#for someone who hates canon so much in so many medias i really do uphold the sanctity of canon huh

[tamaharu]

sits down in your inbox. we've talked about how scollace would get married but let's get back to the basics: what's your ideal getting-together scenario for them

AGGGGHHH this is actually really hard to answer okay so i think its like the slow burn mutual pining roommates au of my dreams except a whole lot worse bc theyre both terrible as like, people, and it lasts FOREVER. the problem is canon actually deals with scotts.. scott-ness in a really delicate way, and i do not think the two of them would get together until scott manages to get himself under control. so i will give two answers: the real one, and the funny one. this is going to be kind of long and less tender than you might hope lmao

the REAL scenario is where most of pre-ramona v1 and their past plays out the exact same as canon. like, they meet in uni, they become best friends, envy breaks up with scott, and he and wallace move in together sometime during scotts hazy year. and, unfortunately, scott still ends up dating knives.

ramona kind of acts as a catalyst for scotts emotional growth (and he in turn for hers) which i have talked about in a post somewhere in my drafts, so the way this works out would have to be scott going to therapy. i think scott and knives would date slightly longer than in canon bc while his friends and wallace are discouraging the relationship fully for the age gap, theres no extra pressure of the cheating. they DO break up eventually when scott has an epiphany or whatever like oh my GOD. this is CREEPY. and he breaks up w her. theres still a whole knives subplot going on but w less cheating.

ANYWAYS they visit envy again this time w/out having to fight her bf, and this time when he sees wallace at the place, he (gasp) doesnt have to cuddle. thats right, in the scollace au of our dreams, since scott isnt dating anyone, wallace doesnt feel like theyre in the right place for wallace to properly move on from his lingering crush on scott. he does force scott to talk to a counselor though.

then blah blah blah therapy blah blah emotional growth blah blah scott finally gets a job working w stephen stills and brags about it to wallace and wallace is like “cool, so can we buy a house or” bc theres no question at that point that theyll be moving w/out each other. so they buy a house. cue more therapy blah blah apologies to all the women in his life hes hurt like a LOT blah blah we’re recording right now blah blah maybe scott goes back to school blah.

wallace and scott would probably get even closer once scotts stopped acting like a dick all the time, and like scott is obviously bisexual, duh, and hes pretty secure about it, so when his friends start joking about them acting like a couple he laughs it off no biggie. except it begins to dawn on him very slowly that maybe they.. maybe they DO act like a couple.. meanwhile wallace is like i have not dated anyone seriously in like, two years at least. this is all scotts fault.

there’d probably have to be like. a catalyst to make them actually admit feelings, either in the form of a person (probably lisa or envy or smth) or an event (aka one im partial too where scott gets top surgery and when wallace cares for him the entire time scott is like maybe i DO be gay) but something happens that forces scott to compartmentalize his actual deep-seated feelings for wallace and after that its just a measure of scott doing something romantic for one and wallace going :wide eye emoji: :wide eye emoji: :wide eye emoji: wait my feelings and fantasies of like idk 3-4 are FINALLY GETTING REALIZED?????? and then they become the bitchy gay power couple of my wildest hopes

the FUNNY scenario is during the middle of scotts therapy speedrun arc he gets really drunk with wallace for the first time in a while and *fade to black* then they wake up in bed together the next morning and both go “huh. guess this is happening now” and date for five years before getting married, moving to the bahamas, and adopting three children a pitbull and a longhair cat

[fozmeadows]

race & culture in fandom

For the past decade, English language fanwriting culture post the days of LiveJournal and Strikethrough has been hugely shaped by a handful of megafandoms that exploded across AO3 and tumblr – I’m talking Supernatural, Teen Wolf, Dr Who, the MCU, Harry Potter, Star Wars, BBC Sherlock – which have all been overwhelmingly white. I don’t mean in terms of the fans themselves, although whiteness also figures prominently in said fandoms: I mean that the source materials themselves feature very few POC, and the ones who are there tended to be done dirty by the creators.

Periodically, this has led POC in fandom to point out, extremely reasonably, that even where non-white characters do get central roles in various media properties, they’re often overlooked by fandom at large, such that the popular focus stays primarily on the white characters. Sometimes this happened (it was argued) because the POC characters were secondary to begin with and as such attracted less fan devotion (although this has never stopped fandoms from picking a random white gremlin from the background cast and elevating them to the status of Fave); at other times, however, there has been a clear trend of sidelining POC leads in favour of white alternatives (as per Finn, Poe and Rose Tico being edged out in Star Wars shipping by Hux, Kylo and Rey). I mention this, not to demonize individuals whose preferred ships happen to involve white characters, but to point out the collective impact these trends can have on POC in fandom spaces: it’s not bad to ship what you ship, but that doesn’t mean there’s no utility in analysing what’s popular and why through a racial lens.

All this being so, it feels increasingly salient that fanwriting culture as exists right now developed under the influence and in the shadow of these white-dominated fandoms – specifically, the taboo against criticizing or critiquing fics for any reason. Certainly, there’s a hell of a lot of value to Don’t Like, Don’t Read as a general policy, especially when it comes to the darker, kinkier side of ficwriting, and whether the context is professional or recreational, offering someone direct, unsolicited feedback on their writing style is a dick move. But on the flipside, the anti-criticism culture in fanwriting has consistently worked against fans of colour who speak out about racist tropes, fan ignorance and hurtful portrayals of living cultures. Voicing anything negative about works created for free is seen as violating a core rule of ficwriting culture – but as that culture has been foundationally shaped by white fandoms, white characters and, overwhelmingly, white ideas about what’s allowed and what isn’t, we ought to consider that all critical contexts are not created equal.

Right now, the rise of C-drama (and K-drama, and J-drama) fandoms is seeing a surge of white creators – myself included – writing fics for fandoms in which no white people exist, and where the cultural context which informs the canon is different to western norms. Which isn’t to say that no popular fandoms focused on POC have existed before now – K-pop RPF and anime fandoms, for example, have been big for a while. But with the success of The Untamed, more western fans are investing in stories whose plots, references, characterization and settings are so fundamentally rooted in real Chinese history and living Chinese culture that it’s not really possible to write around it. And yet, inevitably, too many in fandom are trying to do just that, treating respect for Chinese culture or an attempt to understand it as optional extras – because surely, fandom shouldn’t feel like work. If you’re writing something for free, on your own time, for your own pleasure, why should anyone else get to demand that you research the subject matter first?

