#i feel like it took online fandom culture so long to be Normal about this dynamic existing too

[marsixm]

i’ve probably said this before so yadda yadda but the thing about ofmd that gets me so hard every time is like i dont think its actually so totally rare irl for a gay relationship dynamic like ed and stedes, aka the hot moody edgy cool one being the one who loves being romanced and manhandled and the camp faggy theatrical one being the pursuer, the top, the one being asked to take charge- but like, its not something i expect to see not only done on tv but done so to a T. i mean sure i havent watched every show i havent seen every movie, maybe the truth IS out there, but idk im pleasantly surprised and so happy 2 have this dynamic on this show on god’s tv air waves

[caelum-in-the-avatarverse]

Fandom can do a little gatekeeping. As a treat.

So I finally decided to archive-lock my fics on AO3 last night. I’ve been considering it since the AI scrape last year, but the tipping point was this whole lore.fm debacle, coupled with some thoughts I’ve been thinking regarding Fandom These Days in general and Fandom As A Community in particular. So I wanna explain why I waited so long, why I locked my stuff up now, and why I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m a-okay with making it harder for people to see my stories.

Lurkers really are great, tho

I’m a chronic lurker, and have been since I started hanging out on the internet as a teen in the 00s. These days it’s just cuz I don’t feel a need to socialize very often, but back then it was because I was shy and knew I was socially awkward. Even if I made an account, I’d spend months lurking on message boards or forums or Livejournals, watching other people interact and getting a feel for that particular community’s culture and etiquette before I finally started interacting myself. And y’know, that approach saved me a lot of embarrassment. Over the course of my lurking on any site, there was always some other person who’d clearly joined up five minutes after learning the place existed, barged in without a care for their behavior, and committed so many social faux pas that all the other users were immediately annoyed with them at best. I learned a lot observing those incidents. Lurk More is Rule 33 of the internet for very good reason.

Lurking isn’t bad or weird or creepy. It’s perfectly normal. I love lurking. It’s hard for me to not lurk - socializing takes a lot of energy out of me, even via text. (Heck it took 12 hours for me to write this post, I wish I was kidding--) Occasionally I’ll manage longer bouts of interaction - a few weeks posting here, almost a year chatting in a discord there - but I’m always gonna end up going radio silent for months at some point. I used to feel bad about it, but I’ve long since made peace with the fact that it’s just the way my brain works. I’m a chronic lurker, and in the long term nothing is going to change that.

The thing with being a chronic lurker is that you have to accept that you are not actually seen as part of the community you are lurking in. That’s not to say that lurkers are unimportant - lurkers actually are important, and they make up a large proportion of any online community - but it’s simple cause and effect. You may think of it as “your community”, but if you’ve never said a word, how is the community supposed to know you exist? If I lurked on someone’s LJ, and then that person suddenly friendslocked their blog, I knew that I had two choices: Either accept that I would never be able to read their posts again, or reach out to them and ask if I could be added to their friends list with the full understanding that I was a rando they might not decide to trust. I usually went with the first option, because my invisibility as a lurker was more important to me than talking to strangers on the internet.

Lurking is like sitting on a park bench, quietly people-watching and eavesdropping on the conversations other people are having around you. You’re in the park, but you’re not actively participating in anything happening there. You can see and hear things that you become very interested in! But if you don’t introduce yourself and become part of the conversation, you won’t be able to keep listening to it when those people walk away. When fandom migrated away from Livejournal, people moved to new platforms alongside their friends, but lurkers were often left behind. No one knew they existed, so they weren’t told where everyone else was going. To be seen as part of a fandom community, you need to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known, etc. etc.

There’s nothing wrong with lurking. There can actually be benefits to lurking, both for the lurkers and the communities they lurk in. It’s just another way to be in a fandom. But if that is how you exist in fandom--and remember, I say this as someone who often does exist that way in fandom--you need to remember that you’re on the outside looking in, and the curtains can always close.

I’ve always been super sympathetic to lurkers, because I am one. I know there’s a lot of people like me who just don’t socialize often. I know there’s plenty of reasons why someone might not make an account on the internet - maybe they’re nervous, maybe they’re young and their parents don’t allow them to, maybe they’re in a bad situation where someone is monitoring their activity, maybe they can only access the internet from public computer terminals. Heck, I’ve never even logged into AO3 on my phone--if I’m away from my computer I just read what’s publicly available. 

I know I have people lurking on my fics. I know my fics probably mean a lot to someone I don’t even know exists. I know this because there are plenty of fics I love whose writers don’t know I exist.

I love my commenters personally; I love my lurkers as an abstract concept. I know they’re there and I wish them well, and if they ever de-lurk I love them all the more.

So up until last year I never considered archive-locking my fic, because I get it. The AI scraping was upsetting, but I still hesitated because I was thinking of lurkers and guests and remembering what it felt like to be 15 and wondering if it’d be worth letting a stranger on the internet know I existed and asking to be added to their friends list just so I could reread a funny post they made once.

But the internet has changed a lot since the 00s, and fandom has changed with it. I’ve read some things and been doing some thinking about fandom-as-community over the last few years, and reading through the lore.fm drama made me decide that it’s time for me to set some boundaries.

I still love my lurkers, and I feel bad about leaving any guest commenters behind, especially if they’re in a situation where they can’t make an account for some reason. But from here on out, even my lurkers are going to have to do the bare minimum to read my fics--make an AO3 account.

Should we gatekeep fandom?

I’ve seen a few people ask this question, usually rhetorically, sometimes as a joke, always with a bit of seriousness. And I think…yeah, maybe we should. Except wait, no, not like that--

A decade ago, when people talked about fandom gatekeeping and why it was bad to do, it intersected with a lot of other things, mainly feminism and classism. The prevalent image of fandom gatekeeping was, like, a man learning that a woman likes Star Wars and haughtily demanding, “Oh, yeah? Well if you’re REALLY a fan, name ten EU novels” to belittle and dismiss her, expecting that a “real fan” would have the money and time to be familiar with the EU, and ignoring the fact that male movie-only fans were still considered fans. The thing being gatekept was the very definition of “being a fan” and people’s right to describe themselves as one.

That’s not what I mean when I say maybe fandom should gatekeep more. Anyone can call themselves a fan if they like something, that’s fine. But when it comes to the ability to enjoy the fanworks produced by the fandom community…that might be something worth gatekeeping.

See, back in the 00s, it was perfectly common for people to just…not go on the internet. Surfing the web was a thing, but it was just, like, a fun pastime. Not everyone did it. It wasn’t until the rise of social media that going online became a thing everyone and their grandmother did every day. Back then, going on the internet was just…a hobby.

So one of the first gates online fandom ever had was the simple fact that the entire world wasn’t here yet.

The entire world is here now. That gate has been demolished.

And it’s a lot easier to find us now. Even scattered across platforms, fandom is so centralized these days. It isn’t a network of dedicated webshrines and forums that you can only find via webrings anymore, it’s right there on all the big social media sites. AO3 didn’t set out to be the main fanfic website, but that’s definitely what it’s become. It’s easy for people to find us--and that includes people who don’t care about the community, and just want “content.”

Transformative fandom doesn’t like it when people see our fanworks as “content”. “Content” is a pretty broad term, but when fandom uses it we’re usually referring to creative works that are churned out by content creators to be consumed by an audience as quickly as possible as often as possible so that the content creator can generate revenue. This not-so-new normal has caused a massive shift in how people who are new to fandom view fanworks--instead of seeing fic or art as something a fellow fan made and shared with you, they see fanworks as products to be consumed.

Transformative fandom has, in general, always been a gift economy. We put time and effort into creating fanworks that we share with our fellow fans for free. We do this so we don’t get sued, but fandom as a whole actually gets a lot out of the gift economy. Offer your community a story, and in return you can get comments, build friendships, or inspire other people to write things that you might want to read. Readers are given the gift of free stories to read and enjoy, and while lurking is fine, they have the choice to engage with the writer and other readers by leaving comments or making reclists to help build the community.

And look, don’t get me wrong. People have never engaged with fanfic as much as fan writers wish they would. There has always been “no one comments anymore” wank. There have always been people who only comment to say “MORE!” or otherwise demand or guilt trip writers into posting the next chapter. But fandom has always agreed that those commenters are rude and annoying, and as those commenters navigate fandom they have the chance to learn proper community etiquette.

However, now it seems that a lot of the people who are consuming fanworks aren’t actually in the community. 

I won’t say “they aren’t real fans” because that’s silly; there’s lots of ways to be a fan. But there seem to be a lot of fans now who have no interest in fandom as a community, or in adhering to community etiquette, or in respecting the gift economy. They consume our fics, but they don’t appreciate fan labor. They want our “content”, but they don’t respect our control over our creations.

And even worse--they see us as a resource. We share our work for free, as a gift, but all they see is an open-source content farm waiting to be tapped into. We shared it for free, so clearly they can do whatever they want with it. Why should we care if they feed our work into AI training datasets, or copy/paste our unfinished stories into ChatGPT to get an ending, or charge people for an unnecessary third-party AO3 app, or sell fanbindings on etsy for a profit without the author’s permission, or turn our stories into poor imitations of podfics to be posted on other platforms without giving us credit or asking our consent, while also using it to lure in people they can datascrape for their Forbes 30 Under 30 company? 

And sure, people have been doing shady things with other people’s fanworks since forever. Art theft and reposting has always been a big problem. Fanfic is harder to flat-out repost, but I’ve heard of unauthorized fic translations getting posted without crediting the original author. Once in…I think the 2010s? I read a post by a woman who had gone to some sort of local bookselling event, only to find that the man selling “his” novel had actually self-published her fanfic. (Wish I could find that one again, I don’t even remember where I read it.)

But aside from that third example, the thing is…as awful as fanart/writing theft is, back in the day, the main thing a thief would gain from it was clout. Clout that should rightfully go to the creators who gifted their work in the first place, yeah, but still. Just clout. People will do a lot of hurtful things for clout, but fandom clout means nothing outside of fandom. Fandom clout is not enough to incentivize the sort of wide-scale pillaging we’re seeing from community outsiders today.

Money, on the other hand… Well, fandom’s just a giant, untapped content farm, isn’t it? Think of how much revenue all that content could generate.

Lurkers are a normal and even beneficial part of any online community. Maybe one day they’ll de-lurk and easily slide into place beside their fellow fans because they already know the etiquette. Maybe they’re active in another community, and they can spread information from the community they lurk in to the community they’re active in. At the very least, they silently observe, and even if they’re not active community members, they understand the community.

Fans who see fanworks as “content” don’t belong in the same category as lurkers. They’re tourists. 

While reading through the initial Reddit thread on the lore.fm situation, I found this comment:

[ID: Reddit User Cabbitowo says: ... So in anime fandoms we have a word called tourist and essentially it means a fan of a few anime and doesn't care about anime tropes and actively criticizes them. This is kind of how fandoms on tiktok feel. They're touring fanfics and fanart and actively criticizes tropes that have been in the fandom since the 60s. They want to be in a fandom but they don't want to engage in fandom 

OP totallymandy responds: Just entered back into Reddit after a long day to see this most recent reply. And as a fellow anime fan this making me laugh so much since it’s true! But it sorta hurts too when the reality sets in. Modern fandom is so entitled and bratty and you’d think it’s the minors only but that’s not even true, my age-mates and older seem to be like that. They want to eat their cake and complain all whilst bringing nothing to the potluck… :/ END ID]

-

“Tourist” is an apt name for this sort of fan. They don’t want to be part of our community, and they don’t have to be in order to come into our spaces and consume our work. Even if they don’t steal our work themselves, they feel so entitled to it that they’re fine with ignoring our wishes and letting other people take it to make AI “podfics” for them to listen to (there are a lot of comments on lore.fm’s shutdown announcement video from people telling them to just ignore the writers and do it anyway). They’ll use AI to generate an ending to an unfinished fic because they don’t care about seeing “the ending this writer would have given to the story they were telling”, they just want “an ending”. For these tourist fans, the ends justify the means, and their end goal is content for them to consume, with no care for the community that created it for them in the first place.

I don’t think this is confined to a specific age group. This isn’t “13-year-olds on Wattpad” or “Zoomers on TikTok” or whatever pointless generation war we’re in now. This is coming from people who are new to fandom, whose main experience with creative works on the internet is this new content culture and who don’t understand fandom as a community. That description can be true of someone from any age group.

It’s so easy to find fandom these days. It is, in fact, too easy. Newcomers face no hurdles or challenges that would encourage them to lurk and observe a bit before engaging, and it’s easy for people who would otherwise move on and leave us alone to start making trouble. From tourist fans to content entrepreneurs to random people who just want to gawk, it’s so easy for people who don’t care about the fandom community to reap all of its fruits. 

So when I say maybe fandom should start gatekeeping a bit, I’m referring to the fact that we barely even have a gate anymore. Everyone is on the internet now; the entire world can find us, and they don’t need to bother learning community etiquette when they do. Before, we were protected by the fact that fandom was considered weird and most people didn’t look at it twice. Now, fandom is pretty mainstream. People who never would’ve bothered with it before are now comfortable strolling in like they own the place. They have no regard for the fandom community, they don’t understand it, and they don’t want to. They want to treat it just like the rest of the content they consume online.

And then they’re surprised when those of us who understand fandom culture get upset. Fanworks have existed far longer than the algorithmic internet’s content. Fanworks existed long before the internet. We’ve lived like this for ages and we like it.

So if someone can’t be bothered to respect fandom as a community, I don’t see why I should give them easy access to my fics.

Think of it like a garden gate

When I interact with commenters on my fic, I have this sense of hospitality.

The comment section is my front porch. The fic is my garden. I created my garden because I really wanted to, and I’m proud of it, and I’m happy to share it with other people. 

Lots of people enjoy looking at my garden. Many walk through without saying anything. Some stop to leave kudos. Some recommend my garden to their friends. And some people take the time to stop by my front porch and let me know what a beautiful garden it is and how much they’ve enjoyed it. 

Any fic writer can tell you that getting comments is an incredible feeling. I always try to answer all my comments. I don’t always manage it, but my fics’ comment sections are the one place that I manage to consistently socialize in fandom. When I respond to a comment, it feels like I’m pouring out a glass of lemonade to share with this lovely commenter on my front porch, a thank you for their thank you. We take a moment to admire my garden together, and then I see them out. The next time they drop by, I recognize them and am happy to pour another glass of lemonade.

My garden has always been open and easy to access. No fences, no walls. You just have to know where to find it. Fandom in general was once protected by its own obscurity, an out-of-the-way town that showed up on maps but was usually ignored.

But now there’s a highway that makes it easy to get to, and we have all these out-of-towner tourists coming in to gawk and steal our lawn ornaments and wonder if they can use the place to make themselves some money.

I don’t care to have those types trampling over my garden and eating all my vegetables and digging up my flowers to repot and sell, so I’ve put up a wall. It has a gate that visitors can get through if they just take the time to open it.

Admittedly, it’s a small obstacle. But when I share my fics, I share them as a gift with my fellow fans, the ones who understand that fandom is a community, even if they’re lurkers. As for tourist fans and entrepreneurs who see fic as content, who have no qualms ignoring the writer’s wishes, who refuse to respect or understand the fandom community…well, they’re not the people I mean to share my fic with, so I have no issues locking them out. If they want access to my stories, they’ll have to do the bare minimum to become a community member and join the AO3 invite queue.

And y’know, I’ve said a lot about fandom and community here, and I just want to say, I hope it’s not intimidating. When I was younger, talk about The Fandom Community made me feel insecure, and I didn’t think I’d ever manage to be active enough in fandom spaces to be counted as A Member Of The Community. But you don’t have to be a social butterfly to participate in fandom. I’ll always and forever be a chronic lurker, I reblog more than I post, I rarely manage to comment on fic, and I go radio silent for months at a time--but I write and post fanfiction. That’s my contribution.

Do you write, draw, vid, gif, or otherwise create? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you leave comments? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you curate reclists? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you maintain a fandom blog or fuckyeah blog? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you provide a space for other fans to convene in? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you regularly send asks (off anon so people know who you are)? Congrats, you're a community member.

Do you have fandom friends who you interact with? Congrats, you're a community member.

There’s lots of ways to be a fan. Just make sure to respect and appreciate your fellow fans and the work they put in for you to enjoy and the gift economy fandom culture that keeps this community going.

[thetypedwriter]

All the Young Dudes Fanfiction Review

All the Young Dudes Fanfiction Review by MsKingBean89

So. 

This is a first. 

If you’ve been following this blog for some time, then you know I generally read young adult books and write far too lengthy reviews on them with the occasional outlier of adult fiction, mystery, sci-fi, etc. 

At any given time, I usually have both a physical book that I’ve bought from somewhere that I’m working on (right now it’s Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley) as well as a fanfiction that I reserve until before I go to bed (my treat for a day well lived). 

Fanfiction is something that I’ve mentioned copious amounts of times on this blog in varying degrees, but this is the first time I’ll be writing an actual review for one of them on this platform. 

The reason for this is myriad. 

One, this fanfiction called All the Young Dudes is a far-cry from your normal standardized fanfiction of 5-50,000 words-something I can easily consume in a few minutes to a few hours. 

Nope, this behemoth ends on a staggering 526,969 words and 188 chapters, not including bonus chapters and extra in-universe canonical content the author has also written and published. Roughly speaking, if this was actually published onto paper it would be well over 2,000 pages. 

2,000 pages. 

Yeah. And I enjoyed every single moment of it. 

Two, while I read a lot of fanfiction I generally don’t put any of it on this blog because while I’ve dedicated it to published novels, I also usually have very simple feelings about fanfiction. My thoughts run the gambit of: It was good, it was fluffy, it was a train-wreck, so on and so forth. 

Normally my reviews are so long and wordy because I have too many thoughts about the published books that I read and I need an outlet to let them loose. 

Whether because of its longevity or because of its content, All the Young Dudes is a story I find myself having a profusion of thoughts for. Hence, the birth of this review. 

If fanfiction isn’t your thing, feel free to skip this particular review of mine (although fanfiction is a gift to this world and you should really rethink your stance on it if you don’t like it, just saying). 

Third, All the Young Dudes is well written and rivals any actual published content. 

