#i have been so disconnected from tumblr and fandom media in general

[mixu]

Hi, hope you are doing well. )

I am curious to know your impressions, anecdotes, experience of being a veteran SNS shipper. How was your experience with Naruto fandom? Has it changed? It would be great if you could talk about it.

Hi! I hope you’re doing well too. I barely receive any asks, so I’m excited.

Ah, my experiences and anecdotes being in the fandom, especially as a SNS shipper (does it count as shipping if they’re canon?) … It’s more than half of my life (I feel like I’m talking to my grandchildren) so this could get long.

I’ve been part of the fandom for 17 years, but it’s just recently that I’ve gotten to interact more with other fans both pro and anti sns. This mainly for three reasons:

Time period

When I entered the fandom internet and social media weren’t what they are today (that’s how old I am). I barely had access to internet for school and quickly read the new manga chapter before having to disconnect.

Location

Younger people don’t realize this but the globalization of manga and anime are quite recent. Now you can find merchandise even at the supermarket and a great catalogue of series is at your disposal with minimal effort. And being an “otaku” in the 2000’s was begging to be bullied at least in my country, so I preferred to keep my interests to myself.

My personality

I’m not the most social of people.

Thus, in the beginning, the fandom was nonexistent to me. It was just me, what Kishi wrote and my thoughts.

Little by little I got to interact with other people who were mainly shônen fans, and never read outside of that demographic, so there was no chance they would recognize a “non-pure shônen” even if it hit them in the face. There was not much to discuss aside from who would beat who, and I wouldn’t have been able to articulate it back then anyway, but my guts knew there was something different about Naruto. More than met the eye.

I next met a different part of the fandom in the form of fanart and fanfiction, but at that time it never crossed my mind that people would cling to those non-canon portrayals with their life. I would say most of these fans are avid consumers from other demographics that got attracted because something (the romance or the potential gayness) caught their eye, but are only interested in how to bend the characters to fit their vision. I know fanfiction and fanart are supposed to be self-indulgent, I enjoy it and write it even, but I’ve mostly managed to separate from the real thing. Not many discussions about the story as a whole (please keep in mind we were all teenagers back then).

So, none of those previous fan groups seemed to understand what I couldn’t put into words, and for the longest time, because my understanding of Naruto and Sasuke’s story was mostly instinctual, I had to go along with it. I let myself be gaslighted into believing my thoughts were just a byproduct of my fujoshi tendencies (I guess it could be right to call me fujoshi, but never due to Naruto).

After a quite long break, not just from Naruto but from manga and anime in general, I came into contact with the more educated part of the fandom in tumblr, and I finally got to put into words what was behind Naruto and Sasuke’s dynamic thanks to all of the great analysis that I found. I got vindicated and felt like I could finally live in peace but it was short lived.

When I met all the crazy antis, oh boy, I understood why ignorance is bliss.

That being said, there are indeed a bunch of obstacles between the fandom and understanding the true significance of Naruto’s story. However, not all of them are due to lack of knowledge when it comes to narrative devices and storytelling tools. I’m far from proficient in that topic and I can confidently say I got it.

Discarding those who will perpetually live in denial due to bigotry, homophobia, lack of an open mind, cultural differences, etc, and after much pondering elicited by this post of yours, I’ve come to the conclusion that the shônen label holds way more power than I originally thought. Or better say, all that shônen represents functions as the most effective reality filter.

Because Naruto was labeled as shônen:

The dudebros who only care about the power escalation won’t understand even if they are not homophobic because they came for the blattles and cool powers, nothing else matters.

The lost shôjo readers who force nh and ss into focus and think they can bend the “romance” to cater to their taste because a shonen writer would drop the ball with something as delicate. “Let Kishimoto draw his battles, we will fix the deficient love story because we know how true romance it’s supposed to look like. We wouldn’t be interfering with the hero’s story, anyway.”

All the while ignoring they are dragging a bunch of toxic tropes with them. They don’t see their pairings as failures because shôjo also has its good share of toxicity and abuse.

The fujoshi and fundashi who despite coming after the gayness, still miss the point because they do not care about the story so long as two hot men are kissing or fucking or whatever. They don’t actually believe in sns because most of their pairings are ships for fun, anything can be shipped, (pencil-senpai and sharpener-kun) so they see Naruto as a love story only under their terms but never in canon.

Then we have people that read a wider range but fail to look at the story as anything else than one written for male teenagers. Got shôjo for romance seinen and josei for more maturity, so shônen is meant for an easy quick snack.

Some of my friends, that I consider very intelligent people, way more versed in storytelling and narrative and whatnot than me, who are definitely not bigots or homophobic, still miss the point because they weren’t looking for it. They realized only after I pointed it out (I even made a ppt presentation, but that’s another story).

As for the people who understand from the beginning:

There’s of course those with the knowledge to dissect the story, and who can consciously ignore the restrictions of the labels.

Yet another group (I consider myself part of this one) that manage to bypass the rules only guided by instinct, but kept second-guessing themselves until they met someone from the previous group.

Then there’s my mother, bless her, who watches anime and loves her romances, but knows shit about manga demographics and wonders how the fuck Naruto and Sasuke gave birth to Boruto because in her eyes that little piece of shit has to be their son.

So once again, it all comes back to Kishimoto and his decision sell his soul to Jump. Was it all for fame or money? Was he too hopeful and naïve? Was it all a cruel prank?

What happened to mangakas like Tezuka? That man knew no limits.

That’s it for my thoughts on and interactions with the fandom. I think I leave my evolution as a sns stan for later if you’re interested in it.

[bigskydreaming]

So, been awhile! Apologies for that - took a step back from most social media sites for a few months because the accumulated stresses and everpresent urgency to most things I've been dealing with for the past five plus years finally caught up with me and I kinda just....crashed, and needed some time to get my head on straight. Or whatever the non-obvious-pun version of that might be for a Known Bisexual. Everything was getting to be too constantly 'stop and go' for me, if that makes sense.....like I'd TRY to be more present on here, TRY to work on things like my patreon and fic and meta and stuff like that because I've really wanted to get back to creating actual stuff that people enjoy instead of being like My Issues: The Latest Installment and the like, but then something else would crop up and kill my momentum before it even really got going and I'd have to duck away yet again, and rinse and repeat.

HENCE! I took a more dedicated, extended leave to try and get into a headspace and build a buffer that better lends itself to me getting back to the kinds of posting/writing conditions I've thrived under in the past. It took longer than I thought, but I've never been good at accurately estimating things lol. I've still been on twitter somewhat sporadically, since a huge part of why I hate that site is its format makes it all but impossible to really get to ranting at length...y'know, as I do, my tried and true time-suck method of procrastinating...and with everything going on in the world these days I didn't want to disconnect entirely even though I did need time to work through some shit. BUT I DIGRESS.

Point is, felt like I needed something more substantial than the optimistic-but-lacking-in-actual-energy-and-planning measures I've attempted in the past couple years in order to get on top of things and achieve a measure of consistency and stability again. Less shooting for the moon because I just WANT to be back to my older, happier/more content patterns, more....putting some actual time and thought into how I can realistically make that happen instead of just trying to will it into existence through sheer stubbornness. Because obviously, THAT always works.

ANYWAY. It'll still be a couple days before I get back to regular posting/reblogging patterns or much of any of that at all.....don't be confused if you see some blink and you miss them temporary posts from me over the next day or two. I'm testing out the formatting and layout of a bunch of posts and graphics made for my patreon and original fiction stuff, since the preview post function doesn't always work with read mores in a post and they're all gonna need that lol. If anyone's up for it, I am finalizing the price/reward tiers of my patreon and could use some thoughts on the different levels - I think I have them mostly figured out but wouldn't mind some additional perspectives on how I broke things down and if I'm missing some alternatives. Just message me directly if you'd like to weigh in or lend me your thoughts!

I've never wanted my tumblr to be all about fic or just original content or anything like that, so the patreon's meant to kinda keep all that separate beyond just generalized update announcements on here. The blog will remain just a regular multi-purpose smorgasboard of my reblogs and thoughts on other posts and meta about my various fandoms and all that jazz. The patreon discord will have spaces having to do with my various fanfics, but they'll never be exclusive to it in any way, and every fic update I make will still be on my blog same as always. I've been building masterlists of all my Dick Grayson meta and all my Teen Wolf meta, as well as headcanons and writing snippets/scenes that never got posted elsewhere because I didn't consider them full fics, and I'm starting a series of posts that lean directly into my tendencies to be an Overly Opinionated Asshole who - historically speaking - has never been, uh, shy, shall we say, about Having Thoughts about various fandom patterns or trends.

So....look out for the upcoming "Kalen Vs Fandoms" post series. What? It sounded catchy to me. First up:

"Fandoms' tendency to pick one character per fandom to have every other character introduce as the dumbest person they've ever met, but no its okay, they're actually really fond of them and universally defaulting to a judgmental or patronizing shot at their intelligence every single time they're the topic of conversation among other characters just naturally happens to be part of every single other character's love language - is this perhaps NOT as endearing or affectionate as fandoms tend to treat it as?" Aka "How many people can actually say they'd be comfortable with the idea of every single person in their family or friend group leading with "I genuinely think they're stupid but I love them anyway" each time they talk about them to someone else, and if you don't think that's a normal conversation starter for people to have about a loved one, why do so many fandoms attempt to treat it as such?"

.....the length of post title should not be taken as an indicator of how long each post is. If people want to draw their own conclusions about post length based solely on the fact that they're, well, by me.....I mean. That's totally your prerogative. Nothing I can do about that!

Post topics will run the gamut, if for no other reason than gamut is an amazing word that doesn't get used enough and I wanted to use it. From "Its totally valid to project onto characters and use fic as a way to work through various issues via that projection but how much does this have to do with how defensively people react to the slighest criticism of character choices in their fics as though personally attacked - discuss" to "Criticizing and condemning the writers of source material for specific things - to rave reviews from followers - only to then do the exact same specific things in your own fics - to rave reviews from followers - while claiming that the mere fact of being a fan not getting paid for writing those specific things somehow makes them less worthy of criticism.....are we all seeing the problem here."

There's a slight chance those titles are perhaps....somewhat unnecessarily asshole-coded, but like, in a whimsical way! I think. Whatever. I'm sure it'll be fine!

Will either rhyme OR reason be involved in the order of post topics? No. Not even a little bit. Next question.