Because it matters, is the short answer. Because race and culture are not made-up things like lightsabers and werewolves that you can alter, mock or misunderstand without the risk of hurting or marginalizing actual real people – and because, quite frankly, we already know that fandom is capable of drawing lines in the sand where it chooses. When Brony culture first reared its head (hah), the online fandom for My Little Pony – which, like the other fandoms we’re discussing here, is overwhelmingly female – was initially welcoming. It felt like progress, that so many straight men could identify with such a feminine show; a potential sign that maybe, we were finally leaving the era of mainstream hypermasculine fandom bullshit behind, at least in this one arena. And then, in pretty much the blink of an eye, things got overwhelmingly bad. Artists drawing hardcorn porn didn’t tag their works as adult, leading to those images flooding the public search results for a children’s show. Women were edged out of their own spaces. Bronies got aggressive, posting harsh, ugly criticism of artists whose gijinka interpretations of the Mane Six as humans were deemed insufficiently fuckable.

The resulting fandom conflict was deeply unpleasant, but in the end, the verdict was laid down loud and clear: if you cannot comport yourself like a decent fucking person – if your base mode of engagement within a fandom is to coopt it from the original audience and declare it newly cool only because you’re into it now; if you do not, at the very least, attempt to understand and respect the original context so as to engage appropriately (in this case, by acknowledging that the media you’re consuming was foundational to many women who were there before you and is still consumed by minors, and tagging your goddamn porn) – then the rest of fandom will treat you like a social biohazard, and rightly so.

Here’s the thing, fellow white people: when it comes to C-drama fandoms and other non-white, non-western properties? We are the Bronies.

Not, I hasten to add, in terms of toxic fuckery – though if we don’t get our collective shit together, I’m not taking that darkest timeline off the table. What I mean is that, by virtue of the whiteminding which, both consciously and unconsciously, has shaped current fan culture, particularly in terms of ficwriting conventions, we’re collectively acting as though we’re the primary audience for narratives that weren’t actually made with us in mind, being hostile dicks to Chinese and Chinese diaspora fans when they take the time to point out what we’re getting wrong. We’re bristling because we’ve conceived of ficwriting as a place wherein No Criticism Occurs without questioning how this culture, while valuable in some respects, also serves to uphold, excuse and perpetuate microaggresions and other forms of racism, lashing out or falling back on passive aggression when POC, quite understandably, talk about how they’re sick and tired of our bullshit.

An analogy: one of the most helpful and important tags on AO3 is the one for homophobia, not just because it allows readers to brace for or opt out of reading content they might find distressing, but because it lets the reader know that the writer knows what homophobia is, and is employing it deliberately. When this concept is tagged, I – like many others – often feel more able to read about it than I do when it crops up in untagged works of commercial fiction, film or TV, because I don’t have to worry that the author thinks what they’re depicting is okay. I can say definitively, “yes, the author knows this is messed up, but has elected to tell a messed up story, a fact that will be obvious to anyone who reads this,” instead of worrying that someone will see a fucked up story blind and think “oh, I guess that’s fine.” The contextual framing matters, is the point – which is why it’s so jarring and unpleasant on those rare occasions when I do stumble on a fic whose author has legitimately mistaken homophobic microaggressions for cute banter. This is why, in a ficwriting culture that otherwise aggressively dislikes criticism, the request to tag for a certain thing – while still sometimes fraught – is generally permitted: it helps everyone to have a good time and to curate their fan experience appropriately.

But when white and/or western fans fail to educate ourselves about race, culture and the history of other countries and proceed to deploy that ignorance in our writing, we’re not tagging for racism as a thing we’ve explored deliberately; we’re just being ignorant at best and hateful at worst, which means fans of colour don’t know to avoid or brace for the content of those works until they get hit in the face with microaggresions and/or outright racism. Instead, the burden is placed on them to navigate a minefield not of their creation: which fans can be trusted to write respectfully? Who, if they make an error, will listen and apologise if the error is explained? Who, if lived experience, personal translations or cultural insights are shared, can be counted on to acknowledge those contributions rather than taking sole credit? Too often, fans of colour are being made to feel like guests in their own house, while white fans act like a tone-policing HOA.

Point being: fandom and ficwriting cultures as they currently exist badly need to confront the implicit acceptance of racism and cultural bias that underlies a lot of community rules about engagement and criticism, and that needs to start with white and western fans. We don’t want to be the new Bronies, guys. We need to do better.  

[itsclydebitches]

Indeed people should be careful about that kind of behavior. However, I will say that the "people writing RWBY's story for them" sometimes actually do a fantastic job. I'll often look at these theories and go "huh, that's neat. The show really would have been better if it had used this idea".

Oh absolutely, anon. That's one of the reasons why I find those kinds of responses frustrating. I see fans coming up with truly fantastic ideas, but rather than celebrating their own or the community's creativity, the conclusion is, "RWBY is such a well written show, I can't believe you would try to say something negative about it." Putting aside the difficulty of discussing a story when many fans equate any criticism with hating on it, it's just disappointing to see people putting in the time and creative energy to spin gold out of RWBY's potential-filled straw... only to turn around and insist that RWBY did that from the get-go. RWBY has not (yet) written an epic love story between Blake and Yang. The writers didn't come up with an impressive twist with Ambrosius' rules. There is no arc of Salem modifying Solitas' grimm to give herself an advantage. We think these things (and many, many more) should indeed have happened because they're good writing: the romantic subplot, the celebratory twist, and formidable villain laying plans years in advance. I often see fans claim that of course such and such happened off screen because otherwise that would be stupid and I'm like yeah... RWBY is often stupid. The writers often make stupid choices, especially in more recent volumes. Your unwillingness to admit that doesn't magically make the story better. The thing you assumed must have happened didn't, or it kinda happened in a badly executed way, and the community has spent years revising the story in their heads and going on to treat that version as canon because the idea that RWBY has problems is a take that's really frowned upon, if not outright rejected. I want to give the fandom a little shake and lovingly go, "RWBY didn't write the epic you're talking about, you did. If you don't want to take credit for that, fine, uphold inspiration before transformation, but please don't tell others in the community they're wrong because you're working from your RWBY AU rather than what we were actually given (or not) on screen."

