#have plenty of space for queer characters (and characters of color!) so this post is not about that

[actual-corpse]

Alright. We all know that consumers (and capitalism and the companies, but this isn't about them right now) are ruining gaming, right?

Consumers ask for more, more MORE! From developers and its jacking up prices and file sizes and giving us mediocrity at best.

It's what ruined MLP:FiM. *too many people wanted world building. It was completely unnecessary and gave us one of the worst characters in the show. The world and cast got spread too thin and eehhhh...*

SCOPE CREEP

Consumers don't actually know what they want, and they just beg for shit that is completely unnecessary to both the story and the game itself. Creating pointless bloat and breaking shit (Cyberpunk 2077? The game Consumers rushed out comes to mind).

We have enough games on the market. We have such a large backlog that we can stand to wait a few years for a studio to polish a diamond instead of giving us a shiny turd.

It's late stage consumerism and late stage capitalism all rolled up into the nastiest mess you can conceive.

I saw a complaint about Detroit: Become Human that mentioned being disappointed in how one-note BACKGROUND ANDROIDS were.

BACKGROUND. CHARACTERS. Characters that are only there to fill up space. Not everything needs its own fucking story. Not everything needs its own shitting lore!

Easter eggs are awesome! I love them! I love things you really need to look for! But if we make everything an Easter egg, then there are no Easter eggs.

If YOU want to do all that shit, develop your own fucking game. Indie games fucking rule (but are an intense labor of love).

All that extra shit? That's why we have fandom. Fanfiction, OCs, headcannons. We can add the stuff that story writers couldn't. FANFICS WERE MADE BY FANS TO ADD ALL THE EXTRA SHIT THAT WE WANTED! Developers can't possibly cater to the every whim of a small few wants.

Not everything needs lore. Sometimes, the curtains are just blue.

[4ragon]

any book recommendations?

Dooooooont fucking do this to me ahhhh okay. Okay. I have read 72 books so far this year and I have been having a blast so you may be unleashing a monster, let me just look through my Goodreads and see what I’ve read. I’ll put it under the cut so no one murders me.

Also. Mostly fantasy, fair warning. I like fantasy.

First!!! Since I finished it yesterday:

Voyage of the Damned by Frances White

Debut novel, it’s a magical murder mystery romance with fun characters and magic and a bisexual main character, I had a blast with it. Plenty of twists and turns, some I predicted and some that managed to blindside me.

Also it literally just came out this year so no one else is posting about it. My library only just got it this month. Someone needs to talk to me about how fucked up some of this is.

(Also, I’d rate it M if it were on ao3. Lots of sex jokes. Suicidal characters. Be aware of that.)

The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson

Okay fair warning, every book in here is 1000 pages long. That is not hyperbole. Also some heavy themes, ie suicide, abuse, slavery, murder.

But this book is a MASTERCLASS in worldbuilding. Like. Holy shit this man puts so much detail in this series. I’ve only read through book 2 (well 2.5) and while it did take a bit to get through the initial hurdle of “I’m going to introduce a million fantasy concepts to you and you have to fucking roll with it” it’s well worth it. A lush world with some amazing characters. I’m enjoying the series.

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

It’s a bunch of heists in a magical gritty setting with a bunch of awful people and I loved it a ton. Though it did make me really anxious. So anxious. Heist movies make me anxious. I love these guys.

I do think it’s weird to have them be 17 but I choose to ignore that. It’s got a great cast, and it’s sooooo fun to watch a plot unfold. It’s really good at giving you just enough information to constantly be at the edge of your seat.

Here’s one a bit out of left field: The Color Purple by Alice Walker

A musical version came out and I wanted to read the book before even touching that. And guys. One of the best books I’ve ever read. But. Trigger warning times 1000 by page 1, REALLY heavy. It’s the kind of book that beats you down for a while before things get better.

But they do get better. They do.

Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao

Queer as hell, angry as hell, basically mechs fighting aliens in a setting based loosely on ancient China. I was not expecting the romance to go the way it did but it made me very happy, and I’m so excited for the next book.

The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells

I’ve talked about this before. I love you Murderbot.

They’re all very short, action packed novellas. More serialized than I expected but that’s part of the charm! Plus Murderbot is such a great character. My favorite is the one actually novel length one but the whole thing is great.

Discworld by Terry Pratchett

This is a whole series you can read in any order. They’re genuinely laugh out loud funny and also heartfelt and beautiful . My favorites so far have been Guards! Guards!, Going Postal and Reaper Man

The Locked Tomb by Tamsyn Muir

I know we’ve all run the “Lesbian necromancers in space” thing into the ground, but also Gideon may be one of my favorite characters in anything ever. She’s so fucking fun. She’s funny and crass in a way I feel like female protagonists rarely get to be. I love her.

Also. I have no idea what the fuck is happening. I think that’s part of the charm. Lots of worldbuilding going on in the background that makes no sense until the end and then you’re like holy shit. I love it.

A Most Agreeable Murder by Julia Seales

So mix Pride and Prejudice with a murder mystery novel and the ridiculousness of a Discworld novel and you have this book. It’s so fun. One of the background characters is clearly a werewolf and it has nothing to do with the rest of the plot.

The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

I’ve already gushed about this book but it’s so found family. The absolute coziest feel-good novel I’ve read. Plus it’s queer as hell! One of my absolute favorites.

Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki

This book was just beautiful. Another one with some heavy themes, but I loved it. Aliens and demons, queer, trans mc, about music and hope and found family. Plus it got be back into reading so! It holds a special place in my heart.

Sorry. That was a lot. That’s not even all of them but these were some of my favorites.

[blood-and-poetry]

Hot take I'm seeing quite a few posts confused over why Deadloch isn't trending or much more popular on tumblr because "tumblr is so gay and so feminist". And I am sorry to say this but tumblr isn't the "lesbian website" or the "feminist website". Tumblr loves men just as much as the rest of society does, its user base just loves them in a very online way which makes it look a bit different at times. It has always been this way, starting with shipping every two white dudes in close proximity to each other, over worshipping old male Hollywood actors to downright MRA and anti-feminist talking points in the recent past in "progressive leftist" spaces on here. All done in very uwu political correct tumblr speak of course.

And it's really that simple. Media with two (often times white) guys standing close to each other will always be more popular on here than anything women- or lesbian centric, no matter how many theoretical tumblr approval boxes said media ticks. There is a reason why lesbian shows get canceled left and right. Even if lesbian shows are trending for one or two days there is just no genuine interest from a majority of people (on tumblr and anywhere else). Men overall are rarely interested if it isn't made with the male gaze in mind or focusses on men, straight women aren't interested, even many bi women (don't come at me I am bi) aren't interested because they don't see other women (and often times themselves) as complete and potentially interesting people/characters (how often I've seen women on here saying something along the lines of "my favourite characters are all men but it's just because these characters are so good! Pure coincidence. I would definitely love a female character but I just have never found one I am that obsessed with. Not my fault, they are all written in a bad/boring way").

Doesn't matter how often the word "queer" is thrown around here, all of this has always been the same and it won't change. Which is.. fine? I have never expected it to be something else. A website that isn't specifically designed for lesbians but only attracts lesbians would be magical. But a website thats designed for nerdy people and especially women of that kind will attract.. nerdy people/women. Consisting of the same groups of people that exist in real life, including lots of women attracted to men. I have my little bubble here in which I mainly see lesbian content but the things on my dashboard rarely reflect what's trending or the content of popular posts.

I am not bitter about this because it has never been different (here or anywhere else) but I am surprised that people are still thinking that this website would worship a lesbian-lead and female-centric show when it would be entirely out of character for tumblr as a whole to do so. I mean maybe this is all about the show being australian. Maybe people don't like Australia. I also get that crime shows aren't THAT popular either but I guarantee you, if Dulcie and Eddie were dudes this show would be trending so hard.

Deadloch is a fantastic show. It looks amazing, has fantastic humor, the drama is great, the plot is great, there is a good message behind everything and the show also sprinkles in some of tumblrs top ten greatest political correct catch phrases. The main two characters are played by lesbians, another actress from the main cast is bisexual. One of the main characters is a lesbian and there are several other lesbian characters in the show. The other main character is a woman of color (who SHOULD be same sex attracted but sadly seemingly is not which makes me cry). Almost all important characters are women. Amazingly written by the way. There are plenty of women of color, indigenous women especially, playing important roles. All female characters are complex and nuanced people and their suffering isn't used for shock value or to push forward the plot. The two main female characters are both over 40 years old! What the show doesn't have is the same two decent looking men standing in close proximity to each other. And there really isn't any arguing against my little rant here because the only thing I accept as proving me wrong is a lot of people watching Deadloch or overall more women centric and lesbian centric stuff :) Thank you :)

[atlas-nsfw]

I think these topics are worth serious academic studies. In traditional publishing, we can point out straight-white prominence as a symptom of the beliefs of the publishers (perhaps they think queer people and POC arent large enough markets or not wealthy enough markets, etc.) but in non-traditional publishing we still see a similar emphasis on white and straight dynamics (though there is admittedly more diversity than in traditional publishing). So this lends itself to the belief that white and straight authors are more common. This could be a language barrier, as English speaking spaces online tend to be white by majority (It could be worth comparing white vs POC demographics in the real world to the digital world to the indie monster publishing to free/fandom monster romance), but it is hard to say. On a similar note, it may be interesting to dissect what different audiences want from their romances.

The monster romance community on tumblr is highly varied. There are those who enjoy dub/non-con, those who want their monsters to be physically monstrous but moral paragons, those who like x reader content, those who want monster x monster. Just because someone voices an opinion doesn’t mean they are a significant portion of a population though. This especially applies when money is a factor (traditional publishing vs indie vs free/fandom).

A recent example is Baldur’s Gate 3 releasing that the most romanced character is Shadowheart (the most generically attractive white girl), followed by Karlach (who is just generically attractive but big), then Lae’zel (not generically attractive but woman). Which was a huge shock to fandom spaces where Astarion (white boy vampire who is a certified tumblr sexyman) is most popular. This is because the fandom space is not a 1:1 ration with the consumer base. The fandom space is made up of mostly women (admittedly white women) as fandom spaces often are, while the consumer base has a significantly larger population of straight men, who have traditionally made up a majority video game consumer bases as developers cater around them.

As just mentioned, the consumer base and creator are not independent. Any academic study would have to consider both if they wanted to be thorough.

Another interesting angle is that people can be trained to find certain things attractive, especially if they are allowed a degree of removal from the object of attraction (people who read non-con do not want to be actually violated in real life usually, consent being vital in bdsm spaces, tolerating toxicity in fictional relationships but not real ones, etc.). Beauty standards are perpetuated this way but so are concepts about what is hot vs not. Plenty of people internalize “harmful” tropes as hot because they have a history of being exposed to them in that context and haven’t received enough incentive to overcome challenge their attraction to the trope(in theory though this too warrants study).

In summary, I don’t have a lot of answers but I would be genuinely curious about quantitive and qualitative studies on the topics mentioned here! There is clearly a lot we can learn by asking these questions and I am glad OP brought it up!

I would be very interested in counterpoints or other angles that other people come up with on this topic! The more voices engaging with a topic, the more scope it has!

Some light reading:

^this one talks about formal segregation as a historic factor which I didn’t get to on my post but I definitely a factor to consider!

