#fanwank for ts

[dying-suffering-french-stalkers]

[boltlightning]

i log onto tumblr.corn. i see someone post the most fundamental understanding of a piece of media, but stated in the most condescending way possible, as though this is a revelation for the unwashed masses. i add a few more tags to my filtered content. i log off of tumblr.corn

[yo-namine]

Okay, one more thing and I'll shut up.

I guess what really bugs me about the "KH1 is also Kairi’s fault because she hurt Riku’s feelings" stuff is that – aside from it not being true because she quite literally did nothing to him – is that it comes off as kind of entitled? Especially when you consider the whole "Riku is actually the light" argument fans were pushing post-KH3.

It’s like, if Kairi does something good like saving Sora in KH3 – something totally unique to her abilities as a Princess of Heart – well, Actually, she couldn’t have possibly done that herself. Riku should get credit for that.

But if Riku does something wrong – like letting his ambition override his love for his friends (something that lays the foundation of his entire redemption arc in this series) – Kairi deserves the blame. Because she should’ve been nice to him or something (never mind that she is, lmao. She just teases him the same way he does her. Because they’re friends.).

And I used to just chalk all this up to standard shipping nonsense (for obvious reasons), but honestly, sometimes it really does come off as straight-up misogyny. Like sure, a male character did something wrong, but this female character should’ve stopped him. Or she could’ve prevented it by placating him more, or by giving him whatever it was he felt entitled to.

And it’s frustrating because Riku is a fascinating and well-written character, but that’s mostly due to his redemption arc which you can’t fully appreciate if you ignore his single-mindedness and entitlement at the start of KH1 and instead just blame Kairi.

And I’m not saying everyone who claims Kairi owes something to Riku for KH1 is doing it to be an asshole or even consciously doing anything, really. Odds are that it's just one of those fanon interpretations that got so popular everyone forgot it isn't actually supported by canon.

But I do think it's part of a larger pattern of how fandoms treat male characters who fuck up vs. female characters who have the audacity to acknowledge that he fucked up (like Zuko fans with Katara, or Snape fans with Lily), and that really bothers me. And I think it bothers me more in this case because – again – Kairi didn’t even do anything. She would be justified in being mad at Riku, but she never is. By the time you get her to the Traverse Town waterway, it's clear that she sees Riku a victim who needs help, not a perpetrator. Kairi merely made a single (accurate) observation about him back home that wasn’t even critical of him in any way, and fandom blew it out of proportion.

Anyway, this post is too damn long, so TL;DR: Kairi Did Nothing Wrong in KH1, and I just wish fandom would give her less flack for things she doesn’t do and more credit for what she does do.

[anghraine]

Tumblr posting isn't the hallmark of activism and no one is obligated to talk about Palestine on here. That being said, it sure is interesting that you never mentioned Israel's ongoing genocide until you decided to make a post about how antisemitic people who do talk about it can be (and provided no example, so it's vague enough it serves no purpose whatsoever, can't be argued with of learnt from).

I did wonder if that would be someone's takeaway (and even that it would likely be on anon), so this response was already largely prepared.

In any case, my fandom account is not the totality of my existence, even online, and particularly not at the moment (I used to talk about politics more here, but don't tend to use this account for that kind of thing these days; I've also barely acknowledged the Trump/Harris election that will directly and drastically impact my own life and which I'm following closely). I mentioned the grotesque antisemitism directed at Jewish people regardless of whether they're Israeli or not, mainly coming from people who have no more stake in what happens in I/P than I do, because it's become so common over the last year in fandom spaces and conversations, and is therefore relevant to this account. There are no genocides happening specifically on Tumblr, but there are people here using Israel to present their pre-existing antisemitic ideas as leftist praxis and to air them more openly.

In addition to that, I don't generally feel the need to Be Seen Having a Take on matters I'm not especially familiar with—particularly as a US American, since we tend to be too quick to share our super important center of the world opinions on other countries' geopolitics regardless of how much we know or understand about them—until I've had time to think, research, and phrase what I want to say. Once I was more familiar, I wanted to be clear that I consider Israel's actions horrific and that, simultaneously, I find the increasingly regular fandom antisemitism I've seen intolerable and unjustified (and I did feel these needed to be in the same post to avoid being misunderstood even in good faith). I kicked my post out of drafts because at that point I'd seen enough to feel equipped to do so and felt it was sufficiently clear about where I stand, and because (as I said in my tags) of a specific and particularly abhorrent display of antisemitism I saw on Tumblr yesterday.

I also did not feel the need to duplicate and broadcast specific instances of antisemitism (much less that one) in order to dunk on it or whatever. Broadly though not universally, I prefer talking about overall patterns that bother me more than litigating isolated instances, even when it's ... like, annoying trends in Pride and Prejudice fanfic or something, but all the more when it's a systemic social problem. And given that I have a number of active Jewish mutuals who would see my post, I didn't want to inflict it on them all over again. If you think I would find something grotesquely antisemitic that's actually totally fine, then you're free to find someone else to follow.

