#i hate fandom fighting

[cyanide-sippy-cup]

Wayne Family Adventures literally had 2 entire seasons worth of healthy dad Bruce who sits down and talks with his kids. He brought Jason down from a nervous breakdown. He got Damian a dog. He told Tim that it's Batman who looks out for Robin. He felt incredible guilt over missing even one of Cass' recitals. He plays with the kids, he takes care of them, he talks with them about family and what they mean to him. He puts in the work.

And yet we still have people coming out of the woodworks to claim that being an asshole is "integral to his character" the one time he says fuckshit to the kids.

Look I came from from multiple abusive households (yeah that's right I'm pulling this card). I know what that looks like. This ain't it. What Bruce said is fucked up, no doubt about it. But this is after potentially years of kindness and heartfelt discussions. Saying something fucked after all that healthy behavior isn't abuse, it's a call for help. And that's what the kids are trying to do. He's scared. He even admitted to Damian that none of it matters as long as they're safe.

This arc isn't to point and go "oh look at how horrible Batman is and how he treats his family". It's showing how grief and trauma can twist the people you love into something that hurts, and the effort and pain needed on both sides to fix that (like in the Jason episode, how he lost control and almost hurt Dick and then told them to take care of Bruce). Keeping this idea that violence and abuse is integral to Batman and his relationships is the same mentality that has kept main timeline Bruce in that behavior for the last god-knows-how-long.

[wheretheresawyll]

Character parallels: Wyll Ravengard (Baldur's Gate 3) | Anora Mac Tir (Dragon Age: Origins)

[wishesofeternity]

The thing about HotD is that it while it absolutely minimizes the agency and ambition of both Rhaenyra and Alicent, this is specifically used to glorify Rhaenyra and frame her as righteous while condemning Alicent and framing her lacking. That's the key difference in both their textual portrayals that has directly led to 90% of the fandom hailing Rhaenyra as the second coming of Christ while spewing the most hateful vitriol at Alicent just for existing. But y'all are not prepared for that conversation.

[theminecraftbee]

okay, so in a rare moment for me, there's a discourse thing i want to bring up, and that thing is. okay. so on iskall's stream there's this thing that can happen where someone brings up a criticism of his content or vault hunters. frequently it's self-evidently wrong, but sometimes it's not. and then iskall spends the next thirty minutes shadowboxing this guy, explaining himself, and completely derailed. and this is an iskall trait we all know and sigh bemusedly about, because he cares about the community and wants people to understand his intentions! he wants the community to understand his decisions!

however, it's not the community as a whole he's fighting; he is in fact, arguing with One Guy, who often doesn't represent the wider community, and who normally won't have their mind changed. hell, sometimes it's believable that they're satisfied having just managed to upset iskall, and they'll leave, no change to their mind, perfectly pleased that iskall's responding at all (that's what i firmly believe the people who poke at the 'you don't upload enough and that means you're falling off and a bad person' wound are trying to do, at least).

in the vault hunters community, we refer to this as iskall getting One Guyed, and it's typically viewed as bad, because it ends up focusing an entire moment on a single guy's negative opinion as opposed to on the larger picture. and it's an understandable thing to have happen! but it's frustrating to watch from the outside.

and so now i am looking at that cat poll. and the way everyone is still shadowboxing someone who has since apologized. and the way i would have never ever known about any of the negative comments about jellie if it weren't for fellow mcyt fans constantly putting them on my dash to dunk on them. and it's like. if you look through the notes most of them are just... normal? it's only a tiny few of people (and the pollrunner, who has since apologized) who were being dicks. it's a very, very ignorable demographic.

but. well. there was One Guy. and we had to correct them.

and folks, i don't know how to say that i almost never see "lol mcyt is cringe" type comments unless one of you puts it on my dash. both because i don't go looking through the notes of things that are likely to have them or go looking for reasons to be upset and because it's just... not that common! very frequently these days it is, in fact, One Guy!

i have almost never seen that poll on my dash without at least one instance of the One Guy. instead of being for fun, it's mostly become about explaining ourselves to someone who will not listen and will not change their minds, and treating this as a the whole of the Other Side of that poll, when most people are being... fine. they're fine! the majority of the people voting for the other side are doing it for perfectly normal reasons that don't require fighting about.

and man. let me tell you. after spending as long as i have watching vault hunters development? it can be just as frustrating to watch a fandom get One Guyed as it is to watch iskall.