^ short article on some proposed reasons people gravitate towards monster romance

so I got some interest on this post where I tossed out that I wanted to talk more about monster romance and race and gender. it's been really nice to see a few folks are also wanting to hear/talk about it! I'm not prepared to say anything at length [eta: this turned out to be kind of a lie] with any certainty or research to back me up, but I thought I could post a rough outline of sorts of what I'd want to research and explore further, just as a starting point for myself but also a jumping off point if anyone else has any thoughts or resources.

I guess I'll start with gender first. I'm new to the romance genre generally, but I don't think it's a surprise that the genre has always been dominated by discourse around who reads romance and the kind of gender dynamics presented in a lot of conventional romance books (which are generally heterosexual/heteronormative in a lot of problematic ways). I'm thinking of the harlequin romances my mom and grandma used to read, but also of the discussions around colleen hoover's work and then the dark romance sub-genre too.

this means that there's the obvi discussion to be had about content vs. context. who is writing the romance, what informs their writing, what messaging comes through via choices made by the author, as well as by the context the author is writing in. I'm sure if you've been reading romance--even fanfic--for a while, you're well versed in some of these conversations, even if just in a casual way.

after considering romance on a macro level, I think you'd then have to look at some of those more micro sub-genres. where are gender norms accentuated and exaggerated, and to what end? why is dark romance a thing, why do (usually) straight white women want to fantasize about being in that kind of relationship? what's the purpose being met? (this is all asked non-judgmentally, btw, as I also enjoy dark romance.)

and maybe there are folks who would dislike my comparing of monster romance to dark romance, but I do think the two are related, especially based on a lot of posts I've seen since joining this corner of tumblr. I think there's a lot of interest in exploring ideas around control and dominance that dark romance and monster romance provide contained space for. if you watched my YouTube video, I touch on this a little bit more at the end as well.

I'm sure I'm missing a lot re: gender (like all the stories being told about lgbtq+ MCs), but this is just some initial thoughts at the fore of my brain.

as for race...........well. lol.

there's the very surface level question around what percentage of monster romance FMCs are white. I genuinely don't have this answer, and I know there are a lot of nonwhite FMCs too! but I'd be really curious to know the actual numbers here. why? well, bc diversity matters. but also because of the decades long narratives around white women as victims of men of color, and how that narrative has been used to weaponize whiteness and demonize blackness specifically, and non-whiteness more generally.

I am def not saying that all monster MMCs = depictions of non-whiteness, I'm just thinking about the connections between equating non-white people/bodies with monstrosity. I'm thinking of the historical framing of non-white people and communities as sub-human, as savages, as beastly. inhumane. monsters have kinda always been a metaphor for the other, including the non-white other, and I think it'd be naive of us to assume that vestiges of that brand of racism (which is still alive and well) never inform the ways creators engage with monster romance and monsterfucking, consciously AND unconsciously.

I'm also thinking about orientalism. I'm thinking of the exotification and classification of the east. the way westerners invaded the eastern world and began treating the people there like specimens. I'm thinking about how othering and abjecting and exotifying a culture or community or person can create a power-informed version of sexualizing that culture or community or person. like, othering/abjecting/exotifying can lead to creating a perverted sort of desiring. I have a special interest here because I'm arab, so this stuff feels particularly personal, but yeah. it makes my wheels turn.

there's also a dehumanizing element of turning an othered body into a piece of sexual meat. I'm thinking about the way monsters in these books are always excessive, the way their penises are always massive. we can't pretend that doesn't seem a little familiar to the degrading ways white people have also discussed black bodies, too. like. I'm not saying wanting our monsters to have big dicks is racist, I'm just saying there are some aspects of the genre that I think deserve to be ~unpacked~ and considered in a wider context that takes this kind of stuff into account. not as a confirmed given, but as an avenue worth approaching with curiosity, if only to point out the ways in which it's NOT a product of racism/anti-blackness.

obvi this post is not backed up at present with a single source because I'm just thinking out loud based on stuff I've read previously over the years that I definitely would need to revisit, so I totally get if you read this and think I'm being ridiculous. but if you saw my first post and were kinda wondering what I had in mind when making it, this is it.

[absolutebl]

Tropes that are seme/uke loyal

So because of this ask from a while back I got intersted in exploring visual tropes that when executed in a BL tend to always favor either the seme or the uke. 

Filming seme/uke

So BL visual markers of seme/uke are pretty country dependent. And sometimes setting or narrative dependent. For example when Korea features older characters they often don't bother with seme/uke and seem to have a they-just-gay approach (To My Star, Wish You) but when Korea goes to high school (Mr Heart, Light On Me) they lean into seme/uke usually with cuteness and height differences.

That said there are traits of seme/uke that come directly from yaoi and any country that produced BL may play with them:  

The uke = cute/small/slight/sweet, the seme = handsome/tall/bulkier/more reserved. Here’s me talking about a few of these and their repercussions: 

Extreme height difference

Blushing maiden/virginal innocent trope (issues with sex negativity and seme/uke)

In BL there’s other stuff that’s done to do with profession, setting, and appearance to emphasis seme/uke: 

the props that character is given to hold or depicted with (little yellow backpack anyone? pink milk?) can signal seme or uke 

the location of a character’s safe space (kitchen, library, reading/studying in bedroom for uke, physical outdoor or sporting activity for seme) 

aggression or lack thereof (body positioning & posture)

skin color (ukes = more pale) as well as hair & makeup and sometimes wardrobe, for example uke characters are often shown with more pigmented & glossier lips

All of this is to visually trigger “masculinity” for the seme and “femininity” for the uke. (I talk about how all this stems from heterosexual dysmorphia in this post, so I’m not going to queer critique this here, I’m just intersted in tropes this time around.) 

One of the best markers we have for who is acting the part of seme or uke in a BL is bifurcated visual tropes. So while plenty of BL tropes are shared equally (like meeting on a bridge or feeding each other which the seme can do to the uke, or uke to seme) there are some tropes that strongly favor a seme/uke dynamic. 

For example USUALLY:

crash into me (the uke is the clumsy one and the seme catches him)

wound tending (seme is the injured one unless the uke is VERY tsundere or very clumsy) but for illness tending (the uke is the sick one)

the seme has his head in the uke’s lap but the uke puts his head on the seme’s shoulder 

seme forehead kisses uke but uke cheek kisses seme

uke is the messy eater 

seme drinks from the water bottle (and takes his shirt off) 

seme hair tousles uke and also dries his boy’s hair (seme’s are bag fans of hair touching and forehead kissing - they like the head area, so to speak) 

seme does the looming (especially against walls) and head cradling while hugging 

seme threatens to sexually “punish” the uke 

Semes are mostly going to enact paternalistic gestures of affection onto ukes. Until We Meet Again is pretty classic in all executions of seme/uke tropes for the main couple DeamPharm.  

When a couple is very relationship soft with each other, these tropes get switched around or modified, as if the tropes themselves have become verse, see: Oxygen, The En of Love: Tossera, Ingredients, Be Loved In House. It might be argued that the couple is more likely to also be verse under those circumstances (see FighterTutor in Why R U?) but I hesitate to draw the correlation because personally does not equal sexual position/preference.

Oxygen is particularly soft because while Solo is clearly the seme and the aggressor in the relationship, he is younger than Gui and so gentle and shy that they trade tropes all the time. Mutual care is a big one for these two, so is asking for permission. Both the visual elements and the story narrative emphasize Solo’s near constant non-verbal need for consent and it’s done though trope manipulation - it’s really clever and beautiful. Tossera does this too. And Be Loved In House. The more equal the couple in aggression, the more likely these tropes are to be shared between the two, or swapped from the norm. 

BL couples where there is no Seme/uke

An example where these tropes are being used to entirely subvert seme/uke and relay to the audience that there actually is NONE AT ALL, is Bad Buddy particularly in episode 7. 

(source)

[zibiscusloon]

Thanks for the tag! ^^

Favorite Color:

Odd as it may be, I have a love for dusty colors, if that makes sense, like any color that has tinges of yellows, oranges, and browns added in? Love that shit I don’t know why I like the sorta vintage look.

Currently Reading:

Nothing as of now. Unless fanfiction counts. Imma say fanfiction counts- in which case my most recent read has been Hurt/Comfort Hunter fics with the Owl Fam cause I’m a sucker for Noceda siblings-

Last Song:

“Clip Clop into the Light” from Puppet History. Look it gets me in a great mood and it oddly fits my OCs despite being a song about God singing with a horse shortly before sending him to hell-

Currently Watching (series):

As of now nothing new, I’m more so deciding which shows I wanna give a try out next! I’m torn between starting Amphibia or The Ghost & Molly McGee. Mainly rewatching Owl House cause I’m in denial about it being over-

Currently Watching (movie):

Mostly rewatching the original & prequel Star Wars trilogies. I need my goofy space family ok I’m not normal about the Skywalkers- the next movie I wanna start is Nimona cause it just looks beautiful and I’m really excited to watch it-

Current Obsession:

The Owl House & Security Breach Ruin. I don’t think any show has had me in such a tight grip like toh tbh- it’s my ultimate comfort show cause I love it’s depiction of magic and the wildness to it, the amazing queer rep (which Luz has helped me so much to be comfortable in my own skin as a bi kid), and of course I’m obsessed with every single character-

The Ruin DLC has reawaken the feral fnaf fan in me who is stirred every time there’s new fnaf news- Cassie is my new favorite protagonist, Gregory & I are currently beefing, I have a renewed love for Roxy, and I get to see my dearly beloved Daycare Attendant (yes I’m a simp, no I’m not ashamed), I’ve been obsessed with trying to work out the new plot points introduced, trying to find if there are any secret endings, and working out how I’m gonna fit it all into my personal FNaF AU-

Currently Working On:

I’m doing writing for my FNaF AU due to the new information from Ruin, as well as updating character designs from my AU that are outdated and need revamping (I plan to post proper refs for Vanny, Vanessa, Gregory, the missing children, William, and Mrs. Afton), just trying to figure out everyone’s place with everything we’ve learned.

I’ve also been working on more Owl House art! Plenty of it is my OC x Canon ship cause Hunter & Sam are my comfort ship- as well as just general goofy domestic drawings with the Owl Fam. Also want to post more art of my Fankids as I think about them a lot and wanna make silly family content with the Hexsquad + chaotic Granny Eda.

(Feel free to participate if you’d like! ^^ no pressure!)

9 People to Know Better (except I'm not tagging 9 people)

I don't normally do tag games, but I got tagged in this twice (by @jealous-kippen and @remmixx, my beloveds <3) so here I am! (also as I'm writing this out I am realizing that while both posts were titled the same way, it looks like they had different question prompts??? So I'm just gonna combine the two)

Favorite Color: Purple! Any shade will have my heart but I am partial to more red-toned purples. (PV, if that means anything to anyone who sees this other than me, you know who you are)

Currently Reading: Three things! In terms of actual books, I've been slowly making my way through the Riordanverse since my university did The Lightning Thief in my second year (first school in my state to do it once the rights were released!) since I somehow never got into Percy Jackson as a kid, and I'm currently on Son of Neptune. I'm also one like my third or fourth re-read of Eurydice by Sara Ruhl, since that's the play I'm designing the costumes for for my senior project. And in terms of fanfic, I woke up to a notification about this yesterday and Actually Screeched.

Last Song: Dial Drunk by Noah Kahan (ft. Post Malone), which was a bit of an accident. I use siri to request music while I'm driving and I asked for Dial Drunk and was singing along until I got jumpscared by the slight difference before Post Malone's verse. Although if you look at my spotify, the ROTPL album has been on repeat for weeks.

Currently Watching (Series): I've been hyperfixated on ROTPL and have watched it over a dozen times at this point, which is probably not healthy, so I put on NCIS last night for background noise while I ate dinner and accidentally watched like six episodes.

