#i turned out to be the no 1 realism hater i just never did it again

[aquasun]

was thinking about my old deviantart and the amount of gerard and frank fanart i found on there made me chuckle

[skamremakesfromhell]

I will never understand how skam italia got so popular that it somehow developed its own breed of stans outside of regular skam/Rm skam stans? Like i literally see other rm stan accounts othe twitter and tumblr complain about how obnoxious skam it stans are

so idk if you were really asking for a breakdown but i’ve been thinking about this a lot recently so im gonna ramble about it for a bit whoops

so it was always inevitable that the remakes would cause divisions within the skam fandom and i think that’s important to kept in mind. there were divisions when there was only the 1 show! the chaos of 8 was a given lol. so not only would there be people that preferred one remake over another but there was also the immediate division between fans of og who didn’t even wanna touch a remake with a 10 foot pole and og fans that were watching the remakes

so the first rounds of remakes start (skamfr, skamit, druck, and skamus) and there was a lot of excitement and disappointment happening because we were all excited for new content but simultaneously disappointed that the content wasn’t new enough. that s1 was the same exact story across them all. skam france came first and it really set the bar real low. it felt to many like a cheap copycat. it had some fun stuff here and there and the cast was doing a decent job but overall with the constant promise of “change” from the production/cast that never followed through a lot of people quickly got tired of it. by the time s1 was almost over druck and skam italia began to air and a little bit later skam austin starts. right here i think it’s important that s2 of skam france was airing for a majority of the time these others were on since s2 is the season that’s the most “either you love it or you hate it”

a number of people gave up on skamfr either not feeling it/refusing to watch s2/whatever and moved on to the other remakes. i think it’s really important to note that at this time skamit was the only version that was changing “william” in any substantial way. druck only changes at the very end and it’s only the fact that he apologized to kiki on his own but edoardo had been introducing small deliberate changes to his character throughout the season. this gained interest from both noorhelm fan and anti noorhelm people because it was new! and different! compared to the other version not changing much for this storyline and skamfr airing a basic copy of s2 this was an exciting development! it was something that intrigued more og fans

of course you have to remember that everyone thought all the remakes were gonna be terrible. they were all a lost cause from the very beginning. people that were enjoying the remakes were already having to be defensive against og fans who hated the remakes just for enjoying them. skamfr was already kinda a dud, skamus had too much hype and pressure on it since it was the one julie was working on to really live up to that, and druck was falling to the wayside from poor production decisions (going on break for a week within the first month without telling anyone ?!?? really ?!?) skamit s1 did seem to be the best produced, with some interesting character changes, and a nice aesthetic. it quickly became the one most people recommended to others. new person asks “which remake should i watch?” and the first answer would almost always be skamit. italians were all pleasantly surprised by the show which made them want to spread it even more. like “look finally some good italian television!” the actors are good and not super overdramatic! the shots are nice and pretty! everyone on the cast is so pretty! rome is so pretty!

but what made this turn into the skamit fans being their own “separate” fandom? well if you go back through all the #discourse you can see all the number of time skamit fans have had to defend the fact that they liked skamit and that in itself will limit you down to the kind of people are always on the defense. who feel like they have to talk about all the great amazing things to feel validated in liking what they like because people are out there criticizing it. who either don’t care about issues people raise or don’t want to think about it. “why can’t everyone leave us alone” “if you don’t like don’t watch” “this is how italy is and you’re the problem for not understanding that”. the casting of sana caused a lot of people to call out skamit and condemn it as “problematic” and/or refuse to watch it before it even aired. now i believe those people are well within their right to do that. if something like this about a show upsets you you don’t owe it to anybody to watch it. but what this caused was people that wanted to watch skamit/enjoyed it felt the need to dismiss the issues raised by other people in the fandom. this is because 1) people were attacking them for liking skamit and 2) it’s become the culture of fandoms to demand you only enjoy things that meet an incredibly high moral ground and you have to constantly prove that the media you enjoy does that. which is such a disservice to being media literate honestly. and this kept happening. the racist, fatphobic comments, the excuse from the production about sana’s casting, the lack of any minority actors, the excluding of mahdi’s characters, the n-word being used and the mess that was the response from the cast and crew

