#i fucking hate this side of the fandom and belittling the character's reaction

[lazysublimeengineer]

The fandom: why is Chigiri crying?

Me: because he is unable to continue playing in the U20 match and he's being subbed out.

The fandom: isn't he being dramatic?

Me: if you know Chigiri's backstory since season 1 and watched the episode YOU SHOULD KNOW WHY HE REACTED LIKE THAT AND IT'S NOT HIM BEING DRAMATIC.

THE GENDER BIAS AGAINST MEN CRYING IS SO REAL I CAN'T-

[wellofdean]

Just breaking up this post before it just gets out of hand, but want to reply to these notes from @ironworked :

#I was reading the transcript of a panel Kripke did in 2008#he gets asked about Jo and at the end says they 'don't have any plans to bring her back'#and then: ''(audience cheers)''#then they cheer *for* Ellen#The impression I get is that a large portion of the fandom only ever cared about female characters that weren't 'a threat' to a ship#but who still were there for Dean and Sam#This show had its fumbles and mistakes and iffy stuff with female characters but I'm with Ilarual here - fandom has been significantly wors#the reactions to Mary and Amara are particularly interesting because they're pretty much exactly#the kind of nuanced female character fans *say* they want#and yet they get trashed and misrepresented regularly#funny that#Tv: Supernatural

Ugh. So gross. And to be clear, I am also with @ilarual : there is plenty of misogyny in Supernatural that's there just because it's the air we all breathe, but a lot of it is in the way if someone wants to belittle Dean in some way, they ALWAYS impugn his masculinity, and the way he is supposed to be ashamed of being the one who just wants to keep his family together, and the way he is unable to experience a tender emotion without embarrassment, or the way he can't say "I love you" so he says "I did not leave you!" and "Don't do anything stupid!" angrily instead. Or, the way Sam (soulless) and grandpa Samuel make fun of his nice house with Lisa, and he feels the need to defend himself by saying "Go ahead, call me a soccer mom!" as if the worst possible thing he could be is a feminized, domesticated man who's been tamed by a woman who reads girl magazines. THAT'S misogyny, but fellas, I think the show is attempting to point a thing out with that? All of those things are depictions of misogyny in a show that's about the way terrible patriarchal relationships fuck men up.

Dean's so-called misogyny is cartoonish and ridiculous and clearly a triggered performative response to stereotypical representations of performative femininity, because when Dean is called upon to respond to a woman as a human being, he is well able to do that, even in season 1.

Women who threaten the big ship are always hated in fandom after fandom. Personally, I loved Jo. I loved her crush on Dean, and his big brother act hiding a crush on her. I loved Amara because GOD'S SISTER? Dean's dark female soul image? The way their weird, skeevy connection resolved in mutual empathy, one caged thing to another, and also in giving each other what they most needed? Mary coming back to show Dean that his fantasy of a lost ideal family was just that? A fantasy?

Like, that is just rich storytelling and I am here for it.

I get why people didn't like Amara -- she is an antagonist and I cringed every time she touched Dean's face. She was a threat to Dean, but also? I fucking LOVED that she was there, making me super uncomfortable and fucking EATING, and against Chuck? I wanted her to win. Fuck that guy! I love the idea that a controlling author/father/god who locked his sister and feminine equal up so he could play with his boytoys and make them kill each other. I love that Amara is symbolic of nothingness as opposed to Chuck's being because I think there is a fundamental way in which we struggle to imagine ourselves, AS A CULTURE, without patriarchy.

I also get why people are mad at Mary. We love Dean! We want him to have what he wants! We want him to have fluffy mom-time to make up for all his years of pain. But, can we all just ask ourselves the important question of whether or not a grown-ass man should get what he wants at his mother's expense? Like, are mothers actual human beings with desires, needs and exigencies of their own, or are they slaves to their men and their offspring?*

*Side note: I feel like there are a lot of young people who are mad at their moms on tumblr, and yeah, not all parents live up to their responsibilities and that sucks, but yo: moms are people they make mistakes and have needs.

And, as story devices, which is what they ultimately are, Dean's weird feelings about Amara in a season that is all about Dean thinking about what his heart wants, really only supports the ship we all want to see sail. As for Mary, her death was the inciting incident and her return (and John's) was about healing by letting painful things be painful, and seeing that what you have is pretty fucking good, actually ("I have a family"), and then her second death tests Dean's commitment to holding his family together. Like, our heroes have to be put in situations so we can see their mettle! That's what stories do!

I dunno man. The other day someone I know in meatspace was like: "Oooh! I love Supernatural! Let's talk!" And I was like: "Oh! Cool! Yeah!" and then she says: "Sometimes it sucked though, especially in the later seasons, like when they brought Mary back," and I was like........."Actually, let's not talk."

[misty-doodles]