Aside from "Kalen vs Fandoms" I've been putting a lot of thought into what other topics or content I can expound upon at length, to the possible interest of people. I'm good at writing and editing and analyzing narratives. Not claiming to be the best, just not trying to fish for compliments or anything. I think my analysis of narrative and character choices has generally been of interest in most fandoms I've been in, but when I'm IN a fandom, I do personally invest in favorite characters and stories that inevitably put me in opposition to takes from fans of other characters and stories within that fandom, and when that happens, the Horseman of Discourse inevitably follows and I....do the discourse. Look, I am who I am. I see the discourse, I engage with the discourse. Unless I don't care about the topic of discourse, in which case I don't, because that discourse doesn't matter. Obviously.

SO! In the interest of posting about narrative analysis and breakdowns of writing choices, character arcs and the like but WITHOUT engaging in The Discourse, I'll be making an easy-to-find post of fandoms or source material whose characters and narratives I'm familiar enough with TO have opinions or analysises of, but for whatever reason, the fandom has never clicked for me and I've never actually felt a desire to be part of it. Thus I'm not likely to be invested or compelled enough to follow up on anyone disagreeing with my personal thoughts or analysis or various character arcs or narratives, because its literally just like, my opinion man, presented for no other purpose than to potentially be of interest to anyone who might be interested in it. No actual follow up needed on my part because I'm not particularly chuffed if people have different takes, they're totally valid, mine don't exist for the purpose of being defended there, they just exist because Opinions, I Had Them, Here Look. Or Don't. Its Totally Whatever.

Because I don't feel as strongly about these pieces of media as I do fandoms I'm personally invested in, it is trickier to come up with a comprehensive list of ones I can weigh in on. So please feel free to hit up my inbox with any fandoms, narrative or character arcs you're curious about my take on, and I'll let you know if they're fandoms I consider myself a participant in, and thus not really right for this series, or if they're something I'm just not knowledgeable about.....but if they're not an actual fandom of mine and I AM familiar enough with them to have an analytical take or response, I'll add them to the masterlist/post as a potential topic.

This series will be called and tagged "Kalen Vs Writing Choices" (That I Personally Don't Like Or Think Could Be Better). The parenthetical part is there solely to be a disclaimer clarifying that my ego is not so great that I think that My Subjective Take on the writing choices made or not made is the only one that matters. I mean, I don't intend to include the disclaimer as part of the actual tag and will mostly leave it as y'know, like, something IMPLIED, but the disclaimer still exists and thus counts. That's totally how that works.

And that's how I've chosen to awkwardly segue into the final intended-of-three post series.....Dramatically Abrupt Tonal Shift Ahoy!

This next part will get long, but I would truly appreciate it if you gave it a read despite its length and even if - especially if - the next topic isn't one you typically look for my take on, or even avoid my take on, because I don't think I'm likely to ever express my thoughts on this matter any more genuinely or directly than this. Like I'm not trying to guilt anyone or anything like that, its more I'm just trying to say if you ever read ANY single post of mine when it comes to the next topic or pick a post to base your decision on whether or not TO wade into something I have to say on this subject, I would appreciate it if you made that this next part here, as I think it best conveys where I'm coming from when it comes to most any post I make along these lines.

So. The thing is....most people who've followed me long know that in the past I've frequently been extremely vocal on topics of rape, incest and abuse, specifically through the lens of being a male survivor. These absolutely are personal for me. This has led to me having a lot of Overly Opinionated Takes on these topics and how they're talked about, depicted and treated within fandom conversations, fics, and social media spheres and conversations at large. I've also pretty obviously not posted on these topics nearly as much in recent years as I once did - but not because I feel any less strongly about them.

And that's one hundred percent because it's frustrating as hell to see a very good portion of the posts I make about any OTHER topic in my usual fandoms go on to accumulate hundreds of notes....while NONE of my posts on these topics ever break out of my direct circle of mutuals. I don't say it to be egotistical - look how many notes I get on stuff - I say it because its literally objectively factual, and the disparity is dramatic, and the disparity is a PROBLEM. Especially given how much the topics of male rape and abuse - in SPECIFIC - tend to be, within most of my past fandoms.

This disparity has a very clear reason for existing too: people have never been shy about citing that they refrain from reblogging or referencing my posts on these topics because they feel like I act like I'm the only opinion that matters on them, the sole authority to be listened to here, that I use my status as a male rape survivor as a cudgel, to shut down opposing takes or points of view.

Which I would totally be fine with or understand if not for the fact that I've always gone out of my way to express that I don't want or expect my opinions on these matters to be taken as anything other than my personal opinions born of my personal experiences, which I cite because they're relevant. I don't think that survivors should have to disclose their status or personal history or details in order to have their opinion heard on these topics, but I deeply resent how often survivors making the choice TO disclose their personal history or relationship with these topics in order to directly unpack how that informs our perspective....is weaponized AGAINST us, in order to shut down and discredit OUR takes even while literally accusing us of only disclosing in order to do the exact same thing to others.

Something that I've posted about a LOT in the hopes of getting it spread throughout fandoms that regularly talk about male rape is for literal decades I've seen people harp on about how men can be raped too, believe male survivors, don't believe the myth that men can't be raped, etc. Which like, I appreciate the sentiment, but the thing I've tried to express for years is that in my personal experience, and those of a lot of other male survivors I've talked to - this is not really the biggest or even ONE of the biggest issues most male survivors face.

And the fact that for all that there are many survivors in fandom who have made the difficult choice to be open about their traumas and recoveries - which I ALWAYS respect, as that is never easy for any of us - a huge part of why I've always made a point to disclose my own history as a male survivor is because there just flat out aren't a lot of perspectives from MALE survivors in specific, being circulated in pretty much any of the fandom spaces I've ever been in over the past twenty years. I don't even slightly think I'm any more of an expert or authority on topics of rape or abuse - beyond how they pertain to my own personal experiences - than any other survivor. But as long as the topic of MALE rape and abuse in specific, how men are affected by these things, how society reacts to us and treats us in the aftermath....as long as these are the topics explicitly being discussed.....I do think my perspective as a male survivor is pretty fucking relevant, and admittedly, I tend to get pretty heated about pushing BACK against attempts to invalidate it or shout it down as though I somehow have LESS of a stake in or right to be heard in these particular conversations. And I get how this has at times come across as attempting to dominate a given conversation.

But like.....I'm also going to point back up to the part where I said earlier....I'm an Overly Opinionated Asshole. I say it somewhat deprecatingly, for the lulz, but also not. I'm very passionate about conversations and topics I feel strongly about and I don't make apologies for it. And for the most part....this has NEVER stopped people from reblogging or liking posts I make about pretty much any other topic....despite me not really coming across that differently in most of them, compared to how I come across in most of my past posts on topics of rape and abuse.

See....I'm in complete agreement with everyone who emphasizes that rape isn't a gendered issue. That it can and does happen to individuals of any gender or identity. But the reason why I've always found the focus on 'remember that men can be raped too' more performative than helpful is because for almost twenty years, I've been posting on these topics in various fandom spaces and trying to express that in my personal experience, something that REALLY deserves to be talked about more is the fact that rape is not gendered. But rape CULTURE very much IS.

Like it or not, we live in a very gendered society still. While yes, men can be raped too.....for a number of reasons - most of them born of sexism and misogyny in specific - the conditions, catalysts and reasons for men being raped are NOT interchangeable with those at work in instances of women being raped, as an example. Because the way society treats men and women in pretty much EVERY situation is different. Similarly, the way society REACTS to men and women disclosing they've been raped is different. And so on and so on.

So 'remember that men can be raped too' has some basis in societal claims that men can't be raped or that rape IS a gendered issue....but not as much as I think most people tend to believe. And twenty years after I first started searching out perspectives of other male survivors in online fandom spaces, beyond just real world physical support groups, I'm STILL hearing 'remember that men can be raped too' dominating all conversations about male survivors just as regularly and repetitiously as it was twenty years ago....as though the world has not changed at all, and the needle on this particular facet of male survivorhood hasn't changed an inch in the past two decades when no, actually, it very much has.

The reason why I feel so strongly about offering up my perspective as a male survivor in a relative absence of seeing other male survivors' perspectives circulated is I honestly believe the reason this is so consistently upheld as the biggest problem facing male survivors is its a carry-over from women attempting to be heard and believed when disclosing....which makes sense and is completely understandable....as long as there's a complete absence of male survivors offering up any perspective that's to the contrary.

But the fact that we live in a gendered society where rape culture, not rape itself, still very much IS gendered due to being a product of....living in a gendered society....means that the differences in how society treats and reacts to men and women affects every aspect of how society treats and reacts to men and women survivors. And that starts with disclosure itself. In my personal experience - and fully acknowledging that I don't speak for any other male survivor in this moment, and I absolutely do believe there are those who have experiences to the contrary, and that matters too - MY experience, which also matters, is that not once in the twenty years since I've started disclosing about my own rape, or the csa I experienced as a child - have I actually had an issue being believed.

With full acknowledgment of how unfair it is, how gross, the reality of living in a sexist, patriarchal society where male privilege very much exists, is that while men can be raped too, this traumatic thing that happened to us does not in any way actually invalidate or negate our male privilege. It doesn't turn it off for the duration of our experience or any time its relevant to our experiences going forward. We carry that privilege with us through our recoveries and the rest of our lives just as much as we did before it, because its an inalienable result of being in a society that allocates privilege solely on the basis of being born a man who identifies and presents as a cis man (with respect to trans individuals having another axis of experience that very much differentiates all matters pertaining to rape culture, in comparison to cis men, just as much as in the case of cis women, albeit in different ways).

And the gross unfortunate reality of our society is that it ALWAYS prioritizes believing men over women, in all matters......especially cis white men like myself.

So the simple fact is....even the act of disclosure - and the likelihood of being believed when voluntarily choosing to share the information that we've been raped - means that a cis white man like myself does not receive the same reaction as most women receive when attempting to share that same information. Society preconditions a lot of people to be more receptive to taking cis white men at their word, comparative to affording anyone else that basic respect.

Getting people to believe me when I say I was raped has never been the issue for me that other individuals face.

But that doesn't mean that my disclosure doesn't result in issues for me.

Because while being raped never invalidated or negated any of my cis white male privilege, neither did having cis white male privilege negate the possibility of me being raped - OR the fact that society ALSO preconditions people to be really fucking shitty about survivors.

