#fandomcourse

[greensaplinggrace]

the fact that buffy's acceptance of spike is so closely tied to her acceptance of herself is so fucking important and people will really dismiss that with a bunch of half assed media analysis like do you think they realize their comprehension sucks so bad

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the fact of the matter is that buffy ends up isolated no matter what the scoobies do because she bears the burden of the slayer alone at the end of the day and nothing can change that. the problem with this isn't that she's separate from them, it's that they don't want to acknowledge that she is, and in doing so they drive a wedge between them that just grows and grows. the best thing about spike is that he's similar enough to this other side of buffy to understand it and her by extension. he is the only person around who can support that side of her.

most of buffy's issues in season six stem from the scoobies rejecting a part of buffy that spike accepts. and this shame she feels for her reliance on spike and the presence of this darkness and isolation she cannot avoid is largely because of them. i'm sick of this bizarre assumption that pointing out where the scoobies go wrong in their relationship with buffy somehow equals an uncritical uplifting of spike. just because he understands her and represents a certain aspect of her doesn't mean he doesn't fuck up. i mean that's kind of the whole point of their season six dynamic. one of his biggest issues is that he thinks he's helping her by enabling her completely because he doesn't have the ability to properly identify the line between self acceptance and self destruction - pursuit of the id is one of his biggest character traits. that's what makes the end of season six and his decision to get the soul so interesting (although of course there's just as much i can say about the narrative framing of that in regards to lore consistency and the story's obsession with angel, but that's a whole other thing).

point is, the scoobies cannot understand all of buffy, and when they refuse to acknowledge this they destroy their chances of building any bridges to even a simple relationship with that other side of buffy or helping her carry that burden in any way. meanwhile, spike is in the proper position to understand buffy as the slayer and hold his own with her in such a way, but his definition of love is wholly obsessive and destructive. while i disagree that he's incapable of love and even of loving selflessly without his soul, i think spike's version of love in particular is self destructive in a way that enables buffy's own desire to hurt herself through hurting him (see the aforementioned shame regarding her shadow self). spike cannot identify why allowing buffy to give in to her dark side in such a way is bad because he struggles to understand how she could use this to resent herself - although i do think he realizes it's happening on some level.

spike is also buffy's only form of catharsis and the only one that actually listens to what she is saying during a time when everybody else is dismissing her because of the aforementioned inability to understand her as the slayer. it's a clusterfuck - and a clusterfuck that needed to be shattered with a hammer for any kind of relief. and quite frankly to disregard the scoobies' own part in this situation does a disservice to buffy as a character. to be honest, she deserves fucking better than what everyone in her life gives her, especially the scoobies, who grow to take her for granted and feel entitled to controlling her life as a way of keeping her conformed - again, due to the aforementioned lack of desire to acknowledge this other part of her that they cannot connect with.

which leads to season seven, where spike is the only person on the show who has developed and changed enough to remain at buffy's side helping her carry the burden. while everyone else suffered during season six, none of them opened their eyes to what they were doing to buffy - and if they did, none of them acted on it. spike is the only one to acknowledge the damage he's done and work to become better for buffy in any way he can. he is the only one that ends up able to carry that burden with her because he is the only one capable of facing the truth and acting on his desire to do better.

the fucking problem isn't that he hurt buffy - because to be quite frank everybody did - it's that he's the only person on the whole damn show to acknowledge his place in buffy's life, and to acknowledge the burdens she bears, and actively change himself for her. did you know he has almost all of the genuine apologies in the entire show? seven seasons and all of the harm the scoobies cause buffy, and it's fucking spike that is acting like a mature person capable of being a proper partner.

[greensaplinggrace]

yeah you know what? I'm going to get into this. "don't humanize villains"/"this abuser is a monster" is some of the worst character discourse in fandom. abusers are not other. abusers are not always easy to recognize. othering someone who's done terrible things from humanity is an arrogant, poisonous idea.

that is a person who is doing those things, and you want so badly to be unable to fall into such patterns of harm and abuse that you will force that person into another category of species altogether, and in so doing you spare yourself from introspection and you give yourself a pretty little pedestal to stand on and you shame everybody who fell for a red flag that is surely so easy to recognize. and you give into prejudice you assign moral values to attributes outside of yourself and you think you are so above doing harm that you could never act in such a way, even as it is a capability within all of us to do so.

get off your self righteous high horse for a moment and use your fucking brain. I'm sick of people in fandom claiming to be the most moral members that are the "only people willing to discuss this" and then every statement out of their mouth is harmful and pervasive word vomit.