A (small) analysis of Niragi

Now, it's like 9pm and my brain is mush, I'm going off memory with this quote said in season 2, episode 7. It's said by none other than eternally angry boy, Niragi Suguru, a menace to the aib fandom space. Now, I do enjoy him as a character, and I also hate him as a person, and to watch both sides of the fandom bicker is tiring. I like him, I think he's complex and fun, and very fucked up. I think he has some interesting things to explore, like what I want to talk about that I feel gets misunderstood a lot. I am not a Niragi apologist who thinks his actions are fine or that he's a uwu baby, and I can fully see him a morally corrupt person. He's still fun to me. With that out of the way, a little analysis on one specific quote.

~~~

"if there were 7 billion of me, you'd be the villain too,"

Now, a lot of the reaction YouTubers I've seen usually scoff at him, or don't understand him at all when he says this, because wtf does that even mean? Dude just tried to kill the main cast. But listen.

Niragi is a deeply troubled person with an extensive history of emotional neglect and physical abuse. He's a hurt, abused adult who's never been given an ounce of positive reinforcement in his life before he got to beach and then, that was the fuel to his psycho.

In his attempt to never show weakness for fear of being hurt again, he's become the very people he hates. He's become his bullies, repeating the cycle of abuse. And he knows that, it's why he's so angry when he sees Arisu and Chishiya become better people. Because they also lacked loving families, and made selfish choices that hurt those around them, and to Niragi, they should be able to understand his pain. But they were able to break the cycle and be happy, and Niragi wasn't. And it's because of this he's become the one thing he truly hates the most.

Alone.

He doesn't want or deserve their forgiveness. He knows that. He wants someone, for once, to just understand why hes like this.

If there were 7 billion of me, you'd be the villain too.

If everyone you knew belittled and hurt you, made you suffer till all you could feel was bone deep resentment, you'd become just as bad as them.

[laceymorganwrites]

Exile

Word count: 1,135

Pairing: former Kenma x reader

Warnings: swearing maybe, a bunch of heartbreak, yelling

Song: Exile - Taylor Swift, Bon Iver

A/N: I´ve had this idea for so long now, I finally got my ass up to write it.

Taglist: @babythotshq (send in an ask to be added to my general taglist or to my fandom specific ones, you can also ask to be tagged in works for a certain character)

I can see you standin', honey With his arms around your body Laughin' but the joke's not funny at all And it took you five whole minutes To pack us up and leave me with it Holdin' all this love out here in the hall

Kenma didn´t expect to see you so soon after your break up. Well, it´s been months, but still, the wound was more than fresh for him. He thought too much whether or not he should approach you, but as soon as he saw another pair of arms wrap around you, his heart sunk.

So you had already moved on…

On the one hand he wished he could too, but then again, he would never be able to forget you, stop loving you even less.

His eyes went wide at the sound of your laughter, he never thought he´d hear it again, it was one of his favorite sounds in the world and he regretted nothing more than telling you to shut up because he couldn´t concentrate.

He should´ve made you laugh more. I think I've seen this film before And I didn't like the ending You're not my homeland anymore So what am I defendin' now? You were my town Now I'm in exile seein' you out I think I've seen this film before

Kenma knew it was a mistake to get into a relationship with you. And yet he couldn´t stop himself.

Why should he? He loved you after all.

Or so he thought.

He never questioned anything, that was why it didn´t work out. Kenma took everything about you for granted and never once reflected on himself.

Now he knew what a big mistake that was, but then he had more important things to do.

Oh how he hated himself for thinking that way.

But now everything was too late. He let you go just like that and didn´t even watch you walk out.

Regret was all he felt and yet he didn´t have the guts to do anything about it. All he did was think, about how badly he fucked up, about how you were much happier now, about how he wanted to be the one to make you happy. Hoo, hoo-ooh Hoo, hoo-ooh Hoo, hoo-ooh I can see you starin', honey Like he's just your understudy Like you'd get your knuckles bloody for me Second, third, and hundredth chances Balancin' on breaking branches Those eyes add insult to injury

You were too busy laughing at the joke of your boyfriend to notice Kenma staring at you. Well he never was one to stand out in the crowd.

And yet when you looked at your boyfriend, your smile still adamant and your eyes bright, you caught a glimpse of him and everything around you went dark.

It felt like gravity was pulling you to the ground, punching you in the face and kicking your guts at the same time.

Kenma still had that uncaring look on his face, it was something you grew to hate over time, something that always frustrated you so much.

You were still mad at him for letting you walk out like that, no, you were mad at yourself for not being more persistent.

But then again, you were doing your best. Your best to be there for him, to spend time with him.

And every one of your attempts was blocked by him, belittled and he would always roll his eyes at you, telling you not to overreact like that.

But with someone who didn´t react at all, that was the natural reaction. I think I've seen this film before And I didn't like the ending I'm not your problem anymore So who am I offending now? You were my crown Now I'm in exile seein' you out I think I've seen this film before So I'm leavin' out the side door

Everything came back to you all at once, the way he was always so distant, so annoyed with you, the way he yelled at you that day…

But it wasn´t all his fault.

You shouldn´t have been that clingy, you should have supported him. With Kenma, you never were sure what you were going to get.

Some days he was really cuddly and affectionate and wanted to spend a lot of time with you, but even more days he was distant and didn´t want you anywhere close to him.

On those days you felt more than unwanted, like a bother and nuisance.

So step right out There is no amount Of cryin' I can do for you

Kenma never meant to push you away like that, you were his first relationship, he didn´t know what to do and was too ashamed to ask.

He wanted to be perfect and every time he wasn´t, he got so frustrated and mad at himself.

Never did he mean to take his anger out on you, never did he mean to close up the way he did.

But he couldn´t change time. And the worst thing was that he couldn´t even make it better.

It wasn´t his place anymore, you´ve already found someone to mend your broken heart. All this time We always walked a very thin line You didn't even hear me out (You didn't even hear me out) You never gave a warning sign (I gave so many signs)

You fought for him until the very last second. Every time he closed the door on you, you kept knocking and brought him water and food. You always made sure to take care of him even though he didn´t want to see you.

Whenever he was having those bad days of doubt and sadness, you were always there, waiting for him to open up and tell you what was wrong.

He never did.

Communication has always been your biggest problem.

Kenma overall didn´t talk and you just stopped trying at some point.

You never should´ve given up on you. Maybe all of this could´ve been resolved if Kenma told you what he wanted, lacked, needed.

All this time I never learned to read your mind (Never learned to read my mind) I couldn't turn things around (You never turned things around) 'Cause you never gave a warning sign (I gave so many signs) So many signs So many signs (You didn't even see the signs) Kenma decided to go home instead of staring at you and your boyfriend any longer. It was no use anyway.

He could never make up for the way he treated you, he didn´t have the right to.

Neither did he have the right to intrude in your new love and happiness.

If only he noticed the longing look you had on your face when he walked away the same way you once did, without saying a single word.

[jholden23]

Fandom

Here I am.  I’m the person that said that thing.  You know what I’m talking about, everyone does.  Screencapped and taken from my Twitter profile, given a different context and reposted with all kinds of connotation that wasn’t intended.  I’ve spent the last couple of days being villainized by the supernatural fandom.  I’ve been around this fandom long enough to know that this isn’t going to change anything.  The people that do this sort of thing to others all the time won’t be changed.  I’ve learned that this fandom loves nothing more than a villian, and I’ve been handed that role.  So get your screencapping and reposting with “oh now she’s saying this” ready, because I feel like I just want to explain my headspace and how everything got blown out of proportion, resulting in me being called all kinds of things from ‘hateful’ to ‘evil’ to ‘jealous’ and much worse and then being ceremoniously marched out of the SPN fandom. And I’m sure there’s more to come.

This story actually starts a while after I entered the fandom around 5 years ago.  I was surprised to find what seems to be large amounts of people using all kinds of little things said and done by the boys, the other cast and even the production staff of the show to belittle, argue and try and force points on people or use things they like or don’t like to hate other people or broad sections of the fandom.  

They screencap and call out people, hate on actors, their wives, their kids even.  This kind of thing has always made me upset.  Everyone has things they like or don’t like.  Everyone has things they DO like.  I never understood why people can’t just move along if they don’t agree.  Life is interesting because people have different opinions on things.  Not everyone has to agree, but I always felt name calling and passive aggressive posting never helped, it just made some people feel powerful while others felt helpless.

It started feeling like people pay all of this money to go to cons just to try and find things to prove their point.  “---- looked at ----- this way, I was there and I saw it, that has to mean that they feel ------ about ------” or “----- said ------ in my ------ op and they must mean that they -----------, it was such a special moment”.  Positive or negative.  If it was positive it was quickly taken by someone else and made negative.  It seems to be getting more and more prevalent.  Ops taken to make someone happy with a certain prop or thing or look and then another section jumps all over it and says nasty things about the person that did it.  They call the fans disrespectful.  They say that the actors shouldn’t be treated that way.  When the actors don’t want to do something, they call them terrible things too.  

But, I have always felt that the actors have a right to refuse something if they want.  They are being paid to do a job.  Just like anyone else at work, if they want to refuse to do something, they can.  But at the same time, the cons have actors, acting.  We fell in love with them because of the stories they delivered from fictional characters.  The relationships they built on and off screen.  And when we take our love to the cons, they’re still actors. When they hold those props, do whatever it is we ask them, they’re acting.  I don’t see that as a bad thing.  And I really don’t think that whatever is happening or they’re being asked for that they go home and dwell on it.  If they see something they don’t like, I’m sure they just move on and don’t give it another thought.  I could be wrong here, but that’s my opinion.  If you’re in a line of work where you are constantly criticized and highly publicized (like acting), you can’t be dwelling on every little thing.  You just can’t. This skill would need to carry over to cons.

I’ve strayed from my point.  

JIB this year made me very upset within the Supernatural fandom.  It seemed more than normal, people were pulling every little thing said and done in an op, asked as a question, every exchanged anything between actors and fans or actors and actors and using it to “prove” this or that.  And to bad mouth other sections of the fandoms.  

Then the girl with the Destiel shirt was being villainized all over the place.  I felt bad for this poor girl (little did I know I’d soon take her place).  She has something she likes. It got noticed.  Lots of people feel the same way. [Just to be clear, I neither ‘ship’ Destiel or Wincest nor am I homophobic - it seems you are one of those three in this fandom]. She got called all kinds of things and people were screaming at each other about this and that.  Calling people names.  Trying to impose every little detail to make a point.