There's a level of irony here given the recent backlash against RWBY rewrites. I've spoken before about how every fandom rewrites the canon, in large and small ways, but RWBY is the only community I've ever been in that contains pockets who think that's offensive; that it's an insult to the authors to try and improve upon what we were given. Honestly, I want to talk about how weird that is in an explicitly transformative space. I want to talk about the staggering difference between criticizing a published piece of media people pay for on a personal blog the company will never see vs. criticizing a passion project done in someone's downtime by sending hate directly to their inbox, or putting it on their post, or writing about it in the circles they very much do run in. I want to talk about RWBY's status as a rewrite of 50 different fairy tales all mashed together and the absurdity of trying to approach that as something original and, therefore, untouchable. I want to talk about how some members of the fandom claim that the RWDE community does nothing but complain, so they create their own celebratory content, but then that becomes a problem too. (The same way posting in "RWBY" was a problem, so fans went to "RWDE" as requested, but then "RWDE" became a problem, so we're seeing the rise of "Anti-RWDE" as a cross-posted tag.) There's a lot going on here, but the irony is being disgusted by rewrites of a canon that is itself a rewrite, all while the fandom works very hard to mentally rewrite the story in a way that smooths over anything negative. RWBY presents itself as a first draft. It's a story with a lot of potential and, as first drafts go, also a lot of work that still needs to be done to make it into the great show fans are looking for. Yet instead of acknowledging that and celebrating our own ability to do that work in RT's stead (without the limitations of things like time limits, budgets, etc.), the norm has, very strangely, become personally writing the final version in your head, getting mad at the fans who are (obviously) watching the first draft, and getting mad at others who overtly call their rewrites what they are.

[shanastoryteller]

i read another one of those posts that was discussing the difference between i-societies and we-societies and how that difference effects interpretation and fandom and they used lan xichen as their example of this, specifically how people view his reaction to lan wangji’s punishment - either as perfectly understandable and expected aka totally morally fine, or see it as heinous crime that goes against basic decency 

which immediately caught my attention because i’m sure y’all are aware i have some Feelings around lwj’s punishment and his clan

the reason i’m not responding to this post in a reblog is just because the op said that this was just their opinion and they weren’t looking to engage in discourse. so i’m just making my own post instead

the reason this caught my attention is that my Feelings really don’t have anything to do with the appropriateness of lwj’s punishment at the time that it occurred 

the clan decided that wens needed to be killed. the clan decided wwx was culpable of the many crimes of which he was accused. not only did lwj go against his clan’s decisions, he injured his clan members in the process, either by protecting wwx or the wens depending on the media. 

we live in a society

do i think that the clans deciding they really needed to kill a bunch of old people is morally reprehensible? yes. do i think they should have reevaluated their perceptions after no army of cultivators was at the burial mounds? obviously. 

but they didn’t. they ignored evidence to the contrary and decided to go forward with their perceptions. however i feel about that, it’s what happened, which means from their perspective lwj went against them and injured his clansmen for no justifiable reason

of course they punished him for it. why wouldn’t they? if they didn’t, that would be insane and go against everything shown in the untamed universe and the lan clan in particular about punishment and responsibility

lxc is the clan head. regardless of his personal feelings, he has a duty to uphold the law and order of his clan. if he doesn’t, how can he effectively lead it? especially considering how his father broke away from those rules

all of this is true in universe. it’s what we have to work with. i may handwave or twist things in fanfiction for my persona satisfaction, because that’s what fanfiction is for, but this is what canon has given us

here’s why i don’t like lxc specifically in connection with lwj’s punishment 

multiple members of my family have gone to jail. more than once 

they committed crimes. they were guilty. they were judged by a trial of their peers and a sentence was passed down by a judge 

while there are many things wrong with our criminal system, i know for a fact that they really were guilty of the crimes they were accused, and that their sentences were not overly harsh in proportion to their crimes 

we live in a society

i would never say that this shouldn’t have happened or is unfair because it’s important to me that i live in society that has a way to deal with and manage crime (ignoring my specific feelings about the effectiveness and appropriateness of the current criminal system)

but i was always sad about it

i never wanted them to go. i worried about them while they were in there. they’re my family and i care about them and even if they brought it on themselves i don’t like seeing people i care about suffer. i didn’t want it to happen. i regretted that it was happening to them. 

sometimes they committed crimes against me specifically or in ways that involved me. stealing from me and other members of my family, or getting in a physical altercation in front of me that i felt the need to try and break up

even when i was personally hurt and affected by their crimes, they were still my family, and i love them, and i’m still on good terms with them today. family can be complicated. love is messy 

while lxc may not have been able to stop or lessen lwj’s punishment, and while as the clan leader he couldn’t speak out against the actions of his sect, that’s not really what my specific feelings are about 

he never voices regret for lwj’s suffering, except to blame wwx for it. he never says that he didn’t want it to happen and that he hated that it did and that if he could have stopped it while still upholding a functioning society, he would have. even after the truth of everything comes out, and it turns out maybe lwj had a reason for his actions that should have been taken into consideration, he never readjusts his perception or voices that change in perception out loud. sure, you can argue that maybe these things happened off screen because this is a story from wwx’s perspective. but maybe they didn’t

the punishment is instead wholly correct and good without room for personal suffering

i like lxc for a lot of reasons. i find his reaction to wwx and all the accusations against jgy after the time jump to be admirable, for one. i’m perfectly happy to read stories and interpretations where’s he’s a pure badass cinnamon roll

but

the question for me was never really was lwj’s punishment appropriate in the context of his society or what social responsibility to lwj did lxc have as a member of society or as clan leader or his brother 

it was: does your love exist outside of the bounds of social acceptability? 

is your empathy able to exist outside the realm of responsibility? does your care and worry extend even through the societal failures of someone who matters to you? 

if the answer to those questions is no, well

i’m just not going like you very much 

[qqueenofhades]

The photo set you reblogged of Yusuf and Niccolo helping throughout time just filled me with so many happy feels and it made me realize that it seems so common in media with immortal couples that they take breaks from each other and reconnect after a few decades. Which is a great trope but seeing these two that seems to have been attached at the hip since the day they met just fills me with all the heart eyes.