it was one after another of things that made a number of people decided to not be a fan of skamit anymore and once they’d decided that any new thing that came out just proved to them that they were right! that skamit was racist and they were right for dropping it! but that doesn’t just end there because then it becomes anyone that supports skamit is racist and doesn’t deserve respect. and while all this is happening as every new thing happens and we all argue again about who is the most “morally superior” the fans of skamit are stepping on the toes of anyone that dares to criticize the show. they are defensive because they feel like their character is being attacked. because they feel like they have to be. and so ideologies are clashing all over the place over what is and isn’t racist, what’s good representation, what’s the importance of representation over “realism”, how realistic is skam really, you have muslims saying sana’s casting is disgraceful and muslims saying they don’t mind it, people of color saying it’s bad that there are no pocs and that sana is whitewashed and other people of color saying this isn’t a big deal because it’s realistic for italy, europeans claiming all the hate is coming from americans who live in a “us centric world” and don’t understand european views on race and europeans saying uh no i also think this is racist, italians saying this is just how italy is and italians calling all the racist stuff out. it’s just a ton of arguments that are difficult things to get people to see eye to eye on especially when it’s all over social media text and everyone feels like they have something to prove! prove the show they like is morally sound! prove they’re actually the most “woke”! prove and blame and defend and dog pile on everything! and no one is actually listening to each other because defending or shitting on a show is more important than remembering the humanity behind these arguments. remembering that there’s a person who you’re upsetting! who you are hurting because we’ve all invested too much of ourself in this!

it really bred this perfect space for back and forth arguments that went nowhere because people felt the need to tighten their hold on their own ideologies and to defend their position over any random comments they see. i’m guilty of doing this a number of times. i’ve seen a post in the skam tag and made my own post against it. i’ve seen comments on my post or people sub-blogging me and called them out to address it. this thing this show and all it’s versions are something we as fans all feel very strongly about. and this is really the only space we have to talk about it. to hash everything out. to post whatever thought we have. emotion run high! and with the anonymity of social media these arguments escalate so quickly!

i think it’s accurate to say that skamit fans are defensive. they feel like they have to be because they feel like the reasons they and the show they love are attacked are arbitrary reasons. they’ll dealt with so much criticism that any remark against skamit feels like another attack they need to defend themselves against. which has now created a culture where people are scared to say anything critical of skamit. that they’ll be deemed a hater and told “if you don’t like don’t watch”. but people don’t have to defend against every argument they see! they dont need to sit themselves on a high horse! anti skamit people are told to just leave and not bother with skamit but this goes both ways! skamit fans don’t have to address every criticism!

because of this back and forth that went no where we’ve created a culture where we can’t seem to even have discussions about the show anymore. about what we like/don’t like. what’s working and what’s not. that if you say “i don’t like this” you’ll get someone in your ask box basically saying “fuck you” because we attacked the people that wanted to enjoy the show it’s made them feel that everything is an attack. and this is a phenomenon you see across many fandoms! this morally superior hate-filled childish attacks. and at this point i don’t know if we can undo the damage that’s been done, both to how the fans of skamit view criticizers and how the people that aren’t fans view the fans. and that’s honestly really unfortunate

[mythicaldemigoddess-of-deltarune]

Rosemary & The Crystal Dragon Sword (2021)

------------------

Credit for High Guardian Spice goes to Raye Rodriguez 

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technically there is no Crystal Dragon Sword, made out of the Scales of a Crystal Dragon....so yeah it’s noncanon.

but if it was canon, the sword would call upon Rose’s Crystal Dragon Familiar.  

while I can understand that High Guardian Spice, wouldn’t be everyone’s taste....but I’m starting to think that the other half that don’t like it,

well it might be for the wrong reasons....

I hope there will be a Season 2.

this drawing might not be 100% perfect,

and this is my first High Guardian Spice Fan Art.

plus I have my doubts on some of the Haters of that show,

guess some are just use to the Realism Anime, I guess...

plus now that I look at it, it kind of reminds me of She-Ra and The Princesses of Power....I like that show too, though I wouldn’t be surprised if that show has some who dislike it, but there could still be those who like it.

while not everyone has to like that show, but if some dislike it because of it having some LGBTQ, well let’s hope that isn’t the reason.