Currently Watching (Movie): Saw the Barbie movie the night before the actual opening with my coworkers (We don't cross picket lines people! I was not asked nor invited by any company, and I paid full price for my ticket. There's a one-screen theatre in the town where I'm doing summer stock, this relic from the 50's, and they were able to get access to the film a day early and did a special first come first serve premiere.) and we all sobbed the entire way through.

Current Obsession: Rise of the Pink Ladies. Full stop. I'd seen clips of it when it first aired in April but I was iffy on it in spite of how good it looked. Like most, I'm a little tired of reboots and remakes, and while I did clock Cynthia as being queer within two seconds, (I believe my exact words were "That's either a very butch lesbian or the eggiest egg to ever egg.") I was Convinced it was a queerbait situation. Plus I was nearing finals and didn't have time to get into a new show. But then Crushing Me was trending on tiktok and I realized this was not queerbait, so I put it on to have something playing while I packed for summer stock and it's been the only thing I can think about since mid May. It got me writing fanfic again for the first time in years, if that tells you anything. Speaking of,

Currently Working On: A follow-up to my previous fic, Steady, Steady! I wanted to have it up this week, but it is a behemoth. I'm a little over halfway through my plot outline and I'm at 10,441 words. Fun fact, this will be my longest single-chapter fic so far. Not just in the fandom, not just on AO3, but ever (so far!)

No-Pressure Tagging: @merely-a-player, @penguin-writes-books, @el-fandom-birb, @marley-barnes112, @isweartheyregayyourhonor, and @look-at-those-niceass-rocks (since I've already dragged you back to tumblr kicking and screaming)

[gunterfan1992]

Episode Review: ‘Obsidian’ (Distant Lands, Ep. 2)

Airdate: November 19, 2020

Story by: Jack Pendarvis, and Kate Tsang, Adam Muto, & Hanna K. Nyström

Storyboarded by: Hanna K Nyström, Anna Syvertsson, Iggy Craig, Mickey Quinn, Maya Petersen, James Campbell, & Ashlyn Anstee

Directed by: Miki Brewster (supervising), Sandra Lee (art)

Of all the many colorful characters in Adventure Time perhaps none has a more elaborate backstory than Marceline the Vampire Queen. In many ways, Marceline really was the writers’ gold goose, engendering complex story after complex story. By the time the series ended, the vampire’s life had in more ways than one been woven into the very fabric of the show’s mythology.

But because I am a Marceline fanboy—whose zeal for her majesty is rivaled perhaps only by Glassboy himself—I always felt like the show could have done even more with her backstory; I mean, when the series finale aired, there were still plenty of questions that had yet to be answered (What happened to her mom? What is Simon going to do now that he’s “cured”? How did Marcy and Bubblegum meet? Were they romantically involved before the events of the main series? How did it all go south?). Nevertheless, when "Island Song” played for the last time at the end of “Come Along with Me,” I forced myself to push aside this minor, fannish grievance and applaud the show for writing such an excellent character. I didn’t need for every last detail of her life to be explicitly shown on screen. I was happy.

But then, about a year ago, news dropped that one of the Distant Lands specials would really delve into the history of Marceline and Bubblegum’s relationship. In an instant, I tossed my stoic “I-am-satisified-with-what-I-received” mentality right out the window. We were going to get another Marceline episode, and it was going to dive back into her elaborate backstory!?! I could barely contain my excitement as I waited for the episode to drop.

Well, was my excitement worth it? Or was “Obsidian” a big ol’ let down—a tragic victim to grandiose expectations that were never meant to be fulfilled?

I’m quite happy to say that not only was “Obsidian” a remarkable special in its own right, but it is arguably one of the strongest episodes of Adventure Time, period.

The plot of this episode is fairly standard, as far as Adventure Time episodes go: Glassboy (a new character voiced by Michaela Dietz, the voice of Amethyst from Steven Universe) accidentally sets a giant fire monster named Molto Larvo loose on the Glass Kingdom, and Marceline and Bubblegum—who we learn have been living their best cottagecore life together in Marcy’s cavehouse—are forced to save the day. But the series’ writers take this otherwise quotidian adventure idea—a story which, at least on paper, could have easily fit in during any of the show’s many seasons—and employ it as something of a Trojan Horse, using it as a pretense to delve into both Marcy’s traumatic childhood and her and Bubblegum’s romantic history. And, boy, is it a ride!

With regard to the former story thread, the audience learns that sometime after the Mushroom Bomb detonated, Marceline and her mother, Elise (voiced this time not by Rebecca Sugar, but by actress Erica Luttrell, who played Sapphire in Steven Universe), roamed the wastelands in search of shelter; after Marceline’s mother came down with some sort of sickness, she sent Marceline to be on her own. Elise was hoping that this would spare Marcy the trauma of seeing her mother die before her very eyes, but due to some communication issues, Marceline never learned what became of her mother. As such, Marceline began blaming herself for “leaving” her mom to die in the wreckage of the world. This plot thread is perhaps one of the bleakest that Adventure Time has ever explored, and the show does it masterfully, balancing the darkness (e.g., Marceline’s mother coughing up blood) with bright spots of comedy (e.g., the "wazzup” dog) that never feel distasteful.

Likewise, when it comes to the story thread about Marcy and Bubblegum’s romantic history, the special does not hold back. We get to see “Bubbline” at its best and its worst. I have a feeling that the word “fan service” is going to be used by a lot of folks when talking about this episode. As the AV Club writer William Hughes notes, this word is usually hurled around like a pejorative, but it aptly describes the appeal of “Obsidian”. After all, this episode really is “fan service at its finest”—not only does it give the ravenous shippers the story tidbits that they have so long to see (e.g., the moment Marcy gave Bubblegum her rock shirt, Bubbline’s epic break-up), but—and this is very important—it does so in a way that is fundamentally meaningful. “Obsidian” does not feel self-indulgent, unnecessary, or pandering. On the contrary, it is overflowing with deep emotion that allows us to better understand how Bubblegum and Marceline really feel about one another. Sure, over the centuries that the two gals have bummed around Ooo, they have bickered and fought, but deep down, their love is passionate. In many ways, it is like the titular obsidian, which means that nothing short of an enchanted diamond pickax is strong enough to break Bubbline apart for good.

(It’s also quite nice that after seasons and seasons of tip-toeing around the question of Marceline and Bubblegum’s sexuality, “Obsidian” can explicitly focus on their life together, showing the two characters cuddling, kissing, and dancing. In terms of LGBTQ+ representation, it’s a huge leap forward, and I’m so happy that Adventure Time has had a part to play in normalizing queer relationships!)

Marceline episodes almost always featured a catchy diddy, but "Obsidian” really cranks things up to 11 by featuring a whole bevy of catchy songs, several of which are perhaps among the show’s strongest. The first right banger, “It’s Funny,” is the song that plays over the special’s credits. With a grunge-meets-riot grrrl feels, this track really sets the tone for the episode, signaling to the audience that we’re in for, as Lumpy Space Princess once put it, some “drama bombs.” The next standout is “Woke Up,” a brutally honest diss track that Marceline used both to contain Molto Larvo and break up with Princess Bubblegum centuries prior to the start of this episode. This song was written by pop rocker Zuzu, and it—as the kids say—slaps. Layers of fuzzed-out guitar and digitally processed vocals are used expertly to sell Marceline’s emotions and convey how, on the surface, she’s delighted to no longer be under Bubblegum’s romantic spell... even if her heart may not be so sure.

But arguably, the musical jewel of the entire special is “Monster,” a somber ballad that Marceline sings to Bubblegum when they find themselves trapped in the collapsing furnace and are facing what they believe is certain death. Written by indie pop artist Half Shy, this song is, in many ways, something of the inverse of “Woke Up”: soft, happy, and filled to the brim with a sort of love that few are lucky to receive and even fewer can honestly express. Not only does “Monster” finally cement Marceline’s real, visceral love for Bubblegum in song form (remember: almost every prior Bubbline song was either indirect or delivered by an angsty, heartbroken Marceline), but it also “tames” Molto Larvo, allowing him to metamorphose into a strange but harmless cat-butterfly critter. Just like “Come Along with Me,” “Obsidian” proves that the power of love and music will save us in the end—if not physically, then at least emotionally.

Regarding the production-side of things, there’s a lot of praise to doll out. First off, the look and style of “Obsidian” is gorgeous. While “BMO” opted to experiment somewhat with the classic Adventure Time art style, trading cel shading for an almost watercolor feel, “Obsidian” echoes the aesthetic of the original series. That said, there’s an undeniable animation bump—likely courtesy of that sweet, sweet HBO money—that lets Ooo and its denizens shine in all their glory. You can tell that Adam Muto, art director Sandra Lee, supervising director Miki Brewster, and all the members of the production staff really went above and beyond the call of duty. The episode's soundtrack, composed by Amanda Jones, as deserves a shout-out. Jones did an excellent job mixing the chiptune style of the original series with a bass-heavy rock sound that highlights Marceline’s starring role. Bravo!

As another production aside, I should point out that CN/HBO’s decision to make these specials each 44 minutes was the right call. The 11 minute format of the original series often left something to be desired when it came to plot development, as many an important episode was forced to end somewhat prematurely due to time constraints; conversely, the 8-episode miniseries format that the show experimented with during its latter days sometimes felt like too much time (Stakes, Islands, and Elements all had whole episodes that felt like nothing more than the show treading water). The length of “Obsidian”, however, was just right, giving us plenty of time to take in what was happening without ever feeling like it was dragging.

A final aspect of this episode that is worth mention is its many call-backs to previous episodes and characters. “BMO” was mostly a self-contained story that, due to its nature as a prequel in space, really couldn’t reference the Land of Ooo without feeling forced. “Obsidian,” however, throws in everything and the kitchen sink (Adventure Time superfan and all-around cool person Jagm has collected most of them here for those of you who want to see everything laid out nicely). Stand-outs for me include Choose Goose (someone who we really haven’t seen since season five) smuggling sketchy products into the Candy Kingdom, post-Ice King Simon trying his hand at open mic nights, Bronwyn as an adventurous hero, and Finn the (Adult!) Human complete with beard and scars! Of note, Jake does not appear in this episode, except as a tattoo on Finn’s chest. Many in the fandom are now speculating that the events of “Obsidian” take place after our beloved shapeshifting dog’s death. Oh say it ain’t so! Perhaps we’ll learn more in “Together Again.”

Mushroom War Evidence: Unlike “BMO,” which directly referenced the Mushroom War and its fallout (both literally and figuratively), this episode returned to the show’s roots by featuring gobs of explicit hints in throw-away lines or elaborate background pieces. Honestly, there is far too many to list here in a pithy paragraph, but some major references include: the reveal that the Glass Kingdom, like the Fire Kingdom, was created by ‘magic’ blaze from the heavens (almost certainly a nuke); the fact that Marceline and her mother wandered for a time in the debris-filled wastelands following the apocalypse; and the reveal that Marceline spent at least part of her childhood holed up in a bomb shelter surrounded by the bones of myriad dead humans. Honestly, while references to the Mushroom War have always been sad footnotes to an otherwise cheery show; in this episode, however, the references are very graphic, illustrating the sorrow and horror of mutagenic war.

Final Grade: As I said earlier, I’m a Marcy fanboy, so I’m horrible biased, but I don’t care. This episode rocked. Q.E.D.

