#is how much context matters in fandoms especially when talking about things like racism and other bigotry

[theghostofashton]

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[meirimerens]

cleaning out this account of last night's ruckus because posting when sleep-deprived & going along with (even gentle) egging is Not productive and frankly did not do much beyond rallying people to heehee and haha and feel a sense of moral superiority which was not something i meant to & should have fostered by continuing to engage, cos that was not going to give us anything.

i do apologize firmly and fully for last night's mess and noise. i should have cut it short, should have said less, should gotten my ass to bed because I was in no state of mind to attempt cool-headed discussions, and it is my fault for not having had the discipline to sleep on it. it wasn't then, and it is not now, any kind of witch-hunt. i did not name names and i did not show anything on purpose, but i should have said even less, for one of my tags, which did not strike me as potentially too identifying for comfort when sleep-deprived, made them pretty identifiable, and i firmly reiterate my apologies for it should not have happened. people deserve to be left alone to do some reflecting and growing, and i have repeated it as such. this thing should be talked about as a wider problem and not be pinned on individuals, even if it easier. from what i had remembered, the artist/s had already been made aware of how unsavory the depictions were, and had just kept going, but this is something i should have checked for myself. I didn't, and for that I'm sorry.

i do very much stand by the fact that only drawing the one non-white guy like Wreck-it-Ralph when he canonically is profoundly average beyond being tall, while all the white characters get to have normal proportions (if comically smaller than him) is, at the very least, "sus", and worth interrogating even within the context of heavy stylization, because it's not like stylization has never been used to racist extents. this is an opinion i hold and am not particularly inclined to budge on. i do not believe it is conscious, or comes from a will to harm. but i think it's real silly and deserves reflection. this is a trope i've seen spanning fandoms, that every fandom with a white guy x nonwhite guy popular ship has to reckon with at some point, and every time you got people who think it's sus as fuck, nonwhite people who take the time and effort to explain how and why, and people, including nonwhite people themselves, who think it's not a big deal. i have both my own personal opinions on caricature (which are that you can do so while still not falling into racialized depictions) and no power nor desire to change anyone's minds. those two opinions can and do coexist, and even people who will relate to burakh on the same basis will have varying degrees of tolerance for this, and their opinions on the matter. let's just say there's room for everyone.

discussions from indigenous russian &/or central/east asian people on how the fandom treats artemy as the one nonwhite guy in one of the most popular pairings have been going on for years: i was coming across them before i even got here. but my personal experience of 4 years of seeing such depictions and reading them be criticized by people it affects and my personal exasperation towards mischaracterizations bordering on racism developed from seeing a constant stream of them, and them being identified as such, is not the experience of people who just got here, and a discussion spawned from a "woe the hounds be upon ye" imgflip meme does not particularly lend itself to 4 years, tens of posts, tens of threads and more strewn-around discussions of nuance.

I reiterate my apologies for the noise, the ruckus, and for the pointedness that had no business being here, especially considering how long stuff like that has been going on for; it was uncalled for and callous for it to fall on specific people when it is more productive to talk about it as tropes and a wider fandom problem than to point fingers. I should have had the discipline and the discernment to cut it out and go to bed. i didn't, got way in over my head, and truly and fully fumbled. i apologize for making a circus out of this. thank you for reading, and hope you're well.

[taylortruther]

Angry woc anon here, lol. I totally agree with you, what a lovely response. And thanks for absorbing my rant, lol -- I'm so pissy about this and have so few outlets. And uh, here comes another one? It really is so hard in fandoms. B/c like, just as you said, we're all here to discuss her, so ofc we're going to talk about things like who she's dating. And yeah, she's a public figure, and like ... public figures affect the political landscape. And that can be fuzzy. But I feel like ... as you said, there are people treating this like actual activism. And I have some sympathy for that, especially for younger fans -- this is the only sphere they really have a voice. But I think something that is really true about female-dominated fandoms is 1. we're eager to tear ourselves/the women we love apart b/c there's a built in cookie/jolt of self-esteem/whatever for the girl who shits on other girls, and 2. we police the shit out of our fandom, out of all proportion to real-world issues, b/c we know, on some level, how huge those issues are, and are terrified by them, and our attendant helplessness. Standing up to actual men is terrifying and subjects you to vicious, insane cruelty. And we're dealing w/ this shit irl every day of our lives. So we freak the fuck out at Taylor like she's suddenly got an Aryan Nation tattoo and not, yknow, getting some sleazy-but-worshipful rebound dick after a tough breakup. Because it feels like doing something, when actually doing something is so, so, so much harder, especially for women. Tbh I feel like Azaleia Banks in the only person with the right take rn -- like, girl, you can do better! You deserve better! But also, goddamn, this breakup is devastating, she's on a completely unprecedented tour, she's living under insane scrutiny every damn day, she's a once-in-a-generation genius, and because she's a woman, she also needs to be very hot and in high heels as she does it. And she's 33. She knows it only gets harder from here. So, like ... I get it. Joe checked out, and MH, for his faults, clearly KNOWS she's spectacular. I get it. It's not great, but shit, I get it, and I'm going to give her grace. Like we do for men, even when they do actually objectionable shit. The truth is, which I think a lot of "THIS IS ACTIVISM!" Swifties don't want to face, is that Taylor dating MH effectively doesn't fucking matter. No one is looking at this and saying "Gee, I'm going to join the alt-right because Taylor Swift is soothing herself with a sleazy indie dude!" Even just in terms of "what is this normalizing" ... as a social worker who has had to reckon w/ that question in a variety of contexts, it's patently absurd to freak out over this and not, like, the thousands of songs on the radio every day that treat women of color like animals. Or how about the ones that glorify beating them and treating them like shit? Or like, the thousands of online spaces that explicitly tell men that Jews are the reason they're stuck in a dead-end job? I know a lot of people think this is whataboutism, but there is a material difference no one who actually does this work can ignore between these things. There are orders of magnitude that matter here, and ignoring them is putting one's own petty, privileged bs before actual, active suffering. The truth is, the vast, vast majority of people who like Taylor don't know who MH is and never will. They hear there's some "drama" and shrug. And the other truth is, this has blown up because we looooove getting together to rake a woman over the coals. I know that BECAUSE I'm a woman of color with a background that spans multiple countries. No matter where I am, I can depend on one fact: People love hating women. This just isn't that fucking different.

i'm not lying when i say reading this ask made me really emotional because not only do i feel like you understand the depth of my feelings on this topic (the misogyny and racism, but also the way the fandom is handling it), but you've also articulated feelings i didn't know i had. i'm really grateful that you took the time to express this and share it with me because, truthfully, i feel less alone in my perspective. and i know we've been saying "it's not that deep," but like. it's not, but it is.

that last part probably didn't make sense. but i just want to call out a few things in your ask that really stood out to me and i want to emphasize:

But I feel like ... as you said, there are people treating this like actual activism. And I have some sympathy for that, especially for younger fans -- this is the only sphere they really have a voice.

2. we police the shit out of our fandom, out of all proportion to real-world issues, b/c we know, on some level, how huge those issues are, and are terrified by them, and our attendant helplessness. [...] Because it feels like doing something, when actually doing something is so, so, so much harder, especially for women.

There are orders of magnitude that matter here, and ignoring them is putting one's own petty, privileged bs before actual, active suffering.

No matter where I am, I can depend on one fact: People love hating women.

[stranger-rants]

Well, I was only talking about Billy, so of course I only labeled something he did as a hate crime. A little baby hate crime. Honestly I think the stuff at the roller rink in S4 should count, since they clearly are fucking with her cause they think she's mentally deficient.

Breaking up homophobia into little bits and pieces and implying it's only homophobia if he called the other boy a f*ggot sounds like cope, but from you I fully believe it's sincere. Like how you keep calling Steve queerphobic cause he specifically called Jonathan a queer. You can say it's homophobic even if it's not the big daddy f slur.

My point is that he did do something homophobic, in a flashback, parroting his dad. And it's clearly something he does not remember fondly since it's in that big dark mental hurricane space. I don't think Billy is canonically homophobic, but he did do a homophobia.

With the race stuff, "Billy isn't racist" is definitely a valid interpretation but imo it deserves to be a minority opinion (same for "Billy is homophobic" btw). The clear, obvious interpretation of his behavior towards Lucas is that it was racist. I choose to ignore that shit cause it's not fun to write about and fandom isn't activism. Though if I did I'd prolly go the "Billy's smart enough to figure out racism is stupid and he'll get better about it as soon as he's out of his abusive home and has the mental space to work on himself" route.

Anyway, I'll stop clogging up your inbox. Obviously we disagree on stuff, but I really like your blog and I hope you have a nice day :)

I'm very specific in my language because these things, while related, represent different facets of bigotry. I also don't like using "baby hate crime" to describe most bullying behavior committed by children, for similar reasons why we don't diagnose children with ASPD. I don't like setting children on a course for incarceration for their behavior when they are children and hate crime is explicitly a crime. Bullying is dealt with very differently and as a person who works with children, I do think this distinction is important.