(Hell, ANY kind of living victim....with this also being very relevant to abuse survivors, survivors of physical assault, etc. Much like people can be overflowing with empathy for unborn children who can't offer up any take to the contrary to whatever people want to say "in defense or support of unborn children," only to turn around and cease caring about most of those babies the second they're born, people tend to be just as overflowing with empathy for deceased victims of abuse, rape, assault and the like....who, y'know, also can't offer up any take to the contrary of whatever they say or claim about what they WOULD want, what they DO deserve, etc. Present those same people with a living child or a living victim who can and DOES have an opinion that doesn't match what those people feel it SHOULD be? Watch attitudes shift VERY quickly, as allllll that empathy hurriedly flushes down the drain as though it was never there).

But the point is, my cis white male privilege is always here regardless. But that doesn't mean rape culture isn't shitty enough that it can't find a way to circumvent even that in pursuit of discrediting/invalidating/ignoring survivors, just like that privilege can be circumvented in order to create the situation where a man is raped in the first place.

Its just....the gendered nature of rape culture means HOW those attempts to discredit/invalidate/ignore male survivors manifests.....doesn't look the same as when it leads to just outright disbelieving other survivors when they attempt to disclose.

And that is how I can be listened to and reblogged on most any other topic, no matter HOW I go about presenting myself in those posts or conversations - ironically in no small part BECAUSE of my cis white male privilege - while only getting crickets when I post on these topics, BECAUSE people only choose THOSE posts to make my presentation or level of intensity a dealbreaker, and thus their very reason for ignoring anything I have to say there. Not because they don't believe me, but because the WAY I say it is too aggressive, too biased, too emotional, too intense....its an attack on their autonomy, an attempt to override whatever they previously thought or believed about the subject and just force them to adhere to my take.

Because the thing about living in a sexist, patriarchal society is.....that IS a thing that cis white men often do, and a lot of society is structured to make it easier for us to achieve this in most instances, frankly. This just happens to be a rare exception, because for a lot of reasons that would make this post even longer - and that again, I've often posted about before - upholding and reinforcing rape culture on a society wide level supersedes the usual focus on accommodating INDIVIDUAL cis white men in having their opinions heard and circulated.

I'm trying to be as frank as possible here about the intersection of privilege and experiences of being a male survivor because I don't believe its to anyone's benefit to be disingenuous about it, and I do think that it doesn't actually supplant the fact that male survivors do have just as much right - and NEED - to be heard and listened to about our experiences with rape and perspective there, and have those ACKNOWLEDGED, as anyone else.

Its just....the existence of privilege and how that differentiates most experiences in a gendered society matters, and thus.....it needs to be part of the conversation rather than just treating all responses to rape and survivors as agendered, just because rape itself can and does happen to people of all genders.

There's actually a fair amount to get into when it comes to differences in a lot of mens' disclosures vs womens' in my experience, but just as an extension of what I'm talking about here, one of the specific elements in my experience is that men often don't have a problem being believed about having been raped or abused.....but one of the predominant responses is society is heavily preconditioned to view male rape and abuse survivors as almost inevitably feeling they need to exert a similar power over someone else in order to claim back their own feelings of pride and safety in their masculinity. Effectively.....most every male rape or abuse survivor I've ever talked with at length shares a similar experience of being believed when they disclose about being a survivor....but noting a clear and direct shift in how whomever they disclosed to interacts with them....with EVERY expression of anger or outrage - particularly in the matter of their rape or abuse - being viewed as evidence of us being ticking time bombs who are inevitably primed to explode and take out what happened to us on someone else.

There's being cautious around cis white men, for example, because we're cis white men, which I totally get and am not expressing an opinion on. I'm just saying even with that acknowledged, there is a SHIFT in how people interact with me after I've disclosed to them personally, in how they....scrutinize me, for lack of a better way of putting it, in very noticeable ways and areas. Like its consistent. And think about how its not totally true that media doesn't portray men as being capable of being raped or abused, typically. Think about how often you've seen procedurals where the backstory of the rapist or abuser of the week is specifically THAT they were a rape or abuse survivor themselves, usually in childhood. Its NOT that society doesn't believe or accept that men can be raped too. Its that society is primed to default to viewing the very act of men being raped as an indicator of the shift from them being a man to being a man who is likely to become a predator themselves.

Rape appears all the time in regards to male survivors in media. Its just it usually just appears in the context of men who arent presented AS survivors, but rather as predators or aggressors themselves, and their past victimization treated as a catalyst rather than a trauma. This is not to excuse any such character or depiction of course, its simply to emphasize that the very angle from which male survivorhood is approached in most contexts is different from that of other survivors. Just like the angle from which their survivorhood is approached is different from that of male survivors. And thus the issue most men have with disclosing in my experience is NOT that we're afraid we won't be believed....its that we're afraid once we disclose, we'll be viewed as inherently more dangerous because our victimization primes us to be that much more likely to inflict ourselves on others in some attempt to reclaim our masculinity.

And its categorically NOT about any group of survivors having it better or worse than others, which is why I LOATHE people saying variations of 'you wouldn't say that about this if it happened to a woman' because anyone attempting to pit male survivors against other survivors en masse is NOT doing so for my benefit or with my endorsement. The point is just that each way society and rape culture interacts with a different group of survivors presents different problems and issues that need addressing, and aren't interchangeable.

There is a REASON why the subject of Dick Grayson's anger - usually in the context of things that have happened to him - is so important to me, specifically in terms of ensuring that its treated as something he's allowed to have....rather than an indicator that he's going to messily explode his life in a way that impacts everyone around him negatively.

Now.....if you've never considered that aspect of rape vs rape culture and how it can differently affect and shape the experiences and recovery of cis male survivors versus trans male survivors and nonbinary survivors and survivors who identify as women.....I ask that you consider what else my perspective might be able to add to actually productive, meaningful conversations about rape, rape culture and survivorhood, that you never would have thought TO think about before, without male survivors bringing it up based on it having played a role in personal experiences.

And then I just ask that you please think about the implications of someone known for being a vocal presence in certain fandoms, with a fairly sizable number of posts widely circulating throughout them......never having posts about male rape and survivorhood circulated to any noticeable degree, despite writing DOZENS of them, in all kinds of different moods, ways and intensity levels.....and all of them while active in fandoms where male rape is regularly discussed or focused on due to certain characters or storylines......and ask yourselves if it maybe seems a little off for the disparity to be THAT large. Again: I have written DOZENS of posts on this topic. All with less than twenty notes. I'll be composing a masterlist of them in the near future as well, but for now I'm just saying. Please just think about that.

While I'm going to make an effort to be more deliberate in how I approach this topic in posts going forward, tonally and in terms of word choice, I do have a right to be just as passionate about it as any other topic, and it is FUCKED UP to think that my personal experiences here should be pointed to as the very REASON I should need to be LESS passionate than I am anywhere else, in order to be heard or listened to. Still. I am not actually trying to override anyone else's viewpoint, present myself as some kind of ultimate authority, or shut down other survivors in any way....I'm just trying to uphold the relevancy and importance of adding my own perspective to the conversation.

I don't want to be the only voice listened to here. But as long as my voice is relevant, and I don't see or hear a lot of other voices speaking from a similar standpoint, I would like to be a RESOURCE on topics of male survivorhood, rape and recovery, from that particular standpoint. And even if and when other male survivors might perchance add their own perspectives with experiences and takes contrary to mine....I welcome that! Because mine is not the only one, cis white male survivors are no more a monolith than anyone else, and none of that will in any way actually invalidate my own perspective or experiences or render them no longer relevant at all.

Being a resource on a topic that has always been everpresent in most fandoms I've gravitated to - which has often been a reason FOR me gravitating to those fandoms in specific.....that has always been my ONLY goal with these kinds of posts. NOT an authority.

So, having my posts - which for all my willingness to write them, has never been easy for me and probably never will - reframed in such a negative way, dismissed and even weaponized against me - has over the years demoralized me and made it harder to find the energy TO tackle these topics, as much as I'd like to. But I do feel that I've found a second wind when it comes to this and think I'm ready to wade back into being Overly Opinionated on these topics as well.

So that's the third of the three post series I'll be starting, "Kalen vs Topics of Rape, Rape Culture and Survivorhood As Perceived Through A Singular Personalized Cis White Male Lens, Presented By (and With) My Middle Finger At Any Attempts to Subvert Or Undermine My Thoughts On Them By Reframing Them As Me Trying To Gatekeep Male Survivorhood No Matter How Many Times I Use The Words IN MY EXPERIENCE or IN MY OPINION, Which I Do A Lot, Because This Has Been Happening For A Very Long Time, And I Am Tired, But Still Very Opinionated, And Still Very Here, So Bite Me I Guess."

.....I'm still workshopping that one's title. Its a process.

ANYWAY. At the moment, I'm aiming to make one post of each once a month, and if I do more than that great, but not trying to pressure myself to do any more than that at the moment in the interests of Realism. We'll play it by ear. If I have more free time or energy than expected, maybe I'll do more. Its not like I have a shortage of Very Opinionated Opinions, after all. You've met me.

BUT I DIGRESS.

So in the interest of not making this long ass post any fucking longer, not that anyone really expected otherwise from my first post back in months, like could I REALLY even claim to ACTUALLY be back if all I had to show for it was some weak little lackluster drabble that wasn't even 3,000 words? Methinks the fuck not -

Well, have an abrupt and anticlimactic finish that comes out of nowhere despite giving myself literally 4,900 words to build to something appropriately profound or meaningful or whatthefuckever. Y'know. Your standard Kalen Classic. The abrupt and anticlimactic wrap up I mean, not the profound and deeply meaningful one. Eh. You get it.

Did ya miss me? I missed you!

PS - I was Informed that we are almost to the end of Tommy T's Tenure, is it almost safe to come back to Nightwing comics? Does anyone know when his last issue is? Have we planned the party yet? Who's on balloons, we definitely need balloons.

[the-force-awakens]

Yeah, that's a pretty good analysis. I don't see Poe included hardly at all, in fandom or in canon to a degree, and I think it's safe to say he has one of the least number of fans who are specifically fans of him. Like I don't see many blogs/accounts that are specifically Poe centric.

Oh man, I actually got up to answer this on my computer rather than my phone, so we'll see how into it I'll get into this ask, but yes! It's vastly unfortunate that he often gets excluded or overlooked when he's the entire catalyst for the sequel trilogy. He is, archetypically and narratively within the story, the Leia of our generation: if it was not for Poe and BB-8 (who is really like an extension of Poe), then Finn wouldn't have been able to escape the Finalizer, and Rey would have never left Jakku.

