#i also Need to talk about the way this fandom views them bc it pisses of me off

[chosuiri]

one day i will go into the details and little bits about fukuzawa and ranpo when i do NOT turn into a mess anytime i think about them

[eddiediazismyhusband]

These people will never experience the pain hearing from the causal viewers and THE SR that we who view those characters as queer, are delusional. We were told, it’s in “our heads” and what you see “is your interpretation” NOT what’s on the script. OH CANT FORGET MY FAVORITE, “go write your own SHOW”. Imagine for 6 years viewing buck as queer coded and told you were dumb and “it’s never gonna happen”. For 6 YEARS!!!! It literally took them ONE EPISODE AND MOVING TO A NEW NETWORK for bibuck to happen. And these people think this couple who ONLY HAD 3 dates (1 of them a failed one), and 2 kisses is endgame? 💀💀💀imagine your ship not having any depth to where they stopped caring about them after making buck bi💀💀💀. Where are their scenes? Oh it’s “enjoy it while it lasts”. It’s them having barely 20 minutes of screen while the “non ship” has x2 has much in 10 episodes. Did they forget their fav said this💀💀💀💀

💯no notes agree with everything you said 👏👏👏

and also even that lfj quote pissed me off when it came out bc i was like “how are you gonna stand here and tell me to be grateful for a relationship that came out of left field with no chemistry?” like even if it does lead to buddie i will still hate that whole arc because it could have been handled SO much better and without bringing back a racist character, played by a problematic person, ON TOP of causing the biggest shipping controversy to ever hit this fandom… that man has given me the ick since day one of s7 and when the cameos started and he started encouraging his fans and egging on the bullshit i was done w him.

it pisses me off bc they act like buck has to go through some sort of “queer bootcamp” before he can date eddie and im like…. no he doesn’t?? he doesn’t need some sort of “gay yoda” or whatever they called t-rex in the beginning bc there is no rulebook to being queer… so the whole notion of “working out the kinks” (which is an extra level of icky coming from someone like lfj, and looking back after the daddy joke in 7x10) never sat right with me… and the whole “what if buck got with eddie and didn’t like it?” if he meant that literally as “what if buck didn’t like it” my brother in christ theses are fictional characters, they’re not sims, the writers have full control over literally everything that happens… why would they write them if buck “wasn’t gonna like it” (which is bullshit bc we all know he 1000% fold immediately if eddie kissed him)… if he meant “what if the fandom didn’t like it” (which is an odd way to word that question if this is what he meant) WDYM IF THE FANDOM DOESNT LIKE IT EVEN HALF THE BT SHIPPERS HAVE BEEN SHIPPING BUDDIE FOR ALMOST SIX YEARS????

the whole situation drives me up s wall bc not only have we simultaneously gotten so close yet so far to getting buddie, we also now have to deal with these wack-ass fans policing people, calling queer people homophobic, sending death threats and violent hate speech to people who don’t like their ship, actively talking bad about oliver bc he clearly isn’t a fan of lfj or the way this storyline was handled, on top of having to deal with the show’s retconning of typhoid’s character and trying to brush his shit under a rug using queerness as an “excuse” and thus enabling these people to use the “homophobia” rhetoric when someone doesn’t want a boring ass rewash basic ship.

[composeregg]

wanted to join in on that meta post by saying yeah, even if we view joker’s and akechi’s relationship as special compared to the others, akechi is still written under the constraints of p5, and an antagonist to boot. like. vanilla had his confidant as automatic bc (iirc) they thought they couldn’t fit it in properly! which is crazy, even tho the automatic rank ups have an interesting implication (such as, akechi will always be rank 10 by the end no matter what you do). i understand that ppl probably wanted someone to talk sense into the thieves for their unwittingly callous actions, but not by the guy who decided to go thru with his 11/20 plan lol

(this post)

YEAH like, I love Akechi. I adore him. But I have SO many OPINIONS about this mans. like. I'm not going berate anyone for how they write characters, that's the freedom of fandom, but I am going to stand over here with my opinions and contrary thoughts and chitchat about them in my space

I know that very often it is because people want someone to refute what canon has shown us (because canon's writing disagrees with it's desired goals as mentioned in that post). They want someone to go "Look at Joker, look at what's happened to him, don't you care? How risky this was?"

But okay I'm actually going to back up a bit!

(this got long)

What other choice was there for 11/20?

Because the answer is not "they could have taken Akechi in a fight."

The goals of the interrogation room/metaverse plan:

Escape with Joker alive

Trick Shido and the conspiracy into believing Joker has died

and you know? you know? you cannot do that latter bullet point if you just beat up Akechi

So enlighten me. How, exactly, were the thieves supposed to come up with a different plan in under 20 days? One where Joker would live, where the conspiracy would believe he had died, and importantly, one that at that point in time cannot count on Akechi being a turncoat. They have no reason to trust that he would

"Don't you care about how risky this was? There had to have been other ways."

We don't get Shido's name as Akechi's employer here until after the phonecall reporting the death, I believe. They cannot change Shido's heart in time to avert this because they do not have the information. The interrogation room plan, genuinely, was one of the smartest ideas they had. It accomplished exactly what they needed to. These are teens in a life-or-death situation, who notoriously have MANY trust issues with adults for good reason, especially since society is so corrupt that a hitman can easily walk into a police department and assassinate a high-profile criminal and get away with it with help (remember the guard at the door?) The other options are basically "change your identity and flee the country" or "literally actually die" lets be real here!

SO

Akechi, let's be honest with ourselves here, would primarily be pissed off that the thieves got one over on him! And if he is concerned about the lasting trauma of it all, or how risky the plan was, he is seeing this and approaching it from the angle of knowing it worked.

(Better options for sense-talking: Sojiro! Sojiro is right there! Takemi! Iwai! Kawakami! Yoshida! All important responsible adult figures to Joker and at least some of the thieves.)

In my opinion if Akechi wants to snark at the thieves about the plan in any way regarding how much it fucks up Joker and how it was risky, they are more than allowed to fire back shots at him for making it necessary and shooting Joker in the head in the first place.

I think people often use it as a shorthand, to show that Akechi cares about Joker, but also as a way to emphasize the importance of Akechi to Joker (compared to the rest of the thieves). It's easier to ignore the fact that he killed two of the thieves's parents when it comes to Joker being in a relationship with him, as long as it can be shown that he's the one that really cares. That he wouldn't put Joker through something so fucked up with his care (hilarious, laughable, he shot Joker in the head). It separates "Akechi and Joker" from all the phantom thieves in a way.

(Honestly sometimes it feels like ship bashing/character bashing but for ALL the phantom thieves with how intensely some people write it! beyond even the point of exploring Atlus fucking up characterization to pretend to have a blank slate silent protag)

BUT like I said in the post, it also points out a major flaw with convincing players that the rest of the thieves DO care in the game. Because the thieves are never really given a chance to show that. It's implied, and it's clear the game wants you to believe they care, but we don't get scenes addressing specific stuff like this enough.

Joker is confident, and cocky, we see that with that bastard smile in the interrogation room after getting "shot" in those cutscenes. It is genuinely a plan to be proud of, and it hails back to his original persona being Arsène. Arsène, who escaped from prison simply by disguising himself and pretending he had already escaped and put a body double in his place. Arsène, who pulled off a robbery while in jail. Arrogant and self-assured and cocky, the interrogation room plan is genuinely something the likes that would be worthy of Arsène's name.

He can be proud of the plan, and also traumatized by it. But he actively agreed to this plan, probably helped come up with it (where does everyone get the idea that it was Makoto's plan? genuine question). Joker is not a hapless victim of other's whims, he also had agency. So many of the parallels between Joker and Akechi are how they exercise what agency they have while being stripped of traditional power and victimized by society.

Honestly? Honestly? In my personal opinion, having Akechi berate the thieves for the plan is disrespectful to his rivalry with Joker, along with his own characterization.

He holds Joker as his equal. Equal in agency, in skill. If he looks at Joker and says, "why would you go along with such a foolish plan?" if he looks at the thieves and says "why would you ever put your precious leader through this?" he is taking away Joker's agency and choices. One of Akechi's focal points is agency. If he sees Joker as equal in this, and he denies Joker his agency, he is also taking it away from himself.

Akechi's cocktail of emotions regarding the assassination can manifest in so many different ways, and he can translate that to anger at the thieves rather than himself for putting Joker through that, but that would be his emotions regarding himself being misdirected more than anything.

Akechi has too much respect for Joker to deny Joker his agency in a plan that was good enough to fool him.

Respecting agency and admiring a brilliantly crafted plan also doesn't mean ignoring trauma that ocurred from actions taken under duress.

(At least, it doesn't mean that as long as you're not Atlus)

[raytorosaurus]

Wait what dumbassery got tweeted? I wanna see it so I can laugh

lol okay under a read more bc i was like "i don't have the energy rn to spark a whole discussion about this" but then it got kinda long anyway so. the tweet itself is your average annoying twitter bullshit but it speaks to a wider pattern that really fucking pisses me off and worries me so that's what this is about

someone tweeted this, which had like 900 likes and multiple people in the replies and qrts going "omg did she really do this/when did she do this" and op would be like "it's a joke," to which the reply would always be "oh well it does sound like something she'd do."

it's a) not funny in the first place lol and b) a very common type of joke to make, hinging on this widely-accepted idea that frank and lynz hate each other and are petty about it, and that lynz abuses gerard & is extremely controlling. both of these things are literally completely fabricated but people just believe them, and it really goes to show how all these people who hate lynz sooo much don't hate her for the reasons they claim to. these people could not any more transparently give less of a shit about jimmy urine's abuse victim when it really feels like they gleefully use her as an "excuse" to make frerard "jokes" where lynz is a villain. it's disgusting and so so insensitive. domestic abuse is also such a fucking disgusting thing to accuse people of with literally zero evidence besides the kind of thing that was touted on blogs like ode2's, including things like "lynz saying she deadheads the flowers is her sending messages that she emotionally or physically enjoys beating gerard into submission" and "the way gerard's behaving on instagram (i.e. not using it very often) just feels fishy to me...something must be wrong" and "frank and lynz are sharing coded messages about hating each other via opossum memes on their instagram stories or in their instagram likes".

my point is: if you really hated lynz THAT much for reasons such as her association to msi and the tweets where she claimed to have indian descent and was weird to people who called her on it, then you should not need to invent additional reasons to hate her. you would also have to admit that those two things are not exclusive to lynz since everyone in mcr also has extensive voluntary associations with msi, most of all gerard and frank, who have also done/said racist things in the past, and you would have to come up with reasons why you are willing to forgive them but not lynz. i also don't like lynz and find a lot of her actions distasteful but it's literally impossible to get a reasonable explanation from any of the mcr fans who hate her SO much for the depth of this hatred without them including complete fabrications or deeply bad-faith suppositions (or actively misogynistic comments) in those explanations. it's extremely transparent and only goes to show how little these people care about the actual genuine issues related to jimmy/msi and weird racist comments/claims.

also as a side point i don't understand why people also love to act like frank is a perfect innocent in any situation to the point where they'll literally make up reasons to like him or claim that he's on "their side" (e.g. the idea that he hates msi when he was a vocal fan). i love frank so much but fandom as a whole seems to have such a weirdly distorted view of him, despite him being the one in the band who's most open about his thoughts and feelings/life in general. or maybe for that reason? he certainly seems to be the one people project onto the most with a lack of self-awareness about what they're doing, idk. it's weird though frank is such a lovable and admirable guy but sometimes i see the way some of his intense fans talk about him and i honestly feel like they're talking about a different person? of course none of us really know him at all but idk i really feel like the version of him that exists in the most prevalent fan-driven frerard narrative is so bizarrely separate from reality skfjfkssk. idk anyway that's kind of off-point, the most important thing here is that if you make things up about frank or attribute your own opinions to him when he hasn't actually said anything like that (e.g. hating msi or hating lynz) you're gonna get further and further down that rabbithole and end up setting yourself up for disappointment when frank inevitably doesn't behave/think the way you want him to irl lol.

so anyway i qrted that tweet, and op deleted their account between my second and third tweet here lol.

