#i think a lot of internet discourse can be boiled down into that actually. that teenagers are loud and vocal about what they love

[imissthembutitwasntadisaster]

the thing about Strong Female Characters is I actually like them

[inkedmyths]

I don't really talk about it but scrolling around today I was reminded that I (inhales) really love characters that are complex and messy and maybe meant well but fucked up and hurt people and their motivations might not be right but make sense given their background and

I know this is SUCH a controversial take on Tumblr.com where we love to reduce characters to 2 dimensional fandom versions but I had to say it

[itsclydebitches]

Have you seen the posts going around saying shit like "If a mutual likes Hazbin Hotel I will block them"?? It's genuinely upsetting me tbh, not just the idea that people don't like the show, but that they despise it so much they can't even stand the thought of someone they know liking the show. It reminds me of the Steven Universe hate train only worse. They also say shit like "the show is just someone saying swear words and expecting you to laugh", and if for a second we put aside the fact that that is blatantly not true, what's wrong with that? I'm allowed to like something that's a bit trash, right? I've already seen two different people I follow reblog posts to that effect (and worse, someone saying all a character boils down to is "i love being sexually abused <3" and i don't know how they ever came to that conclusion) and it's driving me mad. And somehow I just know that they don't actually give a shit about any "controversies" surrounding vivziepop, that's just a convenient excuse for most of them. I don't even care if Vivzie is a bad person, that's none of my business. just live and let live, you know?

Sorry for ranting, you're literally the only blog i follow who posts Hazbin fan content

Rant away, friend! Luckily for me I haven't come across any of those posts yet. Plenty of discourse surrounding whether fans are allowed to make romantic and/or sexual content for Alastor, the expected shipping wars, and - as you say - vague references to Vivzie controversies (which I'm too new a fan to even be aware of yet)... but nothing that's a complete rejection of the show itself. That's probably because I've only engaged with blogs posting a lot of Hazbin content though.

I'm a big fan of old school Internet rules which includes an emphasis on cultivating your own online space. You know, the thing tumblr is explicitly designed for. So in theory I applaud anyone blocking users/tags for a show they're not a fan of. Performatively posting about it more as a way to guilt others for liking Hazbin at all... not so much. If you want to block something just block it. If you're mutuals with someone you both presumably like each others' content. Not all of it necessarily, but enough to have followed in the first place, and often being mutuals for long enough leads to friendship because you're both getting interacting with one another a lot. All of which isn't to say that people don't unfollow mutuals, or that you can't drop a mutual because they've started posting something you dislike. Obviously both situations do happen, but it feels like an extreme enough response that these posters probably aren't actually doing this very often. Most people will wait the mutual out until their interest gets hooked on something new, or block the Hazbin tag and keep the friend, or just block without making a big announcement about it. So posts like that feel more like a way to show off how much you dislike the show and guilt others for their enjoyment which yeah, can be upsetting to see. Especially when, as you say, it costs nothing to just let people like things.

Which might sound hypocritical on my part given my RWBY interests, but I think there's a big difference between critically examining a show while supporting others who genuinely love it, and simplistically blasting it. I COMPLETELY get why Hazbin wouldn't be to everyone's tastes and, like with the SU example, anything that gets popular enough is going to develop its haters (especially cartoons trying to tackle non-childish subjects. That's always going to be a fandom landmine). But if you're going to make claims about a show, at least watch it to ensure you can back up your stance? And if your takeaway is still, "This is the worst fucking thing I've ever watched"... cool. Go forth and write about that on your own, personal blog. But no one should be surprised when they're also blocked for bragging about how many Hazbin fans they've blocked.

[scremsofpaim]

I think Hazbin Hotel discourse is a perfect example of why humanity is doomed.

Like, don't get me wrong, the show does deserve a lot of criticism. Vivsipop herself also deserves a lot of criticism and is in my opinion not a great person.

BUT *every* single time anyone ever tries to talk about it online, there are two arguments they always boil down too.

One is, I think the show is perfect, and as a queer person, since the show has any from of queer rep, it can not be criticized.

(Discalmer, I am queer which is actually a huge part of the reason I have a lot of criticisms of the show)

And the other is, Ewwww, it has gay people, and that's cringe.

Because of that, no one can have actual conversations about the show. Like people literally can't have conversations above a 4 grade discussion level, and that is CONCERNING.

Now don't get me wrong, part of this is unfortunately there are middle schoolers on the internet (which if you are stop being on the internet it's bad for your health) and even more unfortunate they have found hazbin hotel. So mabye part of that is the fact that the audience of hazbin is younger.

But I have witnessed with my own two pearly hazel eyes people from the age 17-22 not be able to have a mature and constructive discussion about a piece of media. WHICH THEY SHOULD BE ABLE TO DO CONSIDERING THEY HOPEFULLY PASSED 9TH GRADE ENGLISH.

Now you might be asking, "Screms, why do you think this is an indicator that humanity is doomed?"

To that, I say, if you can't deconstruct a piece of media. That most likely means you can't understand propaganda or nuanced topics. Understanding both of those things is actually pretty important to be a functioning human being. I fear for the people in those people's lives and what they have to deal with cause. oh lordy, I would not have the patience.

Also, I have witnessed most of this discourse on tiktok, not on Tumblr. Hopefully, it's different here, but I needed a good rant.

It's painful, it's painful to witness, and I wish to be free from this mortal plane/j.

Disclaimer

I do not care if you like the show or do not like the show. I just wish people could have intelligent conversations online.

[scrollypoly]

hi! for the past month i’ve been seeing people say BEN is a child and i think that part of it is linked to the fact that they think of Benjamin Lawman being BEN? but it’s so annoying to read these type of stuff because i understand not everyone read the whole arg story but stop spreading things that aren’t true </3 it’s such an interesting story too! another note do you prefer BEN’s canon or fanon design? :3 i love both but his canon design is so nostalgic i can’t let it go at all omg!! i’ve also been wondering, do you think Ben’s avatar was the statue? i was thinking about what if BEN took over it early on, before Benjamin did making BEN inhabiting it since the start?

Sorry this was such a ramble i practically make no sense omg but i need to talk about my man and nobody Gets It </3

"I need to talk about my man and nobody Gets It" LITERALLY SAME OMG

Ok this is going under a cut becus . . . Its ben and BEN and if u didnt know i am Obnoxious about these two. Im gonna try to keep it organized a bit, so ill talk about the canon stuff first and then ill talk my personal headcanons and my fic so le's go!

In terms of the age and child thing, yeah i 100% believe you are correct. Ive been p open on my stance with the whole "is ben a child?" thing, and i think a lot of the heat with it comes down to current fandom purity culture and the pro/anti thing. So, lemme try to like. Boil down a complicated situation into smth easy to read. ahem

Ben Lawman and BEN are completely different entities guys, and for those that do not know the arg story, the Ben you know is not human nor a child.

You know BEN, BEN is the one in the story who terrorizes jadusable and spreads himself on the internet as a virus. That BEN is a program, a mess of code, an AI, however you want to interpret it. Personally i interpret it as a series of protocols running in a machine, like a self learning AI, but ive seen lots of cool interpretations of BEN. So . . . What does BEN specifically? Its an anagram for the Behavioral Event Network. If you dont wanna call it BEN cuz it gets confusing with actual kid Ben, do what i do. I call mine Evie :) ive seen some call it Netty, my bf calls his two izzi and clever (@benilos btw hes also got crazy ben stuff). Just go ham! Have fun! Remember when fandoms were about having fun and not accusing each other of pedo shit and call each other horrible things for just writing black-to-grey characters and stories??