While yes, it's true that Poe wasn't initially meant to survive The Force Awakens (and other nine word horror stories for me), Poe is still one part of the primary trio of the trilogy and has been since 2015. He is not only Leia's first protégé, but the eventual leader of the Resistance, and according to the Rise of Skywalker novel, the heir to the legacy of House Organa (cue me loudly proclaiming him a Disney Prince). Yet, somehow, at the same time......no one seems to ever want to include him as part of the saga, and an important one as that?

(@dameronalone points out ever so often how much they love the shot where everyone leaves Exegol for this reason, because we see Poe flying alongside the Falcon, which really hammers in that Poe is an important player in the history of the saga).

More thoughts below the cut, because I have more and this is already lengthy.

The worst thing is that Poe was extremely popular. Lucasfilm and Marvel pretty much immediately greenlit a comic series for him, and while that was definitely to flesh his story out, if my memory serves, it was so popular that I believe the first printing sold out? And it was originally only meant to last 25 issues (which personally I think it should have stayed at, because I don't super vibe with 26-onward and it feels off and tonally disconnected to the rest of the series and also the ending of TLJ, and the characterization for Poe also feels off, but that's!! a different rant!!!) but the title was so popular that Marvel decided to extend it for two more storylines!

The issue was the fandom backlash to TLJ.

You don't have to look too far into my blog to know that I adore Poe in TLJ, and that I like his arc in the movie, and that I avidly defend him for it, but the internet in 2017-2019 was an entirely different universe from that. You could not go anywhere - Tumblr, Twitter, Youtube, fucking hell, even most major media news outlets and clickbait websites - without hearing about how much everyone hated Poe Dameron.

Why? Because they walked away from his arc deciding that he was sexist and the movie's perfect example of toxic masculinity (although, lmfao, the First Order clowns are right there). It went further than that, with headlines about how everyone hated him, how he was personally responsible for everything that happens in the Resistance in the film, and how he was the worst character in Star Wars since Jar Jar Binks (because clearly the Star Wars fandom never learns from its previous toxicity, right?). It was to the point that, to my immense horror and frustration, even as far as into promoting TROS, a reporter described Poe as a "secret villain" in TLJ to Oscar (and man do I hope that man knows Poe is loved, actually).

Fandom wasn't much different. Fanon Poe prior to TLJ was....a lot different. In some ways, a lot of fics hit the nail on the head on who Poe was, but there was a definite unifying idea of who Poe was: a pure cinnamon roll who never, ever swore, and always listened to Leia and never argued with her - let alone disobeyed her orders or put a toe out of line (this is even illustrated in canon, with the first Poe Dameron annual, where the author has Poe declare that Leia is "always right" and instantly caving in an argument).

And TLJ Poe is about....as far removed from that vision of Poe as you can possibly get - although nothing about him in TLJ is ooc. We see the bare bones of it in The Force Awakens, and Before the Awakening and the comics further flesh out Poe in a way that perfectly leads into the Last Jedi. But the cinnamon roll fanon was made so common and leaked so far into fandom consciousness, that there was this strange concept that Poe was never, ever angry even in expanded material, which...he does. He gets pissed off plenty of times in the comics, and with the Defense Fleet while arguing with Deso.

So, canon Poe did the unthinkable and, y'know, didn't fall in line with how fanon saw him, which resulted in a huge backlash over the fact that he was a character with agency and a personality (that is NOT sexist thank you), which resulted in us getting books like Resistance Reborn, by authors who can't stand him or describe him as anything besides "supremely arrogant" and spends three hundred pages emotionally torturing him, claiming he needs to die, physically assaulting him, and you know...having the person who attacked him and the other person who claimed he needed to die flirt with him, because it also spends an ungodly amount of time sexualizing him to an uncomfortable degree, because the one thing fanon could agree on outside of the fact that he had been "ruined" or that he was a jackass or a "fuckboi" (yeah that went around too), was that Oscar Isaac is really goddamned fine in the Last Jedi (he is, I'll give them that, there's something about tlj!Poe, scientists remain baffled).

And on top of all of that, a particular fraction of the fandom developed an interesting habit of taking new pieces of canon and spreading them around online out of context, claiming that the writers were now intentionally writing him as sexist and as a jackass, and ruining his character further. I don't know for certain if this had any effect overall on the fandom's perception of him, but I know that it did almost break my spin in him for a while because I thought people were being very genuine, and it wasn't until 2020 that I got curious and started doing my own research into the panels/paragraphs being shared online, and sure enough, discovered that the angle had been falsified to paint Poe into a worse light (which, if anyone is curious, is why I did my deep dive into everything that he was in, because I didn't want to be fooled again. You can't trick me if I know everything lmfao).

So essentially, his popularity nosedived after the Last Jedi. It seemed to bump up a little bit, or at least there definitely seemed to be more people interested in him/writing for him in 2020 coming off the lockdown, but obviously that has very much dwindled. But I've definitely not seen any blogs dedicated to Poe as a character since 2017, and you don't ordinarily see him in miscellaneous Star Wars gifsets that go around either, let alone solo Poe gifsets (I know because I lose my shit anytime there's a new one that's not by me), and Poe creations that have nothing to do with a ship is.........even less likely to be found.

I definitely think canon is at least trying to keep him in our minds though. He was the second character to lead one of the Lego Specials, and that Rey short story ("Through the Turbulence") was focused on her friendship with him. Whether or not that's because of the possibility of Oscar returning for the Rey movie (which feels fairly tangible, considering he's been kind of shady about it after mentioning he'd come back for a good story, and doing that Halcyon video), or if it's just because of Lucasfilm maybe warming up to him as a character again*, I don't know, but I hope it means we get good-faith content for him again soon.

*Because I'm tired of the story group constantly being a little bitch about him, and the same goes for the Topps Trading Card App. Maybe people wouldn't think he was a villain if you stopped describing him like a terrible person? Just a thought.

[boysbeloving]

Happy 1st Anniversary of KinnPorsche the Series!! 🎉 🎊 🥳 🥂

allow me to be emotional a bit (i say this as if i'm not emotional over the series and the actors every other day lol)

kinn and porsche are SO precious to me...as individuals and as a couple...i relate to kinn a lot: his struggles with a parent, his crushing sense of duty, trying to fit into the world he's forced to be a part of, him not always knowing how to communicate feelings...i had talked about it a bit here about how soft he is despite everything around him and ya...kinn is extremely close to my heart because of these things...i see myself in him (barring the killings and sadly barring the butt sex too)

porsche is just....SO MUCH lol!!!! if i spend time with him i would need 3 to 5 business days to get my energy levels back! but i understand his love for his brother and relate to how he's fiercely protective of him (i'm the same with my sister...but she's older than me)

and ofc mile and apo

man i related a little too much with apo's early life struggles lol...him being told to always 'correct' himself, him feeling disconnected with who he is made to be, being subjected to casual homophobia at workplace (he talked about these things in the On That Day interview and that press con that had happened with the entire cast)...the fact that he felt so unhappy coming back home from the US...it broke my heart and it hit a little too close actually...i had talked about this a bit here (i feel apo is queer coded) coz it reminded me of things that had happened in my life quite recently at that time and the fact that both apo and i were still going strong gave me a sense of kinship with him (hahha 'kinn'ship haahhhaha)...i ofc don't have a mile who has been a positive and happy addition to apo's life since he came back but i am making efforts to have those positive and happy additions in my life

and one of these positive and happy additions happens to be the kpts fandom....y'all....it is SO AMAZING TO BE PART OF THE FANDOM.....y'all are SO TALENTED! the art, the gifs, the meta, the fics, the vids, the polls, the thoughts on the characters, the crackposts, the textposts, the fandom archivers! i'm so thankful to all of you...each and every single one of you

and lbr we've had our fair share of trials and tribulations but because i'm only on tumblr and not on any other social media sites, it has been generally a brilliant experience...i have made such great friends, have talked to a bunch of you, received amazing mile thirst traps in my inbox, have been entirely inappropriate in writing my shameless tags in posts, have openly admitted to my armpit and armpit hair fetish (i made armpit appreciation gifsets ffs), have again very openly talked about my other kinks as well (i think y'all know 🙈) (the armpit fetish admission has led to a beautiful friendship that i cherish <3 and my thirsty tags have led me to meet my feral twin <3)

personally as well i felt like investing myself more into the fandom and the series and the characters and the actors....it made me do things that i had not done before! i talked to fellow fans actively, i made gifs (low quality and using free software lol but i'm actually happy with them), i wrote stuff, like i legit made an ao3 and wrote some stuff lol! i have not done that before and again it is primarily for me and i'm proud of myself for doing these things y'know

last but not the least, kinnporsche the series gave me my thai husband: mile phakphum romsaithong .... and for this alone, it is the best thing out there in the world 🙈🤣

the anniversary of my foray into the series will be next month (it was mile's asscrack that convinced me to finally watch the series that kept trending on tumblr from time to time) but let me be emotional today too

thanks y'all and happy 1st anniversary!

[sickknotdoom]

i sent this in a day or two ago but i think tumblr ate the ask so i’m rephrasing it and sending it in again; it’s basically a follow up/addon to the anon talking about the fandom. i got into the main sparklecare comic around 2021 and tbh i’m glad i didn’t really interact with the fandom at the time, i was always really anxious about talking and sharing my art so i just never did. looking back at it the fandom feels very parasocial. like, kittycorn is really easy to contact and just generally talks to squeak’s tumblr followers like they’re friends, shares a lot of personal things and random bits of lore that have no real relevance to the main comic. it feels like listening to a friend talk about their oc project, which is probably what it WAS like when the fandom was smaller, but it just doesn’t work now that it has a bigger fandom. it’s like there’s a disconnect where to kit it still FEELS like it’s a small project being worked on by a group of friends, when now it’s just another piece of media for the internet to consume and criticize. 

and i’m not blaming kit for that, sometimes things just blow up without warning, but once something is out there you can’t do anything to control it and the fandom has already gotten to that point. even though i do think we should respect squeak’s boundaries, some people just aren’t going to do that; it’s what the internet does. to kit they’re ocs, but to us they’re just characters, and it’s kind of stifling when the creator of a media will block/otherwise dislike you personally if you try and act like said media isn’t perfect. i’m not talking about the proshit or bigoted stuff i’ve seen people make with sparklecare characters (those are just nasty and they don’t have any place anywhere), i’m talking about the stuff that’s been addressed in this blog before (the aspec/mlm representation, the focus on cometcare, the weird amount of control kit has over the fandom). 

i understand that this comic and these characters are personal to kittycorn, i’m not trying to discredit any of that, but at this point it shouldn’t be treated like walking on eggshells anymore. people are going to do things you don’t like and it’s important to listen when criticism comes from actual fans instead of people thinking it’s “autistic queer furry bullshit”. i personally fucking love sparklecare, it’s gotten me through some shit, but the more i pay attention to kittycorn kitself and the zcp it becomes less of an idolization thing and more of an “oh, that’s kind of really weird and parasocial” thing y’know. 

this last part is for this blog admin, if you see a person with the url @ pointless-party replying to posts, then that’s just me not wanting to send in five hundred asks a day lol. i unfortunately have a lot i want to say about this comic but nowhere to really say it. -🐍

felt

[marinersubmariner]

The twitter mess has got me thinking about livejournal and fandom platforms in general, so here’s a lot of words that mostly amount to me being old and sad!!