Then someone I really respect in the fandom got involved and took a side.  I got really upset, both sad and angry.  It made me so sad that something as simple as a t-shirt that made someone happy could create so much hate.  Now, I don’t know what Jensen really thinks, or Misha, or anyone, but I really doubted that anyone is crying all the way home from the stage of a con because of a t-shirt (except maybe the person that was wearing it because of the fan reaction).  They’re probably not even giving it a second thought.  I’m of the opinion that they don’t care about this trivial stuff that fans make huge deals out of all the time (hence not giving a solitary fuck).  The actors are paid very well to put on a show for fans.  People pay lots of money for it (myself included) and they enjoy this show.  With all of the things in my mind that I’ve already said, and out of anger and sadness, I felt the need to say something, just a simple tweet.  I didn’t want to even specify a fandom (because there are other fandoms like this too).  I didn’t want to call out a section of the fandom to be accused of taking sides, because I feel like any group can seem to find ammunition if the right personalities start yelling. So I tweeted what I did.  So now, thinking about what you just read, go read ‘the tweet’ again.

I’ll wait.

It’s not about so and so being a bad person, or that your interactions don’t mean anything. The people that know me and know that I often lace everything I say with heavy profanity and that I run my fat mouth when I get upset didn’t even blink at this.  They know what I’m talking about.  I talk about this kind of thing all the time. Usually with a little more context than the tweets that got sent.

There’s no denying that cons are expensive.  I use the term ‘stupid expensive’ all the time.  But I still go.  I buy ops. I go to whatever I can.  I was just in Vegas in March.  I am just as stupid as I was reflecting on anyone else.  And the people that know me and have followed me for a long time should know that.  But when something is taken off of someone's timeline, all context is lost.  Specifically, in this instance, I was inferring those who spend all that money to just incite hate within the fandom, however.

Anyone paying attention can’t deny that the actors at cons make a ton of money.  I have never, and will never say that makes them bad people.  They’re smart.  They have something that sells.  Their act.  The show outside the show.  But suddenly I’m being told that I said that they are terrible people.  That’s not what I said.  I don’t believe that in any way.  Since when does making money and putting on a show make someone evil?  That’s why we’re here to start with.  Because of a show that they were in that we loved.  There’s lots of stuff that the actors have done that’s amazing.  Charity work and all kinds of things (this document is already long enough without that list).  But that doesn’t mean that they’re not making a lot of money at cons.  And that does not make them bad people. And for the thousandth time, I didn’t say it did.

I got angry and upset arguing with people that did and still are calling me terrible things, saying nasty things and insinuating all kinds of inaccurate things.  Claiming that I ruined lives in 480 characters worth of text.  

I became frustrated because once something gets picked up by the ‘big influencers’ in this fandom, the wolves are out for blood.  The hate machine is rolling downhill, knives and pitchforks are out. I’ve seen it countless times.  It didn’t matter what I said, there was still people attacking me directly or indirectly.  Becoming more and more angry I argued back.  I did specify SPN was my main impetus when someone asked me directly, even though I had tried to keep it neutral.  But no one was listening when I was trying to explain.  They only saw the worst of what was posted, the connotation I was not trying to say.  I locked my account, deleted the tweet in question and posted another angry message, this time directed at the fandom at large.  I don’t usually delete tweets because I feel like people should be able to have conversations about things.  But this was not happening, the oven was set to ‘destroy’ and I was inside.  It wouldn’t have mattered if I deleted it anyway.  So I argued.

A word about the ops and actors acting and then I’ll go away forever from the SPN fandom.  

Yes, I do believe that actors are ‘on’ all the time, acting.  I’m a teacher.  When I’m hanging out with my friends I drink and swear and tell bad jokes.  Sitting on my couch or at the pub I’m the ‘real’ me.  Last night I had a gig with a jazz band that I play with in the evenings where there was a bar that sold booze.  I had three students attend the gig to listen to the music.  Although I would usually be my normal self around the band that I played with last night, I didn’t swear and didn’t drink.  Why? Because I had students there.  I don’t feel this is any different with actors.  

They are ‘on’ when there’s fans around.  They have to be careful what they say and do.  Look at what’s happened when they’re not (see tweets calling out customer service).  They’re still them, but them ‘lite’.  If they’re frustrated, they’re not going to react the same way they would at home.  They just can’t in the public eye and they know it.  They have to save some of themselves for their families and their private times.  I still talk to my students in a very ‘me’ way, but there’s always that little bit that I keep for my friends and family.  It’s my opinion that actors are the same way.  That doesn’t make them bad.  It makes them human.

Finally, as far as ops and interactions at cons or anywhere else; what difference does it make if the actors are acting?  Did you enjoy it?  Is it special to you?  Good.  That’s what you paid for.  I have had plenty of interaction with this cast, other actors and musicians that made me happy.  Do I think it made them as happy as it made me? Hell no.  Does that make me feel any less happy about it?  Absolutely not.  Do I think they go home and sit on the couch and revel in how amazing my photo op was? I hope not.  I go to sets and watch them film, I chat with them on set, I see them at cons, I buy ops and take photos and all the other things.  But at the end of the day, I take those interactions and keep them in my heart knowing full well that the person on the other side isn’t nearly as excited to meet me as I was them.  And that’s exactly what I expect, believe and love about being a fan.  It’s just the nature of being a fan of someone.  

Do I believe there are people that have made connections? Sure.  Do I believe everyone has to? No.  Do I believe the actors take every op home with them?  No. They have their own lives and families. Are others welcome to believe something different?  Absolutely. I’m not going to tell you what to think.  But no matter what I or you believe, it shouldn’t affect how you see your own interactions.  I saw that I was being accused of ‘taking away’ people's moments.  Not only was that not the intended connotation of that statement (think back to the beginning-people using ops to try and prove the most special thing and use it to alienate parts of fandom) but no one can do that.  No one can take away whatever impact meeting someone had on you.  Especially not a stranger on the internet ranting about something different, but being pigeonholed into something else.

Ok, I’m done here.  Entirely.  I just felt that I deserved a chance to better explain what I was actually trying to say.  I guess I can’t say that I’m surprised that things have turned out this way knowing how this fandom operates and knowing that I tend to get explosive in my language.  I still believe in what I said in the context I was trying to state it.  But not everyone knows me well enough to put my own personality to it and realize what was actually being said.  Everyone else just pulls out my words and throws context of their own on them, shining a different coloured light on my words and using it to create hate.  

However, I likely should have provided some more context to my words.  In my head the intention was clear.  

But that said, I didn’t want to insult anyone or assume create problems.

I can’t wait to see all the names I’ll get called for this.  Actually, it’s not going to matter.  I already know and after being the target of the hate, I’ll be checking out of it.  I’ve already become a punchline.  If that what it takes to make people happy, fine.  I’ll be the sacrifice.  I’m still going to enjoy everything I did before, going to cons, going to sets, taking photos and sharing stories, but I’ll do it one on one.  I wouldn’t want to start a fight.

Oh and before someone beats me to it, no I did not enjoy Season 14.  No I do not like the character of Jack.  No, I’m not going to villainize people who feel differently.  While my opinion is different it doesn’t make it more right than someone else’s.  But that’s the beauty of life.  Opinions make things interesting.

Just like people's opinion of me.  You can still think what you want.  Maybe I am a villain.  Maybe I am a bad person.  I’m just me, though. And we’re all a work in progress. 

A wise band teacher one said ‘If you’re holding out for universal popularity, you’re going to be waiting a long time.’  

Be nice to each other, #SPNFamily, I’ll be looking in the window from outside.

[ionlycareaboutteam7-blog]

why do sasunaru shippers hate sasusaku more than naruhina/sakura more than hinata? || aka a sasunaru shipper explaining why sasusaku is better than naruhina in every conceivable way

yeah yeah this isn’t my lane as a sasunaru shipper to comment on ss because it’s not my ship but it IS my lane to comment on sasuke and sakura, 2 of my favourite naruto characters.

this is my first post about naruto or any series in quite awhile, so excuse any possible errors on my part, but i’ve been thinking and i’d like to write out my thoughts on a particular subject. i’m back with a controversial opinion, of course because those are the only ones i’ll ever have

if you ship sasunaru and u viciously hate sakura i suggest going into this post with an open mind because... you aren’t gonna like a lot of what is said here but i suggest reading anyways :-)

during my time in naruto fandom i’ve noticed a trend among sasunaru shippers(and anti ending people in general), sakura is the butt of all of the jokes and especially after the manga ending and gaiden being released people have loved to make jokes about SS’s marriage but hinata never gets the same negative treatment and my thoughts are only

why?

act i: underratus sasusakus

i’m going to get straight to the point and say my opinion. sakura and sasusaku especially are given extremely unfair treatment and exaggerated belittlement among the sasunaru fandom. allow me to explain why

if you love this bitch right here

you should have done enough character analysis to realize these few things about him

1: he was completely deprived of love and any connections from like age 7 up until he met naruto, sakura and kakashi

2: he felt like he had to push everyone he cares about away because he saw it as weak

and 3: underneath all of his trauma he’s kind hearted

so knowing all of these obvious things, why would you say that in moments like these

he is actually trying to shake off someone he doesn’t like at all and only sees as a girl with an annoying crush?

or alternatively, why would you say he’s abusive and she deserves better but then go and ship him with your favourite character? it’s so transparent and it’s obviously just a filler excuse so you don’t have to actually look into the character dynamics and how they work because you don’t want to admit that your least favourite ship actually isnt awful.

Sasuke isn’t the type of person that would have such disregard and apathy towards a person that’s shown him nothing but love throughout the entire series. that goes against his entire character’s philosophy and most of the arguments seem to be pulled out of thin air also

He obviously cares about sakura plain and simple, no mental gymnastic argument in the world can disregard plain canon evidence. if youre so set on the idea that sasuke doesn’t give a shit about sakura, then i’m gonna raise the question: why would you have a character who doesn’t care about one of his teammates that supported him as ur fave? which leads me to my next point

there’s obviously gonna be theeese kind of people:

“of course my precious baby sasuke loves his team, but sakura has a selfish love and she will never deserve him!!!!”

there are SO many anti sakura arguments from sasunaru shippers that are just plain wrong so i’m gonna use this opportunity to crush them all

“sakura only liked sasuke cause he was hot and popular”

after sakura was surprised that the kid guessed she liked sasuke, she was informed he was popular with the girls