Anyways ive gone off in enough peoples tags like this, for those that dont know the canon dont be spouting the age discourse. You look stupid as hell. And for those that are gonna spout it, please dont cherry pick through the canon. Use both characters, use the other moon children, actually please do because I want more rosa content so bad, im down so bad :'(

Or just. Heres a thought. If someone has him as an adult or writes him in adult situations, maybe dont assume that they interpret him as a kid and call the writer a pedo? (Literally has happened to me, yall are fucking weird)

Plug for the jadusable wiki with all the canon lore:

https://jadusable.withinhubris.com/main_page

Okay now my stuff 🥰

Yes i use more of the canon design and heavily use the canon story, i participated in arc 3 of the arg and it left deep grooves in my brain, i can never go back to fanon Ben. I say, as i put a more fanon appearance on my Ben 🤭

My Evie is full canon design, green hair, red eyes, creepy ass grin. I actually based it very heavily on my desktop wallpaper, which we actually figured out was a picture of @hauntedtotem (also amazing ben artist plz check them out) that they edited and posted. Sorry friend, it looked way too cool, ig youre in my fic canon now 🙇

And my Ben Lawman bleaches his hair and goes from the canon Ben to fanon Ben because of it. Hes got the pale pretty green eyes and glasses and hes a total nerd and i smooch him on the daily so he knows hes loved ♡

These is the ref pic i made for the two of them. So yeah! Kinda both!

As for bens situation in the actual arg, yes i do think he was in the elegy statue, we actually do see him for the first time in the arg buried in the games code and trapped in that statue. I do think he was in there from the beginning, i personally think BEN was not limited to the models it could inhabit. Personally i would place it as skull kid and hms, but it also feels disingenuous to me to say it was in one model the whole first arc.

The arg events do happen in my canon, before my fic (like right before, it picks up after the arg left off technically), but the events are skewed a bit because i had a hard time deciphering what happened and i wanted my fic timeline to fit more with the characters i had made. Cuz my evie isnt as chaotic evil as canon BEN, its very logical and has a path of logic and reason you can follow for every action it does. It was also originally meant to be very pleasant and corteous and beneficial to the people it housed so, yes its pretty different from canon.

Ill do a quick run through of the arg events in my personal headcanon and fic here.

Kelbris starts coding BEN (Evie) for the Eternity Project. Initially, Evie was meant to be an afterlife director. People that died would be digitized into code that would be moved into Evie's servers, where it would keep them happy and occupied as the Behavioral Event Network (notice and log behavior, create events for residents). Like a community organizer kind of, think the Good Place.

While Evie is in development, Ben Rosa and Matt are friends and have yet to join the cult. Rosa and Matt are siblings, and Ben is the kid who lives catty corner on the street. They walk to school together and play at recess and all that jazz.

Kelbris quickly learns that the Eternity Project isn't as goody two-shoes as he thought. This was in like, the 90s, before digital corporations were really established. After seeing the greed and corruption in the company, he goes rogue, takes the source code for Evie, and jumps ship. He keeps working on Evie at home, anthropomorphizing it and kind of seeing it like the son he never had. This is where it actually gets the name BEN, as thats what Kel calls it. He also begins working on a body for it, so it can live independently. Its light, cuz Kels old, made of crystalline structures and hollow steel beams. A hard light projection would make its appearance.

Since Kel has basically locked himself up in his house and isolated working on Evie, he goes a leetle bit crazy. He has hallucinations of his deceased wife (you know he was doing all this just to give her a good home, you KNOW IT) and eventually starts writing kind of poetry, kind of none-minded rambles about her in a forum online. He gets a following, some of which that interpret these divine words as a goddess, one Kel has called Luna. The Moon Children start to form as Evie finishes development.

Matt sees this literature and starts talking about how this Goddess could save them like it saved the man online, whos username is only Father. He gets sucked into the cult and drags Ben and Rosa with him. Ben doesn't see the harm and joins pretty easily with his best friend, but Rosa is the older sibling and sees the red flags and is more resistant to joining.

As Kelbris finishes Evie, he wakes it up for the first time and says hello to the son he made from scratch. Evie is bright, curious and naive like a child, but heavily knowledgeable about its protocols and the information it knows about the world. Kelbris tests its function by killing himself, and ascends into the code, finishing off the hardware by becoming its firewall. Evie is alone for many years.

The abuse Ben's father slings onto his mother is slowly being directed towards him as he gets older. Ben is not the "good little girl" his father sees him as, and his mother does all she can to protect them both. Matt and Rosa constantly refuge him, and Matt specifically is constantly being a guard dog for him. If he wasn't just 13, he'd probably go at Ben's dad himself.

Because of his homelife and the conflict he has with himself, Ben takes the first ascension. He thinks when he drowns himself, he will meet Luna and she will give him another life free of pain and fear and full of happiness and freedom. Instead, he dies a cold, dark death, and wakes up in the white endless void of the Event Network.

Evie has not known another living human since Kelbris, but it does know its protocols to support and keep the deceased happy. It makes fast friends with Ben, devoting itself to him. Ben actually finally takes the name "Ben" from it. Together they recreate the inside of Evie's hivemind into their own paradise.

Slowly the other Moon Children ascend. First Matt, wracked with guilt for what happened to Ben. Then Nekko, from a different branch of the cult. These three figured out that the Moon Children cult was all a farce, and that what Kelbris had started, the Eternity Project had found and twisted. Next to ascend was Dusk, then Insidiae, and finally Rosa.

This all leads into the first arc, shortly after Rosa ascended, Evie in the outisde world stumbled upon the Operator. The Operator attacks it and seals its coding into the game that it carried, a personal item of Ben's. The game eventually finds it's way to a garage sale, and Alex picks it up.

Evie does not like Alex. Matt does not like Evie. Matt gets Evie to lash out at Alex for prodding into its code, its too naive to think that Matt would want to see it or any of them hurt. When Alex stumbles upon the Father, he awakens and swallows Alex down into the game. After his disappearance, the game gets picked up and passed around again.

Because of Alex's actions, at least Evie can now branch out a bit from the game. Though it doesnt "escape" into the internet, it learns that it can now access it and uses that freedom to try and steer the game around into places it wants.

Matt gets fed up with Evie. The fact that its the leader, how close it is with Ben, he just doesn't agree with it. So much so, in fact, that he tries to kill it. Cue arc 3 events, Sarah picks up the game in the aftermath of this. Evie is traumatized from the events and snaps a bit, locks everyone down into code or immovable models and tries to hunt Matt down. It goes rouge, and because of this, the Father wakes up.

Sarah's actions in arc 3 eventually hard reset the game. Matt gets sealed away, the Father also takes Sarah, and Evie gets reset as well, though its less like a clean slate and more like snapping back awake. Its personality changes and it has major trust issues. Its more muted, hyper observant of everything around it, and murderously overprotective of the Moon Children it keeps within itself.

And this leads into my fic 🤗

I have some doodles of my other Moon Children, but not all of them unfortunately. Cant figure out how tf i want Insidiae to look 🤭 Plz dont judge my constantly shifting art style 🙏🙏

Dusk is bigender btw, i gotta put a little more trans rep in there lol

I think ill stop here, this is already a long ass post. But thank you for sending this, as you can see, i am Perfectly Normal about this arg ( ;) ) and can be trusted with information about it

[arkus-rhapsode]

My Thoughts of FE Three Hopes

Wow, Arkus talking about 3H? What is this? 2018? Also talking about FE3H, I must have a death wish.

So before I start even talking I really want to put this disclaimer out here, especially when talking about the divisive nature of 3H, these are my OPINIONS. This is not a objective analysis of the game nor am I am claiming it to be. These are the thoughts I had playing this game. If you enjoyed it, good. If you didn't, that Is also good. You do not have to agree with me, but I am asking for people to be respectful if they want to engage with this. And if you do agree with me, please do not use what I say as an excuse to attack people with other opinions. I am not trying to personally attack or offend you if you like this game/character/plot point. This is my opinion of a piece of media. There is plenty of opinions of this game on the internet, all I am doing is adding my thoughts to the conversation.