The past couple years I’ve really struggled with the pull to start using twitter because so much fandom activity moved over there, while at the same time being held back by knowing that it would not be a satisfying experience for me. I lurk there a little, and it’s alright in small doses, but it just doesn’t work for the types of fandom posts that I can contribute or that I want to see. And it has increasingly frustrated me how much people post fanart exclusively over there when its formatting is awful for fanart (no archives! no organized tagging system! completely unbrowseable by subject matter or time period! everything disappears in .02 seconds if it even crosses your view at all! WOW SO GREAT. I get that it lets you post porn but that isn’t a big draw for me :/ yeah, I know, what am I even doing on the internet)

My preferred form of fandom is images and graphics and art and long-form commentary and twitter just isn’t made for those things. You can kind of jury-rig it for them I guess (weirdly cropped 2-to-4-image photosets, hmm. great. threaded tweets??? you know there was a time when you could put all your related thoughts into a single post!) but it’s obviously designed for brief little texts and I’m too self-conscious about writing things for that to ever work for me. The way I see it is you can absolutely tweet on tumblr but you cannot make a tumblr post on twitter, and that’s the fundamental disconnect that has prevented me from leaving. I’m not compelled to go to a platform with fewer and worse features. (well, that plus the fact that I no longer have any friends to follow in the way that I followed the crowd from livejournal to tumblr. why bother!!! NOBODY’S LISTENING! —Cassian Andor about posting on social media)

I totally understand people mourning what could be the loss of years of fandom activity on that site, but at the same time its immediacy has always made it appear more fleeting to me anyway. Obviously you can scrounge up old posts if you really dig around, but without archives or functional tags it has never seemed to be a platform that encourages a long lifespan for anything posted there. Which is of course the trade-off for it being so current and of-the-moment, but I also think it’s detrimental to the fandom ecosystem as a whole, and on a personal level I’m too much of a hoarder for that kind of disposability to work for me. I like to keep things in my little treasure trove and continually pore over it with fondness. :(

I also just have too much anxiety, uh, in general, but especially with instantaneous forms of communication, so I get extremely avoidant about anything fast-paced. Chats always made me nervous, I don’t like texting, it all makes me a little too frazzled to do for fun. I was okay with message boards and lj comments because there wasn’t as much expectation of a quick response (and of course there was way more separation of Internet Time when you didn’t have a smartphone on you 24/7. boundaries!!!! never heard of them). A lot of this is purely mental hangups because I’m perfectly capable of communication, but it’s stressful and exhausting and the internet is filled with increasing pressure to never say the wrong thing (which is already a pressure in my head!!) so to add forced brevity and urgency on top of that... it makes me so uncomfortable and it’s such an enormous barrier when the foundation for literally everything is communication. Words are hard!!! I’m not terrible at it but there’s always an excessive amount of deliberation involved and it’s such a difficult thing to grapple with all the time. Constantly, forever. The mortifying ordeal of SELECTING WORDS to make yourself known!!!!!!!

I guess also nothing has ever been as conducive to discussion and replies as lj. Tumblr replies are so limited and reblogging to add your own commentary is a totally different thing. Private messages are there, but there’s no decent mechanism for open back-and-forth conversation. So even while part of me is glad that people might come back here, more activity on my preferred platform doesn’t change the fact that I still feel dissatisfied with the way all of this operates in general. Tumblr is better than twitter, but even tumblr isn’t that great.

To be honest I’ve become so fuckin weird about this stuff that I now essentially use google docs like a private secret livejournal. I type out my thoughts constantly as though I were writing an actual post to share and then I never share it. Which is probably. insane. But in the era of social media all fandom stuff either seems like way too public a forum full of jerks or it’s seen by nobody anyway so why bother. There don’t seem to be comfortable niche spaces anymore, or if there are I never found them, and besides that I’m too shy and too tired to seek them out and work up the energy to interact. So I just talk to myself like a lunatic. It’s super healthy I’m sure!!!!

I also just really miss how I felt on the internet and in fandom spaces when I was younger, making pointless little websites and graphics and posting photographs just because I wanted to. And obviously I still make things because I WANT to, but the act of actually posting to the internet now and the way that others engage with it seems so much more transactional than it used to. I got into making graphics when it was only like a handful of people on a message board sharing things with each other, and it’s wild how much more fulfilling and encouraging it was to have just a few familiar people make comments than it is to get likes and reblogs. A little number ticker on a post is like... that’s it? That’s all there is? It’s so hollow and mechanical.

Sort of the best way I can think of to describe how it feels to me is that it used to be more like being the proprietor of a quaint storefront where you peddled your wares and people could come and go and chat as they please, and now it’s more like tossing one of your wares onto a highway where it gets driven over at 80mph. And certainly that perception is skewed by rose-colored nostalgia about ~the way things used to be~, I’m much older now so I’m sure my temperament has changed a lot too, I slowed down while everything else sped up, time makes fools of us all, etc. But I’ve seen enough people express similar things about the modern internet that I do think maybe it’s not just me.

I don’t know, unless you’ve been following me since livejournal this probably all sounds like nonsense coming from a silent lurker who barely even posts. I’ve always been much more reticent on tumblr because it feels so exposed—the potential for things to spiral way outside of your orbit is both scary and annoying. But I guess I just don’t really know how to participate in fandom anymore in the way it exists now. I don’t have a community and it feels impossible to break back in amongst The Youths. I don’t have the energy to contribute as much as I want to, and then when I do expend the energy it seems like a waste of time because it’s stuff that either goes entirely unseen or it gets silently viewed and disposed of in an infinitesimal fraction of the time it took to put together. So there are these two warring impulses of: this is making you unhappy and you should stop vs. it doesn’t matter if you’re entirely alone when you’re still having fun by yourself with your special interest that you enjoy. And I don’t know how to reconcile the two.

[0x28]

is tumblr no longer The Fandom Website? i ask bc i was looking at the list of the most popular ships on ao3 in 2023 and it seems so disconnected from what ppl have been blogging about this year. ik my mutuals are def not representative of the General Tumblr Population but I do follow some like. regular tumblrinas. and i also click onto people's blog's in my notifs so im not completely disconnected from what Average Tumblr User is blogging about. makes me wonder if the fandom people are congregating more on other social medias like I've heard about tiktok fandoms being a thing... sounds scary stay safe out there folks

[tomyo]

Since it's a movie already about a bunch neurodivergents, please bear with me as I go off about micro culture and The Mitchells vs. the Machines.

So a lot of people can already note the memes in the movie are very dated internet humor. I don't think I saw a joke that lived past 2011 in it. But I can't help but to also feel cognitive disconnect at the idea Katie is supposed to be born in 2003 when everything about her and her family makes her a millennial.

Before I get way too deep into it, this is just more observation on teen identity than some shitty which generation is better debate. Sociology is extremely fascinating and it's just fun to pick apart elements in film.

So like I was saying, TMvsTM feels very, early 2010s. Pretty much the only thing taking it out of that element is the wide use of smartphones and mommy blogging but even then, you could push back the time frame to 2011 and still be pretty on the mark. Siri had just come out and iPads the year before which at the time was treated as the most unneeded invention. It's pretty much around this time that the smart tech boom took off and we started to see movies make the "big tech company" story. You know exactly the one: A Steve Jobs character, some joke about a needless technological advance, the main characters wowed by shiny expensive devices, and in the end usually we realize silicon valley are too disconnected from humanity. Honestly though if you've seen the Soylent guy, they might be right. An aspect I wonder about is how LA and SanFran feel about each other. TMvsTM gave the slightest inkling of bitter resentment towards it's northern neighbor and I can't help but to wonder if the constant use of the Steve Jobs storyline is maybe a hint of a general feeling LA has.

Speaking of LA, it's pretty clear that Katie is going to Calarts. One of the reasons I think it's so dated is Animator's tendencies to rely on their own experiences; Alex Hersh making a story about twins when he himself is a twin or JG Quintel literally just making himself the main character in every series he makes. Michael Rianda was born in 1984, and while that puts him on the earlier end of millennials, it isn't hard to believe the late 00s would be a defining era of his life. Many young film and arts students flocked to YouTube in it's early years to share their creations. Again the aforementioned Alex made off the wall, Nathan of Nathan for you's various skits, and so on. And again looking at the memes used, they are specifically the type that would have been created by these film students.

So let's look at Katie's art. It tends to be mixed media collages with a sketchy hand drawn style that makes you think of Napoleon Dynamite, and the movies themselves are reminiscent of campy action hero films. She puts in a lot of dazzle effects, typography tends to have these perspective lines, and the artwork flourishes tend to be stilted and looping almost as if they were gifs on Tumblr. There's a distinct one during a still frame and I swear to God, the jittery movements while flipping it back and forth feels like it has to be a Homestuck reference. Either way, all of this points towards 80s revival, something that was in full force in the 00/early 10s. You could pull a page out of my sophmore notebook and it would easily fit in. Katie distinctly draws like a millennial teenager. This isn't to say that there are zoomers drawing this way but I think No Burnham's 8th Grade shows a nice contrast in art style.

I remember seeing this scene and the old familiarity of seeing younger kid's art in fandom tags. Where late millennials where inspired by early millennials' 80s nostalgia and adventure time adjacent cartoons, early zoomers were in turn influenced by late millennials' new grounds/YouTube flash animations and 'Calarts style' series. We each appropriate and remix our predecessor's works and the general style morphs as we go on.

