - peak edgy teen in the middle of a moral outcry.) But while people might've been afraid of him, and most definitely talked about him behind his back, that's worlds away from mob violence. The change was startling, even if Eddie might be able to see it on the horizon.

Idk to me that's more of what the hunt the freak line was about. The knowledge that they could turn on you and would if you gave them a reason (or if you want to go with the Eddie is closeted interpretation - if he got outed). I think he probably has been called the freak for a while but honestly I think he's proud of it at this point.

Obviously all of this is up to interpretation, I guess I've just gotten to the point where a lot of the popular fanon interpretation doesn't feel like Eddie to me anymore

[dickheadcanons]

Obviously people can write what they want, but nothing takes me out of a story faster than seeing Jason adopted without Bruce meeting Dick.

I know I have my biases, but I feel it shows a complete…lack of interest in Bruce, as a character. Bruce is a highly traumatized man, one who hasn’t had a family since he was 8 years old (hired butlers really don’t count, for all that they might get more family-like later). What could possibly convince him that he was the best person to care for a young boy? It’s delusion at best or even insane narcissism. What could he possibly offer besides money, which he already gives in large amounts to actual child-helping organizations in Gotham??

Unless, of course, he witnesses something so shocking, so deeply affecting, that it’s become one of the best attended events in the DC universe because everyone wants a piece of that emotional arc. Something that vividly takes him back to the alley way, back to another boy kneeling between two bodies. Makes him realize that there might be other people in that lonely, dark world of his.

Dick in general is so massively influential on Bruce, but this moment is what pries its fingernails under the doorframe. It’s what makes everything that comes later possible. And it’s not just that he’s an orphan boy; it’s the shock, the spectacle, the intensely public display of grief after violence from a boy who looks like Bruce, who is the same age as Bruce was,and, I think this is critical, was so happy just moments before like Bruce remembers being.

Maybe Bruce still finds Jason and Tim and Cass without taking in Dick. Maybe he still can be a good father, be a good Batman, without Dick’s influence directly in his life. But the character is fundamentally different without being there that night. It’s the first and longest lasting moment of character growth that we see on page for Bruce, one that gets retold over and over.

He needs his night at the circus.

[juniperhillpatient]

does it ever get exhausting? holding every piece of entertainment - every silly love spell plot in a fantasy show & every fictional relationship meant to create drama & intrigue - every character arc to a standard of real life therapy approved healthiness & aspiration? does it get tiresome to hold everything that’s supposed to be fun under a microscope? do you ever think hey - I’m not a child I don’t need to have the morality of everything my sit com characters do spelled out to me like I’m 3 every time?

[deripmaver]

Did Kentaro Miura Confirm Casca "Enjoyed It"?!?!?!

LOL another day another weird google translate from kojion causing a stir in the Berserk fandom. Explicit discussion of rape and feeling physical pleasure during rape to follow, be careful if that's not something you can read!

While at first everyone was furious and demanding a source, and rightly so, someone posted the magazine this interview came from:

I have absolutely no japanese language skills at all, so I have no idea how much this translation matches up with kojion's post. I did a bit more digging and found a second English translation, which I've helpfully flipped horizontal so you don't have to crane your necks like I did LOL:

To be clear, the specific phrasing of Casca experiencing pleasure, and reaching "ecstasy" (I'm assuming that means orgasm) are FROM THE FEMALE ARTICLE WRITER. She is saying that to HER it's clear that Casca is experiencing pleasure and reaching orgasm.

The response from Miura is a lot harder to parse, in my opinion. Per the writer, he responds, "Even without the God Hand, Casca thought she would feel pleasure if the person being raped was Griffith" (kojion, I think this is supposed to say something like "she would feel pleasure if the person she was being raped by was Griffith") or "Even if we didn't mention the God Hand, I thought Casca would feel that way (ie from the previous paragraph, that the rape would feel good) if the other person was Griffith."

I suppose I have two sets of thoughts about this, the first set being that I really don't think this is the smoking gun of "Miura says Casca liked being raped!" that people are interpreting it as. It's very possible that Miura is only referring to physical feelings of pleasure and orgasm during rape and not actually enjoying it in like... a NTR hentai kind of way LOL. The question really is whether Kentaro Miura in 1996 had the nuanced perspective on sexual violence to say that sometimes during rape the victim feels an unwanted pleasure response, but that doesn't negate the traumatic psychological effects of it, and in some ways that unwanted arousal can create its own host of traumatic psychological effects. It's possible imo, but I can't say for sure. Either way, simply having your main character experience orgasm during rape isn't in and of itself a bad thing to do (Diana Gabaldon did it too, in Outlander), it's more about the intention behind it.

What I CAN say for sure is that everything about Casca's character during and after the eclipse is meant to indicate that the rape was mind-breakingly traumatic for her. From how she tells Guts not to watch, to of course how she completely regresses into this infantile state, to her reaction to seeing Griffith on the Hill of Swords being panic and terror, I really don't see any argument within canon for the idea that she "enjoyed" the rape beyond possibly being physically aroused, which I've already discussed.

The second set of thoughts I have are basically: this article is from 1996. It was published twenty seven years ago. In a much more recent article from 2019, Miura had this to say on the topic of sexual assault in Berserk:

Though this again isn't the smoking gun of "Miura regrets the sexual violence in early Berserk" people make it out to be, it's very clear his perspective has grown and changed as he got older. I think, in order to understand Miura's thoughts about Casca's rape at the time of his death, it makes much more sense to look at his words about the corridor of dreams chapters, and the chapters themselves. At some point in between 1996 and 2019 he clearly came to the conclusion that specifically being raped by Griffith was what caused her to shatter mentally, so honestly... Even if you take the least charitable interpretation of the quote from 1996, I think you have to acknowledge that he clearly doesn't feel that way now. Or, didn't. Like, in ~2019, this is how wrote Casca having PTSD:

I also want to include this quote from kojion's account about how Miura reacted after the eclipse:

There are a bunch of other quotes of Miura feeling depressed after the eclipse, I was gonna find more but I forgot kojion has a habit of posting the most explicit eclipse panels uncensored on his twitter and I'm not gonna wade through those for them. Either way, I just don't think there's much to support the idea that the eclipse was supposed to be anything BUT horrible and traumatic.

Anyways, tl;dr, Miura doesn't ever say "Casca enjoyed being raped," that's from the interviewer. He could very well be referring to an unwanted arousal response. And even if he wasn't and did really mean she was kind of into it, though I don't think this is supported by canon, he clearly has grown a lot since this was published twenty seven years ago.

[allgremlinart]

also while I'm in a poking-the-beehive mood, I will at some point have to write a little meta blurb about the take that the creators of atla/tlok had a "fetishistic obsession" with "brutalizing" Korra. look. this is actually some very old 2010s discourse and while its a concern that I take seriously when people bring it up, I just dont think it holds much water. As someone for whom Korra is, like, THE character I'm protective about, I promise I'm super sensitive to any hint of mistreatment of her and... I think there really is a fundamental difference between how Korra and her struggles are treated in this show and how people like say COUGH Joss Whedon COUGH HACK treat female characters and their suffering... I dont have time to get into it tonight cus I need to go to bed so instead I'm just gonna let this fester here unaddressed like so many of my other possibly divisive posts LOL...

but like when I saw that discourse cropping up again in *2024* and VERBATIM to how it was said in 2013... . lol no... I'm not 11 anymore I can actually voice my opinions on this coherently now sdhshs (hopefully)