I use queerphobia because it encompasses more than homophobia. I use hegemonic masculinity and effemiphobia to talk about how boys use the word "pussy" to bully other boys into masculine behavior. It's important to be precise, especially when bigotry can take on many forms. I don't consider this as a clearcut example of Billy being homophobic. He was a child beating up another child who we assume was a boy repeating the same words his dad said, but also probably something he hears quite often. The fear that men show and teach young boys to feel towards femininity is not just a matter of homophobia.

I also think it's silly, personally, to downplay Billy's racist behavior while harping on Billy - as a child - bullying another child using the word "pussy," which he was also told and/or may not have fully understood at the time. To me, his racism is much more evident and it's something we should be more critical about. Still, he doesn't go around hate-criming people. A lot of his violent outbursts are incidental and not exactly targeted. Using that word continually to describe his violent behavior ignores context and assumes Billy just does these things regularly.

I'm glad you enjoy my blog, but I say what I say for a reason. His bullying behavior as a child is still wrong, but I don't agree that it's clearcut evidence that Billy is/was homophobic. As I've said, people accuse him of saying and doing things he never actually said and did and that includes the "Billy is homophobic" bs.

[dilfdoctordoom]

I like Rocket but I don't understand how Gunn didn't think it would be appalling to let Thanos murder Gamora and then have vol 3 be all about how Rocket shouldn't be allowed to die as a result of his abusers actions. Worse he doesn't have anyone talk about Gamora being murdered, rather than the stupid lines about how she can't remember anything for whatever reason they won't explain, except for one time. That one time is Peter talking about it like her being thrown off a cliff was some silly little joke of an incident. I don't understand how people can't see how awful that was.

Also I really wish there was more space to talk about how even if unintentional it does matter that the only female character who ended up with consistent development from beginning to end and a solid arc was Nebula who is played by a white actress. And the character seemed to benefit off of Gamora because Zoe talked about how Gamora was always guiding the team and keeping them on task and that's Nebula's job in vol 3. This may seem like no big deal but it becomes one because the movie says nothing about 2018 Gamora having those responsibilities. We only get Peter mentioning Gamora formed the team and no other characters back him up on this or offers their own thoughts on Gamora's time with the family. Instead they stand around like they barely knew her and never heard or experienced anything Peter talks about. In this context it frames it as if Nebula has always had the role on the team and Gamora did nothing. Then with Mantis she never gets much authority and her arc isn't well developed. Her arc also leads to her leaving the team and while going off isn't inherently bad, it does leave Nebula as the only woman allowed to stay close with most of the family on Knowhere. Plus Peter's teased as returning so it really is Gamora and Mantis left not getting to stick around or have a continuing story.

I don't know what happened with all the choices and decisions between vol 2 and what we ended up with in vol 3 but Rocket getting the love and attention he deserves doesn't make up for other characters not receiving the same writing and treatment. Particularly Gamora. There needs to be more space to discuss that vol 3 does some things well while doing other things not so well or even terribly. Especially because race and ethnicity are already factors in how people are viewed and by extension how the characters they play are viewed. It does matter when canon acts like this is how it should be and vol 3 is written as if 2018 Gamora was never that important and should be forgotten while 2014 Gamora is sidelined, underwritten and given very little purpose or nuance to her characterization.

This! Literally all of this!

It's not just that Gamora's story is unsatisfactory; it's that the leading woman of color was diminished in every aspect of the story, the other woman of color had her character arc skipped over, and dead Gamora was reduced to just being Peter Quill's girlfriend.

It's not one issue, it's several combined. I adore Rocket Raccoon but I think it's insane to act like him getting a good story was worth shafting the WOC of this franchise, especially when the Guardians franchise already has issues with sexism and racism and was just coming off the fridging of their leading female character.

And you're very right to critique that Nebula comes off the best out of all the women in the Guardians. I'd argue she has the best treatment out of every female character in the franchise and when she's getting prioritized over women of color, it feels... icky, to say the least.

Vol 1 & 2 managed to balance this large cast-- so it doesn't make sense when Vol 3 doesn't even try to do the same.

Gamora's ending also feels... ill thought out? I don't think there was any consideration of intersectionality, either behind the scenes or in the fandom. Fandom makes it out as a feminist win that she doesn't end up with her love interest.... despite the fact that such an ending perpetuates the trope that the black woman doesn't "need" love.

The fandom has shown a really ugly side at the idea of discussing the racism and sexism in this movie, which isn't surprising, but is still disheartening.

Nobody's saying these movies are devoid of anything good. Liking them can coexist with acknowledging their flaws-- and there are a lot of flaws.

At the end of the day, this is a franchise that failed women (women of color & queer women in particular) at every turn. It took until the second movie for the Guardians team to officially gain a second female member; it's adapting a run that operated on a minimum of three women in the Guardians at a time. Heather Douglas gets her existence written away, as does Cammi. Phyla-Vell is introduced as a child, separated from every single thing related to her character. Mantis is a racist caricature. Gamora gets fridged. Even Nebula suffers under this writing; her abuse is downplayed and treated as a joke in Vol 3.

[rjalker]

Thank you, though I want to make it clear I am not Black. I am very much white. I've just apparently spent more time than other white people in this fandom learning to recognize racism and calling it out when I see it.

You can talk about racism in media. You should. But you shouldn't make posts like the original where you're ignoring what happened and why people have a problem with it.

The in-universe context for something is never an excuse for the real-world bigotry it perpetrates, and headcanons for why characters behaved the way they did doesn't make up for the real reasons they did those things.

15's breakdown was not about him realizing what it's like to experience racism, it was because he couldn't rescue the people in front of him because they didn't want his help. The story was originally written for a white Doctor, and wouldn't have had anything to do with racism or white supremacy at all, and that's made very clear from how the ending was handled.

It will always matter that this Doctor is a Black man. It will always matter when his episodes are written by white people, especially if it's a white man who's already written many antiblack things in the past, and hasn't done anything to learn from his mistakes. (Hiring sensitivty readers to look through his scripts, or even just, more importantly, hiring actual Black writers)

The only reason you shouldn't be talking about episodes that deal with racism is if you're going to deny the racism, which is what your original post was doing. You should talk about episodes like this and how they handle racism, it cannot just be left up to people of color to talk about these things and criticize bigotry. Our job as allies is to listen to people who experience the bigotry and boost their voices and call out that bigotry when we see it. Sitting silently by and forcing them to be the only ones talking about it doesn't help anyone.

"only people of color should criticize racism" should not be your takeaway here. Your takeaway should be "don't equate people criticizing racism with people pretending there's no racism".

Being an ally does not mean standing idly by and forcing the victims of the bigotry to be the only ones putting in effort to fight it. It means putting in the effort yourself to recognize it and call it out and draw attention to it when other people are ignoring it.

Which is actually another way you can tell this episode was originally designed for a white Doctor. Ruby was raised by a Black woman, but she just stood there silently not offering a single shred of support to the Doctor in the face of blatant racism. That would have still been bad with the original idea with Eleven and Amy, but now it's just another blatant oversight of RTD thinking he can just find and replace 11 with 15 and make the Finetimers white supremacist instead of just generally isolationist and call it a day.

You have to learn to recognize racism and you have to learn to call it out when you see it. Forcing the minorities affected to be the only ones calling out bigotry isn't helping, it's burdening them further. I have been on the receiving end of other forms of bigotry so often where I am literally the single person in the whole fandom who cares about fighting that bigotry and it is the most exhausting thing imaginable.

Being an ally does not mean being silent. It means listening, learning, and knowing when to speak up.

Please do not take this to mean you should never talk about racism. The point is the exact opposite. The only time you need to stop talking is if you're downplaying the racism or silencing the people who are talking about it.

Criticizing RTD's antiblackness is a literal requirement for being an ally to Black people in this fandom.

the 2 options cannot be acting like the doctor was breaking down because he cares about white supremacists vs stanning rtd for being so incredibly antiracist lol

[secretmellowblog]

So much internet analysis of media feels like……. if people were trying to criticize Chick-Fil-A, but refused to talk about anything other than the quality of the sandwiches. All that mattered was whether the product was good. So people just debated endlessly over whether the products were Good or not, and no one discussed how Chick-Fil-A donated to conservative homophobic hate groups.

“Is this Disney product Good and does it have good gay representation?” Does Disney still donate to homophobic republican politicans!!!??? Do they still actively censor any queer content during production, cancelling gay projects and actively forcing their writers to cut gay content, to the point where every sad scrap that makes it onscreen is a miracle? Can you meaningfully make any statements about “gay rep at Disney” without bringing in that larger context?

It’s not a perfect analogy— because art shouldn’t be a product, and a movie is theoretically trying to Say something in a way that a sandwich is not. But Idk I feel like the reason we fixate so much on media analysis is because it is Fun. It is fun to talk about lord of the rings and the owl house and Steven universe. It is not fun to talk about the horror and exploitation that is baked into the “entertainment industry;” it’s not fun to research and analyze the systems that created the horrifically expensive movies you love.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because amazon is releasing the most expensive tv series ever made, a spin-off series based on lord of the rings. I have no interest in watching it despite my lifelong love of lotr but the thing is—

I have no doubt the series will be good! It will be fine. Lots of money has been thrown into it, and I have enough friends in the entertainment industry to know that on every massive corporate product there are hundreds of writers and artists sincerely trying their best to create good meaningful art. The Amazon series will be Fine. It will be good.