The mitchells environment is also distinctly 80s. They love in a worn down one story and the interior has a lot of kitsch with it's wooden panelling and furniture, courdory couch, and even a hand knit blanket. Naturally their car is also from the 80s. We can extrapolate in general that the Mitchells are not the richest family. If you pay attention to the furniture; it's pretty clear that most was likely made by Rick. On the other hand, Calarts tuition is 50k and in one of the most expensive cities to live in and that never seems to come up as an issue. However there's one thing I'd like to point out, major property tends to reflect when a kid is born. For instance, growing up my mum drove a 90s ford taurus where my younger cousin's family drove 2000s vehicles. Cars in particular can only make it so far before needing to be replaced and that tends to hit in a 15-20 year period of regular use. Despite being called a 1993 model, the Mitchell's car looks extremely 80s and a listicle even identifies if looking more like a 1988 GM celebrity. We can see how Rick and Linda struggled financially when Katie was born but it's still a surprise they have it in 2021, 33 years and definitely over 200k miles. I also want to point to Boyhood for a moment. A great aspect of this film is we see time as it happens, and we get an honest image of life in the mid 2000s. Prior to the housing bubble, we had a period of middle class affluence where consumerism was at an all time high. The image of suburban living would have been a beige carpeted room, Ikea furniture, and a saggy microsuede couch in front of a theatre system.

[sunshinexlollipops]

Just wanted to pop in and say this cus I read your other replies asking about how you were. Just wanted to say that you're right. Mental Health IS a bitch!! We dont know eachother and honestly it might sound trivial but your works helped me alot during some really bad times in my life. It was like an escape from reality that i desperately needed. I guess I just wanted to thank you for that and also I'm just glad to hear you're alright. I hope things keep getting better.

hey there @cowboydisaster -- I wanna go ahead and say I am doing a lot better. my life is still a huge mess and there's a lot up in the air about it rn, but I don't wanna dump nor spread my business all over tumblr lmao. but let's just say there was a lot going on in and outside of my head for the last few years. thankfully, I got the scripts I needed to keep continuing in a positive direction (esp ADHD meds oh lord), and I have a supportive team of docs/professionals that have really helped me since I've been diagnosed with a few conditions since everything went wackadoodle for me in 2021.

as for writing/reading, I totally get what you mean about really connecting with and surviving through a work. I'm getting back into reading more and more as of late, and writing is here and there. my depression did disconnect me from those passions, as I used literature BIG TIME as a teen to cope and just float through the bad periods. stories can not only help you escape in the ways you need to, there's also some that manage to say what you can't, or that can make sense of or represent something in you that felt nonsensical or ineffable before. I'm honored that ACW/my writing could be that. in general, I hope you know that not only am I rooting for you, I do hope things have improved and lightened for you. mental health definitely IS a bitch, and with 2020 being as it was and the world keeping a sour tune, I know so many aside from myself who have experienced crashes, burnouts, mask and ego deaths... it's been a lot and a huge toll on many. things may still not be a 100% and the world is definitely still being dumb asf, but I hope that you've found some sort of progress and growth in yourself as well.

otherwise, my fingers are CROSSED that I can finally figure out why brain no worky when it comes to writing. I've dipped my toes in it here and there, and there's quite a few things I've worked on during my absence even if I didn't finish or like what I produced. it's still better than the staring contest I was having with my cursor and blank word document, though...

thank you for your ask and your well wishes. I aspire to try and get back into some creative-function, and I also have been backing off apps like twitter/tik tok because shit was rotting my brain, and that's helped. social media has made shit so "now now now" in terms of urgency, and also, the fandoms on there leave... more to be desired. things and I are on the up and up so LESSSS GOOOO

[marrow-minded]

wow just kinda had a moment ive never experienced before

i feel like for the first time in maybe ever im so disconnected from pop culture and just the general sort of media zeitgeist, which is weird bc ive been on tumblr since 2012 and have seen numerous fandoms crop up and die off that i wasnt a part of and ive never felt this disconnect before

and its not fomo its not even a negative feeling but like. i scroll through tiktok or twitter or tumblr and see post after post of whole media franchises with multiple seasons or whatever the blockbuster movie of the month is and i feel no desire to invest my time or energy and like. i cant possibly be getting old already am i really aging out of pop culture before im 25?

is this my fault? or is it that thing are just happening too fast to keep up with? i feel like i spent my teens and low 20s drowning in media that was being pumped out faster than i could keep up with and the fanbases just got worse and worse and the entire time i felt like i was waiting for it to feel like it did when i was fourteen and fangirling over superwholock and then one day i woke up and i havent seen a new movie in two years, i dont know when all these shows started let alone got multiple seasons, i cant even tell if something is a video game or a show or a webseries sometimes and nothing feels lasting at all

[acatnamedturtle]

Finding Hope

It's hard to fathom that it's been over twenty since I created my first of many journals on LiveJournal. There, I was able to connect with those who shared my varied interests, participate in the various fandoms before it was popular to do so, make some amazing lifelong online friends, and truthfully, express myself in ways that I seemingly couldn't in my everyday life. I expanded my self-taught knowledge of online coding, learned how to make icons - about the extent of my graphic artist capabilities, and learned that I wasn't a defective human being.

I know, something that most people aren't.

At 19 though, I didn't fully appreciate that.

Now, twenty-two or so years later, I'm finding that I really miss that ability to connect with people through writing online and just being somewhat anonymous. LiveJournal is still around, as are other sites running the same basic kind of software like InsaneJournal and DreamWidth, but there's disadvantages there. LiveJournal is more Russian based now that it's owned by Russia, and it doesn't have that same feeling as it used to. I checked out one of my old journals - yes, I can still access it surprisingly - but the site in general just doesn't...feel right. Plus, honestly, the rise of Facebook and Twitter kindof killed those online journal social media sites.

So I find myself here, at WordPress and Tumblr, as I need to find that safe space to unload the various thoughts in my head and just ... connect with people again. My life has been in upheaval for a number of reasons, and it's just feeling so overwhelming and somewhat hopeless again. Being anonymous is so freeing. That disconnect from my everyday life where I don't feel judged on what I'm thinking or doing, even if those in my life aren't actually judging me and it's just my brain talking.

[anna-scribbles]

You’re so lovely and I really appreciate that you haven’t disconnected your faith from your social media presence. It’s really reassuring to see another Christian online that talks about their faith while mostly being involved fandom stuff.

Like “here’s some lovely things I’ve created and also I love Jesus so I’m gonna take a break for that see y’all in a bit!” And when you come back it feels like you feel better. Like it shows through even if you’re not overtly talking about it.

It really inspires me to try to find a better balance for it in my own life so thank you.

thank you anon, this is a really sweet message to receive :)) I've definitely tried to be more intentional about the time i spend/what I do with this blog since taking a break from it last year and it's helped me feel a lot healthier in my relationships with God & other people. a little more about that under the cut!!

I think for me, it's hard sometimes to find a healthy balance with my time online here because posting art and engaging in fandom is something I really enjoy. but it's also something that is very disconnected from my personal life, so for a while I was using it as a way to avoid things going on in my life I didn't want to think about. it is generally really fun and uncomplicated to spend my time here, but it can (and did) get to a point where I was engaging with family/friends/God/my own thoughts less than what was healthy for me.

since taking a break, I'm better now at recognizing signs that I need to take a step back. for a more recent example, I got a lot of fun engagement on my ml/pjo crossover posts and I started to feel this need to answer every ask, to spend hours drawing out every idea I had in relation to it because I knew it would make people online happy. (and, also, because there were some things going on in my personal life I didn't want to think about, and I knew it would serve as a fun distraction.) I don't think distraction is always bad, and I don't think it's wrong to post fun drawings online for people. but I can recognize now that if I feel like I need to be on tumblr, to keep feeding engagement, then that's a sign I should take a step back.

In my faith life, it's been really helpful for me learn to be honest with other Christians in my life about where I'm at, and to let myself be supported by them. something I've been thinking a lot about recently has been the concept of hope in the Bible. a few months ago I became really interested in the faith-hope-love conjunction that happens several times in the New Testament, mostly the "work of faith, labor of love, and endurance of hope" Paul mentions in 1 Thessalonians 1:3, but also in 1 Corinthians 13:13 - the "these three remain: faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love."

I felt like I'd spent a lot of time thinking about faith and love, but not about hope, and I wanted to learn what it was about hope that placed it up there in the big three. it's funny that I fixated on this then, because i've come to a point really recently where I realized how much I was pinning my hopes on people and things and ideas about the future. but the hope of the gospel isn't about this life at all. we can have hope for so much more than a good life on earth - hope is something that outlasts disappointment and sorrow and fear. there is a reason hope is an endurance, why it is saddled up there to those other hard words like labor and work. hope is the means by which we make it through this life, not the promise that it will be easy. the hope that Jesus gives us - the Hope the Jesus is - Is so much stronger than the hopes we craft for ourselves. and that's something I think God is teaching me right now.

sorry this was a bit long!! I hope you can find a better balance in your life, it's something i'm still trying to figure out for myself. thank you for your kind words! <33

[circumstellars]

I doubt it's noticable yet, but just in case, I'm letting yall know I'll be taking a break from social media and fandom in general.

Don't worry, it's not for any stupid hate anons or anything. I'm feeling disconnected, and working on content lately isn't a rewarding hobby but a chore for little outcome one way or another. Moreover, I'm feeling ghostly, a tool and not a person for a lot of people. I think 10 straight months of working on thriving (and carving out a reasonable space to exist in through sheer will) in an otherwise unusually hostile fandom environment is pretty good work, but takes its toll too.

I think spending some time away will either give me some clarity or maybe refresh my drive. I'm not done with TUA yet, that I can feel; but if I want to continue indulging in it I have to be mentally resilient enough to keep up with the demands and the expectations of a large discord server community and the broader culture here on tumblr/etc, and I'm frankly burnt out.

I have a lot of rl stresses as some of you have a little insight on, so I can't have both realities being consistently difficult to deal with, when one is supposed to be an escape. Fandom 2021 is just not as easy to do long stretches in like it was even 5, 6 years ago. There is more groupthink and landmines than ever before, and it's tough on the head and the heart sometimes.

Thanks for understanding, if you do, and if you have supported my content and contributions to this fandom this far, thank you for that as well. I hope I have brought you enjoyment and enrichment in your own fandom life, of which has always been my number one goal! I am a big fan of fandom itself, and the positivity it can be responsible for.