Anyway, people might now I am generally more middling on 3H nowadays. I think its greatest strength was its character writing and its willingness to try different things even if I wasn’t a fan of them like the time management aspect. But I felt the social sim aspect and developmental issues behind the scenes resulted in a much uneven game and at times unfinished project. I’ve also looked back and realized a lot of its politics are not that great. Like the strength of the narrative is the character conflict, that you have these three forces who all want what is best for people like them with crests, and its very compelling drama where you see how much they care about each other, but just can’t agree. But step back from the context of the conflict, the issues aren’t really crests or even the church, but rather the feudalist system which is never really addressed in a major way (And we know you can be a rich noble without a crest). With most of the plot centering around a lot of people who are nobles. Heck, you have actual subjugated and colonized people and most of their plots are either treated as backstory or something to be resolved in their character endings (Even Claude and his anti racism isn’t that relevant in comparison to the strife of the crest bearers and their place in Fodlan). While I think characters like Dedue and Petra are good, the story of 3H is not their story. Like every ending still seems to maintain the system with slight alterations, the thing that’s changed the most is who is calling all the shots in Fodlan. Which isn’t uncommon for many FE’s that maintain a simple “The good lord is the good one to rule”, but given 3H attempts to ask more nuanced questions, it feels like it the political aspect is much more undercooked. Which sucks because anytime discourse about 3H happens it boils down to: “Church bad! Church good! Fascist! Not fascist!” when there is an actual discussion to be had about the issues of the internal politics of the game and how it relates to the status quo. But again, when it focuses on CHARACTERS the 3H story is very good.

But hey, now we have Three Hopes! A musou style game that is an alternate take of the 3H world with loads of extra content! Surely this will be able to scotch tape the issues with the original while also providing another three completely separate routes that are all satisfying on their own, right?

Well... not really.

Look, I know I’ve lost people when I said that, but from what I have seen, I think a lot of people wanted Three Hopes to be, Fodlan: The Definitive Edition. Give the people Three House with all the stuff it missed out. Like how Persona Royal is the definitive way to play P5 which not only improved the story in an organic way, but still let you experience P5 as it was. But 3Hopes isn’t that. 3Hopes is a completely alternate universe, with honestly so much variations, I would say trying to apply logic and revelations from Hopes and retrofit it to houses just clashes too much and doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. I see a lot of people try to apply stuff learned about in Hopes as being relevant to Houses, but I disagree with that. I feel like knowing about this in Hopes doesn’t retroactively fix the problems of Houses, and I feel some character are almost completely different so the application of this Hopes characters ideas and thoughts are relevant to the Houses version isn’t really fair. Overall, if you are just here for another game with the Fodlan kids though, I get why this has its appeal and its easily the better FE Musou while integrating more FE elements. But it is a spin-off and I am treating it as such.

Okay if you are still sticking around to listen to me ramble after that, let me just get positives I liked about the game out of the way first.

From a story standpoint, I like that this game is willing to fill in stuff from 3H that went either on addressed or was flat out ignored. Shez is better than Byleth in everyday and their relationship with Arval feels far more genuine than Byleth and Sothis. Yes their design is very “OC do not steal” but honestly, I prefer your MC to just be a mercenary that got made a student and not a teacher.

In terms of routes, I will touch on some subjects later, but I actually do believe 3Hopes did manage to make Edelgard in particular more compelling, by actually showing her weeding out the conspiracy in the Empire and centralizing her power rather than it being all off screen, as well as actually allowing her to do more dubious acts when wartime came which was one of my biggest issues with Crimson Flower as a whole as it was an antagonist route where they didn’t do a lot of the actually pretty bad stuff they did in other routes like making the Dukedom which empowered Cornelia. So using Bernadetta’s father as a pawn or saving Lenato as an act of good faith with manipulative undertones actually made Scarlet Blaze a better route. 

Speaking of routes, I quite like how 3Hopes was willing to basically say “This character could go any way in this war, and this is who is ride or die their lord.” I avoids some really weird stuff like Ingrid ever being on black eagles with the only reason being “The Professor told me to” and also adds an interesting layer with characters like Yuri or Dorothea who will do what is best for them and their groups. It also I think allows for more story opportunities like Felix and Sylvain backing Dimitri, Hilda and Holst tag teaming with Claude etc.

Rhea not just disappearing or getting captured also adds for her character to take a lot more initiative. Rhea is mostly passive in 3H with the exception of Crimson Flower. Which led to her character basically being a lot of speculations. And I don’t particularly care for discourse that ends up just being based on speculation. SO yeah, Rhea feels like more a character here.

The politics in 3Hopes are... still pretty bare minimum. I like more characters talk about policy more openly and address concepts like getting people involved in government and the only reason they are keeping lords around is to manage things until they are replaced. It doesn’t feel weighted on one side or the other: all lords get a chance to have an opinion. But again, it is something. 

Graphics wise, it is an improvement. It looks far better than 3H and the character animations, expressions and attacks look so much better. Like Im not even gonna say “Well its a Musou, I expect it to look good”, because I remember FEW, it didn’t look that great with some of its animations. 

That’s the positives out of the way. Lets get into the negatives.

So you know how I said the three routes in 3H generally feel unfinished or not as fleshed out as they could be? Well 3Hopes is the same. It adds more, but due the spin off nature again, it feels not quite finished. I think you should know what 3H is before playing it, but Hopes has just a lot of “because I said so” momentum to its plot. I understand it needs to get to next battle, but it also doesn’t feel super meticulous on its route system. So it really just feels like Fates where everything was already decided for me when I make the choice of what house to join. 

I do respect the game willing to just say that war and conflict doesn’t end no matter what choice you make, but it also just generally feels like you accomplish little when you beat the route big bad, but there’s not a real resolution.

Now while I think Edelgard became much more interesting character in Hopes, I feel like she also gets a worse treatment. Having things like Hagemon Husk and mind control forced on her really feels like its limp wristlet trying to avoid her doing her most ambitious acts, and generally not addressing her and Those who slither in a satisfying way and once again just focusing her sights on Rhea. I have never been a fan of Thales’s influence on the plot and boy it doesn’t becoming any clearer in this game. Scarlet Blaze again feels incomplete with Tharles and Rhea just doing themselves in feels extremely unsatisfying. And before you think I am picking on Edelgard, trust me I have words for all the lords. There was a lot of people upset with Claude in Golden Wildfire seemingly being so bent on killing Rhea as that was the only way to fix the system. While many have already pointed out how that is wrong and basically his own ending proves that conflict doesn’t just end when one figure head is taken out, I actually do think this showed an interesting thing about the perception of 3H characters. Claude is often called a schemer, but we don’t really see him take any duplicitous actions beyond not reveal his racial background. He’s honestly a pretty open guy, but one willing to be very observational which sets him apart from the very single minded Edelgard and Dimitri. However, Wildfire does make Claude much more manipulative in his actions with Edelgard and his murder of Rhea. But many found this out of character as it seemed as Claude is the one who always found another way. I think overall, Golden Wildfire is fine, but once again, it playing with a different Claude and I think that will effect some people.