so that one panel gets rid of that argument

“sakura doesn’t really love sasuke, she was going to kill him...”

...because she thought it was her ONLY OPTION to save him from himself, she thought he was too far gone and it wasn’t until naruto showed up that she had hope again (which is why sasunaru shippers being as threatened by ss as they are is so dumb and crazy)

personally i don’t like this aspect of ss and heavily prefer the sasunaru dynamic with the whole eternal never giving up on you thing because it scratches my particular shipping itch but it’s foolish to say that sakura doesn’t love sasuke period, she obviously does and she does deeply and she’s one of the closest people to him and always will be

Sasusaku gets tons of unfair hate just because of the long running anti Sakura meme, and it’s always been the scapegoat of the anti naruto ending crowd. But it’s silly to me because it makes sense that if sasuke doesn’t end with naruto, he would end with sakura

aside from naruto, his closest living person is sakura plain and simple. she’s done nothing but love him, maybe not as absolutely and unconditionally as naruto has, and maybe she did falter but it’s more than anyone else in the entire series(besides naruto) has and it’s more than he’s ever got from anyone else (besides naruto lol) so if sasunaru doesn’t happen why on earth would you be upset that the boy who was so deprived of love for his entire life ended up with this girl?

if not naruto, sakura is the best person for sasuke plain and simple because literally who else in the series (besides naruto) put up with all of his baggage for the entirety of the series, + she raised his child when he was MIA and sarada actually grew up to be a diligent and intelligent ninja. i ain’t even mad when people ship SS

sasuke has recognized all of this, too.

and has thanked sakura for all of the love she’s ever provided for him throughout the years, even when he was not himself and hurting her, she always just wanted him to be okay, and he appreciates it. so of course he married sakura, duh.

you cant even be threatened by their eye smex

because sasuke gives naruto bedroom eyes all day long

he gives a shit about sakura okay?!?! sakura gives a shit about him okay?!?! it’s okay to acknowledge that his canon marriage isn’t the devil while still realizing the objective superiority of your otp!!!!!

all of this can be summarized into, for some reason sasusaku threatens the sasunaru fandom and leads them into having bullshit mental gymnastic arguments against it for no real reason when....

the real monster of the series is naruhina.

act ii: naruheinous disgustus

NARUHINA IS THE WORST SHIP TO EVER COME OUT OF ANY SHOUNEN MANGA, OR ANY MANGA EVER EXCEPT MAYBE SOMETHING LIKE VAMPIRE KNIGHT. I said it.

sorry about coming off a little strong there, but i have a lot to say about this matter, and you know i’m for real when i have a lot to say about something that has so very little.

it seems to me like most sasunaru shippers don’t actually care about naruhina and just give it a free pass cuz it’s boring and she’s nice and cute and whatever

but naruhina is so much worse than sasusaku on every imaginable level

so, so much worse

because where sasusaku at least has friendship

naruhina has nothing

at least where sasusaku has care and chemistry

naruhina has a bland empty space

because hinata is a bland and empty character

[due to plot holes and retcon in the last and other filler, i will only be using kishimoto’s material for this post. but hey, since naruhina is canon only the author written material has to be enough, right? right....? please guys he ships our ship he made it canon i swear he planned everything to end with their epic moon(who sasuke) love story]

we get shown this when naruto gets introduced to hinata and his only impression of her is that she’s a weirdo

We get this when Naruto never ever noticed Hinata, while Sasuke was actively trying to cheer Sakura up

naruhina in part 1 has absolutely NO basis at all. it’s absolutely nonexistent from naruto’s side.

unfortunately... it remains that way.

this moment. this fucking moment is when it all started to go downhill. i mean, naruhina was always at the bottom but this is when it becomes apparent that the ship is never going to pick itself back up.

i’m not going to be one of the people who say that after naruto completely ignored her confession that she should just never think about him again and find a new guy, that’s unreasonable.

however,

naruto completely ignored her confession! in fact, i don’t even think he ignored it. i think it just never occured to him that he should even talk to her which is even sadder imo... sasuke, who is apparently the devil to sasuke, at least y’know... thanked her.

after this happened we never saw hinata’s reaction to this, her feelings on why naruto never replied to her, we never even see her doing anything outside of thinking about naruto/talking to naruto period unless it’s a fight in a flashback

it’s almost like hinata is an NPC in the naruverse programmed to react to anything naruto related and nothing else. you can definitely not say this about sakura, she has a defined personality. Hinata doesn’t.

don’t even understand how this

[sending her son to fight alone against an enemy of unknown strength and only telling him to... take care of naruto-kun]

could ever be favoured over this

sakura > hinata

sasusaku > naruhina

sasunaru shippers = dumb for hating on sasusaku and giving naruhina a free pass

[saitouh]

sometimes what gintaes say are worthy of a few giggles. for example, they constantly dismiss tsukuyo's feelings as irrelevant and "one-sided". but what about gintae? lmao

is gin even remotely romantically interested in otae?

i mean at least he has expressed interest in tsukuyo's body, told her she has a beautiful face, admitted to zenzou that he agreed with him - that she is amazing (as a student), and expressly told her himself she has a beautiful soul. told her to rely on him, cry on his shoulders, and that he will cry and laugh together with her. that's actually some pretty heavy stuff. even if they don't get together in the end, these are the things he has said to her and they are not dismissable.

you are so pressed, so jealous, that you made a fucking GIF to belittle tsukuyo, that she is just "one of the other insignificant girls gin hit on" when it is clear that she means a lot to him, as much as all the other people in kabukichou.

has otae even expressed any interest in gin??? lmao she wore the kimono kondou gifted to her. she hugged his roach mask to her chest. she shed tears FOR HIM. TWICE. she held an umbrella over his head and said "please don't catch a cold."

but apparently for you gintaes, what she did for kondou is ~kindness~ but any other "similar" expression of kindness toward gin is seen as ~romantic~

tsukuyo's love is one-sided. in any relationship charts, at least tsukuyo will have an arrow towards gin that says she loves him.

but you, gintaes? there is not a single arrow that can tie them together romantically other than labeling her as shinpachi's sister. there's basically n o t h i n g there.

you claim i am lying and i am only posting screen caps that support what i am saying. lmao what the fuck are you even on about? do people submit court evidence that don't support their claims? just what.

this is not a court case. i am not the internet. other people see your shit. you act like i am basically one person trying to convince the whole world of something that isn't there.

the fact is, i am basically just posting things what most people have already known. i am posting things that piss me off. i am not making shit up. and together with the screencaps, i explain WHY you piss me off.

again, i am not the internet. other people do not blindly read what i post and agree like drones.

they are free to look you up and all the shit you have said about tsukuyo, gintsuki and her fans. but of course, judging by your reaction towards these people on reddit, tumblr and elsewhere, anyone who have simply told you that there is NOTHING between gin and otae automatically is a "hater" despite the fact that they have NOT posted hate about otae in their debate with you or elsewhere.

no one has called otae childish names. there are people who dislike her and have wrongfully attributed her character negatively, but honestly? not that many people actually express their hate for her compared to what you gintaes and ginhijs have done towards tsukuyo. this whole site explodes to the brim with complaints each time tsukuyo made an appearance, even though she appears once every two years before the silver soul arc. does that even happen to otae??? people can't even draw gintsuki without ginhijs saying "stop posting so much gintsu in the gintama tag". does the tag belong to a specific subset of fandom? hmmm????

and the gintae anon harassing a gintsuki artist on tumblr with rude asks like, "tsukuyo just brings gintoki down unlike otae"

don't even dare to deny this. scroll the fck down far enough on the tsukuyo tag and you will find it

lmao why am i even repeating this shit

you people? instead have called tsukuyo names like tskewyo in picture MEMES (so don't make up the shit excuse that you don't want her name to show up in search. NO TEXT ON IMAGES WILL SHOW UP IN TEXT SEARCH) and mock gintsuki fans as "gintsuwus"

seriously drop the martyr act. it's fake and it's disgusting and it's not fooling me. it just further nauseates me.

[betweengenesisfrogs]

Toward a Critical Re-Evaluation of Homestuck, or: A Prayer for Andrew Hussie

(aka Off-the-Cuff Homestuck Thoughts #7)

This might be a manifesto.

Since the ending sequence of Homestuck in April 2017, and even well after the establishment of a canon aftermath for its main characters and the confirmation that there will be a further Epilogue, I've seen a sentiment among Homestuck bloggers and the Homestuck fandom that I find very frustrating, one that persists well into 2018.

The sentiment goes something like this:

"Homestuck is a meaningless work by a flippant, irreverent prankster (Andrew Hussie) who dropped his commitment to the story at the last second, and made fun of his fans for expecting there to be a meaningful ending. Furthermore, he continues to harm and belittle his fandom in the creation of Hiveswap, and only continues his work on Homestuck-related projects to exploit his audience."

Not only is this idea wrong, I find it disingenuous at best, malicious at worst, and actively detrimental to an understanding of Homestuck as a work. While it comes from an understandable frame of mind - the feeling of disappointment many of us felt at the end of Homestuck's pretty short and to-the-point Act 7 - it actively ignores the main reason *why* that ending came across as disappointing at first glance. Namely, it ignores the role serial storytelling - a necessity at that point in Homestuck's existence - played in creating misleading impressions of where the story was going among fans. Furthermore, it completely ignores how well the story arc of Act 6 Homestuck generally works when taken as a whole.

It demonstrates a very shallow understanding of Andrew Hussie as a storyteller, conflating his in-story persona with the actuality of a creator who demonstrates nothing but work ethic and commitment to his creation.

It ignores what actually happened with Hiveswap, which is that despite a frankly horrific set of circumstances that nearly prevented it from being made, Hussie was nonetheless able to gather a small team to create a game studio that delivered on every promise it ever made to Kickstarter backers and created a pretty solid, fun, and novel adventure game, with more installments and a rich evolving mystery on the way.

Finally, this interpretation completely misunderstands the way the idea of narrative is being used in the ending of Homestuck, not as a cudgel to beat off fan desire for thematic completion, but as a tool for delivering a thematically powerful narrative that draws parallels between the specter of Lord English and the way stories themselves are used as tools of oppression.

Homestuck isn't perfect, and neither is Andrew Hussie. But by and large, this popular perception of him is flat-out wrong, an exaggeration of whatever flaws he brought to the creation of Homestuck, and contributes to a misunderstanding of its ending. Indeed, I'd argue it is, in some ways, part of why Homestuck has rarely been acknowledged as a significant work of art. To understand why Homestuck is important, first we need to be able to acknowledge what it achieved.

Here's a daring notion: overall, Homestuck was and is pretty damn good.

Here are some reasons.

1) Being Forced To Tell the Story Serially Over a Slow Drip Messed With the Experience for the Reader

I can hear the bristling now. "I hated the ending," I can hear some of you saying. "It left me cold and unsatisfied, and damn it, that's an objective fact. Who are you to take that away from me?"

