#i think they were trying to say that shipping the comics version is problematic

[hurtcomforted]

why are some antis bending over backwards to make every ship they don't like problematic? "they're like brothers, this is practically incest!" "you can't ship that, he's married with kids in canon!" "he's a kid in some of the comics so this is actual pedophilia!"

you know you're allowed to just not like stuff, right? you don't need some higher moral reason for it.

[middle-earth-mythopoeia]

1, 3, 6, 10, 13, 16

Thanks for the ask! I’m not sure whether to answer for the Silmarillion or LOTR, so maybe I’ll do both?

The character everyone gets wrong:

For LOTR, I answered this one way here, but there are a lot of other ways to answer it! I also think people get Elladan and Elrohir wrong. This may be a weird hill to die on because they’re small characters in the book, but I HATE how they’re represented in fanon. They’re made into carbon copies of the Harry Potter twins, who I already don’t like (ugh, I hate even mentioning Harry Potter here). I’m a twin myself, and I’m sick of twin characters being shoehorned into the goofy prankster role. It feels like a cheap attempt at comic relief because people don’t know how to write anything else. Especially when it’s just not how Elladan and Elrohir are represented in the book.

For the Silmarillion, I answered this one way here. I think the Weasley twin treatment also gets applied to Amrod and Amras, which is particularly nonsensical because the lives of all the Fëanorians are all extremely dark and tragic (the whole Silmarillion is tragic!). I get that sometimes people want to write happy, funny fanfiction, but can we please let go of the twins-as-wacky-pranksters trope?

Description of the worst take you’ve seen on tumblr:

For LOTR, I answered this another way here. But I wasn’t even thinking of another worst take, which is so bad that I’d erased it from my mind… the idea that the LOTR movies were an improvement on the books. "But nobody thinks this!" you will say. They do, and I’ve seen this take here on tumblr. WE HATES IT! There are good things about the movies (music, sets, acting, costumes, etc.) but literally nothing can come close to the beauty of the books. And besides, the movies deviated from them in many inexcusable ways—it would take to long to even list them all.

For the Silmarillion, one of the worst takes I’ve seen is the idea that Maeglin was really an innocent victim all along who was unfairly slandered by a supposedly biased history. I understand that sometimes it’s interesting to deconstruct the story, but at a certain point you’re just throwing it out the window. I’m not saying you can’t sympathize with him to a degree—he was clearly abused by his father as a child. But then he internalized those lessons—of his father’s possessiveness and violence towards women—and that was how he treated Idril.

I also know there’s a discussion among fans about Maeglin’s race, because earlier drafts described him as swarthy—and it’s certainly problematic for the dark-skinned male character to be the creepy one—but Tolkien’s later drafts described him as pale. So do with that what you will.

Which ships are the most annoying?

I don’t like the prevalence of Thorin/Bilbo. That’s partly because I hate the Hobbit movies, where the pairing mostly comes from, and it’s just not my cup of tea. People should write what they want, of course. I just don’t see the appeal.

For the Silmarillion, Sauron/Celebrimbor. It’s just everywhere, and I’m tired of it. Also, I get that some people are into darker relationships, but a lot of what I’ve seen of the pairing (even though I actively avoid it) is bizarrely romanticized. Like you guys do realize Sauron is evil, right? Even if he literally seduced Celebrimbor, I don’t think he’d be wracked with guilt about anything. People say they like this pairing because it’s dark, but then they turn Sauron into a poor little meow meow full of romantic longing and riddled with guilt because he tortures and kills his lover, and it’s just weird. I don’t think Sauron had romantic feelings for anyone, and I really don’t think he felt bad about torture and murder.

Worst part of fanon:

LOTR: I’m not even sure what LOTR fanon is anymore, probably because I try to ignore it. I guess I don’t like how the movie versions of characters and events have taken over. You know who also gets Weasleyified? Merry and Pippin, and it’s the movies’ fault. It’s not that I don’t enjoy them in the movies to a degree—but some of their best moments in the books were cut out.

The Silmarillion: I don’t even know if I could choose the worst part of fanon. I find Silmarillion fanon particularly frustrating, because in a fanbase where a lot of people don’t know the Silmarillion well, fan interpretations often get passed off as canon. People absorb fanon thinking that it’s canon, and that’s why you get so many posts that say things like, “Wait, I just realized Maglor ISN’T the nice Fëanorian.” (To be clear, I’m not judging people who say this. They’re unlearning fanon, which is good. It’s just a sign that fanon interpretations are taking over too much when you end up with a lot of people having to revise these big misconceptions.)

Ultimately, it’s just frustrating to me that fanon is so prevalent in either the LOTR or the Silmarillion fandom, because the source material is WAY more interesting. I might be swinging a bat at a hornet’s nest by saying all of this—but the asks were meant to be controversial!

You can't understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc):

For both LOTR and the Silmarillion, I don’t understand why people think Sauron can mind-read. That’s not a thing, but it’s astonishingly prevalent in fan interpretations. The worst part is, I don’t think people realize that mind-reading Sauron is a fan-invented concept.

[sister-lucifer]

Why even bother putting proship dni in your bio when you literally write rape porn? You are not any better than those types of people lmfao.

yk, i wasn’t originally gonna answer this, but i think this is actually an important discussion. long post ahead, be weary.

[tw for discussion of rape, sexual assault, pedophilia, and incest. stay safe.]

first things first: i don’t want this post to come off angry. I’m not, i understand why you might feel this way. this is a complex and nuanced situation that can be hard to wrap your head around

i’m not a puritan, i don’t mind dark/problematic content inherently, i know big shocker! but there’s a difference between writing something and glorifying it as though it is a positive.

all of my potentially triggering fics are FLUSH with warnings, because warnings are important! i know that what i’m writing is…well, intense! very intense for some people! and that’s ok! i can accomplish the balancing act that is writing what i want while still doing the most I can to keep my audience safe and comfortable.

every once in a while i’ll come across one of those stepcest or age gap fics while on my nightly search for smut, and i scroll by them without a thought because they, they’ve been properly marked with warnings and tagged, i have no business here.

but there’s a big different between that and trying to romanticize these things.

when i write my non/dub con fics, it’s obvious (or at least it should be obvious) that the aggressor is, to put it bluntly, a massive piece of shit. youre supposed to feel afraid or even a bit uncomfortable, because that isn’t a normal situation. you are not supposed to view those scenarios as just “oh another cutesy ship fic” because that’s not that they are. they’re dark and dirty and should be treated as such.

thats what i think makes a lot of the difference between me and actual proshippers: how the relationships are portrayed and how the author wants you to feel towards the aggressor or more powerful person in the relationship.

for a good example of everything i’m against, i suggest watching this video over blogthegreatrouge. here’s the spark notes version:

Rouge repeatedly featured rape, sexual assault, and pedophilic relationships in their comics. now if handled well, i wouldn’t be saying anything. but you are supposed to feel bad for the rapists and predators. you are supposed to sympathize with them and see their literal crimes as just “oh they were only trying to get their crush’s attention, so it’s ok!” but it’s not. i know that, you know that, Rouge SHOULD know that, and yet she’s portraying these things as normal relationships to an audience of children, which Rogue is definitely aware of. on top of that all of the triggering material is unmarked, meaning anyone could stumble upon it.

THIS is what I have an issue with. THIS is what actual proshippers do. and this is inherently harmful, because anyone who isn’t already mature enough to understand that this is wrong will take those experiences with them and it could put them in harms way. a child who sees that could think it’s okay, and potentially not speak up about abuse because of it.

for further examples of what i’m against, check this video as well. these authors are writing about taboo relationships which feature incest and often the young girl is only 17 or 18. i don’t think writing about these things in and of itself is bad, in fact i think there’s much discussion to be had around these issues, but glorifying them to an audience of young girls as if it’s the perfect romance is not the move! seriously, if you go to the amazon reviews for these books, too many of them are teenage girls talking about how they with their stepdad/teacher/dad were like this. THAT is a bad move.

Or what about the Killing Stalking scandal? maybe people criticize killing stalking because it “glorifies” abuse and murder, but if you actually read it, it doesn’t do that. it’s supposed to make you feel uncomfortable and gross, it’s supposed to be HORROR, not romance! the only reason it has the reputation it does is because anime review youtubers brought the comic to their audience of young people who weren’t mature enough to grasp the layers and nuance of what they were reading. killing stalking is a good comic, but all of its goodness is lost in the sea of teenage girls who have no idea what they’re reading.

any of my fics featuring non/dub con are NOT supposed to be cutesy or romantic. they’re supposed to be gross. that’s me looking at you and saying “isn’t that so fucked up? isn’t that wild? isn’t this guy such a gross piece of shit?”

Black Christmas (1974) once said: “If this movie doesn’t make your skin crawl, it’s on too tight.”

If my fics don’t make your skin crawl, it’s on too tight! this is a space where you can come and be gross and yucky and then return to your normal daily life unaffected, because i expect that everyone reading my fics is old and mature enough to understand that you are not supposed to sympathize with the aggressors, you are supposed to see them as the nasty swamp creatures they are. and if i find that they arent, then that’s what the block button is for!

this is a space where we can ask “hey, wouldn’t it be fucked up if x happened?” and have that question answered in an equally fucked up manner, because there’s an inherent understanding that everything that happens in those fics is, in fact, fucked up.

i hope this answers your question, anon.

[wickjump]

EDIT HERE SORRY THIS PROBABLY SEEMS MEAN I DIDNT MEAN FOR IT TO BE 😞 sals (unless it causes harm)!!!! u do u :3 i am not trying to control what u ship or like

cross and killer have no canon interactions in killer’s au, and uvs killer is left very vague as a character. cross and killer fought but that’s kind of It. no interpersonal dynamics with them. they are hardly close, and i cannot judge a dynamic based on how they act as strangers. that’s really strange because you act differently to people you know vs those you don’t. killer and cross don’t know each other. everything about them is made up, no canon content, nothing.

cross and dream on the other hand had an entire comic showing their relationship, which is how i judge it. because we see a lot of it and how it plays out. cream might not be canon anymore but we have an idea of how it would look if it were canon.

and it wasn’t just joku’s specific version of cream is was also jakei’s, it was a collab. and i ignore canon all the time! ship what you like!! but it’s the same discomfort people have with ships that are canonically unhealthy that get said unhealthiness brushed under the rug. they canonically would not be good and nobody acknowledges it and completely ignores the aspect that made it such by pretending it doesn’t exist. the only thing retconned about dream and cross is that they canonically dated, not how dream’s aura would affect him.

id honestly be so much more fine with it if people didn’t ignore dream’s aura and how it messes cross up. if there was a single nod to it id be fine but it’s just. never there. it’s ignored and pushed to the side and nobody acknowledges it at all. a lot of people are uncomfortable with fanon versions of proven-to-be unhealthy ships, i’m the same here. ship what you like, i really dont care. im just airing out a frustration i have, i genuinely do not see the issue with that. hating kross based on theories of how they’d act vs hating cream based on how they’ve been proven to act is really different. there is also a difference in ignoring canon when it’s retconned (ie. the fact cross and dream ever dated) or problematic compared to ignoring canon when it’s Still canon just so the ship can be nicer. not saying you can’t or that you’re bad for doing so but that it’s not irrational or unreasonable or weird of me to acknowledge this canon just because it clashes with a ship people like. how dream’s aura would influence cross is still canon. it’s not problematic or retconned, it has no reason to be ignored outside of people Just Not Liking It because it clashes with a ship they love. i am not weird for acknowledging this canon.

ALSO SORRY THIS IS SO LONG?? and the tone is probably so off im so sorry 💔 my intent here was not 2 be mean don’t think that!!!!!! i prommy this isn’t a dig at you or anyone have a very good night ^^

sorry im So sorry wick is on her hater arc. wick is specifically tired of seeing so many cream posts about why it’s actually the healthiest ship as though cross is canonically unable to control how he feels about Dream PRIOR TO THE PANELS I SHOWED HE HAD WILLINGLY JOINED NM ONLY TO BETRAY HIM AND JOIN DREAM NOT BECAUSE IFS WHAT HE TRULY WANTED BECAUSE HE PREVIOUSLY DISLIKED DREAM IMMENSELY BUT BECAUSE HE HAD JUST GOTTEN A TASTE OF DREAMS AURA AND DIDNT WANT TO LEAVE IT

wick hater era im sorry

[the-badger-mole]

When I dislike something, I'm not just disliking it out of a void. I have reasons and one of the ways to make it worse is for everyone else saying how great that thing is. I don't know if I would like dislike Aang as much as I do if I didn't have Bryke, Nickelodeon, the Avatar the Last Airbender official YouTube channel, kataangers and now Janet Varney of all people constantly trying to tell me how great Aang is and just gloss over or hand wave away all the crap he does pull.

I don't know who Janet Varney is, but I feel you. Aang was never my favorite character, and there's no version of Kataang I would have shipped. I think I would have always found Aang...problematic for lack of a better word, but a lot of my outright hatred for him is in hindsight. Everything that happened after the series ended- the comics, LoK, Brkye, and all the horrid Aang fans (that is the fans that were harassing Zutara fans for ridiculous reasons, not all Aang fans) made me hate Aang more than I would have if he was just this lazy main character who didn't actually work for his victory. I merely disliked Aang in the beginning. Now I loathe him proudly.