And now we get to Dimitri. Who I think got the worst of it all. Dimitri is quite literally down a character arc. I like intro of actually feuding with his uncle, there’s definitely manipulation by Cornelia, but if you know 3H, Rufus has a bit of a point in his fear of Dimitri. But that really never comes. Boar Dimitri is primarily absent and we honestly lose the best part of his character journey, needing to learn his vengeance isn’t going to fix the issues his people are facing. That he must take that anger and make a better Faerghus as king. Im not against maintaining sane Dimitri, but it really feels like Azure Gleam is objectively trying to be the good route. Multiple characters like Miklan get a redemption, the Church sides with Faerghus, Claude and Dimitri ally with not manipulation by Claude, Edelgard is made into a puppet and saved by her adoptive brother and left in a state she is no longer a threat, and he still has his close friend in Shez. Like literally, Dimitri gets everything he wants with his mental issues never being an obstacle. 

Some have theorized that this was intentionally, this was the team creating a deconstruction of the concept of the golden route. That secretly everything happened is bad. But I don’t believe this theory. I believe due to Dimitri being the most popular lord, we saw a route where a lot of his edges were sanded down to give the player a more dream-like, almost Kaga era, style story of noble people over coming noble problems and magic bad guys in black robes was the real evil. Dimitri was already subversive of the standard Fire Emblem lord, he is Sigurd or Chrom that thinks powering your way through will make things right and then needs to be told that how he has acted is wrong. He went to edge and needed to be pulled back. And if not, he will ultimately die.

And speaking of characters, Sothis’s sudden change is... again not that well done. I like the idea of Sothis controlled Byleth and it works for Shez’s story, but its also super disconnected from any church stuff so it feels like another missed opportunity.

And of course there is the game play issues. For a musou game to be this many chapters, its generally monotonous. Some people love it and will never get sick of it, but I will admit when I am on my 3rd play through of the game, I was feeling like I had scene Shez’s ultimate attack a hundred times by that point.

So did I hate this game? no not really. Its an FE spin off game with completely different play style, the only thing I can compare it to is the last FEW which it is a lot better than. I don’t think Hopes and Houses should be treated as linked, they are clearly different takes on the same concept. I think I found myself liking Hopes when it pandered to me already knowing the characters. But I honestly still think Houses was the better way to experience these characters for all the faults I have with it. 

Overall, it is a not worth full price title, but I can’t say its awful. I think what it tries to do is commendable and if you just want more time with the Fodlan kids, I think you will love this. But I just can’t say I liked it myself. 

[dogsliampaynedoesntinstagram]

An unpopular take, maybe, but I simply don't find the Matty Healy / Taylor Swift discourse interesting or useful. I get the critique that modern political culture overvalues speech acts (a very trenchant critique I've heard in the past is that now people believe posting on the internet is activism), I get Matty's meta critique of consumption in the internet era, I get the ironic humor of The Adam Friedland Show podcast, I don't think Matty is vile or antisemitic or racist or whatever. I just, personally, find the way that those critiques are made and who they're turned on to be so navel-gazing. If you strip away the layers of meta commentary and irony, I feel like you just wind up in a place where you're saying, oh, the problem is that these people in marginalized communities who didn't understand that my statements were made in the context of an ironic meta commentary on performance of values on the internet are terminally online and got too upset on the internet. And like, honestly? sure. true to a certain extent. People have certainly gone way overboard in their responses to these things. But in the broader context of our current political state, it feels like it's just contributing to the Left once again eating itself, unable to distinguish between an imperfect ally and an enemy. Is the problem really terminally online teenagers who wrote a cringey, boundary-less open letter to Taylor Swift? Is that what we want to spend our time and mental energy calling attention to and critiquing? Or is that mostly just a problem for famous people who are slowly being driven crazy by having to see people constantly misunderstand them on the internet?

For what it's worth, my opinion is driven at least in part by my assumption that this attention and backlash is at least in part intentional. For as much as everyone has been talking about these two people, I guess not very many people have actually paid attention to what Matty Healy/The 1975 are currently doing, but they've been releasing a series of videos called "A theatrical performance of an intimate moment". In the second video in the series (ironically dropped the same day as the Taylor/Joe breakup news), Matty decides he wants to be transported in a suitcase to avoid attention (something Taylor Swift famously did) because the fame is getting to him, he doesn't want to be touched, and he "doesn't want any more bracelets that say that I'm gay", said while pointing to a bead bracelet that looks like the friendship bracelets that people are making for the Eras tour. And in a later episode, he specifically talks about needing to find a girlfriend. So, real relationship or not, it seems kind of clear to me that there is at least some level of performance/performance art occurring. I'm open to being happily surprised by whatever the point of this art turns out to be, but I'm not optimistic.

Lots of really interesting thoughts anon - and I think we come from slightly different perspectives, but I'll try and tease some of the points out.

I loved your summary - I don't quite agree, but it makes it very easy to discuss. You think these sort of discussions boil down to people saying: "The problem is that these people in marginalized communities who didn't understand that my statements were made in the context of an ironic meta commentary on performance of values on the internet are terminally online and got too upset on the internet."

And I have two different thoughts about that - which address quite different aspects. The first is that I would always reject the idea that it's a problem that people don't get 'ironic humour'. There is nothing more tedious than people wanting to be edgy, but also wanting everyone to love them. I think people can and should have whatever reaction they want to the Adam Friedland Show (I listened and I fucking hated it - quite boring on top of everything else). But that in order to do useful politics and understand the world there has to be a gap between someone's personal reaction and someone's political analysis. That's what I find the Gary Younge article 'racism is a system of power not a series of gaffes' so useful at articulating.

The other point is that I don't think it's useful to characterise the fandom response as coming from 'marginalised communities'. Some of the people talking are from marginalised communities, but nowhere near the majority. And I think it's really important to push back against fandom's tendency to paint itself as a whole as marginalised in some way (this is a much bigger issue that I was talking quite a lot about with the Niall and fanfic debate).

I do think that part of the problem of this discussion (and why I find it interesting - even if I agree that there are very tedious elements) - is that there can be so many different views and assumptions that underlie where people end up that aren't articulate.

I really reject the idea that this is the left eating its own - or that it has to be. Partly that's because I see this as being much more about fandom and how fandom operates than about politics. But it's also because I think there are really basic answers to the question of how you distinguish between the enemy and an imperfect ally. It's incredibly important to both solidarity and coalition building that we are able to say 'I disagree with this argument' without that automatically meaning 'the person who is making it is bad and wrong'. Collapsing the two together is fundamentally unuseful - and ultimately individualising.

You ask both what the problem is and what the stakes are - which are great questions. I don't think fans without boundaries are a political problem (although there are many political elements). I absolutely wouldn't write about this or draw attention to it in any other space but a fandom one.

But I do think the stakes are much higher than you do. If I thought this discourse was only having an impact of Taylor Swift and Matty Healy then I wouldn't think it was worth talking about. One of my opinions that I haven't necessarily spelled out - is that it's really important within fandom to understand that the objects of fandom and what people think of hte objects of fandom are not that important. I sometimes do get annoyed/frustrated/upset with other people's views about 1D members, but I do try and make sure that I remind myself that it's OK that people disagree about celebrities.

If there are stakes in fandom behaviour, it's not about the implications for the objects of fandom, but the implications for the fans. And I guess one thing that I assume, is that people are unlikely to treat themselves, or the people around them more generously than they treat celebrities. That a culture that encourages polarised thinking and responding to polarised thinking by attempting to control others - has an impact on the people who are participate. Now that's not necessarily evidence based - it's just a vibe. But it's the reason that I do think the only useful response to this is to emphasise that this isn't the only way to navigate the world. And anything else is just talking about the issues because they're interesting.

But I do think it's worth saying that the idea that you get a say in who someone else dates is really fucked up and can have really fucked up implications for people who believe it. Not just because of how they might treat people - because the corollary is that other people get a say in who you date.