[ellaenchanting]

Hypnovember 2019 Master List

Jesus. Jesus Christ, that’s a lot of writing. I don’t really consider myself a writer generally and this is definitely the first time I’ve written this much this quickly. I’m going to look at my word count soon, but- I think I may have written a novel’s length of words? Wow.Thanks to everyone who encouraged me during this or provided support/ideas: thinking of @daja-the-hypnokitten , @liminal-wanderings , @mr-ackerman , @spiralturquoise , @wellgnawed , @sex-obsessed-lesbian , and @hypno-sandwich especially here but there were lots of y’all who reblogged or made kind comments. I appreciate every one of them. :)

Here’s a catch up of everything I’ve written so far this month. In honor of @jukeboxemcsa, I’ve also included a HypnoBS rating where 1 is absolute bullshit and 5 is normal Tuesday night.

Icons- 📰- story. 🔊- audio 💻- technology 😍- romantic 🌈- queer 😴- regular ole’ hypnosis 🛀- brainwashing and/or hypnotist in a tub 👻- spooky 🐈- at least one happy pussy ❓- bad or reeeally questionable consent ✝️- author's weird religious feels that somehow kept coming up

Day 1: Base Character-F/f 📰😍🌈🛀🐈 

Choice quote: ”Or maybe it was the ship of Theseus- Janine seeing how many little pieces of her she could replace until she fundamentally just wasn’t the same person anymore.”

HypnoBS- I haven’t done this kind of play and have no first hand experience. Let’s say 3.

Newly added 11/18: @undersleeper requested some extra information on how the brainwashing was actually done in this story so I added this non-canon sequel. (I think the sequel boosts the BS score to a 4.)

Day 2: Colors- F/nb 📰😴 🌈

Choice quote: “Bri used to consider themselves a bad hypnotic subject.”

HypnoBS- 4. I haven’t done this induction specifically but love doing these kinds of overloads

Day 3: Dizzy- no gender specified🔊😴

Choice quote: “When you take deep breaths, you feel like you’re getting more oxygen, but actually the opposite is true.”

HypnoBS-5. Should get you in trance, we’re not ranking the accuracy of all the science herein.

Day 4: Sing- m/f kinda I guess? 📰👻❓

Choice quote:  “Tonight wasn’t the night to give in, he told himself. Not yet.”

HypnoBS- 1. Thank God.

Day 5: Poison- M/f 📰😍🛀🐈

Choice quote: “Lila could admit it. She was kind of a brat.But Sean? He was worse. He was a fucking troll.“

HypnoBS- 4? Haven’t done it, could probably make something in this realm work with the right person.

Day 6: Summon- F/f 📰😍😴🌈🐈

Choice quote: “Number one, there is no butch street cred. And number two- if there was such a thing, you and I both know that being seduced by a beautiful woman would only increase it.”

HypnoBS- 3 or 4. It’s quick and there would need to be a lot more talking generally. But sure.

Day 7: Underwear- F/f 📰😴🌈

Choice quote: “Under….where”, Destiny tested the word out loud. It sounded like a portmanteau of some sort. She understood the word “under” and the word “where” (or “wear”? “where are” maybe? maybe it was German?) but those two words together didn’t form much of a picture.”

HypnoBS- 5. Although have only done this as a hypnotist so I can’t speak to subject POV. This kind of thing is adorable to watch, though.

Day 8: Neighbor- F/f📰😍🌈 ❓

Choice quote: “When Jiyeon tapped her pencil, Alyssa tapped her pencil lightly to match.”

HypnoBS- 1. Maybe 1.5 since there are no monsters or demons.

Day 9: Idiotic- no gender specified📰😴

Choice quote: “Because Id-iotic. It’s literally what you want deep down”

HypnoBS-4. Not my thing but with the right people- sure.

Day 10: Smell- F/m 📰😴😍🛀🐈

Choice quote: “Belinda had also woken up from sexy dreams at night to the feeling of Ray’s head buried in her cunt.”

HypnoBS- 3 on the details. Some parts are more plausible than others. We’re outside my realm of experience here so others could probably rank more accurately.

Day 11: Broadcast- Hypnovirus/f 📰💻🛀✝️

Choice quote: “It felt important to present herself to the screen in a way that demonstrated her vulnerability and openness to instruction.”

HypnoBS- 4. Probably not likely, but I could see this kind of symbolic bleed with the right person pretty easily.

Day 12: Stage- M/m 📰😍🌈😴

Choice quote: “Brandon had not mentioned the hypnosis thing to Scott- it felt weird and personal and he had already half-convinced himself that he was being creepy in response to Scott’s platonic friendliness. He didn’t want to scare him off. He had never expected to see him here.”

HypnoBS- 5. At least as far as the hypnosis goes

Day 13: Bath- no gender specified 🔊🛀😴

Choice quote: *insert rambling about Pat Collins here*

HypnoBS- 5. But also a high general BS score. I was tired and needed to finish a thing. I am surprised but grateful people liked this one. :P

Day 14: Machine- M/f 📰😴💻😍✝️

Choice quote: “For as long as she could remember, Deidre had longed for self-annhilation.”

HypnoBS- 1. That’s not how brains work.

Day 15: Ooze- there’s a m and a f 📰😴🛀❓

Choice quote: “For example, your badge- did you know that putting all the stickers on the top of your badge like that usually means that you’re a hypnotist?”

Amy’s eyes widened a bit. “It does?”

HypnoBS- 2. Sadly.

Day 16: Wedding- something/f 📰👻❓

Choice quote: “She knew then that she was alone. No one could help her. No one could even see her.”

HypnoBS- 1.

Day 17: Gentle- a different something/f  📰 kinda 🐈❓✝️

Choice quote: “As long as she didn’t focus on it, it would write the story for her.”

HypnoBS- 1. I think. :P

Day 18: Infection- not stated/m 📰 🛀❓

Choice quote: “If he could just get the song out of his head, maybe he’d have a chance.”

HypnoBS- 2. 

Day 19: Hideout- F/f 📰  🐈 😍😴🛀🌈

Choice quote: “’Come to me, pet. Come to me.’ 

Mesmera.

 She could always sense when Galaxy Girl was weak. She consistently picked the perfect time to strike.

And now, she had found her apartment.”

HypnoBS-4.5

Day 20: Watch- no gender specified 🔊 😴

Choice quote: “Feel your thoughts just tick tick tick tick ticking gone”

HypnoBS-5

Day 21: Fighting- F/m 📰 😴

Choice quote: “His mistress loved resistance play. She delighted in watching him struggle and strain against an irresistible impulse.”

HypnoBS-5 Mmmm :)

Day 22: Mistaken- F/an entire hypnocon  📰  😴

Choice quote: “Ginger- submissive, wide-eyed, bottomy Ginger- was holding a crowd of 8 people in her hypnotic thrall. Some had their eyes closed already, while others were staring at her with the rapt look of early trance.“

HypnoBS- 4. But only because I haven't seen it yet. :P

Day 23: Heist- F/m  📰  🛀❓(😍 but it’s pretty messed up)

Choice quote: “The inside of the vault had gotten somewhat sparse-looking- David had been cleaning out the bank out at a much quicker pace recently- but there were still plenty of treasures here to bring to his mistress.”

HypnoBS- 3, maybe 2

Day 24: Business F/f 📰 😴😍🌈

Choice quote: “Summer was a well-mannered southern girl at heart. She knew that if something was none of her business, it was impolite and rude to know it. Best not to think about it too much. She didn’t want to be nosey.”

HypnoBS- 4

Day 25: Babble F/m📰 😴 🛀 (💻 kinda)

Choice quote: “You can feel your access to language lessening….and lessening. Feeling those parts of your brain losing blood, quieting, going to sleep. Imagine what that might look like on the fMRI- the color draining, darkening, going black. Your ability to use language can be almost completely gone.”

HypnoBS- 5 (Neuroscience BS- closer to 3)

Day 26: Enemy M/f 📰 😴😍🐈 

Choice quote: “When she was denied for long periods of time, everything became sexual.”

HypnoBS- 5. Unf.

Day 27: Confidence F/m 📰 😴❓

Choice quote: “Dr Eleanor had been recommended to Richard by his friend Jon who had seen her previously. “She won’t bullshit you,” he had said, “she just gets right to the roots of your issues and helps you solve them.” He must have known what he was talking about- a year after visiting Dr Eleanor, Jon had recently married a wonderful woman. He was also running marathons and succeeding professionally. There were worse people to listen to, Richard thought.”

HypnoBS- 3 (although this kind of gaslighting is real and can be effective)

Day 28: Abduction F/f M/f background m/m 📰 😴😍🌈

Choice quote: “’And so she….’ Lilliana stopped. She stared for a moment in surprise at the space between Cirie’s fingers. Cirie looked like she was holding a small, invisible ball. Liliana tried to recall her train of thought (something about work?) but found herself strangely blank.

She looked at Cirie in astonishment. 

‘You took it!’ she accused.”

HypnoBS- 5

Day 29: Doctor Doctor/Master (from Dr Who) 📰 😴🌈💻

Choice quote: “The doors in the Master’s mind all appeared to be open. The Doctor quickly scanned for malicious intent but-

Oh.

Oh my.

So that’s why.”

HypnoBS- I...uh...1?

Day 30: Kink The author/her self-indulgent whims 📰 🌈

Choice quote: “Ultimately, she really just  liked her friends- and she especially loved hearing all of their stories.”

HypnoBS- Cake. Imma eat a cake.

Thank you all for reading these! I know this is a long post, but I’d really appreciate reblogs of it. If you’ve liked my stories, please consider leaving me a tip on Ko-fi! Also I’d be happy to give extra information on any of the characters or a bit of what happens next if you want to send me an ask about any of these stories. I’m finding myself with a strange craving to write. Funny how that works. :P

[waveridden]

were you disappointed by the new star wars? then you should listen to the new season of friends at the table.

i know this sounds like a non sequitur, but hear me out on this one.

friends at the table is an actual play podcast focused on critical worldbuilding, smart characterization, and fun interaction between good friends. that’s what they say at the top of every episode and it’s completely true: all of those things are central to the f@tt experience.

f@tt is an actual play show (which, if you’re not familiar, means they play a tabletop game as their method of storytelling) that is deeply committed to its own canon. every political faction, every character, every bit of story is fleshed out and thoroughly explained by the lore. they care about thematic consistency and story consistency and consistent character arcs. everything in friends at the table makes sense, even things that are twists or surprises. they’re all rooted in the fiction of the show.

“okay, so it’s thematically consistent, which is nice,” you say. “but what even is the show about?”

f@tt is several seasons long, but they’re starting their sixth season. it’s called partizan. you don’t need to listen to any of the other seasons in order to understand this one. (do i recommend the other seasons? yes, i do, but the backlog of this show is huge. this is a really excellent jumping-on point.)

partizan is a moon in the middle of the divine principality, which is a massive sprawling space empire full of awful people. the principality conquers and assimilates and assaults all the planets they can find in order to expand. it’s also at civil war: two of the five stels (which are the political sects within the principality) have been at war for the past five years.

the season is heavily inspired by mech anime, but also by 70s sci-fi aesthetics. it’s a pretty low-tech future: not a lot of spacefaring travel, not a lot of super fancy holograms or anything, but a very simple approach to science fiction. it’s deeply political, in that way that star wars stories always try to be, and even though there won’t be space travel, the world of partizan alone is deeply, deeply fleshed out and interconnected.