[p34rl34rring]

um no nuance november: atla edition?

this was all over tiktok and ive seen some people do it here so...here we go...some of these are probably hot takes, you have been warned.

most of the fandom seems to forget that katara is a young girl with deep-seated trauma that she never truly dealt with. cut the racism and misogyny. shes not the “token straight,” shes not annoying, shes not technically the “mom friend,” she deserves a better life (and life partner) than she was given in canon.

katara’s comment to sokka during the southern raiders was harsh don’t get me wrong, but it was justified 

most of my issues with characters fall on their writing...not the characters themselves if that makes any sense

bakoda should have been canon

why didn’t katara, toph and zuko reunite in korra (they’re literally my three faves i was robbed, plus they all just seem sad...)

mako is hot

if we are talking combat, earth is the strongest element...toph can genuinely just drop a rock on someone and its over

republic city is absolutely unnecessary and frankly, stupid. capitalist propaganda :) why would you american-ize this series? im baffled

i just hope that azula got therapy and some love...her actions were outrageous but as far as we know she was conditioned by ozai to just be a pawn

katoph = best duo (friendship and fighting) in the whole show

katara is not a sister to zuko...that role is for toph

(as much as i love firelord zuko) zuko should have waited at least a few years to actually assume the position but even then i truly think he would hate it and institute a democracy

the humor did not land in for me in lok (list of tried and failed for me is meelo, bumi, bolin, varrick, eska...)

i truly did not feel any strong emotional attachment to any lok character (causing me to be pretty indifferent to most of the entirely new editions to the show)

(i think the large cast did not allow for much development for really anyone, save for korra tenzin and maybe lin?, leaving them all to be pretty two dimensional.)

more rambling under the cut (its more shippy you have been warned...)

the fanon portrayal of aang is a glorified version of the canon (you can criticize your faves!)

aang being a “bad” father in canon fits his (poorly written) character 

TAANG IS GENIUS (it makes me like aang more :)

i dont think maiko is healthy...at all (same for bolin and eska and zhu li and varrick) - bottom line: bryke cant write relationships

building on that it felt weird for zuko to change throughout book 3 for him only to revert back to his old life in the finale by staying with mai

sokka and suki are the only valid canon couple

also why is everyone so quick to be “oh suki is bi!!” but so much of this fandom feels the need to say “no, katara is the token straight she can’t be bi...” it seems so silly to say but katara hatred is so normalized in this fandom and it makes me so upset. literally everyone would be fucking dead if it werent for her i love my queen fuck y’all

kanna would not have gone back to pakku

MAILEE BITCHES

why are most zukka shippers women...food for thought

peace by taylor swift is a zutara song...zukkas dont even try to claim that

zutara works...it just seems like antis forget that these two characters (even if it is not explicitly romantic in atla) have such a strong bond. they listen, care, and look out for one another...and bottom line they see each other as equals. (also watch the second half of tsr again...they play off each other and work so well together)

this fandom demonizes zutara shippers for absolutely no reason while completely disregarding actual problematic issues that occur throughout the rest of the fandom

suki in the comics is practically a katara stand in

makorra felt like an attempt to appease the zutara shippers (it failed immensely)

should we love kuvira as much as we do? should we be shipping her with korra...?

in canon it does make sense that sokka could have been suyin’s father, but where did suki go? were they hinting that zuko and suki had izumi, meaning that sokka and suki broke up? but WHY? they were literally perfect with absolutely no complication in canon...tldr: post-atla is so ridiculous

i think this feels salty...and i went on for too long...i needed to get that out...um...

[hunterguyveriv]

Teela New Design Thoughts and Rant

So I have sat on this, trying to let the image of Teela’s new design grow on me, and I am not sorry to say I am not digging it. Like Allura’s redesign for Legendary Defender, the image in question screams tones of political correctness and a grab for “representation” brownie points with Teela’s new appearance and the race-bending of a less known character to me (Andra) except for Injustice vs Masters of the Universe. So I’ll wait to collect my bag of worms on that topic once the series is out in completion, THIS topic is more about Teela.

I need more than just an image to accept and like it. I need to know why she doesn’t keep her classic design, the function and reason of this new one. And no, I am not talking about that ridiculous image someone did calling her “a mean bisexual.” Just because... NEW “fans” love the new design and accept it, does not mean old timers like myself need to love it and automatically accept it. 

And before any of you NEW fans (who more than likely will jump ship once the series is over like most did to Voltron for newer series like Dragon Prince/She-Ra/Owl Hotel) jump down my throat, (like your lot did to us old-timers with Voltron and She-Ra,) keep this in mind - I was 1 when He-Man and the Masters of the Universe first hit TV screens back in 1983. Those of us who grew up with the classic series, WE, are allowed to have our opinions about newer versions of the shows we grew up with, if it goes against your views move on. We go into any new series to a franchise we loved as young children hoping for the best - that it honors the original it hails from. We want it to succeed and be popular.

Like Voltron, I grew up with many iterations of He-Man. The classic Masters of the Universe series, the Masters of the Universe movie with Dolph Lundgren as He-Man (still think he should make a cameo as Prince Adam's father or distant ancestor but that’s just me), and even The New Adventures of He-Man, and even the 2002 cartoon series. Each iteration had Teela in it, and we fans accepted her designs.

Teela from the original series “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe”

Teela from the1980s live action movie “Masters of the Universe” portray by Chelsea Field

Teela and He-Man seen from The New Adventures of He-Man

Teela from the 2002 He-Man series 

Teela’s various appearances in the Eternity War Saga and Masters of the Universe comics as Captain of the Guard/Future Sorceress of Greyskull/Prince Adam’s Wife/He-Man’s barbarian queen

First image of Kevin Smith’s Teela.

To old-timers like myself, who grew up with the series, read the comics growing, who collected the toys - THIS is Teela! This is who we grew up with, so YES(!) we are going to be resistant of excepting what she looks like now. Just like many of us old timers didn’t like the things they were doing in the Voltron series.

Teela from comic strips pre-dating the filmation series

But as you can also see, she never used to be the white skin tight jumpsuit clad redhead. She had the appearance of a Barbarian woman you would see in something like Conan or Red Sonja. In these images, Teela has the right quirks about her. She is beautiful, strong minded and willed, determined, doesn’t put up with anyone’s shit while also having a vulnerability she tries desperately to hide from not just Prince Adam, her father, but even Adora in some of the comics. Here...

 this design doesn’t scream beautiful strong warrior training to be the next sorceress (depending on what canon you follow). But I personally think they took away all the traits that made Teela such a great and complex character over the years just to fit the current narrative that a strong willed woman doesn’t need any male support whether it is her father Man-At-Arms or her betrothed (again depending on which canon you follow) Prince Adam/He-Man.

This new design to me, looks like Kevin Smith wants to capitalize on the Cara Dune design as if to say "I see how much you loved Cara-Dune, look I have my own version!" 

This worked for Gina Carano, because she is a former MMA fighter, which played greatly into the role of being a former Rebel Alliance Shock-trooper turned brawler. However even with her being built like she is, they gave her obvious curves while making her the brawler she was. The only curve I remotely see on her is her waist and hips. With her looking like Cara-Dune it also says LACK OF ORIGINALITY which Voltron Legendary Defender and other Netflix reboots are NOT innocent at either - case in point both from Voltron the Shiro & Keith fight seemed to Anakin vs Obi-Wan and the Paladin Uniforms in Season 8 seeming too Wrath of Khan-Undiscovered Country like.

Secondly and most briefly don’t even get me started on who is voicing Teela too! I never liked Sarah Michelle Gellar, thought she was way to overrated because of Buffy the Vampire Slayer! I know the original voice actress let alone the voice actress from The New Adventures of He-Man are probably too old to do so, but I would have gladly accepted Lisa Ann Beley who voiced her in the 2002 series or even Shannon Chan-Kent who for those who don’t know her, voiced Larmina in 2011s Voltron Force!

Last, some have stated that they don’t like that she looks more masculine then feminine. That she needs to look male to be a hero or compete in a man’s world and I have to agree. Some have argued that Kevin Smith is going for a more realistic appearance of a woman who has the strength to wield not just a sword and shield in battle but also a staff. This I call horseshit, complete and utter horseshit and those that say that need to do their research!

Look at these following actresses:

Underworld franchise: - Rhona Mitra - Sonja

- Zita Görög - Amelia

- Kate Beckingsale

- Clementine Nicholson 

Fantasy/Historical/Sci-Fi/Superhero Movies: - Bridgette Nelson who played Sonja in Red Sonja (BIG ONE HERE!)

- Sandahl Bergman who played Valeria in Conan the Barbarian and Queen Gedren in Red Sonja

- Sienna Guillory as Arya from the movie Eragon

- Keira Knightley from 2004s King Arthur and then the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. (which this is possibly the most accurate depiction of ancient celtic women in battle by Hollywood)

- Rosa Salazar of Alita, granted she wore a motion capture suit, but she wasn't built 

- EVEN Gal Gadot! She was an actual Israeli Soldier

- Zoe Saldana for Gomora

- Lucy Lawliss as Xena 

- Leonor Varela of Blade II

A woman does not need to be built like this new design of Teela to fit a role that requires them to be someone who wields a sword/staff/battle ax/or bow and arrow. Are you going to tell other actresses like Cate Blanchet, Milla Jovovich, Charlize Theron, or the actresses of other fantasy films or actresses from the History Channel series Vikings that they need to bulk up to use those weapons realistically like some have tried arguing ? 

These are all actresses who prove that you don’t need to have buff arms to wield weapons like a staff/sword/or ax. They all played characters who still managed to look bad ass when in combat while looking feminine and beautiful. Yes women warriors wanted to stand side by side with their brothers at arms and have done so throughout many cultures in ancient history. Most of them probably having the build of many of the women above!

Wielding weapons like swords/axes/clubs/ etc properly you don’t need to have your arms built like that, all it requires is the proper weapons training and time. Someone who is captain of the royal guard…which oh gee is someone like Teela(!) is would be well versed in. So answer me this, why is a feminine looking Teela problematic and the new one isn’t?

Now as a He-Man fan, I will go into this series hoping for the best, that it does what Voltron Legendary Defender failed to do and that is honor the original series and be a love letter to us old-timers. But depending on the trailer (which I am surprised we haven’t seen yet) or the series itself I am bracing myself for it  to be a shit show like Voltron became when they brought Shiro back. 

[chibimyumi]

I'm not in the Black Butler fandom but I've heard an account on this site say the creator(?) Of black butler is a pedophile and homophobic. I'm not sure if it's true or not though. They might just be trying to make the fandom look bad.

Dear Anon,

What makes this fandom look bad is the fandom itself. I am not sure about other fandoms, but the Kuroshitsuji fandom for one is filled with self-righteous, compulsive liars who make up ‘facts’ to legitimise their own ideas.

To answer your question; no, to the best of our knowledge Toboso Yana is NOT a confirmed pedophile, nor homophobic. Of course one might make a case out of how eroticising and fetishising children or homoromanticism/sexuality is a form of pedophilia/homophobia, but that’s an altogether different can of worms which I refuse to touch.

Lending your ask as opportunity, allow me to compose a small FAQ here.

Kuroshitsuji FAQ

1. Was Kuroshitsuji supposed to be a yaoi?

No. The short version of the answer is as such:

Square Enix does not publish any yaoi or explicit content.

Yana already had her own yaoi/BL associated artist name Yanao Rock. It would be very foolish to start a BL-themed manga using her official artist name Toboso Yana which she is trying to keep separate from Yanao Rock.

The rumour of Kuroshitsuji supposed to have been BL only exists in the Western fandom.

The detailed answer can be found here, here and here.

2. Is Sebaciel canon?

No. For the purpose of marketing Yana has neither confirmed nor denied the truth of this statement, because it obviously sells. But if you study the interaction between the characters, it is clear as day that they would not be romantically interested in one another, because 1. Sebastian does not like slavery, or enjoy dating cattle, and 2. O!Ciel is too traumatised. When push came to shove (in the Emerald Witch Arc) he would not even let Sebas near him.

A thorough analysis of their relationship can be found in this post.

Although Yana has said nothing, Editor K, the second highest authority on this series, has confirmed that there is no affection between master and servant.

“【The foundation of Kuroshitsji no. 16】 The butler is a demon and   competent and loyal. However, there is no affection for his   master. [Sebastian] supports his master in his revenge as a butler, but the nature of the contract is one where he will eat the soul after the completion [of the revenge]. The contract is the only reason [Sebastian]  works so hard, he is a perverted gourmet. #Kuroshitsuji”

3. Is it alright to ship Sebaciel because Yana’s material endorses it?

Does Yana’s material casually portraying murder make murder less severe a problem?

An author is human too, even IF an author thinks of something as acceptable, we as readers need to consider what is right or wrong. Most classic literature/media actively promote sexism, racism, etc.; but it does not mean we should follow those ideas. “[Person] does it, so I can do it too” is Trump’s or a 5 year old’s argumentation style.

4. Is Grell Sutcliff a man or a woman?

Grell Sutcliff is a transgender woman. Besides Grell’s own claims, Yana herself too has confirmed her statement in text.

“Ah, but this time after the completion of the script, I had a request to Grell’s actor Mr. Uehara. “Could you please [play her] as a strong woman”, I said (laughs) In the original comics, Grell does not make an appearance between the Red Butler Arc and the Luxury Liner Arc, and therefore people often think she is useless at her job. So I asked [Mr. Uehara] to please portray her as a career woman in front of her kouhai (younger colleague, aka Ronald)” 【Toboso】

Here is an entire Masterpost on gender in Kuroshitsuji, and here a detailed history of how Yana has been owning up for her mistake of portraying Grell in a problematic manner.

4.5 Did Yana not say Grell is male?

Yana has never said and meant that Grell is a man.

Yana did write on her old blog: “yes, Grell is a man, but has the heart of a maiden” (Toboso, 2010).  That however, was the lack of accurate terminology in Japanese for a transgender woman from a decade ago. Transgender studies have developed entirely differently than within Euro-American discourse. As such, holding Yana’s words from 10 years ago accountable as accurate NOW in the English speaking community would be Euro-Americentrist at best.

5. Is O!Ciel’s real name Astre/Noel/Merde?

No, Yana has confirmed that none of the three main characters’ names (Sebastian, O!Ciel and Undertaker) have been revealed yet. And indeed, Undertaker’s name is therefore also not ‘Adrian Crevan’ as has been claimed often times.

Click here for more details.

6. Is the anime canon?

No, the only part Yana had in the anime were the first few episodes of the first season that were directly based on her manga, and the visual designs of some characters. Yana herself does not even seem to like the anime, let alone consider it ‘part of her canon’. Besides, the anime actively DEFIES her canon.

Click here and here for more details.

7. Is the second musical ‘the Most Beautiful Death in the World’ canon?

No, just like the anime, the only part Yana played in this musical is the visual designs of the characters. The characters however, are written by the Kuromyu creative team.