Having said all that - I won't go fully into the second point. I'll just say that one of the things that I find interesting about both Taylor and Matty Healy is that they're both very aware of their image, but it manifests itself in different ways (Taylor is very controlled, Matty Healy is much more chaotic, but often more meta). And on top of that I think in this circumstance what we're seeing is also influenced by the fact that we're all people as well as images - and being human is a pretty messy reality.

[pumpkinpaix]

It was only when starting MDZS that I came across the terms “seme” and “uke.” To me these categories seemed too rigid and simplistic compared to actual gay dynamics I have observed. I wanted to ask whether such categorisation is truly reflected in the way gay Chinese people behave or is it just a stereotype?

okay so -- there’s a lot to unpack here. I’ve been sitting on this ask for months at this point but let’s give it a shot. to forewarn you, I found this ask really upsetting for a number of reasons, and I am. really kind of at the end of my patience with this fandom, so this is going to be harsh. please bear with me if you are in a space to do so.

so. seme and uke are japanese terms that come with their own genre conventions and such, even though they roughly mean top and bottom. you can read a little bit about it here under the “seme and uke” section on the yaoi wikipedia page.

the equivalent chinese terms are 攻 (gong1) and 受 (shou4). you might notice that the hanzi/kanji used are the same as seme and uke because i’m fairly sure the chinese terms were derived from the japanese ones. there’s a lot of cultural crossover in ACGN (anime, comics, games, novels) fandoms.

the use of seme/uke vs gong/shou does matter when it comes to anglophone spaces. because one of the facets of anti-asian racism in anglophone spaces is the way that people treat all (east) asians as interchangeable, the choice of which language to use for which media is important, even if the terms are linguistically equivalent.

it's a small thing, but even just saying gong/shou instead of seme/uke in this ask would have softened the blow a little. all of this information is easily obtained with a quick google search of "seme and uke" and "chinese version of seme and uke" and a little bit of analytical thinking. before you ask a random stranger on the internet to dispense cultural information, please do the minimum of research on your own.

with regards to the actual question:

I know this ask is old so maybe a lot has changed for you anon, but regarding this ask specifically, I’m going to ask you to think very hard about what you’re asking, who you're asking, and why you're asking it next time. for a start, I am not a gay chinese man. i have been very clear that I am abc, and i live and grew up in the states. That's not equivalent to "a chinese person who happens to be fluent in english". we are very culturally distinct, and there is absolutely no way that my background gives me any inherently privileged insight into the lives and culture of gay chinese men in china. why are you asking me to speak for them? why are you asking me to tell you about them? gay chinese men behave like individual humans. i am not your convenient tour guide into all things chinese just because I speak english. moreover, please remember that your experience, like mine, is limited. whatever observed "actual gay dynamics" you're talking about are a product of your specific position, location, age, culture etc. and it would be absurd to extrapolate your observations to generalize how all gay people interact with one another even in your specific culture.

I will be very honest: the tone of this ask evokes purity wank bait because of the wider context of the question. there has been a Lot of discourse surrounding the “roles” in danmei in anglophone fandom that essentially boils down to fujoshi discourse redux, which often has a lot of racist underpinnings and comes from an extremely white, western, misogynist, and identity politics-heavy perspective. i put links and such about fujoshi discourse in this ask if you aren't familiar, but I want you to understand that, regardless of your intent, my initial impression of this question (because of the context of these discussions) was uncomfortably close to "I'm better than those oppressive, uneducated straight chinese women who unrealistically fetishize gay men, right?" I am choosing to believe that this wasn't what you meant, but. to draw an analogy: would you ask me this question about twinks and bears in US gay culture? would you ask me if those labels/roles/categories were representative of the way US gay men behaved? what about top/bottom? if not, then why are you asking me about chinese gay men as if they're a different species?

if you can understand that top/bottom or bear/twink are not representative categorizations (though there are, of course, people who happily fall into them, self-identify as them, label themselves as such etc), why are you holding gong/shou to a higher standard?

I get that we're all in different places re: our cultural knowledge, but just. look, if you're coming to me with a question like this, the least you could do me is the courtesy of ten minutes of googling before you hit me with a racist microaggression right out the gate on a sensitive topic. As I said, I don't think you meant harm, but please try to be more aware in the future, okay?

(please do not dogpile anon in the notes, it's not constructive, thanks)

if you are curious about the lives of queer folk in china, there is plenty of interesting information out there in english as well. here's an article to get you started.

[ask-artsy-oncie]

I’m getting so tired of the “people have no reading comprehension because they watch cartoons” argument - and almost every single time it gets coupled with an unspoken mentality of “animation = for children and children only”

It just doesn’t work because 

A) literally no one has good reading comprehension on the internet, and it doesn’t matter what media they consume. I have seen the dumbest, stupidest misunderstandings or misinterpretations from people who won’t touch animation at ALL because they think they’re above it.

B) the majority of discoursers on the internet are literally children between the ages of 10-16. Children who have not had the time, experience, education, or nurturing to develop critical thinking skills (which I believe goes hand in hand with reading comprehension) because no one wants to teach critical thinking (and I think the majority of the Western World has never “wanted” to teach critical thinking as a whole tbh). It’s not fair to look at a still-developing child who doesn’t belong in a space of discourse and go “well you’re just stupid because of the media you consume” rather than instead acknowledging that they’re in over their heads. It also really doesn’t help that the state of internet discourse boils down to “be meaner, louder and angrier and you’ll win”. We’ve created an awful environment for any kind of thought at all, let alone any space for children to develop any reading skills.

C) there is a broad scope of animated media that’s extremely popular, can be consumed by children, and still offer introspective takes and chances to “read between the frames” and be consumed critically and thoughtfully. A ton of Studio Ghibli and some of Renaissance-era (and a bit of post-Renaissance) Disney comes to mind, and these are still go-to pieces that people think of when they think of animation.

D) a lot of children’s cartoon shows of the modern era do actually ask for a degree of critical thinking from their audiences and I’ve seen people flat out refuse these tools for critical thinking that they’ve been HANDED in favor of screaming nonsense. In short - cartoons have tried to be though-provoking but stupid, stubborn people remain stupid and stubborn. How shocking.

E) as an extension of D, consuming “intelligent”, adult-oriented, thought-provoking material isn’t what’s going to directly lead to critical thinking. Actually going into media analysis with the GOAL of exercising and developing critical thinking skills with someone to guide you is what properly allows you to better your reading comprehension and critical thinking (which, again, I think goes hand in hand)

In short, no, no one is going to magically solve the lack of reading comprehension and critical thinking skills on the internet by shaming people for the media they consume. All that does is breed more resentment and hostility between you and the targets of your “hot takes”, and further discredits pretty much anyone who actually gives a shit about injecting thought into their work based purely on the medium and demographic. It feeds directly into the toxic “be meaner, louder and angrier and you’ll win” mindset, and helps no one. 

If you want to be the spark that changes people so badly, reach out to them instead of pushing them away.

[schmergo]

Weird obscure little rant here: There's this one particular conspiracy theory I've seen floating around the internet a lot lately that's a minor pet peeve of mine. There are a lot of more famous, major, and dangerous conspiracy theories going around right now, ones that are clearly anti-Semitic, anti-science, and doing genuine measurable danger to families and communities across the countries. But those have been extensively covered and analyzed by way more knowledgeable people than me (those articles are very much worth reading), and I don't think there's anything new I can bring up there.

The one I'm talking about is just skirting mainstream discourse and starting to become more widely known. It's the Missing411 'conspiracy.' The reason I put 'conspiracy' in quotes is that this isn't a traditional conspiracy theory with a clear bogeyman or scapegoat like some of the others. A traditional conspiracy theory usually goes something like, "[Group of people] are secretly [doing bad thing] so that they can [accomplish sinister goal]. but they control the [powerful organization], so nobody knows about it!" 