I will be available to fandom friends only by DM on discord for now. I have an as-usual full queue, so it will still post on tumblr anything I've thrown in it in the mean time.

Shop requests are dried up rn, but it continues to be the exception as it's my only income while I continue to job search and work on my portfolio, so if any requests come in, still let me know via the form or DM.

Thanks everyone, hope I can return with fresh perspective soon.

Cheers and love,

stellar

[a-lil-perspective]

I have been silent for some time now. I have refrained from exhibiting any plaguing thoughts that might warrant me the label of “that person”, but I’m at the point where I’ve had my fill.

Ramble under the cut so as to not... offend or inconvenience anyone. There’s absolutely no obligation to read this. It’s Tumblr. You can block/ignore me. The option to do so is readily accessible.

I’ve been a Bad Batch fan since day one. While I didn’t start creating that very same day, it was relatively close. Point being, I’m a long-time dedicated fan. As the premiere to their series draws closer, I feel like there is going to be a great shift, rift here. That being said, I figured now is as good a time as any to make this post.

I love those boys beyond words. They’ve been the one constant in my life amidst a rapid and debilitating change. I love getting to give them life, even if my interpretations aren’t the most accurate.

Yes, I am a new Writer and yes, I am new to Tumblr, as I am sure both of those things are painfully apparent.

I get that it is impossible to please everyone. It’s something I’m learning more and more with each passing day. It’s something that gets harder to swallow, even more so.

I’d like to say that being here has been a largely positive experience, with all of these great connections and opportunities. But honestly? It’s been more isolating than anything. I’ve actually never felt more isolated than since I joined a year ago.

As a content creator or even just a general blogger, I don’t ask for much. I don’t ask for anything, in fact. I consider myself very low maintenance. I don’t demand/harass/play the martyr for reblogs. I have never mentioned it once, and never will. Some people on here are so damn passive-aggressive about it, and quite frankly, it’s embarrassing. It’s very stigmatizing. While I completely understand the frustration surrounding the like-to-reblog ratio, I think it’s neither tasteful nor reputable to threaten to call people out for not reblogging your fics. I wish I could say I was joking on that one. But I’ve seen it profoundly. Not cool.

And yet, no one says anything or raises any concern there.

Yet I make metas, harmless rambles, and I get shot down? Seriously?

—I need to “chill”, it’s “overkill”, I’m “overthinking”. I and my content are apparently just so damn arduous to interact with.

If you don’t like me, please just move on. There are plenty of other Bad Batch creators for you to enjoy. You know that. My work is absolutely not the final say, and I’ve never claimed it to be.

What is so wrong, with sharing one’s thoughts? Why do people inherently have a problem with other’s creative efforts? I see it time over again. Why do I feel like if I was making a bunch of smutty posts it wouldn’t be as much of a problem, that it in fact would be infinitely more welcome? (Absolutely NO shade to people who create smut, okay? I’ve made my own share. I admire those bold enough to do so regularly. I absolutely love them. Please teach me your ways).

This ramble really has nothing to do with the most recent event regarding my contributions. Rather, it’s a culmination of experiences over the past several months that have brewed and festered to the point where I can no longer keep downplaying it.

Social media, at its core, is one big popularity contest. It always has been, it always will be. But I’m not here to win. That’s never been my objective. That’s not what I’m about. Surprise (or not), I am not a popular blog. Not by a long shot. I’ll never claim otherwise.

I don’t ask people to view/interact with my content, I’m not an activist, I can’t even fathom exuding that kind of confidence. Even though I, admittedly, crave it. I suspect I crave interaction as much as the next creator. It’s a nice feeling. Yet there’s never been any obligation for it, especially with me, so I don’t understand what the problem is. As I’ve said, there are ample ways for you to block/avoid me. It’s the internet. In this day and age, there’s no excuse for viewing anything you don’t want to.

I came here in the hopes of finding like-minded individuals, uplifting and interacting, and exercising some otherwise stunted creativity.

All Tumblr as taught me is that creating and contributing is largely a thankless, empty endeavor. You can give and give and give and be reduced to nothing. There’s a profound imbalance between “giving” and “receiving”, and in regards to both ends of the scale, it’s became apparent to me that if you don’t cater heavily and in unreasonable degrees or get “noticed” by a popular blog, you get nothing, and your efforts are null and void.

Truthfully? I constantly feel like I walk on eggshells here, and it’s all I can do to not crack under the pressure, even though it’s my blog and my headspace. I should feel comfortable and free to express myself here, and I don’t, and I’m unsure of how to achieve that sense of stability. To be completely honestly I feel like a constant bother and a nuisance. When I post, I literally feel like there is a collective eye-roll that comes with people receiving a notification from my blog. Even though I know, rationally, that can’t be true, that’s an absurd level of thinking. I can’t say I can pinpoint exactly where it stems from.

But regardless: I hardly ever talk about/create the things I actually want. I only recently just got ballsy enough to share some metas, and we all know how well that’s going. I try not to have smut out of respect for my asexual/minor mutuals, even though the tag to blacklist is very much an option. I try not to bring up conflicting topics, Tumblr, political, or otherwise, even though with proper tagging I could. But I try not to even bring that into existence. Even though it’s my right to, I don’t.

I don’t actually feel like I fit into any narrative here, especially in the Bad Batch fandom; even though we are all basically the same steadfast group of bloggers. We all know who we are. We all coexist in the same space. It’s nearly impossible to be unaware of each other, at this point.

And yet, I’m not in a bunch of Discord servers or backed by a team of beta readers and all that jazz. It’s basically just me talking to myself out here. It’s very isolating.

Part of that—most of it—is my own crippling social anxiety, and the genuine belief that I don’t deserve to be in the same space/servers as all of these brilliant creators. Because I’m just me, and there’s not a whole lot of value there. With that mindset, it’s hard to actually feel like I belong anywhere. I know that is a mindset I have to conquer alone.

My excitement over my creations has largely dwindled into nothing. I seldom ever bounce my ideas off of others—another issue that stems from the fear of presenting as a burden—and even though I try to write for myself, even that fire has pretty much died out. I’m not even sure how or if I could even reignite it, at this point. It’s really quite sad. It makes me very sad, actually. All I wanted was to safely ramble, project all my thoughts and creativity that has otherwise been repressed through prolonged detrimental circumstances.

More than anything, I wanted to find and hold onto something that makes me feel useful, meaningful, happy. More and more I wonder if that’s even possible. I don’t think it is, not here. I often wonder if joining and sharing on Tumblr was a horrible mistake. I miss the innocent joy of when I first started creating. It was so simple. I’m trying to find that simplicity again.

But I’m burned out. I’m running on fumes. I have been for some time.

At this point it goes beyond just “taking a break” from Tumblr. It’s the fact that it all feels like this meaningless, monotonous cycle. I wonder every day if I am an isolated case in experiencing these emotions.

And yet, come tomorrow I will still be here, business as usual.

I’m not asking for sympathy or playing the victim or attacking anyone or trying to guilt-trip into more interaction. I am very aware of my shortcomings and incorrect mindsets. I’m just trying to make sense of it all. I feel very disconnected from everyone here and it’s lonely. This took a lot for me to share. I will most likely delete this because anxiety will eat me up, as it does with everything I post. Yes, everything.

[mikanyuzu-26]

Is Chapter 139 of Attack on Titan being messed up deliberately?

*Views are my own. I barely post anything on social media but I feel the need to express my thoughts as a long-term AOT fan.

You need to be a genius in getting everything wrong. As a reader who has been following the series for 8 years, the frustration and disappointment the recent chapters brought me are beyond words. The series Attack on Titan has long been known for its well written plotline, with pieces of hints eventually leading to the reveal of mysteries, ranging from the identity of enemies to the origin of titan. Isayama the author is more than capable in building a story, as evidenced by the carefully arranged setups and successful characterization in 130+ chapters. Probably echoed by other readers, the story surprisingly went downhill since Chapter 124 (aka the alliance arc) when pacing becomes slow with no major progress in overall plot. Eren who is the supposedly main protagonist is nowhere to be found in most of the chapters, let alone his inner thought. The conclusion in Chapter 139 is even more confusing, showing clear disconnection with previous chapters and major characters being OOC. There are fans who are kind enough to summarize the inconsistencies.

Chinese netizens’ comment on the story quality

I would interpret the bad writing in Chapter 139 as intentional, with two possible reasons, or both: 1). To betray and hurt the readers as expressed in his interview. He is free! 2). To passively protest against a plot change by his editorial team

“I was a big fan of Game of Thrones, so I can relate to the feelings of those fans who were disappointed with how the series ended. But when I’m drawing, I’m expressing my own feelings, and I think as long as I’m doing that, my fans will be able to accept whatever ending I come up with for them”. The question is – was Isayama hinting at a GOT-like ending that expressed his true feeling? Looking at his response at this point of time, was he foreshadowing a disappointment?

Personally I am a believer of (2) – the plot was hijacked. I see the pacing issue starting from Chapter 124 as Isayama and the editorial team trying to buy time in reconstructing the plot. This is the period when multiple minor subplots (e.g. Connie’s mom, Aruani, conflicts with Yeagerists like Daz, formation of Alliance, Reiner’s mom & Annie’s dad) are introduced and closed off shortly after, while Eren is nowhere to be found.

Also note that Isayama did not even show up in the interview/live stream after the end of the manga in on Apr 10 and Apr 14, 2021. The editor represented him instead. It was also revealed in the most recent live stream that the editorial team had quite a lot of influence over the plot, in which they changed the last few pages of Chapter 139.

As many of you have already raised, early chapters already mentioned the “only way to put a final end to the cycle of revenge” is to do a full rumbling. I believe this is the first draft of the ending of the story as this idea has been expressed more than once directly out of the mouth of Eren.

The other possible change is the way of how Ymir is being freed. In earlier chapter, Eren clearly understands what Ymir has been waiting for 2000 years in Chapter 122, and this is also the reason why Eren is able to start the rumbling in the first place. The possibility of Mikasa freeing Ymir is not being introduced until Chapter 138 (or 139), and certainly comes out of nowhere as the only people outside of path who have seen Ymir are Armin and Ramzi.