But my question is: Does it being good actually matter? Does it matter if a chick-Fil-a sandwich is good? Does it matter if this vile evil horrible media monopoly run by a villainous CEO that works its employees to death creates a good product?

I feel like I’m going crazy when most of the criticism of Amazon’s lotr is conservatives and people who act like conservatives ranting on about how “I can’t believe they gave Blorbo GenericElf a personality! That’s so out of character—he didn’t have a personality in the book! Tolkien, our lord and savior who we must worship as an authority, would be infuriated (because we still are bound to submit to this dead guy’s opinion apparently!) Everything would be better if everything stayed exactly as it was in the past, in the Sacred Original Canon. Any attempt to transform Tolkien’s work is morally reprehensible and a sign of the fall of the civilization.”

Sometimes I just want to shake those people and say “PEOPLE ARE DYING! people are dying in Amazon warehouses, and you’re treating your petty fandom opinion about blorbo genericelf’s personality as if it has this laughably enormous moral weight.”

I know that’s unkind, and that people can care about more than one thing; but I don’t know. I used to have this really naive idea that adaptations were a conversation with the original work, and every reinterpretation was a beautiful addition of meaning. I still believe that on some level. I think every author should be free to reinterpret stories however they want, should be able to argue with the original author and set their work on fire if they need to. there’s a lot about Tolkien’s work specifically that deserves to be disrespected, like his vicious racism and sexism. I LOVE transformative work—especially transformative work that meaningfully argues with the original author.

But like….you really can’t talk about these big media franchises without talking about the systems that created them.

Yes, people can sometimes create great beautiful sincere emotional art within these exploitative systems! I love the original lotr films and books. The new Amazon series is so expensive that it will be perfectly Fine.

But creating good art doesn’t change the fact that these giant media monopolies do so much real, constant, tangible harm. Warner Brothers caused massive harm to New Zealand while making the lotr/hobbit films, essentially strong arming the country’s government into changing their film industry laws to benefit massive foreign corporations. And Amazon is a vicious violent exploitative mega monopoly that is literally overworking its underpaid employees until it kills them.

It’s hard because I believe that good art can be very meaningful to people, and that media analysis can be important and valuable.

Its just that— not to swing a bat at a hornet’s nest— sometimes I wish people would stop hyperbolizing about how [petty fandom opinion] will cause lasting harm to the world, while not engaging with the things about the media property that are causing immediate tangible physical objective harm.

[xaverie]

Honestly...

I know I am far far from the first person to say this. But it's times like this where I especially wish Fandom (understood to be the aggregate of fans who interact with media by sharing fanworks or commentary) would stop viewing art only through the lens of shipping or character apologetics.

No one loves a good in-depth character analysis more than me, but at the end of the day

A character is not a person, the same way a window is not a house -

no matter what you can see inside of them. Characters are tools for telling a story exactly the same way the setting is a tool, or a camera is a tool, or a costume is a tool. Sometimes Fandom has a tendency to talk about characters outside of the context of what they contribute to the story, and most of the time extracting a window from a house makes both things useless.

AMC's Interview with the Vampire is - in part - a story about abuse, domestic violence, and racism. This has been textually the case from the first episode, both in the depiction of the characters' behavior and as explicitly stated in the framing device.

The narrative does not ask you to make moral considerations for Lestat or approve/disapprove of his relationship with Louis because romance is not the function of Lestat as a narrative device. The story is unconcerned with whether or not Louis and Lestat make a good, or even an "acceptable" couple, because shipping is not the way an audience is expected to interact with this narrative.

With so much of the Fandom discourse after this recent episode centering around whether any one fan likes or dislikes the characters' romantic relationship because or despite it being "toxic," - I am begging you to question why that is.

"Louis also did bad things / he or Claudia might be exaggerating" - Louis cannot do anything, he is a character that writers depict doing harmful things. There is a motif of Louis's unreliable narration and the 'Odyssey of Memory' but that doesn't mean there's a truer, more accurate version of events that is more fair to the real Lestat because Lestat is NOT real. The writers depicting Louis as changing his story, being dishonest to himself and others, participating in violence, and lashing out at Lestat serves to create a nuanced portrayal of abuse and domestic violence grounded in emotional reality. The actual story being told. Recanting this to make Lestat's violence less extreme or to make him seem victimized in this relationship accomplishes none of that, so why should that be part of the story.

"Daniel is an asshole to Louis / he was too invasive about Claudia's diary" - that's because he's fulfilling his narrative purpose. Which is to remind the audience that Louis is an admitted, extremely prolific serial killer. That Louis almost killed Daniel once and then went on to kill again for 27 years after that. To remind the audience that in Louis' love for Lestat and Claudia he ceaselessly excuses, justifies, and tolerates their horrific mass murders, and that we don't also have to do that. That as glamorous and interesting and seductive as they are - that was a little girl's father and he wanted to buy her a pony.

As Eric Bosogian said, Daniel is frightened and when he is frightened he gets angry. Daniel is not a person, he is a reminder to the audience that there is every reason to be afraid and angry. He is a device to show an outside perspective into an abusive relationship. He is alternate plot point showing that letting the story seduce you is: 1, not the only reaction - 2, that our reactions to stories reveal things about us - and 3, being seduced by the story is part of how Louis got to this point.

None of these characters need defending or admonishing any more than ink or paper does. Characters cannot change and grow because they aren't people. But we are and we can. How does the way you feel about the story make you feel about yourself? The world around you? Which acts of violence and deceit did you care about? Has that changed? Have you learned anything? Charisma and attractiveness are tools that Lestat uses to simultaneously perpetuate and obfuscate his abuse. Louis uses them to intimidate and manipulate. Have we been seduced?

With nothing but respect to the impact of Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles fandom on fandom culture and the history of fan made transformative works, please. When we, as fans, engage with works of art, why not engage with the whole building - including the foundation. Spend some time considering whether there are themes or images or impressions that might benefit you or speak to you (the actual human being) even more than "I like/relate to this character" or "I like/dislike this couple."

Taking a window off of a house because you can see your reflection in it doesn't make it a good mirror. It makes it a piece of glass that has stopped working as a window and a drafty house that is no longer a very good shelter.

[fozmeadows]

race & culture in fandom

For the past decade, English language fanwriting culture post the days of LiveJournal and Strikethrough has been hugely shaped by a handful of megafandoms that exploded across AO3 and tumblr – I’m talking Supernatural, Teen Wolf, Dr Who, the MCU, Harry Potter, Star Wars, BBC Sherlock – which have all been overwhelmingly white. I don’t mean in terms of the fans themselves, although whiteness also figures prominently in said fandoms: I mean that the source materials themselves feature very few POC, and the ones who are there tended to be done dirty by the creators.

Periodically, this has led POC in fandom to point out, extremely reasonably, that even where non-white characters do get central roles in various media properties, they’re often overlooked by fandom at large, such that the popular focus stays primarily on the white characters. Sometimes this happened (it was argued) because the POC characters were secondary to begin with and as such attracted less fan devotion (although this has never stopped fandoms from picking a random white gremlin from the background cast and elevating them to the status of Fave); at other times, however, there has been a clear trend of sidelining POC leads in favour of white alternatives (as per Finn, Poe and Rose Tico being edged out in Star Wars shipping by Hux, Kylo and Rey). I mention this, not to demonize individuals whose preferred ships happen to involve white characters, but to point out the collective impact these trends can have on POC in fandom spaces: it’s not bad to ship what you ship, but that doesn’t mean there’s no utility in analysing what’s popular and why through a racial lens.

All this being so, it feels increasingly salient that fanwriting culture as exists right now developed under the influence and in the shadow of these white-dominated fandoms – specifically, the taboo against criticizing or critiquing fics for any reason. Certainly, there’s a hell of a lot of value to Don’t Like, Don’t Read as a general policy, especially when it comes to the darker, kinkier side of ficwriting, and whether the context is professional or recreational, offering someone direct, unsolicited feedback on their writing style is a dick move. But on the flipside, the anti-criticism culture in fanwriting has consistently worked against fans of colour who speak out about racist tropes, fan ignorance and hurtful portrayals of living cultures. Voicing anything negative about works created for free is seen as violating a core rule of ficwriting culture – but as that culture has been foundationally shaped by white fandoms, white characters and, overwhelmingly, white ideas about what’s allowed and what isn’t, we ought to consider that all critical contexts are not created equal.

Right now, the rise of C-drama (and K-drama, and J-drama) fandoms is seeing a surge of white creators – myself included – writing fics for fandoms in which no white people exist, and where the cultural context which informs the canon is different to western norms. Which isn’t to say that no popular fandoms focused on POC have existed before now – K-pop RPF and anime fandoms, for example, have been big for a while. But with the success of The Untamed, more western fans are investing in stories whose plots, references, characterization and settings are so fundamentally rooted in real Chinese history and living Chinese culture that it’s not really possible to write around it. And yet, inevitably, too many in fandom are trying to do just that, treating respect for Chinese culture or an attempt to understand it as optional extras – because surely, fandom shouldn’t feel like work. If you’re writing something for free, on your own time, for your own pleasure, why should anyone else get to demand that you research the subject matter first?