[akuma-tenshi]

so this is a big, long rant about sexism in the idv community bc it's been on my mind lately and i need to put it out there. this is what i've observed after almost four years in the fandom and been stewing on for a long-ass time. if you don't feel like reading an essay on how annoyed some random enby on the internet is, then don't click the read more and just keep scrolling. don't interact with this post if all you're gonna do is get mad; i'm not here to piss anyone off, just make observations. and if this isn't your experience, good for you and please direct me to whatever circles you run in because i need to be there.

so, i've noticed that the idv fandom is extremely shit when it comes to how they treat female characters, and nobody really.. talks about it?? the only person i've ever seen actually discuss it used it as a way to drum up sympathy for ada. which, if you know me, you know really fucking pisses me off. because there are SO MANY OTHER EXAMPLES of sexism in this community, but no, clearly because we have sympathy for a male victim of abuse we're being sexist towards his abuser.

the thing is. there is so much to point to when you talk about how the fandom is sexist. it's very common to see female characters boiled down to just a couple traits. mary?? hot mommy step on me. michiko?? soft and gentle and demure (don't think i won't notice the weird shit about how that's a very common stereotype of asian women btw i see it). demi?? hot and drinks a lot. emma and lily are "uwu mentally ill babies". annie is soft. emily is either an irredeemable monster or a bitch, depending on who you're talking to. patricia is scary and mean. sangria's a girlboss, grace is soft and gentle, martha is spunky. and if you ask anyone their thoughts / ideas on these characters beyond those short descriptors you get nothing. i'm starting to fucking hate the word "girlboss" because it's all anyone says in response to like half these characters.

male characters are given alllllll the nuance in the world you can't talk to an aesop fan without them going into their endless headcanons / theories on why he's the way he is or how he's not actually that bad of a person or how cute he is or whatever. look at norton, or eli, or orpheus, or luca, or edgar, or joseph, or ithaqua, or any characters in that vein, and look at how the fandom treats them. look at the endless fanfictions and character studies and ships and x readers and headcanons. and then look at what female characters get. nowhere near that much.

i feel like margaretha and emily are the ones who suffer the most from this male-centric view by the fandom. they're characters who are inherently intricate, whose actions can't be explained away as entirely good or entirely bad. but that doesn't stop people from actively trying. they're going to act like margaretha wasn't being horrifically mistreated by her husband and just decided to burn down the circus for funsies or whatever. they're going to act like emily isn't trying so fucking hard to help emma and repent for what she's done. neither of them are meant to be read as black-and-white, but people will try because if they have to use more than two braincells on a female character they're going to implode.

meanwhile you get paragraph after paragraph about the intricacies of the argument between luca and alva. you get so many people analysing the relationship between norton and orpheus and how they're both kinda dicks but also both kinda have points. you get endless people defending joseph's actions bc his brother's dead and he's terrified of growing old / forgetting the people he loved / dying. you get so many fucking stories about how y'know, edgar's not that bad actually.

AND I'M NOT AGAINST ANALYSING THESE CHARACTERS!!! idv, especially in recent years, has been doing some great things with character writing. like, fuck 'em, they've got their issues, but they're still really good with some stuff and deserve credit. but don't act like it's not obvious how so many people have overlooked women (and poc, don't think i've noticed people ignoring the intricacies behind william and ganji as characters as well in favour of "himbo" and "bastard who cares", but i'm white so that's not exactly my place to talk) in favour of their favourite skinny whiteboy of the week.

they're that way with older-looking characters, too. if an idv guy has facial hair, you bet your ass he's also getting boiled down to his base traits. jose's an alcoholic, kevin is self-sacrificing and likes women, kurt is a little guy, kreacher is Awful, charles basically doesn't fucking exist anymore. but again not the focus of the talk atm.

it's just. so upsetting. esp. since most of my favourite idv characters are women but everyone i talk to about them is like "oh yeah demi's hot" or "aww annie's such a nervous little baby" or "god patricia's such a cool girlboss". and even when the shit they say is positive in a vacuum it still makes me so upset bc THAT'S NOT ALL THEY ARE!! demi is kind and loving and hardworking in the face of a world that only ever hurt her. annie's life has been an endless stream of pain and heartbreak and the only thing she really wants is freedom. patricia is literally cursed and is trying to find her place in the world.

also. i fucking hate ada but she falls victim to this too. as much as i despise the "you dislike her just bc you're sexist" thing and as horribly uncomfortable as she makes me, don't act like you haven't seen how her entire character is boiled down to how much she "loves" this man. don't act like you haven't seen how her entire character, all of her promise and potential, is forgotten in favour of that fucking trainwreck of a relationship. i bet half the fandom can't tell me anything about her other than her relationship with emil. emil suffers from this too, with his backstory and personality and life of abuse becoming an afterthought, but again, not what we're focusing on.

this is not an isolated thing or confined solely to the idv fandom. this happens in fandoms everywhere. but because idv is so close to my heart i feel like i really need to talk about it. there's so little content of female characters when there's fucking daily content of male ones. and don't get me wrong, i do like male characters. norton is literally one of my favourite fictional characters and i love talking about / analysing him. but i can guarantee a lot of people wouldn't be so interested in him if he was a woman.

sorry, just needed to get that off my chest. mandatory "this doesn't apply to everyone in the fandom" and "if this doesn't apply to you then i'm not fucking talking about you". we were so against the ashley wood collaboration bc of how much he sexualised michiko (and women in general) but like. do y'all really care that much?? bc i really don't think you do.

[bucksdaffy]

this is a genuine question, sorry! (i ship bucktommy! i just also ship buddie and i wanted to ask) but you said here https://www.tumblr.com/bucksdaffy/750558811283144704/what-that-buck-was-jealous-of-this-superhot-guy?source=share that we've seen the way buck acts when he has a crush on a man, how he gets flirty, and i feel like there are quite a few times in canon where buck and eddie get flirty i know an example that gets thrown around a lot is the "do you want to go for the title?" which reads as flirty to me, esp bc of the bucktommy moment in buck's kitchen. i hope its okay to ask you this, i just wanted to get your take on it :)

of course it's okay to ask! i'm happy to give my thoughts on various topics, especially when you ask in such a respectful manner!

beware, though, this is a long one.

i feel like i need to preface this by saying that i don't think shipping buddie is wrong. i'm committed to the principle that as long as a person doesn't twist canon, it's not really my business what they enjoy, even if i personally don't share that view. so if you choose to view certain buddie moments as romantic but at the same time acknowledge that your view is not really canon (yet, with a huge possibility that it never will be), i'm totally fine with that. and if you don't need your ship to become canon in order for you to enjoy it, i'll probably develop a little crush on you because, damn, that's hot! what pisses me off, though, is claiming that something IS canon because YOU interpret it that way, whereas the actual canon often states otherwise. this is where i draw the line, and this is why i might seem to talk in such definitive terms when bobs send me asks.

okay, now back to your question.

i think your interpretation is valid, but at the moment, i do consider it fanon.

shorter explanation: i don't really see it as flirting (and canonically as of right now it was not).

longer explanation: it might sound funny, but there is this strange idea in a lot of fandoms that friends can't be... friends with each other. now, don't lose me just yet – let me explain!

so i think it's a common view that a friend is someone who you can trust; someone who supports you and is always there for you when you need them. and that is absolutely true, there is no doubt about that. this is basically the foundation of a friendship.

but for some reason, there are people who don't see beyond that.

when a friend jokingly insults the other in a tiktok video, for example, chances are you'll find a number of comments on how the insulted friend deserves better. and yeah, sometimes that's true. not everyone we consider our friend is truly a friend. but people seem to forget, or simply ignore, the fact that this is how a lot of people actually show affection too.

and it doesn't end with insults, of course. there are a number of ways people show affection to those they love. one of them can also be flirting with each other in a joking manner. tbf, i do that with my friends fairly often. does it mean i'm attracted to them or they are to me? no. we just feel comfortable with each other enough to make such comments, and we just like to spice up our conversations a bit so they're not boring. that's it.

the thing is, friendships differ from person to person. there is no rule that dictates what is and what isn't considered a friendship. saying that someone insulting their friend definitely means they don't care about them is a reach, just as saying that someone flirting with their friend definitely means they are in love with them is a reach. people can engage in these behaviours without romantic feelings underlying them.

you mentioned the "wanna go for the title" scene and how you interpret it as buck and eddie being flirty with each other, and that is your right to interpret that scene that way.

however, personally, i have never seen it as them flirting with each other (even in the platonic way i "flirt" with my friends). i have always viewed this exchange between them as just a friendly banter, which, again, is something that a lot of friends do. being playful with each other isn't exclusive to romance; people can do so in all sorts of relationships – romantic, friendships, familial. so, it doesn't indicate what type of relationship one has with another human being; rather, it just shows that they are comfortable with them.

bucktommy's kitchen scene is different in that the exchange ended with a kiss. buddie's kitchen scene ended with them playing a video game.

with the assumption that buck's crush on eddie (if there ever was one) was gone by the start of s3, that scene reads completely platonic to me. however, if i believed the crush lasted longer than that, i think i could perceive it as genuine flirting on buck's part. the problem is, though, i really don't think that's the case, and i don't think anything in canon indicates it was that as well.