I know I can’t tell my family about the whole Gray-Asexuality,

because they might not think that there are some who can be Heteromantic.

      even if the show is for Mature Audience, because of it’s Language.

there can still be some improvement, and I still like it.

I also want to say that if someone does something that gives off as a

Toxic-Feminism type image

of course people are gonna get upset,

and see it as being just as bad as Toxic-Masculism. 

some will have a good reason to be a little scared of men,

like having a small case of Androphobia, but it being a Semi-Androphobia.

and yeah a few years ago during when we were moving to the house we live now, I kind of had a panic attack, it was dark and I was in the car and I was by myself.....ended up hitting my head while in the car....

I don’t like being by myself in the car, either it be at night or day...

like there are some men and boys in your family you can trust,

but knowing one of my much older cousins, that isn’t 100% so...

before he did such a really bad thing to someone,

I remembered something that happen when I was little, which either really did happen or was just a warning dream, but NO Child should be given that kind of warning dream, it’s no wonder I buried deep down in my subconscious and forgot it for sometime.

but it’s likely it did happen, but my pendulum is giving me a circle No

about it not being a warning dream, and a Yes about the forced kiss had actually happen.

I got another Yes about me burying the Memory in my subconscious.

if I had been a little boy at the time and my Cousin was a Girl,

I would probably still end up traumatized and burying the memory to protect myself.

but because I obviously never told my Mom about it, remembering it a few years ago, and trying to get her to listen about it, but her writing it off as just a bad dream and telling me he would never do such a thing....

but a few years later after I confess to my Mom about it,

we get word that he did something REALLY bad to someone...

sometimes it feels like my family doesn’t want to listen to me,

like only listen to me like sometimes, and when they don’t listen when it really matters, it hurts, a lot.

 plus now I am a bit confused about it, I mean there could be a possibility that my pendulum could be pranking me, and it could of just been a warning dream that traumatized me.

 even if there can be some who like the show...

there are still those who wont.

one of the improvements, might be to replace the ending for each of the episode with the one from the very last episode of Season 1.

even if what is said is true, or that it was just a reference.

some shows do reference other shows.

but getting Season 2 might not even happen, because of how many hate on the show, it is possible that it is cancelled.

I hope it turns out it isn’t cancelled, and they are trying their best to improve the show a bit more, and maybe making sure there is form of lesson in them.

like the lesson that Sage learns when she bonds with Snapdragon.

there can be some guys who talk about there feelings, while there can be some gals who don’t want to talk about some deep feelings that they try to hide from everyone and just rather not talk about those feeling at all.

    I shouldn’t get my hopes up about the Season 2 thing,

I mean got my hopes up for Wander Over Yonder getting saved and being given another Season, but that didn’t happen at all.

I hope that Wander Over Yonder, Star Vs The Forces Evil, Gravity Falls, The Owl House and Amphibia gets on Cartoon Network, 

even though I still love Disney, it be nice if those shows ended up on Cartoon Network.

 Warner Bros needs to do something about the whole too much Teen Titans Go, I wouldn’t mind if there was a full collection DVD of the show.

Warner Bros is one of the owners of Cartoon Netowrk....

 the Non-Stop Marathon of Spongebob was not okay for me.

I had to put up with it for some months, I’m fine now but I still rather either go to another room or try to tune it out by listening to some music or whatever.

I wish I can tell my family about how bad it got for me before,

but of course it is likely my confessing about it, might make them upset with me.

I just am so tired of the Tv Automatically changing to the channel when Spongebob comes on....I freaking HATE IT.

once in a while I can watch it, but that non-stop Marathon with the same episodes, with very little change and it showing one of the other episodes, it was a nightmare for me.

I’m sure there are a lot of people, who can’t tell their families about most of their feelings. and I just wish they hurry up and have Villainous on too...

I mean there was the cameo in that show with Victor and Valentino. 

I am tired of Teen Titans Go hogging the channel, but if what I checked is correct....it does seem they aren’t gonna come on today.

which I guess it means they wont be hogging the channel like before.

I am also gonna hope the Simpsons will stop getting another Season,

and there will be some work-in-progress for Disenchantment’s next season.         

