#i brought up media but it doesn't solely apply to that and the same with disability

[uncanny-tranny]

I think when people talk about things like desirability, they can miss the deeper point of why it can be important to analyze why people are seen as undesirable. It isn't just that a type of person is just... not hot... but often, it's the dehumanization of a person based on marginalized features.

For instance, I had a conversation with somebody about disability portrayal in media, and we had agreed that, historically, disability had been portrayed as a horrific ordeal. However, I think they missed the point as to why the "undesirable disabled" character was so appealing to a broader audience. The idea that disability is other, inhuman, and something that depersonalizes somebody from society is partly why those ideas were and are prevalent in mainstream media and culture. It is the idea that "nobody likes you. Nobody needs you. Nobody wants you" because of the person's marginalized body or experience or whatever it may be.

It isn't some superficial "oh why aren't I seen as pretty by everybody?" It is the knowledge that you are portrayed as undesirable in this way because it is a way to separate you from everybody else. It isn't about beauty, nor is it a selfish desire to be wanted by somebody. It is the desire to be seen as a person - an equal, regardless of who desires you or who does not.

[directdogman]

OKAY so i randomly dug through the callum crown wiki page (which im guessing you dont moderate?) but SINCE WHEN???

Believe it or not, some DT fans have known about this for a while now! It should probably be phrased in the past tense since he obviously isn't exactly partying in his nursing home, but yeah, during his presidency/time at the UN, Crown regularly used cocaine.

Believe it or not, this was actually decided really early on, but there's only 2 actual references to it in DT media, a short mockup story I wrote years ago and obviously the newest story. It's never brought up in-game because Norm doesn't know about it + Mingus obviously wouldn't bring it up even IF she knew about it.

Crown was a workaholic with insatiable appetites who rarely slept and saw his life as something that was purely in the service of others and the betterment of humanity. He saw it as an ethical obligation to do as much as possible while president and never took time to himself. Crown's habits were an open secret at the time, but it wasn't obvious to most since Crown had a phone head (meaning key symptoms like his face appearing pale + his pupils dilating obviously didn't apply) and was already very energetic, erratic and kinda twitchy. He very much acted the part long before he picked up the habit.

If you asked Crown about it, he'd probably tell you that his addiction was a sacrifice, putting his body through extra strain so he could stay awake for longer, have more energy and shake more hands, complete more work and help more people. It's the same reason he frequently modified his phone head in different ways in order to increase the efficiency of different parts of his brain.

I don't think I need to tell you that this kind of decision-making came with very large drawbacks, a notable one being the strain it put on his relationship with both Marla + Milt, who were both immensely concerned for his well-being while he was solely preoccupied with his mission to create a better world for ALL of humanity.

I think this makes sense, when you consider where he came from. Crown was not treated with respect or approval until he proved his own usefulness to others (and thus wanted to maximize that quality) and of course, was singularly devoted to his goal of lifting all humans out of poverty. Most of all - creating a world where he would've had the same opportunities even IF he hadn't had the know-how/ability to find a way to leave his garage. Nobody left behind - at all costs.

[verycharismaticdragon]

I also think it's worth mentioning that Wangxian / MDZS have started several important discussions in Western fandom in the few years they've been around.

Due to MDZS donghua and The Untamed (animated and live-action adaptations respectively) becoming many English-speaking fans first foray into c-media, they brought to light many unconscious biases. However, thanks to the efforts of Chinese and Chinese diaspora fans, those biases were pointed out and interrogated, starting a widespread discussion about anti-Asian racism present in Western fandom spaces. Not limited to just sinophobic / anti-Chinese sentiments either, if you've seen discussions about for example the racist underpinnings of using Japanese terms to mean 'bad version of the thing' - the space for these discussions, which were of course long time coming, was in fact created by Chinese and Chinese diaspora MDZS fans speaking up about the issues they saw in Western fandom's treatment of Chinese BL characters.

Another discussion that was frankly a long time coming, but in which Wangxian in particular has made a significant difference, is the question of sanitization of queer media - in particular Western fandom's tendency to rip into any queer media that isn't completely chaste and conflict-free. There were people speaking up against this before, but due to MDZS's extremely specific circumstances, it became the ground for some very fruitful discussions.

Those circumstances were, first, its widespread popularity and massive fandom, meaning it had numbers on every possible side of the argument, and second, the discrepancy between the source material (novel) and adaptations, in particular the live-action show. For those unfamiliar: the queer romance in the show is at the level of about... Good Omens season 1, let's say; it's made clear they are each other's most important relationship, there is definitely no heterosexual explanation for it, lots of soulful eyecontact, some Significant Touches, and so on - but no love declaration, no kisses, let alone anything else. Which of course doesn't make it any less of a queer love story! But, conversely, original novel canon Wangxian are not just canonically married, but have tons of kinky sex described in explicit detail on page. (If you've heard wangxian shippers mention "everyday means everyday", yes thats about their sex life. If you've heard about the ass sword, yeah that too.)