[thrilling-oneway]

You are so right with m/f stuff! I’m not familiar with a lot of VBS shipping discourse, but it’s annoying to see how people can’t write an analysis on how important Tsukasa is to Rui without others dog piling them and saying they’re delusional and ignoring canon for their yaoi “with no content”. (At least on twitter, tumblr is much better with this) And as someone whose also bisexual, it’s so annoying seeing people use bisexuality as a gotcha to ship m/f and act as if its progressive and that it gives them the okay to hate on f/f and m/m pairings.

YES YES EXACTLY. God I hate when people keep saying that ruikasa has no content and their dynamic is underdeveloped whenever anyone talks about them. Like as biased as I am because I like the ship, they do have a very developed dynamic regardless of if you like the ship or not. Literally there's three events about it (potato and pandemonium + it was a pretty big background element in curtain call), one of which is the third event in the game. like if you don't like ritk that's perfectly fine, but when people are dogpilling ritk shippers for talking about their dynamic/pandemonium chapter 8/wtv and saying they're reaching, especially if the person doing this is an account dedicated to another rui ship/are a rui fan, it's a bad look because you're literally ignoring a very significant part of his arc. Ignoring massively important aspects of a character you claim to like just because of a ship is low. This fandom is way too set on everything being about shipping like bruh no one is telling you that you had to view pandemonium as romantic you can view it as platonic perfectly fine and not need to erase parts of rui's character to justify your rui/female character ship.

it's an especially weird situation with VBS as well. as much as I hold the earlier EN fandom to a higher standard there was a lot of discourse around VBS and the fact that they're implied gay. like it used to be a situation where if you admitted you shipped m/f vbs you would get jumped. as a comeback people would accuse biphobia but i never saw huge amounts of people being actually biphobic. saying "an and kohane are quite heavily implied to be lesbians (and it makes some people uncomfortable to see them shipped with men)" is a true statement but people didn't need to attack others over it. not liking a bi headcanon isn't biphobic unless you're actually being biphobic about it yknow? luckily it calmed down after a while but now you get jumped for not shipping m/f which leads us straight back to the statement about an and kohane. gbr the situation with vbs shipping nowadays is much worse than the situation when i first joined, obviously partially bc of the massive increase in fandom size but mainly because people are spewing actual homophobic rhetoric over akty ankh (someone literally tried to claim heterophobia was real bc of people not liking m/f vbs a couple months ago. actually this has happened multiple times).

AND YES GOD THIS FANDOM'S APPROACH TO BI HEADCANONS IS SO FUCKING ANNOYING. Like people only use it as a way to make m/f ships more queer and try to 1 up people with it because oh yes male/female couple are not the norm at all and they're so cool and different and if you add a bi/pan hc on top of that it makes you more progressive (/s). HCing a character as bi does not give you cool points and the fact that so many people only do it for m/f ships pisses me off to no end because people treat it like Straight 2 when bi people can be in m/m and f/f relationships. People can hc whatever they want ofc but it's so obvious sometimes that people are only using bi hcs as a way to quickly round off their hcs for every character so they can multiship or justify their m/f ships as queer and at that point I'd rather they just hc'd them as straight because I don't like seeing my identity used solely for the purpose of making a ship more queer because someone doesn't want their m/f to be a hetship.

[tarobytez]

disability in the Six Of Crows Duology; an analysis of Kaz Brekker, Wylan Van Eck, and the fandom’s treatment of them.

****Note: I originally wrote this for a tiktok series, which im still going to do, but i wanted to post here as well bc tumblr is major contributor to what im going to talk about

CW: ableism, filicide, abuse

In the Six of Crows duology, Leigh Bardugo delicately subverts and melds harmful disability tropes into her narrative, unpacking them in a way that I, as a disabled person, found immensely refreshing and…. just brilliant. 

But what did you all do with that? Well, you fucked it up. Instead of critically looking at the characters, y’all just chose to be ableist. 

For the next few videos paragraphs im going to unpack disability theory (largely the stuff surrounding media, for obvious reasons) and how it relates to Six Of Crows and the characterization of Kaz Brekker and Wylan Van Eck, then how, despite their brilliant writing, y’all completely overlooked the actual text and continuously revert them to ableist cariactures.

Disclaimer: 1. Shocker - i am disabled. I have also extensively researched disability theory and am very active in the disabled community. Basically, I know my shit. 2. im going to be mad in these videos this analysis. Because the way y’all have been acting has been going on for a long ass time and im fuckin sick of it. I don’t give a shit about non-disabled feelings, die mad

Firstly, I’m going to discuss Kaz, his play on the stereotypical “mean cripple” trope and how Bardugo subverts it, his cane, and disabled rage. Then, I am going to discuss Wylan, the “inspiration porn” stereotype, caregivers / parents, and the social model of disability. Finally, I will then explain the problems in the fandom from my perspective as a disabled person, largely when it comes to wylan, bc yall cant leave that boy tf alone.

Kaz Brekker

Think of a character who uses a cane (obviously not Kaz). Now, are they evil, dubiously moral, or just an asshole in general? Because nearly example I can think of is: whether it be Lots’O from Toy Story, Lucius Malfoy, or even Scrooge and Mr.Gold from Once Upon A Time all have canes (the last two even having their canes appear less and less as they become better people)

The mean/evil cripple trope is far more common than you would think. Villains with different bodies are confined to the role of “evil”. To quote TV Tropes, who I think did a brilliant job on explaining it “The first is rooted in eugenics-based ideas linking disability or other physical deformities with a "natural" predisposition towards madness, criminality, vice, etc. The Rule of Symbolism is often at work here, since a "crippled" body can be used to represent a "crippled" soul — and indeed, a disabled villain is usually put in contrast to a morally upright and physically "perfect" hero. Whether consciously on the part of the writer or not, this can reinforce cultural ideas of disability making a person inherently inferior or negative, much in the same way the Sissy Villain or Depraved Homosexual trope associate sexual and gender nonconformity with evil. ”

Our introduction to Kaz affirms this notion of him being bad or morally bankrupt, with “Kaz Brekker didn’t need a reason”, etc. This mythologized version of himself, the “bastard of the barrel” actively fed into this misconception. But, as we the audience are privy to his inner thoughts, know that he is just a teenager like every other Crow. He is complex, his disability isn’t this tragic backstory, he just fell off a roof. It’s not his main motivation, nor does he curse revenge for making him a cripple - it is just another part of who he is. 

His cane (though the shows version fills me with rage but-) is an extension of Kaz - he fights with it, but it has a purpose. Another common thing in media is for canes to be simply accessories, but while Kaz’ cane is fashionable, it has purpose.

The quote “There was no part of him that was not broken, that had not healed wrong and there was no part of him that was not stronger for having been broken.” is so fucking powerful. Kaz does not want nor need a cure - its said in Crooked Kingdom that his leg could most likely be healed, but he chooses not to. Abled-bodied people tend to dismiss this thought as Kaz being stubborn but it shows a reality of acceptance of his disability that is just, so refreshing.

In chapter 22 of SOC, we see disabled rage done right - when he is called a cripple by the Fjerdan inmate, Kaz is pissed - the important detail being that he is pissed at the Fjerdan, at society for ableism, not blaming it on being disabled or wishing he could be normal. He takes action, dislocating the asshole’s shoulder and proving to him, and to a lesser extent, himself, that he is just as capable as anyone else, not in spite of, but because he is disabled. And that is the point of Kaz, harking back to the line that “there was no part of him that was not stronger for having been broken”. 

I cried on numerous occasions while reading the SOC duology, but the parts I highlighted in this section especially so. I, as many other disabled people do, have had a long and tumultuous relationship with our disability/es, and for many still struggle. But Kaz Brekker gave me an empowered disabled character who accepts themselves, and that means the world to me. 

Keeping that in mind, I hope you can understand why it hurts so much to disabled people when you either erase Kaz’s disability (whether through cosplay or fanfiction), or portray him as a “broken boy uwu”, especially implying that he would want a cure. That flies in the face of canon and is inherently fucking ableist. (if u think im mad wait until the next section)

Next, we have Wylan.  

Oh fucking boy. 

I love Wylan so fucking much, and y’all just do not seem to understand his character? Like at all? Since this is disability-centric, I’m not going to discuss how the intersection of his queerness also contributes to these issues, but trust me when I say it’s a contributing factor to what i'm going to say.

Wylan, motherfucking Van Eck. If you ableist pricks don’t take ur fucking hands off him right now im going to fight you. I see Wylan as a subversion another, and in my opinion more insidious stereotype pf disabled people - inspiration porn.

Cara Liebowitz in a 2015 article on the blog The Body Is Not An Apology explains in greater detail how inspiration porn is impactful in real life, but media is a major contributing factor to this reality. The technical definition is “the portrayal of people with disabilities as inspirational solely or in part on the basis of their disability” - but that does not cover it fully. 

Inspiration porn does lasting damage on the disabled community as it implies that disability is a negative that you need to “overcome” or “triumph” instead of something one can feel proud of. It exploits disabled people for the development of non-disabled people, and in media often the white male protagonist. Framing disability as inherently negative perpetuates ideals of eugenics and cures - see Autism $peaks’ “I Am Autism” ad. Inspiration porn is also incredibly patronizing as it implies that we cannot take care of ourselves, or do things like non-disabled people do. Because i stg some of you tend to think that we just sit around all day wishing we weren’t disabled. 

Another important theory ideal that is necessary when thinking about Wylan is the experience of feeling like a burden simply for needing help or accommodations. This is especially true when it comes to familial relationships, and internalized ableism.

The rhetoric that Wylan’s father drilled into his head, that he is “defective”, “a mistake”, and “needs to be corrected”, that he (Jan) was “cursed with a moron for a child” is a long held belief that disabled people hear relentlessly. And while many see Van Eck’s attempted murder of Wylan as “preposturous” and overall something that you would never think happens today - filicide (a parent murdering their child) is more common than you would like to believe. Without even mentioning the countless and often unreported deaths of disabled people due to lack of / insufficient / neglectful medical care, in a study on children who died from the result of household abuse, 40 of 42 of them (95%) were diagnosed with disabilities. Van Eck is not some caricature of ableist ideals - he is a real reflection on how many people and family members view disability. 

Circling back to how Wylan unpacks the inspiration porn trope - he is 3 dimensional, he is not only used to develop the other characters, he is just *chefs kiss* Leigh, imo, put so much love and care into the creation of Wylan and his story and character growth that is representative of a larger feeling in the disabled community. 

That being said, what you non-disabled motherfuckers have done to him.

The “haha Wylan can’t read” jokes aren’t and were not funny. Y’all literally boiled down everything Wylan is to him being dyslexic. And it’s like,,,, the only thing you can say about him. You ignore every other part of him other than his disability, and then mock him for it. There’s so much you can say about Wylan - simping for Jesper, being band kid and playing the fuckin flute, literally anything else. But no, you just chose to mock his disability, excellent fucking job!