Actually, I'm not trying to take that away from you. Like, you're allowed to have been disappointed. I just want to point out that it might be a better ending than you gave it credit for, and explain why it came off the way it did. If you're interested in hearing me out, read on. You should know that initially, I was disappointed, too.

But after rereading Act 6 and the whole narrative leading up to that ending? I changed my mind. Rereading, I found it pretty satisfying, making a great deal of sense, capitalizing on major themes, and delivering a meaningful ending for most, if not all characters

I'll talk more about *what* I think the narrative is doing in a bit, but here's why I think it was misread, by me among many others.

Serial reading fucks with the quality of a story experience. I feel like this is a pretty uncontroversial statement. The problem with serial storytelling is that stories build on themselves, drawing on themes and ideas from earlier on to make a powerful build-up to moments of catharsis. This is the nature of story and character development. However if you're getting a story as little bits and pieces, it is much more difficult for this to happen. You lose track of these threads.

More dangerously, it's very easy to develop a set of expectations around a narrative while it's in pause mode. Little moments - intended to be part of a larger flow of ideas - completely dominate one's thinking for as long as they hold the stage. This is a common thing in fandom, especially webcomic fandoms, who deal with the slowest-drip narratives.  Again and again I've seen expectations generated during webcomics' hiatuses lead fans to disappointment with the results, simply because those results have nothing to do with what was expected during one of those moments of downtime. El Goonish Shive, Sluggy Freelance, Gunnerkrigg Court - I've seen it in webcomic fandoms again and again, that the dashing of narrative expectations seemed like a betrayal of the story when read at a drip pace, but made perfect sense when viewed as a whole story.

This is not a problem Hussie was ever unaware of. Here’s an excellent discussion (among many) from one of his early Q&As that takes on the problem in detail:

The longer I do this the more I'm struck by how radical the difference is between the experiences of reading something archivally vs. serially, both for the reader, and the author if he's prone to sampling reactions frequently as I do. For the reader especially, I think the experience of day to day reading is so dramatically different, they might as well be reading a different story altogether.

The main difference is the amount of space between events the reader has, which can be filled with massive amounts of speculation, analysis, predictions, and something I guess you could call "opinion building", which can have both positive and negative effects. On the positive side, these readers become more closely engaged with the material than archival readers can be, zeroing in on details and insights which might be overlooked otherwise. On the negative side, I think that excess mental noise the space between pages allows can potentially be a bit suffocating, and put a strain on the experience the material was intended to deliver.

The archival reader always has the luxury of moving on to the next page, regardless of how he reacts to certain events, and thus can be more impassive about it. That internal cacophony isn't given time to build, and if there are reservations about a string of events, whether due to shocking revelations, or questions over the narrative merit of something, or really any form of dissatisfaction, all he has to do is keep clicking to see how it all fits together, and can make a more complete judgment with hindsight.

He goes on to discuss a specific example of how this played out for the readers:

The recent pages [the start of Horrorstuck] had me particularly conscious of the nature of serial delivery. [Eridan's betrayal] was rolled out over the course of a weekend, first with Feferi, then Kanaya. When Fereri dies, this registers as one extremely dramatic event. Cue the waiting, speculating, worrying and all that. When Kanaya dies a day or so later, it registers as a second dramatic event! Again the scrutiny begins which the space allows. Is this all too much? How do I feel about this narrative turn? Is this setting a trend for a bloodbath? Does that serve any purpose? The reader projects into the future, does a little unwitting fanfiction writing in his head, and may not like what he sees! All this activity becomes the basis for opinion building, which is sort of the emergence of an official position on matters, good or bad, which is only able to flourish in the slow-motion intake of the story. That official position can be a very stubborn thing, especially when it's negative, and seriously textures the way additional developments are regarded. It's really hard to shake a reader off an entrenched position on a matter, even when it was formed with an incomplete picture.

Reading the same events in the archive is quite different. Very little of that inner monologue takes shape. And while the events are still shocking, and the reader may raise his eyebrows a mile high, he then simply lowers them and keeps reading. In fact, because of the reading pace, I would suggest these two deaths actually register as only ONE DRAMATIC EVENT! One guy snaps and kills two characters. In the flow of straight-through reading especially, it is quite startling, tension-building, and can only serve to propel the reader into further pages, at a pace which suspends the experience-compromising (augmenting??) play-by-play.

Hussie would return to this topic again and again, including here and here and here and h8re.

This is in incredibly valuable insight for anyone who creates stories over the long term, especially  webcomics. You may or may not agree that Homestuck's finale is well-executed, but I think it's hard to escape the fact that the response to Homestuck's ending, indeed, to most of Act 6, was hugely influenced by these factors. Why? Because the experience of Act 6 and 7 was more affected by hiatuses and the speculation problems they create than any other part of Homestuck.

It's hard to remember these days, but one thing that Homestuck was known for from about 2010-2013 was its absolutely preposterous rate of updates. I'm pretty sure that *was* the initial fuel for the fire that made Homestuck a huge fandom. What other website could you go to see a huge chunk of a story drop on you so regularly? No other webcomic had people using Update Checkers, programs designed to check the RSS feed of Homestuck and tell you within the minute that it had updated so you could check it out before your friends spoiled everything to you. What other webcomic ever needed such a thing? But the first era of Homestuck fandom was predicated on the idea that the comic would update every couple of days, sometimes once a day, sometimes *multiple times in the same day*. No wonder it got so huge so fast. It was an experience unlike almost anything else out there.

Around 2013 this began to change. Homestuck began having large hiatuses, the famous "pauses," and though Hussie indicated the story was working its way towards the finale, it ultimately took until the 2016 anniversary to complete.

Interestingly, it's around 2013 or so that we started seeing frustration with Homestuck break out into a large phenomenon, with many people arguing that the comic had stopped being good, and it's after the largest of these pauses, the Omegapause before the end of Act 6 and Act 7 updates, that we had the famous ending backlash.

The fact that very few people seem to have considered this in their analysis of whether Homestuck is good or not is absolutely staggering to me.

Given these factors, we would expect to see some of the enthusiasm taken out of the Homestuck fandoms during these periods, and strong opinions on where the story should go next, and, lo and behold, that's exactly what we see. The common sentiment is that Homestuck "stopped being fun during Act 6." Well, yeah, it's a lot less fun to have a comic that updates rarely than a comic that updates with loads of content very, very often. That doesn't necessarily mean the content got worse. And yet I see no one asking if this altered our perception of the story.

2) Serial Reading Problems Are Worsened In an Experimental, Twisty Story

This hiatus problem was exacerbated by the nature of Hussie's storytelling. I'd describe his writing style as "affectionate teasing": testing and pushing readers' boundaries, aiming for strong emotional reactions, constantly working to defy and mess with expectations, but ultimately working towards a rich character-based story. Hussie's work whiplashes between humor, horror, worldbuilding, action - it's intense and disconcerting at first, but once you get familiar with it, you see these that all these elements build toward a coherent whole.

I'd argue that this storytelling style is *uniquely* well-suited to long-form reading and endangered by drip-feed reading.

Because when you read piece by piece, you experience whiplash slowly, and that’s not everybody’s kink. Pieces that are meant to work together take on a different tone when read on their own. As discussed above, continuous events seem like separate events when read on their own, and this creates a *false* expectation of where the narrative is going. Furthermore, it's not as much fun to be teased or messed with in slow motion. The expectation that there will be satisfaction and resolution disappears when the current update is all you can think about. This, not a deficit in storytelling, is what created the feeling of "Homestuck’s not fun anymore." But it was the same affectionate, gently teasing storytelling as ever. But this only comes out when the work is re-read.

This is exactly what happened in Act 6 Homestuck. Events seemed like they would go on forever, when in real story terms, they went on for moments. Take the notorious Trickster "arc" (I can't even call it an arc - it’s more of a sequence if anything). Today it's remembered as an unendurable gauntlet of Hussie pushing buttons. The reality of it is, though, if you read through it, it's like Hussie pushing buttons for all of five minutes, like half a chapter from a novel. Literally all it is is: The Gang Gets High on Magic Candy > They Do Stupid Things > Blackout. Mostly it's an excuse for some serious character development *afterward* as the Alphas discuss the bad decisions that led them to this place. It may or not be perfect, but it's definitely a lot more reasonable when you see it's a quick tangent.

Act 6 is full of things like this: events remembered as horrible slogs that are really quite brief in retrospect.

This is brought home when you consider that events in Act 5 – hell, even Acts 3 and 4 – also brought on strong negative responses from the fandom - it's just that they were quickly buried under a story that was quickly moving on to other things.  Here are some strong fan outrages from those days I can name off the top of my head:

--This interlude with the trolls is too long, nobody cares about the trolls, Hussie has abandoned the human kids --Nobody cares about troll romance, switch back to the kids --Jade hasn’t been seen onscreen for ages --Vriska’s creation of Bec Noir shows that she is too powerful a character, she will never face comeuppance --John is dead again and Vriska killed him??? --Killing Feferi, Tavros and Kanaya? That’s too many deaths --I thought Feferi was supposed to unite the troll races! You’re telling me that’s not going to happen? --Kanaya is dead??? Fuck that --Scratching the timeline? What, Hussie, you’re going to reset everything and ruin the story? --Equius should have gone out with more dignity, this is a betrayal of his fans --Nepeta shouldn’t have been murdered, this is a betrayal of her fans --Gamzee used to be cute, now he’s a murder machine, this is a betrayal of his fans --We never found out what happened between Gamzee and Karkat? Why won’t the narrative switch back and tell us? --Nobody cares about Doc Scratch --Nobody cares about these stupid Ancestors, switch back to the trolls --Vriska is DEAD? This is a betrayal of her fans

And so on. Reading Hussie’s old Formspring archives is a graduate class in this era of Homestuck fan frustration.

And yet today Act 5 is universally remembered as brilliant, thought of by many as “the time when Homestuck was great.” In my book, while Act 6 does take on different themes than Act 5 (focusing more on the protagonists’ psychology and failures), and thus may not be to everyone’s taste, the biggest difference between the two is that during Act 5, the twists and turns of the story were thought of as part of a unified whole, because the story was barreling along too fast for these complaints to stick around for long.

