#i'm just pissy cause i hate fandom discourse

[buggitino]

more headcanons about sebastian solace from the hit game pressure roblox

back on my bullshit and i promise i only talk about The Situation a little bit

☆ his third arm is more sensitive than the other two (i'm thinking that either the USHD doctors fucked something up during the operation OR it grew in wrong, nerve endings closer to the epidermis and whatnot, something like that)

☆ just hates being touched in general, he’d rather initiate that contact (need an update where he gently —> not very gently shakes expendables off (depending on whether and how much they’ve annoyed/flashbanged him) when they climb him) ☆☆ part of this is due to trauma, he cant trust anyone to touch him without hurting him ☆☆ the other part is that he’s got that fucking dawg in him (i’ll get to this in a second)

☆ unlike what his new voice lines are starting to suggest about his character (i’m not gonna talk about zerum again because i think everyone knows what's happening at this point and ive already thrown in my two cents) he does NOT hate the expendables. literally his first line upon meeting him in his shop has him calling himself your friend (as strained of a connection as it may be, he could very easily not offer items, not share documentation/info, and just take the expendables data and hoard anything he picks up to make it harder for them to get to the crystal) (like yes, it's a mutually beneficial relationship but if sebastian didn't care about or sympathize with the expendables to some extent, it wouldn't be). i really do think he just has a short fuse (i'm not going to bring up trauma again, however-) and says things he doesn't mean (e.g. “they deserved it. and frankly so do the rest of you.” (im coping with the mischaracterization of these new lines leave me alone)) as a means of protecting himself and pushing the expendables further away (both physically and emotionally)

☆ he’ll act like a brat once they’re done, but he lets younger expendables sleep in his shop (he cares about them but would never in a million years let them know that) ☆☆ if a younger one comes in with a bunch of adult expendables, he’ll treat them all the same but will secretly slip the younger one some extra batteries, gauze, something unnoticeable (he feels especially responsible for the younger male expendables cause they remind him of his little brother)

☆ sometimes he thinks he can hear his family's voices on the radio, just under all the static, calling out for him like a search party would. he used to cry over this but he almost got caught once by an expendable coming into the shop so he does his best to tune it out. it’s hard. guilt pulls at his stomach every time he hears a clip of his family, begging for him to come home, to respond, something, anything, and he ignores it.

☆ autism (cause i said so) - i'm including this one for the sole reason that he does the dinosaur thing with his third arm and generally keeps his hands clasped together in the secret dinosaur position (he just like me fr) ☆☆ hates bright lights (the only light he uses/allows in his shop is the one he emits) (its a very soft/warm hue as opposed to the bright fluorescents throughout the rest of the facility) (not to bring up the flash beacon, obviously nobody likes getting flashbanged and he's got angler eyes but sTILL)

☆ he used to hate eating fish (pre-op) and now he’s pissed cause it’s all he has available and the DNA changes made it so fish is the yummiest tastiest thing in the world (i like imagining him actively fighting the urge to eat whatever fish he’s cooked in one bite cause he refuses to acknowledge that he's changed on a level that isn't physical/appearance-based)

☆ calls grown adults “kiddo” (even the ones that are older than him) ☆☆ he gets a certain kind of joy from seeing the 40/50/60 year old expendables try to figure out just how old he is after they get called “kiddo”. it’s extra fun for him when they’ve clearly already heard the rumors and/or gotten a glimpse of his file

☆ the ring is just an accessory, a bracelet on the floor or in a locker he found and liked. assumed nobody was gonna claim it and kept it (shoutout to @/lotus.eaterr on tik tok for this one!!!!)

[drysaladandketchup]

hi! sorry you can absolutely delete this if u don’t feel like answering or anything cause this is kind of vent-y (?) and isn’t like… actually a question but i am SO annoyed at some hockey fans and how they decide to treat leon. i am german and i live in america and the way leon gets treated in fanfictions and hockey discourse gives me serious flashbacks on how i am treated here. ik leon speaks perfect english but i wish people remembered that that’s still his second!!! language!!! it’s not his native language!!! sometimes he will come across differently then he actually is!!! his words will get twisted and he will be misunderstood because it’s not his native language!!!! every time he’s described as pissy and arrogant and rude (in a genuinely rude way) a vulnerable german kid living in america dies… 😔😔😔 and then the mattdrai fanfictions (admittedly i have not read that many because im just a not a big fan of the pairing but it was one of the main ships that got me into the fandom) i just hate that he seems to be so villainized (?). i might be biased (i am) lol but i am soo sick of it rrrr sorry sorry this got way too long. you just spoke about it before so i felt like you might understand where i'm coming from. peace

Oh my dear anon, people continuing to personify Leon as arrogant, emotionless, and rude is becoming my villain origin story. I'm happy to vent alongside you. I have talked about this before, and it does still bother me when I see it. Because I'm biased too. I love this guy haha.