Because it matters, is the short answer. Because race and culture are not made-up things like lightsabers and werewolves that you can alter, mock or misunderstand without the risk of hurting or marginalizing actual real people – and because, quite frankly, we already know that fandom is capable of drawing lines in the sand where it chooses. When Brony culture first reared its head (hah), the online fandom for My Little Pony – which, like the other fandoms we’re discussing here, is overwhelmingly female – was initially welcoming. It felt like progress, that so many straight men could identify with such a feminine show; a potential sign that maybe, we were finally leaving the era of mainstream hypermasculine fandom bullshit behind, at least in this one arena. And then, in pretty much the blink of an eye, things got overwhelmingly bad. Artists drawing hardcorn porn didn’t tag their works as adult, leading to those images flooding the public search results for a children’s show. Women were edged out of their own spaces. Bronies got aggressive, posting harsh, ugly criticism of artists whose gijinka interpretations of the Mane Six as humans were deemed insufficiently fuckable.

The resulting fandom conflict was deeply unpleasant, but in the end, the verdict was laid down loud and clear: if you cannot comport yourself like a decent fucking person – if your base mode of engagement within a fandom is to coopt it from the original audience and declare it newly cool only because you’re into it now; if you do not, at the very least, attempt to understand and respect the original context so as to engage appropriately (in this case, by acknowledging that the media you’re consuming was foundational to many women who were there before you and is still consumed by minors, and tagging your goddamn porn) – then the rest of fandom will treat you like a social biohazard, and rightly so.

Here’s the thing, fellow white people: when it comes to C-drama fandoms and other non-white, non-western properties? We are the Bronies.

Not, I hasten to add, in terms of toxic fuckery – though if we don’t get our collective shit together, I’m not taking that darkest timeline off the table. What I mean is that, by virtue of the whiteminding which, both consciously and unconsciously, has shaped current fan culture, particularly in terms of ficwriting conventions, we’re collectively acting as though we’re the primary audience for narratives that weren’t actually made with us in mind, being hostile dicks to Chinese and Chinese diaspora fans when they take the time to point out what we’re getting wrong. We’re bristling because we’ve conceived of ficwriting as a place wherein No Criticism Occurs without questioning how this culture, while valuable in some respects, also serves to uphold, excuse and perpetuate microaggresions and other forms of racism, lashing out or falling back on passive aggression when POC, quite understandably, talk about how they’re sick and tired of our bullshit.

An analogy: one of the most helpful and important tags on AO3 is the one for homophobia, not just because it allows readers to brace for or opt out of reading content they might find distressing, but because it lets the reader know that the writer knows what homophobia is, and is employing it deliberately. When this concept is tagged, I – like many others – often feel more able to read about it than I do when it crops up in untagged works of commercial fiction, film or TV, because I don’t have to worry that the author thinks what they’re depicting is okay. I can say definitively, “yes, the author knows this is messed up, but has elected to tell a messed up story, a fact that will be obvious to anyone who reads this,” instead of worrying that someone will see a fucked up story blind and think “oh, I guess that’s fine.” The contextual framing matters, is the point – which is why it’s so jarring and unpleasant on those rare occasions when I do stumble on a fic whose author has legitimately mistaken homophobic microaggressions for cute banter. This is why, in a ficwriting culture that otherwise aggressively dislikes criticism, the request to tag for a certain thing – while still sometimes fraught – is generally permitted: it helps everyone to have a good time and to curate their fan experience appropriately.

But when white and/or western fans fail to educate ourselves about race, culture and the history of other countries and proceed to deploy that ignorance in our writing, we’re not tagging for racism as a thing we’ve explored deliberately; we’re just being ignorant at best and hateful at worst, which means fans of colour don’t know to avoid or brace for the content of those works until they get hit in the face with microaggresions and/or outright racism. Instead, the burden is placed on them to navigate a minefield not of their creation: which fans can be trusted to write respectfully? Who, if they make an error, will listen and apologise if the error is explained? Who, if lived experience, personal translations or cultural insights are shared, can be counted on to acknowledge those contributions rather than taking sole credit? Too often, fans of colour are being made to feel like guests in their own house, while white fans act like a tone-policing HOA.

Point being: fandom and ficwriting cultures as they currently exist badly need to confront the implicit acceptance of racism and cultural bias that underlies a lot of community rules about engagement and criticism, and that needs to start with white and western fans. We don’t want to be the new Bronies, guys. We need to do better. ��

[sheeping]

Hi, I am making a post responding to this entire situation, since apparently I cannot save my own mental energy without everyone acting up about it.

Your original posts about this situation lacked an extreme amount of nuance, especially about intersectionality, and therefore about race. Your posts do not exist in a vaccuum, especially not regarding race. Antiblackness is a systemic issue. It affects everything, deeper than any other person of color can understand. America was built on slavery, and since you mentioned the literal word rape about 15 times in your post, this is something I am allowed to bring up.

Since you are wanting to be dense and only talk about the axis of being attracted to men, whatever. There is nothing inherently wrong with the statement that yes, bisexual women are treated differently than lesbians due to their attraction to men. Lesbians (especially BLACK lesbians) suffer corrective rape statistically more than any other group. Men feel extremely comfortable even harassing lesbians in public spaces - and no I am not saying this does not happen to any other women, but it is different with lesbians, and it is not wrong to say that. Especially black lesbians, who are targeted at such a level that most of the time we stay closeted for most of our lives. Black lesbians experience racism, misogynoir, along with harassment from men. "Select circles of lesbians", really does not matter in this context when you truly did not explain that in your original posts, but once again I feel you are underplaying what black women (especially black lesbians) go through and how we navigate online spaces, even. How many times have nonblack bisexual women harassed us due to viewing us as aggressive? But i never see posts about that, just continual on and on posting about what? 5 white lesbians that said something rude? So you feel the need to categorize all of us? Jesus christ.

You keep saying that "this isn't about race" and answering asks saying the same is some of the most textbook racist bullshit I've ever heard in my life, EVERYTHING is about race, down to the sidewalk you walk on, down to your houses, the economy, sexuality. EVERYTHING. Drawing these lines is common sense when I live this every single day of my life, see it online, read it, am constantly kicked out of fandom spaces just for being black, I cannot even begin to interact with nonblack bisexual women, or have these conversations without being shut down immediately.

"tirelessly painting them as racist", I cannot even begin to express how hateful and weird this sounds when, again, whenever I try to speak to anybody about their racist posts I am shut down, told I am being stupid, aggressive, that it's "not about race", everything.

Other than that... your entire reaction to how Johnny responded to you was misogynoiristic in and of itself. Johnny is white, obviously. But believe it or not as a dark skinned black woman I do not feel like responding to things most of the time due to how much I go through on a day to day basis. Johnny sticks up for me and yes he is angry and aggressive but why wouldn't he be? It's the correct response to be angry about antiblackness when you see it, most white people are entirely too passive and civil regarding it, but especially misogynoir. You choose to listen to lightskinned black people over anything I, or Johnny tried to say. No one else has a problem when an abled-bodied person defends their disabled partner, no one has a problem when a man defends his woman partner, so on and so forth. But because a white person is defending a black woman you suddenly feel the nerve to start posting about how he lacks decency, about how it's weird, and therefore hypermasculinizing me by forcing me into a role that I do not have the fucking mental capacity to handle. You agreed with so many misogynoiristic asks that I could be here all day disecting every single one of them, but once again I do not have thw energy for that. Johnny uses his white privilege in order to allow me mental rest online. I deal with too much irl so why would I want to argue with people on tumblr? None of you or your mutuals stop to think about me, no one asked for my opinion, when I tried talking to one of your mutuals about this, they just blocked me and called me, a dark skinned black woman, a "yapper", and then made a post going on about how it doesn't matter they're lightskinned and that they go through antiblackness. If it needs to be explained to you, no a lightskinned black person will always have it easier in society and life than I would. Google colorism. Google the brown paper bag test. No one stands up for black women, or uplifts our voices, and especially not dark skinned black women. Tumblr literally banned most of us during the russian psy-op bullshit. I hope I was able to spoon feed you this information well enough after taking time out of my evening to write this post because apparently white people aren't allowed to point out antiblackness when they see it.

How the fuck did you come to the conclusion that people think its worse or care more or its "more of a tragedy" when a lesbian is raped do you even fucking hear yourself what thw actual fuck lmao

I have witnessed an extreme lack of empathy and an extreme level of victim blaming towards straight and bisexual rape victims both in irl and online wlw circles. I have no idea who you are and you have no idea who I am so you dont have to believe me or agree with me, and i dont particularly want to open up about my experience with SA to you. But I will say that seeing people approach bisexual wlw uninvited to tell them they are fundamentally different women than them because they have relations with men are the same kind of people as those who more or less openly held this opinion.