[greensaplinggrace]

literally nothing makes me more steamed than seeing people call one of the mildest antagonists I’ve ever seen the “worst there is”. does griffith mean nothing to you? like hiram burrows and ramsay bolton exist. hannibal lecter is out here eating people. john silver committed one of the worst atrocities known to man. the monarchy exists. fucking light yagami killed thousands of people across the entire world. and you’re telling me mild mcmildson who wasn’t even written very well is the worst? seriously? do you live under a rock? have you only read one book in your entire life?? are you a puritan?! get out of my sight

[greensaplinggrace]

alina starkov i am so sorry that no one understands your character. i'm sorry that you have been reduced to the fandom's morality pony at the sake of your real personality and your depth. i'm sorry that they don't understand that you existed as a person outside of the men in your life, and that your relationship with your trauma was complicated and ugly and understandable. i'm sorry they didn't love you for this anyway.

i'm sorry they don't understand the metaphor of the sunlight in your soul representing your self discovery and growing ability to accept yourself - that every scene where you long so desperately to know yourself and then glow when you finally do is cast in darkness by those who would rather you starve yourself in the name of conformity than eat healthily at the table of self love.

i'm sorry that they didn't love you enough to see how much losing your light hurt you and i'm sorry that they didn't want you to have a happy ending that you truly wanted - one where you could be all of yourself without shame or borders. i'm sorry their love for you was so performative that it stripped you of everything you are, that it left you wanting and shamed and filled with grief. i'm so so sorry.

[greensaplinggrace]

#hot take #truths the fandom isn’t ready for #fans of this never bring up - *proceeds to discuss topics already extensively discussed in fandom and by fans*

[greensaplinggrace]

there’s a certain beauty in fandom idealizing bardugo’s assessment of manipulation as well. how they give more weight to a level of predatory and highly manipulative behavior that does not exist within canon to support analyses that would previously fall flat. in an effort to forego real literary analysis, fans will take the author’s word for her intent and reapply it backwards throughout her works regardless of supporting evidence.

I think this shows a special kind of mindset that isn’t necessarily unique to fandom. many people in the world would rather allow confirmation bias to cloud their judgement of a situation than to view it through their own unbiased lenses. a show of support as well as community in a world where losing such connections may paint one as a predator or an outcast.

that the very act of shipping something is seen as supporting abuse or falling for manipulation when such actions present very different societal consequences overall is indicative of a larger misunderstanding about the world in general and literature's influence on the masses.

it’s the same argument that one would, say, use about people agreeing with midsommar or fight club or american psycho. yet when real satirical pieces of work criticizing prevalent societal problems in subversive ways are put side by side with shadow and bone, it becomes obvious where this argument fails. after all, for shadow and bone to present the issue of abuse and manipulation in a way that truly critiques society, it would first have to accurately depict the ways manipulation and cult tactics are utilized to exert control, and it would secondly have to display the real ways in which power is allotted within a system to the general populace as well as the individual - and it would have to tackle with nuance the diversity and intersectionality of privilege and trauma within a time of war and genocide.

the darkling's whole thing is his ability to manipulate people to empathize with him despite his wrongdoings and the fandom just proves that

a mischaracterization like this shows why such a misunderstanding would take place, however. when positing that the darkling's ability to manipulate people canonically relies on convincing them to empathize with him despite his wrongdoings, you insert more meaning into the narrative than exists. the darkling textually manipulates one young woman through his looks, because while bardugo argues that he represents a master manipulator, she only writes him as someone capable of being just pretty enough to catch a young woman's attention, so that he may use this interest to his advantage whilst still allowing her feelings of prejudice towards his race to go unaddressed.

the darkling gets alina to empathize with him, but his wrongdoings don't play a part in this. alina empathizes when she knows about his wrongdoings, yet never falls for it and still kills him. she empathizes with him when she doesn't know about his wrongdoings, and all this does is give her the impression that she understands him a bit more. nobody else is manipulated by this, so it isn't his thing. in fact, the darkling doesn't even try to appeal to anybody but alina, who canonically never fully falls for him anyway.

so to say people shipping a fictional ship somehow proves bardugo's point about the relationship... being unhealthy? is a shallow stone throwing opinion that is bound to hit some glass ceilings.

let's be real here for a second. bardugo treats her female fans like children and infantilizes her female characters. bardugo's point about the darkling's manipulation lacks nuance. bardugo's writing about abuse and manipulation in general lacks nuance, and is ultimately more harmful than helpful in any way. she has no point, because her point cannot even be supported by her own text.

comparing people liking an unhealthy fictional ship to the same mindset that occurs when consuming satirical media meant to display overall biases within general society runs into the very simple issue of that unhealthy ship representing nothing and addressing nothing prevalent about society in any meaningful way. not only that, but it isn't even portrayed in a way that would manipulate readers, considering the cheap use of narrative devices and the formatting of the story and themes overall. so what you are looking at when people like the darkling or ship the darkling and alina is people who admire the potential of these cobbled together archetypes and caricatures, and who simply admire the symbolism of such a dynamic.