Given that Hussie has always been aware of the challenges of serial vs archival storytelling, I feel like the relentless output of the first five acts was in part an attempt to mitigate those problems. As if by shoveling content into the mouth of the behemoth, he could propitiate the ravenous fandom horrorterror and thereby stave off the descent of the Infernal Internet Speculation-Expectation Monster that was prophesized to devour all.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t stave it off forever, and lo, in 2013 did the IISEM descend with its glistening tentacle teeth, IA, IA, IA! CHOMP CHOMP.

It astonishes me that in some quarters folks talk about the 2013-2016 pauses as if they were something Hussie wanted, when by all evidence he tried desperately to avoid them up until that point. I don’t need to explain that these hiatuses had to do with restarting the whole process of creating Hiveswap and building a game studio from scratch, right? I don’t need to explain that he got screwed over and these were circumstances outside his control, right? Let’s assume we’re on the same page there. If not, I suggest you look into the matter before assuming these hiatuses had anything to do with creator apathy.

After a certain point, Hussie faced a difficult choice. Unable to keep up the rapid-pace storytelling, he could change the storytelling to make it suit a serial reader, or he could focus on making the story the best it could be for an archive reader.

I think he went for the better option: aiming for the archive reader. If you’re going to argue that he should have put the emphasis on the serial reader: which serial reader are we talking about here? The one who started following in Homestuck in 2010, like me? The one who started after Horrorstuck, and viewed it, but not the end of Act 5, as a complete whole? The one who joined during late Act 6? How the hell would you decide that? Whose experience is the one to privilege?

The only option that really makes sense is to aim for the version of the story that will be around the longest and experienced by the most people: the archive that is the complete story of Homestuck.

Ultimately, I don’t think he could have changed his style of storytelling anyway, and to do so would have been to lose the combination of humor, madness, and surprises that brought us all to Homestuck in the first place. Forced to reckon with a difficult situation, he focused on making his kind of story the best that it could be, and I think Homestuck is better for it.

Given his awareness of the problem as expressed above, I’m sure Hussie knew proceeding over the long term would stoke a lot of resentment in the fandom. But he went ahead and did it anyway, because his goal was not to live up to a certain set of expectations. His goal was to tell what he saw as the best possible version of the story. I have an immense respect for him for that.

3) The Last Pause is the Deepest (or: Omegapause Killed the Character Development Star)

The final hiatus problem I want to point to is that in terms of the narrative arc of Homestuck, the final pause, the Omegapause, came at the most inopportune time for readers to get a sense of the conclusion of that narrative.

Basically, many character arcs in Homestuck were concluded *before* Collide and Act 7. Before the Omegapause. Indeed, Hussie brought many long-running arcs to an end in a very satisfying way during the “conversation” sequence before the final fight, from Dave’s long-needed conversation with Dirk about Bro to Rose’s finally getting to meet and befriend Roxy, to Game Over!Terezi and (Vriska’s) reunion. In narrative terms, Collide was not the climax, even if it might have been perceived to be. The climax was the Retcon sequence preceding the conversations – the desolation of Game Over, our surviving protagonists’ despair, then victory in the form of negotiating with the Denizens, representatives of Skaia, to create a timeline in which victory may take place, both in game terms and emotional terms. The conversation before the final battle showed us an emotional victory – victory in game terms was really just icing on the cake, or an echo of that emotional victory.

The trouble is, having a long pause before the final battle sequences created the false perception that the conversation was merely the prelude to the climax: that, in fact, the climax had not yet taken place. For us serial readers, it was easy to conclude that there was further character development to come.

Well, in some ways there was, and in some ways there wasn’t. Dirk and Dave got to have another big moment in Collide that drove their themes home, while Rose and Roxy had basically already done their thing earlier and just got to fight alongside each other. Meanwhile Vriska and Caliborn’s arcs really culminated in Act 7, and some, like John’s and Ret-Terezi’s, were complicated and continued by the Credits aftermath and probably won’t be brought to a final end until the Epilogue. There’s a degree of variation, which I enjoy. Collide does serve some functions: characters who were at an emotional distance from each other (for instance Jane and Jake), got to fight alongside each other and start building back their friendships.  Overall, though, the bulk of emotional entanglements got resolved in that conversation, making the Retcon the load-bearing piece of Homestuck’s climax.

This is why the Omegapause was the most dangerous pause: because it built up an expectation that things would further develop from there with new entanglements and complications, instead of aiming towards a tying-off of plot elements into a conclusion.

I remember what *I thought* the post-Omegapause sequence was going to be: a showdown between the kids and Lord English as he entered the game session through Bec Noir, Spades Slick and Lord Jack. I expected there would be a twist, and I expected one or more of our protagonists would die. I was thrown for a loop when I realized the story had basically been almost over, with no last twist, no “secret final battle” of kids vs LE in sight.

But as I reread the ending of Act 6, I realized: that would have been so much stupider than what actually happened. The fact that the kids don’t directly face LE and Vriska does is one of the most brilliant parts of the ending, and on the reread I rapidly fell in love with the Homestuck’s conclusion. What had thrown me off was the fact that I developed my expectations during a period where it looked like we were further from the end.

But in retrospect, Hussie had been saying all along that we were very close to the conclusion – it was just, at that moment, very easy to get the wrong impression.

Rarely do I see anyone taking anything like this into account.

I do think we could have benefited from more character development after the pause, if for no other reason than to overcome these problems and make the victory feel a little more grounded, and I do feel like certain characters (Jane comes to mind) got more limited and abbreviated endings. But these are minor points for me in the overall arc of Homestuck’s narrative, which in my experience establishes its conclusion very, very well.

4) Homestuck’s Ending Is a Glorious Queer Gnostic Account of Escaping from Narrative Oppression (and Yes, Virginia, it Has Character Arcs)

Okay, so I’ve written a lot about *what* I love about the ending of Homestuck elsewhere, going on for pages and pages, which you can read here and here. For now, let me just attempt (as absurd as it is) a quick summary.

Homestuck in Act 6 parallels many different motifs to drive home the idea that escaping from Lord English’s domain is an escape from a cosmic oppression, and serves as a metaphor for escaping and defying real-life oppressions and hegemonies. These motifs include Gnosticsm, queer identity, pluralism, and a metafictional examination of the controlling role of the narrative that is Homestuck itself.

Gnosticism is an ancient early alternate version of Christianity that posits a false reality created by a false creator, the Demiurge Yaldabaoth, who rules over human beings but whose domain it is the Gnostic’s quest to escape. The Demiurge styles himself a Lord God (often the very same one from Judaism and more mainstream Christianity) and an artist but is in fact incompetent and limited in comparison with the true harmonious reality. That he was able to create such a false world was a cosmic accident caused by angel-like beings known as Aeons, who existed perfect symmetrical pairs until an asymmetry caused Yaldabaoth’s creation. Sophia, the asymmetrical Aeon is our path back to that perfection. Furthermore, the false world is the world of flesh and matter and material things, while the true world is the world of ideas, symbols and archetypes, a place of divine Platonic form. By knowledge (gnosis) we become our true selves and are set free. Gnosticism is anti-authoritarian, anti-patriarchal, and devoted to each human being’s quest to connect to the divine on their own terms.

Gnostic motifs proliferate everywhere in Homestuck, especially Act 6, from such chat handles as GardenGnostic, TimaeusTestified, and TipsyGnostalgic to basically everything about Calliope and Caliborn, including and especially their role in the finale. Act 7 depicts Caliborn as trapped within the realm he is created, destined for power but ultimately doomed to it, destroyed in the perfect moment where Calliope, his counterpart, brings his domain to an end.

Caliborn’s realm is the sequence of time loops and set of worlds that brought Lord English into being, but it’s also the narrative Homestuck that depicts those events and worlds. He complains about the narrative Homestuck, argues with its author, and tries to make his own version, just as a demiurge would. (Secretly, because of his cosmic influence, he’s more of an influence than he realizes. He places limits and boundaries on these worlds in the form of the narratives he perpetuates, and is obsessed with sexist ideas, exploitation, and themes of masculinity, importance and power. That the heroes escape this realm in which he has control is also them escaping these narratives that have been placed upon them.

This is the sense in which Dave says “we don’t have arcs.” As I’ve said elsewhere, it’s not Hussie rejecting the idea of giving his characters meaningful stories (this is largely a false impression generated by the Omegapause weirdness), as shown by the fact that Dave himself has one of the best, strongest arcs in the whole story. What Dave means, and what Dave’s arc is about, is that he had to let go of the false ideas, false narratives placed on him by the world (Lord English’s world, the Demiurge’s world) in which he lived. He did this by understanding the abuse he suffered from Bro (a Caliborn-esque figure) was wrong, and by overcoming his internalized homophobia to realize the value of the relationship he’d found with Karkat.

This is a frequent motif in the final pages of Homestuck. Queerness is represented as a way of escaping the patriarchal, conservative God of the Demiurge, and that these revelations about Dave appear in parallel with the final departure from the domain Caliborn controls is no coincidence. Queer relationships and identities build in the ending of Homestuck into what Hussie tongue-in-cheek called “the gay singularity.” This growth in queerness is represented as growth toward meaning, and further queer figures like the non-binary Davepeta appear as idealistic mentors to teach our heroes to understand their cosmic circumstances.

At the same time, the growth from a material world to a world of ideas is represented as the heroes taking on God Tier identities that embody aspects—ideas that are literally the building blocks of the universe. To know yourself as an aspect is to know who you are, and by knowing who you are, you become an idea that is divine. This all takes place at the same time characters grow towards queerness. To know your own queer identity is also to become divine.

And, at the same time, the characters leave the narrative. Everything that was Caliborn’s – his worlds, his time loops and influence— is left behind by the characters as they move into the realm where they are heroes, leaders, and gods. They pass through a door that resembles the weapon that he used, that is his narrative, the weapon shaped like the symbol of Homestuck, the weapon that *is* the narrative Homestuck. It is a weapon against him because he stays behind, on the other side of the door. Lord English can never leave. He’s in the dark pocket of the black hole forever. Caliborn enters a realm that appears to give him power—but he never comes out. He’s trapped by his own limited idea of who he is and what the world should be.

This is a fantastic, culturally resonant, and very Gnostic ending.