[firelxdykatara]

zutara fandom is such a fucking hypocrite. you all call a native woman who loves her husband, who lives happily with him a trophy wife and a breeding machine, simply because you don't like kataang, despite the fact that in the canon she is still a respected matriarch of the tribe, a healer and trained avatar and has outlawed blood bending. you came up with the trophy wife yourself, but blame it all on bryke. didnt you have a popular headcanon where she has 5 children, abandons her nation to live as the "water tribe ambassador" in the fire nation. yknow because erasing her culture sounds cool i guess

Literally what are you talking about?

Pointing out that Katara is treated, post-atla canon, as Aang’s trophy is not ‘calling a native woman who loves her husband a trophy wife’ because like, I’ve got a newsflash for you, Katara does not exist. And criticizing the way the white men who created her chose to destroy her character in post-canon materials and the sequel show is not the equivalent of being racist or misogynistic--it’s actually calling out the racism and misogyny inherent in her treatment by the show’s creators!

Secondly, I’ve written extensively before about how Katara’s ‘achievements’ post-canon actually aren’t. The show pays minor lipservice to what Katara accomplished, but doesn’t actually show that she did anything worthwhile with her life other than have the Avatar’s children. She ‘outlawed bloodbending’? Sure she did, that’s why she was present at the trial for the most infamous bloodbender in history, right alongside her husband, brother, and friend..... oh wait. She ‘is still a respected matriarch of her tribe’? Sure she is, that’s why she was able to talk sense into her people when they were on the brink of civil war, that’s why people listened when she raised her voice and told them to stop being idiots, that’s why... oh, wait, none of that happened because she stayed in the healing huts the whole time. Oh, but she was ‘a healer’--not just that, but one of the greatest healers who ever lived? Sure! That’s why she was able to heal Korra’s bloodbending related injuries- hm, no, but I’m sure that’s why she was able to heal everyone else when their injuries were revealed to have been caused by bloodbending- no, wait, but I’m POSITIVE it’s why she was able to heal Korra’s injuries when she was recovering from mercury poisoning- wait, she didn’t do that either!

It’s encapsulated pretty neatly by this paragraph:

 [The problem is] that virtually none of these accomplishments matter in the context of LoK. Very little that Katara did during or after the war is so much as referenced, and even the things that are referenced matter very little. Katara never talks about her life except as it pertains to Aang, or her children. She doesn’t get to do anything during the series either, despite there being multiple things that–were it not for her entire personality being vacuumed out with almost surgical precision–she should have done if she were being kept true to character, or if she, like, cared about her family and people at all. (Things like, oh, attending her own granddaughter’s Air Master ceremony, or lifting finger one to save her family when they were in danger, or lifting finger one to step in when her people were getting thrown into a whole ass civil war...... ...)

@araeph‘s Consumed By Destiny series is also relevant here, because it goes into far greater detail about Katara’s utter lack of a character in LoK and the comics, especially as compared with her character in the original show.

As for my ‘popular headcanon’, I do indeed headcanon Zuko and Katara as having five children (though my conceptualization of their family will be different from others, everyone has their own hcs about the steam family and that’s so sexy of us), which should probably be the point where you realize that Katara having three kids with Aang is not what I have a problem with lmfao. But where the hell do you get ‘abandons her nation’ and ‘erasing her culture’ from ‘Water Tribe ambassador’???? Literally where????? The entire point of Katara being ambassador to the Fire Nation is to represent her culture in global matters of state. It’s so that she can be the voice for her people on the world stage, ensuring that their wants and needs are heard and fulfilled as the world moves forward and the nations grow together. It’s literally the complete opposite of ‘abandoning’ her nation, her people, or her culture, because everything about who they are and who she is will be everpresent in her life (and her husband’s life) because she’s thinking about them and acting for them in everything she does politically.

Just say that you hate people headcanoning Katara as having more agency in her own life and influencing global politics than canon allowed for her and go, honestly. Stop pretending you give a shit about Katara when you hold so much hatred for people envisioning something more for her than just being ‘the Avatar’s girl’ for the rest of her life.

[princeescaluswords]

I see you are a huge fan of fics where Scott McCall dies. Don't worry! More content coming right up! ;)))

As a matter of fact I do enjoy fiction where Scott dies, so thank you very much.

Indeed, my first multi-chaptered Teen Wolf fanfiction, completed all in the way back in 2016 when I was new to both fandom and fanfiction and called Army of Ghosts, has Scott dying in the first chapter. He’s blown up in an ambush and then purposefully dismembered, and the rest of the story is an exploration of how Stiles copes with it. Hint: not well. It’s quite a dark story.

You see, there’s nothing wrong with Dark Fiction, by which I mean fiction which explores activities or events that are rejected as undesirable by modern society, in a way that centers the narratives on the activities or events in and of themselves, and not simply as obstacles for the protagonist to overcome. I believe that not only should these stories exist but they serve a valuable purpose when it comes to understanding the people around us.

My objection has always been to what I call Exploitative Fiction, by which I mean fiction which portrays activities or events that are rejected as undesirable by modern society, in a way that ignores context, consequences and even logic, with the end goal being to present those activities or events as positive experiences for a purpose not directly connected to the activity or event itself.

That’s wordy, isn’t it? Let me give you some examples then to help clarify. I consider it Exploitative Fiction when rape is presented as a step on the path to love, where physical coercion into the sexual act is seen as evidence of passion, but the consequences of employing violence as a shorthand for possessive desire are simply negated because the goal of the story is romantic rapture. I consider it Exploitative Fiction when a slave falls in love with their owner and they develop true feelings for each other, but they still exist within the same slave-owning society, yet the context of that relationship is ignored simply to produce the most intense version of you-and-me-against the world. I consider it Exploitative Fiction when writers create a fanfiction collection called 101 Ways to Kill Scott McCall, in which it is a safe bet that these aren’t explorations of how his death affects others but merely vessels for the unbridled rage of people furious that MTV decided to film a television show with a minority heroic protagonist as the lead.

The reaction to this caution is for individuals to purposefully confuse Dark Fiction and Exploitative Fiction, attempting to shift the argument by obscuring the difference. They employ the motte-and-bailey fallacy, where they point out that Exploitative Fiction is a form of Dark Fiction but choose to defend Dark Fiction, which isn' t the topic. In other words, when someone says “Hey, maybe you should be careful when sharing a story where a traumatized sixteen-year-old with abandonment issues enters into a relationship with a middle-aged millionaire white male serial killer, whose very presence will isolate the teenager from his family and friends, that you don’t present it as a flawless gateway to perfect happiness?” they respond with “You just want everything to be sunshine and rainbows and good triumphing over evil, you Puritan Scold!” and suddenly a person wondering why a story straight out of the discarded scripts of To Catch a Predator is being used as spank-bank material is labeled as Goody Chastity, Implacable Enemy of Joy and Sexy Fun.

“But PEW,” you say, “Isn’t this just your opinion?” And my reply is “Yes, it is my opinion, but it’s not just mine. Let’s talk about Kyle Rayner’s girlfriend.”

For those who don’t know, the term “fridging” came about from an issues of Green Lantern, where a supervillain killed Kyle Rayner’s girlfriend and stuffed her into a refrigerator for him to find. Whatever someone may think of that particular storyline, it started a conversation about female characters being killed as a function of a male character’s development. Having a supervillain brutally murder the loved one of a hero is pretty dark. It’s Dark Fiction. No one said that supervillains can’t murder or can’t murder certain people or that the hero can’t react to those murders. The complaint was that the female character existed solely to be murdered. Her only function in the story was to generate Kyle’s angst, to set up a situation where his character is explored. She was Exploited.

Why is this a big deal? Because it happens a lot, and not just in comic books. In television, in movies, in literature, women are often reduced in narrative function again and again to shortcuts for male character development. Better scholars than me have written about this exhaustively and pointed out how this fictional exploitation feeds into real-world exploitation (and vice-versa). It’s not hard to find a significant amount of public research.

So yeah, in posts like this one, I complain about Exploitative Fiction in the fandom community to which I belong. Because it doesn’t take a literary critic to read these stories and perceive that the goal of the story isn’t to explore the darkness in which Stiles and his killer boyfriend (whether that be Derek or Peter) murder his best friend, it’s the satisfaction of rage that their white favorites weren’t the focus of the show. Again, again, and again in humiliating, degrading detail Scott is murdered or maimed or stripped of power, in one-sided beat downs that follow no discernible internal rules but one: white male characters must win. It’s not about a power struggle or logical consequences, it’s about punishing a character for daring to be the lead, and it’s racist.

You know how I know that? Because I have never found a story where Stiles and Peter hunt down and murder Isaac Lahey for the crime of abandoning the Hale Pack, slandering Peter, or physically attacking Stiles twice. Because I have never found a story where ArchSpark Stiles tortures Jackson or strips him of his lycanthropy because he almost killed the Hales and his father, rejected Derek, and was forced to serve Gerard. Because I have found few stories where Stiles is murdered by Peter because he was plotting against him, and the evidence is that Stiles said mean things about him. It’s nine hundred and ninety times out of a thousand, it's Bad Alpha/Friend Scott, or if it’s not Scott, it’s Sinister Tree Wizard Deaton. And the sample size, my friends, is very large.