for readers to, say, fall for the darkling in a way that makes bardugo's point, shadow and bone would have to be written very differently. it would have to have an accurate and nuanced handle on power and manipulation, a diverse assessment of privilege and oppression, a more realistic world state with more complex character arcs, and a consistent internal narrative that drives the plot. it would also have to have a better understanding of society and politics overall, and the methods through which organizations as well as people handle control and enforce conformity as well as obedience.

of course I hate darklina, but there's a certain beauty in people who ship them simply because of how it proves Leigh's point of his manipulation. how even though he's a murderer, predator, and so much worse, people still manage to think he deserves a relationship with Alina. that they should be together. the darkling's whole thing is his ability to manipulate people to empathize with him despite his wrongdoings and the fandom just proves that

[greensaplinggrace]

absolutely fascinated by people saying the darkling committed genocide. is this the result of them not reading the books or is this the result of stringent moral policing in fandom spaces defining how people interpret media online? or perhaps is this the result of said moral policing creating a feedback loop of misinformation for those that don't remember the books too well?

[greensaplinggrace]

people on this site will see content creators begging, pleading, screaming for interaction speaking about how disheartened they feel and asking for even a lick of attention and be like "wow it's so presumptuous and cruel to act that way about your loyal customers - the lurkers and viewers on this site!" while not reblogging or interacting with anything and then not two days later they'll have the gall to come online whining about how all of their fandoms are fucking dead. like two guesses as to why that is.

[greensaplinggrace]

the damage 'cool motive still murder' did to literary comprehension and actual character analysis could never be more obvious than in the shadow and bone fandom lmfao. how is so much of the fandom so bad at reading comprehension or even understanding a smidgen of nuance.

[greensaplinggrace]

i think what's more interesting, anon, is the fact that someone cannot apparently call one character out for their canonically abusive actions without for some reason attracting every idiot on the planet that wants to employ a massive red herring by claiming they should be discussing someone else. not to be condescending, but this ask reads like the logic of a toddler that got upset because their parent only complimented their sibling. "well why didn't you say i was also smart!" - probably because this conversation isn't about you. in fact it is not even operating in your general vicinity.

also, this fandom is so obsessed with infantilizing the female characters and watering them down to make them the "perfect victims" in a frankly perverse obsession with gender essentialism that it's honestly rarer for people to discuss baghra's literal abusive actions without victim blaming than it is for them to discuss the darkling's own crimes. which by the way, are the result of baghra's influence.

you calling baghra abusive when darkling is right there is.. interesting

I love both Baghra and Aleksander and they are both abusive people. You clearly already know of Aleksander. About Baghra:

How is continuously having kids only to then abandon them when they don't turn out the way you want them to not abusive? She did this because she wanted a companion to bear an eternity with. Pretty understandable. Pretty cruel. We all know what happened to Ulla. Worse must have happened to others.

I understand her reasons for not telling Aleksander about his father. She didn't want him to get attached to someone only to be hurt when they die rather quickly in the grand scheme of things. But that is not how a child should live. He should have gotten to adjust to having people in his life and then losing them instead of never getting close to anyone at all. The 'no friends' rule while understandable was not ideal.

She was fairly old when she had him. Her immortality had worn her down in ways. She wasn't emotionally capable of raising children.

She overcompensated with Aleksander. She didn't want to give him the issues she had because of how she was raised and ended up giving him different issues instead. "You will bow to no-one." Come on.

She is also pretty clearly an obnoxious, physically abusive teacher.

Also, the context was a scenario of Baghra raising Alina (a child she specifically kidnapped to save her son) who she would have killed, if she could figure out how, to stop her son from having this 'weapon'. She obviously would also raise her in a very specific way to shape her into someone her son could never get a hold of instead of letting her grow on her own.

[greensaplinggrace]

aklsdjf imagine hating your own characters and the people who like those characters so much that you wont even speak to a fan of your work about them. girl this is embarrassing for you

[greensaplinggrace]

antis really be like: the enemies? in this lovers-to-enemies relationship? is full of the characters hurting each other while they’re enemies? 🤔 abuse

[greensaplinggrace]

🔥for Genya Safin? 👀

anytime anybody attributes genya's decision to remain in the grand palace entirely to the darkling, they do her character a major disservice. they erase her depth, her traumas, her agency, and some of the key, defining points of her personality, her relationship with choice, and her driving motivation. not only that, but in large part, when people "excuse" genya from this decision, they are couching their reasoning in terms of perfect victimhood and female infantilization. I have never seen an analysis of this scene pushing all of the blame onto the darkling that did not in some way shame imperfect victimhood and moral ambiguity in women.