(I haven't read your fanfics for them yet. I know I'm a bad fan but if it helps I havent been able to read anything since all this started but while writing this ask I got the feeling that all this rambling I spewed out is a big theme)

Hush. Bad fan nothing. We all are coping with this stupid, awful year in different ways, some of us by escaping into fandom and some of us being unable to engage with it and some of us doing both or anything else. You certainly don’t owe me or anyone any obligation to interact with our content, fic or otherwise. So just to have that there on the top. You’re good, hun. :)

ANYWAY, thank you for giving me a chance to meta a bit on the boys and their relationship and to have a window into what my brain looks like pretty much 24/7 these days. (I blame them.) I keep thinking about all the ways this couple is depicted in the TOG film and how lovely it was and how unusual it is for me to have an OTP where I actually love them in canon and don’t need to violently disavow it in order to create AU fan content with just the characters. (See: Timeless, Game of Thrones, pretty much any show I’ve hyperfixated on at some point.) I love AUs anyway, because that’s the way my brain works, but the fact that I can also enjoy canon just as much is rare for me and for a lot of us. I saw a post somewhere remarking on how the fanfic for Joe/Nicky isn’t fixing anything, which is usually the point of transformative fanworks: we take something that canon atrociously fucked up and fix it. But in this case, all our interpretations are based on actually appreciating the way they’re presented in canon and wanting to enjoy that and uphold it, and that -- especially with a couple like this one -- is shocking??

Like. Despite my historian gripes about the occasionally incongruous details for their graphic-novel backstories (which are the only things I HAVE fixed in my fics), I’m just... deeply appreciative of the care which everyone, writers and actors and all else, put into depicting Joe and Nicky and their relationship. And god YES, one of the things I love the absolute MOST is that they’re a loving, faithful, committed, happy married queer couple over centuries, and that seems to be the case for as long as they’ve known each other/ever since they got together. (See Booker’s “you and Nicky always had each other.”) These fools can’t sleep apart from each other even when they’re stuck on a freight train in the middle of nowhere, they flirt like teenagers at dinnertime and even when they’re strapped to gurneys in a mad-scientist laboratory, they make out to enrage bad guys and also because they’re just still that goddamn into each other after all this time.

I think it was Marwan Kenzari who pointed out that there’s simply no way to truly state the depth of their knowledge and devotion and commitment to each other. They’re 950 years old. They have known each other since they were in their thirties; they’ve been husbands for literal centuries. There is no way anyone else in the world could possibly come close to replicating the kind of bond they have with each other, and neither of them have ever had any inclination to look, because why would they? Especially with the fact that queer couples in media, even otherwise sympathetically portrayed ones, often have Drama and Third Parties and Promiscuity and whatever else (because of the tiresome old canard that Gays Equal Hypersexualized!), and Joe and Nicky don’t need or want ANY of that. There’s no urge to make their relationship a cheap source of soap-opera conflict. It’s the rock and the center and the core of both of their lives, and everything they do stems from that.

There have been some great metas/comments on how neither Joe and Nicky are sexualized, they dress like stay-at-home dads during quarantine (Marwan Kenzari and Luca Marinelli are both objectively gorgeous men, and they’re out there looking like that, god bless), and the viewer is never invited to goggle at or fetishize their relationship. There are no leering or exploitative camera angles on anyone, and their expressions of love aren’t posed or intended to titillate the audience, they’re just solidly embodied and natural and lived in. It’s never bothered to be stated clunkily in dialogue that they’re a couple; we just see them exchanging looks and smiles in the early part of the film, and then we see them spooning on the train after the mission in Sudan, which confirms it.

At every turn, the narrative celebrates the kindness and love shared by the Immortal Family, the individual characters, and Joe and Nicky, especially and explicitly in queer form. The villains of the film are also defined by how they react negatively to that love. @viridianpanther​ had a great meta on how Keane as a villain is especially set up to menace Joe and Nicky as the narrative representation of toxic masculinity, aggressive heterosexuality, and the usual “Kill Your Gays” trope that we’ve all come to wearily expect. But instead, after that scene where Joe and Nicky fight Keane, Nicky is shot and comes back to life in Joe’s arms rather than dying permanently like we probably all momentarily expected, and then Joe gets to FUCKIN’ BREAK THE NECK of the guy who enacted that violence.... good GOD. The first time I watched it, I almost couldn’t believe it was happening. (This goes for the whole film, but especially that scene.) Like... when do we get that?? When do we EVER get that???

Obviously, there are so many stereotypes, whether visually or in behavior or character traits, that could have been assigned to a gay Italian character (excessively dramatic, effeminate, fashionable, etc) or a gay Arabic/Muslim character (explicitly announcing He’s Not Like Those Muslims, having to actively reject his heritage to make him more palatable to westerners, being tormented over being gay, etc) and Joe and Nicky subscribe to none of those. I get very emotional about Joe referring to Nicky as the moon when he is lost during the truck scene partly because it’s SUCH a common motif in Arabic love poetry. To call someone your “moon” is a beautiful way to say they’re the light of your life, and since the Islamic calendar is obviously lunar and the holidays, months, and observances, are set by the phases of the moon, this also has a deeper religious significance.

I don’t know for sure if they did that on purpose, but it it’s a lovely and subtle way of showing us how Joe clearly doesn’t have an issue with being both queer AND Muslim, and is able to draw on both facets of that identity in a way that a lesser narrative would have denied him. And that is just really wonderful. Yes, we’re seeing these characters when they’ve had centuries to settle into themselves, but there are plenty of writers who would have forced those conflicts artificially to the surface, rather than letting them be long in the past. It’s the same way when you watch a film set in the medieval era, it wants you to know that it Is Set In The Medieval Era. Cue the filth, misogyny, racism, violence, etc! Rather than it being a lived-in reality, it has to be jarringly drawn attention to, and I’m just so glad they didn’t do that with Joe and Nicky. And for them to have met in the crusades and fallen in love??! Come on. That’s just rude. Rude to me, personally.