“RT @toboso_official: When I was watching kuromyu・A Thousand Souls, I really thought: “Eric and Alan are characters I could never have created from scratch…” (No offense meant!) I was responsible for the visual designs, but the characters were born from the writing by Ms. Okada, the directing by Fukuyama-sensei, and finally, by the actors.”【Toboso】 

Click here for the mini masterpost on this musical, and to understand how this musical is homophobic, transphobic, pedophilic on top of defying Yana’s canon.

If there are other things that would belong on this FAQ list, feel free to let me know! I hope this helps.

BUT HONESTLY PEOPLE; STOP MAKING UP CLAIMS!!!!!!!! Sometimes we just don’t know things, and it is alright! If your theory does not have confirmation (yet) or is actively defied, WELL, SUCK IT UP!

[redlenai]

Twitter SPN is so funny, had a fun “argument” with someone but these are going to be my highlights that make me tilt my head like Jack

 Basically, you are forbidden from saying “found family” or that “X character deserved better”, or that there has been “queerbaiting on the show”, that’s automatically a Heller thing, therefore your argument is invalid and whatever you say will not be taken seriously independently if you’re not exclusively talking about shipping on the show, independently if you’re NOT a heller/destiel fan; you are automatically considered someone who wants “rainbows and happy My Little Pony kind of endings”

 That I’m a poor ignorant thing for believing that there is romance in SPN, actually not, I believe there was a fricking shirt-storm of hands of writers, editors, actors, producers, directors and more meddling with the story and the characters constantly that the show doesn’t have a solid identity like on the first 5 seasons. A terrible implemented confession that even if it was meaningful to Save the World, is useless if it’s going to be ignored and removed from the narrative (cofcof and not only they buried the gays but as well the heterosexual romantic interest of the other brother) and both brothers looked emotionless during the finale after they won as if they were drugged by the Turducken sandwich)

 They say they don’t “invalidate” your “Heller” opinion and again independently if you’re or not actually one, they claim you’re being pathetic, ridiculous, idiotic, (insert more insults here),  wasting your time and that there are more important things out in the real world... all said from an anti-heller exclusively made account, but if you were to speak to them with the same level of insults you’ll be “as problematic as the rest of hellers”, and if you call out the unfair treatment, they’ll make thousands of buts just so attempt to claim you’re actually the hypocrite one. They openly say they hate hellers and while claiming they “don’t put everyone on the same bag” they still prejudge, insult, assume everything that I could possibly think regarding the show.(Which is an impossible take since I change my mind and have several ideas coexisting even if they are opposites too)

They can say that you’re wrong, delusional, that you have been watching a totally different show, that this is a horror show where happy endings or sexuality have no place there and it’s only and solely about the brothers fighting the supernatural. They genuinely believe that characters like Dean are loved only for the bisexual undertakes and claim we reduce the character to a “stereotype” of homosexuality where that it’s his only personality (Like, yeah,they... don’t care if you’re actually queer/bisexual, if you identify with Dean you’re actually being disrespectful to LGBT and making a stereotype over him)  While you’re there letting their own version being able to coexist, not calling them wrong but that they have a different perspective and resolution over the overal message of the show. Not to mention that we’re all a bunch of disrespectful idiots for processing the show with a different interpretation than them and that “I’m the one being disrespectful”, like I’m sorry but I don’t even live in the USA nor told Jensen at his face that Dean must be Bi/The finale sucked/he is my bitch/to do homoerotic OPs with his soulmat--- brother.

They can claim that they are “studying audiovisual arts and know how to make a better show than your shitty fanfic. You’re wasting your time and complaining when there are bigger issues than your stupid little ship”, funny thing, I don’t make fanfics yet I do work for comics, I have won a few prizes, worked with editorials, made narrative and character development studies, have supported causes and being involved on IRL problems to try to solve them and such---- Oh no, I’m bragging and showing my privileges just to show my superiority to a fuck-hellers account, I’ve been building my entire artistic and author career just for the sake of this moment, I need to be realistic that just because I want Cas and Dean married (???) that doesn’t mean that it’ll happen, that I only care about these characters just because I see them as GAY but ignore all the other queer characters (The same characters the person claims are not important, not crucial to the main protagonists development, are not friends nor family, are only extras but seems that they only care about said characters just to have them as arguments to say “There are crumbs of representation, but since they are not your delusional gay pairing you don’t care about them”) and honestly, I’m that little weirdo who would watch several spin-offs, mini shows, novels, comics or whatever SPN related content without needing the brothers to be in there as protagonist and to even provide new characters that could appeal to a section of the fandom without “degenerating” the main cast if you so much consider it like that.

Oh, and since I’m a disgusting little Heller I actually only have to like one single headcanon about how the finale could have been and if you would have liked any kind of different ending even tragic, neutral, vanilla, strange, open, etc then you’re just contradicting yourself and making no total sense and continue to being delusional. (Mostly, because I said that I would have even liked an Ending where everyone dies and the world gets destroyed just like in Devilman, as if finally deciding the show to be tragic to the very end)

Final take, I got told to go “make silly little fanfics and comics fixing the finale since you hated it so much”, like, idk if it’s a hate-love relationship where you hate the content but still want more of it just for the thrill to complain about “dha gays continue making the show gaaay noooo”

[jyndor]

(Imperialism etc anon) Ok I get where you're coming from! Thank you for being understanding. While Zutara is obviously not inherently racist or anything there are zutara interpretations that *are* racist (example: fire lady katara which I can get into) and it does need to be acknowledged that Zuko's status as fire nation royalty does create a power imbalance between him and Katara. Now, this is a conversation that has a lot of nuance to it but it seems like the people harassing you are (1/2)

(2/2) just repeating some genuine critique they saw without understanding what it means just to say that they're right, harassing people in the process. I did not have that context when sending that first ask and I apologize, since anons harassing you and others are clearly doing it out of bad faith. I just didn't like the leveraging of concepts that really matter in real life (colonialism, etc), ykwim? But I get what you were trying to do.

hey anon I’m finally getting to you after 84 years XD

so first off, I want to be careful about how I approach this because I understand that as a white person (even if my ancestors experienced imperialism) in the US I absolutely benefit from imperialism and don’t want to like, idk, whitesplain XD so if anyone gets annoyed with any way I say anything, just lmk and I’ll rework it. and I also do understand that these are real world issues that are far more consequential than messaging in media (although I do think it’s very important that we challenge messages in media because of media’s influence on our thinking and politics).

but before I talk about zuko and his relationship to fire nation imperialism, and then later fire lady katara and why it isn’t INHERENTLY racist but definitely can be, I want to talk about the atla fandom and how we got here. like, why I assume that most anons who come at zutara shippers are asshats acting in bad faith. if you already know fandom history, skip this section.

1. atla and the fandom has always been kind of shitty and racist

so IDK if everyone is familiar with the history of the ship war in atla fandom, but it’s regarded as one of the nastiest ship wars in fandom history which I agree lol. atla’s creators were some of the first to interact with the fandom the way they did - back then it wasn’t all that common for creators to get into twitter feuds with fans and boundaries were respected more than they are now imo. but for better or worse, and it is a mixed bag, bryke interacted with fandom a lot. certainly at cons but also on social media.

but honestly things really got extra mean in fan spaces when bryke made a “joke” atla season 4 slideshow out of fan art (some of which was really sexual in nature and totally inappropriate) that mocked fans’ creations, but especially zutara fanart and zutara itself. it was pretty tasteless especially considering how most zutara fans were teen girls, and featured some art of sokka saying that if you think zuko and katara would be good together, you’re doomed to have failed relationships. that’s where the whole “dark and mysterious” bs came from, which does describe some zutara fic but not even most of it lol. I actually do respect bryke a lot despite my criticism of them, but I don’t think I’ll ever get over that shit. like even if you hate zutara, even if it’s a joke, we were kids. and they were adults, and the whole thing was nasty.

however, the ship war was chaotic and messy, but it does feel worse now. maybe it’s because back then the fandom was MOSTLY teens and kids, and I don’t think that’s true now. we were all trying to prove our ship was best with like, content from the show and theories and all that, and now it’s like... whose ship is ~problematic lol it’s a show by white us americans appropriating from various cultures impacted negatively by us/british imperialism that they then profited off of, of course it’s racist. that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk about that, and in fact many poc have been saying this shit for years - that atla is racist and colorist at many times (guru pathik anyone?) and no one really listened.

if fans are complaining only about zutara, then I’m automatically writing them off as being insincere or ignorant. and since most of these people are anonymous, I have no idea if they are having substantive discourse about colorism in avatar or cultural appropriation (even if it is mostly appreciative). if you are on anon, I have no context about what you actually think except for what you give me. and that definitely is how I view anons in general but especially within the atla fandom because for all 13-ish years I’ve been in it, it’s been messy. that’s why zutara fans have isolated ourselves from the rest of fandom, because the rest of fandom has been really nasty to us. like did we give back some nastiness? absolutely.

but I would hazard a guess that most anti-zutara shippers don’t know about the conversations we have had in this community to make it safer for people of color, conversations that centered poc and woc especially. hey, that’s okay - not to compare zutara to r*ylo because eurgh but like, idk what discourse the r*ylos have about their community. no idea, I don’t go looking for it. and I don’t go to the tags and harass r*ylos - even though they harass the fuck out of everyone else.

2. so zuko and his privilege

undoubtedly zuko as fire lord is in a fairly privileged position LMFAO. but during the show zuko is very clearly exiled - he holds very little political power in the fire nation EXCEPT for during the first season when he is in command of a ship that ozai gave him on a punishment quest lol like yeah he does terrible things and he of all people would not excuse his actions even if he was a traumatized kid, that’s the point of his arc - that he got some exposure to the rest of the world and worked to be better. and the only reason he was exiled at all was because he cares about people - he didn’t question fire nation supremacy at 13, but he sure did question the morality of his people being lead to slaughter.

but after zuko and iroh defect from the fire nation and stop hunting aang, he has next to no power, in any kind of way. like the guy is a political refugee. and yes, he goes back to the fire nation for like five minutes before realizing that he hates everything about fire nation hegemony and that he wants to end his father’s reign of terror, like that isn’t exactly someone who is going to be well esteemed by the powerful elites when he returns and takes the throne.

and I disregard the comics because they suck lol but zuko does have power as the fire lord, but he limits his power. like compared to ozai, phoenix asshole? azula? for the rest of the world, zuko is kind of an ideal leader for a former colonizing/imperialistic nation to have - someone who worked to end that tyranny, who is anti-imperialist, who believes in justice and equality, who wants to make things right for the peoples who his family oppressed.

I do think it is important to talk about power dynamics and imbalances in relationships - for instance, one could argue that mai is at a significant disadvantage in her relationship with zuko. sure she is from a powerful family but not as powerful as zuko’s. sokka? hah forget it. he’s just as disadvantaged as katara is politically speaking. toph? well, she’s definitely not as powerful politically as zuko - her family tried to silence her for years because of her disability. and oh, she’s disabled so it might be ableist for zuko to strike up a relationship with her when they’re both adults. forgetting of course that toph and sokka and katara and suki and mai are not going to be shy about their wants and needs, that these relationships are not likely to be coercive by nature of the show they’re in and the characters they involve. this is not bill clinton with monica creepiness. like, you’d have to write the relationship that way.

the only person who arguably has more political power than zuko is aang. I guess zuko can’t ever be in a relationship with anyone other than aang. and zuko’s family massacred aang’s people so I guess we can’t ship zukaang. now I know you’re not saying that, context matters. power dynamics are important. but you can’t take away the agency of characters - katara, who is essentially a princess, has agency and can choose who she wants to be with. strictly speaking, aang is more powerful than anyone in terms of political power - he’s the avatar - and of course the dynamic is different by nature of aang not being from a line of oppressors, but there still is a power imbalance in their relationship. and I don’t know how many k/ataang shippers have discourse~ on that. not that I really feel like they NEED to, um idk what they talk about lol I’m not in those circles.

3. fire lady katara is in the eye of the beholder

so fire lady katara is not inherently bad or racist, it’s essentially like saying michelle obama shouldn’t have been first lady of the us (now I get that like the obamas being in power didn’t mean black people are not marginalized lol). you can have conversations about whether or not individual versions of fire lady katara are fucked up, and I’m superrrr open to that because I’ve seen it be kinda shitty before. i’m just gonna leave this link to @shewhotellsstories and her post on this.

but often times katara as fire lady is very dominant in global/fire nation/water tribe politics, she’s a game changer ambassador (that is probably the most popular headcanon I see), she holds on to her culture (and many fans have designed her being in her wt colors, zuko is respectful af to her, she and zuko spend extended periods in the swt, etc. like... it just depends on the way it’s written.

also leaving this response by @avatarnerdkiller to the idea of katara being a prize figurehead.

anyway, thanks for your patience anon and I am curious to see if you see this or even feel like responding after all this time XD

[arcticdementor]

“Hey bro! Check out this Nike ad!” This was my entry point into a new world.

…

Since Carlos had lived mostly outside the United States, he was able to follow soccer on a level I’d never encountered in my hometown. Back then, before social media and the advent of scarf-wearing Northwestern fútbol hipsters, big-time European soccer was like the metric system: Known to almost all but ourselves. But Carlos knew, and immediately used LimeWire to curate me a massive archive of 1990s through early 2000s soccer highlights. What was I doing in the world without them?

Oddly enough, in trying to inculcate me in soccer fandom, he started not with game highlights, but with the advertisements. Yes, Carlos was an educator and a voluntary footsoldier for Big Apparel. Going in, I had no clue about high-quality, internationally popular Nike soccer ads. The ads, written by the legendary Wieden+Kennedy firm, were miniature movies, films that were often creatively daring but also quite funny. The most popular of these ads might be “Good vs. Evil,” from 1996, where Nike’s best soccer players team up to play Satan’s literal army. The blending of sacrilege, theology and comedy just worked, like a more ambitious version of Space Jam that somehow took itself less seriously than Space Jam.