So no, I’m not against Dark Fiction. In my fiction, Scott has been killed, maimed, and imprisoned. (I’ve actually been accused of being obsessed with putting Scott in jail.) I’ve explored the consequences of these actions on Scott and the people around him, and it hasn’t always been a happy ending. I look forward to reading stories where he has endured terrible trauma. I’m reading one right now that I’m simply head-over-heels about. I just think that Exploitative Fiction needs to be addressed, head on, especially when it feeds fandom racism.

[gffa]

I know I've brought this up before, but how much of the fandom reception of the prequels do you think stemmed from the genre dissonance? That the prequels, genre-wise, are closer to high fantasy, while the OT is more an adventure/space western/underdog triumph story.

The prequels also have elements more reminiscent of a romantic period/court drama/Shakespearean tragedy, while if you consider the underdog angle of the OT, the OT also seems kinda similar to some of those inspirational movies about sports teams or something, or a shonen anime with the "Power of Friendship".

I'm just saying, these are rather disparate genres that tend to attract different demographics of people.

And not many people tend to be... great about understanding why they don't like something, much less putting it into words, or understanding that they can dislike something without that something being actually bad. (For example, instead of "I just don't really like [thing]," the usual statement is something along the lines of "[thing] absolutely sucks.")

So the usual response is trying to find (and gather) solidarity while putting down or being condescending towards any dissent, and trying to justify their own dislike. (*gestures vaguely towards pineapple on pizza*)

And historically, it's not uncommon for people to... react strongly towards things they find... different or abnormal, which they judge based on themselves, their emotional response to something, and what they're used to.

Looking at kids, this behavior is... fairly normal. "You're weird," "ew, why do you like that, that's gross," "that's stupid," and so on. A lot of kids/teens/young adults also get defensive really easily. And let's face it--adults are basically just older, taller kids who've had to deal with more of life.

(To be honest, I also get defensive really easily. A lot of people do, and it's... it's normal. The defensive reaction can be lashing out, denial, or just being passive-aggressive or staying silent and tuning it out or mentally rolling your eyes at it. But I'm trying to work on it, because just because it's normal doesn't mean it's a good reaction.)

So, what I'm wondering is whether some fans dislike the prequels simply because it's a different genre...

...but instead of realizing that, they try to defend and justify their dislike by pointing fingers and criticizing whatever stood out or looked different from the OT or cherry-picking details/taking things out of context or making negative conflations (that can be refuted).

Because it's not about logic, it's about how they feel. And people want to feel justified and validated, and we want to feel like we're right and we enjoy staying in our comfort zones. So... yeah. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

LOL, okay, this response is going to be really disjointed because I went off in like a dozen different tangents and even then it's not enough to cover everything, so just kind of read this in a Scattered Thoughts Nerd kind of tone, where I'm staring off into the distance because Navel Gazing Gets Me Going Sometimes. 😂 In my experience, it's sort of a mix. I don't hang around a lot of people who dislike the prequels (in the sense of dismissing them/not being fannish about them) because, well, that's the heart of my interest in Star Wars, so our areas of interest basically don't really overlap that much, so I don't have a chance to talk to a lot of people and find out their reasons or even how they dislike the prequels, in the bigger trends of fandom. I do think there's an element of what you're talking about, that sometimes people can't just dislike things because it's not their genre of choice, that's absolutely a part of it. Mostly because that's how a lot of people react to anything they don't like (and it's something I and literally everyone else has to work on), there has to be a reason for it that it's objectively bad and, like, I have experienced a lot of people getting mad because I like something in a different way than they do. And I don't mean just in Star Wars fandom, but in almost any given fandom--if someone likes something in a way someone else doesn't, if they talk loudly about it (even within their own space), then there's always a contingent of people who have to find a reason why that person is objectively wrong (or even try to make them morally wrong), rather than just shrugging and going, "We see things differently, my view on things doesn't overwrite theirs and their view on things doesn't overwrite mine." It gets more complicated in instances where fandom attitudes genuinely can be hurtful, especially when they're overlapping into the way real people are treated, likes/dislikes don't 100% exist in a bubble, especially when it comes to queer fans, fans of color, disabled fans, mentally ill fans, etc. But that there are a lot of instances where fandom culture has always been--and is increasingly so--contentious and it's hard to chill out when someone is always screaming at you, when the atmosphere of the fandom is always so intense. Further, there's also an element of how fandom has always been--and also is increasingly so--about personal resonance, personal emotional investment, interpretation, and meaning. That sometimes we identify with something so deeply that we feel attacked when someone else likes or dislikes something we feel so strongly about, something that we feel is a reflection of ourselves, and I see a lot of that as well. And this, too, often crosses over into lines of how the context of how we treat characters can be reflections of how we treat real world people, but that there's no monolith here as well. For example: I make fun of Anakin, this angers some people, because how dare I not take this fictional victim 100% seriously, despite that I have repeatedly said that Anakin is the character I most identify with, that things I make fun of him for are ones that I resonate with personally. I'm not disrespecting mentally ill people, especially considering that Anakin is not bound to a single interpretation on this front--he is not canonically mentally ill, no matter how easy it is for us in fandom to map much of that onto his character or, in my case, feel that so much of what I see in him are things I struggle with myself. By and large, the majority of the people I see (at least on tumblr) who make fun of Anakin are doing so within the same vein, that they're being silly about him on things that they personally relate to. (My experiences on this are not universal, I cannot speak for the whole of even any one part of fandom, only my own sphere of experience, but this is what I've seen.) As always, it's fine if someone doesn't vibe with my style or they find that it's not their thing because they do take him more seriously, but that preference does not make my jokes

suddenly not have the context that I relate a lot to what I see in Anakin. In contrast, the way some of the fandom treats Mace or Finn isn't just personal all the time. Not liking their characters isn't inherently racist, but the way they're consistently, consistently treated sure as hell speaks to a larger pattern of racism in fandom and doesn't come without that context. It's the same with Rey--is there a huge vein of misogyny when it comes to her character? Abso-fucking-lutely there is. Things Luke and Anakin get a pass on, Rey is raked over the coals for. Is everyone who dislikes Rey a misogynist? Not even close. Some don't like her because Finn was used as a prop for her story. Some people don't like her because she got sucked into Kylo Ren's story too much. Some just don't care for the way she was written for other reasons. Some just don't vibe with her. It's fine. Nothing is a monolith. And to circle this back around to what you're talking about--it's hard to judge, both because no part of fandom is a monolith in their reactions, but also because we're only hearing from a selection of the fans. How do you know how many people who aren't fans of the prequels, who just don't care for them because it's not their genre, but just go about their day? You don't hear from a lot of them because they moved on to things they do like, so it seems like they must not exist--except, they do, and they're just out there doing things they like more. We only hear from the people who feel the need to tell others they dislike the prequels for this reason or that reason, some valid, some less valid, etc. Ultimately, I do think there's probably a fair amount of genre dissonance for why people dislike the prequels and channel that into "they're objectively bad" and get defensive when people like them and say they were great, but only because that's true of anything anywhere. But that it's only one small slice of the bigger picture (and there's a lot of stuff that I had to eschew in the writing of this response as well because it can be a pretty sprawling topic), where there are tons of reasons and reactions that people have, as well as they're perfectly free to dislike the prequels for whatever reason they do or don't have, it doesn't really affect my opinions, unless they're trying to shove it in my face or are being a dick to those who disagree with them.

[padawanlost]

Why do people seem to hate Dave Filoni all of a sudden? I mean I'll confess I don't really like the way some characters were changed in the The Clone Wars series, but Filoni and Lucas did do a LOT of things right in that series. Its actually really deep and explores some very important moral and social issues like the impact of war especially on young people. Is it because Filoni has been critical of the Jedi at times? Honestly, I don't see anything inflamatory in what he says, and I don't think he's just randomly pulling stuff out of the air. Some of what he says is supported in old canon materials. The Jedi aren't perfect, I fail to see why legitimate criticism is such a big deal.

Before anything else, this ask was sent before the bad batch premiered so I won’t get into *that* right now.

That being said, this fandom has had a very interesting love-hate relationship with Filoni, so allow me to provide some context before we get into the heart of the issue.

Before The Clone Wars (2008) premiered the anti-prequel movement was still strong. A lot of people still accused George Lucas for ‘ruining’ star wars forever, so when the show premiered filled with action scenes, jedi, sith, badass moments and humor, Filoni was hailed as the savior of the franchise. Finally someone who understood what star wars was *really* about had come and saved us all from the prequels boring issues.

 That mentality last for quite some time. sure, there were voices of dissent but the general vibe was that Filoni had truly fixed star wars and the prequels. It was very similar from what happened to Game of Thrones. When the show premiered HBO and D&D were hailed as these god-like superwriters who could do no wrong. As the show progressed fans started noticing the cracks but most people still believed the show and its creators above criticism. only now that some time has passed that people are becoming more objective about the content and realizing the signs that something was off were always there. Of course, Filoni didn’t have a fiasco similar to Got’s Season 7 and 8 but the long waiting period between TCW’s season 6 and 7 gave people a lot of time to think objectively about the show, which made them realizing Filoni was, after all, just a man. And TCW was not an ‘alternative’ to the prequels, it was just an extension of it.