Fourth, because of how extensive this fanfiction is, it took me over a month to read it-time I generally would have been reading something else. Instead of leaving you all hanging for a few more weeks until I finish Firekeeper's Daughter (don’t hold your breath-the book is sort of a slog for me personally right now), I decided to just take the jump and write my first-ever typedwriter review for a fanfiction. 

Fanfiction has been a part of my life for the better part of almost two decades now. It was truly something I found by accident and in retrospect, it’s insane to me that it’s still something that brings me continuous joy and happiness. 

I discovered fanfiction when I was 11-years-old and deeply obsessed with the Harry Potter fandom. 

Now, as an overall disclaimer I completely disagree with J.K. Rowling’s stances of gender and biology and differ wholeheartedly with her views of trans and non-binary individuals. With that said, I still love Harry Potter as a story and while I no longer buy anything that profits J.K. Rowling directly, I still love the fandom and the people in it, including fanworks like All the Young Dudes. 

When I was 11, the seventh Harry Potter book had yet to come out and like many other people in this time period of agony while waiting for 2007 to roll around so that I could find out what happened, I discovered fanfiction as a way to fill in that ache I was so keenly feeling. 

I found myself suddenly immersed in this world of online fiction-both good and bad-but completely entrancing all the same. 

I never left. 

That is to say, I did eventually move onto other fandoms with their own fanfiction cultures, but Harry Potter was still my first in terms of fanfiction and introducing me to the concept as a whole. 

Specifically and maybe oddly, I never found myself curious for actual fanfiction about Harry or Hermione or Ron. In my mind, I already knew what had happened to them and reading about them in fanfiction was redundant. 

In addition, the first fanfiction I just happened to come across was a Lily/James marauder era fanfiction on mugglenet.com

This idea immediately intrigued me as fans as a whole knew next to nothing about the infamous Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs and while I knew everything I needed to about Harry Potter it was intoxicating to think that I could learn about a time before the series had existed and about characters who were important, but off screen. 

I was hooked and devoured as much as I could for most of middle school about the marauders and Lily and James’ romance in particular (I even wrote and published some of my own that will go unmentioned as they are truly really terrible). 

That being said, I haven’t read a Harry Potter fanfiction in years. I grew up and out of the fandom eventually thanks to Twilight and from there I’ve bounced from fandom to fandom as I’ve aged and consumed different things and fallen in love with different characters and different worlds. 

That isn’t to say I’ve forgotten though. 

I still remember my favorite marauder stories, my favorite Sirius Black/OFC (original female character), and my favorite baby Harry drabbles. They made such a huge impression on me and even though it’s been sixteen years, I still recall those stories with fond nostalgia and jubilation. 

Which is why it’s almost ironic that I would return to this particular time period of the marauders with All the Young Dudes. 

In a fashion that’s almost scarily full circle, I happened to be on Youtube one day and saw a recommendation video about this girl reviewing a fanfiction called All the Young Dudes. Now, youtube book reviews aren’t uncommon, but a thirty minute video for a fanfiction? Not your typical sighting. 

So out of pure curiosity, I searched All the Young Dudes fanfiction on Google and low and behold the overwhelming and top results were all for a marauder-era fanfiction by MsKingBean89. Piqued, I clicked on the link in ao3 and thought why not? 

While I’ve mainly been reading in other fandoms recently (BTS, some anime and manga, All for the Game) I had been in a little bit of a slump for finding a really good, really alluring story for some time and really didn’t think I had anything to lose by reading All the Young Dudes, especially as the more research I did, the more I found how popular it was-a plethora of videos on youtube, tiktok compilations, and dozens of fanart posts. 

Plus, it had been so long since I had read anything from my progenitor fandom and the thought of going back was strangely comforting.

Hence the journey of reading All the Young Dudes began and oh what a journey it was. 

Now, that this review is already five pages in, I should probably tell you what on earth All the Young Dudes is actually about. 

The whole story is a marauder-era fanfiction told from Remus Lupin’s POV from the summer of 1971 when Remus is 11-years-old to the summer of 1995 when he is 35-five-years-old. It is an in-depth portrayal of Remus’ time at Hogwarts from year one to year seven and then going all the way up to the start of the second wizarding world, ending around the time Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix begins. 

While already the scope makes this a massive undertaking, the author also includes all canonical content from the original series involving Remus, the Marauders, and the time period and incorporates it into her fanfiction-making it canon compliant from start to finish. 

While a very large portion of this story is not romantic, there is eventual WolfStar (Remus Lupin/Sirius Black) and if you have read the original Harry Potter series...well. You know things don't end up super dandy for these two characters in particular so you know how the story will end before it begins. 

This fanfiction left me speechless for so many reasons. 

The scope and length is frankly unbelievable. This fanfiction was published on March 2, 2017 and it was completed on November 12, 2018.

….how?

How did she manage that? I frankly have no idea, but I am in complete and utter awe at her ability to write content with such a magnitude and actually complete it. She gets an award just for that honestly. 

Not only that, but the fanfiction is actually superbly well-written. I won’t lie and say it’s the most poignant and beautiful piece of literature I’ve ever consumed, but it was consistent in its pacing, characterization, themes, motifs, and structure, which, for 2,000 pages, is an incredible achievement when you think about it. 

Speaking of characterization, everyone was So. Well. Done. 

Remus was such an interesting POV to read from and while he was compliant in every sense of the word-werewolf, prefect, bookish-MsKingBean89 added so much more to his character and fleshed him out so incredibly that it’s truly tragic that he’s not a real person. 

And to that extent, she does this with all of the characters. You see James’ optimism and leadership, Sirius’ arrogance and loyalty, Peter’s jealousy and chess skills. 

Every character was so well-rounded and real. She did an incredible job of taking the bits and pieces from the canon series and using that to build up her own flesh and blood people with motivations, likes, dislikes, dreams, and desires. 

That being said, she also had 2,000 pages to do it sooooooo it would be bad if the characters weren’t fleshed out by the end honestly. 

In addition, I really appreciated that she didn’t just focus on Remus, Sirius, James and Peter. Lily Evans played a critical role in Remus’ school life and after and so did the other Gryffindor girls like Marlene and Mary. 

Too often, the focus is on the boys and their close friendship and while that was a huge focus, we also get to see Remus develop friendships with the girls in his own right and other friends as well that were often OC’s of the author’s. 

Now. OC’s are generally something I dislike. I’m reading fanfiction to read about particular characters that I’ve sought after, not to read about some imaginary cast. However, just like any of the canon characters, all of the OC characters were well-developed and played crucial roles in Remus’ development-while either at Hogwarts or after-and I found myself not minding them in the least. In a few cases (Grant) I actually really loved them. 

The biggest draw for this fanfiction for me was Remus’ time at Hogwarts. It was so well-written and incredibly descriptive and I found myself thrust back into the world of magic so suddenly and seamlessly that it was like I never left. 

MsKingBean89 includes so many intricate details and builds up the world so beautifully that I’d recommend any Harry Potter fan to consume it, just to get some good Hogwarts material out of it. 

Another thing I greatly appreciate about this fanfiction was the slow burn. I’ve read slow burn before (All for the Game trilogy anybody?), but this truly took the cake. Sirius and Remus don’t properly get together until the end of year six going into year seven. That’s over 100 chapters in. 

100 chapters out of 188. 

Meaning that over half of this beast doesn’t have the main pairing even together. For some people, this could be a drawback. You might think to yourself: It takes how long for them to confess their feelings and stop being prats?

A very, very long time. 

However...it didn’t bug me. I like slow burn to begin with, but being along for the ride as Remus goes from being a child to an adolescent with unrequited feelings to being in a relationship with someone he loves is so rewarding and fulfilling that the 100 previous chapters are completely and utterly worth it. 

MsKingBean89 develops them so well and so carefully that the payoff is so sweet and satisfactory that it's enough to bring the tears right then and there. 

The last huge feat of this fanfiction for me was the author’s dedication to canon not just confined to Hogwarts and the Harry Potter books, but also to the time period. Either she lived through the 70’s and 80’s herself or she had done her due diligence when it comes to research because anything from London anti-gay laws to British slang was commonplace in her fic. 

I found it completely amazing how she was able to tie in real-time historical and cultural moments like famous singers and movies playing at the time alongside convoluted muggle politics warring with the wizarding ones. 

I was so blown away by the accuracy and genuine love behind this fic that it often brought me out of my own mind to simply ponder once again how much work this was and how well she was delivering it. 

Even unpleasant things, like homophobia and bigotry, are dealt with in a very carefully constructed way that is aligned with the time period in which the story takes place. 

Unfortunately, everything beautiful is not without flaws and All the Young Dudes is not the exception, although it’s flaws are nary compared to its achievements. 

The few complaints I have with this fic are honestly quite negligible. 

First, there are a few grammatical and punctuation errors. Very few, but I did notice some. 

Next, and again, this complaint is really just me whining, but...the end of the fic was really fucking sad. The end of this whole story took me so much time to complete simply because I didn’t want to read it. 

I know what happened during the first wizarding war and I also know what ended it (James and Lily Potter dying, Harry being shipped off to the Dursley’s, Sirius imprisoned for a murder he didn’t commit, Peter presumed dead) and in one fell swoop Remus lost everything and everyone he ever loved. 

After spending over 1,500 pages of Remus growing to love these people it is absolutely devastating and heart-breaking to see him lose it all. 

The last handful of chapters are just really, really sad and it makes me wonder why MsKingBean89 decided to write it in the first place. Frankly, I don't know why she didn't write about Remus’ time at Hogwarts and stop after graduation because we all know what happens after that and none of it is good. 

Looking back, I wish I could time travel and tell myself to stop at chapter 150. I truly didn’t need to read about the tragedies that happened after that and the hell that all of the characters go through. 

And while it does end on a….sort of kind of maybe positive (?) note with Sirius and Remus reuniting briefly once the events of Harry Potter and Prisoner of Azkaban take place, it was really tainted and bittersweet for me knowing that in a year Sirius would die and Remus would marry his fucking cousin and have a child. 

Urgh. 

I just can’t. 

That being said, I understand it’s not the author’s fault and I’m not saying it is. She wrote a canon compliant fic to the end and it was my choice to continue reading. That being said, she said she ended it before the events of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix because Sirius and Remus are happy and back together and she didn’t want to write what was coming next if she continued. 

I truly, truly get that. 

But in the same vein, why even write the events of the first wizarding world to begin with then? I’m confused with that response as it doesn’t make much sense to me. I felt like ending it right then and there was not a happy ending. They’re together, yes, but at this point they are both shells of who they used to be. Both have severe trauma and PTSD and frankly I don’t even know if I agree with them being together just because they’ve put each other through so much. 

It’s just an interesting choice at the end of the day in terms of the author. 

Once again, however, I truly understand that she can do whatever she wants and that she doesn’t owe anyone anything, especially as she’s writing this for free and just because. So please keep in mind that although I’m complaining, I truly understand how fortunate we are to even have this fic in the first place. 

Okay. 

Secondly, my only other huge complaint is that MsKingBean89 made Remus gay. Not bi, not pan. Gay. 

You could argue that Remus just calls himself gay in the fanficiton as he didn’t know about other kinds of sexuality. You could argue that Remus’ sexuality changes and develops as he ages and experiences trials and tribulations. You could argue that it was a sign of times like so much else in this fic. 

I frankly just found it to be a frustrating choice as the fic is canon compliant and even though it ends before the events of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows we know that Remus eventually marries Tonks and has a baby son named Teddy Lupin. 

How does that make sense?

I tried very, very hard to come up with some sort of feasible explanation for how a gay man would have ended up with the love of his life’s female cousin and truly could not think of one that was not fucked up to some degree. 

Again. I know I’m being nit-picky, but it irked me that she made this choice regarding Remus’ sexuality and essentially ended her fic with Remus stuck in a corner regarding how the series actually ends. 

At the end of the day, all of the negatives are truly, truly not important. I’m just whinging to whine and to express my thoughts, but I do once again understand that MsKingBean89 isn’t profiting from this fic and that she can do what she wants as is her prerogative. 

I hope I was able to express that while I understand that, I can still be frustrated with some of the choices she made. 

To wrap this all up, All the Young Dudes is a masterpiece and is a must-read for anyone who loves Harry Potter, the Marauders, or Wolfstar. I was blown away by the sheer magnitude, the love and care she put into her craft, the slow and deliberate development of all the characters, the beautifully constructed love between Sirius and Remus, and the intricate world-both muggle and magic-that surrounded the story like a cocoon. 

I am so happy I found this fic and I truthfully am floundering at what to do with myself next. If you have any more current Marauder era fics that I’ve missed out in the past eleven years, please don’t hesitate to let me know. 

Recommendation: Go read All the Young Dudes. For weeks, you will cry, you will laugh, you will despair, and you will smile. This fanfiction will make you wish this was canon and in my mind, it now is. 

Score: 8/10

Links:

1. All the Young Dudes on ao3 

2. The Youtube Video about All the Young Dudes that made me aware of its existence 

[anidealiveson]

Thanksvember Master Post

Day 1 - Like Coming Home - It has a super rare “wholesome plot twist”! Without spoiling anything too huge, I really like that @julesherondalex took the time to talk about how important it is to take care of yourself first. You can’t love someone else properly, the way they deserve, if you don’t have that same love for yourself. I wasn’t expecting the heartbreaking scene, but the beautiful way in which that topic was was approached neither took away from the story or the joy.

Day 2 - Must Love Dogs - An incredibly fluffy (literally) fic that I loved reading. @rosehallshadowsinger did a really great job weaving Azriel and Elain’s canon personalities into this adorable AU scenario. It is obvious @rosehallshadowsinger took care to create believable personalities for two characters that didn’t get POVs in the books.

Day 3 - Striking Matches -  I have to say that I wasn’t at all attracted to an AU fic about firefighters. I was also not a big Rowaelin fan before that, but I was work procrastinating so I gave it a try. Wellll, 30 parts later, I found myself delighted at the writing and sad it was over. I couldn’t believe how well @shyvioletcat cat was able to entirely re-characterize these two into such a different setting, yet still retaining what made them popular in the books. Aelin was perfect in her role as a snarky schoolteacher irritating the stoic firefighter Rowan. And the descriptions of the kids lining up at the firehouse demonstration and Jake’s adorable prodding was icing on the cake.

Day 4 - Close Quarters -  I really loved the way @lady-therion wrote Nesta in this modern AU. I particularly like how she equates Nesta’s sometimes standoffish attitude as a very relatable personality trait. She has trouble reading people and gauging situations. It’s well written and the dialogue is unique for a plot that is common in ff!

Day 5 - Like A Lonely House - It’s got a colossal I love Lucy level misunderstanding mixed in with a lot of tension and angst. This Nesta that is full of sacrifice and duty and fire is how I imagine the Nesta who feels that she has a stake in the Fae world would be like. @featherymalignancy wove such a captivating new world in Macar, that it felt a lot like being introduced to the 8th court in the ACOTAR world.

Day 6 - Death Dance - There are several takes out there that touch on Nesta in the Ilyrian camps, but I love how @thewayshedreamed interpreted Nesta’s skills on the battlefield as a calculated dance. Nesta has always been a raging storm, but I love how @thewayshedreamed took care to show us a Nesta that channeled that storm into discipline. If SJM never intended to release a Nessian focused book, I would have considered this a satisfying end to their story.

Day 7 - One Night Standards - I love the way @sassyhobbits writes Aelin with her typical extremely sassy exterior, but also made sure to saddle her with a vulnerable side that runs deep. I normally don’t care for slow burns, but I like the pace of her relationship with Rowan here, and that they had to work hard at it. I also like the plot lines that involved their PR stunts and how the public grew to love them as well.

Day 8 - Goose Chasing - Its the most absurd plot of any fanfic I’ve read! The title is not figurative. Its really does involve chasing a goose. @rhysismydaddy did a fantastic job encapsulating the spirit of silly Cassian and grumpy Nesta in a situation they’d likely never find themselves in, yet making it entirely believable. 

Day 9 - Manon Chooses The Worst Babysitter Possible - It’s such a casual and fluffy and hilarious read. It was fun to read about a softer and more delicate Manon. Through this absurd mistake, @sarah-bae-maas did an excellent job really humanizing Manon and postulating a fun in-world domestic scenario. 

Day 10 - My Hunger Knows No Bounds -  @perseusannabeth manages to take a simple concept and weave a sweet narrative. I particularly love how @perseusannabeth incorporated her personal details into it and took the time to share her lovely culture with us.

Day 11 - Knowing me, Knowing you - We never got to actually see Aelin rule Terrasen (well we got a tinyyy bit) in the books. Though this was modern day, @nalgenewhore tells a fun story of what that could have been like.

Day 12 -  Forever (is a long time) - @noodlecatposts takes Elide and Lorcan’s completely polar opposite personalities and spins an interesting (and frankly quite adorable) story. All the rules crack me up. My favorite Lorcan is the one that reminds me of Luke Danes from Gilmore Girls. Currently, he is in the middle of grumpily fixing up her flooded room, so I am sure that my favorite parts are yet to come.

Day 13 - Go Your Own Way - I appreciate @tomtenadia for putting to words a scene that I desperately wanted in ACOWAR or even ACOFAS. A lovely parallel to an equally lovely Fleetwood mac song.

Day 14 - In Which She Makes A Friend - It is no surprise that the fandom wants Nesta to find her place in the Illyrian mountains and even bring about some social change with the female warriors. But the way @bookstantrash got there was such a wonderful and endearing journey. Big fan of the callbacks to how Kaelin was treated and the similarities to a certain Illyrian warrior was when he was younger. We got to see a sweet Nesta, who I’d like to think was attempting to make up for some of her regrets through taking care of Kaelin.

Day 15 - The Ranch - As a huge fan of Sweet Home Alabama, its should be no surprise that I loved this fic by @tacmc . I enjoyed the slow change that we saw in a stubborn Nesta as she opened up to this new way of life and reconnected with her sisters and found a home with Cassian.

Day 16 - Felons - Such a unique interpretation of Nesta and Cassian. I really like the self-sacrificing Nesta angle and @rhysismydaddy did a great job weaving intrigue into the unraveling of what we knew to be a her innocence. I never read The Witness, but this really made me want to.