 Luci might be a Demon, but he has the True Heart of a Angel.

 it be for the best that all the seasons of the Simpsons, go to DVD.

one of the reasons why I want them to stop making the Simpsons already,

is because of some of the creepy stuff I heard about them predicted some real life events, and if it is 100% true, then it really needs to stop.

it isn’t even the fun kind, like with Kris eating the Pie in Chapter 2 in Deltarune.

or the whole Rainbow Dash and Applejack ending up being married in the distant future, which they might not say it on the episode, but those two are obviously married.

this year hasn’t been the best for me, like what happen on March,

then on August to September.

anyway, not everyone has to like this Fan Art.

if they are working on a Season 2, maybe they are trying to make it a bit better so there wont be so much hate for it.

anyway I think the next post I make, will be a Deltarune Fan Art.

[amazingstories]

Back in 1968, Alexi Panshin published a critical study of Robert A. Heinlein entitled Heinlein in Dimension (now available online at the link). His book had a rather odd history – you can find a one-sided account* of its story here – but it was a rather interesting overview of Heinlein’s works to that point. It does have its flaws, but – in its honour – I decided to entitle this essay Heinlein in Reflection.

First, a brief recap. Some months ago, I volunteered to do a Retro Review of Starship Troopers for Amazing Stories. Steve Davidson suggested I review the remaining two books in the three that Heinlein believed encompassed his politics; Stranger in a Strange Land and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Somewhere along the line, this turned into a review of Farnham’s Freehold and To Sail Beyond The Sunset. (Earlier, I also reviewed Podkayne of Mars, at least partly because I read a strongly negative review and felt the urge to reread the source material.) Looking back left me convinced of two things: first, Heinlein was far more diverse than his critics painted him (which became the subject of another essay) and, second, he was never as black as his critics painted him. Heinlein was, in effect, a man who was before his time and after his time, but never truly a man of his time.

Perhaps because of this, Heinlein and his legacy have been savagely attacked. The hoary old chestnuts of ‘racist’ and ‘sexist’ and ‘fascist’ have been trotted out of the stable and aimed at Heinlein, simply because Heinlein was not a man of our time. Some critics have latched on to tiny details – Meade’s lack of presence and characterization in The Rolling Stones, for example – and used it to accuse Heinlein of sexism. Others cherry-pick examples from Heinlein’s earlier works and use them to slam the author, while still others just point and shriek at Heinlein without bothering to apply any critical thought. One may argue – many do – that attacking Heinlein is attacking the roots of science-fiction itself, that the haters are motivated by spite and/or a simple refusal to accept Heinlein’s works on their own terms (The Rolling Stones is a book for young male teens; Starship Troopers is about another young man maturing). Others might point out, in response, that Heinlein lived in a world that, in many ways, was very different to ours. He saw further than most, but he still had his blinkers.

There is, if I can be blunt, an understandable tendency to assume that a writer’s characters are speaking for him, that their impulses and goals match the authors. Yet any author will tell you that that is simply wrong. An author must develop a sense of empathy, even for a fundamentally wrong character; an author must play fair with his characters, particularly the ones he doesn’t like. (Straw characters are rarely amusing, whatever the politics behind them.) Indeed, given how much Heinlein wrote, anyone who assumed that Heinlein agreed with his characters would have to believe that Heinlein suffered from multiple-personality disorder. At base, it is difficult to believe that Heinlein wanted both the worlds of Stranger in a Strange Land and Starship Troopers. They simply don’t go together. As Larry Niven put it:

There is a technical, literary term for those who mistake the opinions and beliefs of characters in a novel for those of the author. The term is ‘idiot’.”

One may think that this is a harsh judgement. And yet – looking back – critics have been happy to blame Heinlein for being what he was, a man who was born in 1907 and lived through a profound period of social and political change that, understandably, may not have sat well with him. Heinlein’s life – 1907-1988 – spanned both world wars, the cold war and all its assorted engagements, the fall of the European empires, the civil rights era and the loss of American innocence … Heinlein saw a lot. His experiences – and those of his country and world – shaped his development, as surely as my experiences shaped mine. Heinlein grew up in a profoundly unsafe world, where – eventually – the threat of nuclear annihilation arose to promise the destruction of everything he held dear; his critics grew to adulthood as the world stabilised – for a while – and the prospect of imminent death and destruction faded into the background. Heinlein never knew the safety (and immense comforts) we used to take for granted – and, in many ways, his harsh view of the universe was more practical than anything put forward today.