…

Yes, I know ads aren’t supposed to be high art. I understand that they are the purest distillation of manipulative greed. And yet, they sometimes are culturally relevant generational touchstones. While Nike was weaving soccer into enduring pop culture abroad, it was having a similar kind of success with basketball and baseball stateside. These ads weren’t just pure ephemera. Michael Jordan’s commercials were so good that, as he nears age 60, his sneaker still outsells any modern athlete’s. “Chicks dig the long ball” is a phrase (a) that can get you sent to the modern HR department and b) whose origins are fondly remembered by most American men over the age of 35.

Modern Nike ads will never be so remembered. It’s not because we’re so inundated with information these days, though we are. And it’s not because today’s overexposed athletes lack the mystique of the 1990s superstars, though they do. It’s because the modern Nike ads are beyond fucking terrible.

…

They’re bad for many causes, but one in particular is an incongruity at the company’s heart. Nike, like so many major institutions, is suffering from what I’ll call Existence Dissonance. It’s happening in a particular way, for a particular reason and the result is that what Nike is happens to be at cross-purposes from what Nike aspires to be.

…

For all the talk of a racial reckoning within major industries, Nike’s main problem is this: It’s a company built on masculinity, most specifically Michael Jordan’s alpha dog brand of it. Now, due to its own ambitions, scandals, and intellectual trends, Nike finds masculinity problematic enough to loudly reject.

This rejection is part of the broader culture war, but it’s accelerating due to an arcane quirk in the apparel giant’s strange restructuring plan, announced in June. Under the leadership of new CEO John Donahoe, Nike is moving away from its classic discrete sports categories (Nike Basketball, Nike Soccer, etc.) in favor of a system where all products are shoveled into one of three divisions: men’s, women’s and kids’. Obviously Nike made clothing tailored to the specificities of all these groups before, but now, Nike is emphasizing gender over sport. Gone is the model of the product appealing to basketball fans because they are basketball fans. It’s now replaced by a model of, say, the product appealing to women because they are women.

And hey, women buy sneakers too. Actually, women buy the lion’s share of clothing in the United States. While women shoppers are market dominant in nearly every aspect of American apparel, the clothing multinational named after a Greek goddess happens to be a major exception. At Nike, according to its own records, men account for roughly twice as much revenue as women do.

You might see that stat and think, “Well, this means that Nike will prioritize men over women in its new, odd, gendered segmentation of the company.” That’s not necessarily how this all works, thanks to a phenomenon I’ll call Undecided Whale. The idea is that a company, as its aims grow more expansive, starts catering less to the locked-in core customer and more to a potential whale which demonstrates some interest. Sure, you can just keep doing what’s made you rich, but how can you even focus on your primary business with that whale out there, swimming so tantalizingly close? The whale, should you bring it in, has the potential to enrich you far more than your core customers ever did. And yeah yeah yeah, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, but those were birds. This is a damned whale! And so you start forgetting about your base.

You can see this dynamic in other places. For the NBA, China is its Undecided Whale. It could be argued that the NBA fixates more on China than on America, even if the vast majority of TV money comes from U.S. viewership. The league figures it has more or less hit its ceiling in its home country, so China becomes an obsession as this massive, theoretical growth engine.

…

Here’s the main issue for Nike in this endeavor: The company, as a raison d’être, promotes athletic excellence. While women are among Nike’s major sports stars, the core of high-level performance, in the overwhelming majority of sports, is male. Every sane person knows that, though nobody in professional class life seems rude enough to say so. Obviously, there’s the observable reality of who tends to set records and there’s also the pervasive understanding that testosterone, the main male sex hormone, happens to give unfair advantages to the athletes who inject it.

Speaking of which, there’s a famous This American Life episode from 2002 where the public radio journos actually test their own testosterone levels. The big joke of the episode is just how comically low their T levels are. Sure, you would stereotype bookish public radio men in this way, and yet the results are on the nose enough to shock.

As a nerdy media-weakling type, I can relate to the stunning realization that you’ve been largely living apart from T. Before working in the NBA setting, I was an intern in the cubicles of Salon.com’s San Francisco office, around the time it was shifting from respectable online magazine into inane outrage content mill. Going from that setting to the NBA locker room was some jarring whiplash, like leaving the faculty lounge for a pirate ship. To quote Charles Barkley on the latter culture, “The locker room is sexist, racist, and homophobic … and it’s fun and I miss it.”

…

The “Good vs. Evil” ad boasts a “Like” to “Dislike” ratio of 20-to-1 on YouTube. On June 17th of 2021, Nike put out an ad ahead of the Euro Cup that referenced “Good vs. Evil” as briefly as it could. In this case, a little child popped his collar and used Cantona’s catchphrase. As of this writing, the new ad has earned a thousand more punches of the Dislike than of the Like button.

When you see it, it’s no surprise that the latest Euro Cup ad is disliked. I mean, you have to look at this shit. I know we’re so numb to the ever-escalating emanations of radical chic from our largest corporations, but sometimes it’s worth pausing just to take stock and gawk.

…

But today we are in the land of new football, where we take dictatorial direction from less-than-athletic minors. After her announcement, we are treated to a montage of different people who offer tolerance bromides.

“There are no borders here!”

“Here, you can be whoever you want. Be with whoever you want.”

(Two men kiss following that line, because subtlety isn’t part of this new world order.)

Then, a woman who appears to be breastfeeding under a soccer shirt, threatens, in French, “And if you disagree …”

And this is when the little boy gives us Cantona’s “au revoir” line before kicking a ball out of a soccer stadium, presumably because that’s what happens to the ignorant soccer hooligan. He gets kicked out for raging against gay men kissing or French ladies breastfeeding or somesuch. Later, a referee wearing a hijab instructs us, “Leave the hate,” before narrator girl explains, “You might as well join us because no one can stop us.”

Is that last line supposed to be … inspiring? That’s what a movie villain says, like if Bane took the form of Stan Marsh’s sister. Speaking of which, was this ad actually written by the creators of South Park as an elaborate prank? It’s certainly more convincing as an aggressive parody of liberals than as a sales pitch. Why, in anything other than a comedic setup, is a woman breastfeeding in a big-budget Euro Cup ad?

It’s tempting to fall into the pro-vanguardism template the boomers have handed down to us and sheepishly say, “I must be getting old, because this seems weird to me,” but let’s get real. You dislike this ad because it sucks. You are having a natural, human response to shitty art. This a hollow sermon from a priest whose sins were in the papers. Nobody is impressed by what Nike’s doing here. Nobody thinks Nike, a multinational famous for its sweatshops, is ushering us into an enlightened utopia. Sure, most media types are afraid to criticize the ad publicly. You might inspire suspicion that what you’re secretly against is men kissing and women breastfeeding, but nobody actually likes the stupid ad. No college kid would show it to a new friend he’s trying to impress, and it’s hard to envision a massive cohort of Gen Z women giving a shit about this ad either.

Now juxtapose that ad not just against the classics of the 1990s but also the 2000s products that preceded the Great Awokening. Compare it to another Nike Euro Cup advertisement, Guy Ritchie’s “Take It to the Next Level.”

…

Here’s the problem, insofar as problems are pretended into existence by our media class: The ad is very, very male. Really, what we are watching here is a boyhood fantasy. Our protagonist gets called up to the big show, and next thing you know he’s cavorting with multiple ladies, and autographing titties to the chagrin of his date. He can be seen buying a luxury sports car and arriving at his childhood home in it as his father beams with pride. Training sessions show him either puking from exhaustion or playing grab-ass with his fellow soccer bros. This is jock life, distilled. Art works when it’s true and it’s true that this is a vivid depiction of a common fantasy realized.

Nike’s highly successful “Write the Future” ad (16,000 Likes, 257 Dislikes) works along similar themes.

…

The recent Olympic ads were especially heavy on cringe radical chic, and might have stood out less in this respect if the athletes themselves mirrored that tone on the big stage. Not so much in these Olympics. It seems as though Nike made the commercials in preparation for an explosion of telegenic activism, only to see American athletes mostly, quietly accept their medals, chomp down on the gold, and praise God or country. Perhaps you could consider Simone Biles bowing out of events due to mental health as a form of activism, but overall, the athletes basically behaved in the manner they would have back in 1996.

But Nike forged onwards anyway. This ad in celebration of the U.S. women’s basketball team made some waves, getting ripped in conservative media as the latest offense by woke capital.

…

“Today I have a presentation on dynasties,” a pink-haired teenage girl tells us. “But I refuse to talk about the ancient history and drama. That’s just the patriarchy. Instead, I’m going to talk about a dynasty that I actually look up to. An all-women dynasty. Women of color. Gay women. Women who fight for social justice. Women with a jump shot. A dynasty that makes your favorite men’s basketball, football, and baseball teams look like amateurs.”

When she says, “That’s just the patriarchy,” the camera pans to a bust of (I think) Julius Caesar. At another point, the girl says, “A dynasty that makes Alexander the Great look like Alexander the Okay.” Fuck you, Classical Antiquity. Fuck you, fans of teams. You’re all just the patriarchy. Or something.

Nike could easily sell the successful American women’s basketball team without denigrating other teams, genders and ancient Mediterranean empires that have nothing to do with this. Could but won’t. The company now conveys an almost visceral need for women to triumph over men because … well, nobody really explains why, even if it has something to do with Undecided Whaling. In Nike’s tentpole Olympics ad titled “Best Day Ever,” the narrator fantasizes about the future, declaring, “The WNBA will surpass the NBA in popularity!” ​

…

There are theories on the emergence of woke capital, with many having observed that, following Occupy Wall Street, media institutions ramped up on census category grievance. The thinking goes that, in response to the threat of a real economic revolution, the power players in our society pushed identity politics to undermine group solidarity. Well, that was a fiendishly brilliant plan, if anyone actually hatched it.

I’m not so convinced, though, as I’m more inclined to believe that a lot of history happens by happenstance. If we’re to specifically analyze the Nike Awokening, there is a recent top-down element of a mandate for Undecided Whaling, but that mandate was preceded by a socially conscious middle class campaign within the company.

This isn’t unique to Nike, either. Given my past life covering the team that tech moguls root for, I’ve run into such people. They aren’t, by and large, ideological. Very few are messianically devoted to seeing the world through the intersectionality lens. They are, however, terrified of their employees who feel this way. The mid-tier labor force, this cohort who actually internalized their university teachings, are full of fervor and willing to risk burned bridges in favor of causes they deem righteous. The big bosses just don’t want a headline-making walkout on their hands, so they placate and mollify, eventually bending the company’s voice into language of righteousness.

…

All the guilt and atonement transference make for bad art. And so the ads suck. There’s no Machiavellian conspiracy behind the production. It’s just a combination of desperately wanting female market share and desperately wanting to move on from the publicized sins of a masculine past. So, to message its ambitions, the exhausted corporation leans on the employees with the loudest answers.

There’s a lot of interplay between Nike and Wieden+Kennedy when the former asks the latter for a type of ad, but the through line from both sides is a lot of cooks in the kitchen. Based on conversations with people who’ve worked in both environments, there’s a dearth of personnel who are deeply connected to sports. In place of a grounding in a subculture, you’re getting ideas from folks who went to nice colleges and trendy ad schools, the type of people who throw words like “patriarchy” at the screen to celebrate a gold medal victory. The older leaders, uneasy in their station and thus obsessed with looking cutting edge, lean on the younger types because the youth are confident. Unfortunately, that confidence is rooted in an ability to regurgitate liturgy, rather than generative genius. They’ve a mandate to replace a marred past, which they leap at, but they’re incapable of inventing a better future.

…

Ironically, Nike mattered a lot more in the days when its position was less dominant. Back when it had to really fight for market share, it made bold, genre-altering art. The ads were synonymous with masculine victory, plus they were cheekily irreverent. And so the dudes loved them. Today, Nike is something else. It LARPs as a grandiose feminist nonprofit as it floats aimlessly on the vessel Michael Jordan built long ago. Like Jordan himself, Nike is rich forever off what it can replicate never. Unlike Jordan, it now wishes to be known for anything but its triumphs. Nike once told a story and that story resonated with its audience. Now it’s decided that its audience is the problem. It wouldn’t shock you to learn that Carlos hated the new Nike ads I texted to him. His exact words were, “I don’t want fucking activism from a sweatshop monopoly.” He’ll still buy the gear, though, just not the narrative. Nike remains, but the story about itself has run out. Au revoir. 

[seyaryminamoto]

I feel like i'm gonna regret asking this but what is hiby

Oh. Ohohoho, oh. I recently answered this to someone else (not on this blog), I suppose there are so many newcomers in this fandom lately that HIBY has become slightly less known than it used to be.

HIBY stands for How I Became Yours, the most polemic and catastrophic fancomic in the history of the Avatar franchise. If you thought any of the official comics were problematic in any sense, woah boy, they’re goddamn flawless masterpieces compared to this thing.

Every possible angle of HIBY is problematic. Spot-on accusations of tracing were the main reason why Deviantart took down Jackie Diaz’s profile and comic from their platform. I heard Nickelodeon also got involved legally, not 100% sure on that front, but if true, they cracked down on her because she attempted to profit off this clunky mess of an inconsistent story by claiming it was somehow an official sequel to ATLA. To clarify, this last thing is something I was told, I can’t find actual sources to confirm it… so maybe I heard an exaggerated account of the tale of HIBY and it never went that far. Nevertheless, this comic didn’t need to escalate into a legal problem to be absolutely abhorrent.

In regards of art, HIBY somehow keeps discarding the asian-inspired setting seen throughout ATLA and instead favors showing the characters in European castles and outfits that don’t fit anywhere within ATLA’s world at all:

Katara is basically wearing a red version of Belle’s dress from Beauty and the Beast, if I’m not mistaken. The architecture of the place they’re at is so European it’s baffling (if I’m not mistaken, this is supposed to be Toph’s family’s house :’D). Also, it’s blatantly obvious that the background is a photograph, so she could’ve just as easily looked for photos of asian locations instead, but she picked european architecture because yes. Yet more blows against the possible artistic merits someone could offer this comic (if there’s any).

Now, though, the BIGGEST problem in HIBY is, of course, the story:

To recap: ATLA ends with Aang and Katara kissing at Ba Sing Se. Whatever problems someone may have with their relationship, or Mai and Zuko’s, or Sokka and Suki’s, it’s unquestionable that those three ships were canon by the end of the show.