Anyway, this was a rather long-winded and feelsy way of saying that these characters are constructed, acted, and written organically in such a way that you hate to even THINK of them being separated, and it’s not because they can’t function without each other, but because they are two halves of a whole. We also see that the characters themselves can’t stand being forced apart: Joe’s freakout in the truck scene when Nicky briefly won’t wake up, Nicky making sure to tell Joe that he’s glad he’s awake in the lab, the whole post-Keane fight scene that I talked about above, the way Nicky fights ferociously to get to Joe when Merrick’s stabbing him, etc. For that to be given to the queer couple, where the strength of their love and devotion is reinforced as one of the emotional goals of the story, and for that queer couple to be written in the way that Joe and Nicky are, both individually and as a unit, is just so very rare.

Because yes, there’s plenty of drama and angst and pain in their lives, but there’s none at all in their relationship, and that’s what fans keep telling TV writers the whole time: they WANT to see the couple confront things as a unit, rather than being kept on tenterhooks the whole time and forced to go through manufactured or artificial drama. It would feel especially wrong for Joe and Nicky, who have known and loved each other for 900 years. The fact that their respective actors also put so much care and love into them is very obvious, and makes me feel even luckier that they’re played by people who clearly get them and honor them and know what they’re doing.

Basically: of course Joe and Nicky have been with each other the whole time, and of course we’re all drowning in feelings over it, and I feel very blessed that this ship exists, and I very much need the sequel ASAP. Thanks.

[comingoutofthecauldron]

let’s talk about lesbophobia in fandom

i don’t like to use the word “lesbophobia” unironically because of all the gross radfem terfy connotations, so i will clarify right off the bat that i am neither a terf nor an aphobe and that if you are i want you off my blog like, right now. unfortunately, the meaning of lesbophobia has been so warped by alt right lesbians that seeing it in an unironic context makes me, a lesbian, uncomfortable, which speaks volumes in itself. so to clarify, lesbophobia is essentially homophobia with a pinch of sexism thrown into the mix, and it’s running rampant in supposed safe spaces and, more relevantly, fandom. 

/i’d also like to clarify that i’m not only speaking on lesbophobia, but also the general disgust and disdain for all wlw in fandom, and am using it as a sort of umbrella term/

lesbophobia and disdain for wlw has been around forever, but whilst gay positivity, mlm and mlm ships have been steadily increasing in popularity within fandom over time, wlw and wlw ships have remained perpetual underdogs. why? because lesbophobia has become a fandom within itself. both in and outside of fandom, we see instances of casual lesbophobia every single day—from aggression towards wlw to something as simple and prevalent as the complete and utter lack of sapphic ships and characters in media. hatred of lesbians and wlw is practically a trend, and it’s seeping in through the cracks of fandoms who are already facing issues with minorities and marginalized groups (i.e. racism, ableism). if you honestly think that lesbophobia isn’t prevalent as hell in fandom right now, you’re either not a wlw, you’re not all that involved in fandom, or you’re dumb as shit. 

just look at ships. in almost every single fandom, the ratio of mlm ships to sapphic ships is ridiculously unbalanced. people are quick to ship male characters who so much as smile at each other (and i don’t condemn that) but would never do the same for two women—even on the rare occasion that the ship is actually canon. i once wrote a wlw fanfic for a [predominantly straight] fandom, and received messages like this gem:

on the flip side of that, if there is a sapphic ship in canon or fanon, it is often fetishized and sexualised to a disturbing degree. there will be double the amount of nsfw art and fics, and ninety percent of it will be derogatory and fetishized as hell. having been actively involved in several fandoms over the past few years (and currently a content creator in one), i’ve seen instances of all this hundreds of times. people go crazy for mlm ships, but the second you say you ship/prefer a wlw ship, there’s always someone at the ready with, “i think all ships are great!” or “it’s not a contest” or “i prefer [insert m/m or m/f ship] actually” or “they’re my brotp!/why can’t you just let them be friends?”. not only do lesbians and wlw not get to have any rep in media, any rep that they try to create for themselves in fandom just gets attacked or ruined. this is so detrimental not only to all wlw, but especially to younger wlw who will end up being indoctrinated into this belief that their sexuality is something dirty, something that can never be tender and sweet but rather something that deserves to be preyed upon. 

building on that, let’s talk about engagement. i run an instagram account (where i have a significantly bigger following) as well as this blog for my fandom, where i post the content i create (mainly text posts). when i first started creating content, i made a lot for a relatively unpopular wlw ship, in which both girls are canonically romantically involved with a dude—though one of them is canonically pan. their canonical m/f ships are both very popular, and i noticed that my engagement was dropping every time i posted them, so i eventually just stopped. it wasn’t even a conscious decision; i merely resigned myself to the fact that the fandom didn’t want to see sapphic ships, and some people would even go as far as to condemn them. for reference, my instagram posts get an average of about 500 likes per post (popular ones usually exceeding 1k), but when i post this ship, my engagement drops to about 250 likes. similarly, my tumblr text posts have an average of about 140 notes per post (popular ones usually reaching up to 750), but my wlw content rarely surpasses 100. this just feeds the cycle of wlw never getting rep: if, like me, content creators become disincentivised by the lack of engagement with their sapphic content, they’re more likely to stop making/posting it, leading to further lack of rep—and when new content creators try to rectify that, they face the same problems. 

and then, of course, there’s the treatment of actual wlw in fandom. my best example of this is when my friend and i made an anti account on instagram (the first instagram anti account in that fandom), our bio saying something like “salty and bitter lesbians being salty and bitter”, and received an onslaught of lesbophobic insults and threats from angry stans within hours. (tw: r*pe) one commenter even went as far as to tell us that they wanted us to get r*ped. as well as this, i’ve seen so many instances of people using slurs against lesbians in arguments/in anons, often for no apparent reason other than they feel that they have the right. when i first mentioned i was a lesbian on instagram, my account only had about 200 followers, and within a day i lost 20. i also lose followers whenever i post f/f ships, not quite to that extent but enough for it to be noticeable, on top of the aforementioned engagement dips. in the face of all this adversity, i think a lot of wlw turn to mlm ships because they’re the closest thing we have to actual rep, but when we do we get accused of fetishizing them by the same people who fetishize us. there’s an endless list of double standards that non-wlw have been upholding for years, and i can firmly say that i’m really fucking sick of it. because of our sexuality, we will never be allowed to enjoy something without someone labelling it or us as dirty or otherwise problematic, when to them, the only problematic thing about us is that we aren’t pleasing men. 