[cyanityy]

Bully sketch dump 3 + crops

I'm flying out so since I can't take my tablet with me I'm releasing all my captive sketches into the wild *magic hand gesturing*

(Thanks to @/bidisaster-peanut-romano for instigating Tad & Parker besties hc with me. I sob every time)

[arolegos]

im way too scared to say this on main but icl i love lloyrumi n' i love ur lloyrumi art ... can u draw them more for me ... maybe dr harumi meeting sora and jordana like 'damn lloyd they js like us fr fr ???'

i love when the relationship dynamic is "kiss marry kill? all of the above"

[picaroroboto]

Dawntrail, more than any other expac I think, requires a bit of "buy-in": You don't nessacerily have to love Wuk Lamat if she's not your cup of tea, she is a fairly simple character after all, but if you can't accept that Dawntrail is her story and at least pretend to like and be invested in her, you probably aren't going to get anything out of Dawntrail. Similarly, if you don't accept the implied character development of the "canon WoL" choosing to seek adventure for it's own sake after Endwalker, you won't be able to enjoy the fun adventure story elements DT is banking on if you're still tied down by baggage from EW.

I think that's a large part of the reason DT seems to have drawn out a disproportionate amount of haters, because if you're in stubborn opposition to these changes from the start you're going to get even more salty as you go along and be completely unable to enjoy DT for what it is.

[ecstarry]

snippet from pt.3 of olympic villa au - full fic here

“No, tell me why you are upset.” 

Regulus snapped his arm back and stared at him with absolute disdain. “Don’t fucking tell me what to do, Potter.”

“So it’s Potter now?”

“What do you want from me?” 

To kiss you, James thought. 

“Why are you this mad?” James couldn't wrap his head over how insensitive Regulus was acting.

“I’m not fond of people who fake interest, whatever the reason for that may be.” Regulus wasn't even looking at James while speaking.

James was even more confused by that answer, and quite honestly, he was starting to get upset too. 

“Regulus what the hell? Why would I send an apology if I didn’t want to make things right?”

“Do you mind?” Regulus started walking away. “I really wanted to do my cardio for the day.”

[scruncheduppaper]

if i see one more ford hate post on my tl im genuinely going to go insane

YES hes a dick but a) hes a fictional character b) he CHANGES and DEVELOPS and REDEEMS HIMSELF BY THE END OF THE SERIES and c) ITS COOL THAT HE HAS AN EGO. ITS COOL

and also im starting to lose interest in fiddlestan because at this point its becoming clear that people only ship it because they dont like ford and they think that fidds doesnt deserve him AS IF THE CONFLICT ISNT THE APPEAL OF THEIR RELATIONSHIP??? AS IF IT ISNT THE POINT??? AND AS IF THEIR RECONCILIATION BY THE END OF THE STORY ISNT A PERFECT ENDING TO FORDS ARC im gonna bite someone i swear.

look someone on twitter said that “some fiddlestan shippers are just fiddauthor shippers in disguise” and its PISSING ME THE FUCK OFF because IM SORRY DO YOU GUYS NOT SHIP CHARACTERS BECAUSE YOU���RE INTERESTED IN DIFFERENT RELATED CHARACTER DYNAMICS?? WHAT ARE YOU JUST HERE FOR THE LOVEY DOVEY SHIT??? the REASON why fiddlestan is INTERESTING TO ME in the FIRST PLACE is because it elaborates on both of these characters with respect to their relationships to ford!!! there’s nothing wrong with the fact that theyre connected to him!!! these arent real people, these are characters that act as vehicles to explores messages in stories!!! of COURSE i only ship fiddlestan in relation to fiddauthor, why would i cut ford out here completely when it’s SO MUCH MORE INTERESTING TO RECOGNISE THEIR COMPLEX DYNAMICS IN RELATION TO HIM???