Looking at his career in reflection, I think it is possible to say certain things about Heinlein that shine through his books. It is, of course, impossible to say for sure, but … I think it works. (And someone else will call me an idiot. That is the way of the world <grin>.)

Heinlein was, I think, a dichotomy. Just as Stranger in a Strange Land and Starship Troopers represented, for a while, the bibles of both Left and Right, Heinlein himself was a complicated mixture of cold-blooded realist/pragmatist and hot-blooded fantasist. He knew too much about humanity – particularly men – to fully embrace the more rationalist (in the sense that their characters are rational) worldviews of some of his successors, but – at the same time – he wanted people to be better. He was aware – realistically speaking – of how society’s chains held people, particularly women and blacks, in bondage, yet he also preached of worlds where those chains had been left in the past and forgotten.

It sometimes produced odd results. Hazel Stone, of The Rolling Stones, is an engineer, yet she faced considerable resistance from men in a male-dominated field (and eventually retired to raise her son). It isn’t actually clear if she gave up or not, unlike the main character of Delilah and the Space Rigger, who kept going until she had proved herself. It is clear that she advises her granddaughter, eighteen-year-old Meade, not to go into engineering even though she has the talent – a bad piece of advice or a practical one, given that Meade would have to work hard to prove herself? (Notably, Heinlein never suggests that barring women from engineering is a justifiable attitude; an alternate view of the whole situation might suggest that Hazel’s attitude ruffled too many feathers.)

Indeed, Meade is treated as the subject of a somewhat dishonest review of The Rolling Stones, which may as well serve as a good example of attacks on Heinlein himself. At the start, she is told to stay still … which the reviewer condemns … except she’s being painted, so she has to stay still. Later on, the adults wonder if she is ‘husband-high’ – i.e. old enough to get married. Which sounds awfully sexist, except for the minor detail that she might be spending a large chunk of her early twenties on a interplanetary freighter with no eligible men – a potential problem for someone of her age (and someone who has already shown an interest in men).

Odder still, this same dichotomy between realism and fantasy shows up in Farnham’s Freehold, Heinlein’s most controversial work. Farnham himself concedes that Joe – a black man – would make a good husband for his daughter, but notes that – at the same time – he would not advise such a marriage if they’d stayed in the distant past. The problems facing men and women in interracial marriages were stupendous, at the time. Is Farnham a realist or a racist? It can be argued both ways.

Heinlein did, I think, understand men very well. His grasp of male psychology was far better than most of his successors, although his grasp of female psychology was poor. He expected people to try to be better, but – at the same time – he didn’t condemn them for being what they were. Many of his juvenile novels were successful, at least in part, because he understood what his audience actually wanted. He understood the forces that shape the male mindset and suggested ways to push them in useful directions, instead of alternatively pretending that they didn’t exist or trying to crush them. Heinlein would not, I think, have had any time for either MRA or MGTOW activists, but he would have understood them. His male characters were recognisably human, even when their adventures were set in the far future. Heinlein preached the outwards urge, the desire to go on and found a new home. Our current stagnation owes much to the lack of a frontier.

This wasn’t really true of his female characters, although one could argue that they are reflections of their times too. Podkayne is a sweetly manipulative little teenage girl who reads poorly to our eyes, simply because her society doesn’t read like a natural outgrowth of ours. It is a curious combination of post-racial attitudes mingled with old-fashioned sexism, although it is clear that Poddy’s mother was a well-respected engineer in her own right. I think, at base, Heinlein simply wasn’t good at writing women. He could and did scatter references throughout his text to women who did ‘male’ jobs, but he was a great deal weaker when it came to using them as viewpoint characters. In some ways, indeed, he paid them the odd compliment of treating them as men, once they had been freed of society’s chains. Perhaps Heinlein’s greatest failure was not anticipating the effects – positive and negative – of feminism.