How is Chapter 139 being intentionally messed up? The inconsistencies above suggest that at least two plot twists are only being decided at the very late stage of the story. • Eren’s true intention (Eren Requiem vs. full rumbling) and the reasons behind • What Ymir wants

Throughout Chapter 139, there are definitely better choice of words which even average Reddit/Twitter/Tumblr users were able to re-write in the past few days. However Isayama just somehow chose the worst way in presenting the story as if it is a shoutout to readers. The presentation also makes Chapter 139 memorable, though not in a way most have expected.

“Why Mikasa?” “Well…only Ymir knows that one…” When I reread Chapter 139, it seems to me that Isayama is not trying to shy away from admitting the plot change. The disbelief from Armin’s way of saying “Huh? Did you just say Mikasa?” is an analogy to the readers’ reaction due to the lack of interaction between Ymir and Mikasa before the last panel of Chapter 138. Eren is also drawn with a resigned expression. If this is an over interpretation of the frame, Eren’s next response “Well…only Ymir knows that one…” directly points out how the statement lacks a clear and sound reasoning. You can translate it into “Well…only [the company/my editor] knows that one…” or “Nothing I just want to throw this in”. Isayama clearly knows what he is writing and indeed “only Ymir knows that one” becomes a meme.

Also to add that prior to Chapter 139, Ymir has always been a parallel of Historia/Krista, not Mikasa, even as early as Chapter 51, but this plot was just somehow nowhere to be found eventually.

Why Rumbling? The most disastrous consequence of a plot change, from wiping all history and civilization (that has been repeated in his conversation with Historia in Chapter 130 and his internal monologue in Chapter 131) to an Eren Requiem, is that it takes away all the justification and rationale for Eren to eliminate 80% of the population in the first place. Whether or not Eren executes the rumbling and dies willingly, the world will still be in conflict and future generation will remain in the forest. If the plan is to free Ymir, a better way is probably just asking Mikasa to chop his head off. That saves humanity (Ymir likes drama, after all!).

Isayama could have easily used phrases like “I just want to move forward” but he put “I don’t know why, but…I wanted to do that…I had to”. This is also Isayama speaking from the Eren – he does not know why Eren is doing rumbling just to achieve the 80% plan. He just “had to” draw it.

“10 Years, At least!” This is probably the most debatable and dramatic part of the chapter. Eren expresses his love to Mikasa but the scene is presented in a way as if it is a kid throwing a tantrum. In addition to that there is Armin’s comment “Oh ok…I didn’t expect something that pathetic..” as if it is again, the readers’ comment. The scene is portrayed in an unbelievably comedic way, especially when you compare it with Eren’s conversation with Ramzi in Chapter 131, which is supposed to serve the same purpose in showing Eren’s human/soft side. Most importantly, freedom has always been Eren’s core value throughout the series. The outright contradiction this line shows only makes the whole idea of this panel questionable.

Character Regression Needless to say, characters’ behaviours surprisingly regress back to the first arc, wiping out all developments throughout the series. The worst thing is it even kills the hype of re-reading the manga as you know the characters never grow, after all the sufferings and hearts sacrificed. Examples include: • Eren is still a crybaby • Mikasa remains trapped by her relationship with Eren and the scarf • Historia is not living proudly for herself after the Uprising arc • Reiner sniffs Historia’s letter after going through depression and wars (there is even a petition online asking Isayama to change this! You see how problematic this is.) • Jean and the horse joke

Almost everything that could possibly go wrong is wrong in 1 chapter These are written by the man who have been writing good chapters in the past 10 years. Can you believe it is just a lack of sense?

• “Thank you. You became a mass murderer for our sake.” • The “poop” that Armin gives Eren (Isayama likes using meme right? :P) • Eren’s face when he is punched

Is this the High School AU style?

Compared to Chapter 112...You can tell the difference.

The way how the fandom views Chapter 139 is certainly very divided, but even amongst those who like it, most still think “things could have done better” (source: SNK Chapter 139 Poll), showing how awkward the style is compared to previous chapters. The inconsistencies in character portrayal and plot are too hard to ignore. It pains me to see a well-constructed and reputable series, one step away from legend even just with an average ending, closed with a chapter that almost defeats the purpose of the rest. Trust in Isayama – while he can build a legend in 10 years, he can also take it down with 1 chapter.

By the way, Levi is one of the few characters who isn’t ruined. Probably also a conscious choice.

[monkberries]

So here goes: Personally I find Paul to be hot with a beard. But it annoys me because there’s always some Paul stan who’s like “he was super depressed during that time you know” anytime someone says how hot he looks with a beard. Like first of all, I don’t think we should go around diagnosing people and assuming how he felt 24/7 just based on a couple of quotes when we don’t know him, and second of all I was just saying he looks good. Also idk why Paul stans want to pretend like Paul is STILL a victim when he’s definitely not. He’s a super successful billionaire musician. He’s fine.

I'm going to assume all four of these were from the same anon; I received another along these same lines that seems to be from someone else:

OKAY. There's a lot here.

As I've said before, I think the concept you are both talking about - that Paul is the favourite, that people will attack you if you criticize him, that people are vilifying John more now - is true, but is also a matter of perspective. I think sometimes we perceive the whole fandom as just the people we're surrounded by; that can be true in smaller fandoms, like for obscure shows or whatever, but for the Beatles, the fandom is so much bigger and more spread out across generations, social media platforms, and works of literature than almost any other fandom. There are literally thousands upon thousands of books either about or tangentially about the Beatles; there are pockets on every platform from tumblr to twitter to podcasts to instagram to facebook etc., and it branches off even more niche within those to like, facebook groups specifically for podcasts about the Beatles, or discord servers, or livejournal threads, or music forums, or fics on ao3. There are fansites with thoughtful speculative articles like heydullblog and blogs specifically reviewing Beatle books like beatlebioreview and sites cataloging every bit of minutiae like the Beatles Bible, all with their own flavor of comment sections. And not only that, the Beatles fandom spans generations and cultures in a way that almost nothing else ever has or ever will.

And this is not even going into the shifting narratives that have been in play over the years surrounding Paul specifically, and the huge, huge difference between the perceptions of him by the authors and the Counterculture People, the perceptions of him by regular ass Wings fans who have only idly flipped through Rolling Stone while waiting in line at the local bodega, and the perceptions of him by everyone in between, who may or may not have been unconsciously influenced by the wider narratives about him.

All that is to make the case that the fandom that you are experiencing on tumblr/twitter is an extremely small fraction of The Fandom at large. For every Paul stan on twitter that yells at people for not believing that Paul literally invented music, there is a John stan in a facebook group going on about John's supposedly tireless peace efforts. For every nuanced, well sourced post on amoralto's blog, there is someone in the Beatles Bible comment section saying that John and Paul hated each other. For every fan who's read the major Beatles bios with a critical eye towards bias, there are plenty more fans who just absorbed them as straight fact. This is not to say that your experiences are not real or valid! They absolutely are! What I am saying is that there are infinite permutations of infinite Beatles fandoms out there, and the people you see who insist that Paul is still treated worse than John, I would imagine, are occupying various permutations of the fandom where that is more true, alongside the one they share with you. It's not for me to say whether the Paul or John people have the upper hand on the whole - truly, I don't think anyone has enough perspective on the whole fandom to make any judgment on that, no matter what general Grand Pronouncements anyone may make about The Fandom.

As I've said before, any overly defensive "stan" behavior, whether it's for John or Paul or George or anyone, is exhausting to me, so I definitely understand where you're coming from re: him being supposedly underrated. He is literally one of the most successful musicians of all time; as of the beginning of this year, he is worth 1.2 billion dollars; and, thanks to his own efforts and the efforts of quite a few fans and writers out there over the decades, he now enjoys an incredibly positive "granddude" reputation. There are ways in which it can be exasperating to read yet another indignant refutation of music reviews for RAM that came out fifty years ago, when his last three albums have hit the top 3 in the charts in both the US and the UK and have gotten great reviews. I have seen people wonder, honestly wonder, how much more money Paul could have made, how much more respected he could have been, if the rock press had been inclined to give RAM good reviews. When I see that, it does start to feel like fans of Paul, at least the defensive ones in the fandom permutations I occupy, are arguing with the author photo of Philip Norman in the book jacket for Shout!. It's not that I think those arguments and discussions are not worth having; I do think they're worth having because I believe that the only way we can continue to grow is if we grapple with the mistakes made in the past. But there is a strange kind of disconnect that happens when you read about someone indignantly defending Wild Life as though the members of Wings are currently, actively having eggs and rotten fruit thrown at them, and then you remember that Paul is currently, and has been for many years now, one of the richest men in the entire world.

As for the misogyny thing, I'll copy and paste a quote from Erin Weber which may explain a little better than I can:

"Where it starts entering into serious discussion for me is when you have professional grown men (Schaffner would be the most glaring example of this, but not the only one) repeatedly using the term “pretty” or “pretty-faced” to refer to another grown man. (Norman does the same). Schaffner doesn’t only do that once or twice, he uses one of those exact words at least fifteen times in his references to McCartney. “Pretty-boy” is also a term that at least one journalist has used to describe Paul, and that’s not a stealth insult: that’s an overt one. (My husband, who hates the Yankees, routinely used the term “pretty-boy” to insult Alex Rodriguez. And it wasn’t meant as a compliment).

My reaction to this is based both on studies that I’m aware of (I’d have to hunt them up, but I’ve seen them referenced before) which argue that the use of feminized language can be a method of stealth insult/diminishment when used by men to describe other men, and my own personal experience. It is difficult to see a situation where a grown man using the term “pretty” or any variation of the word “pretty” to describe another grown man means it as a compliment. Even if its purely meant as a descriptive term, it is a descriptive term that is weighted with significant meaning and is feminizing. And given the rock press’s obsession with masculinity and its insistence, as noted in other studies, of using masculine terms to portray a song as good and feminizing terms to describe them as weak or inferior, I don’t think its a coincidence that a rock press that knew well the power of masculine and feminine language commonly used feminized language, particularly in the 1970s and 80s, to describe McCartney."

I personally see this more as pseudo-homophobic than pseudo-misogynistic (like, when I see a man called "pretty" by another man in an insulting way, I immediately think "oh, that author wanted to say a gay slur but he's too Professional"), but the two things can get muddled together, I suppose.

Anyway, actionable items:

Diversify Your Fan Experience. More perspectives can really help gain a fuller understanding of not just the fandom but the Beatles themselves. Don't be afraid to be wrong, and don't be afraid to be right; always be open to learning new things and hearing new insights.

If All Else Fails, Block 'Em.