[laufire]

I know you don’t know me but trust me, this is hilarious. rest easy, I have it in me to hate TWO characters at the same time.

you lot (both Damon stans, AND Stefan stans respectively) need to stop coming at me whenever I dare speak about your fave and presuming I do it because, idek. I must have the hots for the other serial killer brother, or whatever this is. I think they’re both shit and I’m infinetely glad they’ll both die irrelevant.

(and for those that might argue that Stefan did that with his humanity off -IIRC- and Damon all the time -hell, he proved himself to be a predator even as a human-: I don’t think Stefan enabling Damon’s raping and murdering ways makes him any better! he would still be a terrible person for that even if he, personally, hadn’t hurt a fly in his entire existence, tyvm)

it's not a huge surprise that people see Damon's personality as something completely separated from him being a rapist, instead of seeing the latter as an intrinsic part of the former (it's, after all, very similar to how people act with real abusive men, whose abusive acts are, apparently, not meant to reflect on their morals at all!). but boy is it still infuriating.

[emcads]

“when i say enemies to lovers I mean competing for class president!!!” i’m begging you to consume media set outside of a high school

[via-whitmore]

So I just saw a post tagged “fandom is for teens first.” And I just.

I definitely understand there are instances of older people improperly acting towards younger people. I definitely think that media for children and teens needs to have spaces for them and young people need to feel safe online regardless of their interest.

But to say fandom? All of it regardless of content? The act of engaging with media online like housewives didn’t write the Spock/Kirk zines where we got the term slash in the first place? Mm mm. Super Ageist. You don’t have to become a passive consumer when you turn twenty and you can be over twenty in fandom without automatically being seen as a bad influence. It shows a true lack of understanding for the fan culture that got us here in the first place. Also all the teens are eventually going to age. Do we kick them out as new fans of old properties roll in? I think it smacks of “younger people having fun is more important than older people having fun.” If you grow out of it that is totally okay. Life is supposed to go in phases. But many people get into fandoms as older folks and there should be a place for that.

Also like...all the media you consume regardless of the intended age range is made by people in the age range that is apparently dangerous so. Like?

[dying-suffering-french-stalkers]

Did. Did these buffoons really not watch Return of the Jedi? I distinctly remember Luke flying into a murderous rage for a minute there.

Did they not watch Revenge of the Sith?!

"It would be bad for kids of rey went dark"

No it fucking isn't bad for kids to see a main character struggling and having her inner demons to defeat. Get this nonsense away and go back to watching the teletubbies.

[dying-suffering-french-stalkers]

pirate poll but it's one round and i'm cool about it

[yo-namine]

"Kairi was wrong to joke about not bringing Riku on the raft just because his darkness was making her uncomfortable." I have kicked men out of ubers for less.

[anghraine]

Apparently the people who missed the card are now getting confronted with MtG's Aragorn art, with the expected results. I'm just sad we can't see the grey eyes (but they definitely got the "shaggy dark hair, flecked with grey" down).

I've wanted Aragorn's canonically greying hair for ages and there it is + an incredible character design.

It's certainly, hmm, noticeable that a certain strain of Tolkien fandom's pretenses to fidelity when it comes to character descriptions are largely limited to skin color and they're cool with endless variations on inaccurate pop culture Aragorn as long as he's pale. This Aragorn looks spectacular :D

[emperorren]

Wait are people actually feeling suicidal over Daisy’s words?

A word of advice from someone who has been in fandom for.. .too long, tbh. Don’t lose your sleep over actors giving their opinion on shippy stuff. Really. Actors don’t have a clue of what shipping is, and those who think they do end up doing... what Daisy did, i.e. try to sound like they have a nuanced understanding of the discussion and controversy surrounding the pairing, which often results in parroting anti arguments without even realizing it.

Actors trying to tackle ship discourse = bad, bad news. But also irrelevant. One, Daisy was clearly stating her opinion on the dynamic as it is by the end of TLJ. Two, she said something similar (minus the “I can’t get behind it now”) pre TLJ and we STILL got a reylo-heavy movie. Three, she has said plenty of positive things about Reylo, and Kylo, and Kylo’s redeemability, which she also reinforced, unprompted, in this particular interview, hinting to the fact that things might change drastically in TROS. Four, even if she genuinely dislikes Reylo (and tbh I don’t get how she could, purely from an acting/artistic perspective, because it’s SO good for her character to be involved in such a high stakes dynamic, and so good for her personally to have a superb actor like Adam as her acting partner), it’s going to have ZERO impact on the actual outcome of the movie. They don’t write a multimillion dollar franchise around this or that actor’s personal feelings lmao. No matter how important he or she is. Watch Mark fucking Hamill be eternally pressed about Luke’s arc while nobody at Lucasfilm gave a rat’s ass and went through with TLJ Luke as per plans anyway.

You also need to be aware that there are going to be many moments like this in the months to come, and it’s likely going to get even worse after IX, when actors will be no longer contractually obligated to stay tight lipped or afraid of getting an earful from their bosses. Chances are John will come out and say “I was pissed that f/rey didn’t happen over reylo”, or that Daisy will go on record saying certain scenes were uncomfortable for her to shoot or that she would have preferred Rey to not have a romance at all, or that she wished she could have done that trajectory with John’s character, shit like that. 