as i mentioned before, the lack of rep for wlw in media is appallingly consistent, and part of that stems from tokenism. in a lot of modern mainstream media, you’ll have one, maybe two lgbt characters, and nine times out of ten those characters are white cis male gays. of course, there are exceptions to this, but generally, that’s it. script writers and authors (especially cishets) seem to have this mentality of, “oh, well, we gave them one, that’s sure to be enough!”, which means that on the off chance you do get your gay rep, the likelihood of also receiving wlw or any other kind of rep becomes practically non-existant. this belief that all marginalized groups are the same and that one represents all is what leads to misrepresentation on top of lack of rep, which is what makes tokenism so dangerous. if you treat your only gay character badly, you are essentially treating every single gay person badly in that universe. so not only is lesbophobia and disdain for wlw harmful to sapphic women via their exclusion in media, it’s also harming those minorities who do get rep. when people try to defend lesbophobic source material, that’s when fandom starts to get toxic. the need for critical thinking has never been more apparent and it has also never been less appeased—and wlw are getting hit hard by it, as always.

finally, a pretty big driving factor of lesbophobia is, ironically, lesbians. my lesbian friends and i often joke that though everyone seems to hate us, no one hates lesbians more than lesbians do. though i’d say it’s most prevalent on tumblr, i see traces of it all over the internet. the growth of alt right lesbian movements is not only reinforcing hatred for lesbians, but also reinforcing hatred for bi and pan women. here you have these terrible lesbians using their platforms to express their disgust for bi/pan women, for aces and aros, for trans women/nb lesbians, and people see them and say, “gosh, lesbians are just awful.” and just like that, all of us are evil. occasionally, lesbian blogs that i follow get put on terf blocklists for no other reason than the fact that they have “lesbian” in their bio. and the lesbians that actually deserve to be on those blocklists? they’re too busy spewing misinformation about trans women and bi women to care, boosted up by their alt right friends in an ever-expanding movement. i’ve found that this heavily influences fandom on tumblr, lesbians often getting branded as “biphobic” when they hc a female character as a lesbian rather than bi or pan. this criticism of both lesbians and wlw by lesbians and non-wlw alike only ever allows lesbophobia to grow, both in and out of fandom. that said, lesbians aren’t to blame for their own discrimination; rather, many of us have been conditioned into subconsciously endorsing it after spending our entire lives hearing heterosexual platitudes about lesbians and sapphic relationships. homophobic cishets are and always have been the nexus of this oppression—the only difference is that now they can hide behind alt right lesbians.

one thing has been made apparent to me throughout my time in fandom, and that thing is that no one likes to see men “underrepresented”. people hate sapphic ships and lesbians so much because there is no room for men, and men Do Not Like That. so, like the worms that they are, they slither their way in, be it through fetishization or condemnation of wlw characters and ships, and they ruin whatever good things we have going for us. the thing about worms, though, is that they’re easy enough to crush if you’re wearing the right shoes.

so to all my bi/pan gals and lesbian pals: put on your doc martens, because we’ve got ourselves some lesbophobes to stomp on. 

[a-written-dream]

Attack on Titan ch.139 spoilers

Okay, so I know a lot of people are going to be talking about what they didn’t like with the final chapter, and how disappointed they are and yada yada, and I get that, because following a series and having it end usually results in some level of disappointment (it’s fricking hard to write a good ending, isn’t it? And trying to tie everything up in a way that is both satisfactory to the author and everyone else even more so) but

I wanted to write down a few things I liked with this final chapter, because while I’m not entirely sure yet about my own satisfaction with the end, there are still things in there that I really enjoyed and that made me feel happy with the chapter. These aren’t meant to be facts in any shape or form, just things I picked up from the chapter that I enjoyed or which brought me satisfaction or happiness (as painful as it was)

(This was meant to be a short bullet list of a few things and turned into 3k of semi-analysis oops my bad)

The one thing I knew I wanted out of this chapter was to see things from Eren’s perspective, to get an understanding of why in the world he’d gone and decided that not only was destroying the world a good idea, but also pushing away his friends and telling them (pretty obvious) lies. There were so many things still left unanswered that I felt required an explanation from Eren’s side, and I really think this chapter delivered in doing that. There are still a few things I’m a little confused about, but I think I’ll need to do a proper read through of the whole manga to truly get it.

I really liked that we got to see Eren sharing his perspective together with Armin, that Armin was the last character we get to see together with Eren when he is alive. I haven’t read most of the manga, but from what I’ve heard their friendship is given even more depth than in the anime, and I really enjoyed the way the anime portrayed it. As a person who prefers platonic relationships in (canon) media, it means a lot to me that it wasn’t the love interest who got the last meaningful interaction with Eren. It shows just how important Eren and Armin’s relationship is and is a nice nod towards the fact that Armin was the one who sparked the flame in Eren that lead him to feel caged and crave freedom in the first place (I’m sure you could do an entire analysis on this but I haven’t spent near enough time analysing the manga or their relationship to be able to write one); I suppose I just think it fits very neatly in with the story and the importance of Eren’s different relationships.

I loved how dark AoT was – genuinely and thoroughly enjoyed the fact that that terrible and horrifying things happened, and this extends to the fact that Eren turns into the villain. But, despite this, I’m still quite happy that what he does isn’t entirely his own doing. Or, rather, that he does what he does to rid the world of Titans (which, additionally, was his one purpose and promise all along, wasn’t it?). He sees the future, a future without Titans, and he does what he needs to do to get there, even becoming a mass murderer (80% of humanity, though? Jeez Eren, little overboard maybe). We see previously how much it hurts him (e.g. when he’s in Liberio and cries about the young boy he meets), and then again in this chapter – and rather than being a monster, he becomes a martyr (I am a sucker for martyrs and guilt-ridden characters, so the fact that my love for Eren has only grown with this chapter makes total sense). But, I do want to point out also that while we see that he’s doing it for reasons that aren’t entirely selfish (though they are by no means selfless), we are still told that he thinks if he didn’t know the others would stop him, he would have flattened the earth anyway. I really like this small, one-panel detail because it makes the rest of it seem more likely. Isayama doesn’t twist Eren’s personality to fit the narrative and happy (”happy”) ending he wants; Eren has always had an anger in him, a selfishness, a misplaced belief that the world should be his. He is by no means a truly good person, never has been, but he can’t easily be placed into the ‘bad person’ camp, either. I think, in some senses, that this chapter really caught those contrasting parts of his personality, his grey morality. He is selfish and full of hate, but he’s also so many other things. He cares about his friends, so so much, cares about the people of Paradis, and at the end of the day, doesn’t that make him a little less selfish, if he’s willing to throw away his own humanity to save his friends (and isn’t that a theme that runs through the series? Remember Armin saying both that to ‘defeat a monster you must throw away your humanity’ and ‘someone who cannot throw away everything, cannot achieve anything’). While I definitely think it would have been cool to see Eren full of hatred to the point where there is none of the good in him left, I’m happy that we got to see him feel love. In some ways, it feels like we got to see him the way we used to know him, back before the time-skip, back before the weight of his own consciousness and guilt made him turn his back on that hope that still lived in him somewhere.