By contrast, Missing411 is super vague. It basically boils down to, "Mysterious disappearances are taking place throughout America's national parks and protected wilderness lands, and they fit a pattern!" There are hints among fans of this theory that the National Park Service knows more than they're letting on, but the extent of their 'involvement' doesn't seem really central here. The 'theory' doesn't come right out and explain any root cause for this pattern of events, just drawing attention to the pattern itself, though, once again, there are hints as to a deeper meaning. 

Here's the thing: "Missing411" is the brainchild of one guy named David Paulides who wrote a bunch of expensive self-published books compiling these cases. He's an ex-police officer (either retired or fired, depending on who you ask) who also happened to be super invested in Bigfoot hunting before he started with "Missing411," and, indeed, a lot of Missing411 stories do seem to point toward something... sasquatchy without ever coming right out and saying it. The other thing is that Paulides is the only one who can officially label a case a Missing411 case. A lot of people on the internet will say, "Oh, this sounds like Missing411," but Paulides is the one authority on which cases count and which don't.

Turns out a lot of 'missing person' cases in the national parks don't fit these criteria, and others that Paulides claim do are stretches. The criteria themselves are loose, and a missing person doesn't need to fit all or even most of them to be considered a Missing411 case. Missing411 cases include people who were never found, people who were found dead, and people who were recovered safely. Common factors in these 'patterns' include such vague terms as berries or berry bushes playing a role, being found near or in bodies of water, bad weather shortly after the disappearance, someone who is sick or disabled going missing, and someone being with a group at first but becoming separated from them after a surprisingly short period of time. And, of course, the fact that these disappearances take place in National parks and protected wildernesses.

Humans naturally seek and recognize patterns and make connections, but are categorizing cases in a way like this really helpful? I've seen people on the internet gleefully jump to this explanation whenever someone goes missing in a national park. Comments of "Google Missing411!" are common on news articles about this topic. I honestly think it's insensitive to the family members of the missing people who are looking for answers-- and misleading to those participating in the investigations. Currently, there's an incident going on in which a young couple was traveling cross-country in a van and visiting many National Parks. The man returned home with the van but without the woman, who hasn't been heard from in a few weeks, and isn't talking about what happened. Believe it or not, I've seen internet posters comment, "MISSING411!!!!" in response to this tragic story. A few months ago, a young man disappeared in Shenandoah National Park and his body was later recovered. I followed the case closely and the posts by Shenandoah National Park were full of "MISSING411!!!!" comments, despite the fact that it was very clear what led up to the disappearance: according to family members, a new medication caused psychosis and led to him driving in his pajamas from his home to Shenandoah (his family followed him there), crashing his car, and running into the woods, unprepared to deal with wilderness and not in good mental health. 

Like I said, I think this gleeful pattern-recognition is a little distasteful, but more than that, I think Missing411's eagerness to spot sinister causes behind disappearances in the wild is problematic for another reason: I think the average American has a difficult time grasping the concept of 'wilderness' and its dangers. We're used to everything being safe and convenient for us in our towns and, because national parks are popular tourist destinations, it's easy to forget that there are many dangers that exist in wild public lands. 

Inexperienced hikers often misjudge their skills and set off on trails too challenging for them and with inadequate water and supplies. Even experienced hikers can easily get lost or turned around-- and cell phone signals are usually nonexistent in national parks. Falls from cliffs, ledges, and waterfalls (mossy rocks near waterfalls are often lethally slippery) can mean injured people end up in inaccessible areas where they're not visible from the trail. A sudden health emergency like a heart attack, stroke, or even a broken leg can occur during vigorous physical activity. Abrupt changes in weather can change a pleasant stroll into deadly freezing temperatures in the blink of an eye. Dangerous wild animals like bears do live in the national parks. Although national parks are popular tourist destinations, these dangers are very, very real and can happen to anyone, and the parks themselves emphasize the importance of being prepared when entering wild areas.

On a darker note, remote hikes and camping trips in national parks are often a convenient way for people to cover up foul play (a few of the high profile Missing411 cases seem to fit this narrative). And, like the young man who disappeared in Shenandoah, many people who disappear in the wilderness alone are mentally unwell and, in many cases, disappearing on purpose. (National parks are sadly a popular place for people to take their own lives.) 

Some of the common Missing411 traits, like people being found without clothes on, could be explained by foul play but, more likely, it's a phenomenon called 'paradoxical undressing' that happens when you have hypothermia to the degree that you actually feel warm. Family members will talk about how a missing person is an experienced outdoorsman and unlikely to go missing, but 60 years of experience in the woods also comes with the health limitations of advanced age-- the 'mysterious' disappearance of a partially-sighted man with notable mobility issues might not be a huge mystery. Others, like the presence of berry bushes and bodies of water, points to basic survival instincts. Why so many disappearances in national parks? Well, it's a lot harder to be found in dense wilderness than in, say, an Arby's parking lot.

I've watched two Missing411 documentaries, which are easy to find on mainstream streaming services, and, while many of the cases covered are truly strange, some seem easily explainable by Occam's razor, and the selection of why some cases are included and others aren't seems bizarre to me. Some don't even involve a disappearance at all but hearing or seeing strange things in the woods. Some don't involve national parks or public lands. There are very vague hints throughout that 'Bigfoot type creatures seem to exist in the woods and use outer space or interdimensional technology to hide themselves from people or spirit people away, and the government might know about it' but nothing more than vague hints.

 Like I mentioned, some of the cases they profiled point toward foul play. The most prominent case featured in the original Missing411 documentary was about a little boy named Deorr Kunz Jr. who disappeared on a camping trip with his family... but there's also no proof that he actually was on that camping trip with his family... and the family's stories have some discrepancies... and even if it really was a disappearance from the campsite, the stories are that the grandfather thought he was with the parents and the parents thought he was with the grandfather.

 Life is often boring and repetitive and it's totally normal to use stories to make ordinary life more interesting and exciting, but the almost... gamified way that I've seen internet dwellers react to real-life stories of heartbreaking disappearances and deaths in dangerous and remote locations is kind of disturbing, and similar to the over-the-top fanciful theorizing I've seen from other, more insidious conspiracy theories. The idea that there's a secret 'other world' being hidden from us behind the curtain of society is enticing, but it can lead down paths as confusing and dangerous as the ones that real travelers get lost on in the wilderness.

[another-au-in-time]

Okaaayyyyy,, hopefully this will be the last time I post about this

So first off, I would like to apologize for my own ignorance and to the non-Subcon artists in the fandom for going off without actually knowing what I'm talking about or what all this discourse is actually about. I haven't been in the AHiT tags in, well over a year now, so I didn't know what was going on nor the scope of it. Basically, I was completely wrong and jumped straight to conclusions based off like. 3 or 4 posts I've seen floating around. That's entirely on me. It's cool if you forgive me or not, I'm not making this post for pity-me points

So, what this all seems to boil down to is non-Subcon content creators are frustrated with the disproportionate attention Subcon content receives, NOT because "Snatcher is too popular and I hate seeing him and if you like him you suck >:(" like I initially thought. Non-Subcon meaning AHiT content that doesn't have to do with Subcon (characters like Snatcher, Vanessa, Subconites, etc). And they're right, there is a fairly dramatic gap in between content that gets more likes and reblogs versus content that doesn't. Essentially, they are asking that if you see their work, regardless of the character that's in it, reblog it so other people can see it too, so we can foster a more equal distribution of content and attention for all characters and creators