At the same time, actors are also rarely consistent about this sort of things. One day they will praise the dynamic, another day they’ll make shitty jokes about it, depending on what they feel like focusing on, what part of the audience they’re addressing, what’s the tone of the question, etc. That’s because, again, they don’t lie awake at night thinking how this dynamic will evolve, they don’t have feels, they don’t have (necessarily) a clear and set in stone opinion of what the pairing should be were they in charge (also because they’re not writers, but performers).

The point is you can’t let ANY of this ruin your enjoyment of this fictional dynamic, or taint your fandom experience. Chances are there will be other interviews in the next months where Daisy says the exact opposite anyway. 

[him-e]

I just wanted to say thank you for the positivity in the past two years. There were a lot of red flags wrt TROS, the buns, the mask etc. but I still appreciate your positivity and your attempts to make of it all via meta. It was all the most shallow option in the end, but at least we didn't spend two years dreading everything and being glum, and I think optimistic bloggers are to credit. Sure, TROS slapped us in the face, but I'll cherish the time I spent in the fandom before that. Thank you

Thank you, I’m glad we’re not regretting having been positive in the first place. I’ve made this mistake many times before, and it seems I never learn: giving mainstream fiction writers too much credit.

Perhaps I don’t want to learn, because learning THAT means not being able to enjoy fiction. I can’t engage with a story if I can’t trust the writers to be competent and passionate about it. It’s the barest requirement for me to do spec and meta, let alone become emotionally attached. Not engaging with fiction but merely consuming it passively seems like a nightmare to me.

I never planned ahead to get involved with Reylo or the sequel trilogy in general—I saw something of interest and ran with it, as I always do, because I can’t afford turning down something that ignites my imagination and makes me want to immerse myself completely in it. I welcome every scrap of passion and creative spark I can find in my life, and I treasure it until the end. Perhaps more than I should, but that’s how I am. I like the feeling of being consumed.

So all things considered I regret nothing, not even staying positive. It’s been 4 wild years, and it was completely worth it, and there’s still a lot of spark we can use from what we created and will continue creating in spite of canon. I said that bad writing was always a possibility behind the corner, but the sequel trilogy had a good track record with that for the first two movies, so I had no reason to just assume “bad writing” as the likeliest option. The visual red flags could be chalked up to JJ wanting to reprise his imagery for the characters, and I didn’t find it particularly worrying. I only started feeling anxious when the JPX leaks came out—I had this gut feeling that they could be true, but I let myself silence it. Not because I wanted to hope blindly, but because I couldn’t reconcile such a shapeless, bullet-point mess with the solid three-act, character-driven story that TFA was, and I couldn’t see why the standards of JJ’s writing would sink that low.

I didn’t, of course, realize that DLF had in fact every intention to retcon TLJ completely. But there was no way I could know that: they LIED to us about it through and through.

I feel like a clown, but only a little. We weren’t wrong—we were given false information and false advertising, by a franchise that didn’t fulfill the promise created in the first and second movie of the trilogy.

[via-whitmore]

I think the mistrust of adults because everything is on fire is responsible in a big way for the ageism in fandom.

[dying-suffering-french-stalkers]

BOTH are interesting and valid and totally 100% fictional, I refuse to let us do this again.

can already sense the Zutara/Kataang drama. its been 84 yrs,,,,,,, pls let me rest. im 21 i dont need this kind of anxiety. p sure i have ptsd. my sanity ,,,,,,,,,,,,,my cabbages

[timeladyjodie]

So I saw a Debate™ going across my dash, and something bothered me that I want to comment on... But I also don’t want to comment on the post and get sucked into the drama. So here is what I wanted to say:

Fans have no right to guilt-trip artists into writing/drawing their ship. Yeah, it sucks if you like a rare-pair. I am on both sides of this scale in DA, to pick a fandom as an example--on one hand, I ship Cullen/Inquisitor, which is probably one of the most popular ships in the fandom with 6k fics on AO3 alone if you combine some tags. On the other hand, I also ship Bethany/Sebastian, which is definitely a “have fun with your ten fanfics, and three fanarts” ship. So I know both what it is like to ship “the popular ship” as well as the ship no one but you and a couple of other people care about. 

And you know what, it sucks to have a ship where it’s just you and three other people in a canoe. I get the frustration of seeing a popular ship get ALL THE FICs while your ship has next to nothing. But you do not have the right, ever, to try and guilt-trip people into writing/drawing your ship. Fic writers and fanartists write/draw because they enjoy making art for fandom to consume. And they do not get paid for this. Nothing is going to suck that drive away faster than telling an artist/writer “don’t draw/write that ship you normally do, draw/write the ship that I like, because no one else does! Feel sorry for me!1” Even if they did agree, do you really think the art/fic would be that good if they were taking time to create something because they were guilted into it? I do not think said art would turn out very good. 

TLDR: People should make things because they want to, not because someone is harassing them to do so.