Day 17 - Of Books and Timber - Cassian offers to build a shelf for Nesta. The way @duskandstarlight goes through the entire range of emotions through Nesta is brilliant. She starts out with cold indifference, but by the end, we get from her a sweet and tender gesture of gratitude. Showing that meeting each other halfway with small gestures is all they ever needed.

Day 18 - You Should Sleep In My Bed More Often - I absolutely loved this quick exchange between Nesta and Cassian after she accidentally injures him. I can’t believe how much I laughed out loud when Cassian said “I need you to protect me closer”. @charincharge​ perfectly captured the teasing childish essence of Cassian and Nesta’s hilarious victim-blaming was so on the nose that I might have thought this was taken right out of ACOSAF.

Day 19 - The Right Swipe - I really enjoyed this take on the inner circle mixed with the super modern online dating plot. I especially love that @redisriding created genuinely realistic characters (body issues, social anxiety etc). Great read!

Day 20 - Goldfish Prompt - What a fun read. I love how frantic and much personality Feyre had here. I love how dedicated to her fish she was, and how that made her super endearing. Cute read from @azrielsiphons

Day 21 - The One With The Snowstorm -  What I really like is that Cassian actually says that he is sorry for his part in Nesta’s exile. I am not bitter about it, but it was an interesting turn. They need to meet halfway here and I rarely see it so well written as @joysbell has done here!

Day 22 - Prompt - A lovely and cute and sweet prompt written by @crowsvalentine​! I love the ramp up of suspense just to get to the hilarious payoff. Its adorable and worth the quick read.

Day 23 - Fix It -  is one by @thewayshedreamed​ that I love in its simplicity. It’s a small little argument Cassian and Nesta get into, but its still compelling. It’s sweet and super endearing the way the two of them are written and the subtle way they work through it. Great read!

Day 24 - I Do Bad Things To You - The mob angle may have been done before, but I don’t think with as much care and regard that @tswaney17​ has been giving it. I how the canon personalities of the characters translate so well into this modern AU. Its very obvious that @tswaney17​ has done her research. I especially love all the details around Elain as a surgeon. The story is compelling and well written and every chapter has me wanting more.

Day 25 - Love Her Like She should Be Loved - This is an excellent fic that I really loved. @julemmaes did such a great job translating some of the canon tension from ACOFAS into a modern world. It’s ripe with emotion, drama and quite a bit of heart. I love how earnestly Cassian comes to Nesta’s defense even in the face of going against his entire family. I like the reference to some very real psychological struggles. I think a lot of people can relate to it.

Day 26 - Literally In Love - I really enjoy the subtle mystery that follows this entire journey. I enjoy that @julesherondalex keeps us guessing, while simultaneously weaving a sweet and tender story about two shy teachers and just a slew of mishaps worthy of a Shakespearian drama.

Day 27 - The Shadow Bond - I love Azriel, and this is such a wonderful fic by @radientwings​ focusing on how his shadows might work. His shadows are the one thing that I am most curious about him in the series, so it was lovely to read such a well written interpretation of them.

Day 28 - Exes and Oh’s - Just a shout out to @highqueenofelfhame​ for this lovely story about rekindling past love. I like that even though the plot was uncomplicated, the emotions were not. I love that Aelin didn’t have a perfect reason for what she did, but sometimes that is just how things are. This is a story about taking a second chance, whether it’s deserved or not.

Day 29 - Fever - I really love this fic called Fever. I enjoyed how @lady-therion​ portrayed Nesta. She hit the entire gammut of characteristics (snarky, worried, vulnerable, caring, short-tempered, flirty, you name it!) but it really worked here. I found this nurse Nesta to be endearing and relatable and the dynamic between her and Cassian was very sweet. Just go read the damned thing.

Day 30 - Baby Steps - I really really love this fic. @runesandfaes did such a great job in just so few words to show a really sweet moment between Chaol, Yrene and their daughter learning to walk. I love the parallel back to when Chaol was learning to walk and the cameo of the golden couch. So sweet.

[whenrockwasyoung19]

It’s Time to Talk about a Bespectacled Elephant in the Room

I’ve been in the Beatles fandom for 8 and a half years. I have had a Beatles blog for the entirety of those 8 and a half years, and I have watched as discourse about these four men evolve. The discourse inside and outside the fandom has become so toxic that I don’t think I can engage with it in the same way that I could before. Let me explain. 

When I entered this fandom 8 and a half years ago, it was in 2012, quite an infamous year in tumblr history. That was the pique of “”cringey”” fandom culture. The Beatles fandom was as steeped in fandom culture as any other fandom. I know this because I was part of two of the top of fandoms at the time, Doctor Who and Sherlock. Believe me, I have seen cringe. 

The fandom at the time was totally aware of the John, Paul, George, and Ringo’s flaws as individuals, but most fans tended to simply enjoy Beatles fandom as if it were the 60s. Some might call it ignorant bliss. If you asked me at the time, I’d have said it was self-aware ignorant bliss--if that even makes sense. At the time, there wasn’t a person with a Beatles icon who hadn’t heard the line “John Lennon beat his wife.” Everyone knew it, but everyone also knew the real story, and so everyone just made peace with it. As a result, people didn’t think about every bad thing the Beatles ever did on a daily basis. It was more like a once-a-month kind of thing. Otherwise, fandom discourse was quite fun and relaxed. There were no shipping wars, no one fought over who was the best Beatle, everyone gushed over the Beatles wives, and we all just had fun with fics and fan art. 

Of course, in this period, people engaged in conversations about one bespectacled Beatles problematic behavior. These conversations usually came from outside of the fandom. It was usually randos coming into the tags or into someone’s ask box and ranting about John Lennon’s violent behavior. Some of it came from within the fandom. Some people really didn’t like John and gave others shit if they listed John as their favorite Beatle. A lot of the discourse boiled down to: ‘hey, I see you like John Lennon. You should know that he beat his wife. And now that you know that, you should feel bad about ever liking him in the first place.’ And the response was often, ‘Actually, John Lennon didn’t beat his wife. They weren’t even married at the time. And also he didn’t beat her, he slapped her once in the face, and then never did it again.’ No one’s minds were changed. The fans had made their peace, and the antis came off as cynical and pretentious. 

When Dashcon happened, and Tumblr took a hard look at its cringey fandom culture, the Beatles fandom evolved as well. The fandom became, frankly, less fun. It no longer felt like a group of people who found the Beatles decades after the 60s and were fangirling like it was 1965. There was still some of that left, but a lot of it kind of faded. So, most fandom interactions were reblogging pictures of the Beatles from the 60s and various interview clips and quotes. But the barrage of antis never really went away, and the response didn’t evolve. 

Then, the advent of cancel culture came on. I always waited for the Beatles to get, like, officially canceled, but I also felt they were uncancel-able at the same time. Let me explain. I have been a Beatles fan primarily in an online space, rarely engaging with fans in real life. But I have met fans who are life-long Beatles fans, people who are a lot older than us and who’s fandom isn’t tied to the internet. They don’t give a shit about any of our discourse. They may or may not have heard it before, but they seem totally indifferent to all of it. I’m sure most of them have never heard ‘Mclennon’ before. These are the people that flock to see Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr in concert (and pay astronomical prices for it). These are the people who go to record shops and buy vinyl. These are the people I run into at flea markets who buy up all the Beatles merch before I can even arrive (true story). So, the Beatles will never be canceled because there will always be people who love the Beatles and don’t engage with online discourse. Rarely said, but thank god for Gen-X. 

As cancel culture took over the internet, fandoms changed. It’s not as noticeable in fandoms without problematic favs. For instance, I’m also steeped in the Tom Holland fandom, and that boy is a little angel who has done no wrong. No one has discourse about the unproblematic boy who plays an equally unproblematic character. But in fandoms with ‘problematic favs’ the mood has shifted. I’m also in the Taron Egerton fandom. Taron Egerton, for those who only follow me for my Beatles stuff, is a genuinely sweet and kind person who has had zero scandals in his six year career. There were some rumblings when he was cast as Elton John, and some people took issue with the fact that he’s a straight man playing a gay man. This discourse seemed to die quickly as a whole lot of straight people played gay people in that same year (Olivia Coleman as queer Queen Anne, Emma Stone as her queer lover, Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury). Why jump on this boy who at the time was still technically on the rise. He’s not exactly the same target as someone like Scarlett Johansson who has her pick of roles. Taron doesn’t have quite that some power in Hollywood, and I think most people made peace with the fact that this was a big role for him, and it’s not really fair to take that away from him. So, all in all, the closest thing to a scandal was something that died pretty much on arrival. 

That was until this summer when everything changed. When George Floyd was murdered, celebrities flocked to social media to mourn his loss. Taron’s social media account was silent. For weeks, Taron said nothing about Black Lives Matter or Floyd’s death. This caused outrage in the fandom. Many raced to defend him, starting a hashtage #IstandwithTaron. Others sought to tear him down and anyone who supported him. The kind of mania this one incident caused tore through an otherwise peaceful fandom. What I saw was two sides in a total panic. The antis were people who once had faith that Taron was a good person and were now questioning that. Andthe defenders were people who desperately wanted him to be a good person and were afraid that he wasn’t. In essence, both sides could feel Taron about to get canceled. The defenders wanted to stop it, the antis wanted to ride that wave. 

What this long drawn out Taron example is meant to convey: is that cancel culture has put fandoms on edge. One’s fav has to be perfect, otherwise it can jeopardize the existence of the entire fandom. I’ll admit, I was afraid that I’d be some kind of pariah for standing by Taron through all of this. My actions were to basically reason with the antis but still defend Taron. I defend him mostly because I felt that his silence was the result of a needed social media absence and that trying to shame him back onto social media was an invasion of privacy. But I was genuinely afraid that he would get canceled, and the fun of the Taron fandom would be lost. 

In the Beatles fandom, it often feels like the Beatles, mainly John, have already been canceled. I see this coming from two different sources: antis from outside of the fandom and antis within the fandom. The outside antis are just the same as the ones from 2012. These are people who like to drop in that John Lennon beat his wife, posting this in the tag (which violates an ancient tumblr real by the way--no hate in the tags). 

The antis outside the fandom speak to a larger anti-John Lennon sentiment online. I see references to John Lennon ‘beating his wife’  on Tiktok and twitter. The tone of anti-John Lennon posts has shifted. Before, it felt like the antis were being smug but also argumentative. They wanted to have a conversation about this bit of info they read on Reddit with no context. Now, “John Lennon beating his wife” is practically a meme. It’s a running joke online that John Lennon was a wife beater. I can’t look on my instagram explore page because every so often a John Lennon beats his wife meme will pop up amongst the other, normal, memes.

This change in discourse suggests that the internet has just accepted this as fact now. I should note that back in 2012, it seemed as if few people knew this fact. The fandom knew it, and these random antis knew it, but few others did. Now, because of how common these memes are, it seems to be widespread knowledge.

Consequently, the Beatles fandom, who used to ward off attacks from antis, seems to have given in. I recently saw a post from a Beatles blog (had the URL and icon and everything) that confessed they felt guilty for listening to the Beatles, and I’ve seen similar sentiments expressed in the fandom. People tend to put disclaimers in posts about John or even all four that John is an ‘awful man.’ It seems like the self-aware ignorant bliss has completely gone away. Occasionally, I still see posts joyously talking about Mclennon or reblogs of old photos from the 60s. But the culture has shifted. 

Online, it no longer feels comfortable to be a Beatles fan. It feels like you have to own up to 8 decades of mistakes by four men you’ve never met. And, I should note, this is kind of how it feels to be a fan of anything right now. Taron is not canceled today, but he could be tomorrow. It’s this pervasive feeling of guilt that the person you’re supporting may or definitely has or is doing something wrong.

I’ll admit this uncomfortable feeling has expanded into other parts of my fandom life. I listen to their music, and I feel elated--the way I always have. Then, I get these intrusive thoughts which sound like all the worst parts of Twitter combined. It wasn’t always like this. Back in 2012, when I knew almost nothing about them, I saw them as four young men who were full of happiness, love for another, and talent. Back then, listening to their music was exciting and joyous. Sometimes, I fear that I can never feel that way again. Next year, when I finally go to Liverpool, will I be filled with excitement or guilt? 

I say all this for a few reasons. One, I love John Lennon. I appreciate all the good he did for the world not just as a musician and an artist but also his advocacy and charity work. I love him, and a part of me will always love him, but observing the change in discourse has enlightened me as a historian. Part of my job is to observe people’s legacies, and John’s is perhaps the most interesting legacy I’ve ever observed. When he died, he was hailed as a saint. But tall poppy syndrome set in, and the antis started. This culture grew and grew to the point where it seems to, at least among the younger generation, taken over the sainthood. 

But as a historian and a fan, I have never seen the saint or the devil. I’ve only seen the man, the incredibly flawed man. The thing that these antis never understand is that John Lennon was painfully aware of his own flaws to the point where it made him all the more self-destructive. In essence, his past mistakes caused him to make additional mistakes. But John, aware of his own flaws, always tried to change and was often successful. I’ve talked about this before, but John demonstrated that he was capable of being a good person, like properly so, again and again. After he struck Cynthia, he never hit her again. His shortcomings as a father to Julian weren’t repeated with Sean. He worked on his drinking, his drug addiction, and his anger, trying to overcome those demons till the day he died. By all accounts, the John Lennon that died in 1980 is not the John Lennon who struck Cynthia Powell at school. That John Lennon was living a cleaner, healthier life. He was a better father to both his sons by that point, and was trying to repair his relationship with Julian. He was a good husband to Yoko and saw himself living a long and happy life. 

John Lennon cannot and should not be boiled down to just his flaws. It’s one thing as a fan to acknowledge that John is a flawed human being (news flash: they all are), but he is also much bigger than that. 

So once again, why am I writing this long, rambling post, once again talking about John Lennon’s virtues? Because if I can’t engage with healthy discourse about the Beatles and John Lennon, then I can’t engage with discourse on the topic at all. So, I probably will post less Beatles stuff because I find it hard to go through the tags or even my dash (well, I can’t really go through my dash anymore for other reasons I’m not going to get into right now). If any of my followers have noticed a lot of Taron posts lately, it’s not just because I love Taron, it’s because Taron’s  tag is pretty much the only location on tumblr I feel 100% comfortable in. Any foray into John or the Beatles tags becomes uncomfortable and guilt-ridden quickly. 

So, I probably will post less about the Beatles until I can find a blog or a tag that doesn’t give me bad vibes. My fandom will likely outgrow tumblr and the internet. I have a ton of Beatles books; maybe I’ll rely on those. I am doing official scholarly research on them now. Maybe that will be my outlet. I’m sorry if I post less about them now, but it’s really for my own well-being. 

[circlique]

That aro/ace France post reminded me of my sister. The Philippines isn't that known as a country of love compared to France but our country definitely has a hyper romance culture. My sister told me how broken she felt growing up here. Kids would always say that you're not normal or that there's something wrong with you whenever you mention that you're not attracted to anyone. It took a long time for her to accept her asexuality. So yeah, I could picture France would've had a hard time with it too. Sorry if this wasn't really positive but I just wanted to share. Today, she really enjoys it whenever she sees other headcanons of other characters like America or Belarus (or even in different fandoms) as aro/ace.

I think that’s why it’s so important that people put their ace headcanons out there if they have them! I got more comfortable with my identity seeing people and characters who were also like me. I didn’t feel like I could talk to anyone irl but having those characters and people online talking about them made me feel not so alone.

[heyyouknowbts]

Shipping BTS members is cultural misunderstanding & projection

Long post, text post, the kind of post I don’t normally post post.

Just some thoughts I needed to get out. I don’t consider fanfics with ships as being relevant to this, because there is that inherent assumption on account of the word fiction, lol. And in before I use ships as part of my BTS as Florida man series; they’re never meant to be taken seriously. A lot of times I changed the gender from a headline or made it gender neutral for the memes.

I am really amazed in general about the stories people make up about BTS members and the narratives that get pushed in the fandom that have 0 basis in truth but someone took 2 crumbs from a grainy photo or some fake captions and tweeted it out and here we are.

The way BTS members have grown over the years to freely express physical affection for one another has been repeatedly misinterpreted by some fans as them being gay lovers, and it’s to the point where many elevate them as “gay icons”. That is problematic for lots of reasons, mainly that none of them are openly gay, the members themselves have expressed they do not appreciate being shipped, and it requires speculation on the sexuality/relationship status of public figures we don’t know at all.

Korean culture is extremely conservative, and while BTS members have been shown to be progressive in their perspectives on lgbt+ rights and issues by comparison, that is not the same as actually coming out as gay, nor should it be interpreted as a subtle nod/wink to hint at their sexuality. There is also a lot of, “Well, [Member] had this one gender-ambiguous comment about relationships so they MUST be gay or bisexual,” or, “[Member] wearing a rainbow omgggggg.” It’s pure projection/speculation that is being pushed and packaged into a narrative, and some fans are accepting that as truth.

This falls into that broader category of magical thinking that is incredibly common due to our inability to psychologically cope with the rapid developments in technology that have changed every aspect of our lives. We have easy access to so much information, more than we ever have in human history, and despite that people are constantly seeking out delusions, lies, and conspiracies. Those delusions and conspiracies are pushed out as truth, and people deeply internalize these beliefs and reject anything that contradicts them. There is a suspension of disbelief involved when people read and see things online that I won’t go into detail about because I don’t want to write all day, but it’s key for understanding why people can latch on and believe this stuff to be true. Ever wonder why suddenly there are so many people who believe the Earth is flat? Or why Trump was able to do what he did, despite most people hating him and him being completely incompetent and narcissistic? Anti-vaxxers? Covid deniers? Welcome to the age of magical thinking, we live in it. (Creepy side note, the Unabomber predicted people would start behaving this way and wrote about it in his 1995 manifesto.)

Anyway, back to the shipping and cultural misunderstandings. I feel it needs to be said that I am not Korean, and my experiences with Korean culture consist of several friendships from childhood through high school where I spent time in the homes of my Korean friends, several visits to Korea while my parents lived there (plus their experiences living there as told to me), and then of course my experiences with Korean popular culture (mainly dramas and K-pop). My perspective is still very much that of a western outsider, but as an outsider I think I see where the misunderstanding is for a lot of people.