And as to Vriska—I’ve seen many people say that Vriska’s retconned revival gives her too much power and agency, but I actually think it strikes the perfect balance. The story understands what she wants. But it’s not on her side. I have a lot more to say about her (perhaps l8r), but here’s the most important thing: Vriska can’t leave, either. She gets what she wants: the ultimate fulfilment of her identity as The Hero. She gets to Kill the Bad Guy. But at a cost she is incapable of recognizing. Like Caliborn, she never gets to go on to be a fulfilled, happy patron of the new universe. She is always on the inside of the door, stuck inside Homestuck. And the fact that we’re asked to observe her breaking off her relationship with Terezi to go out in a blaze of glory? The fact that we’re asked to compare her to another version of herself who’s let go of her ego, whose bond with Terezi is the most important thing in her life? The fact, that in her eyes, she comes up better, but in ours, she comes up short? How incredible is that?

Neither the Hero or the Villain, trapped in their own ideas, trapped by their own ideas, can ever be free.

It’s a pretty good ending, is what I’m saying.

5) Against Apathetic Lazy Troll Hussie

So, back to that perception of Hussie I discussed earlier. The idea that he’s a flippant, irreverent prankster who never cared about bringing his story to a good conclusion.

By now it should be clear why I don’t really buy that line of thinking.  The sheer effort put into Homestuck after the pauses began, the level of thematic complexity Homestuck was going for at the end—these belie the idea that he was apathetic or lazy or wanted to piss off his fans. What seems obvious to me was that he was committed. He devoted himself to driving towards an end he was personally satisfied with, whatever anyone else thought of it, and chose to accept the consequences of having to tell it over the long term.

I could see how it might be easy to get the impression that Hussie’s a very frivolous, thoughtless guy, when his in-story self is a ridiculous, flighty orange goofball. But come on. That’s mistaking the persona he uses for comedy with his actual self as a writer. Reading any interview, Q&A session, or discussion with him reveals how much thought he put into every moment of Homestuck, and above all, that he was committed to putting an incredible amount of effort into it from the very beginning.

He was also committed to challenging himself and bettering his work, whether that meant trying new experiments (flash games, new animation styles, splitting panels and dialogue, messing with formatting, letting the villains take over the website, etc., etc., etc…) or rethinking his work to take account of a larger, more diverse perspective, as we saw with the developing queerness and introspection of characters like Dave.

Yet he knew that not all experiments would be received well. He chose to accept that, to not wallow in the familiar but to take on new things regardless of in-the-moment reader reactions. As he put it:

I guess I just believe in sticking to your guns as a creator. It doesn't mean you completely ignore what people have to say or fail to take it under advisement, but pandering and caving into critics for fear of diminished appreciation is the wrong way to go. Staying the course with your vision doesn't mean you'll do everything right, but if included in that vision is serious, concerted exploration, you can only benefit as an artist. Adversaries to this cause should be regarded as villains.

There are two ways to do the "obstinate douche bag" thing as an artist.

One is in vehement defense of stagnation. Some artists I've encountered do this, and it's completely indefensible. It's as low as you can get, creatively speaking.

The other is in vehement defense of exploration. This is just the opposite. This is a posture everyone should strive for, and these artists are the ones people should be most inclined to offer their attention and support.

That's just how I feel about it, and I come from a zero-BS standpoint on it all. This isn't a job for me, and I'll never modify my approach to protect a bottom line. If it was just a job, I guarantee I wouldn't spend every waking hour doing it. It's kind of a strange personal mission I'm on, which I happen to make money from, and that's cool. People are welcome to come along for the ride.

There’s a deep, deep irony to me in the fact that some talk about Act 6 Homestuck like it was a stagnant period in Homestuck’s development, when in fact, it was one of its most creative and experimental periods. This is true both of its structural and visual experiments, where messing with form finally revealed itself to be central to Homestuck’s major themes, and of its storytelling experiments. It’s understandable that diving into the kids’ psychological problems was a shift, and not everyone was down with it, but the very fact it was a shift shows that Hussie was trying new things. It would have been easy for him to stay in a comfortable place doing the same things he did in Act 4 and 5, but instead, he began to ask different questions and take the story someplace new. And honestly? Act 6 took a long time to pay its full dividends, but I loved where we ended up in the end.

(What kept us from enjoying it in the moment? The pauses. Once again the pauses.)

But for me, the thing that most puts the lie to the idea of Lazy Hussie is the sheer fact of Act 6’s existence itself.

Consider how easy it would have been to drop Homestuck completely when things got rough in the middle years. Consider how many webcomic authors would have done just that. I can name many webcomic hiatuses where the webcomic never came back.

But Homestuck did. Not only did it return, it returned spectacularly, scorchingly, with the shocking and dynamic Game Over, with Caliborn’s claymations, with two spectacular, full-length animations, one of them lovingly-hand drawn. It returned with metafictional shenanigans and glorious queer Gnostic themes. Hussie kept going, and kept experimenting all along the way.

This is the furthest thing in the world from laziness.

And the same is true for Hiveswap. It astonishes me how much I’ve heard Hiveswap talked about as a debacle or a betrayal of its fans. Despite having horrible problems dropped on him, the sort that would ruin any other Kickstarter, Hussie spent the next few years working to make sure he met the promises he’d made to his fans. He did.

My dudes, Hiveswap is real. It exists. It delivers on every promise that was made about what it might be: it’s a fun, pretty, point-and-click adventure game telling a new story in the world of Homestuck. It’s creative and clever and updates an old style of gameplay by letting you put things on things to your heart’s content. It’s certainly more accessible than Homestuck, and not yet as structurally complex, but given future installments, there’s plenty of time for it to grow into something rich and thorny. And rather than see this idea go under, from basically nowhere Hussie worked to bring together a small, diverse team of queer artists and creators to make this thing happen.

Again, not exactly laziness.

That’s why it angers me when I see people calling Hiveswap (somehow?) a betrayal of Homestuck fans, or advocating pirating Hiveswap or demanding their money back because it doesn’t live up to some weird set of expectations they placed on it. Maybe during the periods of drought and ambiguous release dates, both for Homestuck and Hiveswap, it made a little sense to be skeptical of Hussie making promises, but now?

It’s basically spitting in the face of a creator who kept working in the most difficult circumstances, and the small, insanely hard-working team who made it possible, over something that they’ve handed to you exactly as you specified right on your doorstep in a gift-wrapped box.

I’m not saying you can’t critique Hussie or his storytelling. He’s definitely a weird dude with a lot of quirks (Which is perhaps the only kind of dude who could have made something as quirky as Homestuck.) I think it’s fair to say he hasn’t always communicated well with the fandom. But the reaction to him these days is totally, ludicrously, out of proportion, beyond anything that would be a useful critique.

A related question is whether Andrew Hussie is burnt out on Homestuck.

Well, maybe?

It’s certainly true that since 2013ish he’s stepped away somewhat from communicating directly with his fans. But 2013 is also the time when Homestuck fandom was at its most massive, its most full of infighting and meaningless arguments, and its most overwhelming to keep up with. I’m not saying I wouldn’t like to hear more of his insights, but it’s pretty understandable that he wanted to step back a bit under the circumstances. That doesn’t necessarily mean he’s burnt out. I mean, he seems to be living his best life, posing glamorously with his fidget spinners and Minion t-shirts. Not exactly hiding in a cave. Rock on, dude.

If he is burnt out on Homestuck, though, that makes what he’s done with Homestuck and Hiveswap all the more impressive.  That he brought them this far, and wants to see them keep going and keep doing well, when he could have let them drop unceremoniously a long time ago. If he’s delegating some of the work to others, all the better. I can think of nothing better for an artist who’s burnt out and ready to move on than to find people he can trust to keep the things he started going into the future, and that, I think is exactly what we have in What Pumpkin, Viz, and Homestuck’s artistic team.

But even to assume that he’s burnt out is to presume a lot about his mental state from some very scant data. By many other indications, he wants to keep engaging with Homestuck. There’s an Epilogue to come—a capstone for those last few ambiguities surrounding the timeline, John and Terezi. And he’s getting the Homestuck books re-published with new commentary through Viz—so maybe that’s where he wants to have his conversations with his audience. And he’s still the creative director of Hiveswap itself. It’s very possible he’s not burned out—if anything, wants to keep building the world he created in Homestuck and seeing where he can take it next.

Ultimately, I think people’s ideas about Andrew Hussie say a lot more about their lingering feelings about the ending of Homestuck—a backlash brought on by the pauses he had to work with—than anything about Hussie himself.

6) The Conversation Around Homestuck

Homestuck is a goddamn triumph.

There are certainly critiques I could make of it. But they pale in light of what Homestuck is: is one of the most rich, genre-bending, experimental, character-driven, hilarious, innovative, metafictional, transcendent, optimistic works on the Internet—to say nothing of how it dwarfs much of the rest of literature.

Ultimately, I think Hussie was right: as an archive, as the story it is from beginning to end, Homestuck stands. It’s a rich, meaningful work with a meaningful finale, and it’s right there to be read by anyone who wants to read it. In that sense, Homestuck was and Homestuck is. It doesn’t really need me to defend it. Nor does Andrew Hussie.

So why did I write all this? Why did I write everything I’ve written here on this blog?

Well, mostly for Homestuck’s readers. For fans like myself.

Because I still see people who came away from Homestuck feeling totally burned and abandoned by its creator, when that was anything but the truth. Because I still see people who feel like they can’t escape an awful negativity about this comic, about the ending of something they passionately loved. I want them to see that it doesn’t have to feel that way.

And because I want Homestuck criticism to be better. Because I see prominent bloggers, some of whom I really respect, taking so little of this stuff into account. I want to see people talk about Homestuck’s place in literature, in internet culture, without discounting how circumstances shaped how it was perceived. I want to get away from a lazy cynicism—that cynicism everywhere online—about whether stories can be meaningful at all. A cynicism that Homestuck is the very antithesis of through its themes of transcendence and hope.

I think for some people, Homestuck is that weird old obsession they cringe at. The ghost of teenage fandoms past. Which is fine. It’s reasonable to want to move on. But it frustrates me when I see the same cynical, cringing attitude affecting how people feel—or feel like they’re allowed to feel without social stigma—about the work Homestuck itself. I’m not interested in cringe culture.

I frankly don’t have time for it when Homestuck’s as good as it is.

Don’t get me wrong, I want Homestuck to be criticized, too. I want to hear what its flaws are. I think that’s also an important part of the conversation. But don’t tell me it’s a pointless, apathetic work, that it’s just the product of laziness. Because we know better than that by now. Because we need a better conversation than that. Don’t tell me that Homestuck doesn’t have Gnostic themes. Tell me how it uses them, and how it could use them better. Don’t tell me Homestuck’s meaningless. Tell me how it strives to be meaningful—because it does, in every aspect of its storytelling—and tell me where it succeeds, and where it fails.