The themes people hated in the prequels were deeply imbued into the clone wars because a show about war must be, by definition, a show about politics. Whether people are ready to admit it or not, star wars was always about politics. I mean, the OT was about reestablishing a democratic government. It doesn’t get more political than that lol

And we can speak of PT-politics without talking of the Jedi Order. And here lies the core of the issue: people’s sudden realization of this truth. Somehow, for a very long time, some fans didn’t realize the clone wars  (and sw in general) was all about poltical (anti-war) allegories.  

Here’s a Filoni interview from 2013 that discusses the fandom reaction to the jedi:

StarWars.com: I was at the Lucasfilm fan screening of the finale, and I was keeping an ear on the crowd’s reaction to certain scenes. I was kind of surprised at the reaction when Ahsoka doesn’t take her Padawan braid back. Dave Filoni: Right. StarWars.com: Because people gasped at first, and then a lot of people started cheering. Dave Filoni: Yeah! Fantastic, huh? StarWars.com: What did you make of that? Dave Filoni: I was really, really surprised by that. Really surprised. I didn’t think people would be against it. But I certainly didn’t think that people would applaud it, necessarily. I think that there’s a certain element there… I mean, we weren’t trying to paint the Jedi in a bad light, but certainly you understand her reasons for wanting to leave. We’ve kind of taken a generation of Star Wars fans and really made them reassess that whole time period to the point where at the end of it, they’re on the side of this young girl who’s like, “Yeah, this isn’t gonna work for me.” And I think people feel that right now. They are often in a situation that they’d rather not be in and they wish they could just walk away, and maybe she embodies that. Maybe there’s something going on there that we’re not aware of. But I don’t know, I was pretty fascinated by that. It was a pretty surprising reaction. George and I went over those final scenes quite a bit. One of the big things was, the whole scene with the Council at the end used to take place outside where Anakin and Ahsoka talk. And it was definitely George, when we watched the first cut of it, who said, “I want to split this so that it’s half-inside, half-outside. And the outside is just Anakin and Ahsoka.” It was very important to him to separate the two of them out and just have this conversation between them. He wanted kids to know that she didn’t blame Anakin for it and that she wasn’t upset with Anakin. And I thought it was a great call. When I re-shot the scene it was pretty phenomenal. There was a debate about Ahsoka at the end, and her just going back to the Jedi at the end of it, and that was the initial impulse. But I kind of argued, “Well, wait. We have an opportunity here with her out to change her story dramatically.” And I’m always looking for those opportunities, because you’re not sure when they’re gonna come, to just grab something and change it dramatically for her. I thought, to do that whole storyline and then have her come back would almost be expected, so why not challenge that.[x]

Unlike what the narrative sold on tumblr says, Filoni and George talked about what was going on in the show (he was reason for Maul and Mandalore, two fan favorites, being on the show). But because accepting Filoni knew what he was doing means accepting George also knew what he was doing when drawing political and social parallels between real life and star wars, it’s much easier to just hate on Filoni and/or George (depending on what they are saying).

It’s kind of like selective hate. When Anakin is being abusive or when Padmé is being assaulted Filoni is a fucking mastermind. But when he’s criticizing the Jedi Order he’s a dumbass who doesn’t know shit about star wars. Or at least don’t know as much as people who have never talked to George Lucas, talked to anyone linked to star wars or has explored the full contents of the star wars lore know.

Look, I’m not defending Filoni here. He’s made plenty of decisions I don’t agree with it, but I find quite surprising how people can’t be rational about it. or, at the very least, be critical of the things that truly matter and have an affect on people in real life like racism, sexism and abuse. Idk, I just find interesting how the fans hating on him for being slightly ‘critical’ of the jedi Order seem to have no problem with the racism, whitewashing and sexism in the show. It really shows what people’s priorities are.

[wenellyb]

hey! every now and then i've seen random posts about sebastian's comment/s on colin kap kneeling among other things, but i've never seen any source material or hard facts. do you have any posts about this or deconstruction of your own? i'd be very interested, ty!

Hey yourself😉!

So I've found the screenshot of the post (at the bottom) and just so you know he also posted an apolology but that one I couldn't find a screenshot of.

There are plenty of posts talking about this but I think most of them are old so it would take some time for me to find them.

If you want my opinion. The whole thing was f*cked up and I remember being extremely surprised and unfollowing him after that post.

And he did apologize, which is good and I do think he understands that that post was not great, but it wasn't my main issue.

When the whole story with Kaepernick happened it was a real eye opener and exposed a lot of racists even among celebrities. I'm looking at you Christopher Meloni. But not only him.

So Colin Kaepernick was to kneeling to protest against police violence and racism.

And a lot of people reacted like a lot of White people react when the topic of racism arise: deny everything and get defensive "How dare he protest blablabala" "He's so rich and he's saying White people are priviledged..." "How dare he say there is racism in this country". You know the usual.

But the thing is to me, the way he protested was the most respectful, and most peaceful way to protest and also so impactful. And some people had still a problem with it...I don't understand how ANYBODY could have a problem with it ... unless they were racist in one way or the other. That was the bar for me... I could not have respect ANYBODY who had a problem with him kneeling, because their message was clear “just sh*t up and play football”.

To me, anybody who had a problem with Colin Kaepernick taking a knee... was automatically problematic and the worst.

For other forms of protests there can always be arguments against it, lousy arguments, but arguements nevertheless: "They're blocking the streets" "There was violence during the protest",... etc... But what is your argument with having a man kneel during the National Anthem, to call out something as serious as police brutality.

To me it was clear that they just wanted Black Americans to shut up, and stay in their lane. "Sports have nothing to do with politics blablabla"

And unfortunately history proved Colin Kaepernick right, and I don't think anybody could voice bad opinions about him today, but at the time, a lot of people were criticizing him, calling him names, insulting him, and even some celebrities were talking about how disrespectful he was.

They cared more about the way he was voicing his protest, than the fact that racism was a real issue.

And because of the protests last year, I think a lot of people tend to forget about that time, but Kaepernick faced A LOT of backlash, A LOT and for what....??? Absolutely no justification. With the way some people reacted you would have thought he burned the American flag on a daily basis, or used it as toilet paper.

So having that in mind, it was really disheartening to see an actor you respect take part in that...

And just to be clear, this is my personal opinion, but I don't think Sebastian had any bad intention with that post (not like other celebrities who were outright criticizing Kaepernick, for some reason I only remember Chris Meloni lol). But the timing, and the content, even as a joke, even as a promotion tool for his movie was extremely bad. You also have to understand the context, and how there were a lot of people rooting against Kap.

Worst case scenerio Seb’s post was racist and best case scenario it was tone deaf.

I can only assume Sebastian watches the news in the US, so he must have known what the caption "take a knee" meant and still decided to post it... So maybe he wasn't ill-intentioned, but to him the topic was light enough that he could post it on his social media...

My main problem isn't even with Seb's post, it was a weird way to promote his movie, or a joke I don’t know. Artists do problematic stuff all the time, and it's up to the fans who support them to decide if they keep doing supporting him or not.

My main problem was and still is the reaction of the fandom, where White Seb stans think they know and understand racism better than anyone else. And honestly this is not me saying that Seb is racist, this is me saying that we should be allowed to voiced our opinions without being silenced or accused of trying to villainize him or cancel him blablabla .

But the Seb stans don't understand that and prefer to turn a blind eye.

I make difference between stans and fans. The Seb fans are the ones who are willing to listen, understand why some people might be offended and admit that their fav f*cked up. The stans are the annoying ones who yould rather keep their head in the sand.

And nobody is even asking to stop supporting Seb... If I cancel an actor, I will stop consuming his content, supporting him, paying to see his movies etc... But I'm not forcing anybody else to do it... But I would like to be free to voice my dislikes especially if that actor was being problematic... without the stans complaining about how "I don't know their fave"

I haven't cancelled Seb btw, I just don't feel like finding him excuses and glossing over the words and if I think that something he did was racist, I will say that it was racist, not "problematic" or "tactless" or "clumsy"...

I think that a lot of people are confused about what racism is, and think it is only White Supremacists who want to harm all non White people.

But it's not only that and in my opinion, there are many layers to racism. If you have "nothing against Blacl people" but there is a part of you that believes you or White people are better than Black people, well you are racist... If not hiw would you describe it? I have already told this story, but I have a friend who swore she wasn't racist and we even had a big debate about racism, and a few weeks later, her boyfriend told me that during a family dinner, she had talked about a common Black friend of theirs saying "She is pretty for a Black girl"... But if you ask my friend, she will say she isn't racist.

If you try to silence people calling out racism, you are contributing to it instead of fighting it.