Koreans (generally) are more affectionate in same-sex friendships. It is socially acceptable to touch your friends, to show physical affection towards your friends in public, and even to be naked around your friends (see public bath culture in Korea). Verbal expressions of affection between male friends, saying things like, “I love you,” and “I miss you” to a friend is not only socially acceptable, but common.

This is a stark contrast to western culture, where men physically touching other men in any way that isn’t assault/aggression is treated as a threat to masculinity and/or an assumption of homosexuality. Most men feel they cannot express affection towards their male friends, as they have been socially conditioned into believing it will emasculate them in some way. This is changing and many men are rejecting that social norm, but it’s glacial change. When people view BTS members’ affections for one another through the western, homophobic lens, it can be easy to misinterpret that these men are lovers, forbidden, hidden, or not. And whether any of them actually are or not is irrelevant. We don’t know, and we can’t know, and anything beyond that is projection.

There is also idol culture at play, where there is a false sense of intimacy created between fans & the artist. We feel like we know them better than we do; that’s purely by design. I appreciate the affection BTS members have for us as fans and what they are willing to share about themselves with us, but I don’t treat that as if I actually know them. However, that line can get really blurry, really fast for fans.

Idk I just get creeped out by some of the shipping content I see. I’m thinking of the really weird photoshopping that people do to pictures of the members, zooming in on “details” of them touching each other in photos and videos and building these creepy narratives around them, that kind of stuff bugs me.

All of this was inspired by this Reddit post about Taekook shipping conspiracies, and how there is this pocket of shippers who actively hate Jimin and try to push this weird, false narrative of him antagonizing and interfering in their relationship. I’ve seen stuff about Jimin getting unnecessary hate before, but this just really irritates me. If you made it this far into my babbling, thank you friend :]

[pochapal]

rank every year of the 2010s from best to worst i want some pochapal lore

[warning for discussion of my fucked up mental health and my myriad traumas. we’re really opening the pandora’s box here gang]

ok time for me to overshare on the internet again! super long post because i can’t shut up and you asked for it. anyway, by objective ranking: 

#1: 2012 - halcyon era, my personal peak. spent the whole year writing hunger games oc fics with my deviantart fanfiction besties whom i still think about all the time and always hope are having the best possible day. if you were here for this era understand i still hold you so closely and dearly in my heart <3. 

#2: 2013 - god i was such a good example of a human being back then. was the year my writing like actually took off and i had a healthy balance between creative stuff and a social life (said social life consisting of spending lunchtimes at school breaking into classrooms and discussing fandom shit with five other people. reading homestuck updates in the music room on one person’s really shaky mobile data...legendary). highlight of the year and maybe my life was in the april of 2013 when i got out of failing to submit a hard deadline essay by telling my english teacher i wrote a whole novel over the two week break and then producing said novel. god i wish i had that level of like. fucking confidence back me back then knew what i wanted and how to get it. 

#3: 2010 - the last year of childhood. i was 12 and played pokemon all the time with my friends and went places and had a moderately successful youtube channel and it didn’t matter that i was bullied so badly at school because i was basically high off life. summer of 2010 was so good specifically. i’d used to get the bus with a friend and go see movies and break into historical sites and get into normal childhood mayhem and maxed out my pokewalkers twice a month and i was buzzed because i had two (2) whole friendship groups to choose from and that was such a huge deal to me the terminal social outcast. it was so simple and carefree and even though everything and everyone involved in this era grew up to suck except for one specific person i kinda really miss it.

#4: 2018 - this was the first year i wasn’t depressed to the point of nonfunctioning. it was 20gayteen, i was on antidepressants, i was as close to thriving as i got at uni (going into town with people once a week, attending art and culture events, getting good grades across the board), i started to write for fun again, i got my cat whom i love dearly, i was exhibited in my uni’s city’s literature festival, GOD i actually nearly attended a pride event that year can you imagine. this year was basically my life’s second peak. miss getting the 8am train and daintily sipping on a cherry coke to keep me from passing out. wish this time could have lasted longer.

#5: 2019 - kinda absolute middle of the road year not for lack of anything happening but because the overwhelming amount of good and bad things cancelled each other out. so like there’s the fact that i was at the top of my uni game this year, was basically making the first steps into a professional writing career (covid i will never forgive you for killing all that dead </3), finally saved up enough to buy myself a gaming pc, and the summer after the homestuck epilogues, but equally 2019 was the start of the Pochapal Gender Fiasco which is by far the most horrible thing i am still currently undergoing and i burnt myself out mentally about halfway through the year (being stuck overnight in a hospital for a panic attack absolutely horrible horrible irredeemable) and then got like super death plague flu that i was sick with for three months (literally recovered less than a month before rona hit. god’s cruel karma.). so like...it kind of averaged out? the good shit was good but not as great as other years and the bad shit was awful but nowhere near as terrible as it could have been. gotta give a shoutout to 90% of my current mutual cohort for following me in 2019...omelette route gang make some noise !!

#6: 2014 - oof. this year essentially marked the start of a four year long downward mental health spiral because everything fell into awful alignment. i’d just turned 16, finished secondary school, had all my friends up and ditch me at once, was home alone for a whole summer, and was hit with Sudden Intense Body Image Issues that i couldn’t explain until uh. after very recent developments lmao. this one goes out to the me of july 2014 who did nothing but lay in bed and listen to the same two marina albums on a loop because fuck i’m attracted to men and also my facial and body hair are really starting to come in and if i think about this for too long i will literally kill myself because oh god i can’t handle getting older which is clearly and definitely the issue going on here. my brain fucking broke super hardcore and it’s a miracle that an overeating disorder was like the worst thing i walked away with. 

#7: 2015 - downward spiral year two!! i was so volatile this year it was such a mess. i was totally socially isolated after a brief stint of falling in with a group of people at the start of my first year of sixth form until january where in quick succession a) it turned out every single one of these people was friends with the person who sexually assaulted me whom i obviously had a lot of complicated feelings towards and b) baby’s first crush came out as bisexual but in the “women and also trans women” kind of way which tore me up so terribly in ways i couldn’t begin to understand. no words for the experience of seeing a girl kiss a boy and crying so hard at night you threw up because you could never be her no matter how much you wanted it. actually kinda get the sense what was going on there was bigger than just some crush lmao. then after that i was so mentally ill i basically attended school less than half the time and it was the only year in my life i failed my exams. i ended up having to resit my entire set of first year a level exams because jesus christ was i in such a bad way it was a miracle i even showed up to them. all i did was either have anxiety attacks or enter bedbound depressive slumps for weeks at a time. but it’s okay because it gets worse.

#8: 2016 - downward spiral act iii: the spiralling. prefacing this by saying that i actually had two whole good months (april - may) in that i was functioning enough to do my exams and finish school with decent grades. the rest was super extra mega terrible. my school attendance for year 13 dipped below 65% and literally the only thing that kept me from being kicked out was the fact that i was naturally smart at the subjects i took and also because the school would have a lot to answer for after letting me get to that state despite having a hefty file on how damaged i was. keep in mind every single part of this was fully untreated btw - i was just floundering around and letting it all fester. i spent three solid weeks going to school but locking myself in the bathroom all day every day and having mental health episodes then going home like nothing else happened only to continue the breakdown that night. then things got kicked into fucked up overdrive when i moved out to uni and was cut off from what little support structures i did have. it was so bad all i did was cry all the time and never went anywhere to the point where three separate sources recommended me to the wellbeing and crisis counselling service that i stopped going to after two sessions because i was fucked up in ways cbt techniques could not even touch. at least i tried to make an effort for the first two months of uni which like. good for me?

#9: 2017 - what lieth at the base of the spiral. helltrench year. i was at literal rock bottom. i stopped going to class, i didn’t hand in a single piece of work. i lied to my parents and would book trains each day only to go back to my student flat and sit there and contemplate suicide. like i would just slump on the floor in a catatonic state and vividly contemplate one of four or so ways i could end my own life. i only didn’t because i wanted to wait until the summer to collect my last student loan and transfer it to my parents as an apology for my death which obviously didn’t end up happening. honestly i can’t remember much of the first half of 2017 that’s how bad it was. i remember taking a gender studies class and the teacher made it Weird that i was the Only Male Student in the room and then she sent me a scolding email after i walked out halfway through a class and never returned. apparently i got into a lot of online discourse in this year but i don’t remember anything other than being put on a blocklist by the milkfic author over ace discourse which is funny if you have the context. mostly i just baited terfs and weirdo freaks to get them to say horrible things to me as what i guess amounts to some kind of digital self harm. anyway breaking point came in late august when i got kicked out of university and then nobody could ignore it any more so there was no choice left but for me to seek out help and recover enough to function which luckily i did. i really Do Not remember 2017. you could tell me anything about that year and i’d probably believe you.

#10: 2011 - extra circle of hell for this little fucked up gem of a year. on the surface it wasn’t actually that terrible, until the Summer 2011 Domino Effect Of Bad Shit. up until like may/june it was a pretty all right year! i was 13 and had a surprisingly successful youtube channel uploading pokemon soundfont remixes to an audience of i think ~350-400 subscribers at my peak? anyway then i got hit with the early summer triple combo of childhood friends moving away, cute and quirky sexual assault at the hands of a person in my friend group, and then having some Really Great and Super Appropriate interactions with adults on deviantart. like obviously there’s the actual ptsd-inducing event which totally disrupted and killed the person i was right up until that moment and reshaped every facet of my life for better or worse (there’s an alternate timeline where that didn’t happen and i got into electronic music and/or coding instead) but really it’s the events that followed in its wake which were kind of more fucked up. so like all of a sudden i was super aware of my body and me growing my hair out and being mistaken for a girl in class suddenly became this Less Innocent thing and i ended up spending hours overnight going to transgender questioning forums and looking up hrt timeline videos and having the wikipedia article on tracheal shaving saved because it was a life raft to me whose voice was imminently gonna deepen and i was simultaneously reeling with constant trauma flashbacks and the whole thing was so so fucked up. then i was on deviantart and i don’t remember exactly how but a small group of furry guys ten to fifteen years older than me started messaging me and encouraging and requesting me to produce nonsexual fetish stuff for them and talking to me about stuff like if i’d ever thought about growing up to be gay and i didn’t think anything of it for a long while because they called me a very talented writer and it felt so good to have someone be nice to me after being so alone and isolated for months on end. anyway the only reason i got out of that before it got bad was because they invited me to one of the big furry sites and i was weirded out because i thought it was a porn site and thinking about sexual stuff was a huge trauma trigger so i just ended up blocking them all and pretending like it didn’t happen. at the time half this shit didn’t bother me but in retrospect holy fuck 2011 was such a damaging year. to think if like three events didn’t happen i wouldn’t be the fucked up mess you see before you today.

god fuck this turned out super long but i’m not apologising because this was a therapeutic exercise for me and also constitutes as one of the biggest pochapal lore dumps of all time. come get your food or whatever.

[untamedunrestrained]

I have to do this!

I recently came across this post made by @vespertineflora and I hesitated before reblogging it because I knew this was a hornet’s nest but I fully agreed with it so I eventually decided to reblog it, because that’s my philosophy if something jives with me a 100% I reblog it, if it doesn’t I don’t. Anyhow, after this I came across multiple posts by @vespertineflora where they put forth their POV in the various sex scenes in MDZS and I really liked their answers which compelled me to write this post.

The one thing I have realised when it comes to MDZS is that all my posts in this fandom are beyond chaotic so I don’t think this will be any different though considering the sex is confined to only one canon of this story hopefully this will atleast make sense. Though as I start this I have no idea where this is going so it is definitely going to be a little chaotic.

At this point I feel it’s important to mention what experience I have already had with danmei. Because if MDZS is your first foray into danmei I can appreciate how crazy the sex scenes must seem. Anyhow, my first foray into danmei was with “Hua Hua You Long” and if the sex scenes in MDZS are problematic believe you don’t want to be within a 100 yards of “Hua Hua You Long”. But, I have a very high tolerance for writing that makes me uncomfortable so I persevered for very long with HHYL but when it became amply clear that the only kind of sex our two main characters are going to indulge in was going to be straight up non-con I gave up. Like, I think I even tried to see if it changed by the very end before DNFing but it didn’t. I get the feeling that non-con/dub-con might be a big part of danmei.

Anyhow, before jumping into MDZS and this was straight after I finished “The Untamed”. In fact, it was the very same day, I came across this post talking about how the sex scenes in MDZS were fetishizing and that the novel presented a rape scene between minors as erotica and touched briefly on their first kiss. Now this post was very vague so I really couldn’t prepare myself one way or the other but knowing my limits I delved into the novel anyway. But, I was hyper critical of any kiss /sex scene between WWX and LWJ because of that post because I was perpetually on the lookout for that rape scene which I had no idea how I was going to swallow.

Having read the novel, there is one point I want to make before we dissect MDZS in particular. This novel was written in an online serialized format so the end of each chapter had to be something that would have to be compelling enough to have people subscribed and to keep people reading the work which is a big reason in the novel the past and present are presented as they are because if you read the novel, LWJ and WWX are never apart for long, if they separate in the past we immediately jump to the present. If we jump to the past it is always to a scene where they will meet. There are very few scenes where they are separated for any length of time, one of which is at the very beginning and the second is at the time the YunmengJiang Clan is attacked and the novel while covering the bases doesn’t dwell for long in this period because it is a period LWJ and WWX are separated and your audience are mostly here for those two. So, you try to make the scenes where your main characters are separated as few and far between. This directly implies that you are catering to a specific audience and we need to realise that we are not that specific target audience.

This book is written in a very niche genre and it is meant to be consumed by people who like stories in that genre and sex is a big part of that and unfortunately so are the non-con/dub-con elements in sex. So, I feel that the reason the author mostly put the sex scenes in the extras was to cater to her audience that do expect these scenes while reading danmei.

The fact is that the story of MDZS is so good that it got multiple adaptations and the live-action show propelled it to a stage the author didn’t intend it for. She wasn’t writing for such an international audience, she wasn’t catering for it either. The worldwide acclaim this story has gotten is unprecedented, I can tell you this because I have never in my life watched a Chinese Drama (well, except for The Untamed now) and I have never in my life completed a novel in the danmei genre (well, except for MDZS now). The fact that this story has found such a stage and the only fault people can find with it are the sex scenes should actually be pretty extraordinary considering when this story was being written it was expected to be consumed by Chinese readers who enjoyed this specific genre.

So, yeah the story isn’t written keeping in mind the sensibilities of the West. The author never intended so many people from different nationalities and cultures to read her story and it was written for a target audience who reads this genre expecting it to meet certain expectations and sex is very high on that list.

Now, I agree that just because we aren’t the target audience doesn’t mean we can’t have an opinion on the work. The fact that the sex scenes in MDZS are non-con/dub-con to please a certain audience doesn’t mean that you can’t call them out for being problematic. They are and you can but remember don’t paint everything with a broad brush. Nothing is as black or as white as people make it out to be and ultimately that is the moral of MDZS.

So, instead of broad sweeping statements, I want to take this opportunity to really dissect the nuances in the kiss/sex scenes between LWJ and WWX because at the end of the day I do really love the story of MDZS.

Blanket Spoiler Warning for all novel scenes from here on out!

First Kiss at Phoenix Mountain

I probably wouldn’t have noticed this scene if not for that post that had me in a hyper-alert state but just because this is something I would have normally given a pass still doesn’t mean it’s okay.

The very first kiss between LWJ and WWX is a kiss that takes place on Phoenix Mountain while WWX is blindfolded. Basically, in the Phoenix Mountain hunt when Jin ZiXuan bulls-eyes his target in the archery competition, WWX tries to one-up him by doing the feat blindfolded which he succeeds at much to Jin ZiXun’s chagrin who then tries to rile him up and which ultimately has WWX claiming that he can do the entire hunt blind-folded and still be the better one at the end of the day. So WWX is blindfolded when he feels someone approach who then proceeds to kiss the living daylights out of him, literally he is so weak-kneed he can’t stand up after the kiss. But, given that WWX doesn’t know who kissed him there is no question of consent, he can’t see who is kissing him and therefore he can’t consent to the kiss. This is definitely dubious consent if not outright non-consensual.

There are certain hints that he isn’t completely at the mercy of his secret admirer, first being that the reason he is able to approach WWX is because WWX doesn’t perceive any killing intent from this person and secondly WWX is elated that this lone cultivator is approaching him at a time when most cultivators are atleast somewhat afraid of him, so he lets him (yes because we already know it’s LWJ) come closer than he would have otherwise and doesn’t even take a protective stance when he is smashed against a tree. When both his wrists are captured he decides to kick his assailant but is shocked into stillness because his assailant starts kissing him at this point. He struggles when he comes to his senses but when he realises how badly the person kissing him is trembling he can’t bring himself to struggle any further. But, he again struggles when the person starts to french kiss him but at this point is overpowered.

So, breaking it down, he consents to this person’s approach into his personal space, doesn’t consent to the kiss but backs down when he realises that this person is struggling with their own emotions, definitely doesn’t consent to being French kissed but is overpowered. So, consensual followed by dub-con followed by non-con. Of course, it must be reiterated that WWX can always kick his assailant away but for whatever reason he doesn’t. Overall this entire kiss is dub-con at the most and isn’t the healthiest thing in the world.

But, in the context of the story it is viewed differently. For whatever reason WWX sees this entire experience in a positive light.

The previous scene seemed to be an absurd yet erotic daydream. Recalling what it had felt like, formless tickles crawled up all the way to the tip of his heart. 

LWJ on the other hand is furious at himself because soon after this scene he can be found disintegrating a tree. Well, this proves two things, one he isn’t proud of his actions and second, that despite everything this is the only way he can express his love for WWX with WWX none the wiser. This scene highlights his struggle with what he already knows, he loves WWX yet he knows no way to express it. His parents were the worst role-models in that area and he has no concept of a man loving another man. His actions are wrong but the story portrays them more as cry for help, to showcase his struggle with his relentless feelings.

He had no idea that Lan WangJi was mad at himself—mad that he acted upon his urges, that he couldn’t control himself, that he took advantage of another in a way that was neither righteous nor abiding by his sect rules.

It is definitely dub-con but I guess it is more in service of character development than anything else. I’m curious as to what people feel about this first kiss. 

Second Kiss with Drunk Lan Wangji after the Yi City Arc

Well, according to WWX it’s the first and it’s anybody’s guess if LWJ has any idea it happened.