Jackie Diaz’s SEQUEL COMIC doesn’t acknowledge this finale: somehow, Aang is in love with Toph but they’re not together despite there’s literally NOTHING in their way, since Aang and Katara weren’t together at all, according to Diaz. And Katara? Oh, she’s pining endlessly over Zuko, who somehow married Mai…

… Despite wanting Katara too.

… Despite he literally knocked up Katara back when the war was ending, which resulted in a miscarriage because of Mai’s wicked schemes~~!!

Can someone please explain to me in what world does it make sense for Zuko, FIRE LORD ZUKO, to be in a relationship with someone he doesn’t want, when the person he does want is RIGHT THERE, AVAILABLE, when there’s no real political consequences to ANYTHING that happens in this comic? You could say “oh no the Fire Nation people wouldn’t accept a Water Tribe woman…” … but then Zuko ends up with Katara anyways and the only problem is that Mai wants to kill them for that :’) so… no excuse works.

Basically there’s no real plot, the whole thing boils down to “I want these ships to happen and I need them to face hardships even if they don’t make sense”. The main hardship is that Mai doesn’t want her HUSBAND to carry out an affair with Katara. Zuko’s response to Mai’s obvious and reasonable complaint about their illicit relationship is to TURN VIOLENT WITH HER. And he’s the good guy :’)

Mai has a non-existent older brother Sho, who looks like a BLEACH character with Ozai’s hairstyle, and together they will try to kill Katara because, welp, someone has to give them trouble, I guess. In all fairness, the only character with a relatively logical flow of thought in this damn trainwreck is Mai. I mean, “my piece of shit husband married me for political clout, got his mistress pregnant, I didn’t want the kid to be a problem for me so I induced a miscarriage in Katara by poisoning her, probs just wanted Katara dead altogether but whatever, I only got the kid. Then Zuko threw me away despite I’m his legal wife and I’m really pissed about it so I want Katara dead” is the smartest writing in this entire comic. And no, that’s not a compliment, it’s still stupid as fuck but that’s how much more stupid everything else is. 

So, the happy couples are, like I said, Zuko and Katara, who get together despite Zuko is married to Mai, Aang and Toph, who somehow weren’t together despite there’s nothing in the way, AAAND… 

… Sokka and fake!Azula. Because I refuse to acknowledge that thing as the Princess we all love and adore.

Frankly, I consider it a miracle that HIBY didn’t destroy our ship completely when it was posted online, seeing as it was amongst the most talked-about fanmade content in Avatar’s fandom at the time. If people no longer associate Sokkla with HIBY immediately, we’ve definitely done a good job saving our poor ship’s face and showing it’s got a fuckton of potential compared to the shitfest that comic portrayed.

Why is Sokkla so problematic in HIBY? Because of fake!Azula, of course. Why is she fake!Azula? Because she’s got plot-convenient amnesia! Turns out that, for some reason, Azula forgot all the events from ATLA (let’s be real, so did Jackie Diaz so it’s not just her) and she shows up in this comic as a completely different character, so much that, upon hearing about the TERRIBLE THINGS SHE DID AND WAS, her reaction is…:

Fascinating, am I right? :’D She’s nice, sweet, shy and as good as brain-dead. And as she’s so sweet and cute now, somehow that becomes absolutely appealing for Sokka. And he falls for her, she falls for him, they bang dramatically, and so on and so forth…

Eventually Azula sacrifices herself in the final battle when Mai and her brother try to kill everyone and oh no! Sokka’s love interest dies again! Such a shocker, however, that Sokka goes to the Spirit World to save her, and unlike Iroh he succeeds… but what does Azula look like post-Spirit World shenanigans?

… Yeah, okay, fake!Azula calling anyone her “little angels” is just proof of how IC she is, if you had any doubts still.

But isn’t it FUNNY. Isn’t it HILARIOUS. That Azula not only undergoes an atom-deep brainwipe that turns her into a flat non-character, but that after dying she’s revived with WHITE HAIR, dressed in blue clothes and whatnot…?

My interpretation, and honestly, I don’t know if there’s any other possible interpretation… Jackie Diaz wanted Sokka to be with Yue :’) She fucking wrecked Azula’s character to turn her into a fake!Azula, who would eventually turn into fake!Yue after being resurrected because oh that’s just perfect to close off Sokka’s storyline, isn’t it? Only, he’s not with Yue nor with Azula because it’s neither of them. Just as it isn’t really Sokka either, or Katara, or Zuko or Aang or Toph.

Now, revisiting this trainwreck, there is a throwaway line where Ty Lee, in her (I think) only appearance in the story tells Katara that Suki and Sokka broke up. So um, Suki does exist, officially, in this comic, and she did date Sokka but it ended, and she’s back in Kyoshi Island with her team. 

Which elicits the question… why the fuck is she Mai’s maid?

I assure you, if you decide to delve deeper into this mess, you’ll absolutely find a lot more things to laugh about, to be outraged about, and to facepalm about while you wonder how on earth would someone, ANYONE, create something like this and not die of cringe looking at the finished product. It’s baffling to me.

At any rate, if you’d like to torture your own eyeballs reading this comic for yourself, there’s a Tumblr blog that gathered HIBY perfectly neatly for all curious eyes eager to torture themselves with this OOC fest. If you want more details than I care to remember about this catastrophic mess of a story, there’s always the TV Tropes page, which I think illustrates everything rather well. 

So… that’s HIBY. While I don’t think it should be sentenced to oblivion (we had best never forget the lowest lows the fandom has reached, else someone might be tempted to outdo them), this particular fanwork is quite the trainwreck in just about every regard. I really don’t think there’s anything worth salvaging in it. So, if you wanna read the whole thing (I’d be surprised if you would xD), knock yourself out in the blog link I posted up there. Otherwise, have a nice day if you still can after reading my answer to your ask :’D

[margridarnauds]

XCalibur: My Review

So, it’s been a couple of weeks since XCalibur came out and, while I’m trying to sort out my own thoughts about this, I decided to do what I do best: Force everyone to read an overly long, barely coherent post.

First off: Let’s get this off the ground. The fact that we got to see this at ALL was phenomenal. This is really, really fantastic, as a step for KMusicals getting a wider western audience, and it’s something that I DESPERATELY hope that they will continue to repeat in the future. I’d have supported it if it was anything, simply because that would give a clear message that there IS an audience for this.

However...

[warning for spoilers, brief discussions of rape]

Overall Impressions: Look....it’s WILDHORN. Wildhorn and me....we go way, way back. Like, to 12 Year Old Rachel listening to Jekyll and Hyde. And the Scarlet Pimpernel. And....quite a few musicals after that. I CAN’T hate it. It’s WILDHORN + ARTHURIANA. Two of my favorite things in the world. But, that being said....this might very well be my fault, but I did find myself a little disappointed, in the sense that, listening to the cast album, I was expecting a much, much better musical than what I really got. Which was a huge order to fill, given that I’ve always considered Artus: Excalibur to be one of Wildhorn’s more problematic musicals. But, in all fairness, they DID kind of promise me more, given that they retitled the musical and said that this was the “World Premiere”™. The set is fantastic, the music is stunning, but it just felt a little hollow to me.

Sets/Costuming: I LOVED the Dark Ages aesthetic to it. The costumes really were great, Morgana’s in particular stole the show, but Guinevere, Merlin, Arthur, and Lancelot gets some nice looks as well, and it all serves to give this idea of the Middle Ages (albeit HEAVILY preying on the old stereotype that it was The Dark Ages, with a very dark color palette generally being observable throughout). This also serves to make it visually very distinct from the Korean production of La Legende du Roi Arthur, given the two of them showed VERY close to one another. (2019 was just the year of the Arthurian musical.) As a Celticist....it isn’t REALLY historically accurate, it’s still fantasy, albeit more Guy Ritchie’s Arthur VS The Crystal Cave Trilogy in terms of how MUCH fantasy it utilizes. LRA (and Artus: Excalibur) took the approach of it being PURELY fantasy, there is....nothing. Historical. In there. One thing that irked me about Artus was that it, in particular, had a CHEAP feeling, like it had roughly as much thought put into it as a 80s comic book idea of Camelot that they were going to slap on the back of a cereal box or something. (LRA, to its credit, was GLORIOUSLY anachronistic, but it was high budget and sleek. I loved it for that.) XCalibur is TRYING for a more historical feel, and, for the most part, it does succeed. Whether the set is a forest, a deserted hall, or Camelot in its prime, they SELL the medievalism. It’s a bit of a pity there’s no WELSHNESS to it, but that is me being nitpicky about my field not being in there. For an Arthurian adaptation, I’m not really going to ask for anything more; it gives what it promises and it does it well. (Though I will say that, every once in a while, one of those costumes would flash in the stage lighting and I would question whether I’d seen that gold fabric at a Ren Faire etsy. BUT in all fairness, those costumes weren’t designed to be viewed in close up like that, and this is probably me being needlessly mean. OVERALL, the effect was good.)

Music: It’s a Frank Wildhorn musical, so of COURSE I’m going to like the music. This is DEFINITELY a stronger musical than Artus, with several new songs (including “The Tempest”, “Let the Sword Make the Man”, and “If he were standing here”, both of which are highlights to me) that really stand out. Since settling himself firmly in the Asian market, Wildhorn’s stuff has developed a polish that wasn’t really there in his Broadway stuff. It sounds much more modern, much more streamlined, with Death Note, the Man Who Laughs, Robespierre, and Mata Hari all having a distinct SOUND that I’ve started to call Wildhorn 2.0. There’s this distinct energy that runs through this production that wasn’t really there in Artus, and I found that it makes the cast album REALLY a treat to listen to. As with Artus, “Celtic” (which, in this case, of course, means “Riverdance”) musical motifs are present in the instrumentals, but I found it MUCH less heavy handed than before, and it’s evenly balanced out by more traditional tunes. I didn’t feel like it was AS overloaded as before, where I routinely found myself napping in between swelling instrumentals.

As with all of Wildhorn’s stuff, there are certain songs that sound very similar to other musicals of his, if you know what to look for. “Why am I here?” for example is nearly a carbon copy of “Who do you Trust?” from Tears of Heaven and “Wenn das Shicksal dich ereilt” from Rudolf, which themselves form part of a distinct genre of his songs that can be traced back to “The Riddle” from The Scarlet Pimpernel and “You and I” from Svengali. “The Mark of the Wolf”, a new song, sounds very similar at points to “How Many devils?” from The Civil War. Etc. etc. I don't really consider this a BAD part, at least in the case of the former, since the songs in that genre, to me, represent the best of Wildhorn’s music. And, after all, with over 30 years on stage....the man can only come up with new music for so long until he starts producing SOMETHING that sounds similar.

Overall verdict? Strong music. Not my FAVORITE of Wildhorn’s stuff,  but I’ve definitely spent a few hours listening to the cast album on its own merits, and definitely more energetic and polished than the German run to my ear.

Plot: So, a big draw for me was “Has the plot been fixed from the days of Artus: Excalibur?” and.....I have many mixed feelings. I DO feel like we got more of a solid musical, but I also feel like it had some really, really sour notes and, in some ways, the transition to a new musical feels only half-way done. Like, they HAD a new musical in mind, they went halfway through the process, and then they shrugged their shoulders, said “That’s good enough”, and left us with a Frankenstein’s Monster. (Oh, wait, wrong KMusical.)

One of the biggest casualties was Morgana. Morgan le Fay has been one of my favorite characters in anything, ever since I was 7 years old and developing one of my first crushes via The Magic Treehouse. Morgana is always the FIRST one I look to in an adaptation to see how they handle her, and her plotline in Artus always felt weak for me, ESPECIALLY her relationship with Merlin, which Wildhorn once described as something along the lines of a “bit of a romance” but that was painfully underdeveloped, especially on her end. We knew that he was weak for her, to his detriment, we knew that she wanted what he had, and that they do.....the do together, but there’s very little REAL development in there, and no sign, on my end, of that “little bit of romance” as opposed to just. Using one another. When I heard that that plotline had been revised, I was THRILLED. Now, I feel like it was a monkey’s paw situation.

(1) Morgana goes from more or less apathetic to Merlin’s situation to.......being totally obsessed with him, to the point where she says he’s the only man she ever loved? Like, she goes from someone HIGHLY motivated by what she believes is her rightful inheritance to being motivated by Merlin’s dick.

(2) The timeline. My God, the timeline. Making Morgana a child when she’s shipped off AND then doing the “Only man I ever loved” thing (and SEEMING to imply that Merlin did love her as well, but refused to say it) is.....it’s bad. No other way around it. They did NOT think that timeline through.

(3) I HATED Guinevere getting Morgana in the back with an arrow, but you know? That was yet another monkey’s paw situation, given that at least it wasn’t “Morgana falling for a very obvious ploy that she SHOULD have seen coming from a mile away if she wasn’t, as has been established, obsessed with Merlin’s dick.”

I will say that, reworking the plot so that Morgana’s obsessed with Merlin’s dick DID work out better in the sense that at least the Madonna/Whore complex with her and Guinevere isn’t really there: We no longer see Evil, Sexy Morgana VS Sweet Forest Maiden Guinevere, and Guinevere in this version of the musical is allowed to be much gutsier than her German counterpart. They did give her quite a bit of character as opposed to “Naive Girl who believes Arthur is The Best but finds out Wrong”. Now, that gutsiness flies out the window once she marries Arthur and is mainly confined to singing sad songs and stepping in between Arthur and Lancelot, but see above for Frankenstein’s Monster.

I will say that I did appreciate that this adaptation was willing to really give us a DEEPLY flawed Arthur; it’s something I’ve seen relatively little of post-White in terms of Arthurian adaptations, and it’s something I’ve missed. (Once Upon A Time’s Evil Arthur notwithstanding.) Arthur is really rarely allowed to BE a character in his own right, he has to be an Ideal™ or, if he’s a flawed character, flawed in an acceptable, palatable way; here, he’s an angry young man who’s shoved into a position that he’s not really qualified for and has to grow into it. He shoves people away, he shouts, he trusts Morgana too blindly, and he basically causes the Guinevere/Lancelot situation on his lonesome. It’s actually a little great to see.