and i hear people going like “oh well i just wanna see fiddleford happy!!” and im like. but without the conflict. like who is he. some twink you can just mold however you want?? without his Flaws and his Complex Relationships with his family and ford and his eventual descent into madness What are you Seeing in him?? not to mention the fact that i dont think stan would treat him better anyways lol

and also im getting the vibe that the reason a lot of people ship fiddlestan nowadays is because people like. dislike ford?? and i said this just now but like hes genuinely such an interesting character as well and it makes me sad to see that the only people who appreciate his character idolise him without seeing his flaws and literally everyone else just hates him like YALL TALK SHIT ABT LIKING MORALLY GREY CHARACTERS BUT WHEN A CHARACTER ACTUALLY IS MORALLY GREY YOU TURN AROUND AND GO LIKE “ehhhhh” like COME ON PLEASE YOU HAVE TO SEE THE VISION FORD IS STILL COOL AND IM GONNA DEFEND HIM WITH MY LIFE

its actually kinda pissing me off the amount of fluffy characterisation fiddlestan gets within the fandom, at the expense of ford, bc oh my fucking godddd PLEASEEE CAN WE HAVE THE ERA WHEN I FIRST DISCOVERED FIDDLESTAN BACKKK BECAUSE THE CONTENT THEN WAS SO FUCKING GOOD

[dirtytransmasc]

I refuse to go into more detail, but, I will no longer hold my tongue. my biggest gripe with this fandom is the way a majority of it erases Lo'ak's actual trauma and struggles (with his identity, his father/family, his clan, etc), and essentially gives him Spider's traumas/struggles in some idealized form (whether for over the top and oversimplified "hurt/comfort" scenarios, or max woobification), while absolutely dragging and/or ignoring Spider's entire character and the realistic depictions of those traumas and what that does to a kid.

like I can't exactly put words to it or go into a deep analytical post, but I've been thinking about it, and some other stuff I've seen online have been making me think about it.

stop doing a disservice to both of my boys. they both have such interesting and complex stories and you're ruining it!!!

[nyoomerr]

Just months before the Immortal Alliance Conference, Luo Binghe discovers the cure to Without-a-Cure. With his own heritage still sealed and mostly unknown to him, there seems to be only one solution: Shen Qingqiu must receive the cure from the last known Heavenly Demon, Tianlang-Jun, even if it means that Luo Binghe has to grit his teeth and set his precious Shizun up with another man. Shen Qingqiu does not want to receive the cure from Tianlang-Jun. He doesn't particularly want to receive anything from Tianlang-Jun. Shen Qingqiu somehow ends up fake-dating Tianlang-Jun anyway, if only to swindle the System into delaying the Endless Abyss plot for as long as he can.

🌹 bingqiu 🌹 no-abyss AU, misunderstandings, light-hearted 🌹 lbh tries to get his shizun medicinally laid 🌹 65k, 5/5 chapters, complete!

the final bit of my Fandom Trumps Hate fic went up last night - i hope that it can provide a moment of distraction and buoyed spirits to those who need it.

as always, thank you to everyone who's been reading along, and an extra big thank you to the incredible @mock-speed for being the reason this fic exists :>

[triglycercule]

mtt therapy moment except dust keeps taking breaks to talk to phantom papyrus and horror just wants this to hurry up so it can get to his turn because he couldn't give two shits about dust and killer's trauma and killer physically cannot discuss his issues and just starts zoning out while crying for some reason during it

and i'm the therapist listening to all of this writing down notes fervently because ITS CANON MATERIAL CANON I NEED TO GET THE CANON MATERIAL

[mamawasatesttube]

women in fandoms can have one of two character traits: #girlboss or toxic bitch. occasionally these overlap and the same woman will be characterized by some people as a #girlboss and by others as a toxic bitch. sometimes she will also be referred to as a mom [friend], which can be a subset of #girlboss in that she's sooo much more emotionally mature and capable and careful and responsible than any man around her. but as we all know, #girlboss and mom friend, or toxic bitch: these are the only traits women have. any negative traits a woman has are erased - this is the thesis statement of the #girlboss characterizers: of course i love female characters!! i think women are so great they don't have any character flaws! #feminism - or are overinflated with disgust (she's toxic, she's a total bitch, she's evil. especially if she's not white. i mean what?)