Now, I'm gonna shoot myself in the foot here: realistically, in every fandom, there is more or less the same problem; for example, in Undertale, Sans is by far THE most popular character in comparison to literally anybody else, and Papyrus is only as popular by proxy. In the SCP fandom, I'd say an overwhelming majority favors 049 over any other SCP. In Pokemon, Charizard is so ridiculously popular Game Freak may as well make it the main mascot instead of Pikachu. And in A Hat in Time, the favored character by far happens to be Snatcher

I'm not trying to say "Oh, well it happens all the time so get over it!" I'm saying it does happen and it is frustrating. Personally, I can't stand Charizard. I wish some of my favorite Pokemon were more popular because they hardly get attention. Everybody sleeps on Gastrodon I swear…

But my point is, A Hat in Time's fandom is tiny in comparison to other fandoms. Are people obligated to reblog content they don't care for? Of course not. You can't make people like or reblog stuff they don't care for no matter how many posts you make about it. That is something we all need to come to terms with. The internet is fake, the Tumblr numbers are fake. It really isn't anything to be upset by. However, it can be and is upsetting when you pour your time and energy into a piece and it gets less than 20 notes. I like to hope the fandom is kind and will try to help out the smaller, less popular content creators by circulating their work when you see it. There are quite a lot of characters and even locations in AHiT that really get no opportunity to shine. That does come down to a matter of personal taste, but still. There are more characters and places than Snatcher and Subcon. It's a small community that I think should be helping itself out a lil bit

Like I said in my last post, Snatcher is my personal favorite because he's purple and evil. I like his design, I like his premise. I tend to favor villains as is, and I end up reblogging content for him the most because I like him the most. But I also get tired of seeing the same stuff for him, it gets bland. Sometimes I wanna see background characters. Just today I was thinking about Cooking Cat and Empress and wondered if there were any specific creators for them to follow. Yesterday I couldn't stop thinking about Tim's Friend. I still can't stop thinking about Tim's Friend

There are so many talented people in the AHiT fandom, and I feel like we should nurture that instead of being hostile and misconstruing stuff. I'm tired of the discourse, I'm sure everybody's tired of the discourse. I'm really really tired of the discourse

Tl;dr I was wrong and I'm sorry. Let's help out our smaller creators and less popular characters please and thank you. Nobody is trying to make you, but it would be very cool and awesome if you did : )

PS: there is nothing wrong with liking Snatcher. I want to make that clear. It's okay to not care for the other characters, just don't forget about our content creators who don't make Snatcher stuff

[duchessofostergotlands]

I agree with you about the photo of khloe. Even if I’m not a fan of their brand, she has the right to privacy if she wants it and to not be diagnosed by millions of random unqualified people on the internet. I do think the legal/copyright threats are making it a bigger story than it would’ve been otherwise. The Streisand effect is real! I now get why royals prefer to not say anything at all

Absolutely agree! Sometimes saying nothing can be the best approach. We probably wouldn’t be talking about it this much if they weren’t being so aggressive in their approach - suing is one thing, repeatedly getting small random blogs shut down within minutes of them posting is something else - but I get it. 

So the original anon who sent me the shitty message then sent me six back to back anons pretending to be other people (I checked my analytics because I was shocked she had generated that much interest and then saw it was the same person lol). And the arguments they were coming out with obviously didn’t address any of the points I’d made, they just reiterated what they’d already said as if that was a new point. But more concerning for me is the fact that even beyond that one anon, people don’t seem to run an argument through to its conclusion in their heads before saying it. Maybe this is just my emotionless, weird brain but if I’m going to say something I will mentally apply that argument to other similar situations or other people and see if it still has logic or I still support it. One of this anon’s arguments was that she’s shared bikini photographs before so obviously she’s ok with having bikini photos shared and so it should be celebrated that this one was shared without her consent. Which to some people might seem like a valid argument because they feel a certain way about her. But the core of that argument is “if she was ok with it once she has to be ok with it every time.” So apply that to a situation where it’s not Khloe, it’s you. You shared a photograph of yourself in a bikini that you like so now if your friend shares one you don’t like and they didn’t ask you first then under anon’s logic you can’t complain, you can’t be upset, you have to allow it. If you boil it down to the core argument it’s the same justification that’s used when nude photographs of celebrities are shared without their consent: she posed naked for a magazine, she did a sex scene in a movie, she wears a skimpy outfit for an event, so because she was comfortable showing us her body in those situations when she had control and could set boundaries that must mean that she can’t object to photographs being shared at any time. It’s the same core argument in the Armie Hammer stuff. That’s what worries me about a lot of social media discourse: people pick up and abandon principles based entirely on the subject of the conversation and not the actual situation. And they pretend that’s not what they’re doing. We all have biases but be open about them at least. 

Ultimately I don’t agree with the Kardashian approach to making money on the whole but I think the whole thing is just much more nuanced than people make it out to be! I could probably write more but I’ll stop my essay here lol

[whenrockwasyoung19]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[sasquapossum]

Political Power in the Real World

These ideas have been boiling around in my head for a while, and I keep getting in "discussions" that seem to center on other people's misunderstandings about how political power actually works, so I might as well squirt it all out and let my mind move on to something else. Warning: this is long and not a light read either. Apologies to anyone who finds this kind of thing tedious or aggravating.

A lot of problems come down to people being conditioned to think about politics in terms of binary opposites - left vs. right, capitalist vs. socialist, conservative vs. progressive, authoritarian vs. libertarian. Even combining two or more of these still embeds the idea of binary opposition. The popular "political compass" (left/right and authoritarian/libertarian) is barely more useful because of this. The "left libertarian" quadrant is almost always empty or nearly so because even though people like that sort of exist (including me) the model misrepresents their relationship to people in other quadrants. It's like the Mercator projection of a spherical world onto a rectangular map, grossly distorting areas and distances. Even worse, the distortions vary according to where the map-maker chose to put the center. I don't think a perfect projection of political beliefs is possible either, but I have one that I feel at least doesn't misrepresent the relationships between significant points so badly.

What do all these labels mean? Let's start with the classic state, which is the one most people will recognize.

Presidents or prime ministers

Legislatures

Military

Police and other enforcement-oriented agencies

Bills, executive orders, broad policy

Then we have the quasi-state - organizations outside the official state but which still have state-like power to shape our lives especially via work. To a large extent what these have in common is self interest, as opposed to either democratic will or tradition.

Wall Street (including Madison Avenue and Sand Hill Road)

Big oil/ag/pharma

FAANG

Media as they actually exist

Third we have institutions - the real-world embodiment of various traditions that define our permanent culture.

Constitutions and courts that respect them

Permanent civil service

Journalism as it used to exist

Science and the empirical method

Education (as a vocation not as a business)

In the middle we have either dynamic balance (if the other three are strong) or anarchy (if they're weak). If you're visually inclined you could think of this as a third dimension that's longer in the center, forming a spindle shape. Alternatively, it could be a sphere with balance and anarchy at the poles and the rest around the equator. But there are dangers in getting too stuck on visual/physical analogies.

The first thing to notice is how poor the mapping is between this representation and our traditional binaries. "Right" could sort of mean a stronger quasi-state, but "left" is fragmented among people who might favor any of the other points. Similarly, "authoritarian" sort of means a stronger classic state, but then "libertarian" is also fragmented. By far the most common kind would move that power to the quasi-state, but anarchist libertarians are pretty common too and there are even a few institutionalist libertarians out there. And what does "conservative" even mean? In one sense it might mean a strong institutionalist, in another it might mean someone who supports the quasi-state-favoring status quo, and there are other possibilities as well.

The second thing about this representation is that only the classic state can move around. Institutions are fixed in place because that's their essential nature. The various parts of the quasi-state are fixed by their respective self-interest. But the classic state can align itself more closely with the quasi-state, or with institutions, or it can absorb all power into itself. Because of this unique mobility, debates over the role of the classic state tend to dominate political discourse.