Just for context, I'm Canadian, born and raised, and as of yet haven't lived in another country where I've had to fluently speak a second language or adjust to a culture I was not raised with. So I am by no means someone who can speak on that experience. But I'm sorry you've faced that kind of judgment.

I've written my thoughts on this subject before, here and here, so I'll try not to rehash everything I've said in the past. But as you say anon, I do think Leon is woefully misunderstood. He himself has said he thinks he's misunderstood, and that he comes off as too direct at times, that it's, 'probably the German in me.' He speaks English perfectly well, very fluently, and he's been living in Canada so long it would be weirder if he wasn't culturally affected and adjusted in some way. But he's still very much German; socially, culturally, linguistically. You don't just lose one entirely just because you've been exposed to and entrenched in another.

Sometimes he says things that can come off differently in English than probably intended, or at least that are easily misinterpreted by a North American audience, but that's a far cry from being 'pissy', as he's been branded by fans and media alike (also as an aside even people speaking their first language get their words mixed up and twisted sometimes, so I think we should just cut everyone some more slack when speaking maybe?).

And look, admittedly I've called him bitchy at times in my tags, as a joke, because yeah like literally any other person on earth, sometimes he says or does something that is snarky or poking fun or off-brand humour. But that's not inherently bad, nor is it inherently German. That's just part of his personality, a singular behaviour in a singular moment. I don't genuinely think he's an angry or aggressive or mean person. I think he's literally just a human being with multitudes.

His occasional tone of voice or his sometimes blunt way of speaking or his sarcastic sense of humour--things that could at least in part be because of his being German but are also not at all exclusive to or ubiquitous among Germans--is why some people make him out to be this aggressive or mean-spirited person, but like... obviously that is not only not true if you pay even an ounce of attention to him beyond a few choice soundbites and clips, but it's also insulting in general. As you say, people assuming the worst of you simply because of differences in communication or expression is the farthest thing from okay. Insinuating that he's brutish or emotionless or rude because he's German is obviously bigoted. It's xenophobic. Not to mention, as you said, it just makes it that much harder for other Germans to approach this audience without fearing they'll be judged the same way.

Now, obviously I don't know the guy personally, I only know what of him is public, but he seems like the farthest thing from rude or standoffish or arrogant. He really isn't any different from any other player (skills not withstanding), but for some reason he doesn't seem to get the same leeway between his on-ice persona and his off-ice persona, or from one instance to the next. For some reason, he's held under this microscope and reduced to his 'worst' moments more than a lot of other players I've seen. He does anything without a smile on his face or makes even one joke or comment that's less than flattering (or falls flat due to language differences), he's immediately made out to be a bad guy.

And to touch on mattdrai, which I do love a lot--and it's okay if it's not something you're into anon, you don't have to justify what you do or don't like :)-- I've said before that I think Matthew and Leon aren't always written very true to life. And I totally agree with you that the issue I sometimes see with Leon's characterization is that he is written like he's arrogant and lacking in emotion (at least outwardly), sometimes even acting like some overly-aggressive bully, and that's just so far from the reality that we know. And yes, some writers, like some fans, actively point to the fact that he's German to explain that. As if that's just how all Germans are, by nature of being German. Which, as I said and as you know anon, is so many kinds of wrong and horrible.

Yes yes he does dumb things on the ice sometimes and he and Matthew (and others) have exchanged shoves and whacks and chirps over the years. But again, if folks watched literally anything with Leon outside of those moments, they'd know that those are incidents, not his whole personality. I'm not over here pretending like he's never done anything wrong or questionable or stupid, but who hasn't? He's not a villain for that. Just like he's not perfect. We're all human.

Oof sorry anon this response got away from me a bit lol. Sorry if this got a little off topic, but I am nothing if not someone who rants and rambles. This topic drives me nuts; I can only imagine how upsetting and frustrating it is for you, as a German living in America.

But my ask box is always open for venting <3

[spacexfucker]

I wish I'd had the wherewithal at the time to properly document in real-time the influx of new people into Fandom spaces online during the start of the pandemic.

There's a very interesting set of people who, because they were spending so much time indoors, decided to navigate online spaces for more content of their favorite media. And, in doing so, dipped their toes in the first few inches of Fandom space.

I've seen most of these types of people on tiktok where it's fairly easy to access introductory Fandom content like fan edits and what are essentially AMVs. Because of the nature of those searches, most of the results at first are very surface-level. Nothing too crazy, just screen grabs, scene breakdowns, thirst traps, etc.