We all know LWJ has zero alcohol tolerance and for somebody who has only had alcohol for the second time in his life that’s to be expected and unfortunately there can be no proper consent under the influence so yeah, this one is definitely non-consensual.

But, people might not see it that way. In fact, I’m pretty sure (okay not so sure) they don’t see it that way. Well, LWJ is plenty eager for being licked by WWX and well WWX is fully in his senses but since you can’t consent to something you can’t fully comprehend, it is still non-con. 

The Hand-job with a once-again Drunk Lan Wangji 

WWX really loves taking advantage of a drunk Lan Wangji. Well, this time things definitely go out of hand. To the extent that WWX realizes that his actions might be very cruel and selfish. Again taking into account the fact that LWJ is drunk these again become non-consensual but surprisingly the reason LWJ has such a violent reaction to the whole act is probably because he believes he took advantage of WWX and then when he tries to help WWX clean up he is rejected making him believe that WWX didn’t want to participate when nothing could be further from the truth, considering he initiated it.

My God, these two are really horrible at figuring out what’s going on between them. No wonder it takes a huge intervention for them to come to their senses. 

The Sex Scene at the very end of the novel

Well, this is the only fully consensual kiss/ sex scene in the main novel. There are kisses followed by a blowjob followed by anal sex and all three are fully consensual. Though the third one seems to be rather painful, it’s still consensual. Also, while they are having sex WWX is constantly mouthing off that LWJ should have taken advantage of him back when they were fifteen and at the Cloud Recesses.

“If you liked me since such a long time ago, why didn’t you take me sooner? The back mountains of your Cloud Recesses would be quite a good location, wouldn’t it? When I snuck out to fool around alone, you should’ve tied me up and dragged me away, pinned me onto the grass like right now to do whatever you want to me…”

“You’re so strong, so I couldn’t have resisted. If I screamed, you could’ve silenced me. Or your Library Pavilion also would’ve been a great place, right in the middle of the scriptures scattered on the ground. We could’ve bought a few cutsleeve booklets to compare and learn, any position at all…”

Well, at this point the novel ends and as you can see despite it being about 900 pages long when translated into English it definitely doesn’t deliver much on the sex front so the author wrote a series of extras to make up for that deficit and it’s your choice if you want to read the extras with the sexual content. They don’t contribute to the story so it’s truly your wish.

Banquet (Parts 1-3)

This one doesn’t have any explicit sex scenes though WWX does try to play out a rape scenario but it fails rather spectacularly because LWJ has no idea what to do and when they try to reverse the positions WWX just gives in instead of actually putting up a struggle.

Incense Burner (Parts 1-2)

I’m finally here at the infamous incense burner extra. So, let’s do this (cracks her knuckles).

This extra is set on the premise that LWJ and WWX use an incense burner that transports them to a dream world where they both get a glimpse of each other’s dreams. WWX’s dream is of the two of them retired and living in the countryside in his own version of domestic bliss while LWJ’s dream is well, where this entire conversation on consent started. Now when LWJ first realizes which of his dreams they are in he doesn’t want to explore any further, he hesitates but WWX decides to investigate. While in the dream he tries to prevent WWX from seeing it to its full extent because he is definitely embarrassed by it. The dream they came across is of a fifteen-year-old LWJ raping a fifteen-year-old WWX and then seeing this the real WWX gets rather turned on and has very consensual sex with his husband, LWJ.

Truthfully, the weird thing is that this might be one of the best ways to deal with this kink and I don’t understand why people are so hung up on the rape scene because hasn’t it been made clear that those two boys are nothing more than figments of imagination. Really, we can’t impose consent on dream versions of people because they aren’t actually people. The only people who have sex in this scenario are the grown-up versions of LWJ and WWX who have consensual sex.

I feel that a rape fantasy is more easy to accept if the victim has it, like in this scenario if this was WWX’s dream the sentiment might have been different but considering this is the aggressor’s dream sympathies change and this is something LWJ definitely acknowledges, he fears being judged but all things considered it’s good WWX knows this side of him because considering how much he keeps spouting off about being raped he definitely wants to indulge in this fantasy. Though in no sex scene in the main novel or the extras do they actually indulge in such a fantasy.

There was also the point that we have no idea when LWJ first had this dream and considering how closely this dream follows WWX’s fantasy during their first sex scene might put the genesis of this dream at a later date which would imply that this wasn’t a dream born out of LWJ’s initial frustration and inability to understand his feelings towards WWX which does alter the perspective a little.

In fact, the second incense burner dream is more problematic when WWX gives a blow-job to an eighteen-year-old LWJ (for my sanity he’s eighteen) who is actually a dream consciousness of his much older husband, then proceeds to use the hilt of Bichen as a dildo till his husband in a much younger body decides to save his sword from the horror and fucks WWX himself. But, then he discovers that he likes spanking WWX and he proceeds to do so despite WWX’s discomfort with the act. Again, I don’t know how much the concept of consent can be applied to dream selves, but all things considered this would have been the more problematic of the incense burner extras. Because, the first part is definitely non-consensual followed by a sex scene that is at best dub-con. Again, this is all in a dream and WWX is never going to get the opportunity to have sex with a younger-version of his husband because he didn’t and now he can’t. So again, I have no idea if this should even be brought into the consent issue.

But, one of the best things about this extra is that when WWX wakes up from the dream he is scared that LWJ will spank him something he didn’t like at all and doesn’t desire to repeat. He tells him that and LWJ immediately tells him that he will not. Which speaks a lot about these two, they know they have to communicate with each other and I feel like they have a good idea of each other’s limits and while these two might be kinky as hell neither actually wants to do anything that the other will not enjoy. So, even though they haven’t always dealt with it optimally I can rest assured that they will do better in the future.

But, I truly feel like everyone in all this uproar regarding the alleged rape forgot that this extra is written for a completely different purpose. I feel like the real reason the author wrote this was to allow LWJ and WWX to have sex in their own bodies which is something they have never done!

From Dawn to Dusk - Rather shameless sex but all consensual.

Intrusion (Parts 1-3) - No explicit sex scene though it is implied.

Villainous Friends, Iron Hook (Parts 1-2), Lotus Seed Pod & Dream Come True - No sexual content.     

[kagetsukai]

Writer’s Review

Holy crap, I’m finally doing this tag!!! I’ve been trying to reply to it for a very long time, but every time I’ve opened my old writing, I’d fall into reading my stuff all over again. Some of my stuff is literally from 2005, y’all! I’m sure if went digging deeper, I could find stuff from 2002 ;) ANYWAY!

I was tagged by: @roguelioness @laraslandlockedblues @queen-kass-the-writer & @dismalzelenka. Thanks lovelies!

Tagging: @out-of-the-embers @shannaraisles @puddle--wonderful @thebakerstboyskeeper @allisondraste @ellenembee @ellstersmash @hollyand-writes @irlaimsaaralath @jonogueira @lucyrne @ma-sulevin @novamm66 @naiatabris @rhetoricalrogue @wardenari

Rules: Post two snippets of your writing. The first should be one of the oldest examples of your work that you can find (the older the better!), and the other has to be an excerpt from something more recent. Compare the two side by side to see the difference between what your writing looks like now and how it did then.

I’m keeping it all under a ‘Read More’, because I actually like you people and don’t want you to have to scroll for a day and a half to get to the bottom of this post. You’re welcome!

Okay, let’s talk about the oldest piece of writing I could get my hands on. The timestamp on this puppy is from 2005, which sounds about right. I wrote it long-hand while laying down on my ex’s couch. Not sure what exactly prompted me to write this story, but I still fucking love it, even fifteen years later. I’m not going to link to my online archive where this fic lives because I am NOT opening myself up to criticism over what I wrote when I was younger. Not today, Satan! Anyway, the fandom is Yami no Matsuei/Descendants of Darkness and the pairing is Tatsumi Seiichiro/Watari Yutaka, my OTP for that fandom :)

Shadows danced around the barely lit room as the blinds moved to the rhythm of the wind. The house looked deserted, but the open terrace door, and a faint scent of something familiar, convinced Watari that Tatsumi was home. He took a tentative step forward, constantly double-guessing his choice to come at such a late hour. Considering the way things progressed between them in the last couple of days, he could expect to be thrown out rather quickly. Still, as each slow step brought him closer to the glass door, he had a feeling he had made a good decision.

Cold, crisp air filled his lungs when he stepped onto the dark terrace. He did not need magical abilities to feel the well-known presence, mixed with an awful stench of cheap cigarettes. Watari raised his eyebrows as he watched the dark silhouette against the night sky; so hunched and tired. Between his slender fingers, Tatsumi held an unlit cigarette.

“Are you going to light it?” he asked.

A visible tremble ran through that powerful frame as the small roll of finely cut tobacco fell out of Tatsumi's grasp. He followed its path for a brief moment and then shrugged. When he turned away from the railing, he kept his head low, hiding behind the long bangs. Watari swallowed almost audibly as he noticed the dark circles around Tatsumi's normally vibrant blue eyes. It only proved how poorly Tatsumi had been taking care of himself lately.

“Not anymore,” Tatsumi said in a flat voice.

Now, this next excerpt is from something I am currently working on, but haven’t actually posted yet. It’s a conversation between Fenris and Garrett Hawke, while Hawke is living a boring life and hiding from The Chantry post DA2. It’s from a random story that I decided to revisit recently, that I will be reposting this coming fall.

Fenris looked him up and down with a critical eye. “Considering what you look like, I’m surprised as well. What have you done to yourself? Was this your idea of a disguise?”

“What’s wrong with how I look?” Garrett pouted.

“You remind me of the humans in Kirkwall who kept pushing their questionable wares on clueless customers. Remember? They smelled of patchouli and smoked a lot of elfroot.”

Garrett snorted with amusement and reached up to run a hand through his now shoulder-length hair. He’d been keeping it in all sorts of braids and ponytails - mostly because it was easier to keep it out of the way while working the forge - but he figured Fenris probably meant the various piercings he now sported on his clean-shaven face.

“If you must know, I ended up near Wycome and there was a lovely Dalish clan friendly to humans who did all sorts of piercings in exchange for supplies and money.” He gently tugged at his right earlobe and at the large wooden plug that sat within the flesh. “It’s amazing what you can do with high pain tolerance and magic, my friend. I wanted to look nothing like my description and I think I succeeded at it.”

Now, onto the comparing thing!

My writing used to be a lot more focused on trying to evoke emotion and suspense through meticulous editing and sentence sculpting. It sounds stupid, maybe, but I remember taking a long time to go through my stuff with a fine-toothed comb to make sure that: 1) I don’t sound ESL, and 2) that I convey the emotions I was striving for. My early influence for writing like that was Tolkien (and I whole lot of other fantasy authors I can’t think of right now). I wanted to sound fancy REALLY FUCKING BAD.

These days my language is a lot more relaxed. I think once I left the creative influence of my ex, I was able to find my own voice in writing. I figured out that my strength lies in the more modern language and urban fantasy style (if we’re talking about traditionally published works). I think it really reflects that in the second blurb, because it feels funny, relaxed, laid back. Also, my sentence structure is nowhere near as stiff. Which I like.

Another thing I noticed is that I used to write exclusively M/M pairs, while I now write almost exclusively M/F pairs. I’m going to out myself as one of these obnoxious people who thought that writing M/F was gross and M/M was the only way to exist as a writer in fandom. Gods, I was SO STUPID. Ugh. Anyway! I was clearly dealing with trying to work out my sexuality while in a deeply Catholic culture, so we’re not going to dive TOO deep into it. This is just a meme, after all ;)

The big question is, have I improved my writing? The obvious answer is, yes. For one, I don’t have a beta editor to catch all of my mistakes anymore. I do all of my own writing and editing, and I feel like I do okay on most days. I also don’t stress as much about making my fiction perfect. Once you let go of the desire to get every sentence ironed out to crisp perfection, your writing immediately improves by a mile. I also don’t over-describe actions as much anymore.

I dunno, while I think I haven’t changed my style TOO much, I also feel I’ve changed A LOT. In the end, this is a part of my journey and I’m nowhere near done traveling ;)

[marshmallowgoop]

This is something I should have edited together.

So here it is: (a lot of!) the sweet messages I’ve received in the last month or so that are in direct response to my anonymous hate mail. 

I don’t know how true it is, but I’ve heard it said that humans are remarkably negative creatures, and it takes so many more positive experiences to balance out just one negative experience. And maybe it’s not that universal a thing, but I can say that it sure feels relevant to my own life.

So, I think it’s important to remind myself that, no matter how much it seems like it’s so easy to attack me but so difficult to support me, I’ve actually received far more kind messages than cruel messages throughout this whole mess. And the kind messages are so much more thoughtful, too—and often attached to real names! 

And... I think that says something when I’m as cringey and humiliating as I am. These folks aren’t too ashamed to say that they’re here for me and what I do.

(But that said, I have removed names from anything that wasn’t a reblog or reply because I don’t want to embarrass anyone. Please let me know if you don’t want your words here at all, and I’ll blur them out. I don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable.)

There’s some stuff I want to address under the cut—along with a transcript if anyone is interested in reading these words but has trouble with the screenshots—but more important than any of my ramblings to follow, I want to thank everyone who took the time to write out these supportive sentiments and who continues to support me. I know these meltdowns are a drag, and I know I’ve been a nuisance. Thank you for sticking with me. I aim to be better and live up to what these messages say.

First things first, I want to clarify why I posted the collage of all the hate the other day. I didn’t approach that well, and I’m sorry. I realized too late that it was a bad decision.

Really, that collage was more meant just for me. Maybe it’s sad, but I’ve been actively writing on this site for a good half decade now, and for a lot of that time, I’ve almost craved anon hate. I was disappointed that I never got any. I wondered what the heck I was doing wrong.

After all, I have so many unpopular opinions. I realized that a lot of the community disliked me—or if that’s too strong a word, I knew they didn’t want anything to do with me—because of what I think and how I feel. But they never wanted to voice anything to my face. I wasn’t worth the effort to be attacked. I was nothing. Nobody.

There’s this quote from Tibor Kalman that I think about a lot: “[W]hen you make something no one hates, no one loves it.” If no one hated me enough to hate me right to my face, I thought, then I wasn’t good enough. I was boring. Easily forgotten. Not worth the effort.

So, getting all that anon hate for the first time? God, it hurt. It hurt so bad. Getting everything I’d always feared the community hated about me—as well as things I didn’t even consider them hating about me—right in my inbox? Ow. I cried a lot. I wanted to burn everything I ever wrote a lot. I wanted to quit making stuff for this community a lot. 

What’s the use? I thought—selfishly, of course, keeping in mind all the support up above. Why do I try? It was cruel and unfair, but I kept thinking these things. I kept thinking, What’s the use when nobody wants me here?

But I also thought about the implications of getting all that stuff thrown at me. And I knew it meant one thing: I’m not boring anymore.

There is at least one person out there who frequently checks my blog for more things to rail on me for. There is at least one person going out of their way to write nasty, awful, mean-spirited messages. There is at least one person eagerly waiting for me to respond, to say something, anything, so that they can hurt me and drag me and push me down.

After all these years, to at least one person, I’m worth the effort. No matter how much the messages have stung and destroyed me, I wanted to keep a record of them to remind myself, hey. Someone or someones out there hate(s) me this much for having a different opinion on a cartoon. Maybe that says that my opinions on this cartoon are worth something. 

I mean, they’re worth this level of mocking and ridicule, right?

But... I could have just kept the collage to myself. It’s a personal motivation. Nobody else needs to see these terrible things. That just encourages the cruelty even more. Why did I publicize it?

Well, it’s not too uncommon for Internet content creators to make something out of their hate comments. I like the trend of turning the comments into songs, like here, for example:

At the end of the video, Madilyn Bailey, the artist, says that the purpose of the song is to mock Internet troll culture and make something positive from the negativity.

But I wouldn’t say that that was really my motivation for posting my collage. Call me silly and naive, but I wanted to draw attention to these Internet fandom issues. Everything in that collage is what I was having to deal with... on top of my normal life struggles. 

While all of this was happening, I was tapering off my anxiety and depression medication because I felt it wasn’t as effective as it could be and because I feared it was making me lose my hair—something that I am extremely self-conscious about. I cut my hair short nearly a decade ago, and it’s never grown back to the same length. 

So, needless to say, while all of this was happening, I was horrified about the big clumps of hair lost in the shower. I was dealing with lightheadedness and dizziness from the withdrawal of my meds (which I’m still dealing with, btw), and I was also dealing with stresses at work. My department has changed management within the last year, and there’s been the concern that people will lose their jobs. There’s been the concern that this occupation won’t be enough to support me anymore.

While all of this was happening, I was stressed about my career, about money, about growing older—the beginning of the anon hate assault was just days before my birthday. I couldn’t see my therapist as much as I wanted because there ain’t enough therapists out there for all this world’s issues. 

And while I know that I shouldn’t compare, I also know well that my struggles are nothing compared to the struggles of others. So, how must it feel to deal with all the crap that life just normally throws at you, that’s probably a lot worse for most people than it is for me... and then come home to messages that treat you like a disgusting, horrible, awful human being for your feelings on a cartoon? For work you offer to a community for free and fun? 

For answers to questions that you only answered because you were asked to?!

Well, it felt pretty bad to me.

When I posted my collage, I meant to send a message about how this is not okay. I don’t want to see this kind of behavior, and I’m bothered that I don’t know how normal or common what happened to me is. Is this an everyday occurrence for online content creators? Have I just been shielded all these years because I wasn’t interesting enough?

I hoped that by sharing what I was going through, it’d draw attention to the problem. We shouldn’t be treating our fandom content creators like this. It’s not fair. It’s sick.

Of course, I don’t want to guilt anyone into supporting me. I don’t want anyone to feel like they can’t criticize me. I don’t want anyone to feel that, just because I was dealing with a Lot in life, any poor behavior on my part is somehow okay. It isn’t.

The comments that probably hurt me the most in that collage aren’t even the “hate” ones. They’re the ones that express that I messed up. That I hurt them. I can’t say I agree with how these feelings were expressed, but more than any nasty, personally insulting message, those probably hit hardest. I hate the feeling that I’m disappointing my followers. In fact, in taking screenshots for this post, I saw that at least one of the people who had sent me a sweet message has since unfollowed. And that—the sense that I should just stop, that my work really is as horrible as the cruel anons say, that I’m no longer someone they want to support because I’m a disaster and a failure—that... really, really stung.