“wow, i like space and politics,” you say. “but i was disappointed in star wars for representation-related reasons.”

hey, me too! that’s why i’m super excited for partizan. past seasons of f@tt have been very anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist/colonialist, and they’ve also made efforts to tell a diverse range of stories.

are you worried about characters of color? characters are frequently and explicitly described as being black, or middle eastern, or native american, or latinx, or asian, or, or, or. these characters run the gamut from heroes to villains, but all are portrayed with compassion and consistency, and racism is never a factor. also, austin, who runs the game, is a black man, so the metaphorical table isn’t all white people, and the visions of the world presented in the game aren’t... yknow, a white man’s idea of the future.

are you worried about queer rep? first of all, the table has plenty of queer people, so they’re already approaching things from a queer perspective. second of all, while it’s too early to speak to sexual orientations, there are almost no straight people in other seasons, and that’s not an exaggeration. third and most importantly, based on character intros alone, partizan features two characters that use they/them pronouns and a trans woman played by a trans woman. these people care about representation, and they put their money where their mouth is.

“wow, you’ve convinced me,” you say, hopefully. “i want to start listening!”

awesome! friends at the table is available on most major podcatchers, so it’s easy to find. at time of writing, 23 dec ‘19, there is only one episode of partizan out: episode 00, which is the worldbuilding/character introduction episode. the show releases on thursday evenings, so that means the first episode with actual plot and gameplay will be coming out soon! wow!

some other links that might be important: f@tt has a twitter that you can follow, as well as a website that you can check out. also, longtime fans of waveridden dot tumblr dot com know that i’m real gung ho about transcripts; f@tt has a pretty good transcript archive, which is maintained by fans who are paid out of pocket by the gm. i know, it’s unheard of.

last but not least: hey, maybe i didn’t convince you, but you wanted me to. maybe you have questions about actual play shows, or are concerned about something in this post. please dm me! i am happy to answer questions. f@tt is a good show, genuinely, and i am happy to do my part to spread the word about it.

[shadow-djinni]

Generalizations in Fandom

Or, some idiot on my dash made an underinformed comment about shipping trends and now I have to go prove them wrong.

I’m a day late with my griping, but much better-researched for it, which means this post (under the cut) is going to be even longer now.  Apologies in advance.  If you’d like to read my exceedingly long-winded griping, hit the readmore button.

A quick preface–and some background–to my complaining, which will be important going forward.  Though I’m by no means a fandom old, nor am I claiming that status, I’ve been in and around fandom for over eight years now, and have been an active content creator for seven and a half.  In that timeframe, I’ve been in and out of a wide range of fandoms, all with different fannish climates and behaviors, so I like to think I have a fair bit of experience in these spaces.

So, yesterday, a blog I had been following–which, up until this point, had expressed views on fandom I generally agreed with–made a post complaining about the proliferation of slash fic in fandom.  I’m not going to link the post or @ the blogger in question, mostly because I have no intentions of picking a fight with said blogger or with their fans, as I understand they have a relatively large following, but the post was something to the effect of “fandoms always lionize overwhelmingly white noncanon m/m ships at the expense of women and POC”.  Now, at a glance, that looks…correct, right?  At least considering the fandoms you usually see on Tumblr.  But that statement looks…really off to me, given my own lived experience, and the longer I looked the more off it looked, and the more complaints I had with it.

The first problem with this statement, and others like it: there is no such thing as a pan-fandom issue.  Statements like these posit that all fandoms, regardless of the source material, always have or develop the issue the poster sees and wishes to discuss.  It’s a good way to get attention, but it lacks the nuance to really support itself under scrutiny.  The truth of the matter is that the source material a fandom draws for has influence over the sort of fans who are drawn to it and the material they have to work with, which therefore effects the trends in tropes and shipping the fandom in question develops–and while broad similarities may be drawn across multiple fandoms with similar elements to them, no two fandoms develop alike, an effect which is compounded by differences in age, genre, and location of origin of the source material.  

For a personal example, I’ve been active in four fandoms I would consider strongly influential in terms of my taste in fiction and my writing ability and style.  Without getting overly specific, those fandoms are:

a video game franchise begun in the 80s, which has seen new installments released every 5-10 years

a magical girl manga (and later anime) produced in the early ‘00s, which has not seen new canon since

a popular and ongoing live action American movie series, which began release within the last decade

and, for good or ill, Voltron (an animated cartoon released in summer ‘16, which ran through December ‘18 with an utter shitstorm of a fandom)

If we believe statements such as the one above, one would expect that all four of those fandoms would have exactly the same inter-fandom issues, namely the sidelining of women and characters of color in favor of the white slash pairing of the day–but, having been in these fandoms, that’s true for exactly one of them.  I’d give you all three guesses, but let’s face it, the answer is obvious.  

It’s the live action American movie series.

In fact, the initial statement is fairly accurate when assessing that work, and other live action American movie series and television shows, and there’s a number of reasons why.  American live action media often gives disproportionate representation to white men, particularly when it comes to lead roles, while consigning women and POC to supporting roles.  As such, the (white, male) leads garner more development than the support roles, which makes the leads easier and more appealing for fic writers and shippers to work with.  Media with black leads, or other leads of color, also often have smaller fandoms overall, and as such don’t make the big, obvious waves large-scale fandoms like…say, Harry Potter or the MCU make on Tumblr.  

Canonical (female) love interests are also often sidelined by live action media fandoms, for a number of reasons–namely, in canon they are often granted less screentime, less depth, and less subjectivity than their male castmates, and are frequently treated as objects by the camera.  This makes it harder to empathize with them, especially given fandom is majority women who may be rendered too uncomfortable to work with the characters–there’s a good deal of baked-in misogyny that would need to be untangled from the character herself, and in most cases only the most committed of fans are actually going to sit down to do the work.

Now, mind you, these do not apply to all fandoms.  Voltron had some of the same problems with sidelining canonical love interests–but Voltron’s fandom flagships gag were between a half-human character of indeterminate ethnicity and two men of color, one of whom is canonically queer.  The magical girl manga fandom I mentioned above, ironically enough, has issues with sidelining a subtextually canonical f/f ship in favor of splitting the pair to put them in het ships.  And the video game fandom used to have issues with slash shippers in what was a majority het fandom, and still has lingering issues with slash depending on which corners of fandom you frequent.  

And yet, if I were to say “fandom has a problem with ignoring canonical queer subtext” or “fandom has a problem with inordinate aggression towards slash ships”, can you imagine the sort of ridicule I would face?  Most people discussing social issues in fannish contexts would look at me as though I’d sprouted a second head, when those issues are in fact present and in need of discussion–just not in the large, obvious fandoms in the Tumblrsphere, which seem to be the only fandoms these people consider deserving of discussion.

My second point can be summed up in a single sentence: it is not the responsibility of fandom to correct the issues present in the source canon.

No canon is perfect.  Creators are human, and flawed, and they will inevitably fuck up no matter how well they generally handle things.  And while those fuckups do impact the way the fandom creates (see my first point), fandom does not have a duty to fix those fuckups.  Fandom is not, and should not be, an activist space–it’s a creative space foremost, and it’s full of people with all sorts of baggage they pack in with them.  It’s unfair, and arguably cruel, to force people to engage with aspects of canon they find squicky, or even triggering, to ‘correct’ flaws in canon that your “activism” takes issue with.  (note: the link in the paragraph preceding this is mostly talking about shipping activism and while it makes some points about slash I disagree with, it makes plenty of good points about other sorts of fannish activism and the way fans who take their activism too far impact other fans and people unfamiliar with the source media)

And, additionally: unless you’re paying them, fan creators don’t owe you content.  Yes, even if they primarily create for that dreaded noncanon m/m ship and you’d rather they make content for your favored f/f ship.  Yes, even if your favored ship is actually canon, because there’s absolutely nothing wrong with shipping noncanon ships rather than canon ones–if I kept that mentality I wouldn’t create at all.  If you want content, you have to make it yourself, or commission it.

And, my final point: if you don’t enjoy things certain fandoms are doing, learn to use your blacklist and filters.

If, like the op of the post I’m complaining about, you’re tired of the proliferation of slash ships you have ideological disagreements with, blacklist them and the fandoms that produce them!  If there are particular common aus in a fandom you hate, figure out the tags and filter those!  Particular ‘hot takes’ you’re sick of seeing?  Seas of endless shitposts that make you roll your eyes?  One particular writer who does a ship you otherwise enjoy in a notably squicky way?  Blacklist, filter, and block.  

Because I guarantee you, no matter how many angry posts you make about people making content you personally dislike, you won’t make anyone stop producing it.

And you might even piss some of them off.

Now if you’ll all excuse me, I have a non-canon slash fic to work on.

[michael-radi-the-glamorous-life]

There Must Be More

“…than this Provincial life!”

Sorry, I just needed to have my Belle moment. That’s totally not what this post is about. I just adore that score.

Onward!

Over the past week I saw 3 shows - 2 Broadway and 1 Off-Broadway.

These shows were (in the order I saw them):

Scotland, PA

The Inheritance Part 1

Tootsie

Now, regardless of how I felt about each of these shows, or how much I did or did not enjoy them individually, they all had something in common per my experience in watching them.

At one point (at least) in every one of these shows I had the thought: “…But must we? This again? Isn’t there more out there? There must be more.”

Allow me to explain.

Enjoyment vs Analysis

Just a quick side note before I dive in.

I think it’s important here to know that I do not think that enjoyment and criticism are mutually exclusive. In fact, I personally believe they go hand in hand.

When someone asks why you didn’t enjoy something, most people are ready with their criticisms handy to defend their positions. But when someone asks me why I did enjoy something, I feel the same way. I like to know why I enjoyed it and be able to explain that to people.

And nothing is perfect. Nor is it a requirement to explain your likes and dislikes. But for me, enjoying something - or even loving something - does not mean that I find it to be perfect or above criticism.

I adore Back To The Future. One of my favorites growing up. But the movie’s got issues, both artistically and socially issues (ie soooo, we’re saying a white man invented rock’n’roll???).

Anywho. Onward!

Blindingly White

Okay. I know. I’m aware.

Most of the writing spaces and head artistic positions for Broadway and Off-Broadway shows are occupied by men. Generally white men. Generally cis, white men. Often even straight, cis, white men.

But in the world we are living in today, does that fact need to translate directly into the stories being told on the stage? At the very least, does it need to feature as prominently across the shows listed in the back of the Playbill as it currently does?

All three shows I just saw focused on cis, white men. And for two of them it was straight, cis, white men.

Now, is this necessarily a problem? No, not necessaaaaarily. But it says something. Actually, it says a lot of things.

Especially considering that the 2 shows featuring straight men were specifically about under-achieving straight, cis, white men who learned relatively shallow lessons and didn’t really end up changing - a genre that has filled our canons of literature, theatre, film, and TV for a very very long time.

Let’s be more specific.

Scotland, PA

A musical parody adapted from a movie parody of Macbeth.

Main character - Straight, cis, white man.

The guy is an under-achiever according to his wife, even though he’s happy with the life they have and it’s also clear he has aspirations for more, if the opportunity were to present itself.

The wife is played by a black woman and, similar to the Shakespeare play, she exists mostly to prop up the ambitions (or lack thereof) of her husband - even though she is the one who actually wants more and has the stomach to chase after it.

And then she’s scapegoated.

And goes insane. And regrets everything, but isn’t given the capacity to fulfill that character arc. So she must die instead. Of course.

“Classic women, am I right?!”

No. You are not.

So, as this man rises and takes more we are meant to root for him, even though we know he’s doing terrible things. But why? Why this story? Why this story again? Why this story again now without some sizable changes for more relevance? Is it really that interesting today?