Next up on “ableds stfu” - infantilization! y’all are so fucking condescending to Wylan, and treat him like a fucking toddler. And while partly it is due to his sexuality i think a larger portion is him being disabled. Its in the same vein of people who think that Wylan and Jesper are romantically one sided, and that Jesper only kind of liked Wylan, despite the canon evidence of him loving Wylan just as much. You all view him as a “smol bean”, who needs protecting, and care, when Wylan is the opposite of that. He is a fucking demolitions expert who suggested waking up sleeping men to kill them - what about that says “uwu”. You are treating Wylan as a burden to Jesper and the other Crows when he is an immensely valuable, fully autonomous disabled person - you all just view him as damaged. 

And before I get a comment saying that “uhhh Wylan isn’t real why do you care” while Wylan may not be real, how you all view him and treat him has real fucking impacts and informs how you treat people like me. If someone called me an “uwu baby boy” they’d get a fist square in the fucking jaw. Fiction informs how we perceive the world and y’all are making it super fucking clear how you see disabled people. 

Finally, I wanted to talk about how the social model of disability is portrayed through Wylan. For those who are unaware, the social model of disability contrasts the medical model, that views the disability itself as the problem, that needs to be cured, whereas the social model essentially boils down to creating an accommodating society, where disability acceptance and pride is the goal. And we see this with Wylan - he is able to manage his father’s estate, with Jesper’s assistance to help him read documents. And this is not out of pity or charity, but an act of love. It is not portrayed as this almighty act for Jesper to play saviour, just a given, which is incredibly important to show, especially for someone who has been abused by family for his disability like Wylan, that he is accepted. 

Yet, I still see people hold up Jesper on a pedestal for “putting up with” Wylan, as if loving a disabled person deserves a fucking pat on the back. It’s genuinely exhausting trying to engage with a work I love so much with a fandom that thinks so little of me and my community. It fucking shows. 

Overall, Leigh Bardugo as a disabled person wrote two incredibly meticulous and empowered disabled characters, and due to either lack of reading comprehension, ableism, or a quirky mix of both, the fandom has ignored canon and the experiences of disabled people for…. shits and giggles i guess. And yes, there are issues with the Grishaverse and disability representation - while I haven’t finished them yet so I do not have an opinion on it, people have been discussing issues in the KOS duology with ableist ideals. This mini series was no way indicative of the entire disabled experience, nor does it represent my entire view on the representation as a whole. These things need to be met critically in our community, and talked about with disabled voices at the forefront. For example, the limited perspective we get of Wylan and Kaz being both white men, does not account for a large portion of the disabled community and the intersection of multiple identities.

All-in-all, Critique media, but do not forget to also critique fandom spaces. Alternatively, just shut the fuck up :)

happy fucking disability pride month, ig

[esther-dot]

I can’t imagine caring about Jon and being happy that he was with her.

I'm convinced they don't. I was actually surprised (and happy!) to see in that post you linked there were at least some Dany stans who see Ygritte as we do. Because there was a recent post saying something along the lines of "Jonsas are so threatened by every women Jon likes that they constantly badmouth them. They say Ygritte was a rapist and Dany was abusive, or she is a crazy tyrant that's bound to be an enemy to Sansa bc they are jealous blahblahblah." (Can tumblr pull its shit together? Just because a post is tagged with "Daenerys Targaryen" and "anti Jonsa" doesn't mean it should show up in "anti Daenerys Targaryen" ugh!) Jonerys is a show thing and they can deny all they want but Dany was abusive in it, even non-Jonsas -who are not high up in Dany's ass- saw that. And she is coming to invade and subjugate, it's not just Sansa, she is an antagonist to the Starks as a whole. (Oh how they convinced themselves that Jon will have no problems with someone who calls Ned a usurper's dog and cheered at his death. 😬) Ygritte was sexually coercive in the show but I think most people ignore that because they were both adults, we aren't in Jon's head and Jon seems to be enjoying himself. But in the book on top of being abusive and sexually coercive, she is an adult woman trying to get on with a teenager. It is without a doubt rape. How can someone call themselves a Jon stan (idk if that specific poster were, I saw the post, skimread it and blocked) and ignore all that I would never know. I'm used to them ignoring Sansa's abuse and want Sansa to be with her abusers just to shit on her and piss off Sansa stans/Jonsas. But seeing them ignoring Jon's abuse and trauma just to bitch about us only confirmed for me what I already suspect: They don't care about Jon, they don't like Jon. They like the idea of Jon, the main guy falling for their fave, the Jon Targaryen, the hero for their heroine. They couldn't care less about asoiaf!Jon, his well-being, what he likes, what he wants, who he essentially is, who he wants to be. (It also once again showcased their poor reading comprehension skills. I know, I know we should all get used to it by now, but it's always surprising how bad they are at it.)

The rest of the fandom can say whatever they want about us, but what I ship has nothing to do with how I view her. Ygritte would still be awful even if Jon and Sansa never reunite in the books. The fact that this is true:

“she is an adult woman trying to get on with a teenager” 

and their response is that we’re “threatened” by her somehow? I get having a genuine problem with the fauxcest of Jonsa, but you can’t act like it’s better to ship a sexual predator with her victim. The fact that we have to say that about so many ships in this fandom...

There’s this weird idea that we all have to uncritically like certain characters and if we don’t it’s because of a ship that I don’t get. It just seems like a convenient way to shame people into shutting up about certain aspects of the story. The discussion about Dany is about the author’s intent and being that the Dark Dany theories have been talked about for a decade based on book evidence by people who are likely unfamiliar with shipping as a concept, so it’s silly to act like character analysis that is anything but flattering must be because of a ship. We’re allowed to hold two thoughts in our head at once. They need to get over it.

When we talked about the show and said that Sansa would defy Dany, we were thinking of their interaction being influenced by their political goals. The people who assume they’ll get along are saying that the Starks should just ignore the wrongs they suffered at the hands of the Targaryens and what their people sacrificed when they fought to overthrow them. Because that’s the thing. It doesn’t matter if Sansa met Dany and realized they have some shared life experiences, that they both love stories, and felt some understanding or sympathy for her. The Starks will return to power in the North and they owe their people their loyalty. They must consider what is best for the North, and why should the North be ruled by the Targaryens again? Why does Dany deserve the fucking throne and they don’t deserve their freedom? There are mitigating circumstances of course. War is awful. Choosing to not fight, accepting an alliance or bending the knee might be the responsible thing to do for the sake of their people, especially with the threat of the Others. But, I resent that all these people who hate Sansa for sexist reasons immediately commenced a fauxfeminist campaign about how Sansa should have been welcoming to Dany in the show. I do not understand, will never adopt, this widespread belief in Dany’s right to rule and Sansa’s duty to be subservient. Just because they’re girls doesn’t mean they should abandon their goals. 

Also, what the hell are we jealous of? Sansa fans like Sansa. We like that she enjoys traditionally feminine things, her innocence, her goodness, her kindness. We like her strength and resilience when there is seemingly no hope. We like her subtle rebellion. No Sansa fan wants her to be like Dany. We are very happy with who she is. 

As for the abomination, I get why people read ASOIAF and think that Dany and Jon will have a romantic/sexual relationship. We can argue all day about the foreshadowing and what its true meaning is, but the expectation makes sense because it’s so tropey. Their families are set against each other and yet, with a threat looming (the Others), the idea that they’d defy that for some enemies to lovers scenario/star crossed lovers drama makes sense in an abstract way. The problem is, they aren’t caricatures, they have values and goals, and you’d have to compromise all of that to make the relationship work which is exactly what the show did. 

People say Jonsas like fairytales as a way to say of course we will get Jxnerys in the books and we’re silly for wanting something that has an upside, but there is nothing cutesy about people who think they’re half siblings falling in love. On the other hand, it is cliche in the worst way to reverse everything about who characters are, kill their inner life, for the sole purpose of a sex scene. Cuz, that’s what that ship boiled down to. There was no affection, no meeting of souls, just shitty shitty bang bang, threats, and murder. Sorry. Getting ranty...

Anyway, I do think there’s a weird dismissal of Jon as he is, just as you say, and this part, “who he wants to be” is so important because that’s what matters. He even mentions that Ygritte wanted him to be one thing, Stannis another, and he had to decide for himself what it was that he wanted. The kid vehemently denies that he turned his cloak. He has so much turmoil over Stannis’s offer, what it would mean for him, what it would require, “To claim his father’s castle, he must turn against his father’s gods.”

I don’t see how you read this kid struggling with his desires and fears and guilt and think there is any chance he’s turning against the Starks. Or, if for some reason you conclude Martin plans to do that, deny that the fallout would be the complete annihilation of his ability to ever be at peace with himself. 

Art is intended to resonate with the audience and our experiences, likes, dislikes, beliefs, make us each respond to different characters/lines/ideas in unique ways. I try to remind myself that it is good we all find things personally meaningful in this story and that we do not need to agree, but all the same, sometimes I think I’ve never met the characters the rest of the fandom talks about.

[spade-riddles]

"Adjusting Expectations" Post

This submission received a lot of responses and 120 notes, so I thought I would compile the comments here.

Anonymous said:

Adjusting expectations anon was so good. If their timetables are right and we do just need to be patient a little longer, can Kaylor please send us a sign? I guess it would be too loud to slip "adjusting expectations" into social media posts, but maybe they could both do something with playing cards? To show they are card sharks right now but they'll find their way home eventually? That would reassure people. And it would fly under the radar.

casuallycruel131313 said:

I agree with a lot of this but I think the main issue right now is that moral and ethical lines have been crossed and there's no coming back from that. In these post-Trumpian insurrectionist times it's unfathomable that they could continue the Kushner narrative I no longer care if or when they come out, I enjoy the music and I'm happy to observe from a distance because I'm interested from a PR/marketing point of view but my opinion of T &K as people has changed irrevocably and I don't see how they can clean the tarnish off.

@theprologues said:

Agree with most of not all if this but I would like to say as a Kaylor the toe Grammy stunt didn’t phase me. I was not crushed by that by any means. I just shrugged and honestly expected it. It was the attributing Betty and exile to him during the LPSS in November that bummed me out and really made me go...really?

rockcrow20 said:

Have to say I also agree with most of this.

I no longer have any expectations on anything changing any time soon and have not been surprised by the recent events its to be expected after everything over the years really

Nothing has really changed (bearding narrative wise) since I fell down the rabbit hole in 2017 (except that great night in nashville 2018 rep)

Honestly I can't say I am as invested anymore about them ever coming out as I was.

I think the wb/Joe thing was the last moment for me and the continual kushner connection just troubles me like many others.