BUT. But. Monkey’s paw. I LIKED seeing Arthur being a little bitch on occasion, but, for better or worse, he is our main character. And, outside of his bonding scenes with Guinevere and Lancelot early on, we really....don’t get to see that many scenes where he’s LIKABLE. There are a few moments (the scene where he tries to get Morgana to dance at his coronation is ADORABLE), but the first time we’re really introduced to him, he’s in a fight, he (understandably) snaps at Merlin, decides that, hey, being king might not be so bad, is fun for a little while, and then he spends a solid chunk of the second act being a dick because his father died. I don’t really know. I feel like this is going to be one of those things that I keep rolling over in my mind, as far as whether I REALLY like HIM as a main character, or whether I like those individual moments where he’s likable.

A part of me liked that we had, instead of the two siblings fighting during “Was Will Ich Hier”, we have Morgana and Arthur bonding. That sibling bond was, in my opinion, one of the more interesting possible dynamics in the show. But, unfortunately, the resulting conflict with Merlin felt very “been there, done that.” It’s more PLAUSIBLE than in cases where, say, the Enemy of the Week poses as a little girl and suddenly the main cast, who have known one another for twenty years, are suddenly slinging accusations against one another, but it STILL felt rather forced and predictable.

I was actually really grateful that we didn’t have the Morgana/Lot relationship in this particular production--Making Morgana an actual domestic abuse victim and then killing her off NEVER sat well with me, but as a result of that, now we have this situation where we have two more or less unconnected villains: Morgana and Wulfstan, and the plot only really needed one. Wulfstan, as a character, just....isn’t interesting. He’s a more or less generic “Barbarian Warlord” type who’s pissed Arthur killed his son and creeps on Morgana. I can’t REALLY say anything more there. Their plotlines intersect in the very beginning, when they capture Morgana and she guides them to Uther’s old castle, but other than that, there’s a general disconnect between them, and there’s no real PAYOFF to that. Instead, it just feels like it makes the plot needlessly busy.

One thing I’ve noticed, with both La Legende du Roi Arthur and XCalibur, is this pressure to fit as MUCH Arthurian in as possible, and as a result, the final musicals become rather crowded, so there’s no real time for DEVELOPMENT or substance.

“Okay, we have to have the pulling from the sword here!” “Right!” “Hm, Morgana le Fay is one of the most iconic antagonists, we probably need her there.” “Saxons?” “Sure!” “Everyone’s expecting Lancelot and Guinevere, we can’t not have them in there.”

I FEEL like XCalibur is LESS bogged down than LRA with regards to that factor, since the latter also threw in Maleagant as a secondary antagonist to Morgana and the Grail quest, but I still feel like XCalibur bit off more than it could really chew. Which is a pity, because there are Arthurian plot lines that have gotten comparatively little attention in recent days that you could include instead of going the “Paint By Numbers” route.

This also really shows in how it deals with certain plot lines, which are either dropped (Wulfstan V. Morgana), or come out of nowhere. This is REALLY obvious with Lancelot/Guinevere, which is a pity because I found myself, against my own will, rooting for them more than any other pairing in the show. Lancelot goes from a cocky lady’s man to...suddenly being smitten with Guinevere.....and then suddenly, after Guinevere is sad about Arthur being a dick, the two of them are fucking. Now, it would be NATURAL, as far as “Guinevere goes to Lancelot when she feels like Arthur’s being cold to her”, but we don’t SEE that. We literally cut from her in the forest, singing a sad song, and the next time we see them, they’re postcoital. It feels like it comes out of NOWHERE. My investment in them, as a couple, is more due to the strength of the two actors involved than the actual WRITING, which thinks that because the BEDROCK for something is there (”Oh, Guinevere beat Lancelot in combat! Oh, she feels neglected!”) that that means the house is there as well (”Oh, Guinevere beat Lancelot in common....so NOW he’s totally in love with her and is never going to flirt with another woman again. Oh, Guinevere is feeling abandoned by Arthur.......so we don’t NEED to see her going to Lancelot.”) They jump from Point A to point D and the audience is left with a sense of whiplash.

Some things, like Merlin’s actions re: Igraine and Uther, as well as Morgana, are just not explored to a depth that I would really find is satisfactory. “Oh, I did all these terrible things....because of Fate!” is something that we’re REALLY supposed to pull behind, but, given the pain to everyone involved, ESPECIALLY the women (Igraine, Morgana, and Guinevere ALL suffer from Destiny™), you have to REALLY wonder if there was literally anyone else who could have done it.

...so, really. BBC Merlin. BBC Merlin.

MOVING ON FROM MY SALT...as a medievalist, I was actually relatively happy that for ONCE in an Arthurian adaptation, the conflict between Christianity and paganism (WHICH HONESTLY WASN’T EVEN THAT MUCH OF A CONFLICT IN TERMS OF THE CELTIC WORLD, BUT MOVING ON) was presented as being pro-Christian. I’ve dealt with WAY too much media, in my time, that treats, say, 8th century Catholicism in Ireland the same as 16th century Catholicism in Spain, and NO. They were VERY distinct. I am saying this as a confirmed, happy atheist. They were distinct. I do not need or want The Mists of Avalon 10.0 on my screen, no thank you.

That being said...Monkey’s Paw. Monkey’s Paw. I was NOT happy to see the conflict presented as “Christianity taking over is Destined and Good, the Old Ways™ have had their time.” There’s this rather ugly fatalism that runs through it, along with the idea that followers of the pagan tradition HAD to die for Christianity to take its place. It’s...not my favorite thing in the world. Perhaps I’m simply unpleasable in this aspect, but there has GOT to be some medium between the two. Maybe this is my Medieval Irish Bias seeping through here, given that, with what I’m used to, the druids were mentioned in law books through the 8th century. I own this. (”But Rachel,” you might say, reasonably, “This isn’t 8th century Ireland”, to which I would of course say, “BUT IT SURE AS HELL ISN’T 6TH CENTURY WALES OR CORNWALL EITHER.”) Medieval people, historically, while they didn’t REALLY have religious tolerance as we know it, didn’t always see it in stark terms of “PAGANISM IN ONE CORNER, CHRISTIANITY IN ANOTHER”: They were, as a whole, FAIRLY good at integrating aspects of both in, even when they didn’t really mean to. The entire thing is just mangled horribly.

Anyway. Celtic Studies Salt Over.

Actors/Actresses: I’ll be honest, I was expecting, primarily, Morgana, Arthur, and Lancelot to pull the plot along, mainly because they get, together, most of the primary numbers, and because, in the German, Sabrina Weckerlin essentially carried the show on her back. As it was, Kim So Hyang’s Guinevere was the one who REALLY, in my opinion, ended up carrying the show. She had a wonderful voice, strong voice, and her Guinevere was able to make a full, smooth journey between a young, bold girl to the troubled wife of a troubled king to a woman wracked with regret. I’ve seen her in a lot of things, but I don’t think I really NOTICED her until now. She did some truly phenomenal work here, I was really glad, actually, that I got to see and appreciate her Guinevere. (Though, as a Min Kyung Ah fan....I would have LOVED to have seen her Guinevere.) She had great chemistry with both of her leads, lending credibility to both relationships, more than the script itself might really give.

Kai isn’t really an actor I ever really LOOK for in a musical, I wouldn’t say that I’m a MASSIVE fan, but that’s only because I don’t actively search for his stuff. Every time I’ve seen him in something, he’s been solid, and I did very much like him in the press calls. It does seem a little unfair that he got both the press calls AND the pro-shot, but c’est la vie. I did like his Arthur, he had a steady voice to back up the role, his acting was solid. Arthur, as a character, doesn’t REALLY stick out for me, but that isn’t HIS fault so much as the script’s, really, and my pre-built in bias towards Morgana. I didn’t find him to be REALLY likable in the role, very angry and sullen, but.....well. See above for my take on Arthur’s general likability here. I do think the man did the best with what he had, though I also feel like he’s more natural in Arthur’s dorkier, more relatable moments, especially with, say, Guinevere, Morgana, and Lancelot. (Though I’m not sure if that’s because I like Arthur as a CHARACTER more there or if I’m reacting to his ACTING in the role. This is one of those times where I’d have really liked to see Do Kyum or Junsu’s take on the role, since that would help me iron out what parts are the WRITING and what are the actor, but, lacking that, I’m going to err on the side of generosity.)  

Shin Young Sook....I WANTED to like her Morgana. I did. But, I’ll be blunt, even as far back as the press call, I was feeling Jang Eun Ah’s Morgana more, I was, definitely, feeling a little disappointed when the proshot cast list was announced. So, in some ways, the poor woman would have had to have done miracles to get me to REALLY warm up to her. And I didn’t really see miracles on the stage. Her voice remains reliable, she is a belter like few others on the Korean stage. I give her that. But her acting basically totally ruined the character for me. My issues with the role, as detailed in the “Plot” section, aside, I believe that the overall character COULD be salvaged, from an audience perspective, with a nuanced enough portrayal. But, when I saw this particular take on Morgana...I didn’t see MORGANA. I saw Shin Young Sook, Having Fun, instead of Morgana, as portrayed by Shin Young Sook. An actress having fun in a role can definitely be GREAT (Park Hye Na as Eva in Frankenstein is one role of hers I will cherish forever), but in this case, which required a lot of nuance to pull it off and make the villain sympathetic....it does clash when you can tell that she’s one step away from evilly cackling and releasing a final belt before running off the stage. There is a time to ham and there is a time to not, and this was one of the “not” roles. There came some point, perhaps during the song “Desire”, perhaps before it, that I actively started DREADING Morgana appearing on stage. I don’t KNOW that Jang Eun Ah would have done it better. She could have done it worse. But it is a tragedy of only having a single cast available that I will always wonder. I was disappointed here. I was really, really disappointed.

Kim Jun Hyun as Merlin was solid. It’s well known at this point that I have a soft spot for him, but for what it’s worth, on a comparative level, I feel like this role suited him much better than, say, Orléans in Marie Antoinette (where, personally, though still liking him, I found him a little too cold for my taste). He is appropriately distant and otherworldly, showing a human side and conflict as the musical continues. Is he enough to make me LIKE Merlin, as a character? Not really, given how many people suffer because of him and how little the narrative actually QUESTIONS it, but damned if he doesn’t try, and he does lend a subdued charisma to the character, to the point where I know that at least some people noticed him more than they did Arthur or Lancelot. I did think he had -40 chemistry with Shin Young Sook, but that could be because I was ALREADY attached to him and Jang Eun Ah’s chemistry in the press call, and that is not so much a failing on one actor’s side or the other’s (I want to emphasize this, because I do NOT have anything against Shin Young Sook SPECIFICALLY on this point), rather it’s something that can’t really be qualified. (And is entirely subjective, I’m sure that plenty of viewers saw NOTHING wrong.) For me, it did cause me to actively cringe at certain scenes, such as the “This is where your Arthur came from”......”seduction”.....scene.

“Lord....I actually have fewer problems saying no to this than you might think, nvmind.”

It COULD be that that’s the look of conflicting desire, but to me, personally, watching it, it rather looks like Merlin just realized that he forgot to turn the stove off at home. Which is a pity, because I was REALLY going in here expecting to like Merlin/Morgana more than the love triangle and instead found it to be very awkwardly handled. I haven’t ENTIRELY given up on it as a ship, in some abstract way that would involve another rewrite of the entire musical, but I can’t REALLY say that there’s. Anything I like about it either. And I think that if I was less stubbornly determined to find SOMETHING in it to like, I’m fairly certain I would be even more uncomfortable with it.

My final verdict: Watching this, despite some impressive visuals (though not QUITE to the same level as fellow Wildhorn musicals The Man Who Laughs, Dracula, and Mata Hari) and performances, I found myself continually wanting to go back to the cast album rather than actually WATCH the musical. Changes have been made since the German production, but I found that, while some of the changes definitely served to make a stronger musical, some of them actively weakened the show, and it's still a little too busy for its own good. I’m also not REALLY sure that the changes made really justified it being given the label World Premiere™, given the hype around it. If it was available for streaming again, would I do it? Yes, because it IS worth at least one watch and the industry NEEDS to do this more. If it was available to buy, even, for $20 or so, I would probably get it. But I’m not sure that, if it was for the~ $100 price that Toho musicals tend to sell for, I would seriously be able to say “Yes, get this”, and I’m not sure that, if an American/European tour of it was miraculously announced, I would REALLY bend over backwards to get tickets.

6/10

Tl;dr: “WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO MY SISTER?”

[ylizam]

dear creator: femslashex 2k20 edition

Hi, Hello, Hey. First of all–thank you! This is my standard you offered to write one of my fandoms, so thank you for being awesome opening spiel, full of generals likes and dislikes, I’m sure you know the drill. I’ll make sure the fandom specific stuff is up by the time assignments go out. (That said, if you already have an idea about how you want to write about the fandom/pairing we match on—wow, I’m jealous! tell me your secrets!—just skip over the fandom stuff and go forth with your bad self.) 

Things I like include, but are in no way limited to: fun with POV, fun with linear vs. non-linear storytelling, fun with tone, fun with writing. I really dig character studies, stories that really get into what makes a character tick (and something porny that can get at that is wonderful too), and I like relationships that are hard and prickly and worth fighting for. I like happy endings that don’t feel tacked on or forced. I like doubt, and hope, and theology; I like actors, and directors, and I like the random deity. I like fairy tales. I like (love) romance tropes. Forced to share a bed, marriages of convenience, fake dating, friends-to-lovers, idiots-to-lovers, enemies-to-lovers: it’s all like unto catnip. I like interesting turns of phrase, I like the perfect line, I like any story written just for me. If you have any questions about my taste (or lack thereof), feel free to ask @summervillen​ who probably knows my fannish tastes better than I do.