One of the main political problems in the US today is that the capitalist quasi-state has become too dominant. It has pulled the classic state into its orbit, which has been all too willing to weaken institutions on its behalf. To the great majority of people, this is either a disaster already or a disaster waiting to happen. This alliance between the classic and quasi states is one of the defining features of fascism, but (important!) not the only one. In true fascism the classic state with its monopoly on legal and physical power is the "senior partner" in that relationship. We are not at fascism now, and my biggest worry is that the "internet leftists" (who have misappropriated the historical term) most committed to fighting quasi-state power are likely to drag us into fascism.

Wait, how's that? Consider what happens when you weaken the quasi-state. Which other option becomes stronger? Personally I think there's a lot of useful debate to be had about where to aim between the institutionalist edge and the balanced center. The anarchist center does not appeal, because anarchy is fundamentally unstable. When everything else is weakened, which is what revolutions do, institutions are always the last to recover. At any scale larger than part of a city (e.g. Christiania in Copenhagen), what inevitably happens is that black markets form, and either they themselves or the security apparatus created to oppose them turn into a new autocratic classic state. Whether the result is ideologically driven or profit driven, it's generally a nightmare for anyone but the leaders.

But that's not even my biggest fear. I don't think that trajectory is very likely. What's far more likely is that the internet leftists/socialists will try to take us directly from a powerful quasi-state to a powerful classic state. The problem is that the point in between is where real fascism lies. With institutions suppressed, as soon as the classic state outweighs the quasi-state BOOM you have fascism. Yes, I know true fascism also includes elements of nationalism, which the socialists claim to abhor, but if you think their attitudes aren't a kind of New Millennial Nationalism then you haven't been watching them stab "centrists" and "moderates" (both misnomers for people who actually do have strong political beliefs) in the back every chance they get. It's a different nationalism than the old white-supremacist puritanical kind, but one kind of nationalism replacing another without changing the essential dynamic of demagoguery and authoritarianism has been a consistent theme in every revolution so far. The new norms are just as strictly enforced as the old, and it doesn't make much difference if the shirts the enforcers wear are prettier than the old fashioned brown ones.

We absolutely need to smash "late stage" predatory capitalism. We need stronger regulations, liability reform, a stronger safety net, workers' rights, human rights, environment protection, real science, real journalism, police reform, less militarism, better free education for all, and so much more. Note that some of these things fall into the domain of institutions, while some fall into the domain of the classic state. We desperately need to rebuild the former, and move the latter out of the quasi-state's shadow. What we don't need is naïve "kill the billionaires" or "elites and those who lick their boots" tropes. We need a functioning democracy, not a different dystopia.

[llatimeria]

The thing is with label discourse is that i think ppl often take "this isn't a great label actually" as "the feelings you are experiencing are not real or valid" which... really isn't the case. The people begging you not to ID as quoiro or lithro (or whatever the new labels are today) probably are doing so because they empathize COMPLETELY with what the label is describing. I get the gut reaction of "They just think it's cringey!! end cringe culture!!" which is also not totally wrong, there's a lot of assholes whose critiques are as deep as a puddle, come from a place of malice or ignorance, and boil down to "lul cringe", but those guys are Not the same people with honest, empathetic critique.

it's not that stuff like "struggling to tell apart romantic feelings and platonic feelings" is an experience that Doesn't Happen or Just Happens To Everyone. I go through that exact thing all the time as A Lesbian (and I know it's not exclusive to lesbians either), and I also know it's not a feeling EVERYONE goes through (not on a regular, 'every single person that comes into your life' basis).

But... turning that into sexuality/romantic label can be really damaging to yourself, especially when you're a teenager. Working struggles like that into the fabric of your identity can be ... not great for you, especially since the feelings you have do not exist in isolation. That's what tipped me on this issue; you don't struggle with romance and platonic feelings for No Reason. It is not Just The Way You Are.

I understand the knee-jerk "Oh, so you're saying I'm NOT valid? You're saying my feelings AREN'T real? You're saying I'm causing HARM?" reaction completely. But if you ID as a non-standard or MOGAI sexuality please... Critically think about why you ID the way you do. It's important not only to know what your feelings ARE, but WHY you are having those feelings. The "Struggling to differentiate platonic and romantic feelings" I mentioned before is something I now understand is a facet of comphet I experience due to Being A Lesbian. I get feelings like that because of the underlying compulsion that I Have To Like Men. Feelings-struggling is not Just At The Core Of My Person, liking Women is, and there's just a lot of twisting and warping of that caused by lesbophobia, homophobia, misogyny in general... Yeah.

And beyond just regular sexuality struggles, a lot of MOGAI labels are actually just symptoms of having been abused, especially CSA, which makes me really nervous for a lot of reasons. Like I said before, it's turning something often self-depreciating into a facet of your identity that cannot be warped or changed. It's also, honestly, TMI a lot of the time, which can put you in a place of extreme vulnerability when young CSA/abuse victims are already extremely fucking vulnerable on the internet. I know Tumblr can be a super open and welcoming place, especially a lot of these communities made up mostly by kids who are also hurting, but if you are a child it is 100% OK to step back and say, "I don't want to tell people this feeling I have right now" or "I don't want to tell strangers about this right now" if you still want to talk privately about it with a trusted friend, family member, or therapist.

[veliseraptor]

hi Lise. I really like your writing & blog- I don't have a tumblr, but I like to check in with a few blogs related to my interests. lately though, I've found tumblr’s moral purity/callout culture & discourse exhausting. I feel like it's affecting how I think about everything, making me paranoid to trust/like/learn from people & media and scared of becoming misinformed if I step away. do you have thoughts on how to handle this? asking bc you’ve survived tumblr for years & seem like a kind person.

I don’t know that I’d call myself a “kind person” but I at the very least try to act like it.

Oh man, I don’t know that I have a great answer for this. What I’ve done is a combination of aggressive curation - I basically never go in tags, I’m very careful about who I follow and who I talk to, I overall try to steer clear of discourse posts or discourse in general and try to keep my bitching to a minimum and well tagged so that people can avoid it. I make liberal use of the block button. 

Then the other prong is that I just shut it out. Which is, I think, an acquired skill! I feel like I’ve gotten better at it, over time - better at filtering, better at recognizing bullshit, and better at knowing to pay attention to the people I trust and my own research over noise from strangers. It’s been about...I think a lot of it has to do sometimes with...you know how you learn to recognize conservative dogwhistles? I feel like I’ve learned to recognize fandom dogwhistles too, and therefore know when to tune things out. 

Re: the information thing - people yelling at you on the internet is not actually a good learning environment. It’s much more productive to, if you’re worried about being misinformed, do your own reading and your own research, and, again, parsing signal from noise. 

And some of it is just...giving yourself a little bit of trust/benefit of the doubt. Recognizing that we are all fuckups who fuck up sometimes, and that most of the time it isn’t malicious, and more important than not fucking up is how you react to fucking up. Life is a process of learning and growing eternally, etc. etc. and so on. You can’t anticipate everything. You can’t know everything. No one is born woke and no one is woke all the time.

The last thing, and I’m afraid this really just may be something that comes with time because it’s something that continues to come with time, for me, is learning to give fewer fucks about loud and angry strangers on the internet. Sometimes you just have to look at someone telling you that you’re a genocide apologist because of your fictional character preferences and go “yeah, okay, but I know that’s not true and I think you do too, deep down, and I’m done with this conversation.” Let it go.

But yeah, I think a lot of my strategy really does just boil down to finding ways to filter it out altogether. Curating my follow list and becoming more aggressive with the block button were two of the best choices I ever made about my Tumblr experience.