It’s not a bad story - it wouldn’t endure otherwise - but there must be more.

The Inheritance Part 1

Full disclaimer: I loved it. I wept. I think it’s doing great work for this generation.

Main characters - All gay, cis, white men. And there are up to 6 main characters in this first part, depending on how you classify the term main character, and all of them fall into this category.

Now, this show is really about interpersonal struggles and relationships, and how that echoes across generations - particularly for the marginalized group that is gay men. It’s also a story about growth, change, hardship, and love. I really do think this play is doing beautiful work.

The remainder of the non-main character cast is mostly non-white, which is really awesome to see. However, so far in this play, the conversation amongst all of these people and characters is about the lives, stories, and struggles of the gay community as seen through white gay male eyes and experiences.

There are black and Latino characters on that stage, but we aren’t even touching their extra layers of struggle and experience. Meanwhile, the play is discussing the future of gay men and where they are potentially headed, as a group with its own vibrant culture. A culture that they even acknowledge to come from appropriations from the drag community, which appropriated from the ballroom community, which consists almost entirely of queer men of color.

This seems like a pretty sizable issue.

The play is focused on worries of continued and intensified marginalization, but it simultaneously has left out a gigantic piece of the conversation about marginalization by leaving out the additional layers of struggle for non-white gay men.

And this is not even to mention that - although other letter of the LGBTQ+ world are mentioned - the focus is entirely on gay men. What about the rest of the community? Isn’t it all the same history? The same inheritance?

Gay men can claim Stonewall all they want (and they do), but transwomen of color threw those bricks.

Gay men can claim the AIDS epidemic, but the affects of that disease were highly striated amongst sub-groups and especially men of color.

I loved this play. I cannot wait for Part 2. But I just kept thinking, “there’s more here.”

There must be more.

Tootsie

Okay, let’s do it. Let’s talk Tootsie.

I’m not going to go too in-depth here, mostly because there is a lot about this show that is well-crafted and plenty of people are enjoying it. And perhaps, for some people in these audiences, this show really does push the envelop in their minds. But we do have to say it…

This show probably should not exist. Not today, anyway.

Main character - Straight, cis, white man who pretends to be a straight, cis, white woman to book a job.

This man is apparently (objectively) talented too, which means he has many a leg-up in the world in comparison to the majority of people around him.

So, what’s keeping him from getting work?

He’s an angry and uncontrolled human who acts out and gets fired, which means he doesn’t retain contacts from his jobs since he burns bridges. And…

He’s getting older. (Like, 40? Is this one really a problem for men in the business? I remain unconvinced.)

Now, here are some merits about this story (stick with me):

A story of a straight, cis, white man who ruins his own chances at a steady and productive life because of his anger…this is relevant. This is extremely relevant. And if the show were about that particular person, their growth, and their personal journey to leave that toxicity behind, well, then we might have a good story here that is relevant to today.

His alter ego - for she does seem to be a character unto herself and completely disassociated from her male counterpart - Dorothy is actually quite a badass woman. She fights against sexism and ageism in a world rampant with it. And if this were a story about an actual woman fighting for these things in this world, this would be an excellent and relevant story.

But alas, this show is ultimately neither of these things.

Here’s what it actually contains:

The man learns lessons - but not enough.

He changes - but does he?

His alter ego is wonderful - but she doesn’t exist.

There’s a fight for and positive messages for women and feminism - but it’s led entirely by a man in a dress.

There’s a fight against ageism - but led by a man, and men don’t seem affected by this in the capacity that women are.

And not to mention the fact that there are some really cringy moments in this show that parade as feminism, ageism, and trans-positive moments, which really aren’t any of those things. Instead, they are part of a plot for this out-of-work man to get - and then retain - his job.

Is this show moving us backward? I don’t think it is. It could have become that, but it didn’t. And for that fact - adapting from a source material “of a different time” - I will tip my hat.

But is it moving us forward? Nope. Not at all. Not in the least.

So, I again ask: “Why this story? Why now? Is there really not more???”

There must be more.

There Is More

Okay, there is. So much more.

But it’s not being put out there into the commercial consciousness. And when it is, it’s not happening fast enough or as prevalently as it needs to.

And I don’t mean to rail against these particular shows - they had the bad luck of being the 3 newer shows that I happened to see within the same 4 days.

There are plenty of positives for them as well:

Scotland, PA had some awesome music.

The Inheritance Part 1 is beautiful and saying some very important things.

Tootsie made me laugh more than most musicals ever do.

But there is still more.

And we need to find it and put it out there. We need to continue moving forward and stop treading water. Let’s celebrate more people - other people.

There are countless good stories to tell, so let’s find them and tell them to the world with the prevalence that has been given to white men. We can, we should, and we will.

[attract-mode-collective]

"weLCUM to the motherfucking Queer matrixXx"

In part 1 of my recap of stuff tweeted during the later half of May, over at @AttractMode, I mentioned that one thing that kept me awfully busy… hence the backlog and two-part recap for Tumblr & Medium… was Death By Audio Arcade X Dreamhouse II.

The proper/full name of the soiree was Ova the Rainbow: DreamBoxXx, which is where most of these photos were taken, with a few from Death By Audio Arcade X Dreamhouse I; the photographer on the behalf of Gothamist was there for both opening & closing parties, to help add color to their story...

... BTW, the arcade will open one last time, this Friday (June 8th). Doors open at 7!

And as for the rest of last month... well... back to the subject of arcades for a sec; it’s a dream of many to have the full experience at home, though space is obviously the primary issue. Thankfully you (or your Lego minifigs to be exact) have options (via @ActionFigured)...

This Blast City shirt was designed on a CRT monitor, making it extra legit (no word if it was in TATE orientation tho; via theyetee.com)...

I basically know nothing about Avail, though appears to be a Target or H&M-like retail entity for Japan? Well recently they had a Gradius shirt for sale, but I missed my chance to save a copy of the PDF circular from which it made its seemingly sole appearance.

Hence why I had resort to blowing up this screencap (via miki800.com)...

There's actually a 2nd Gradius tee, and we thankfully have a far better look at it this time (via miki800.com)…

... I almost have to wonder if the 1st one was a mock-up or placeholder or something, cuz I seriously cannot find an image of it anywhere.

Few things get me as giddy as a nice 180 camera turn around with sprites (via segacity)...

And 3D turnarounds of polygonal characters are cool, provided that they’re watercolored (via typhlosionofficial)...

Same (via @BauceSauce)...

Sorry, but the sight of shelf after shelf, all bucking under the massive weight of countless carts & discs, is an eyesore IMHO. Instead, a modest pile of software with plenty of breathing room work best for me (via sixteen-bit)...

Such a beautifully personalized iPhone is essentially an iPhone for life (via miki800)...

A (video game) toy chest… a (video game) treasure chest… basically both? (via miki800)...

Remember hearing about Street Fighter 2 X Transformers? Well, they're finally here (via tfw2005.com)...

To be honest I have enough toys. Whereas I could always use more storage! Hence my interest in these SF2 USB sticks. But I can’t decide which World Warrior I want to see in such sad shape all the (via miki800.com)...

Time for another crossover, specifically Virtual On X bunny girls; a custom model kit of Angelan (via shop2000.com)...

A look at all the Tokyo Game Show poster girls since 2010 (via videogamesdensetsu)...

The first Famciase of 2018 to get my attention now has a fake ad to go with the fake game (via pepesalot)...

I'm 99.99% confident that this gaming set up/living quarters (via @miaumiauzmiau)...

... belongs to Polylina, aka Poririna, aka SEGA SATURN GAL (via this old post from a few years back)...

Note the similar pink curtains...

Who wears their Space Invaders shirt better? This guy (via shmups)…

Or this gal (via thesensualeye)...

The chairs for Space Invaders Frenzy has seen some serious shit (via oh-log-n)...

It’s a Space Invaders bathroom cuz why not (via it8bit)...

Nothing illustrates the harsh game making environment better than this one dev’s cardboard facade, underneath his desk, to emulate home (via videogamesdensetsu)...

Kitchen pantry cat’s prices are way better than bedroom closet cat’s (via @tatuya01)...

Memorial Day took place near the end of May, naturally, which meant another opportunity to repost my fave video starring the greatest soldier of the 20th century (via this other old post from years ago)...

Memorial Day weekend was also when I decided to post a bunch of YouTube vids; remember that one explaining why wiggling Sonic 3D Blast for the Genesis produces a level select? Did you also remember to subscribe to the channel? If so, you’d already know how Sonic R did transparencies on the Saturn...

Do you like Famiclones? Do you like Jackie Chan? Then you might like...

... I ended up going down a Jackie Chan rabbit hole, which resulted in a high-quality version of the infamous soundtrack to Hong Kong 97. Which in turn led to the discovery that the loop is actually a small portion of a full-length song entitled "I Love Beijing Tiananmen".

Sorry to ask everyone to click out, but I have a limit on how many videos I can embed in a single post and all.

Come to see what NES game Bithead1000 broke the bank on, stay to hear him bitch about Trapper Keepers...

Spoilers: it was Metal Storm, and can you believe that it managed to grace the cover of Nintendo Power? Not complaining of, more impressed than anything else (via shmups)...

Time for some bonus Bithead1000, which I’m not posting cuz of the aforementioned technical limitation, plus it has nothing to do with games anyway: hearing him talk about old school rap made my Memorial Day and hopefully it'll make yours, no matter what date it is.

Yet another video I must abstain from embedding is Johnny Cage performs 4'33". Hopefully all of you fans of Mortal Kombat/experimental compositions/shitty webtoons do not feel slighted (via roman55)...

Another look at the “New Aero City” stick, this time with the intended color scheme of yellow for both the balltop & buttons (last time they were red, as seen here; via hibachicandy)...

It’s the guy made Metal Gear and the guy who made Kong: Skull Island, playing Xevious & Ikaruga (via xtheo.ca)...

The beginning of the ultimate road trip (via lazywaifus)...

Like many others, I spent an entire morning pouring over that epic game collection before it was set to be auctioned off at the end of the month; my wish list included a SuperGrafx, TurboDuo, CD-i, Nuon, and Donkey Kong for the OG GB sealed… (via bodnarsauction.com)...

Alas, I couldn’t make the trip to Edison, NJ for the auction. Thankfully, @textfiles could; be sure to check all the photos he posted on May 31 for all that he saw...

Am surprised it took this long to see something like this (via @gamesyouloved)...

… The same source also posted this Sonic gif; I’ve looked everywhere for the source but zero luck… can anyone point me in the right direction?

Back to the aforementioned auction, or should I say the mass acquisition of old games; it’s always been a secret plan to collect a bunch of Super FX carts in order to extract the chips, for... something? (via pixelpolygon)

Thought check out what the Mega Drive/Genesis can do without the help of any fancy chips (via vidgam)...

...BTW, am aware of the fact that equally amazing programmers can probably push the SNES in crazy ways if given chance.

Am also familiar with the SVP or Sega Virtua Processor that drove the 16-bit version of Virtua Racing (which I enjoy better than the 32X version).

Re: the auction one last time: so the real reason why I didn't bother with making that trip to Jersey? There wasn't a Divers 2000 CX-1 on-hand (via anthony10000000)...

Here’s someone really enjoying a game of Zaxxon (via arcadezen)...

And someone... well... maybe enjoying a game of Polybius? (via dualvoidanima)

Okay, so this gif ain’t related to video games per say, yet this came up in a Tumblr that I frequent for super cool shit, plus the music video it’s from is neat, so there ya go (via mendelpalace)...