But, as is the nature of getting into a tag on tiktok, eventually the algorithm starts pushing you deeper content the more you interact with a tag. And suddenly, you're getting in-depth breakdowns, shipping content, and then, slowly, content that starts slipping away from strict canon.

So these people, who likely didn't necessarily anticipate the depth of Fandom or understand its quirks and layers, are thrown off. You see "discourse" at this level by people who have never been in Fandom before getting really pissy about things like crack ships, aus, or anything that isn't very strictly canon/explicitly said. Purists who don't want to be associated with the other people who have been in Fandom spaces for longer.

Now, this happens all the time even before the pandemic but because of both the pandemic and the popularization of titkok, this particular fan is a much larger part of Fandom. There's a lot of them and new ones every day and none of them know how Fandom works, what the like general rules and etiquette are, and a good chunk are very resistant to critiques on how they interact with fandom spaces.

The biggest culprit are people who, through tiktok, have literally been influenced to find fanfic. But not based on what they actually would like to read, but what they hear that everyone else has read or is reading again. Unfortunately, the fic that has had the most traction and spread on tiktok is Manacled, a Harry Potter fic. Anyone familiar with ao3 can look this up if you don't already know about it. And if you'd read the tags, I'm sure you could piece together why exactly a fresh new Fandom recruit or even just a regular person who happened to enjoy HP years ago would come across something that is being passed around as good and enjoyable and a way to relieve their favorite series may have terrible consequences.

Then there was this frankly huge influx of people who had never read fic before and had no idea how to parse the system of tags on ao3 reading a book about their favorite characters in a very dark, riddled with triggers, extreme AU. A lot of these people were basically following a trend. And most of the videos I saw talk about Manacled did not really do it justice in terms of preparing their audience for exactly what this fic had in it, nor how to properly interact with the Fandom space and ao3.

People were reading Manacled but not paying attention to tags and then making videos basically slandering the author for the story, hate reading it to talk shit and make hate content. But, on the flip side, there are people who loved it and wanted physical copies.

Unfortunately, this is where a singular tiktok comes into play in which a friend videoed gifting her friend a bound copy she'd made herself of Manacled. And like on tumblr, when certain posts get a threshold of interactions, it breaks containment. This caused another small influx of people who had never been introduced to Fandom, let alone fic, to flock to ao3.

At this point, we start getting into you-all-are-going-to-get-sued territory.

A large number of people read Manacled and other, mostly very popular dramoine, fanfiction. An undetermined amount of those people then, after seeing the video of the binding, began searching for ways to purchase a physically bound copy for themselves. For whatever reason, most were not willing to do this themselves, and so this is where the etsy listings came in.

There was a small boom of etsy listings for bound copies of mostly Mancled. In fact, you can still find these up. This, obviously, is both very illegal and very fucking insulting. This is a very big legal issue. In response, at least at the time, several of the bigger, popular fics took down their work from ao3. Which unfortunately didn't do much because in response, people who had downloaded the first prior were sharing those downloads with heartbroken fans.

You'd think that after being told that selling fic is illegal that people would stop. But they don't. If you take a look at one of the etsy listings, some of these are being sold for over 100 dollars. There's been a small push by parts of Fandom that have been around for a while to go to etsy occasionally and mass report these listings, but it's not really stopped anyone yet.

Fic authors have made a ton of requests either on tiktok or through ao3 for people to not do this. But, because most of these people don't know Fandom etiquette or even care about actual law or respecting authors, these requests have been mostly ignored.

Over the years as an author and someone who has also just read a lot of fic, there is a ratio involved in fic metrics. Generally, you can usually expect about 10% of the hits value for kudos and anything from 1% to 5% of the hits value for comments.

Due to the influx of people with no understanding of fic Fandom etiquette, if you look at the metrics for Mancled, it has over 8,300,000 hits. But its kudos and comments do not reflect the usual ratio.

There is even a strange crossover with goodreads where you can literally find reviews for Manacled. Which is honestly probably one of the most interesting things Ive seen. There are actually several dramione fics you can review on goodreads.

I'm still trying to process how some people's first introduction to fic was Manacled. I'm not saying the story isn't good or isn't well written. But, you have to admit it's a very strong first foray into fanfiction.

All of this to say, when you run into someone starting fights in Fandom space about canon or shipping, I'd say there's a good chance that you're interacting with someone fresh into the space who's entire online experience has likely just been Facebook and fan edits on tiktok. Metaphorically, a group of people who only have ever used salt and pepper on tv dinners arguing about your wine pairings, seasonings, and why you deviated from Marie Callender's fettuccine Alfredo recipe.

As a disclaimer, not all new additions to Fandom are bad. It's great to grow. It is interesting to see how a lot of antis come into the space, though.