I mean my kaylor motto for awhile now has been hope for the best but expect disappointment.

Low expectations = limited feelings of disappointment.

original-cypher said:

@rockcrow20 the WB was a breaking point for so many. You are absolutely right. There are just so ma'y contradictions that feel like absolute whiplash. (I know I seem to have been the only one experiencing that with Gorgeous but... that was a big one for me, too) But like. You go on a whole PR campaign about speaking up and standing up for yourself. You say you're capable and tired of men trying to take ownership of your success and profit off of your name. And you credit you literal damn work to a bloke? Bitch, 'consistency'? Look it up. It grossed me out. It would have felt iffy if I believed they were real. But since I wasn't born yesterday it just sent me the message "this is how far I'm willing to sacrifice my principles to not be queer".

rockcrow20 said:

@original-cypher exactly why it bothered me and I know alot us so much. Such mixed messaging of being a strong fighting for your rights female and then oh hey let me attribute some of my best work to my pr boyfriend and the pr pics where she is walking behind all the time like 🙄 The Betty thing that was big one for me too!

rainbowdaisy13 said:

This write up and the comments are spot on. I don’t have much to add other than like @original-cypher said, Miss Americana is tainted for me now and seems like at the very least, it was released too soon in the plan. I get we think they have had to pivot but man, that doc, and including her literally saying “gay rights make me me” at the end was such a false flag. To see her wax poetic about not taking shit from men anymore and then see her do the same old hetero weak woman song and dance routine with the WB shit for albums that are of her genius mind has been so disappointing. I still believe Kaylor is real and I hope they get a chance to show the world that. Karlie posting that cardigan pic in the woods before the folklore release cemented for me they are still together. Adding a baby makes me feel all kind of weird ethical things but I hope I live long enough to see it play out and wear my I Told You So shirt 😁

@kellykaylor said:

agree with your post... I dont care about toe stunts but what really pissed me of was hetwashing betty 🤮! beautiful post tho anon!!

roameroo said:

Totally agree with these all comments especially the strong messaging of MA only to turn around & pull that WB = my "bf" crap. I was disheartened by her mentioning him at the Grammy's only bc he's getting credit for sh*t he doesn't/didn't do. That is what irks me the most about this, giving him credit for her life's work.

always-the-last-word said:

Can I throw my pennies in the pool ?? Taylor will put out the big three first Fearless, RED then 1989 that should bring us to about August. This is where the excitement should begin. If Taylor preps and waits for National Coming Out day it's a no lose for her. Lover her money making machine will go through the roof !! If things go bad or good in the public eye she'll have REPUTATION Taylor's Version ready to release. It will be epic and she'll own it and be FREE.

@karlie-what-you-want said:

always-the-last-word I like this take a lot! I try not to be too optimistic but if she wanted to come out sooner rather than later, I think this plan would satisfy both business and PR needs (at least on Taylor’s end). Remains to be seen how Tay will help Karlie dig her way out of the mess they made together regarding the K*shners.

always-the-last-word said:

Always remember that Taylor has a PLAN. Some of her plans are year's old (easter eggs). Taylor's one and only LOVE is her music, everything else comes second. If KK wants to change and be with her full time she'll make moves around the same time frame. That's if she chooses to. In any event Tay will be open and own all her music. I've seen this film before and WE might not like the ending.

chosetherose said:

I’ve been going back and forth for a day trying to figure out what I wanted to say when I reblogged this post. I’m tired. I’m frustrated. I understand I’m owed nothing by Taylor or Karlie. I understand that circumstances out of their control have caused the girls to pivot over and over again.

But, the root of my frustration in the past months stems not from me battling with the trivial (e.g. pap walks, etc.) but with my personal principles. I fiercely believe credit should be given where it is earned and I uphold this in my career regularly. To see Taylor crediting Toe with her art was deeply disappointing. Watch the 1989 and folklore acceptance speeches back to back and tell me it doesn’t upset you. I believe the K******s have blood on their hands and that their actions during the pandemic have killed people. To see Karlie still associating with one of them disgusts me.

I can’t help but think back in frustration - Would you really fall from grace to touch her face? (And in the brilliant words of @9w1ft) But would you die for her in public? I go back and forth feeling like questions like this aren’t fair at all and thinking they are sort of valid. At this point, it sort of feels like Taylor would only fall from grace for her lover if all the stars and facets of her life aligned perfectly. But perfection like this does not happen. Such is life. So why am I here?

I do question why Spade left certain messages in their final days. I am still holding hope a fervent revolution exonerates everyone. I so desperately want Taylor to regain control of her masters or re-records. Maybe this is the plan they thought was best with multiple goals in mind (re-records, having a family, coming out of the closet one day etc). I’m trying to remain patient because Spade told us to trust her endless yearning. But WOW it is asking a lot of us at this point.

Anonymous said:

Despite being a pragmatist kaylor and oftentimes getting into arguments with fellow optimistic kaylors (owner of this blog included) I think it's quite unfair -at this point- to say to the optimists who have patiently sat through the worst kind of stunts with the most terrible kind of people (yes I'm talking about the Kushner's friend group too) that they should have seen it coming. Besides, if it weren't for the optimists we the cynicals would have burned this fandom down by now.

Anonymous said:

Even if we ignore that an insurrection happened partially because of the family karlie's still working for and getting paid from, she literally said before the pregnancy debacle unfolded that j*sh was her last client while talking about cutting hair and doing a cutting gesture. How should we have interpreted that? 😤That a year later she would be more stuck with the Kushners than ever? We don't wake up on day and decide to have unrealistic expectations. She feeds into them. 😠

Anonymous said:

I have no expectation of Taylor coming out anymore. Zero. None. I have no expectation of her dropping Toe or even of Kaylor publicly reuniting. It doesn't even matter that much anymore. But I - do - expect 1 thing. Karlie to drop and completely dissociate herself from the Kushners and this has nothing to do with kaylor. It was everything to do with me being unable to support a person who willfully assists (now using her baby too) and receives money from a family that has made so many suffer.

Anonymous said:

A quick word from an ex-kaylor (who will never become an anti). A year ago, when the Trumps were still in power and untouchable and there was no baby, I was excusing and turning a blind eye to many things Karlie did for the K*shners. Even that dinner in September. I had also made peace with the truth never being revealed. But a year later the Trumps are gone, Karlie is still on full stunting mode now with a baby in the mix, a baby that is already being used by the Kushners, and I've really run out of excuses. Now the only thing that could possibly keep me on board is if I knew there was a good chance that the full truth would come out, so that Karlie's inexplicable and honestly borderline immoral actions could eventually make sense. But as your sub said, this is an unrealistic expectation, thus I became an ex-kaylor and I'm not planning to come back even when they reunite. 😕

Anonymous said:

What baffles me is that Taylor has explicitly expressed her regret about not giving her lover the credit she deserves and her doubt whether fame is worth hiding her true love: "when I walked up to the podium, I think I forgot to say your name", "what's a lifetime of achievement, if I pushed you to the edge". But yet again she didn't do anything to change this. I didn't expect her to acknowledge Karlie, but a nod or at least not falsely crediting her beard would be a good start.

Anonymous said:

1🙁 Let me chime in re: "expectations". I'm one of the kaylors who ever since the pregnancy reveal was trying to tell everyone there's NO way she was gonna dump him soon after birth let alone before that. It would bring too much unnecessary attention and Jerk would have never agreed to something that would make him look like a bad guy/husband. For the exact same reasons, I was also saying there's no way he wasn't going to post about the baby. All the above against the popular opinion back then.

2🙁 So I agree that the day of the birth post was known to T, not the timing though. Simply bc Kushner-leaning outlets made sure to note that detail. If they wanted it to go unnoticed, why draw attention to it? That being said, kaylors would have been more patient with this mess, if Karlie hadn't gone overboard with her freedom "smoke signals" last summer and Tay's "insiders" hadn't been insinuating that the end is VERY near. Both of them SHOULD have known by then how we would react to these.

3🙁 So it's natural that everyone feels played and has no patience for any more bullshit. Another sore point is how Jerk AND the Kushner-Trump klan monopolize the baby news. This isn't just to make it realistic, it's an abuse of Kaylor's baby's name to garner good pr for the worst family in America, with Karlie's blessing. In order for her marriage and split to appear realistic she's putting a LIFETIME burden on her child's back. Unless you believe she's eventually gonna say Jerk isn't the dad.

4🙁 So "we’re in a position we should realistically have been able to see coming". But we did see it coming, that why some made these extreme scenarios, bc this is the worst possible outcome. "Good people try to make it work, even in bad relationships." Ultimately this isn't just a "bad rs". It's a horrific association that should have been resolved ages ago, not one to bring your child into, doom it to suffer a similar fate, and expect people to sit idly and watch. That's what frustrates most.

[thedreadvampy]

Tbf on the Martin thing while i know that's not what you meant the reason alot of people got pussy was cause it was right about the time they'd been an issue with acephobia in the greater fandom already and the way you phrased it tbh did really feel like you were equating ace!Martin and Martin being infantilised in a post about martin being infantilised being bad. Basically it kinda sounded like you didn't want people hc-ing Martin as ace because it was infantilising (which also then linked back to some shit that happened with ace discourse) and the post blew up a bit and that mixed with you Knowing Jonny and you coming off pretty aggro or not wanting to give a straight answer on what you meant (or that's what people felt you were doing) yeah that's why that went that way.

Tbf I'm not really interested in relitigating who was right and who was wrong in that particular argument, I feel the way I feel and other people feel differently and I think everything's pretty much already been said like six months ago. I asked because I couldn't remember what happened not because I was longing for the days of pointless arguing.

however because I can't resist digging myself deeper Ever I'll relitigate it anyway under the cut

I have little to no involvement with the wider fandom so I'm not sure how their acephobia was on me in any way

I could have worded the post better but I maintain it takes a pretty bad faith reading of the post to think that my problem is with ace Martin hcs when I specifically said both in the post and the tags and further clarifications that I was talking about the way that people desexualise fat, queer and abused people OUTSIDE of ace hcs

I have said about a zillion times that me knowing Jonny doesn't mean I know shit about TMA and that we've literally never talked about it. which being the case it is pure wild that people think it's a reasonable reason to treat me like some sort of voice of authority.