Speaking of sources for content, worlds collided with the surprise appearance of Just One Boss (which I first encountered at Death By Audio Arcade's Lo-Fi Game Night several months back) at obscurevideogames...

Worlds continued to collide with the surprise appearance of Attract Mode's Dark Souls print by Judson Cowan, in a recent article in Kotaku on the subject of Dark Souls Remastered...

One last last thing: I’ve long considered Suzuki Bakuhatsu to be THE game that best represents the Attract Mode a e s t h e t i c & I’m super happy that the RetroPals finally got around to playing it...

[schpiedehl]

Reasons I hate the Hamilton fandom

Disclaimer: I’m a mod of one Hamilton fb group, an admin of another much smaller group, have seen the show twice, and a huge fan of many of the actors and creatives, not just the original cast. I am entrenched in the Hamilton fandom and have been for nearly 2 years so all of this comes from personal experiences with the fandom. I do not hate the actual musical and having talked to many folks and made friends through this fandom, I can confirm that it has had a positive effect on many people, especially aspiring actors of color. I had criticisms of the actual musical (reductive view of American history, perpetrates American exceptionalism, bootstraps narrative, not as feminist as fans insist, etc) but I’m mostly just addressing the issues within the fandom not within the media. The problems with the fandom is nebulous and manifold so I’m gonna try to be as thorough as possible here: - for those that don’t know, Hamilton is a show made by POC creatives for actors of color. The casting is not “color blind” it is racially conscious. All leads always, aside from the silly, villainous King George, are intended to be played by actors of color and the much of the fandom absolutely REFUSES TO ACKNOWLEDGE THIS. It ranges from the benign-seeing assertions that Hamilton is colorblind and therefore race of the actor doesn’t matter as much as talent (false, with the underlying belief that a white actor will somehow be better suited/more talented in a role that is literally not written for them) to petulant assertions that one white fan or another will be the first white actor to play x role, to erasing the racial identities of light-skinned black, latinx, and asian actors to fit the manufactured narrative that white actors can and have played principal roles and the show is therefore colorblind. Fans are quick to point out the ambiguous wording of “America then told by America now,” intended to subtly indicate POC, as meaning white folk, despite the continuous assertions by the creatives that this is simply not the case. - whitewashing in fan art. Hand in hand with the refusal by many white fans to acknowledge the fact that Hamilton the Musical is intended for POC, white fan artist almost universally draw the actors-as-characters with lighter skin, lighter eyes, and more typically European features. Lin, who played Hamilton in the original cast, is a Latino man of mixed race heritage with tan skin, black hair, and dark eyes yet fan art of him as Hamilton is nearly always pale, red haired, and sometimes even blue-eyed. Artists will defend this as interpretation and some will even indicate that Hamilton was white irl so this is more accurate but Hamilton irl and Lin were nothing alike and he presence of a goatee in Hamilton Fan art is an indisputable sign that the artist is drawing Lin, not the real life, baby faced Hamilton. Dark skinned actors like Okieriete Onaodowan (Hercules Mulligan in the original cast) are rarely drawn and when they are they tend to be heavily lightened. - characters deemed queer by the fandom - notably John Laurens who was thought to be gay or bi in real life by many historians - is often heavily feminized in fan art, despite the fact neither the character nor the actual figure are ever noted as being particularly effeminate. This is of course fetishization symptomatic of applying heteronormativity to gay relationships. - fans often reject and demonize female characters. This is not universal but many fans have negative reactions to Hamilton’s wife, Eliza (and ignore and/or demonize her in regards to the gay ship of Hamilton/Laurens, despite Laurens having died shortly after Hamilton married Eliza. Hamilton fans believe almost universally that Hamilton was bi irl, which is supported by historical consensus, but the notion of him actually being with a woman repulses much of the fandom. - basically standard biphobia). Fans are also extremely gross about Maria Reynolds. - a separate part of the fandom refuses to acknowledge both the historical consensus of the Hamilton/Laurens relationship and the fact that that musical contains several intentional references to it. I’ve been told many times to keep that “gay shit” out of the fandom. - shipping wars of course. - blind worship of the characters either without regard to their historical counterparts or including their historical counterparts. - slavery apologism. Comparing slaves to modern consumer items and/or farm animals to demonstrate the ubiquity of slavery and/or people’s mindset regarding it. While it is true that people are the product of their time, “everyone owned slaves” and “you cannot judge them by the Norms of our culture” are common silencing/apologist techniques which both lack nuance and perpetuate racist ideals. It also erases the fact that abolitionism and moral opposition to slavery existed not only in post-revolution society but also within the very people who owned slaves. Thomas Jefferson wrote that slavery was the worst evil while simultaneously owning and raping slaves. - I’ve encountered at least one person with a bona fide slavery fetish. That’s not the fandom as a whole but it is worth noting. - abhorrent beliefs are common re: Thomas Jefferson’s relationship with Sally Hemings. - this has basically been covered above but rampant racism is not uncommon in this fandom. You get the distinct feeling that a sizeable portion has never once interacted with a person of color before, based on the ways they claim ownership over the actors, portray the characters, talk about racial issues, etc - speaking of the actors: fans are very gross toward the actors in a variety of different ways. - fans fetishize the fuck out of Daveed Diggs, who played Jefferson in the original cast. Diggs, for reference is a biracial black Jewish man, a rapper, actor, and activist best known outside of Hamilton for his work with clipping., which includes an extremely politically charged afrofuturist space rap opera. Fans tend to do a couple things in regards to Diggs. One, they conflate him with irl Jefferson leading so some really and truly bizarre headcanons and fan interpretations. Diggs himself has no love for irl Jefferson and has - along with the rest of the cast - cautioned fans against romanticizing the real figures, apparently to limited success. More heinously, however, I have seen people claiming ownership of Digg’s body and hair (claiming they would be upset if his cut it, or would stop being his fan even), made comments about keeping him as a sex slave, fetishizing his ethnic features, or even denying his blackness in favor of fetishizing his white, Jewish heritage. I’ve even seen a white woman comment that she wanted to kill diggs’ black girlfriend, skin her, and wear her as a suit to attract Diggs. No fucking joke. Diggs work as a musician is loved by many fans but others reject it as “scary black music.” - this happens with other actors tho not as much as Diggs. Fans have made plenty of comments about Okieriete Onaodowan’s “big black spy on the inside,” for instance, showing further capacity to fetishize black bodies. - for many fans, the original cast can do no wrong. They will go out of their way to justify and forgive anything that can be seen as problematic rather than acknowledging that they can still like a person that has problematic aspects. - or conversely, they gang up on actors on twitter, or tag them in hate/undeservedly negative critique. - replacements and non-OBC casts are largely ignored and several of the actors have been trolled or sent hate simply because they are not the originals. There is also the mindset that no one could ever be better than the original and the show is not worth seeing without the originals which is extremely disrespectful toward the replacement actors. - a large portion of the fandom claims that Hamilton is the only rap they like, or that they don’t like hip hop at all. When the Hamilton mixtape - and album featuring inspired-bys and covers of Hamilton songs by contemporary singers and rappers, was released fans HATED IT, many pointed out that they hated the hip hop sound and the “bastardization” of the music. Many of the songs on the Mixtape were by artists which inspired Hamilton in the first place. - a lot of the fans are just plain cringey. Bad head canons which become more ubiquitous than the actual canon portrayals, extremely forceful when it comes to trying to “convert” people, extremely adverse to any kind of criticism of the musical, history, or the actors, obnoxious at cons, etc. - art theft is rampant - extreme classism re: bootlegs especially - older fans have a tendency to be extremely abusive toward younger fans. Not all young fans are bad but bad memes and stupid references are met with extreme, quick, and unwarranted vitriol.

[69reggaetongirl]

Dead TV Lesbian Characters Anonymous

Crackfic based on Sally's comment about this article on Autostraddle : http://www.autostraddle.com/100-storylines-we-brainstormed-in-5-minutes-that-dont-involve-dead-lesbians-330245/ She wrote : "Currently trying to process by making up a story where all the dead TV lesbians sit around at a Dead Lesbians Anonymous support group, trying to process what the fuck is going on with this world".

Sally, whoever you are, wherever you are, thank you and I love you. This is the best idea ever ;) ! Multi-fandom fic. SPOILER ALERT if you're not up to date in the following TV shows : Xena warrior princess, Orphan Black, The 100, Defiance, True Blood, Pretty Little Liars, The L Word, Skins, Buffy the vampire slayer, Chicago fire, Lip Service, Marvel's Agent of Shield, Spartacus : Gods of the Arena, Los Hombres de Paco and Lost Girl.

Chapter 1 : "The Newbie"

In an abandoned studio, located somewhere in the darkest corner of Vancouver, Canada.

-"Ladies, please, take your sits quickly. We have a new member today who I'm sure, is dying to meet us. Pun not intended".

-"Not intended ? Please, Xena, you make this one every time we welcome a new member".

-"Maya ? Don't start".

-"I hope she's cute"

-"Seriously, Sophie Anne ?"

-"What ?"

Queen Sophie Anne didn't have the time to respond when a light knock echoed in the room.

-"Shhhs ! She's here !" Dana Fairbanks whispered loudly.

-"Come in !" Xena said while motioning frantically to the other women to sit.

-"Hi. My name is Lexa. When I died on my TV show last week, they told me to make a stop here but I admit that I don't really know where I am".

"Welcome Lexa," Xena spoke calmly. "Please, take a sit, I'll explain everything."

Lexa hesitated. There were two chairs available in the circle. The first one was just two sits from her right but the blonde woman that would be sitting on her left was looking at her with predatory eyes and a devil smirk. Oh my God, are those fangs ? she thought fast and took the second chair in the opposite direction.

-"Lexa, let me introduce you to the Dead TV Lesbian Characters support group. Here, we meet every Wednesday afternoon to help each other process our death in the TV show we were starring".

-"I still think we should rename the group Dead TV Queer Characters. Not everyone here is a lesbian" Jenny Schecter interrupted angrily.

-"Kenya, we talked about this numerous times. We can't replace "lesbian" with "queer" because then men will be part of the group too and we already have barely enough room as it is !" Xena answered exasperated. "We welcome all sexual identities whereas you wouldn't be there and Cece neither.

-"It's Jenny !"

"Stop yelling" said Sophie Anne smoothly. "You're going to frighten our cute little newbie here," she added with a devious smirk and a wink in Lexa's direction.

-"Yeah, not our fault that your actress enjoy to be killed on a regular basis..."

-"Maya ! What did I said earlier ?" Xena said in a firm tone.

-"Yeah, don't start, sorry," Maya St Germain mumbled.

-"So, if we all have been killed in our respective TV shows, why are we still alive ?" Lexa suddenly spoke, making all the group look at her again.

"That's because once you're created, you enter what is called the collective imagination." Xena answered. "No matter what happens to you, you still live in all the humans mind. In their memories. They still can remember you, talk about you. They can even reborn you by writing you a prequel of your adventures before your death or fanfictions that ignore your canon death.

At that, Victoria Hand stood up abruptly.

-"No, no, no, no. Enough with the fanfictions ! If I see another high school alternative universe I swear I'm going to kill the author myself !" she all but shouted in the stunned room. "I know that I age well, thank you very much, but I don't need to be reminded of the worst period of my life every damn sentence !"

-"Victoria," Xena went on, unfazed. "You will have plenty of time to share your struggles with the group later. Now, it's all about welcoming our new member appropriately. So, Lexa. What can you tell us about yourself ?"