DNWs: noncon, necrophilia, pedophilia, incest, animal harm or death, child harm or death, pregnancy fic, A/B/O. Things that I would prefer you not include—especially gratuitously; there are obviously ways to engage with problematic actions/thoughts/etc. in fiction, but there’s such a fine line there—are as follows: non-character driven racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, anti-semitism, etc. etc. etc. I’d prefer no high school AUs. I also have a pretty big embarrassment squick. And while I'm mostly interested in these characters in the worlds in which we meet them, if you really have an AU (non high school division) you want to write I'm there. Just, you know, grounded in the characters and their relationships and all that fun stuff. That's basically it.

Babylon 5 Delenn/Susan Ivanova I just ship them post-canon so hard. Later in life chances at love are sort of a thing of mine, and add to that two of my favorite characters ever, well, it’s like this pairing is made for me. That said, if you can find a way to write them during canon (maybe John doesn’t return from Z'ha'dum, maybe Delenn and John just never get together at all, maybe you can think of something I can’t) I’d love that too. Delenn/Shaal Mayan I’d love a story about them that’s really Minbari–that understands that neither of them is human. Something set when they were young and just figuring themselves out (and first love is rarely forever but it feels like it must be) or something set when Mayan visits Babylon 5 in season one or, heck, something set after the series ends. (I have a thing for writing on skin, so if you can find a way to fit that in more power to you.)

Last Tango in Halifax Gillian Greenwood/Caroline McKenzie-Dawson Oh gosh I have so many feelings about Gillian and Caroline and their relationship. How it’s grown, changed, and now they’re at a point where they see each other all the time and talk about basically everything and it’s all so beautiful. And, I mean, come on, they both have the best chemistry with the other; it’s just a fact. So what if they get drunk and kiss (or shag or something in between)? Or just deal with things like adults (I’m sure you could convince me that’s possible)? (She wasn’t part of the tagset, but I also liked what little we saw of Olga, both how she interacted with Caroline and how she befriended Gillian when they both showed up late to the play, so if you want to go the threesome route–whether it’s a V or a triad or whatever confusing mess of emotions you prefer–I’m there.) (P.S. I haven’t seen the most recent season, but I’m spoiled and have seen all the gifs and screencaps so include or don’t as you see fit.)

Lucifer Linda Martin/Mazikeen

Their relationship on the show is a thing of delight and wonder, so basically I want that but also MORE. Maze fighting people to protect Linda! Linda, well, trying to fight people but mostly realizing that Maze loves it and is good at it so. Maze panicking again about Linda eventually dying, but also MORE SO because now they’ve been fucking and also having weird candlelight dinners and um is this romantic this might be. (Whether Amenadiel is involved (romantically with either or both, as an active parent but no longer romantically, etc.) or off doing something else stage left and never mentioned is up to you, but please no bashing, killing off somehow, etc.) Feel free to include hijinks with the rest of the gang, but I’d prefer no focus on any police work. 

 The Old Guard (Movie) Andy/Quynh

Note: I haven’t read the comics, so this is strictly a movie request (I know they’re separate fandoms and listed thusly, but I just wanted to be clear). I’d love anything about them, in all honesty. Something in the past: a first time (they kissed, they said “I love you,” they refused to say “I love you,” they had sex, etc.), a fifth time, a mission gone wrong. Or something in the present/future: angst and fractured trust and fighting on opposite sides until they’re suddenly not. All too mortal Andy. Immortal Quynh. The options are basically endless. I also love everyone on the team, so feel free to include them however you see fit. 

Star Trek: Classic Timeline

First of all, I don’t know book canon, so include it, don’t include, whatever floats your proverbial boat. Second of all, I am more than happy with “this character lives” stories here. Obviously. Third of all, please no bashing of any other characters (even that one).

Beverly Crusher/Laris

So I came out of Picard with an undying devotion to Laris and a burning curiosity about what the heck Bev is up to these days. So tell me more about both of them. Is there’s a longstanding affair, often at a distance? Did they start out prickly and reserved, wary? How are Jean-Luc and Zhaban involved? (I am happy with whatever you decide on the Jean-Luc and Zhaban front, other than gratuitous death or bashing of either. Feel free to have them off having their own adventures and don’t mention them if you prefer not to involve them.) Is Beverly’s French as terrible as Jean-Luc’s? 

Kimara Cretak/Kira Nerys

Feel free to have Kimara escape/live/etc. I’d especially love something that recognizes that neither of them is human; play around with what we know of their cultures, about how those cultures might clash or unexpectedly mesh, how that can affect a relationship both positively and negatively. I’m always interested in Nerys’s faith and religious beliefs, and how that interacts with Romulan culture would be very much something I enjoy. 

K'Ehlyer/Deanna Troi

K’Ehlyer deserved better, and who is better than Deanna? I posit no one. This is another pairing where I’d love something about the fact that they’re not fully human and the implications thereof. (Feel free to include Alexander or not, as you choose. Ditto Thaddeus and Kestra. I’d prefer they not be a focal point though.) Whether you set it during TNG or Picard or in between, I’ll be equally happy (or an alternate version of reality works too! those are just the time references I can think of right now!). (Please note that I very much also ship Deanna and Will, so please, please, please don’t bash him or kill him off for no reason or have Deanna cheating on him or whatever. I’d much rather you don’t mention him at all if you don’t want him in the fic.) 

The Untamed Jiang Yanli/Wen Qing

Is part of this my desire to have two of my favorite characters pushed together? Yes. Is it also part of my desire to have them actually live? Absolutely. (Which is to say: I’d love a “Jiang Yanli and Wen Qing live” AU here. Or at least live longer than they make it in canon?) I’d also be fine with modern AUs here, but I’d prefer cultivation be in there somewhere even if it’s set in the present (or the 1980s or basically any time period). Maybe there’s a political partnership of convenience situation! Maybe something shifts in canon and Jiang Yanli helps the Qishan Wens out and things happen and trust grows and they fall in love! Maybe they have a secret fling! Honestly, it’s all good. 

[agentem]

Endgame questions: Sharon Carter, Peggy Carter, Team Carters, some Steve stuff, SHIELD, some Bucky and Sam

I feel like I should just get the Sharon stuff out of the way. Readers, if you are new, I love Sharon Carter--mostly from the comics because she never had much to do in the movies. I also love Peggy Carter because, originally, Stan Lee had written them as sisters and I fucking LOVE SISTER RELATIONSHIPS (see future post on Gamora and Nebula).

Now, of course, they are great aunt and grand niece (that is Peggy is Sharon’s grandparent’s--I believe, grandfather Michael if Agent Carter is still canon--sibling.)

Markus and McFeely (who WROTE these movies) said Sharon was originally LIVING with Steve while he was on the run in Infinity War and that she was cut (”she was cut” is Sharon’s whole MCU history). I say that because she was originally the “female lead” of CATWS and was cut, in favor of Black Widow. She was originally part of “Team Captain America” and part of the airport battle in CAWC, but was cut in favor of Ant-Man/Spider-man happening. (This had to do with the Sony deal happening or not, which is neither here nor there.)

But the point is, she is a character that I care about. I don’t necessarily need her and Steve to be together in the comics. Some of my fave Sharon comics are her teaming with Black Widow or other Agents of SHIELD.

Anyway, back to them “living together.” I don’t think that is canon because if it is, it is fucking dark. It’s one thing to have kissed your grand-niece it’s another thing to have fucked her a bunch of times and had five years of a stable relationship with her from the time it started in CACW.

I HOPE he kissed her and then she fucking moved on with her life. She’s fucking thriving at the CIA. I hope she survived the Snap and maybe got involved with Nick Fury’s underground SHIELD. I mean, they mention Button Bob (whose real name I never remember) at the end of Infinity War as someone who is still on Fury’s team. He was also in Age of Ultron. I would’ve loved to have seen Sharon in Age of Ultron or mentioned as still a SHIELD agent in Infinity War.

Because SHIELD is goddamned important to her. She wanted to be like Peggy. She joined up despite her family’s protests (this is mentioned off-hand in CW) and Peggy was the only one who supported her. Those two had a familial relationship where Peggy mentored her and served as a guide for her career.

You know, what? Fuck it, I’m just going to headcanon that once Fury and Maria Hill are Snapped, Sharon is in-charge of SHIELD. (I think this probably conflicts with the TV show I haven’t watched since Simmons got stuck on that weird planet?) But I don’t give a fuck because Sharon needs to get something.

I am also conflicted as to whether going back to being with Peggy is “moving on” or “going back” for Steve. I think it is the latter, honestly. Like he got jealous that Tony got to have a family? They seem to have conflated “moving on” with “getting a life” in the film. But Nat talks about having a life with the Avengers. That is what I thought Steve had.

Like, okay maybe he wasn’t living with Sharon Carter for the last ten years. (Five on the run, five after the Snap). But is not having a girlfriend or children the worst thing in the world?

As an asexual childless individual, I don’t really understand. He seemed to rely on Nat and Sam and together they were trying to help Bucky, who is really just beginning his healing process in Wakanda when they PULL HIM OUT to join this fight.

I know a lot of Stucky fans are really bummed. I get that. The Russos always said that since they were brothers, they were attracted to the Steve/Bucky narrative as a brother story. (See above where I am super into sister stories, so I get that.) But I also know that a HUGE part of the audience did not read it as they saw it. And they know that. They totally swerved into it in CACW and were certainly aware of the backlash against the kiss with Sharon.

Even if the audience did read it as the Russos intended (and I don’t think creator intent is the same as what comes across): would Gamora abandon Nebula? Would Thor leave Loki? Would Pietro leave Wanda?

I did see that Sebastian Stan played it like Bucky somehow knew that Steve was leaving for good. That is why they have the “you’re taking all the stupid with you” exchange that they had when Bucky went off to war. (Is marriage really like war?) And had him know who the old man was way before Sam did.

But Bucky being sort of okay with it doesn’t mean it is okay? At the end of CACW said his philosophy was that he believed in people. Specific people, sure. He had abandoned the Avengers for Bucky, really.

The only way I can explain it, is that he and Nat were a team, right? And now she’s dead and he’s like “holy shit, I gotta find that life Tony talked about fast!” And he made a split second, impulsive decision. (Which, again, I really think you should PLAN your time travel before you do it, and like discuss the possible unseen ramifications with other people.)

I guess this movie is about the Avengers needing grief counselors (like if Sam had been there, since I assume he is certified in some way to run meetings at the VA, none of this would have happened).

Pause for a moment to appreciate Sam Wilson more. (Do it, goddamn it.)

As for Peggy Carter, I am not sure if this is a yay Peggy for me? I was happy to see her. And I would have looked at her with the same heart eyes that Steve did through the window, let’s be honest.

But I also really loved the first season of Agent Carter. That scene where she says goodbye to him on the Brooklyn Bridge (which better not be covered in goddamn boats, New York) was really great. Hayley Atwell moved me and I believed she was going to find love elsewhere and be FINE.

Not only FINE but THRIVE.

I know the show suggested that her husband was Daniel Sousa, who I liked just fine. I had always hoped the show would be more ambitious and play with the Peggy and Gabriel Jones dynamic from the comics. It’s not a big part of the comics, but when Steve comes back and is IMMEDIATELY like “gross you are old” to Peggy. she is devastated and Sharon is like “what the fuck, you asshole.” (Don’t be so mean to my older sister!) But she eventually finds love with Gabriel Jones, the Howling Commando, and the white lady with the black man pisses Red Skull off, which is fun for me. So I still ship it (just because “fuck you, nazis!”).

I feel like the MCU version of Steve might have picked up with Peggy even though she was old in CATWS, except she had the Alzheimer’s. I personally think that would’ve been fucking rad to cast an older actress and have her be the love interest. (See upcoming post on ageism and women in Hollywood). But they didn’t go there. They cast a Sharon Carter but really did not follow through with it.

Anyway, in the movie Peggy bonds with Steve because he’s an outsider and they’ve both “had every door shut in their face.” I thought it would have been cool to deal with that in the actual context of 50s America. MCU Peggy is NOT American but she is expected to enforce American laws as they were at the time. How does she feel about that with regard to race in America? How is Gabe dealing with having every door shut in his face, even after becoming a distinguished war hero and personally capturing Armin Zola (who they just let wander around SHIELD?) after Captain America and Bucky were busy dying/crying on the train.

I don’t know, that is what I wanted season 2 of Agent Carter to be. They did cast an African American actor as a kind of pre-Hulk character but he turned out to be terrible, which was pretty problematic for me, and left me thinking well maybe Peggy with Daniel Sousa wouln’t be so bad.

Daniel is a disabled veteran, he can’t be having a super fun life.

Oh wait, now his wife is probably leaving him for a Super Soldier? That has gotta hurt. I feel bad for these characters who are kind of abandoned by the narrative.

OTOH, we got to see Jarvis in a movie! And Sam is Captain America now. Change that logo, Disney+. I wanna see “The New Captain America and the Winter Soldier” now.

Steve let me down but Sam doesn’t usually. Maybe I should move on.

[lunarbranded]

🍵+ gatekeeping

Send 🍵for the mun’s salt! || Meme

gate·keep·ing: noun - the activity of controlling, and usually limiting, general access to something.Tumblr definition: when someone takes it upon themselves to decide who has access to something .

Boy, you know. I’ve been mulling over how I was gonna work with this ask and how to do this post for a while. Actually had the words a few times that I wanted to use but I waited and thought on it. As it turns out, there’s a lot I want to touch upon with my salt in this post. Most of it is general toxic behavior from the RPC community itself and some of fandom but, for the most part, it’s Tumblr bullshit to the extreme.

If you don’t want to see strong af opinions, please keep scrolling. The salt will be under the cut and I understand that most of what I’ll be saying in this post will not be popular opinions.

Gatekeeping Is A Form of Bullying

Ever heard some dudebro go ‘I bet she hasn’t even read the comics’ about a girl wearing a Marvel shirt? What about someone going ‘If you don’t read the books, you’re not a real fan’ when someone’s in line at the theater? Yeah, those are examples of gatekeeping. A couple of the most common ones actually. 