This isn’t something that I noticed/thought about myself when I read the chapter, but I saw someone point it out on here and it really struck me. Eren keeps his promise, to see the world with Armin. While they are talking, they get to explore together (the volcano and the lava, walking through the snow and seeing the northern lights above a snow-covered mountain range, finally getting to the sea) and it’s such a sweet, sweet thing that I barely know what to do with myself. I think, once again this really nicely fits in with what made Eren.. well, Eren, in the first place. That wonder and want in Armin’s eyes to see the outside world. And for Eren to uphold that promise, to the extent he can, is just so sweet, and really says something about Eren’s personality (he cares, he’s always cared, maybe he even cares too much).

I’ve seen some people complain about Ymir being in love with Karl Fritz, and I think it’s a valid thing, but I have to say I personally didn’t mind it. People fall in love with people who are bad to them, it happens, and as an explanation to why Ymir has obeyed his (and his ancestors’) command for 2,000 years, I think it works out. But, what I liked the most about it, is the fact that Mikasa is the one to show her that you can love someone and still let them go, you can love someone and go against them. I was happy already in the last chapter when it became clear that Mikasa would be the one to kill Eren, because to me it was her way of becoming her own person, in a way. Because while it’s clear after this chapter that Eren did, at least to some extent, want them to stop him, none of the others technically know this. So Mikasa isn’t stopping him for him, she’s stopping him for the world, and she’s stopping him for her. It’s her way of, after years of living and fighting and doing things for him, becoming her own person and doing something that isn’t for him. I thought it was a nice end(-ish, it’s not the last we see of her, but regardless) to her character development and her and Eren’s relationship. I also like how it furthers Mikasa’s importance to the story. I don’t think she’s been one of those female characters that exist only to be the main character’s love interest, and while her ending the age of Titans is directly linked to her love for Eren, it feels like it’s so much more than that.

Now, I know this is by no means healthy, but. I actually really liked the way Eren reacted to Armin talking (teasing him?) about Mikasa finding someone else to love with ease. Sure, that possessiveness is unhealthy and toxic, but it also feels so much like Eren. He wants the whole world for himself, so why wouldn’t he want Mikasa to himself too? And the fact that he tells Armin not to tell Mikasa because he does want her to be happy, at the end of the day, even if it isn’t with him, once again falls in line with his deep care for those that matter the most to him. I really think Eren’s character is incredibly interesting (in case I hadn’t made that clear by the endless amount of words above) and I really like how this chapter portrayed that. Is he a good person doing bad things? A bad person doing good things? Or simply a person doing what he thinks he needs to in order to get where he wants and to protect those he cares about? Another thing that I really like about his outburst is the fact that he does it in front of Armin. He dares to (essentially) throw a tantrum in front of him, saying something – that Armin even goes to say is ‘pathetic’ – for only Armin to hear because there’s a trust there that runs deeper than anything they share with anyone else.

As a person who is very supportive of platonic physical affection (I think there’s a huge lack of it in media and I think it’s a shame that physical affection should be limited to romantic and/or sexual partners), the fact that Armin and Eren hold hands (both in this chapter and in the rest of the series) makes me very, very happy to see. I am entirely on board with people who would have seen them end up together as something other than friends (I definitely see the chemistry there and kind of ship it myself), but I also love the fact that they are two friends (best friends) who are physically affectionate with each other every step of the way, including at the end (this goes for the hug too). It’s refreshing and nice to see and I think it speaks volumes about how much they care for each other (regardless of what way that may be, but I’m happy that it is platonically in canon because in my humble opinion there are too few platonic-but-still-affectionate relationships out there).

We know that Eren sees how it ends, with the others killing him and stopping him from eradicating humanity, so we know he can essentially see the future (memories from the future – I really love that), but what we also know is that he can only see his own future memories. He sees his own future memories through his father, but because there is no Attack Titan to follow him, no next Attack Titan whose memories he can see, it’s safe to assume that he can’t see anything past his own death. This makes him saying that the one who’s going to save humanity is Armin, just that much better. Because Eren isn’t saying it because he’s seen it, but rather because his belief and trust in Armin is so large and runs so deep that he simply knows that Armin is going to save them, believes it with his whole being.

The bird. I don't even know if there's any need to elaborate on this; I'm a sucker for reincarnation (and meeting in death, which is why I've loved the reoccurring visits from the fallen Survey Corps) and both Armin and Mikasa getting something from the bird (Armin getting a feather, maybe something of a nod to the seashell; Mikasa getting the scarf wrapped around her again) was very sweet. Another thing I literally just realised is that Eren becoming a bird is absolutely heartbreakingly beautiful, because birds are a symbol of freedom, are they not? (This realisation literally hit me in the face with pain, don't mind me) I think this can be viewed in two ways: either, it is only in death that Eren finds freedom (which is rather sad), or Eren is granted freedom, like he's always wanted, even if he couldn't have it while he was alive (not sure I'm making the distinction clear, but to me there's a large difference and I'd like to believe it's the second one: Eren deserves the freedom he finally receives).

Levi saluting. I can't be entirely sure, but if I remember correctly, this is the first time we've seen him salute? He did 'salute for' Hange in some ways, but it's not quite the same. I don't know all that much about Levi's backstory and his relation to the Survey Corps (besides obviously having a lot of comrades and friends he cares deeply about), but to me him saluting at the end is a sort of acknowledgement to everyone's sacrifice, a sort of 'We did it. It wasn't in vain. You are all the reason we made it this far and I am proud to have stood beside you'.