But as I’ve said before, I can’t blame anyone for leaving me after all this drama. It stinks. It sucks. I messed up. I try to be kind, respectful, considerate, but I’m not perfect, and there are gonna be mistakes along the way. 

So I want to encourage—but only if you’re comfortable doing so, of course—more feedback about how to be better. How could I make my content more appealing? How could I handle these situations in ways that are less awful? Could I improve my post-tagging system? My therapist is helping me, but I’d like to hear from all y’all, too. I want to know how to make stuff that people actually enjoy. Anon hate doesn’t exactly help me make better content, but actual constructive feedback will. That’s what I want to see.

But enough bellyaching. Here are some posts I’m prioritizing right now, and I’d like to know which one folks would want to see most:

✄ “ambiguous” thoughts

✄ Ryuko stronger in episode 14, North Kanto monkey versus Osaka monkey

✄ Episode 6 ending

✄ Ryuko and Senketsu interactions

✄ Ripping out heart

✄ Satsuki’s isolation

✄ Things About: Senketsu, Satsuki, Mako, Tsumugu (maybe more?)

✄ Ryuko’s IF story, episodes 5-8

✄ Ryuko’s IF story, episodes 9-10

✄ Anime Revolution info

It’s a lot, I know ^^; And that’s not even close to all of it. But where should I start? Don’t worry; I intend to finish everything here—especially because a lot of these are old, old requests!—but I’m easily overwhelmed, so an idea of where to begin would be really helpful for me!

tl;dr, I shouldn’t have posted that thing the other day, and maybe this long vomit dump about my intentions doesn’t even come close to making up for it. But I want folks to know that I appreciate their support and would love any feedback about how to better serve the community and live up to these kind messages.

Which, speaking of, here’s a transcript of them:

“As a survivor that's ace I think you're handling the ragyo situation excellently and I'm really enjoying your blog so thank you!”

“Sorry you’re dealing with backlash in regards to your opinions and headcanons on Ragyo, dear! While I can’t really say much on the matter, I think it’s fair that you’re being open with us on how you feel and that you’re entitled to your opinion. Does that mean people will agree with you? No, but that’s okay! Or at the very last, it should be...but people can get heated when certain topics come up and that’s when it Gets Messy”

“There’s no right way to fandom, people jumping in your ask to belittle you are jerks. Tbh the first time I watched Kill La Kill I didn’t consider ryuko and senketsu relationship as romantic but after finding your writing and on subsequent watches I totally see it and like that’s the whole point of fandom right? A group of people who love a thing for varying reasons, I don’t understand this need to be monolithic in fandom. Anyways I love your writing and totally understand your frustrations of late”

“Guys, come on. It’s a work of fiction. People are allowed to like whatever they want to like. You don’t like that? That’s fine! But please, leave Goop alone for stating her mind and expressing how she feels about it. She wouldn’t hark you for your opinion because she’s fully aware of how could make you feel. She’s done nothing but pout her heart out about a series she loves, it’s her passion. If someone did that to YOU, you wouldn’t like it, now would you? (1/2)

“I know it’s not going to magically change overnight and everyone will say their peace to feel validated, but I just feel so bad that you’re getting all of this over things that you’ve previously talked about and STILL have to defend yourself for. Your opinion is yours, Goop, and don’t let ANYONE try to challenge that! (2/2)”

“Please don't be so hard on yourself! I understand why it makes you upset when people send hate and stuff but you shouldn't feel the need to justify every single word you say. I just wanted to let you know that I always adored everything you write and I'm completely on your side in all of this. :) I hope you feel better soon!”

“I think your takes are very good; but more important than everyone agreeing w/ everyone elses readings, I think, is that you are a very good writer of analysis and it would be a shame for you to falter in that because of ppls reactions to your content. anyone who harasses you about having the 'wrong opinions' about fiction needs to learn how analysis of fiction functions & find a better outlet :) you are very talented, Goop, please follow your true north!”

“People get hung up on weird things, like you can disagree with someone and not devolve to personal attacks??? Anyways I enjoy your klk content! I look forward to more analysis of the game!”

“man, i dunno why so many anons gotta be such massive jackasses, you don't deserve it. hell, i don't even ship ryuketsu (I lean towards a more queerplatonic partnership interpretation, and im generally allergic to romantic shipping anyways) and i still deeply appreciate the thought and research and care you put into your meta.”

“ik you don't want asks about this but as a sexual assault survivor you are absolutely valid on how you feel about Ragyo. I skip the bath scene on every rewatch, and I find her atrocious. The fact that people are attacking you for this is dumb.”

“Hey man you’re allowed to talk about who you want on your blog. It’s your shit. People are so entitled nowadays and can’t let people have opinions anymore. You’re not dumb, you’re not trying to be offensive. And it hurts seeing how you’re trying to be courteous and step on eggshells and still getting dragged. Like people are allowed to disagree but there’s no need to be rude to someone trying not to be rude. You’re literally saying an opinion. Everyone else relax, my dude. You’re fine.”

“It’s amazing how all these people can recognize ragyos terrible behavior but insist on having to defend her….”

 “Just wanted to shout over all of this hate and say you have an amazing blog and you shouldn’t let this get you down. Keep doing what you’re doing because it’s legitimately awesome. Anyway that’s all I had to say. Keep being you.”

“Hey Goop. Just always remember that even if we're quieter, there will always be more people supporting you and loving you than people hating you. I really hope you don't let these anons destroy your health in a more permanent way. Keep up the good work!”

“Hello! Just wanted to say that I love your posts and analyses of klk so much! I love seeing how passionate you are about it (bc I am too) and I also ship Ryuketsu SUPER hard! I'm sorry if people are getting you down, but I hope you keep on doing your thing!”

trashcanalienist said: I agree with this so much

tolliver-j-mortaelwyver said: …don’t ever let someone else’s insecurities become part of you. 😉

official-raven-branwen reblogged this from marshmallowgoop and added:

Ya’ll got a problem with Goop, you can fuck outta here with that.

#Lookin at you anon

official-raven-branwen said: Why are people being mean to you??! Goop, please please please don’t ever think that your content isn’t wanted. If people are having an issue, that’s on them. They can fuck right off.

tolliver-j-mortaelwyver said: More Ryuketsu! Indeed!

kuribo4indahouse said: Kill la Kill needs you

csolarstorm said: Hey Goop, I sympathize. It’s never easy to share opinions about topics like this, because everyone has a different story, and they all want their story heard by others. I’ve found that you can’t accomodate everyone’s struggles - you can only speak for yourself. Keep on writing, I love Kill la Kill and Iook forward to reading your work.

official-raven-branwen said: You got this! 

kuribo4indahouse said: Don’t worry, and don’t count out the possibility of becoming bigger over time!

gaylo-thymos said: Hell yea, you’re doing your very best to be out there and that’s what matters. Keep bein you!

darthvandr said: Well regardless of recent events, you’re one of my favorite blogs and I’d be sad if you left. So you just keep on being you!

kuribo4indahouse said:

Who the fuck wrote that lol

Are those even real people writing those messages? Who would be this rude over a TV show?

And then they call you “butthurt”… Any self awareness?

official-raven-branwen replied to your post “You’re so butthurt about this Ragyou thing. Get over yourself. So…”

You are awesome Goop! Don’t listen to those asshat anons. You rock and those anons mean nothing. You keep being you because you are enough!

Not sure why you have such awful anons. You are an awesome person. Please know that you opinions on stuff that you (very obviously) love are perfectly valid, because they are your opinions, on your own freaking blog. And to that anon that sent you that message, listen dude, if you don’t like the content Goop puts out, there’s the unfollow button right there champ.

eldritchgentleman reblogged your photo and added:

Fuck the opinions of others and enjoy what you love! They don’t own you, listening to them doesn’t make you happy so screw them with a pineapple.

simon-newman​​ reblogged your photo and added:

Also Ryuko and Senketsu is a valid ship.

eric-coldfire reblogged your photo and added:

Absolute valid ship, op. Ignore the haters and keep being you.

kuribo4indahouse​​ reblogged your post and added:

Just laugh at these Goop.

badgerjaw​​ replied to your post “goops, you’re starting to stoop to the level of those that are bugging…”

I don’t think this anon knows what patronizing means, nor can they tell the difference between getting a big head and acknowledging the amount you do in this fandom. To each their own, nonny, cheers

badgerjaw replied to your post “You realize some of us don’t have Tumblr accounts, we’re coming over…”

At least the shirt in question can consent; wonder if these nonnies are gonna get on the people who abuse their non-sentient socks?

“I'm sorry. I don't always necessarily agree with the ideas, but I haven't been offended.”

“And I know you're like, you know, a reasonable, nice person. So even if you did say something that came off as offensive, I wouldn't be up in arms about it, you know?”

“Hey Goop, I know this is coming really late but here's what I wanted to say

“You didn't deserve any ounce of that anon hate.

“I'm just absolutely stunned. There was nothing wrong with what you posted. Not then, not now. Because all you were doing was expressing your OWN interpretations. You weren't trying to claim anything as set-in-stone fact

“And... I don't understand. I don't understand why people are SO angry that another person has an opinion they don't share. In the end, what are we talking about here? An anime...

“Don't get me wrong. The topics you discussed were indeed important to talk about, and fiction definitely does influence reality. But the fact of the matter is that, when it comes down to it, your posts were simply you sharing some headcanons about some characters from an anime

“And... when you look at the grand scheme of things, I really do think those anons are really quite pathetic. I mean. Consider what sort of person they have to be so get SO angry over a post like ‘Hey I think Ragyo might be ace’ and say ‘How can you be this STUPID Ragyo is OBVIOUSLY a lesbian and YOUR WHOLE BLOG IS A BAD TAKE’ like really?????

“Actually you didn't even say ‘Ragyo might be ace,’ it was more of a ‘I personally feel like Ragyo is ace’ and?? What's the issue with that?????/

“I'm sorry if I'm rambling but I'm so upset that you're upset cause of those anons and all the hate you got over NOTHING

“Also, don't discount the fact that there are indeed people out there who agree with you. I know you mentioned that you don't think anyone shares the same opinions on Ragyo as you do. But in all my years of following you, I've realized one thing

“You and I... have the same opinions on EVERYTHING????????

“But let me be clear. That's not why I support you. It doesn't matter if we have the same headcanons. 

“Even if I disagreed with everything you said, I'd still support you. Because it's not the headcanons that matter—it's how respectful you are and how you're always trying to better yourself. You always try SO SO SO hard to express yourself in a reasonable and kind way, and you are always trying to be mindful of your wording and considerate of other people's opinions

“It really upsets me to see you apologize so much to people who don't deserve an apology.”

“Hi, Goop. I want to thank you for everything you do on this blog. I started getting into your Kill la Kill content in around 2016. I even keep a copy of your meta book downloaded on my phone to reread every now and then. 

“I think what I like so much about your writing is how in-depth and supported and thoughtful it all is. Kill la Kill is so easy for people to write off as just a flashy, over the top, fanservice show. I think the biggest takeaway from the show is that it truly is a story about friendship and love, and I’m glad that you write so, so much about this. It always gets me all giddy and excited when I see you post something new or when you reblog your old stuff. I first watched the show in 2014, then I rewatched it two more times, knowing that I liked it, but not knowing exactly why. 

“Until I started reading your blog. It’s really thanks to you that Kill la Kill is now my unbeatable, number one favorite anime ever. 

“You put into words so eloquently what I’ve always felt towards Kill la Kill since I first watched it. I want you to know I really appreciate you. Please know you have my support, and I hope you keep doing what you love.”

“First off HAPPY BIRTHDAY~ 

“I just hope that anon finds something more fulfilling than spewing hate and nonsense. Like model trains, or magic tricks. I know my life got a lot more bright when I kept my nose out of people’s business and started focusing on the things I love to do.”

“I'm sorry that you have to deal with these trolls. :/ Some people just like to get a reaction. 

“*would talk more but feels that the conversation is past its expiration* 

“I respect you for expressing your opinion. Lord knows how illegal that is when insecure people get offended.”

“super late at night for me and I should be sleeping but I saw all your responses and how you tried to handle things and just felt really bad. You're in a situation that things just can't be solved with a simple logical response. Like I said sometimes people just have a view and when they disagree they just need to attack others who are part of that disagreement.”

kurouga replied to your post “[[MOR] I already knew people felt this way about me, but I guess…”

You don’t know if it needs you? At times like these I’d say the fandom doesn’t deserve you. It’s always mind-boggling – and yeah, saddening – to recognize how readily people forget how to be civil and begin to hold the meaning they see in fiction as more important than the feelings and experiences of others. Meanwhile you’re classy, humble, patient, and resilient enough to have retained these qualities where so many others… haven’t. Nothing short of inspiring.

I’d say it’s reflective of the cancerous state of fandom environments that it’s so much easier to win support with sweeping, neat and tidy divisiveness – that is, by resorting to discouraging, dismissing, or ridiculing differences in opinion – than it is to garner support as a thoughtful proponent of discussion.

Those who would argue “This fandom would be perfect if only those people who have other opinions/ships would just *stop* already” are those who would rather reign over a wasteland than accept that their views aren’t threatened/invalidated by the existence of differing views. And they almost certainly don’t appreciate the irony in that the perfect victory they envision is one in which what remains of the fandom is all cut from the same cloth. Never stop being you, goop.

“Hey uh saw that you're going through some brutal stuff with a anon. But I wanted you to know you're handling it like a champ and hopefully they'll get on with their life soon!”

“No problem I always look forward to getting notifications for your posts. It's kinda sad that you can't talk about opinions on here without someone getting upset but I hope that doesn't stop you from continuing!”

“You write a lot about things and you're sure to upset someone but at least you're being honest and always try to resolve disagreements realistically. I'm sorry that you're crying and all but I hope you do feel better soon! It's gonna be your birthday after all ✌️”

“I don’t know if I clicked the right button. Sorry. Anyway, I just wanted to say that I really, really respect your work and to thank you, because you bring so much happiness to life of me and my other friends. Keep up with your good work and continue to share love for Kill La Kill and for t h e m. *salutes*”

“hey! heard you'd been getting shit lately from people deliberately seeking to misunderstand the work you've put into the KLK fandom over the years (doubt you'd remember me but i'm still [blurred for privacy] on AO3). even though i don't use tumblr anymore on a regular basis, of all the people i met and knew, even tangentially, in this fandom, you've always stuck out to me as one of the loveliest and most dedicated fans and my favorite meta writer, period. please keep it up!”

korra-n-stuff​​ replied to your post “You realize some of us don’t have Tumblr accounts, we’re coming over…”

can these anons please go away? you’re wonderful goop, dont change. These people just has sticks in their asses

fromtheriverbanks​​ replied to your post “Guys, come on. It’s a work of fiction. People are allowed to like…”

I love your analysis. I tend to agree with the stuff about Ryuko and Senketsu and think it’s a big part of what makes the show beautiful. If there were PhDs in Kill la Kill, you would deserve one.

[cb-143]

Dating Day6

♥ Wonpil ♥

First Meeting

You decided to fly out to LA with a couple friends for your holidays

the flight was really long and tiring, and everything just seemed to get worse once you arrived

The airline had lost your luggage  & when you came to the hotel, you first got help at the front desk, asking where you could get some cheap clothes, tooth-brush, etc.

After buying anything you needed, you just wanted to shower and try to calm down somewhat, so back to the hotel you went

turns out your friends had used up all the fresh towels.. so, things were clearly going even better

you went back to the front desk to ask for towels

guess what? They didn't have any.

You were about to give up when a strange man approached you

He had heard your story ealier and felt incredibly bad for you

now he's met you again, and he took his own towels with him anyway, so as you two met in the hotel's lobby once more, he offered you his towels

he takes you to his room to hand you the towels, that's where you meet his friends

he tells you they're in a band together, but you don't stay there long enough to find out all that much

you just want to shower and then head off to bed

the next morning you and your friends  are having breakfast at the hotel

and you see him again.

He sits by the table next to you, and so you start talking again

you find out more this time, learning that his name's Wonpil, what kind of music he makes, that he's on tour,

but most importantly, you find out his phone number

Confession

After you met in the US, you didn't see each other all that much anymore

He lives in Korea, and you live in [your country name(if you're not Korean.. if you are.. just play along?? fshdkjhs)]

you did frequently skype though

Wonpil loves to call you, wants to talk to you all the time, whether it's through Skype/Discord, text Messages, or even snaps

He thinks about you a lot and can barely put his phone down when you're both awake and online at the same time

He would've prefered to confess to you in person, but somehow he never got the chance, so he confessed to you through skype – at least that way, he'd be able to see your face

You were both a little worried; long distance relationships and all..

but you could see how badly Wonpil wanted this

and you had fallen for him too – so of course you wanted to be with him just as bad

Dates

The distance and Time differences make everything a little difficult

Wonpil would love to take you on dates all the time, but you hardly ever find the time

But that only makes it more special when you two do get to meet up and go on dates

When you visit him in Korea, he will go sightseeing with you, show you everything from his culture

if he visits you, you'll do the same for him

No matter where you are, he loves to go on walks (along the beach) with you, whether its daytime or dark outside

he loves the freedom of walking around, having you actually by his side, and just talking away

it's very peaceful to him

but he will go all out then too~

will buy y'all food, surprise you with flowers or little gifts here and there (a new suitcase lmao)

also likes to stay inside with you, watch a movie, play a game, have you help him with his english, etc..

will cook for you/order food and cuddle with you

Spending Time Together

imma just continue that from before hsfdjs

yeah, you'll often stay inside to just chill, eat some food, talk about nonsense

He likes to appreciate the rare moments when you can be with him in person

loves to be affectionate too during those times (will describe more in the next section)

when you're both in your own countries, he loves to still talk to you

he'll also do that where he just calls you and you both do your own things in silence, no talking

sometimes he falls asleep, or both of you, but waking up with one another is always the highlight of your morning c':

loves to take you along to practice/other really cool 'celeb' moments you wouldn't get to see otherwise, just by face-timing or sth

loves to play the piano for you, sing for you

gets shy sometimes c:

VERY interested in how your day was/what's on your mind

he could just listen to you talk about anything the entire day, because he cares sooo much, and because he loves to hear your voice

Loves to get your opinion on things he buys/makes as well

basically y'all would be living together through your phones ♥

Romance

he will always be super affectionate with you when you finally get to be together

loves to have your fingers intertwined, no matter if you're just chilling and watching a movie, or if he's playing a game – and it'll make him fail – or things beyond that

sometimes it annoys him a bit, but Wonpil knows that he doesn't get to interact with you like this often, so he wants to touch you as much as possible

Lots of hugs

backhugs!!!

cuddling

when y'all are around the others, he will still have his arm around your waist/on your back

hold him, and he will start crying

anytime you're close like this, he will remember and think about that you'll have to leave eventually, that he won't get to be close to you like this, and hear your heart beat right under his ear

he will do a lot of little, romantic things for you, but he likes it if you treat him, if you hold and cuddle him

will either sass you or be your little babyboy c':

seriously though, just put your arm around him, backhug him, do all those things, and he will be yours

lowkey likes it when you tickle him

loves tickle fights with you

very conflicted between feeling embarrassed to serenade you and just serenading you as an act to show you his love

don't even ask him to do it, he'll be so smug, but also so touched

it rlly depends on your role in the relationship

if you take charge, he will tease you a little for it, but will try his best for you!!

if he's in charge, he will still tease you hsdkgdj but he'll be more shy/cute about it

gives you little presents

loves any little gifts you bring/buy him

no matter what it is

he'll keep it

he'll keep them all very close to him when he's that far away from you again

'I love You'

It's just like you that terrible things always happen twice

you're on your first ever holidays together (you meet up in another country somewhere)

and the airline loses your luggage??

deja vu, huh?