I have also said about a billion times and will say again that people aren't in fact entitled to demand a full accounting of a stranger's opinions out of the blue. like it is, in fact, confusing and surprising to me the degree to which people took personally the idea that a stranger could be annoyed or disinterested in discussing something that they wanted them to talk about. that's why I keep thinking there must be more to the anger about me from certain users. but like nah apparently 90% of the reason people get pissed off at me is either a) Using The Wrong Tone To Talk To Myself On My Personal Blog which they interpret as attacking them personally or b) Not Being Constantly Available On Demand To Answer And Reanswer Questions That Shouldn't Even Be Questions In The Full Knowledge That Any Poor Wording Will Be Treated As Malice. Sorry, my tone's getting a tad aggro again, I do recognise that, but I find it really frustrating to have it consistently treated as deeply inherently suspicious and/or malicious to not immediately rattle off a perfect answer to "questions" which are fairly thinly veiled traps. like there is no good answer to "what's your opinion on ace people." "ace people exist" is not a matter of opinion and I could just say "ace people are valid and good and fine uwu" which is like. True. but also utterly trite and validates the idea that point in a random stranger's inbox to grill them about Which Minorities Are Valid Uwu is in any way an acceptable or boundaried way to behave. Which I don't believe it is, and treating it as if it's a totally normal and fine thing to do just to get people to leave me alone would be pretty unprincipled imo.

Like I say I've said all this before, I'm just retreading old ground. But in terms of the Why Did This Blow Up, yeah I hear what you're saying but even trying to step back from my own experience and view this from outside, I'm still pretty surprised that a kind of shittily worded post at a bad time (from a blog that was pretty detached from the wider TMA fandom) followed by an Insufficient Disavowal of extremely nebulous accusations of acephobia, ended up being such a big thing.

Like literally. the majority of the messages I was getting were i n c r e d i b l y broad and vague. they said things like "what's your opinion on ace people" and "are you an aphobe" and I repeatedly answered them saying "I mean ace people exist and are my friends and comrades, what's the question?"

And I hope that when people raised specific issues about my actual conduct I answered them. I certainly tried to, to the best of my abilities - like I got a bit defensive initially but I agreed that my wording in the Martin post was poor and I did my best to clarify my intention (which had been to say "IF WE ASSUME THAT Martin isn't aroace," which I thought was a fair assumption when from context I was talking about a Martin being written in sexual or romantic relationships, but which I phrased as "Martin isn't [list of items including aroace]" bc as with most of my posts I wrote it in one go without reading it back). I kept saying that if people were specific about what was wrong with my conduct specifically, what they wanted explained and what they wanted me to change, I was happy to discuss that, but I wasn't happy to give some sort of Simple Definitive Answer to broad questions that were not mine to speak authoritatively on and which I often was like "I can't even begin to tell you my opinions on the answer until we unpick the question a LOT" (like. yes I could say honestly that I believe that ace/aro people are queer as a topline answer but if we go any deeper than that then we need to unpick what queerness is, what aro/aceness is, what context we're talking in, what is meant by queer spaces, etc etc and it's not something I would feel honest giving a yes/no answer to when a lot of people mean a lot of different things by the question, some of which I agree with and some of which I don't.) And it's not helped by the fact that when I have tried to answer questions in a way which feels honest, which inevitably gets long and ramble bc that's how my brain works, people have repeatedly got really hostile not because of what I say but because I've written an answer longer than "yes I fully agree with every possible permission of your point." like literally I have had people rant about how I'm being defensive or dodging the question when a) they haven't actually read my answer by their own admission and b) I'm literally. answering the question. it's fundamentally baffling to me that giving a short unnuanced answer with the intent of getting someone off your back is seen as less "dodging the question" than giving a paragraphs-long thoughtful and inconclusive answer. like this isn't a fucking debate. I'm not here to win an argument. I'm here to think about what I believe and why, and sometimes an honest answer is neither simple or conclusive.

idk man this post is actively unhelpful to everyone but me, but while I don't WANT to relitigate this every time I mention it I DO want to be absolutely clear that I have thought about all these things at length. some things were my fuckup, some things I stand by, but I still think it ended up with a response wildly disproportionate to the actual mistakes I made.

(which were there. evidently. but it seems like a very strange and spiralling way to react to "person who words things ambiguously and doesn't always give immediate clear responses to broad questions about complex issues")

[redxblueihateloveyou]

definitely not me laughing at people just now realizing how dumb this fandom is watching this unravel with a popcorn. 

sad thing is.. with this low level of braincells I think someone will actually do this and then its gonna be the first time, when the fandom stupidity will lead to a real life consequences, but hell, maybe this will teach someone something idk.

definitely not me laughing at one of the directors saying that I know everyone is on R and L, but I hope you’ll focus on the relationships of the adults in this anime, cause they’re much more complicated xD I fell.

definitely me crying at the fact that ppl these days don’t even get what the creators are trying to say with their creation and twisting it to the unholy level. like I understand that everything is up to the interpretation, but it’s like if 90% of the readers would’ve interpret that “Pride and Prejudice” is a story about a poor misunderstood Wickham, abused by Darcy bc the ugly asshole didn’t get that the poor man needed help with his compalsive gambling disorder lmao

just being in the literature/movies analyses since forever, I find it absolutely fascinating how when it comes to books and movies 90% of ppl usually get okay, what the creator was trying to convey, at least like even some do not get the depth, they at least get the main message and don’t twist it to this extent, but when it comes to anime, it’s not the first time I’m watching something, make my own assumptions, then happily go to read fandom posts and surprisingly find that most of them are like a complete opposite AND mocking these tiny bunch, who have the perfectly adequate point of view. first time it happened I was like “am I dumb or smth”, but then the creators speak up and I’m like “ah so I did understand the message correctly”. it’s just most of the viewers didn’t. 

it’s like when I saw those messages about how many think that Seirin are the main characters/team of KNB and Haru and Makoto is what Free! revolves around. I was like “how... did.. u even come to this conclusion if we watched the same thing?” and it’s not like those fans are even trying to present it as “this is just an extraordinary opinion of mine”, no, they’re sincerely going at it on the social media as “that’s what the creator was trying to say” and I’m like “no, I’m like 99% sure he didn’t try to say that” lmao and then surprise surprise... guess who’s right. 

the only question is why really. is it bc the young generation is a huge part of anime fandoms and bc they don’t want to read anymore and thus can’t develop the basic skills of character analysis? 

and before you yell at me, my mom is a school teacher and yeah, they don’t want your books anymore (I still won’t say all, but like HE MAJORITY for sure) and once during the pandemic they asked me to substitute their english online class and I asked them about their favorite fiction characters (bc I legit thought it was a the easiest way to bond and talk) and one said Thanos (...), one said Harry Potter, but when I asked “why”, thinking to hear smth like bc he’s brave or a great friend or smth, what I heard was “he does magic” I was like “well, everyone does magic there, why else”, and you’re in the 4th grade you dumb fuck (lmao that’s not, I didn’t say that xD), the third one said “Charlie from the chocolate factory” and when I asked why is that, he said “bc it’s sweet and tasty” and then I just wanted to shoot myself, cause I didn’t know already what to say... is the movie tasty? we were talking about characters tho? I was reading Jules Verne at your age and I’m not even that old, I’m 25. 

then I remember, that most of them are on twitter/tiktok/youtube, etc. and get scared and then I read some comments on MAL or smth and get even more scared. and look at the fucking ratings, I’m in shock (istg if *** score reaches the mdzs or natsume’s level, the world is officially dumb af).

anyways, back to the point. not notice the character/main conflict that drives the whole plot is truly sensational really. like that’s a whole new level of dumbness. I mean, I thought I’ve seen everything since Free! and Voltron shananigans, but heck I was so wrong. also I’d help with the good roasting, cause I’m real good at it, when needed, but I’m just not really invested enough to get into the middle of this, cause so far I don’t find the characters, who are worthy of such effort (and I think I won’t haha). but thanks for sending me this, it was satisfying to see, that at least the VAs and creators are great and that the fandom got to expose their stupidity. 

bc I was just DMing @heavensweetheart​ how I’ve lost my faith in humanity and then someone is like “did you see this tweet?” and I’m like “no, no, and I don’t wanna pls” and then my sister is like “I’ve this AOT fact video...” and @tododeku-or-bust​ is like “you wanna hear smth form the JC part of the mdzs fandom” and I’m like “I know it’s a free contry, but there’s no way this is legal” lmao. so I’m really thankful that there are still people surrounding me, who understand that this is in fact laughable, that such things even exist. like I’m not happy to find out that those exist, but at least it’s soothing that I have someone I can vent my frustration with, cause sometimes you just need someone to be like “yeah, you’re not wrong, this is in fact dumb and you’re definitely not in the wrong, even when the majority says you are.” and I finally understand what Wei Wuxain was feeling trying to go against of a horde of absolute hypocrites.

also like someone pls make a law, when you can’t enter a fandom if your IQ is less than 3, cause going to some fandom tags is like:

and this fandom is offically became “I’m embarrased to be a part of it” one. and “is it even worth it?” lmao. like I’ll still wait for the last 2 episodes, but I think the answer is actually a “no”. bc if you’re sane, it’s gonna be painful af to read the things the majority of this fandom say, that’s all. and my god, it can piss you off, even when you’re like “I’ve been there before, it okay”, cause it’s damn hard, when you just have a very low tolerance for bullshit.

[synthmusic91]

thoughts? kjfhlkjdfh asking bc i rb'd the original post from u a bit ago because i agreed w/ original poster but i just saw this rb of it and wanted to know what u thought. ciaran(.)tumblr(.)com /post/652413157345820673/there-is-a-genre-of-posts-thats-obsessed-with-the

well first of all i hope this isn't a bait ask. this reply really doesn't deserve the time and effort i put into refuting it, but there was a point in time when i was emotionally confused by these..."arguments", so whoever u are, anon, i hope this is helpful. i also recommend some distance - literally, "go outside and touch grass", which is a lot more difficult than it sounds, but it needs to be done. anyway, here's my "analysis":

for context, here's what the post in question said:

and the tags:

at a high level, we can see that what ciaran is saying doesn't really respond to what OP was talking about. for this reason, i'm not going to bring in much of what OP said, because it's uncontested in this context, and look at ciaran's reply. i'll try to break this up...

EDIT: i had a long-ass response here, but then i realized it was dumb because the source material is dumb. i cut out most of it, but here are the highlights.