-"I'm from the TV show The 100 which tells the story of a post-apocalyptic world" Lexa begun. "The survivors fled from the catastrophe and lived in space for almost hundred years. But then, the spaceship starts to running out of oxygen so they send a group of young delinquents to test if Earth is habitable again. When the group of teenagers land on Earth, they learn the hard way that they're not alone".

-"Great, another sci-fi TV show which, instead of detach itself from reality by creating brand new worlds just perpetuate the worst clichés and failures of our own" a very annoyed Naomi Campbell intervened. "Seriously, can't they do parallel worlds where the slaves are white or the lesbian make it through the third season ?"

-"Let's talk about something less depressing" Dana Fairbanks said suddenly. "Did you have a pretty girlfriend on your show ?"

-"Yes. Her name is Clarke" Lexa answered, a ghost of a smile at the corner of her lips.

-"What she looks like ?" Dana asked with fascinated eyes and a broad smile.

-"She's blonde. Has beautiful blue eyes..." Lexa stopped talking, lost in her thoughts of Clarke.

-"Aww, don't worry kitten" said Sophie Anne looking at Lexa with her head tilted to the side. "She will join you sooner than later," she went on, taking a sip of her blood colored cocktail.

-"Sophie Anne ! That's totally insensitive to say !" Dana shouted. "Even for you," she then mumbled with a disapproving glare to the Queen.

-"So ?" the vampire replied nonchalantly. "It's the truth. We will all end up here. It's just a matter of time, c'est la vie".

-"I admit it wouldn't be so bad to have a girlfriend here," Kenya said, smirking at Gaia who reminded Kenya pleasantly of her ex lover, Stahma Tarr.

-"And with the way some show runners treat us, it sometimes better to be dead," her twin sister Jenny, added, sighting.

-"Amen" Shana agreed solemnly.

The dead silence that followed Jenny's statement was brutally interrupted when the door busted open in a loud bang.

-"Okay guys, you really have to take me in. I just can't stand it anymore !" a very desperate Emma Swan said loudly before letting herself drop on the first chair available.

-"Emma, we discussed this numerous times already" Xena said wearily. "A character assassination doesn't count as a real death." She straightened herself on her chair and added more firmly, looking directly at Emma : "You should return to your group now."

-"No please !" Emma shouted at the verge of crying. I don't belong there. Everybody keeps complaining, wondering who they are, what are they making those horrible choices..." she explained exasperated. "I know who I am ! I'm bisexual and in love with Regina Mills !" She said more confidently this time. "Why the writers of my show can't see that ?" she then whined.

-"Your show got renewed for another season, right ?" Xena asked Emma who nodded yes. "So give them time, they will see it soon" Xena finished, sighting.

-"But meanwhile I'm bored to death in my group !" Emma whined again. "Hey, does that count as a fictional death ?" She then added smiling broadly, proud of her pun.

-"Emma, get out !" Xena shouted exasperated this time.

-"Okay, okay, I'm on my way" Emma said, finally giving up.

After Emma Swan exited the room, Xena looked at the clock and stood up abruptly.

-"Girls" she said, "we have to clean the room for the queerbaiting group and we're running late". Everyone started gathering their stuff and cleaning the two tables at the back of the room where the members lay some food and drinks. Xena then walked toward Lexa.

-"Our next session will be next Wednesday at 15pm" Xena said to Lexa. "If you come, we will start with your story, okay ?" At Lexa's furrowed brow, Xena specified : "I mean that you could tell the group how you died on your TV show, what got you happy or upset about it... You can write everything on a paper if it helps you".

-"Oh, no problem. I'll be there" Lexa answered.

Read the following chapters here : https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11847732/1/Dead-TV-Lesbian-Characters-Anonymous

[eulaliasims]

The Twenty a Bajillion Questions Meme~

@dramallamadingdang and @kahiena tagged me, so information overload straight ahead! (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:・ﾟ✧ Featuring some book links, alien socks, and cat facts.

Name: ...Eulalia

Nicknames: I am very boring and don't have any. My real name is something that can't really be shortened into anything else anyway.

Zodiac sign: Cancer (I don’t believe in astrology in the slightest, but those Tumblr ‘The Signs As’ posts are highly entertaining to me)

Height: 5' 5"

Orientation: Queer. Following iCad's example, I guess about a Kinsey scale 5.

Ethnicity: White

Favorite fruit: Blackberries. Gimme all the blackberries, please and thanks.

Favorite season: Fall. I hate being hot and I'm not fond of cold and snow either, so fall and late spring are my favorites. :)

Favorite book series: I'll always take the opportunity to hype the Newsflesh trilogy some more. Runner-up: Xenogenesis.

Favorite flower: Dahlias. Runners-up: lilacs and irises.

Favorite scent: Wild honeysuckle in early summer. So yummy. Runner-up: lavender.

Favorite color: Don't make me choose, I love all the colors. :(

Favorite animal: CATS. Would you like to know a cat fact? Because I have amassed a lot of cat facts. Cat fact: cats don't have collarbones of the type that humans do, but free-floating clavicles, which helps them squeeze into very small spaces.

Coffee, tea, or hot cocoa?: Tea. I love coffee too, but I have five different teas I drink on a regular basis and a couple more that I drink occasionally, so. (Cocoa is nice, but too sweet for me to drink very often.)

Average sleep hours: 7 - 8

Cat or dog person?: Cat person, definitely.

Favorite fictional characters: I don't really have any? There's lots of characters I adore, of course, but I can't really point at any of them and say, "Yep, that's my favorite." Unless it's one of my own characters. Plenty of favorites there.

Number of blankets you sleep with: Sheet + duvet + one extra blanket if it's really cold.

Dream trip: A very long tour of the UK involving lots of walking and hiking and visting of historical sites.

Blog created: I started posting in 2014 (!!!), and I think I actually created it about a year before that, so... sometimes in 2013 I guess?

Number of followers: 978 atm. The number tends to drop down and then pick up whenever I start posting gobs of gameplay pics like lately. Bye/hi new followers! *Waves*

Time right now: 10:43 am

Last thing you Googled: "japanese emoticon throwing sparkles"

Favorite music artist: Lmao, it probably changes on a daily basis. Right now? Lauren O’Connell.

Song stuck in my head: Ride - Lana Del Rey

Last movie I watched: Star Wars: The Force Awakens... many, many, many months ago. I don’t watch a lot of movies.

Last TV show I watched: Mmm, probably Stranger Things.

What I'm wearing right now: Alien socks, black jeans, gray shirt, N7 sweatshirt.

The kind of stuff I post: “I post TS2 pictures of pretty houses and aliens and things.“ Still accurate.

Why did I choose my url?: “Well, I’m going to follow a bunch of sims blogs and maybe post some pictures... I wonder what my username should be???”

Gender: Lady~ (cis lady)

Hogwarts house: Hufflepuff

Pokémon team: I know I picked one when I downloaded Pokémon Go for five minutes, then got confused/annoyed by something and deleted it, but I don't remember what. It was blue probably?

Lucky number: 7

Dream job: Writer, except I get paid a living wage for it. :’)

Relationship status: Single

Pets: Three kittens cats (they’re gonna be three this year! They’re so big now! ;_; )

Last song you listened to: Off to the Races - Lana Del Rey

Favorite TV show: Orphan Black

First fandom: Harry Potter. Oh, the ship war stories I could tell.

[gothhabiba]

i'm anon from yesterday. so this (ostensibly white) trans man, who is rather popular at my school and in my social circles, posted online the other day about how its unfair that BLM is so well-known in america because what about lgbt people, etc. ->

and that he wishes there could be a similar movement for other marginalized groups. he literally said “not to sound all ‘white tears’, but don’t all lives matter?” I said that his argument sounded antiblack (I am also white) and that there have been plenty of popular movement for lgbt people, and that generally speaking white lgbt activists are better received than BLM is. I pointed out that his comment was indistinguishable from “white tears”. this made him really mad and he said he has native heritage and that it was wrong of me to speak over him as a person of color. however neither myself nor any of my friends have ever heard him talk about being native, he’s from a place where the heritage he’s claiming doesn’t really make sense, and he’s always (for lack of a better term) culturally signified himself as white. anyway so I said I was sorry, I didn’t realize he was a person of color but that he and I both had a stake in antiblackness. he then blocked meand now the rest of the social group (it’s 99% white) has ostracized me. my partner follows the guy on tumblr still and I guess he tags with an “I’m white” tag. I’m just confused, it feels like he’s lying but I don’t want to be an asshole? anyway tl;dr my questions for you are, was what I said wrong? should I try to talk to the others in the group at school to see if they understand? they aren’t my only friends but its rough not being able to go to my school’s GSA/etc.

so first of all, I’m sorry that you’ve (at least temporarily) lost a space because of this–that sounds rough and you don’t deserve it just for speaking out about something

secondly, nothing that you said was wrong. there’s a very real history of nonblack people resenting activist movements for focusing on Black people, even when those movements were built by Black people and even when the people in those movements do very much advocate for other oppressed groups. a lot of people ignore the fact that, if pro-black organisations are widespread or well-known or get a lot done, it’s because Black people have worked & organised & advocated for themselves in order to get every bit of that attention (and, as I think you pointed out, it’s not always positive attention). people just want to sit back and allow black people (& usually black women) to do labour for them, without advocating for black people in return and without advocating for themselves. they want their causes to just, somehow, be recognised, without putting in any work. it’s antiblackness & it’s entitlement.

it also ignores the fact that, again, BLM does advocate for LGBT people. 2/3 of the founders of BLM are non-straight women, & many members and supporters are LGBT (”The character of the folks that we were bringing out I think was really important in terms of having a group that was significantly women, significantly queer, having Black transgender people in the space. And that’s possible because of them and the national team that they built up around them.”). in fact, just in general, Black people & people of colour more broadly are more likely to be LGBT. I’m not going to get into the long & sordid history of white supremacy and colonialism and how they’ve shaped and imposed narratives of gender and sexuality onto nonwhite peoples up until the present day, but suffice it to say that you obviously can’t divide movements up into “Black people” and “LGBT people” as if there isn’t significant overlap, and as if people of colour’s genders & sexualities aren’t figured in ways that are often closely tied to our racialisation.

honestly anyone who says “all lives matter” might be too far gone, but I do hope that you can talk to some other people in the group about this away from him. there’s a definite trend of white people conveniently only bringing up native heritage in order to deflect from accusations of racism (as if indigineity were only about blood, lmao) but I can appreciate why it might be sticky for you as a white person to bring that up in that kind of climate–regardless, he certainly is capable of being antiblack, & if you’re going to try to explain anything that’s what I’d focus on.

I know I’ve read critiques of the exploitation of Black people’s political work specfically but I can’t find anything in my tags– perhaps some of my followers can help? regardless, something similar applies to culture & black creativity more broadly:

Social media has exacerbated the idea that blackness is common property, a public good that must be shared and consumed by everyone. A public good to be profited off of — unless you’re actually black. Black people shouldn’t own anything. Nothing belongs to us — not even what we produce and invent. Not even our experience, our existence. Everything ours is yours (is there even such as thing as “ours”?). Blackness is constantly flied over by vultures, under threat of being decomposed, consumed and annihilated. When we do claim ownership, we are told we are venal, greedy. When we refuse this looting of our identity, experience and culture we are selfish and capricious. (Fanta Sylvia, WOC vs. Black Women)

so basically I’d suggest searching for related information on online & trying to bring this up once or twice more if that’s what you want to do, but if people are being resistant to it there’s not much that you can do about it. regardless, I’m glad that you at least have other friends outside of this group & I hope that this toerag sees the light eventually