As for Tumblr RPC gatekeeping, it’s a bit more like this: 

Omg, you can’t write that because it doesn’t fit into what I believe is the only lore that ever exists

wtf why are you claiming that character is gay/trans/bi/ect? they’re not or it would be mentioned in canon

how dare you want representation for your gender identity/race/ect., that’s not okay because it doesn’t adhere to CANON

you can’t ship that because it’s morally wrong and i don’t like it (which sounds a lot like old church people bitching about anything at all really)

if you don’t have the right aesthetic then i won’t follow/interact with you at all

These are just a few examples but most of them are pretty common. And, you know, that’s sad as fuck, to be honest. So many people I’ve met on this side claim to have been bullied but they’re usually the same people who turn around and do this shit to others. It’s unreal to me that they don’t recognize their own behavior. What’s worse is that it can’t be pointed out or people want to use whatever buzzword they can to tell you to fuck off.

If you try to help correct someone, suddenly you’re every -phobic on the planet and you conveniently managed to set their grandmother on fire. The dramatic overreactions of some people have a price and they don’t realize that the emotional response is sometimes not the correct one.

Just because someone is doing something you don’t like doesn’t mean that it deserves a negative action on your part. 

‘That person upset me so I’m gonna post a callout/vague post about them!’ Why do you guys think that literally fucking everything needs a reaction? It doesn’t. You don’t have to react to everything that happens. Sometimes things warrant a simple ‘oh that’s fucked up’ and then you move on with your fucking day. 

Say you have thirty water bottles. Someone steals one and drinks out of it or whatever but you still have twenty-nine water bottles - why the fuck are you going to be angry all day about that one water bottle? What’s the point when you have twenty-nine other water bottles and you can forget about or throw away the one that was ruined/taken? 

You see, that reaction is how you guys act about any one instance that goes wrong on Tumblr except you’re pissed off for a week and you want to ruin someone’s fucking life over a post/thread that you don’t like. Or, in extreme cases, you open blogs to run your mouth at these people. It takes more effort to act like a dick toward someone than it does to just keep fucking scrolling and it’s astounding how ready people are here to wallow in negativity/toxicity.

Puritan Ship/Roleplay Policing

So I mentioned it before, but there’s this super popular idea on Tumblr that if you don’t abide by a certain unspoken ship/roleplay guideline, people will tear you apart over it. But guess what, guys, it’s fucking bullshit. 

Since when were people not allowed to make their own opinions on what they did or didn’t ship?

When did it start that people were considered trash for shipping something?

Who the hell made half of you the owners of the RPC so you think you can control what everyone does on their blogs? 

You see, this is the same attitude that I see all the time in churches. Oh they’ll tell you to your face that you’re welcome to do as you like and come looking however you want but the second you actually fucking do it, you’re ignored and treated like a social pariah. All this because people love to go around spreading rumors and talking shit about one another all over a fucking hobby. 

It’s actually kind of insane when you think about it. Like, you’re arguing over what two people are doing when they’re throwing internet Barbies at one another and you’re stomping across the playground to scream at them because you don’t like what they’re doing when it has nothing to fucking do with you. Remember what we called that in elementary and high school? Oh yeah, there’s a word for it: BULLYING. And now, it’s evolved into gatekeeping.

This attitude is literally as bad as someone going ‘you can’t sit with us’ just because you don’t like what they’re doing on their blog. 

Now, I called this section ‘puritan’ for a reason - “practicing or affecting strict religious or moral behavior.” Does that sound familiar? Because it should. Tumblr wants to call everything wrong and, from what I’ve seen, the hivemind doesn’t want people making their own opinions. Oh and don’t forget, if you don’t already know something then tough fucking luck because it’s ‘not our job to teach you.’ Thanks for the reminder, Susan, but we all know that you’re going to resort to calling people toxic abusers just because they weren’t given the chance to learn something like you were. Because that’s a fucking great way to help people to understand things from your point of view.

Look. What I’m saying is that trying to force everyone into your moral alignment isn’t okay. Some people will write murder and abusive relationships and not romanticize them just fine. The same goes for incest, rape, dysphoria, and a great number of other things. Believe it or not, some RPers actually take the time to look this shit up so they can make sure that they’re doing it fucking right and avoiding romanticization. You know, what you people want them to do but yell at them when you see it trigger tagged without bothering to take a look at the entire thread in question. Goes right back to that knee jerk reaction people like to rely on - not everything is the end of the world.

Callout/Cancelled Culture

This one’s going to be fun.

So we all know that people love their callouts but we also know that people just fucking love cancelling people. Guess what though - you cannot cancel a fucking human being because they’re not a television show. Shocker right? I know.

Now, I’ll admit that there’s some callout worthy topics but there’s some callouts that are so goddamn stupid that I just can’t take either party seriously. Now Tumblr loves dividing people, especially in the RPC. Don’t fucking tell me that cliques aren’t a thing in the RPC because ‘RPing in your bubbble’ is the same as having a clique. It’s the same concept hidden behind another name, don’t try to tell me otherwise. 

And yes, sometimes people want to run around and start ‘clique wars’ like it’s fucking high school all over again. Sorry, but no one has time for that shit. Do your replies and keep your nose out of where it doesn’t belong, Barbara. But, of course, people have trouble with this concept and get into fights. It’s natural that no two people are going to agree on the same goddamn thing. It would be ridiculous to expect this, especially on this website, but just because you disagree with someone doesn’t mean that they’re cancelled. 

What you think is problematic and what someone else thinks is problematic are likely two different things. And sure, you’ll have people who agree with you and you’ll want them on your side but that doesn’t help because now you’ve created that divide. So things fester and get worse because you want to use your mental illness as an excuse (a popular choice from what I’ve seen) as to why you can’t communicate with someone. Next thing you know, there’s a huge callout against someone and that person didn’t expect it at all.

Knee jerk reactions. Fight gets worse. Divide gets bigger. Toxicity festers. 

Well now, there’s this new thing in the RPC where you can get a PSD template and fake fucking screenshots. Sure, it’s for musings and character profiles for things like Tinder, Facebook, ect. Just fun little things for you to throw your characters into and stuff like that. But there’s always that 1% who decide to use it so they can make it look like someone’s said something when they haven’t. So, when that person tries to defend themselves with a full-screen shot of their own (whole desktop or mobile version), things get worse until there’s a giant blowout. 

Once the dust settles you get this nice little ‘if you follow x, y, z then you can just block me bye’ behavior popping up. Well, that’s just childish. Unless something happened that was almost a ‘they found out where i live and they’re sending me glass filled cookies in the mail’ situation, then I have no reason to bother with that shit in your rules page. No one is obligated to tell you who they associate with just because you had a disagreement with them. However, if that person chooses to take your side, that’s up to them. 

I’m sure damn near everyone has had a similar situation to this happen to them on Tumblr before and, if it hasn’t, were you the one making the call out? If you were, was it worth it? Did it make you feel better? Sure, it might have in the moment but if you’re having that much of an issue actually communicating with others then you should take a step back and work on yourself before you involve other people. It’s like that one saying I keep seeing running around ‘if bad things always happen to you, you should make sure that you’re not the one causing it.’ 

Now, that’s not to say that I’m trying to gaslight anyone, but 9 times out of 10, I’ve looked back and realized that my own knee jerk reactions have caused a lot of turmoil that I could have avoided had I stopped and thought on it. I’ll admit that because guess fucking what, humans aren’t perfect. 

That’s the biggest issue on Tumblr. Half of you expect people to come on here and be perfect from the get go but humans make fucking mistakes and we learn from them. Do we not? How many of you can say that you were perfectly rational and amazing 15 year olds? Absolutely no one because teenagers have a lot of stress and expectations thrown on them while they’re going through a rough growth phase at that time. Things are unpredictable for them and they have school, teachers, friends, and parents throwing all of this shit onto them and then they come on here and have full-grown fucking adults slamming all this shit into their faces. It’s fucking ridiculous. And that’s another goddamn topic holy shit. The way some adults on here act is absolutely barbaric.

Sharing IP Addresses Out of Revenge/Anger

Oh this is something I’ve hated since I found out that Statcounter was a thing. Yes, I run it on my own blog but you’ll never see me sharing IP addresses on the dash. I’ll just quietly IP block you and go about my day, idgaf.

So there’s this huge trend and I’ve seen this on my own dash before (it was fucking disgusting, the response was atrocious on that person’s behalf, and I’ve since hardblocked) and it���s something I’ll hardblock over in a heartbeat. 

Now, for those who don’t know, Statcounter has a little piece of code that you can put into your blog theme and it’ll track the IP addresses of people who visit your blog. For me, I use it because I’ve had two stalkers in the past and yes, I keep screenshots of their visits for my own records. Fuck them. First one started the trigger for me and the second one recently exacerbated it. Anyway, if the person doesn’t have something on their browser to block it, Statcounter will pick up on their visit, what links they look at, how long they’ve been looking, their ISP, general location (never their precise home location, just the ISP’s area), browser info, and screen resolution. I’m sure there’s more but that’s all I recall for now. 

Having it so you can protect yourself from stalkers is one thing but having it and using it to throw someone’s IP out there is another. When I say that people weaponize Statcounter, I’m not joking. People will go on there after getting what they believe is anon hate and see who the move recent /ask visitor was and start blasting their IP all over the place.

For one thing - people can send asks via the dash. They don’t have to click onto your page at all so, there’s a HUGE risk of throwing out an innocent person’s IP address. 

Say someone does this - mistakenly throws out an innocent person’s IP after receiving anon hate. That person is likely going to have a panic attack. Not only have you shared their state and general location but you’ve blamed them for something they didn’t do. Throwing that IP out there, to any fucking extent can create a witch hunt for anyone who has Statcounter to try to figure out who the owner of that IP is. 

This is related to gatekeeping because you’re essentially blacklisting anyone who lives in that state/general area from the RPC all because you saw they were in the /ask page. How fucked up is that? It ties right back to the knee jerk response and it shows that people given even a modicum of power abuse it at the first chance. This isn’t even addressing how vicious some people answer anons.

Sure, posting an IP address on it’s own isn’t illegal but when you tack a name onto it, then it is because you’re essentially creating a threat toward that person.

Point of this section - don’t fucking share people’s goddamn IP addresses on the dash, it just makes you a douchebag. I lose all respect for anyone doing this when I find them - fuck you for doing that.

Activism Forced into Roleplay

I used to be in the Marvel RPC. Key here: used to be. Part of the issue that lead to me leaving was how much people slammed IRL issues into RP. Yes, I’m well aware that Marvel comics has a long and deep history of taking on IRL issues and the comics themselves are quite political.

However my issue comes when this is happening outside of the Marvel community.

I’ve seen people trying to force IRL events down people’s throats. ‘You shouldn’t be happy - x, y, and z are happening right now and don’t you dare tell me to be quiet about it!’ Good way to get yourself blocked. People RP as a hobby and, for some, as a form of escape. Immersing into a character to find out what makes them tick is a form of method acting, so it could be said that we’re method writing out characters to an extent. So shoving IRL issues at some RPers can cause them to lose muse or abandon blogs entirely. 

Of course, in the same breath, I’ve seen people told that they can’t RP something because they’ve never experienced it, people think they’re romanticizing it, or some other bullshit Tumblr reason. Look, I’ve experienced rape, self harm, suicidal thoughts, CSA (incestuous and non-incestuous), as well as mental and physical abuse. Don’t you dare assume that I cannot write about these experiences in an accurate way and don’t you fucking dare tell me that I can’t write it because I’ll tell you first off where you can shove your bullshit. The fact that people have to disclose that they’ve been through these things so people will stay off their ass on Tumblr RPs is fucking ridiculous too. 

You don’t get to tell me what I can and cannot write on my blog when I trigger tag the living shit out of everything to make sure that I’m protecting as many people as I can from seeing it. Do not try this shit with me. Censoring someone because it doesn’t adhere to your moral code is just as bad as banning books, televisions shows, and/or movies. 

Censoring something doesn’t solve the problem and boy fucking howdy does Tumblr have an issue with that. Censorship is another form of gatekeeping, by the way! You might not like it but people don’t go to jail for writing about incest or rape, just fucking saying. Oh but there have been crime authors sent to prison, I was suspended from school for writing about murder, but nothing about rape and incest. 

Sure, it may raise some eyebrows and people have to actually use gasp! postblock, tumblr savior, and any other method of tag blocking so they don’t see it but uh… that’s called being responsible for your content consumption.

Tumblr Is Not The Real World

Alright. So I’m gonna close this with a good reminder that I think some people on Tumblr could use. 

Tumblr is not the end-all be-all of the world.

Yes, you can make some good friends here and that’s fine but when you stay on here too long, the toxicity can start to change how you view the world around you. No, not every man that walks by you is going to rape you. No, not every woman that you see is going to be okay with you treating her the way you do female ocs and canons on here (actually, I’ve met some women who were proud they could make a full-grown man cry with the right look so). 

You have to think about how Tumblr makes you view others as well. All this ‘you messed up once so you’re cancelled’ behavior is a social media phenomenon that doesn’t carry on into real life. It just doesn’t. Sure, you can block someone you know IRL but that doesn’t stop them from talking to you if they were a Facebook friend you went to school with. If they still live nearby you, they’ll either talk to you or about you. What are you going to do? Take the Tumblr route and fucking scream at them like an incoherent banshee? No, you’ll suck it the fuck up and you’ll act like a decent person, don’t fucking lie.

You need to understand that Tumblr is it’s own entity, it’s own little sphere on the internet and, by no means, is it appropriate to carry on in your daily life the way some of you do on here. And if you do, please take a moment to stop and look at yourself. 

Self improvement starts when you want to improve but gatekeeping, bullying, and acting like a total barbarian to people you don’t know isn’t okay. This goes for the ones you do know too. I’m not saying that triggers aren’t important in the real world but you need to understand that forcing the social climate to change will only make people dislike you. When they don’t want to change, they’re not going to and some will refuse to change to spite you. 

Forcing anything won’t help. 

Gatekeeping won’t help. 

Censorship has never helped.

People don’t respond to being told what to do, feel, or think. Personally, I’d tell someone to fuck off if they tried doing it to me. So why do you think you can do it to others? Ever heard of ‘treat others how you want to be treated?’ Just be fucking decent and stop acting like other people are your goddamn doormat, jfc.