"there is a genre of posts that’s obsessed with the notion that fandom is something much larger, more prevalent, and more able to affect the way media is processed and consumed, than it actually is in reality."

so, as we can all see on tiktok and, indeed, on the electronic lore olympus billboard that takes up a side of a literal skyscraper, fandom is no longer the niche thing that "fandom olds" make it out to be. also, we can't ignore how many (white) fandom players go on and work in the industry (cassandra clare, whoever wrote 50 shades, man idk much of anything so there's probably many more). so this comment is sort of myopic. and since this is what characterizes the rest of the reply, well...it's not great.

also don't look up lore olympus; it's basically a dd/////lg fanfic that happens to be one of the most popular series on the line webtoon app, which is rated for teens...and for $1 to the creator's patreon, you can view not sfw p*dophilic art, so. also obviously i didnt do that; there was a video essay about this. i can't find it though

"ironically but understandably, these posts are made by people who are so terminally fandom-poisoned that they ascribe phenomenal power to it, and think of it as some great evil that must be defeated (by making posts on tumblr, which is obviously a very influential thing to do)"

"fandom-poisoned" is such a nebulous term, especially since it appears to mean "has had some really significant, (in this context) bad experiences with fandom." this is, first of all, a huge assumption to make about a stranger, and second, not the own they think it is. i'm just going to link this post, and hopefully you can see how it relates.

anyway, the "making posts on tumblr is meaningless" is um...interesting, seeing as off the top of my head i can think of two very influential tumblr blogs that talk about really important issues, Gradient Lair and Red Light Politics. I don't know as much about Red Light Politics, but Gradient Lair is frequently cited by academics (not getting into academia nonsense now but... -_-). also, they sound more pissed that the original post did gain traction, but whatever. this paragraph doesn't really make sense, but nothing here does, because i wasn't given much to work with.

"...and then because these people have basically no imagination and unfailingly pick on others for their own faults, they project their own experiences on everyone they perceive as being more ‘in fandom’ than them,"

jesus christ. i'm going not say anything about the tone of this because i put too much effort into this for some rando to call me a cyberbully.

i think what they're thinking about is how there appear to be some "fandom critical" people who try to, holistically, "ruin everyone's good time" by "stirring up drama" about popular fandom artists/writers/whoever else idk. oftentimes these people will also make jokes about fandom whatever, seemingly picking on random people's interests.

however, if you look at the long history of fandom racism, fandom's normalization of p*dophilia, and even general fandom harassment, and then you look at fandom's visceral, unwarranted reaction to criticism regarding these things, you can quickly see that disillusionment towards fandom is entirely reasonable. as for the joking, well...this an oversimplification but not everyone needs to like what you like. it sounds like they just need to get over themself.

and go “You, a 27 year old queer blogger who is into [tv show/anime/movie] an embarrassing amount, are now going to be the face of Capitalism” with no self-reflection or critical thought given to how fucking cringe it is-"

so, i'm regretting putting so much effort into this because this is so fucking long and i have to analyze this nonsense...it feels like i'm back in my feminist thought class. nightmarish. but anyway, this seems to deal with- [CUT FOR LENGTH. nothing important was missed].

EDIT 2: actually here's a summary of what I had. it deserves better than to be a response to this nonsense, but first it detailed how this took 1. the op's post and 2. a comment that we don't even know if op agreed with and misinterpreted that, and threw quite a fit about this- and i hate to say this because this term is misused so often by redditors, but- strawman.

I then went on to discuss how, for example, PoC can uphold systems of white supremacy. while obviously no person of color is going to be the "face" of white supremacy, the discussion still needs to be had, especially within that group. similarly, while fandom constituents may not be the face of capitalism, there needs to be a discussion, within fandom, on how they support and are defined by capitalist (and other) systems.

it was really too good of a point to be making for this trash reply. I could go say more, but I'm still trying to stay on topic, unlike ciaran.

"to act like random people on the internet, end users with no influence over corporate decisions, are the ones personally responsible for the fact that late-stage capitalism has destroyed popular art and culture in an increasingly sordid attempt to make money."

we've been over the "no influence" bit - because in fact fans do have influence, especially since media creators are literally fans, etc etc. i'm tired of people acting like they have no power and using that as an excuse to support and perpetuate harmful, easily avoidable behavior.

also, to act like the nebulous system of late-stage capitalism is the only cause of bad media is ludicrous. first of all, someone has to make these so-called "corporate decisions", and the people making artistic decisions are, again, overwhelmingly members of "fandom." this comment is really trying to keep marvel trash and lore olympus-esque nonsense in the same atomic, indivisible category lest someone catches a whiff of nuance.

"the above post is a great example of this phenomenon because op admits freely that they only think fandom is destroying media because they have been spending more time in fandom and thus have an over-inflated sense of its importance in greater culture. posting your own Ls indeed."

i'm so tired. this person literally has 120 works on ao3 like...who is spending more time in fandom.

and the tags:

#i assure you that fandom has no bearing on my actual real life #and if it does on yours. then that is your problem #it's also a very funny problem to

now this is just egregiously tone deaf. you do not need to do more than a cursory google search to find a bottomless well of examples of fandom harassment, threats, doxxing, and violence, much of which is racially motivated. you can see why it would be bad to make fun of this. 

also the way that “fandom has no bearing on their actual real life“...120 fanfics on ao3. 120.

conclusion:

the reply clearly misinterprets of op's point, and as such, does not refute it. they responded to another issue altogether, which is that of the sanctity of their ~coping mechanism~ or whatever it is. their argument in this respect was, in my opinion, delusional and pathetic, especially given that they wrote it on someone else's unrelated post.

FINAL NOTE: i cut out lots of this because the reply went in so many different directions, so some stuff might not make sense. let me know if you have any questions.

[bookofmirth]

basically, they fucked up bc:

1. they made some comments ab mor that offended many bi women +were insensitive regarding what mor went through and called her "damaged goods"

2. thy said they don't give af who az ends up w as long as there's sex on page. and then said they only saw gwynriel as friends, but maybe they should just "bang it out". gwyn is a sex assault survivor that could barely be around men in book1 so that was kind of insensitive too. and they reduced her to az's fuck buddy.

3. they said elain should bang koshei and go dark and let az and lucien be gay together.

4. they also got many things wrong like saying nesta gets all the credit for hybern, and saying az told rhys elain is owed to her (rhys lit asked 'do u think u deserve her' and mf didn't answer bc he never feels he deserves anything).

5. they said 'elain can't have illyrian kids' (which might be false) therefore no azxelain and then gave a half assed apology bc they realized babys are not what makes a couple

6. tamlin apologists. they want him to bang elain too.

7. basically they want elain to bang everyone but lucien or azriel (they even ship her with ERIS!)

8. they really dgaf about lucien unless he's banging az either just them or in a 3some w elain.

twitter called them out and they got pissed. mf was 35 y/o fighting w 18y/os. so sad.

So I only watched maybe 10 minutes of their thing because i didn’t gaf and decided to catch up on Wandavision instead.

But I’m not sure why people are taking these two people’s word as gospel in the first place? It kinda indicates to me the larger problem - fans are so desperate for “evidence” that they take it in any form, especially as long as it fits their view of the books.

I can’t dispute what you’ve said here, but I also think it doesn’t matter? If I said that I wanted Elain to live as a priestess, so what? If I said I want luzriel to happen (which I have headcanoned! check my tags!) so what? If I want Az to go fuck Rhys, what does it matter? That is literally the point of fandom, and I think a lot of you have forgotten that. There is fanfiction, and headcanons, and fanon for a reason. 

This place has turned into “who is the most right about canon and canon is the only real pure thing” place, and it’s annoying af.

All I know for sure is that 1) they said they don’t ship Elain and Az anymore because they think he was being gross, and 2) they mentioned the Mor + Eris mating bond theory which they didn’t start! They did NOT say they ship Mor and Eris, so right away I know people are twisting their words at least a little bit. Then I started watching Wandavision so idk about the rest of it.

And the age thing lololol did you know most people in the fandom rn are in their 20s and 30s? I think the average age of people in my bookclub, who all came from sjm tumblr, is early 30s? Are people supposed to stop and check the age of people they are talking to? If you’re out in the wilds of the internet, you’re fair game. Sorry. If someone comes at me trying to twist my words or claim I did things I didn’t, I wouldn’t gaf how old or young they are. 

I’m not defending them because again, I only watched part of it and then didn’t care, but I think that everyone needs to get their priorities straight. Some rando fan (which yes, they are, unless they have an arc or a detailed outline from sjm, that’s what they are) making up random ass theories about a book should not get under everyone’s skin this way??? What the fuck 😅

tl;dr - idgaf what some random other people who aren’t my friends think about the series, and it troubles me that so many of y’all do.

[sunsetsover]

hello i know i’ve been gone for a couple of weeks and i disappeared without a trace and originally that was because ben’s deafness storyline was bringing back a lot of my own personal experiences that i dealt with when coming to terms with my disability and it was (and still is) really really hard to see what he’s going through and how shitty it is and how badly he’s handling it both because it genuinely is a tough thing to see but also because it reopens all these wounds and gives me anxiety and stresses me out bc reminds me of what i went through and what was easily the toughest and darkest part of my life and obviously that’s no fun to relive lmao

however at this point i’m just staying away bc every time i poke my head in to check what’s going on i’m seeing the most fucked up opinions and takes on the whole thing that it’s actually genuinely making me really angry and upset because the way some of you talk about ben’s disability and situation and specifically the way he’s handling this massive petrifying change in his life speaks volumes about how you view disabled people in real life. because yeah, this is a tv show and ben isn’t real, but things like this happen to people. it happened to ME. and guess what!! i did the exact same fucking thing ben’s doing!!! i isolated myself and felt miserable and got angry and acted out and did stupid shit and hurt the people that cared about!!! and i did that because i was terrified and suffering and hurting and angry!!!! and i’m fucking real!!! i’m a real person and i know for a fact i’m not the only person out there who’s dealt with this kind of thing and reacted in this kind of way. so yeah, you might be sitting behind your fucking keyboards saying all these things about ben being selfish or dramatic or unreasonable or whatever else and think it’s ok because ben’s not a real person but you forget that there are real disabled people reading this shit and potentially internalising those things and feeling like THEY have to deal with their situation in a certain way or that they can’t feel certain things because some able bodied dickhead on tumblr dot com feels like they’re entitled to give their shitty fucking input on how disabled people should react to or deal with their disability - and this apparently means we’re not allowed to break down or be upset or act out because that’s too dramatic!!! ben should just shut up and have his operation right!!!! he should just stop misbehaving and causing so much trouble because it’s inconvenient!!! it’s not fair on callum right!!!!!!