The apple of discord thus was someone praising the live-action for its subtle, "pure" portrayal, touting it as better than "nasty fetishization" of the original work. Which generated many lines of discussion, including about censorship, and about racist undertones of claiming specifically Asian BL as fetishist while not applying the same scrutiny to Western m/m. But one in particular that I feel was very important to fandom at large was the pushback against the idea that "purer" queer rep is better one by MDZS fans. This was the first time a significant number of people were there to speak out about how, actually, gay&kinky sex shouldn't be confined solely to fanfiction. And how claiming its presence as inherently impure was in fact repackaged homophobia. And how damaging it was to queer ppl to only see the most sanitized versions of queer relationships be deemed acceptable, and everything else demonized. And how infantilizing it felt to not see any HE queer stories that also featured conflict between characters, as if queer ppl don't have a full breadth of human experience including fucking up in their romantic relationship, and as if the only two options for queer relationship are "chaste and unproblematique™" or "toxic af and will cause each other untold suffering and meet a terrible end". And ofc many also pointed out the underlying anti-kink sentiment behind many of the claims.

And again, this was brewing before, but the sheer mass of people who rallied behind MDZS Wangxian's unabashed sexcapades was actually, from what I've seen, the first time the scales well and truly tipped towards "purer is not better". I'm certainly seeing much more celebration of complex and interesting queer rep in fandom now, and much less pearl-clutching.

And of course, as mentioned before, there are now several books out there on the shelves that feature both an engaging plot unrelated to main characters' queerness and queer rep that is complex, interesting, and very much sex&kink positive - all because MDZS Wangxian was there.

AO3 Top Relationships Bracket- Semifinals

This poll is a celebration of fandom history; we're aware that there are certain issues with many of the listed pairings and sources, but they are a part of that history. Please do not take this as an endorsement, and refrain from harassment.

[overlyimmersed]

I've been seeing a lot of strange things about morality lately.

I've spent the last week or so desperately trying to suppress the urge to go on rants because conflict scares me. But at the same time, morality is something I've always had strong feelings about.

The specific examples of what has set me off were largely unrelated to each other in every way except for having brought up morality.

So I guess I'm gonna talk about morality...

What is morality anyway?

Well, off the top of my head, I would define morality as the difference between good and bad. And I've always felt that applies to how a person thinks and feels and intends, more so than how they act.

A person can try to do the right thing and fail so outrightly that they actually do harm without committing a moral failing.

And someone else can succeed at doing something good, but if it's with nothing but self-serving intent, they're still a bad person.

So now that you know what I mean, what is my problem exactly? My problem is that I've seen a lot of people in various communities around the internet lately trying to... basically, get rid of morality altogether. The idea that there's no such thing as it, and you don't need to consider it when feeling things and making choices.

That bugs me.

Morality is what separates people from animals. Morality is the thing that makes us people. There's no such thing as an evil animal because animals can't understand evil.

Morality is important. Yes, there are people in the world who use it wrong. Who use it as a buzzword, who abuse it, who use its concept to control others or to harm others. This is not a failure of morality's concept. This is just bad people doing what bad people do.

Morality is good. It's not meant to be a weapon or to do harm. You can't force someone to feel bad about something and call yourself moral.

Morality is actually kind of small. It doesn't apply to as many things as people think it does. Morality applies solely to doing harm on purpose, weather by malice or willful ignorance. There is no right reason to do harm. There are many reasons why harm is necessary, but it is never morally correct. When it is necessary, it should be forgiven, but it should never be accepted as right.

The discussion or exploration of a thing is not automatically morality. Immoral things exist in our world, pretending they don't in hopes that will make it so, is asinine. The inclusion of immorality in media is not automatically immoral itself. It becomes immoral when the immorality is glorified in or normalized by the media. This statement applies to immoralities such as abuse, pedophilia, zoophilia and murder. It does NOT apply to variance in belief systems or romantic/sexual/gender orientations. Being lgbt is not immoral. Having a different religion is not immoral. Just so we're clear on that...

Most people would not define morality as such a simple thing. But for me, it's always been simple. The world is big and complicated. Let people be happy, as long as no one gets hurt.