You're freaking out, meanwhile Wonpil talks to people @ the airport & the hotel about how they could get it back/if they have some items you'd urgently need.

He comes back to you even more cluelessly than before, and as he walks towards you, he notices how stressed you look, what a mess your hair is (a bad mess, not like the usual way it's always like)

your eyes look tired, and you can't even bring up a fake smile for him

and he just feels his heart being squeezed so tightly in his chest

not only because he feels bad for you, or because there's nothing he can do about this

but also because it's in that moment that he realises just how much he loves you

he's pondered about his true feelings for a while, but he's already asked you out over the internet, he at least wanted to confess to you in person

so he had to wait for the right moment

and he felt like this was it

He stopped in front of you

and you asked him how his discussion with the staff went, if he could arrange something, anything

and he just replies with "I love you, it's gonna be okay." and hugs you

and you start crying in his arms, right there, just glad that – even if you don't have your luggage – you have him

Introducing you to Day6/Family

He's always in front of his phone/computer since y'all started talking

the members didn't think that anything was up at first

but his parents noticed it immediately, the way he smiled whenever he talked to you

"So, who's this girl/guy you're talking to?" they'd just ask him

and he'd deny it at first, rolling his eyes even

parents always assume such things, don't they?

Of course, it was true this time, but he'd rather introduce you in person

his parents insist, though, and he ends up telling them all about you, how you met at the hotel, how defeated you had sounded talking to the people at the hotel

his parents are happy for him, despite it being a LDR

they're just as eager as he is to see and meet you in person

his members saw you already at the hotel, but again, didn't really think anything of it

it's when you're constantly talking to him, when they know that you're not just an ordinary friend

but it's of no use asking wonpil about this

they wait until he opens up about it (more like until you demand to talk to them as he calls you)

Going Public

You looked more into his band after you get back from that first ever trip where you meet

Discovering how big his fanbase is, you decide to wait with going public – you know what that could mean for his career, and you're really not up for receiving so much hate!

Wonpil asks you a few months into the relationship

neither of you brought it up before?

He is fine with waiting too

you don't go public until you propose to him

a picture will be published of you two kissing (the ring on full display!!) and a message written by him

A few fans react as you expected them to, but the normal, human part of the fandom is very happy for you two

you receive many congratulations

you also receive many comments and questions about when you will adopt some animals/when children will join your family c: ♥

[minblush]

Leave mimi alone. If you could get over your jealousy for one second you would see would a sweet person she is. I follow her because she doesn't look for fights unlike blogs like yours. Yet there are fights on her blog cause of people who don't have anything better to do like you.

so it’s been a while and i finally worked up any sort of courage to address all of this and i will do it under this one ask because out of all the ones mimi’s “fans” sent me, this one was the most civil

i’m still shocked that i got so many people attacking me over rightfully calling mimi out, and ofc there is no jealousy involved, i guess i just don’t understand why she is the blog that anyone would want defend, like let me summarize

she only gets notes because she is fast with her updates, why is she fast? she just takes updates from twitter and twitter translators a lot of the time without crediting and without any factchecking herself

she spreads unverified information and rumours because of it and got into trouble because of it more than once

she posts sasaeng information and photos taken outside of official schedules in the boys’ private time despite being criticized for it (like the jikook vacation)

she also still has the fact that she “stalks” the boys in her bio, even though i know for a fact people told her many times it’s inappropriate in the context of the fan culture in korea

she is very ignorant about mental illness (the post where she claims that jimin suffers from depression and was saved from it by jin as a fact is still up btw), the entertainment business in korea, colorism and racism (she thinks “reverse racism” is an actual thing lol) and she spreads her harmful opinions by writing essays about it to her large following

what bothers me personally a lot as a gay person, she is one of those obnoxious delusional shippers and normalizes that behaviour to her followers and also fetishizes gay men to a really ugly extent (i’m not talking here about normal shipping BTW I SHIP LOWKEY TOO, it’s about boundaries though, i’m talking about writing conspiracy theories and fetishizing, FETISHIZING, treating sexuality as a joke and treating it like a commodity, direct quote from one of her very “funny” posts: “BTS is gay ! Shippers : Of course. Why would I stan straight boys ? Who does that ?”)

(and yes as someone said in the tags, apparently she also did make racial jokes and jokes about north korea etc, but i haven’t seen those myself, only saw people mention it second hand so since i don’t have receipts i wasn’t going to include it initially)

and that is all before the jonghyun issue, which i feel like is kind of a culmination of a lot of what i dislike about her blog

she didn’t wait for an official confirmation from SM and immediately started posting about his death, all actual fanbases of jonghyun and shinee waited until after the confirmation to actually post about it, because can you imagine if it wasn’t true (no matter how real it may seem?), just like other actual bts fanbases most of these serious blogs wait for official confirmations for anything, unlike mimi who just jumps on any opportunity for notes and for her to be the news bearer. you could see people asking her to wait until the confirmation in the notes of her first posts, BUT SHE DIDN’T LISTEN, instead she let her posts spread and only added confirmation much later when it came out (which is what she does in general, spreads rumours / unconfirmed info, then when confirmation or denial comes out she edits the post and apologizes in some extremely lowkey way, despite her getting the heat for it she keeps repeating the same pattern)

her posts were made from the point of view of a bts fan instead of a human being, she was extremely tribal by saying things like that “as a bts fan, as an army” i offer my hand to shawol etc, “jonghyun took care of bts”

then she made her post about saying how we should be grateful the boys are under BigHit and not SM, because bighit supports the boys in expressing themselves about mental illness and provides help for them, blaming the company and the entertainment business for jonghyun’s death, showing her complete ignorance, not only do we not know what bighit is actually like behind the scenes (do people not remember the scandal where one of the managers hit jungkook on camera?), but the issue is that this didn’t apply to sm anyway… because…jonghyun was very outspoken about his issues with mental illness, so were other sm artists like taeyeon or leeteuk, there was/is even a support group for idols under sm that these guys as well as others like onew or yoona were a part of

and depression isn’t that simple, jonghyun had friends and outlets, but if anyone has ever been depressed or suicidal, then you as i would understand that sometimes that doesn’t matter, depression is a serious illness and the illness just won in this case, this is an opportunity to spread awareness about the illness, to urge people to seek treatment as well (jonghyun sought it himself) not try to analyze and pin it on any company or any circumstance

yet mimi linked jonghyun’s death to being oppressed by his company, by having to hold things on the inside, as if he didn’t talk about it candidly and didn’t express himself in his music

what i also found distasteful but i also can’t prove anything and people grieve differently, i still raised my eyebrows because when she lashed out at people who got rightfully angry for her for using this opportunity for notes and to make it about bts and bighit, she revealed that she was upset and cried because she thought about how it could’ve been “one of her idols” that this happened to and that she didn’t even know shinee that well… she was very coherent up until that point, but when people called her out she started to cry and be very emotional and started to talk about how she had liked shinee since debut and jonghyun was her favourite (so she has been following them for like 10 years? that is longer than i have been into kpop and i am OLD and have liked shinee since 2009.. so she’s been a fan that long and doesn’t even know the basics of what jjong was like and what he dealt with?) and then went onto analyze his lyrics and talk about how she should’ve known, and her blog transformed into other people consoling her despite her being the person that upset so many people with what she had done… that stuff doesn’t add up for me, but that is just speculation since grief is different for everyone etc, it’s just something i personally can’t buy considering how she behaves online a lot of the time

she said she was sorry without actually acknowledging what she did wrong and after people defended her vehemently she actually changed her tune and started to say things like how it was a misunderstanding and even asked her followers to approach any people who were still “misunderstanding” and let them know, which,,, what even? i suppose i’m party this to thank for all the people that told me i was an ugly/jealous loser that should delete and/or die

and despite her being like this, despite her never learning from her mistakes, people still keep defending her and attacking people that call her out, and why? 

i would agree if it were one mistake, everyone always says.. let’s educate her instead of attacking her, let her learn from her mistakes, that’s what life is all about, right? i agree, people grow from their mistakes

but.. SHE NEVER LEARNS! she keeps repeating the same things, no matter how many times she gets in trouble, and you guys keep enabling her, i think it’s this culture of fans stanning other fans that creates toxic behaviour like this, why would she change? why would she learn? why would she start and mature, why? when she has so many people telling her that it’s okay, that she is right and everybody else is wrong everytime she messes up? i think people that send me those messages are complicit really

i just wonder, what will she have to do for you guys to see that she isn’t someone worth sticking up to to this extent, because due to this environment, she won’t learn?

is she the hill you guys want to die on?

i often see people saying that she does a lot for the fandom, but? she doesn’t actually do anything special, she basically takes from others and profits from them, if you follow actual update blogs that do their homework, like allforbts, ktaebwi, sweaterpawsjimin, or vlissful on twitter, you will see the difference right away.. those are the people that do work for the fandom, she redistributes and doesn’t even thank those that did the work, there are people that spend dozens of hours translating and researching, books worth of content, people that paid for japanese tv subcriptions so they can record those shows for you, those are the people that do a lot, reposting tweets, anyone can do that (and a lot of people do, which is fine as long as due credit is given, what i’m saying is… it isn’t special and doesn’t require any effort at all, so why worship someone for like… doing the bare minimum? and sometimes not even that?)

why would you guys go to such an extent to then attack people that called her out, and rightfully, you guys would tell me a person with depression and an actual fan of jonghyun, that “if you care about jonghyun so much why don’t you join him”

over mimi? over someone who acts like all that i described? is that worth it… i don’t understand this cult-like mentality, even if she were an actual angel that did save the fandom, what in the world would make this okay?

i now have anxiety every time i try to get on tumblr and will have to work to overcome it because you people told me to die over calling HER out while going to her and telling her how everyone else sucks and she is a lovely angel…

and why she doesn’t pick fights? i talked to her in the past and let me tell you… she is stubborn and won’t change her mind and when she sees she can’t out-argue and manipulate the person SHE BLOCKS THEM and doesn’t let them express their views on her blog, no she only lets views that paint her as a victim there, she doesn’t let her followers see any validand CONSTRUCTIVE criticism

that’s why she seems like she is above it, like she is only nice and the angel and people like me are scum for ever saying anything, she is very smart about that aspect of things. but she isn’t above criticism (and neither am i), she is a human being like me or you :/.

i’m not telling you to hate her or attack her, don’t please.., i’m just asking you to see her for what she is, someone who is notes and attention hungry, someone who refuses to learn from her mistakes and someone who actually flaunts her ignorance, please give your time and attention and thankfulness to people in the fandom that aren’t like that :( and mostly, don’t go around telling people that call her (or anyone) out to die like.. please?

if she wanted to defend herself she could always talk to me, or anyone, or address it in a constructive manner, instead of relying on her followers to do that for her while publishing dozens asks on her blog that praise her and tell her how everybody else is wrong

she isn’t a celebrity, she can speak for herself

the fact that she chooses to deal with things the way she does says it all, right?

just…please reconsider stanning other fans, it creates all this toxicity, nothing good comes out of it, that is mostly what i wanted to say

and she specifically isn’t worth all the hurt

thanks

[eucataestrophe]

Shipping Real People is Wrong

(and why you should care)

Yes. This post is exactly what it seems like. I don’t see a reason to beat around the bush on this topic. It shouldn’t be a controversial one to discuss. And yet? It is- for some ungodly reason that I can’t even begin to fathom.

Let’s start with what shipping is, and why it’s okay, when applied to fictional people. Shipping is, in short, thinking two fictional characters (i.e. Elena Gilbert and Damon Salvatore from The Vampire Diaries) would make a nice couple. Sometimes this involves making edits to support this “pairing” or fanfiction. Other times, the person just consumes entertainment made by other fans who ship the same pairing.

I think we can all agree that this is pretty okay. It used to be considered a little odd, but nowadays it’s pretty widely accepted.

Where we begin to run into trouble is when we involve real people. When fans begin to pressure the actors/actresses to date in real life. Now, Ian (Damon) and Nina (Elena) did date in real life, to the thrill of many fans. People loved them together. Until they broke up.

You’d think people would stop rooting for them as a couple, considering they’d broken up and Ian married another woman and has a daughter. Unfortunately, no. Many people still ship Ian and Nina IRL and this is where things get...well, tricky.

A good example of things becoming an absolute mess due to fans shipping co-workers together, is none other than One Direction. You’ve probably heard of “Larry Stylinson” at some point.

Do you realize that was the destroyer of a close friendship? One of the people being shipped in the relationship, Louis Tomlinson, spoke out about how uncomfortable he and Harry felt, and how it ultimately ruined their friendship.

"It kind of happened naturally for me and Harry because a certain amount of the fans drew up this conspiracy," Louis said about the Larry Stylinson conspiracy theories. "When it first came around I was with Eleanor, and it actually felt a little bit disrespectful to Eleanor, who is my girlfriend now. I’m so protective over things like that, about the people I love." Louis said the fear that fans would overanalyze every minor interaction between the two stars caused them to stay away from one another. "It created this atmosphere between the two of us where everyone was looking into everything we did," Louis said candidly. "It took away the vibe you get off anyone. It made everything, I think on both fences, a little bit more unapproachable."

Many fans, self-proclaimed larries, took it a step farther and declared that Eleanor was/is a “beard” (when a person is hired to play the part of a significant other in order to hide a celebrity’s sexuality), that Briana (Louis’ son’s mother) was never really pregnant, that Freddie was a doll or not Louis’. Larries continue to harass Briana and her family on social media, even hurling death threats and wishes.

Larries’ behavior has gotten so out of control that there are entire blogs (ran by so-called “Anti’s”) dedicated to calling out this kind of behavior and helping ex-Larries escape the fanbase (because if you attempt leave the Larry-side of the fanbase, you’ll receive death threats and more spine-chilling comments than one could ever imagine).

From this, we can conclude that shipping can do some serious damage in real life, despite the fact that it’s often seen as “harmless” and acceptable.

There are some other cases of celebrity’s having trouble with fans shipping them. The most recent: Lili Reinhart and her costar on Riverdale, KJ Apa. Lili took to her tumblr to respond to the shippers:

"It’s horrifying how invested some people are in my love life. Emphasis on “my.” It is mine. It is private. If a stranger’s love life is causing you anger, frustration or anxiety… please reevaluate your priorities. I also want to point out that there is a difference between shipping Betty and other characters, and shipping me with literally everyone I make eye contact with.There are so many other things to focus your attention and energy on."

There is the argument that shipping real people is okay as long as it’s in fandom-dominated spaces on the internet (i.e. Tumblr, AO3, Wattpad) and doesn’t make it’s way onto the person’s social media accounts. This is very wrong, for a multitude of reasons.

One of those reasons is the fact that you’re still practicing toxic fan behavior and enticing others to do the same. Doesn’t matter where you’re posting those pornographic drawings of two co-stars who are happily married IRL; you’re still doing it, publicly, and it’s still absolutely appalling. 

Another reason is there is NO such thing as a good place to post that kind of content. Fans thought they were safe running to Wattpad...until Zayn Malik himself created an account to promote his book. People were creating memes and cracking jokes that held a whole lot of truth underneath: “delete your fics before he sees!”

This was said for the same reason that people panic and  threaten to delete their Twitter when their favorite band follows them: they’re ashamed of themselves. Even if they won’t admit it, even if they pretend it’s funny, even if they refuse to stop. They feel some guilt, deep down, for what their fave might see on their account.

I imagine there are some people out there who don’t feel any guilt for what they do and the pain they cause. They’re so far down the rabbit hole of slowed down GIFS and flourishing fantasies that they don’t know the difference between reality and fiction and they don’t care.

Call them out and suddenly you’re being branded a multitude of things by not only them, but their online circle, too. One of these things, if the ship in question is same-sex, is homophobic or hetero-normative.

Tumblr seems to have this odd obsession with gay couples, namely male gay couples. It’s fetishistic, and has become an accepted part of fandom life when it should be anything but.

If the two people involved in the ship are straight (or worse, has a partner already), why is it okay to say they’re lying and “definitely gay”? Would any of these people be comfortable with labeling a gay person as straight for their ship? 

Here’s something else to chew on: Making two best friends who are male into a ship, normalizes “bro culture”. How? Because it illustrates that showing any care or concern for your friend makes you gay or bi. Not everyone is capable of letting that kind of thing roll off their back or it goes beyond what they could handle while remaining unaffected (i.e. Harry and Louis’ friendship).

I don’t think there’s a person who’d argue that Harry is against the LGBT+ community or that he’s homophobic, as he has pride flags at his concerts and encourages fans to be themselves. If this doesn’t showcase that most people would be uncomfortable with real life shipping, I don’t know what else will. Put yourself in his shoes. In Louis’ shoes.