[mel-ixa]

The more I think about it, the more the RWRB fandom is winning because what do you mean we have a book (with a collector edition!) AND an amazingly written film AND an upcoming sequel??

The difference in the film vs book makes it even better because now there’s 2 versions and they’re both good and canon!!

One of my fav changes in the film is that Alex passed Henry his key in exchange for the ring so they both held on to a piece of each other when the leak happened. And that Alex was the one who played the song in the V&A right after Henry said he always wanted to dance with someone he loved there like omg 😭

I just choose whichever bits I prefer and now the mashed up version in my head is the best of both worlds and damn we are so well-fed!!

Im not even going to get started on AO3 content cause the pairing has over 10k fics so it’s just a buffet there.

And of course Taylor and Nic are both such incredible actors. Like honestly what is there not to love about RWRB!!

[villainvillain]

kinda sad how davekat was like. it truly was a big deal at the time when it was confirmed by hussie. some of yall who came into homestuck after it was already over dont understand how great it felt actually to finally have a relatively healthy and affectionate m/m relationship shown in HS when all the others were typically dysfunctional, abusive, or one-sided. it was exciting!!! we were all jst kinda happy for dave and karkat yknow. even if it resulted in some pointless "which quadrant are they in?" discourse and some shipping wars but thats just par for the course in hs fandom

and then the epilogues and homestuck 2 dropped and like. ooooohhhhh my godddddd. its completely swamped in stupid melodrama and for some reason they completely ruined jades character for the sake of davekat angst and they ignored daves development in the comic for half-baked sexuality crisis plotline andlike. it feels like everyone turned on davekat and now its cringe or smth and its like. Wow . we had like . three years to feel good abt this and now its gone forever. Awesome

[acearohippo]

I love fandoms, especially witnessing what fans take away from source material and how fans interpret it based on their experiences. Not to mention the stark difference of interaction between new fans, casual fans, experienced fans, and long-term fans.

I say this because the SVSSS fandom has continuously fascinated me in insisting in discussions that there are parallels between Shen Jiu and Luo Binghe (tell don't show), but in their fanworks, I just see parallels between Luo Binghe and Yue Qingyuan (show don't tell).

And it's not even (fully) a case where they're blending character personalities because they want what the other dynamic has, it's just how the characters are based on canon in two different timelines.

All of this to say, perhaps original draft PIDW (NOT original!PIDW nor pre!SY PIDW which are completely different) was supposed to revolve around the dynamic between SJ and YQY vs SJ and LBH. Perhaps YQY was to be the last hour mastermind, the true foil to LBH.

And fandom is just circling this idea without realising it because, once again, the unreliable narrator that is SY has already convinced this fandom that any version of SJ has to be a/the villain, regardless if it's through his own actions or baseless rumours.

Warning, run-on sentence ahead.

I don't know, mans, but it's gotta mean something that LBH and YQY have such similar life beats of being orphaned and having a tough life but remaining kind/compassionate because they had someone to live for until they didn't which left them empty until they found (or refound in YQY's case) one (1) man to obsess over in an uncomfortably intrusive way with no regards for his feelings and rejections, eventually reaching a position as the most powerful being in existence with a huge caveat that their sword is 83% of that power and is slowly killing them which did nothing to soften said man of their obsession's into showing them kindness leading to the ultimate confrontation between the two in which only one could survive and keep their obsession, not that it mattered because neither of them got to experience his feelings reciprocated, except in another timeline where the same things are happening until their obsession suddenly stops rejecting their (still intrusive) advances even if he is acting a bit silly, but hey take advantage while you can and take advantage they did because now they have that reciprocated feeling (except one still "won" as he gets to keep him for himself) and be thankful that all it took was, in their perspective, a near death fever that drastically changed his personality and most likely left him crippled in some other way, preventing their obsession from not NOT needing them anymore, all-in-all fulfilling their desire to be relied upon again, hooray! 😋😁✌🏽

In all seriousness, at the end of the day people are going to draw connections between characters that fit whatever narrative they understood from the story. SVSSS fandom just seems to be trying to convince others of one narrative while believing on a deeper level of another narrative. It's amusing and makes following the fandom fun.