But this may be because of his early life. Heinlein grew up in a world that was very different from ours in many ways, even though it had a certain superficial similarity. (Indeed, many of his early works featured a background that was basically ‘USA IN SPACE.’) Because we don’t understand his world – and his assumptions about how it worked – his critics are quick to condemn. They do not see the past as a different country, nor do they try to engage its residents on their own terms. And while there have been many steps forward – many of which Heinlein predicted – there have also been some steps backwards. One of these, I believe, is a failure to grasp that human nature doesn’t change. Or that TANSTAAFL – There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

This theme became more pronounced throughout the later years of his writing. In Starship Troopers, Heinlein asks what right mankind has to survive. And he’s right. Why do we have a natural right to anything? The universe doesn’t give a damn about us. Heinlein had no illusions about the world. He knew that expansionist powers – Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union – had to be fought. The peace that prevailed in Europe after WW2 was not the result of natural law, but NATO’s willingness to fight (and that peace is now at an end). Superior military force was, in his view, the key to defending freedom.

Panshin argues that Heinlein’s later characters are focused on survival at all costs, while some of his other critics insist that Heinlein thought that women should have children first and only later have a career. This may be true, but … what’s wrong with survival? What is wrong with wanting one’s culture to survive? The universe rarely admits of neat and tidy solutions to anything … sometimes, you just have to grasp the nettle and fight. It’s a harsh viewpoint, in many ways, but it is true. The universe, like I noted above, simply doesn’t care.

There are people who insist that the destruction of the Native American societies was effectively a horrific genocide. They’re right. It was. But no amount of breast-beating will change the simple fact that it happened, or that human history tells us that the strong will always overpower the weak. (All those jokes about how different history would have been if the natives had an immigration policy have a nasty sting in the tail – immigrants did come to America and displace the natives. Why would anyone want to repeat that experience?) I think that Heinlein understood reality in a way many of his successors simply did not.

In his later years, Heinlein loved to shock. He would push forward controversial ideas – cannibalism, incest, etc – forcing his readers to actually think … and then question the foundations of their society. He asked questions that needed to be asked, although many of his answers were weak; he shocked, but then tried to show the consequences and downsides of breaking society’s rules. In doing so, he laid the foundations for much – much – more.

To some extent, as his career developed, Heinlein slowly shifted from writing adventure stories to writing literature. Many of his early works were thrilling stories for young men – often subjected to the editor’s pen – but his later works were more elaborate pieces of literature, more interested in developing their ideas than telling a story. (One of the reasons I didn’t like Starship Troopers as a young man was because it is a philosophical work, rather than an adventure story.) In some ways, it allowed him to get his ideas across, but – in other ways – it weakened them. He was still more effective, as a writer, when he didn’t hammer his ideas home. He trusted his readers. It is a lesson that many more modern writers could stand to learn.

Over the last few decades, there has grown up a belief that figures of the past can be judged by modern-day standards … and then rejected, when they – unsurprisingly – fail to live up to them. George Washington has been attacked for keeping slaves, even though he also saved the American Revolution and ensured that America would neither shatter into dozens of smaller countries nor turn into a dictatorship. Other figures have been subject to the same treatment, even though they were never men of our time. Heinlein, for all his contributions to the field of science-fiction (and a progressiveness that was quite shocking, by the standards of his time), has been blasted for not being progressive enough. He has been quoted out of context, reviewed with neither comprehension nor contextualisation and his supporters have been attacked for daring to support him. Very few people – and Heinlein knew this – are wholly good or evil. Heinlein was neither a angel nor a devil, but a man.

I’d like to finish by paraphrasing a quote from Jonathon Strange and Mr. Norrell that, I think, fits Heinlein like a glove.

It is the contention of modern critics that everything belonging to Robert Anson Heinlein must be shaken out of modern SF/Fantasy, as one would shake moths and dust out of an old coat. What does they imagine they will have left? If you get rid of Robert Anson Heinlein you will be left holding the empty air.”

***

(Editor’s note: while there are two sides to every story, Panshin’s accounting of the attempts by RAH to prevent the publication of Heinlein in Dimension and actions taken subsequently are supported by the historical record, as well as by eyewitness accounts privy to the “Good Day, Sir!” incident.)

(Editor’s second note: there is a wealth of coverage of Robert A. Heinlein, his works and his interactions with Fandom here on the site.)

Heinlein in Reflection Back in 1968, Alexi Panshin published a critical study of Robert A. Heinlein entitled Heinlein in Dimension…