[sulkybbarnes]

'you're pouring salt on a wound here' ah sorry! i just brought it up because it's what the goldfinch director said about the two mains (even tho doesn't theo try to kiss the other guy at one point? i read it a long time ago and didn't ship them but there was obvious subtext there). we're basically always fed in media that romantic love is more important/better than friendship (which, gross) but when it's a same sex couple ppl are like how DARE you imply friendship isn't enough?

Oh boy, I haven’t read The Goldf*nch before so I really wouldn’t know sorry, and I have no idea what the director said either? But, anyway, big yikes if this is how they’re handling talk around a movie that isn’t even out yet. Tbh don’t even get me started on the hypocrisy between how het friendships vs same gender ‘friendships’ are treated in media. People have a very selective understanding of friendship that almost always ignores subtext and context. Friendship only seems to matter when you wanna ship a same gender couple, never mind the amount of actual friendships ruined on TV bc the guy just needs to end up with the closest female character present. 

I think it all boils down to media portraying romantic love as an essentially for het couples and a privilege for same sex couples. For straight characters, value is directly related to a heteronormative understanding of love and the presence of a relationship/family/kids in your life, which is already a fucked up concept but note that it only extends within the bounds of heteronormativity. Meaning that lgbt characters aren’t given the same storylines solely because they don’t hold any value in media to begin with. Love is considered a privilege bestowed upon lgbt characters, and when they’re given a love interest, their onscreen interactions, kisses, and development are quantified to reach the bare minimum. Often with lgbt characters, we’re asked to be happy with them being allowed to exist at all in media and not ask for more. So within this narrative, it makes sense that any het friendship is allowed to turn into a romance, whereas a same gender relationship would be considered ‘reductive’ to the friendship between the characters and to the characters themselves. 

tl;dr homophobes are hypocrites and will forever be jumping through hoops to apply certain standards to het relationships but not to same sex ones 

[qcomicsy]

What op brought up sums up almost every problem I have on how cannon and fandom react about Jason's and Dick's Robin.

First, people ran along with the "Dick is the golden child, Jason is the delinquent/bad kid" based solely by the way they act now and how people refer to them in the cannon as today (this applies more to Jason but bare with me).

Then people called to attention about Dick origins as Robin (where he does show instances of being capable on wanting to act (or just a acting) with violence and (in some cases) even disobedience of his own. And panels of Robin Jason where he most acted as a kid, when he felt safe and welcomed.

Now fandom (again) took this as entire face value and just ran with it criticizing or disregarding any references of comic that disagrees with that portrayal as if it's sacred, and any different interpretation is a way of attacking either Dick or Jason character and... C'mon guys.

It doesn't exactly pisses me of but it does disappoint me. Because (as op said) Dick was the type of Robin who rarely complained, who showed almost no difficulty in learning things, who got his way around showing no fear while hiding in this big armour of silliness, who acted as if Robin was second nature (even if he didn't feel like that inside) who would follow almost all and every order Batman gave him and (most of the times) execute it with with borderline perfection. He was a "good child", smart, respectful, popular among his pears, had an easy time making friends and even an easier time in making people just... trust him, a natural leader.

A perfect picture of the children of the American way.

But Dick is also the kid who in many portrayals of cannon went to confront criminals on his own from muggers to crazy mass murders like a little maniac. Who would pretend to follow Batman's orders just for the next moment pull up some crazy shanenigans and do the exactly thing Batman told him not to do.

(I would really add a panel of someone calling Jason reckless in comparison but I really don't have the time.)

Hell there was this time Dick was so injured as Robin that scared the shit out of Bruce to the point he tried to forbidden Dick from being Robin entirely. And do you know what Dick did immediately after that? Ran away and joined a fucking assassin's ninja cult for children.

Jason Todd on the other end was the "Robin gives me magic" kid. He was excited and mesmerized by the idea of being Robin. He admired Batman, idolized Nightwing and Robin (as Dick). He did enjoy reading, he liked school, he loved museums. He was more than happy to take what it was given to him, he was always willing to help, he didn't pried on Bruce's private life and neither was the type to pick fights with his family or be unnecessarily unlikeable (when he was in a good mental state).

He was also the kid who started smoking as a 12 year old, beat Batman with an lug wrench and said with his full chest he wasn't unhappy when criminals die. He was also the same kid who when confronted with complex moral situations (and his own triggers) would react with violence in order to defend himself or any person he believed wasn't able to do so.

He was also the character created in the time where media was full on exploring the "bad" and "gray" side of combating crime and what the dark side of a big city has to offer and all the consequences and horrible things that comes from it (Scarface, The Godfather, Taxi Driver... etc.)

The thing that gets me when talking about them, specially them as Robin is that people aren't just either good or bad, or perfect and troublesome. People are complex, with contradictions and hypocrisy and heart.