When I drafted this I wrote down 'the seashell' but right now I can't remember exactly why I liked that, but looking at the panels it clearly has some significance. I can't explain why I liked the fact that Armin gave it to Eren, but I do. It felt important.

While we get to see why Eren is doing what he's doing, given a bit of an insight into what made him do what he did, his actions – in my opinion – aren't excused. There's no 'oh it's okay you killed 80% of humanity but it's entirely reasonable because you did it for your friends'. Yes, Armin thanks him, but he does explicitly call Eren a mass murderer, not letting us or Eren forget what Eren has actually done, regardless of why he's done it. There's no excusing killing that many innocent people, regardless of why, and Eren and Armin know this too; Eren knows that there is no forgiving what he's done, that there is nothing left for him but to die because there is nothing he or anyone else can say or do that will warrant him another shot at life after what he's done.

I'm a sucker for angst and character death (don't ask me why, I honestly couldn't tell you. It simply tickles my fancy) and the fact that Eren dies at the end is right up my alley. Not only does it make my angst-loving heart go 'woo', but it also wouldn't have made any sense to keep him alive, in many ways. So while watching Eren die broke my heart, it also felt like an fate true to the story and to Eren's character and his decisions.

As viewers/readers I think most of us have known the potential that Armin holds since the first season, and it wasn't too surprising when Levi chose Armin over Erwin, but in this chapter we really get to see that it was a good decision on Levi's part. Because just as Eren says, Armin is the one to save humanity (or at least the one smart and compassionate enough to get close). Armin is the first to know what to say to ensure the Eldians' safety after the Titans are gone, is the one who comes up with a plan to stop Eren (I think? My memory might be failing me here), is one of those who are going to bring peace back from Paradis. I don't necessarily think there was any need to 'prove' that Armin was the one who deserved to live, but this chapter really shows that regardless of who 'deserved to live', Armin is a strong and capable character, fit as the 15th Commander of the Survey Corps, that has fulfilled his potential. It just really drives the point that Armin wasn't a bad choice, that maybe he was even the right choice.

And finally, I like the fact that it is left open ended. There has been a lot of resolutions, a lot of things finally resolved, and I think it's all been tied up pretty nicely. But I also enjoy the fact that peace isn't certain, nor is survival (because, is it ever?). Isayama doesn't give us everything, doesn't tell us exactly how things pan out, how life and the world after Titans might look. Rather, he allows us to build our own interpretation of how the world might rebuild itself and which routes the characters choose to take. In some way, it's so much more satisfying to have an open end like this, because it both allows the readers to explore their own interpretations of how the story might continue, but also because life in itself is open ended and the end of one struggle doesn't mean the end of all struggle. That's not to say that I think the series ended on a pessimistic or dark tone, because I really didn't. It's a good ending, a happy one, but it doesn't stray too far away from the darkness of the rest of the manga (though I must admit I was expecting a little darker ending, but I'm not necessarily disappointed). It's a hopeful ending, but not a naïve one, and I really like that.

Oooh boy this became a lot more than I expected it to oops. This was not meant to become analysis, but here we are. Might do a tl;dr later lmao

But yeah I just wanted to spread some positivity in these trying times, and I know that endings can be disappointing, so I thought sharing my own positive reactions to certain bits of the chapter might help someone else enjoy it a little more!

(Also ngl I just wanted to write stuff down because I wanted to remind myself why I liked it, and once I started writing I couldn't stop, so there's that).

[migleefulmoments]

I keep creeping on tinhatters (and all of the sane blogs like you) and one thing that really gets me is that the cc idiots think their version of poor sweet little Darren is somehow offended by the name of TSG and the drinks they serve. The man wrote a song about periods. He helped write an entire musical about singing genitalia. He has a crass sense of humor. That’s who he’s always been. I think it’s funny. A lot of his fans do. He’s always been a bit dirty and risqué.

YEP. In reality the CC Fandom truly believes Darren is Blaine or Blaine is Darren.  They don’t get it. While they have acknowledged he wrote Me and My Dick, they don’t remember that when they are clothing their pearls and clutching their knees together in indignation over the drink names. Darren IS definitely crass.  So what?!! He is also charming, super intelligent, caring, considerate, a little sappy, grateful and immensely talented. Their claim that Darren would never own a bar with naughty drink names is simply further proof that the “Darren” they claim to love does not exist and the Darren that does exist is NOT the one they fantasize about. I will agree that Canon 18-yo Blaine would never open a bar like that though Fanon Blaine would. The fantasy that Chris and Darren are lovers is getting hard to uphold and hanging on to even a friendship between the two is getting more and more difficult. They are at this point nothing but former coworkers- at this point I don’t think they are even friends because Chris hates the CC fandom shit showing up on his social media- and attacking Will so much he has isolated himself from Darren entirely. 

The CCers are getting desperate and angry. Now they are attacking Sarah Hyland claiming she was paid to say in an interview that Mia is Darren’s wife. How desperate do you have to be to believe that Darren’s RL friends are being paid? Who has all this money to pay for so many people to lie about Mia? How much money does it cost to get a celebrities to forget their morality-potentially ruining their hard earned reputation- and LIE on camera about someone they are just casual friends with? I would imagine it would take lot of money to convince all these people to play along with a charade that is literally hurting their friend because not only do they have to lie but they have to want cash so badly that they are willing to do something that deeply hurts their friend.  That makes Sarah Hyland an evil woman and therefore I have to ask, why would Chris hire such a woman for SBL? Why would Darren be friends with her? Why would Darren and Chris share their deepest darkest secrets with her? Of course, it’s all nonsense. There is no contract and there is nobody paying Sarah to “promote Mia”. The only people “Promoting MIa” are the CCers who can’t stop looking for every social media post with Mia mentioned or photographed.  

The CC fantasy that @ajw720 spins is so full of holes it is a sieve. None of her friends ever acknowledge those holes and they all avoid actually answering anyone else who ever dares to point them out - they either filibuster or attack the writer rather than answer anything. But most of us are smart enough to see the truth and see that the story of a spiderweb of contracts covering most of Hollywood all to “promote Mia” and keep Darren closeted are silly fantasies of a handful of women.