It’s not a great place to be.

[easkyrah]

What’s your opinion on younger teens in the sjm fandoms? I’m starting to get uncomfortable when younger kids follow me and their age is outright listed on their description.

This went way longer than I thought it was. I’d originally planned simply giving a one sentence response, but the more I thought about it, the more I think I needed to clarify, and pin down why I felt this way. Because opinions aren’t fact, you know?

I didn’t grow up on bedtime stories where the prince saved the princess. When my mother tucked me into bed, she told me two weeks after her marriage, she cut herself. As she made the motions over her wrist, I sick feeling remained in my stomach for days, and every day my father came home from work, I would rub my palms over my arms.

My father holds that sex remains an integral facet of a marriage. Without intercourse, two individuals exist as friends. So whenever my father felt aroused, he forced my mother to have sex with him, even though she’s repeatedly told me when we’re alone she doesn’t want it—but she has to if this marriage is to work.

I told my mother that that is rape, that he’s undermining the vow to love each other. But my mother’s so broken down from her young, past self, she can’t see it. One day, she asked me, “Do you think your father’s controlling?” Not husband, but my father.

And it is my father that locked me out on the porch, and when he let me in with me blubbering “why why why”, he told me, “I destroy my enemies so completely so that they don’t destroy me.” Me—his daughter—his enemy.

I’d been doing the dishes, and the plates had made a clashing noise. “That sound is annoying,” my father had said, approaching me. “If you make it again, I’m going to start using my fists to keep me happy.”

I told him I’d report him, but that didn’t deter him. “Good!” he shouted. “Report me so that I don’t have to take care of you anymore.” My mother had watched silently, but she knew she couldn’t do anything.

Because he is controlling. He had my mother quit her job before I was born, and told her if she wanted to get one know, it would have to be as a trash can driver—because it’s work that’s singular, where she won’t be surrounded by people. He closed both my mother’s and I’s bank accounts.

My younger sister whispered to me one day when our father was home, “If this is love, then I do not want it.”

I found love overrated at this point, anyway. I identified (and still do) as an asexual, so when my father preached sex was the fundamental root of a relationship, I cringed. And when my sister, still discovering her orientation, told me she thinks she’s bisexual—well, I knew we were doomed.

We couldn’t talk to our parents—because my mother tells my father what we tell her—about how we felt.

“You’ll like boys when you get older,” my father said. It’s why when I was in elementary school, he had me sign a contract that I wouldn’t date until I was over 21. “You’ll start feeling attracted sexually—that’s normal.”

But I never did. I found boys cute, sure, but it never went further than that. And whenever my friends came out to be gay, and he found out, he’d say, “It’s a phase in life, they’ll get over it.”

I’ve never said it outright that he needed to get over his own homophobic feelings. It was not up to him to play a god and determine the happiness of others—such as I cannot let age be an aspect of discomfort to justify monitoring or controlling others.

Who was my father to lecture me on the privilege of having the chance to cut myself when he found out I was suicidal? Who was he to laugh at me when I demanded he re-open my bank account and tell me “that’s cute” when I begged for my own credit card? [Side not, just today I opened a student savings account! It feels amazing having this autonomy, even small, from him. It’s a step.]

Celaena had been told by Arobynn, the father (?) figure she knew, about the ways of assassins. When you apply the psychodynamic view, it’s no surprise she believes in the beginning violence is the answer. And in my household, when not negative reinforcement, but punishment reigns, you associate violence as a form of tough-love.

But books show that this is not the way, and it doesn’t have to be. I read TOG when I was a freshmen, thirteen years old. I’d gone through the Wattpad phase, scoffing and belittling every romance/chick-flick/werewolf/vampire/love work in my head. What did these people know about love, probably conjuring these scenes they wished happened to themselves?

But the beauty with SJM’s works is that not only are her fictional relationships unique, but herself and her husband Josh’s relationship too. With SJM’s characters such as Aelin, it took our favorite protagonist more relationships than the single one in books where the female lead + first male mentioned ship together.

In ACOTAR, on the other hand Nesta’s been assaulted by Tomas Mandray. Feyre goes back to an abusive relationship (arguably) with Tamlin. Elain’s put herself in a shell when Feyre went missing. Her characters intertwined with pieces of my own story. There are not just external challenges, but internal character development cognitively.

And meeting people, conversing with people over Tumblr—I found people just as broken, if not more, than me. You can’t dismiss these people in the fandom across all ages who have had their own experiences because of relativity.

And I find age a relative number. Oprah Winfrey was 9 when she was raped. One of my closest friends, an immigrant from Egypt, was nearly 5 years old when his house had been ravaged apart and the sounds of gunshots still ring in his years more than decades later. And conversely, I learned what a dildo was when I was in a senior in high school—and over Tumblr.

When sex-ed teachers said “don’t have sex till you’re married”, I saw that sentence as justifying what my father said—that sex is essential to marriage. But it is anything but. Trust and communication are. In fact, in social societal circumstances, what you learn in the classroom never covers this. And if you’ve been raped—how do you feel, knowing that you didn’t have a choice?

Because my mother didn’t have a choice, not when she’d be left with nothing now if she filed for a divorce. Neither did my friend who was attacked by a male when she was at the gas station and dragged away in the night at Bakersfield. Education never covers more than the basic of what has been preached for years.

For so long, no’s have been negotiated. If I tell a man “no”, he says, “But I’ve brought you coffee this entire week. I’ve made you food when you were sick. You owe me this at least.” Do I really owe him that? If I’d known his supposed kindness wasn’t hallmark of friendship, but something much more sinister, would I be emotionally manipulated into feeling like a bitch if I’d disagreed?

So when SJM gives me a badass female who goes through the stages of defeat and grief, but picks herself back up, I see a role model. I see what my mother could have been. I see what my father would have deserved—my father who negotiated my mother’s no’s, and that is not okay. “No” is a complete sentence.

It’s not to say SJM’s books prove the epitome of relationships—Aelin had intercourse with Rowan on the beach—do you know how unsanitary that is?? Do you know???

I get the age stigma, and I’m going to admit that I didn’t have my sister read City of Heavenly Fire while Jace and Clary have sex in hell—am I the only one who found that ridiculous?? Books do over-romanticize things, but isn’t that the point of fanfiction? To portray it in however you feel—more realistically?

When I first came onto Tumblr, my fics were only angst. I carved facets of my own family life into these fics, and when I received notes that readers cried and couldn’t believe I had the capacity to write this, they became more exposed unknowingly to bits of me.

I’d rather my sister read books and join the Tumblr fandom than say yes to the boy on the bus showing her a pornographic video (because boys do that unashamed here), allow teammates on our cross country and track team to smack her butt and ask to make her feel better with a kiss, etc.

Because in our circumstance, reading the stories of those, such as Celaena who survived Endovier—she’s the closest thing we have to understanding our own situation of what transpires in our house. When Sam died, my friends had sobbed while those whose parents had passed away—they didn’t shed a tear. So the former learned what it felt like to have someone you loved ripped away from you—and this empathy later on serves as a life skill.

The fandom itself has been incredibly supportive. I’ve met people from Bulgaria to Australia, and not only do I have better glimpses into the culture, the bond of SJM books have brought a situational awareness that I have yet to experience sitting fifty minutes in a high school classroom.

Because it’s too late to learn the truth of things in college. Our brains do not absorb the information as compared to when we were younger. Retention rates and all that—we’ve got to start young. There are many forms of education, and Tumblr taught me that my father is not the only type of male in the world—and that there are others like me who have thought there was no way out.

SJM’s characters have taught me self-love, that I can be more than my environment. Age knows no boundaries. What one person experienced at 9 years old is what another could have in his/her 20’s.

Age has always been a limit. I mean, it wasn’t until the 26th amendment 18 year olds and over could vote—but are there not the prodigies below that mark more informed about government and politics than someone who has only lived in their city and has been exposed to their parent’s opinions since he/she never went to college? Especially today with the Internet as such a vast source and online class to enroll it, education starts with incentive, not age.

And if NSFW posts are the issue, then we can always insert that read-below cut. It won’t prevent them from not reading, but we can always frame it in a way that perhaps is meant for these younger readers, and then at the very end, reveal that it was for such.

We can use our blogs in a positive manner to educate about sex, if that’s the root of uncomfortableness. We can be the sex-ed class that we never got. Tell me why my sex-ed teachers called people out if they asked questions, saying the kids were too eager? If we are to overcome the stigma about learning about our bodies, then we have to be able to talk about it.

The youth are the future generation, and if we keep teaching kids that we shouldn’t know things at certain ages, then we set limits on education itself. When I told my sister to not read City of Heavenly Fire, she got a copy from her friend and read it herself—which put a strain on our bond. Because restrictions show that we do not trust. And we’ve got to take the leap of faith. 

I get not everyone has these tragic/pity/sorrowful stories, no matter what you believe. But personally, SJM’s books taught me that there exists some good in the world. There is redemption. There are second chances, and my sister and I struggle to fix our family.  

We have to be exposed. It’s how we function. And for kids who never went through sex-ed, reading books as a source of information can direct them to look things up and educate themselves.

SJM’s books illustrated that you could find happiness without sex—a fact my father would have disagreed with. SJM showed that love is progress, and doesn’t have to be detrimental. Some may interpret her books in other ways, but that’s why it’s so pivotal we have these discussions.

Take Nesta Archeron. Lots of people has called her a cold-hearted bitch, not realizing that it’s an actual, legitimate defense mechanism. And if being a cold-hearted bitch is sending mercenaries after your sister, starving yourself to death so their father would save them, writing a letter to the Mortal Queens despite her hatred of Faes—then I guess I would be too.

But knowing me, I’d freeze up and probably would have not lived at all. Because it’s easy to dismiss characters when they do something we don’t—as if we could have done better. Sure there’s ways Nesta could have gone about and done things differently, but then she wouldn’t have been Nesta Archeron, you know? We’re dismissing her as a person, and coping mechanisms as invalid, which people use in life.

Passing judgments on characters is easy, but when you dive into the Tumblr fandom, you see people defending her (like me), and get another side of things. These debates allow for that one track mind to diverge.

Because if I hadn’t opened up to people, then I would have continued to cut myself. And then I was able to help my sister stop too. The exchange and interaction of ideas may be used to promote ideas that no longer remain up to date, but that’s why we have other users who are up to date, and use their knowledge to write about them. Because knowledge is power!!

What do you guys think? Lowkey highkey want your feedback and thoughts not just to my response but the anon’s as well.

[alicenpai]

Hello ^^ Ur art is amazing! I was wondering if u can give me some tips on establishing an online presence? Things like networking and getting my art to be known

Ah hello!! thank you so much ;o; I’m not sure if I’m really qualified to answer this, IT TOOK ME REALLY LONG. AND TBH I DON’T EVEN THINK I FOLLOW MY OWN ADVICE, but *mario voice* HERE WE GOOOOOO –

Just a disclaimer before we start: some (all?) of these tips are specific to my personal experiences, and they may or may not work for you. I have been posting art online for a little over 10 years, and my experiences may not be the same as yours/other artists (I grew pretty slowly!!). Please keep that in mind. I think I kept this tutorial pretty fair, however. If they did help you I would honestly love to hear your story! ^^

1. First off, consider: what are you passionate about? What do you want others to see when they stumble on your page? 

For me I love games, so I’ll try to draw a lot of that (despite being slow at drawing), and I’d like to focus more on my OCs in the near future. I’m not saying you should limit yourself to labels, but, know where your passions lie! If you like cartoons, draw a lot of cartoons! If you like bgs, draw bgs! You like originals? Go wild! My message is that everyone has a thing or two that they really like! Show what you’re passionate about! There is always a community for your interests.

About fandoms: just remember that if you switch fandoms due to changing interests, lack of time etc. - some people may unfollow or express negative feelings, that’s normal. For me, when I completely stopped posting shounen anime content, my engagement went -WET FART WHOOPIE CUSHION SOUND- down. But hell you can’t please everyone! so just do whatever makes you happy (as long as it’s not harmful to others obviously)

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2. HAVE A CONSISTENT SCHEDULE. REMEMBER THAT YOUR HEALTH ALWAYS COMES FIRST. 

“Algorithms” (I dislike that word sometimes, it gets thrown around more often than the first slice of bread, you know?) will never cater to creators, so don’t beat yourself up if you can’t make 9000 shitty instagram reels a week just because the CEO says so. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO POST 1 DRAWING EVERY WEEK.* And remember that we are in a global pandemic (AT THE TIME OF WRITING) so it’s okay to take breaks, long breaks are cool too.

 Being consistent means maintaining a schedule - uploading every other day, 1x a week, 1-3x a month, etc. - however many times as you want. It doesn’t necessarily mean be “active”, but I think people appreciate knowing how often they can expect work from you! Because they love to see your content and they’re excited for it!

For me personally - I find that uploading 1 piece of artwork per month is usually a pretty good schedule (for a full time post-secondary student/working adult). And I know that may be shocking HAHA. but time really does fly and 1 month can go by in the blink of an eye! Many artists I know abide by that, and so do I - I don’t find that my audience dips too much, and if 5-10 people leave, it doesn’t really matter. In high school with a lighter workload, I might’ve posted 1 drawing a week (or like 3-4x a month) but as my workload grew, I had less time for personal artwork, so 1x a month is already quite good IMO! If you think 1x a month isn’t enough to grow an audience - in the meantime you can join communities and hang out with other artists, or just chat with a close group of artist friends ^^ (see #4)

* You don’t have to post 1 drawing every week, but I know other artists recommend posting text posts in between art so that people know you’re still online! Shitposts are cool (just don’t like.. spam so much that twitter bans you?)! You can talk about that new game you played during your downtime! You don’t have to do this if you don’t want. Some people don’t really like to type at all. Some artists prefer to just post, and that’s okay too.

In a previous version of this post, I said being “active” is important. Trying to adhere to other people’s advice destroyed my sense of self-esteem and productivity. Bad 2017 Alice! Bad! I’ve always struggled a lot with “being active”, because I draw slow, I often felt like I had to “catch up” to my peers, and that’s a toxic attitude to have for myself. I’d occasionally crank out shitty doodles that no one really reacted to, so it made me feel worse. I burn out, I delete posts, I produce nothing. Feel awful about myself as both a person and artist. A vicious cycle. 

In regards to being concerned over people unfollowing: my honest opinion is that people follow so many creators nowadays, that they can always look at another creator in the meantime while you’re busy (even if you’re someone’s favourite creator… most people are decent human beings and understand you need time off). It’s normal to get unfollows when you’re not posting every other day, or if you switch fandoms. Heck even for me I’ve lost like more than 100 followers in an inactive period. It’s normal. Your productivity and follower count have nothing to do with your worth as an artist.

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3. Join communities and be nice to others! Twitter is best for networking because of the nature of the platform (i.e.: more conversational), but obviously don’t be a pushy salesman or constantly follow and unfollow to get someone’s attention and stuff like that - use your judgement. Join art discord groups, even a LOT of fandom discord servers have an art channel too! (join one of your favourite anime or etc, a lot of them have the links posted publicly on reddit), join dA groups, drawing/theme challenges (e.g. you wanna try traditional art? get inking! your favourite ship is doing a themed week? sink with them! people love ships!) Look out for redraw memes, 60/69 min challenges, current topics, etc etc.

I think nowadays it’s easier to join communities as a young artist than when I first started posting art online ^^; (LOL I just had dA) You guys should take advantage of that!

TRY OUT NEW DRAWING SITES! Artfol, Pillowfort (NSFW?), and Sheezyart are some new sites that I’ve seen floating around. Getting involved helps attract eyes to your work. Art platforms may not get you as much attention as tumblr, twitter, or instagram, since they will likely be used by more artists and less non-artists, but art sites cannot grow ant thrive unless people sign up right? I’ve tested Artfol (briefly...) and I think it’s definitely worth trying out!

This is a given, but always tag your work according to the platform. Know what tags work depending on the platform (e.g. 4378548754875 tags on 1 tweet tend to be abused by spam bots, so the more tags on twit the more suspicious the post looks IMO). Very different culture depending on the platform. On instagram and tumblr go crazy. Twitter is good with just 1 with the series, e.g. “#persona5″, or you can just mention it in the post caption, e.g. “Haru is my favourite character! (persona 5)”, because content is still searchable that way as well.

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4. Be patient - don’t worry if you don’t get noticed overnight, or in a couple months… or years even. Don’t panic. Sometimes your work is just not ready for a larger audience. EVERYONE’S EXPERIENCE IS DIFFERENT, no one’s experiences should be discounted - look at each artist’s experience/art growth individually. And this isn’t meant to be discouraging or insulting, sometimes it really is just luck that will get you noticed. 

For me personally, I’ve been posting art online since late middle school. I think it took me about SIX whole years before my art started to go somewhere (conventions helped me too), but even then it took me another TWO years AFTER to break my first 1000 followers (at least on twitter, tumblr I kept no records of as far as I know). So yes, it took me almost EIGHT years online to go somewhere. But I did start posting art when I was quite young, and I would NOT even say that my art was good until the last few years. In fact, let’s roast my old art now:

My friends gifted me a tablet for my birthday and I took to that shit like how kids inhale sugar. I’m really grateful for them. As a teen I was frustrated as to why my work wasn’t getting eyes, I considered myself “pretty good” because of the insane improvement I made in just 2 years’ time. But I think this work just wasn’t technically very strong, or appealing to others yet.

Some people are more lucky than others, but honestly don’t worry if you struggle with your online presence. A lot of other artists are in the same boat, even if they don’t post about it publicly! Even I struggle to find the right time & content to post. Sometimes you can just blame the “alg*r*thm” (derogatory). And remember, large follow counts don’t mean the artist is rich……

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5. Closing thoughts: don’t forget to have fun! (No this is not a threat). Your personal art is all about self exploration and fun (art for work is different). You should draw what you like, but it’s... not... a horrible thing to try and draw popular stuff either. I draw fanart for series that I like, because it makes me happy, but it’s also awesome to bring a smile to others’ faces too, right? I think it’s important to maintain a balance and not go overboard/sell out, you know? Don’t forget to explore your boundaries as well! Hope you can find this useful! And if any of these tips helped I’d love to hear it!