That’s the kind of conversation I want to have about Homestuck.

You may not agree with the things I’ve pointed to here—you may think that Homestuck’s ending is much more flawed than I do. But that’s totally fair. All I want to say is this:

If you were holding off from letting yourself enjoy Homestuck, or if you once enjoyed it and wish you could enjoy it again, or if the experience of the ending left you feeling disappointed and frustrated and burned out…

Give it another read, especially Act 6 and 7.

You might be surprised how much you like what you find.

[dent-de-leon]

What is your reaction to Keith's vlog or the way L@nce stans convoluted it in way that L@nce is still included, or 'If you're devastated about this then how about when they post Lance's!', or 'This show as more of his character development than all of the seasons' and or twisting it all up stating that Ke/th is an asshole who hates himself and wallows in self-pity?

askdslfkl I have a few asks like this, so just to get it out there–I don’t like discourse and I’m not here to police how anyone else should feel about these characters or interpret them, that’s why it’s interpretation. In my own personal opinion though it does kinda bother me that Keith’s development is often only seen as important if it relates to Lance or k/l. I also think that fanon is often mistaken for canon and people give Lance too much credit for being supportive of Keith when he often went out of his way to tear him down. 

I don’t think it was until season 3 that Lance starts to actually work past the mostly one-sided rivalry he established and actually tried reaching out to Keith. But even still, at the start of season 3, he dismissed Keith’s feelings for the sake of his own ego–belittling just how important Shiro’s last request clearly was to Keith and how much he was hurting because of it, ignoring Keith’s very personal connection with Black because he wanted to be the leader just to prove he could, ect. So when I see people saying Lance was the one who worked past Keith’s walls when he was the one who burned that bridge in the first place feels strange. I’m glad he’s working past that now though, and I like how their character development seems to be heading in canon. 

But yeah it does seem that a number of Lance fans–certainly not all–dismiss Keith’s character development if it doesn’t serve k/l. Keith has always been a three dimensional character and I think there were clear signs pointing to everything he said in the vlog, this was just him point blank saying it. Of course as we all know that, “show not tell” makes for a far more compelling narrative. We see enough to infer all this is happening in the show, this is just a simplistic way of flat out saying it. There’s a certain power in admitting your issues out loud though, and if you get choked up when saying it, well–of course that’s also going to make an impact. It hurts to see Keith so openly admit he’s hurting, and I really feel for him. I think everyone kind of does. I just wish more people were able to acknowledge he was going through this all along. 

But at the same time I really shouldn’t be one to talk since at this point I’m kinda the sheith guy. I’m sure people read my meta and are like “why the fuck do you always have to make everything about sheith” lmao. Granted, I try to stick to canon and focus on sheith when talking about Keith’s character development because so much of that is linked to Shiro–the BOM trial, Keith’s galra arc, Keith’s leadership arc, Keith’s abandonment issues, how Shiro changed his life and worked past his walls, ect. So while I won’t really see eye to eye with other interpretations and will always kinda be uncomfy when fandom phases out Keith’s canon relationship with Shiro to focus on Lance–at the same time, I’m not going to go out and say that like all Lance or k/l fans are misconstruing Keith’s character or don’t care for him. Everyone’s allowed their interpretations and life is too short for me to worry about it. live your life, have fun, enjoy the content you like 

[sonxfdoom]

I think I realized smth. Not like a mind-blowing government conspiracy, not something handy in life that can save millions in poverty, not something that can help make anyone’s life feel better besides maybe my own. Call it a Blog Analysis I guess.

My blog’s kinda the odd one out, with the way I follow ppl.  I’m cute, I focus on cute and happy things, and everyone I follow is angsty and nitty gritty. They like the hardcore feels they get from watching their muse go through hardships in themselves or from life, and I like watching my muse be happy and enjoy the small things in life. Whether it’s because it helps them deal with their struggles in life or they just enjoy watching it, they like angst.

I guess I kinda feel out of place. Like, I’m not supposed to like the cute things in life and I’m supposed to enjoy watching my muse suffer and enjoy the tight knots in my chest as I feel for my muse and their situation. But I don’t. I hate that feeling. I hate feeling that way because if I wanted to feel that way I would look back at my own life. I want my muse to be happy, and I wanna focus on things that make me happy. Things that I enjoy. RPing is supposed to be about what makes us happy after all.

You don’t see a lot of posts going ‘Ohhhh you know what I love? Soul crushing cute things that just wanna make me melt onto the floor’, and if you do it’s a lot less than the ‘I love watching my character suffer.’ ‘Muse thinking about themselves be like *picture of trash can*’ ‘tfw ur heart just can’t handle those feels’ ‘My best friend is my crippling depression’ and other things of that sort.

So many blogs focus on the mature themes and you can barely find any that focus on the cute happy times of life and those happy moments. The ones that prefer happier themes and mindsets in the past fandom I was in downright mocked you for enjoying such things.  Saying things like- “Go read some fanfictions if that’s what you want so bad” ”Go be a whiner somewhere else then.” ”What’s wrong with you?” “Why are you even here at all then?” “Why don’t you go write your own stories if that’s what you want so bad?” Is there a negative stigma for wanting to write only positive things? That a blogs focus can’t be happy or else it gets the stigma that it’s of lesser quality, crack-based, more simple or just not as deserving of attention? Does writing about things that make someone happy have to be something that’s always temporary? A break from the main focus on their blog? Somethig that deserves to be treated as special and a rare moment rather than a constant focus?

Call me a sissy, call me a coward, call me selfish, call me pretentious and stupid for how I think. I don’t care.  I hate angst, and I like fluff. I’m not against angst, but I like the positives more than the negatives. I like enjoying the happy fluttering I feel in my heart as I watch my muse accomplish something they’ve wanted to for a long time, or the smile on their face as they get a ‘way to go’ and a pat on the back from someone they like, the feeling of pure joy as they watch someone they care about do something they’ve always wanted to do. I love that feeling. I like that feeling a lot more than what I get from angst. I guess it impacts my muse more than it should. If someone else were to write my muse, I am certain they would focus more on the emotional impact his life had on him, or the feelings of self doubt and constant belittlement he constantly has for himself, and how he hurts himself without even realizing it.  I guess how I feel impacts my muse and writing more than it should.

I just feel wrong, stupid sometimes, for wanting to write about what I enjoy. I feel like the odd man out for writing about things that make me happy. I don’t like forcing people to write with me if that’s not what they want to write, and I feel sorry to everyone I’ve ever accidentally forced that onto. That was not my goal at all. I dunno how to say it.

I’m kinda like, the beverage on the side of a meal if there needs to be a comparison here. While someone’s eating a big ol meal of salad or steak or whatever the fuck you ordered, ya got a drink to go along with it. A way of goin’ - “Yeah, ___’s good, but sometimes ya gotta refresh the mouth before goin in for more. Too much of anything is pretty bland and tasteless after all.” And then once you take a sip of your drink you just continue eating, occasionally taking little to large sips or just alright skipping the drink altogether. Then when someone finishes their meal they sometimes don’t finish the drink out of obligations or whatnot, and instead leave it so some poor worker can take it away or to just sit there until some poor sap throws it out themselves; the worker having mixed reactions depending on if they hate their job or not if they decide to pick it up. And I guess that’s what I’m there for. To be the little refresher from the angst filled lives my followers crave, a little refresher so the angst they write doesn’t start making them actually depressed (or more than they already are), and then continue on with their preferred interests.

I dunno.  I guess I’m supposed to feel happier knowing my place in the world. ...Somehow it only makes me more sad than I was before knowing.

[thegreatmercutio]

Okay...a little heart to heart

In the past few days, the Malec and Shadowhunters fandom is divided and wounded. It’s heartbreaking.

I feel like the constant finger pointing, policing, shaming…and falsely assuming that an entire fandom is built on all these negativity and actions of a few is poor judgement and choice of wording, very generalization. Grouping a mass of people into one negative perspective, requires more reflections and investigations, especially if you’re so invested in ranting about it. And the irony is that it doesn’t encourage positivity either, if you keep adding into that fire.

You have to see the other side, be in their shoes. All this anger I have seen online comes from a lot passion and a lot of heartbreak. And everyone has the right to express their feelings and concerns. No one has the right to tell someone how to feel. You be you, they are they.

This is social media, the Internet…where the good and the bad has a permanent resident. The power and the control is how you respond to them. Your reaction is yours. You don’t have to agree, and you don’t have to like it. Just know, that all this anger comes from a lot of hurt, misunderstanding, and confusion…and sometimes it does comes from hate…that you may understand or not at all. Just acknowledge and respect that it exist, and move on (and I am talking to both sides of the arguments).

Let’s use the “consent controversy” as an example, some say that Alec would never do that, which later required a tweet from the show stating…that they assumed that everyone knew that it was consensual, apparently NOT. Not everyone saw it as so…does that mean this side is right and the other is wrong? No, not at all. Have you heard of the rule of a joke? Using this as an example, if you got to explain the joke to the audience, it’s not a joke. When you witness something, everything is up for interpretation…different people, different backgrounds…different interpretations…it’s called perspectives. And there are times, when it is clear, concrete, and confirmed. This situation wasn’t one of it. Because look at the mess it made. You are entitled to your own perspectives. And they did apologize. How you take the apology, is still up to you.

That’s where, I am hoping we will heal from. We are attacking each other…as a fandom and it’s seems like we are forgetting why we care so fuck much for Malec, Magnus, and Alec…and the show itself, and the other characters. For me, it was the diversity, the representation, the love, the loyal, the hope,…and the change that needed in the media. And art speaks volumes. It might just be just another show, but it shines light on topics that is often ignored. So saying that’s it’s just a fictional show and it’s shouldn’t be taken serious, sure you are entitled to see it as so, but that’s not everyone…again…perspectives.

I hope all the bullying from all the opposing sides comes to an end, (not just talking about the showrunners and the writers) and all the…attacking, name calling, and belittling people feelings is not spreading positivity.

So let’s heal, find a common compromise. Move forward, the show is only reaching half way…it’s still in motion. Things are going to happen, the good and bad. I hope we as a fandom can continue to have good healthy conversations and discussions…and they we all learn from each other. And grow from this. And I am going to be honest, I really don’t trust the showrunners anymore (due to all the mind games), maybe it might be restored but time will tell (but that’s my perspectives)…but I do trust this fandom, I know your hearts are in the right place…let’s move forward together.

Here’s a virtual hug 🤗. We’re going to be okay.