And this is the same thing with Dick and Jason.

Dick and Jason regardless of writers intentions are complex characters with as many sides, contradictions, particular dilemmas and hypocrisy as any other person has and (as op said) they also carry the reflexes of the era they were created. They're not this type of character you have to choose one archetype and this only one archetype to portray and reference their entire purpose and history.Specially when they're tied up to Bruce and their relationships as father and son ( and that is another entire can or worms let me tell you.) I think is completely unfair to keep comparing the two of them as if they both exist in this vacuum of just being raised by Batman.

Dick will always be the love child of good and caring parents who has a loving home to go back to even without Batman, who was raised with kindness and hope, who was created in the peak of the perfect portrayal of family values™. And Jason will always be the kid who grew up in an abusive household, who had to find his way into not getting killed on the streets, who saw too many horrible things that no child should see and who had to do what he had to do to survive (and while he shouldn't be judged by of any of those things he still deals with all the fucked up shit that an upbringing like that does to a person's development) and was created in the same time where comics where obsessed with tragedy and realism.

And even so they both had their own personalities, quirks and particularities that belongs to only them regardless of their upbringing and relationship with the bat.

Dick Grayson is as much as the perfect child as he is the kid with anger issues. Jason Todd as as much as a "troublesome" child as he is the kid who Robin gave him magic.

The like fandom idea that Jason became a problem child in order to make Dick the golden child are kind of wild. Because like… read the golden and silver age comics. Dick is the golden child. He is the most coddled and adored batkid purely by the metric of writers used to want Batman to be a hero and a good man plus it’s forty years of Dick being the only kid that exists. Bruce will never ever again be caring a child to bed when they fell asleep studying or making a whole day planned around their birthday or putting off a case to take them out to the beach house for a weekend or crying his eyes out as they go off to college. Like none of those traditional fatherly things are gonna happen because that Bruce is dead the writers made sure of it. Now he’s far more likely to clock one of his kids in the face then start a pillow fight. 

Read the two years of Jason comics. He started off the bat in reboot as a problem child. You have a little thief stealing tires and smoking? Not supposed to be your all around good american boy like Dick Grayson was. (I say this as a Roma person, Devin Grayson included that Dick is Romani for purely racist reasons it was not always intended in canon and I do not see Dick as representation. If you are Roma and want to go for it. But if I read one more google translated story of Dick speaking Romanian for some god forsaken reason I’ll break my laptop) 

Think about the world in which they were made. The 1980s were not in need of the same boy wonder as the 1940s. Robin was supposed to be what saved Jason from delinquency. And in the end the writers had him unable to be saved. He became aggressive against people like the Black Mask. The age old did Jason push that guy or watch him fall and does it even matter if he just watched because Batman and old Robin would have jumped after him so what is Jason’s deal? On to the end of his life with running away to find his birth mother and happening to run into Bruce who was looking for a nuke. Jason died in the end a hero to save his mom true but it is made clear in the narrative it was his own fault for not listening to his dad. 

^ All of that written of course by a known hater of Robin who wanted to kill the symbol but couldn’t have touched Dick Grayson a far too beloved character. And like I said the 1980s. ‘Listen to your parents or you’ll be in trouble punk’ is not a crazy far out there narrative for them to have spun. 

Back onto Dick he was made to make the little boys of America feel good about themselves like they could do anything. He listened to his dad and he was a stand up citizen who was all about justice! Go to the 1960s when he goes off to college. The first thing he does is get involved with a protest. He was calling Bruce up asking him to host a Beatles knock off in Wayne Manor. Bruce was always telling him to worry about his studies. That was what their first big fight was about! Bruce even explicitly tells Dick at one point to worry about himself and the Titans more than him ! The era a character is written in is reflective of the message they send and with time passed it is easier to look back and contextualize what the message was. Like modern day comic writers since Jason have been trying so fucking hard to ruin Dick and Bruce’s relationship but outright changing canon so that Bruce was a worse person in every argument. It’s not even funny at this point like every year down to the fucking weeks of Dick Grayson’s child hood was written out in succession and these modern writers are like we get it we do But what if Bruce also didn’t care about Dick. Like where am I???

The solution to Bruce Wayne and Batman not being a very good person is obviously in their minds make Bruce a horrible dad to Dick that way it evens out his shit behavior across the board. If there is no glaring example of how good Bruce has and could be then no one would think he should be like that. So we’re supposed to just nod along and be like Yeah i think Bruce would beat Jason up and smack Tim around and tell Damian he doesn’t like him. Seems fair to me. Which???

Anyways all this to say. Dick Grayson was always the golden child the writers just want you to forget Bruce was a good dad once.