like for some reason some of you cannot see beyond the end of your fucking noses to see that this has absolutely NOTHING to do with callum!!!!!! what the fuck does callum have to do with the fact that ben is having a fucking break down!!!!! what does callum have to do with the fact that ben is scared and acting out in the only way he knows how because he’s desperate to prove he isn’t different and that nothing’s changed and that he can still do the things he’s always done!!!!! callum has so fucking little to do with what ben’s going through at the moment and yet some people cannot look at this horrible situation that ben’s dealing with through anything other than a ballum lens and it fucking REEKS

ben lost his fucking hearing, he’s isolated, he’s feels like he’s lost so much of his self, he’s angry, he’s scared, he’s upset, he’s petrified he’ll never hear his daughter’s voice again - his daughter who got hit by a fucking car because he couldn’t hear it and now he feels like he’ll never be able to look after her or keep her safe the way he should - and yes he’s acting out because of all of that!! that’s what happens when you can’t accept your disability!!! you’re determined to prove you can do what you could before no matter what it costs you!!! and yet i’ve seen MULTIPLE people reduce that to ‘well he shouldn’t do that because it’s unfair and inconvenient for callum’!!!!!!!!!! or ‘ben isn’t putting enough effort into his relationship with callum/thinking about callum’!!!! or ‘this is just angst porn that serves no purpose’!!!!!!!! do you not have a brain in your fucking head!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! his brother’s just died!!!!! he’s just become deaf!!!!!!! he can’t fucking hear!!!!!!!!!!! he might never hear again!!!!!!! and is facing major surgery that might not even work!!!!!!!!!!!!! like hello!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! of course he’s struggling and acting out!!!! the fact that so few of you seem to be able to comprehend what’s going on is genuinely worrying

the fact of the matter is that some of you are upset that you don’t have your able bodied ship being all cute and domestic anymore. YOU are the ones who feel inconvenienced or slighted, and you’re projecting that onto callum bc that’s how you can get away w saying this bullshit. bc - and i know this might come as a shock to some of you - when you care about and love someone, you support them when they’re going through such a difficult time. you try to be as understanding as you can. also just look at who callum is as a character. you think he wouldn’t understand ben’s behaviour rn??? like come on!! so maybe it’s YOU that has the problem. maybe it’s YOU that doesn’t like it bc ben’s struggling through this in an ugly (but COMPLETELY valid) way and that’s inconvenient for you bc, whether you’re even aware of it or not, being disabled is an inconvenience. disabled people are hard work. this is just how most able bodied people see disabled people. if you’re reading this and you’re able bodied, you’re not immune from this. you’re not special. like any other prejudice, it’s something you just subconsciously learn and you might not even be aware of. but i’m telling you as a disabled person, the way some of you are speaking abt ben/this storyline tells me everything i need to know about how you view disabled people. so maybe take a step back and ask yourself why you’re saying what you’re saying and why you may feel the way you feel regarding this particular sl. bc for a lot of you, whether you wanna admit it or not, the answer is ableism. 

i didn’t want to make this post bc i don’t LIKE being confrontational!! i wanna be polite and kind and fair!!! but some of you have to understand that when you’re saying some of this shit you’re basically disregarding/making light of/taking the piss out of disabled people and their experiences. maybe you’re not even aware you’re doing it, but that’s exactly what it is. that’s exactly what it comes across as, and that’s exactly what it feels like to read some of the things you post as a disabled person (and it’s not just me - i know for a fact this stuff is affecting other disabled people in this fandom too). it’s upsetting, it’s invalidating, it’s HUMILIATING. and i’m fortunate enough to be a point in my life where i’m at relative peace w my disability, but if this were 5 years ago?? you have no idea how reading some of this shit would have fucked with my head. so the fact that i know there are other disabled people out there reading this stuff and it’s affecting them is more important to me than not starting drama on tumblr dot com. their feelings mean too much to me for me to just sit here and not say anything bc i don’t wanna upset people. some of u need to be upset. it’s the only way you’re gonna learn.

literally all i’m asking is for you to think about the things you say before you post them. ask yourself why you feel a certain way about things. ask yourself if what you wanna say is potentially gonna hurt or upset or insult a disabled person who might be reading it. ask yourself if you just wanna say some bullshit abt ben bc you’re just mad callum isn’t getting more screentime. bc if the answer is yes i promise you your opinion is unhelpful, unneeded and unwanted. so maybe just u know. keep your mouth shut.

[thejudgingtrash]

I wanna hear the Dom/sub discourse!!! Also love ur blog :) (I personally am a proponent of dom percy just bc I like that idea but I’d love to hear yours!!! I didnt even know there was discourse!) love to hear your thoughts and again super cool blog!!!! :’)

* ALSO WOULD LIKE TO CLARIFY IF IT WASNT ALREADY ESTABLISHED BUT ONLLLLLLY IF THEY ARE LIKE IN THEIR OLDER 20S!!!! ppl doing that in the context of teens is *gross* (previous anon who sent in the ask before) :)

Oh! Thank you for the compliments. I’m still not used at being so visible now to people 🥺😥😅

Good that you’ve added your points because that essentially brings down my issues with this whole spiel. I guess I’m going to play the other card. My main issues with this whole thing are:

A) the fandom sexualizing kids

B) people not understanding that looks/behavior in or outside of a (romantic) relationship don’t necessarily have to correlate with sexual behavior, especially when powerplay is involved

Of course Percy is easier to grasp for us. We have five whole books where we hear his every thought, follow his every move and think we get to know him (that automatically makes Percy not a reliable narrator, just saying).

For every book quote that puts Percy into the „Dom“ slot, there’s also a book quote that would be fitting for Annabeth (the dance from TTC comes to my mind). I can see both going either way. Despite them having mostly different personalities (Percy internalizing his thoughts and motives, whereas Annabeth is doing rather the opposite), they are very similar when it comes to leadership and end goals. Annabeth can range from emotional to bossy in a similar way Percy does. They just express themselves on different levels and get seen by outsiders in different ways.

Did you catch that? Did you see the hypocrisy that I just committed? We are using book quotes to justify placing characters that are in that context and in overall canon minors/teens/essentially fucking children in sexualized categories. Tbh, as much flag as you can give Riordan, I can’t blame him for blocking people who do this. Not every author is a fan of fanfiction and fan theory and what not.

People throwing these BSDM terms around without a second thought makes me cringe (tbh, I’m too lazy to explain the psychology of power play and kinks in that regard, just know that the instigator is not automatically the top/dom and there are many, many, many layers in a pp relationship). You cannot base sexual behavior from the canon itself. We know nothing about Percy and Annabeth in that regard to even justify the slightest. Ripping actions out of context to give them a label doesn’t work like that so easily unfortunately.

The only way to settle this question for once and all would be by simply doing this:

The whole debate that happened months/weeks ago (quarantine makes everything blurry in my memory) was just fucking stupid?

Imagine being a 15 year old, anxious, frightened girl. You’ve been deeply traumatized since you’ve been seven years old, you’re scared to death because you have a crush on your best friend and think he might perish (newsflash: of course you as the reader can foreshadow that in that context the series goes on. The characters can’t as they lack that specific insight. Percy didn’t have to wind up dead in the books, but he could have been severely mutilated, gone missing (guess he did later), bruised, etc. apart from his mental struggles. The super power part is essentially the only thing that’s keeping him alive), you give him a kiss because you’re too shy to admit your feelings for him and he’s being an awkward cheeky bastard before looking for a fight and then some adult asshole has the caucasity of calling you a bratty sub. Literally what.

Some anon (or a group of anons, don’t know which) contacted a bunch of people with that Dom!Percy and Sub!Annabeth stuff. Anon, Liebste, homegirl, my love, mija, if you see this please slide into the DMs because whaddefuck? Your thought process hotdamn. Where did you pick this up? Let’s be open about this discussion. You didn’t go from A to B, you went from A to Z and robbed Jeff Bezos on the way out. I mean what???

People using canon to justify their headcanons is simply something I can’t get behind in this matter. The main issues is that they are children/teens/minors in canon. There is no way around it. Trying to justify/back up some of your thoughts in that regard with actual quotes only makes it worse because you aren’t only sexualizing them in your fanon, but you are also automatically transferring these thoughts to the actual books and thus fore sexualizing them in canon. You’re changing the basis and narrative.

I honestly don’t get the obsession that some have with their teenage sex life? This isn’t a personal attack on people but I’ve seen this throughout several group chats and social media platforms like Twitter, Reddit, Pinterest even and of course Tumblr. And popular stuff like Riverdale, Euphoria, 13 Reasons Why and New Adult Twilight rip-offs á la Shades of Grey and that Harry Styles fanfic honestly don’t help with the portrayal of „curious“ teens.

This also isn’t a strict PJO phenomenon, it happens across all fandoms. The odd trend with sexualizing kids/teens or things intended for kids has been going on for ages. I get it, you grow out of the related audience but that doesn’t justify the means? Canon won’t change simply because you do.

Percy and Annabeth are awkward teens that have never dated anyone else and had barely half a year between pjo and hoo before getting caught up in another mess. I’m not saying that teens aren’t curious and don’t experiment, some do drugs and/or have sex (let’s be real the probability of something happening in the stable scene in MOA is very high) but still? Putting dom/sub labels on them is sketchyyy. Also throw your fucking sex god headcanons out of the motherfucking window. They are 17-ish, if you need the mental image of some weird kids flopping on top of each other for two whole minutes for some odd reason, good for you but I’m side eying the fuck outta you.

You can’t really blame Riordan for not being more explicit. A) the series is for middle schoolers (aka kids), so it’s not strictly Young Adult and there’s only so much you can do B) publishers/editors interfering is a thing (especially with society’s views of sex = bad and violence = just fine) and c) the probability of sexualizing the characters of his own creation in that sense might have made him uncomfortable. Better to play safe, than end up with a bigger mess, just saying. I’m all for the sex talk in a non-berating, (slightly) educational approach when it comes to that in non-adult literature. Or even just stating a sex scene in a mere sentence. (Karen M. McManus did an amazing job with portraying struggling teens with a right approach in One of Us is Lying. Stating it or making it very, very, very clear between the lines. Then again, not everyone can pull that off or wants to go in that direction).

In addition to that, seeing stuff like the infamous ”the sea doesn’t like to be restrained“ or ”Percy has handsome features which shifted from humor to anger“ quotes getting constantly shredded is so… Meh. One simple question: what does Percy having a mean resting bitch face to do with his sexuality/sexual behavior? What does him being annoyed and on the moodier side have to do with it? For me absolutely nothing. The correlation isn’t really clear and out there. Pissed Percy doesn’t translate into Percy automatically being the dominant (in Percabeth’s sex life)?

I mean I get it. We all grow up. Erotica is a wonderful genre and art form (if you waddle through the trash). You will never be able to get that out of fiction and fanfiction. That’s also neither my goal nor my place to decide. As cheap and stupid as it is, I’d rather have people intentionally aging the characters up and stating their headcanons in that regard rather than people attempting to abuse canon where the characters are minors in order for sexualizing them. There’s no good way to prevent this from happening unfortunately (unless you really want to abolish all explicit fanon stuff).

Whenever you post a sexy headcanon just hold on for a second. If you have abstract future headcanons sure, go ahead, personally don’t see a problem with that. But if you use source material to fixate your thoughts on minors in canon to give them sexual labels… I urge you to seriously rethink that.

Stop sexualizing minors. Please. Pretty please.

Peace