we lose a lot of good character analysis when we refuse to engage with women's choices as their own. people like to strip them of consequences or agency in order to blame others for their actions, because to admit women are capable of being imperfect victims or people with darkness in them or people that make bad choices or unreasonable decisions - like any person would - is to engage in a level of nuance that fandom rejects. you flatten these characters into perverse caricatures and you fetishize their victimhood without accounting for the reality of such trauma, and in doing so you brush aside the ugliness of the situation and you scrape out everything that makes the victim a person and you replace it with a doll you can easily defend.

genya made a choice. it was not the darkling's choice, it was her own. what happened in this situation was a very fascinating intersection of character motivations and personalities in a situation that highlighted their greatest traits. it is baffling to me that people like to flatten this scene when it is by far the most interesting one out there - imo anything between aleksander and genya is interesting because they are so similar, but I digress.

you have two very practical and goal focused characters in the same room together. you have the darkling give a young girl an ultimatum - strike one: this is a mark against him. he should not be giving children of this age any ultimatums when they are too young to be making such decisions. but he is a general and they are his soldiers and he is a character whose motivational focus is idealistic at the rejection of the individual. he is a) practical, and b) opportunistic - so this scene is a fascinating look into these aspects of his character.

then you've got the darkling engaging with genya. he is relating to her and he is sympathizing with her. people love to mark this as either full manipulation or complete non-manipulative empathy. but realistically, it would be both. it is very likely the darkling understands what genya is going through and is very sympathetic to it. it is very likely the darkling would not push her further to remain in the grand palace if she chose otherwise. but he is practical, and he has certain goals, and he respects genya's strength of character. he is also one of the only characters fully aware of the political climate, and one of the only politically savvy characters on the side of the grisha.

genya remaining in the grand palace is the best decision, in his mind. to remove her would put the grisha on the backfoot. to remove her would put the grisha at a disadvantage in the political climate, and it would instead give the king leverage over them. she is also useful to him, because he is an opportunist, and this is the most reasonable option to him, because he is practical. so he doesn't just remove her from the situation, he gives her a choice.

genya is also practical. she is highly competent and incredibly smart. she is vengeful, she is vicious, she is ruthless, she is prideful, and she is unbelievably caring. it is fucking baffling to me that people assume she's some wilting flower that was wholly manipulated into her situation and then simply sadly endured while she wished for a better life until she could be rescued by her savior when in reality she takes an active role in her story and is the fucking symbol of quiet, ruthless, karmic resistance and righteous fury.

the decision genya makes to stay is the crux of her character. it is her defining moment. everything you can glean about her character can be directly derived from this decision that she makes. and people will just take that away from her? you're joking. let's just say she didn't choose to side with alina as well while we're at it. those scars she got were random and not the direct consequence of her own choice. those scars she has aren't symbols of her resolve and her loneliness and her compassion and the strength she must have had to spare alina knowing what the darkling would do to her. they're just there I guess - all the darkling's fault. please. I'm fucking seething.

genya has reasons for deciding to stay in the grand palace. and she remains there because she has reasons. she has internal logic and depth of character. she has a driving motive that - surprise - puts her in danger! she suffers and she is traumatized and it is because the darkling gave her an ultimatum and it is because of grisha persecution and it is because of the king's corruption and the queen's inaction. but first and foremost it is because she chose to stay. because her character - her personality - dictates it. and she is not regretful.

like you all love to make her some weeping perfect victim when she's not. you love to say she'd fold in on herself waiting for rescue when she wouldn't. you love to say she'd walk away from her goals and her motives and her care for both the individual and the masses when everything about her says otherwise. you love to make her kinder than she is, softer than she is, less practical than she is - because she is too much like the darkling in too many ways and this is simply unacceptable in this fandom. none of these female characters have depth or gray morality to you. none of these female characters have complicated relationships with their trauma and their choices to you. it's literally all just the fault of one man. and I'm sick of it.

genya fucking looked the darkling in his eyes and forgave him for what he did to her. not because she cared about him, but because she cared about herself and her recovery. in a feat of monumental strength and incredible fortitude. literally all this fandom does when they talk about her is judge the darkling. as if she doesn't at all exist beyond him. how is that in any way liberating or providing understanding for survivors like her?

send me a 🔥 for an unpopular opinion (x)

[greensaplinggrace]

i've never been more bewildered than i was when i learned that there were hannigram antis. girl why

[greensaplinggrace]

people in the btvs fandom will act like angel was buffy's one eternal true best love and nothing else compares like ok can we stop with the heteronormative allonormative completely jilted monogomous take on love for like two seconds... different forms of love exist at different strengths and none of those loves are the lesser for it. calm down