Another example, I received a lot of "problematic" comments at work from coworkers on my hair, my origins etc, but when I talked about it to my friends and said those comments were racists.. they said that I was "overeacting" that those comments were harmless or just my colleagues being "ignorant". But one time, I was done with it and I wrote to HR about it losting all the comments I had received and the HR director called me and told me that those comments were racist full stop, he didn't try to minimize it or act like I was exagerrating.

And that's how I see the reactions of Seb stans whenever something from him re-sufaces, like my friends who just act like it is nothing.

Just so you know you are not helping when you do that.

They act as if we're suppoosed to accept that because "it's not that big of a deal". Who told you that? How do you determine what is a big deal or not? Especially when you have never dealt with racism?

Fandom behaves as if people who were hurt or offended by that post were overracting. "It was a joke" "It was a long time ago" "He would never do somthing racist"

How hard is it to say " I can see that my fave did something problematic, or that what he did was racist, and I would still like to support him but I understand that people were hirt"??? How hard is it to continue to stan your fave WITHOUT trying to silence people who call out the behavior.

And also the way they refuse to use the words is annoying... it's always "I'm sorry if anybody was offended", never "What I did/wrote was racist and I know better now". If no one wants to admit it when they do racist stuff... nobody will never get anywhere... Like my friend who is convinced that she isn't racist but goes around thinking that White Women are more beautiful than Black Women, and even says it when surrounded by her family. 

And people act like the people who were hurt have no reason to be hurt because he apologized, but I hope those people realize that it doesn’t work that way. An apology is great of course, but it doesn’t take out the hurt, or the feeling that if he was comfortable enough sharing this on social media, what is he comfortable doing in the safety of his close circle?, or remove the idea that maybe an actor you adored, and respected doesn’t view Black people struggles as a serious matter.

I personally don't hate Seb, far from it. And the reason why I have so many posts about him, calling him out or not, is that he is one of the very few White actors I'm interested in. I don't know him personally, but I enjoy his interviews with Anthony and enjoy his movies. But I'm not about to act like he is perfect like some of his stan do and also I have absolutely no issue with people who have "cancelled" him because of his past behavior, because I understand them and it's their choice, it's what works best for them... I don't want to force them to root for someone who maybe wouldn't root for us.

Last point, that I won't elaborate because I have already written way to much. There's a difference between people actively trying to be racist, and people who are racist and maybe don't realize it, or people who have prejudice but are working on it...

I hate it when White people act like the worst thing in the world is being accused of racism when the actual worst thing in the world is being racist. Because it shifts the conversation from... "Oh how can I improve myself and stop this racist thing I'm doing, or how can I work on this prejudice I have?" to "How dare you call me racist!!! I would never" all the while they continue doing the racist thing they do.

TL:DR: His Instagram post was f*cked up, and he apologized. And it's up to each person to decide if they still want to support him or not, but it would be great if thise who still support him stopped pretending that those whose don't are overreacting or had no reason of being offended.

[gravedangerahead]

I would like to talk about the adultification of marginalized teenagers (and even children), and why you shouldn't claim that having being oppressed, abused, traumatized and/or having had adult responsibilities pushed onto them at a young age makes someone more mature, making it okay for adults in their lives to treat them like they're full adults too.

Preface: There's no such a thing as unproblematic media, something having problematic elements doesn't mean it should be yeeted into a trashcan and has nothing of value to offer. Liking a thing in fiction doesn't mean endorsing it in reality. Fiction can affect reality, and media aimed at young audiences will logically be held to different standards, but no single piece of media is gonna come into your home and brainwash you all by itself. It's more a matter of the work reflecting and then amplifying things that are already part of the culture. Real people are always more important than fictional people and you should treat them accordingly when discussing these things.

However, when arguments used to defend an aspect of a fictional work can be copy-pasted wholesale to defend real situations (and are in fact used for that already), that does bother me. What I'm addressing here is a specific argument I'd like to see retired, because I believe it causes real harm. This is not an attempt to condemn people's tastes, or use real life tragedies as ammunition in fandom drama.

Tw: sexual abuse, racism

Fantastic racism and fictional systems of oppression never have a one-to-one correspondence to real life, but authors necessarily draw from the society they're in and reflect that, consciously or not. If you ever heard that "dystopia is white people saying what if that stuff happened to us" that's why. That means that both the way it's treated in the work and the way we discuss it can have real life implications.

So, what is adultification?

Adultification Can Take Two Essential Forms:

1. A process of socialization, in which children function at a more mature developmental stage because of situational context and necessity, especially in low-resource community environments; and

2. A social or cultural stereotype that is based on how adults perceive children “in the absence of knowledge of children’s behavior and verbalizations. This latter form of adultification, which is based in part on race, is the subject of this report.

Girlhood Interrupted: The Erasure of Black Girls’ Childhood by REBECCA EPSTEIN, JAMILIA J. BLAKE and THALIA GONZÁLEZ- Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality. Available online for free.

If you haven't read it or need a refresher, Vampire Academy is a YA series where the protagonist, Rose Hathaway, is a half-vampire, being trained to be a Guardian. As a dhampir, her society imposes on her the duty of protecting mortal vampires, the Moroi, against the undead evil vampires, the Strigoi. Rose's best friend, Lissa, is a Moroi princess and she very much wants to be her Guardian and protect her, but throughout the series it is made clear that the treatment of dhampirs is highly unfair. Rose is 17 for a large chunk of the series, and she's forced into a lot of tragic situations, she's an excellent fighter and kills a lot of Strigoi, but not without losing people and suffering trauma.

At a young age, Dhampirs take on immense responsibility, are taught to put their charges' lives ahead of their own, giving up their youth and autonomy. Dhampir girls and women are hypersexualized, exotified and disrespected, being mostly responsible for keeping their species going and looked down on for doing that at the same time.

Of course that specific system of fantasy oppression does not exist. But as you can see in the study quoted above, the phenomenon of adultification is not something that's exclusive to the VA universe. While it might seem very far removed from the reality of teens who have some level of privilege, particularly if they're first worlders, being forced to shoulder adult responsibilities, being denied the formative experiences of a carefree youth, being exposed to extreme violence and even forced to perpetrate it, having to leave home and take care of themselves, and many other traumas and oppressions are the lived reality of a lot of young people.

When those young people are perceived as more adult than they actually are, they are often denied the protection and nourishment they need and deserve due to the adult-like stereotypes assigned to them.

These stereotypical characteristics include sexual maturity, possession of agency to make important life decisions and the ability to be criminally responsible for their conduct.

(E)racing Childhood: Examining the Racialized Construction of Childhood and Innocence in the Treatment of Sexually Exploited Minors by Priscilla A. Ocen,also available online.

Minors who went through extreme circumstances are no less deserving of nurturing and protection than others, and neither are minors belonging to groups who have expectations of maturity pushed onto them, but they are often perceived differently. Trauma can come with a pseudo-maturity, but it doesn't rush you through developmental stages.

Adultification is a form of dehumanization that has very harmful consequences to real people.

One of the most dramatic ways that dhampirs were adultified in the books is the age law, an attempt to lower the age in which they become Guardians to 16, essentially hoping to use teens as living shields and cutting their youth short. Rose's experiences holding her own in fights against Strigoi at age 17 are used to defend the validity of this idea, even though she's horrified by it herself. Rose believes they should have a right to those last years of teenhood, both to prepare and to live.

The discussion around that law never seemed like a far-fetched idea completely detached from the real world to me personally, because around the same time there was an attempt to lower the age of criminal responsibility in my country to 16, which of course involveld a lot of biases around race and class. In fact much of what I expressed in this post comes from being exposed to a decade of debates against reactionaries while I was in school and later studying law, in which experts tried to convince the public that minors are a protected category for a reason, since they are at a different developmental stage, and that the extreme circunstances they might be placed in don't make them adults.

Another big way in which this type of bias harms minors is the perception of sexual maturity.

In the context of the commercial sexual exploitation of children, gendered and racialized biases against Black girls cast them as more mature and thus as possessing more agency over their sexuality than their white counterparts. They are viewed as “street smart,” less dependent on adults, and less vulnerable to adult manipulation or abuse. (Ocen)

While the fandom seems to mostly understand that the age law was wrong, there are some arguments that Rose's circunstances gave her the capacity to consent to a sexual and romantic relationship with her adult instructor that I've seen used by several people now.

I find that very troubling due to the real life implications of these arguments. I'm sure these people are very well meaning, and obviously I don't think anybody was defending all of this, but I don't think there's any way to say "she's mature for her age because she went through a lot" or "her society makes girls like her shoulder a lot of responsibility, and therefore she has a higher ability to consent to sex than other girls her age" that doesn't validate these harmful biases in some way.

Compared to white girls of the same age, survey participants perceive that • Black girls need less nurturing • Black girls need less protection • Black girls need to be supported less • Black girls need to be comforted less • Black girls are more independent • Black girls know more about adult topics • Black girls know more about sex (From the Georgetown Law study)

Some of the people making this argument seem to think that the fantasy racism, adult responsibility and exposure to violence that this character suffers are very far removed from reality, created wholesale for the sake of world building. As exposed above, that isn't the case, there are very real counterparts. And in fact, some other people were directly making the argument using real life examples.

Marginalized or abused people are aways forced to grow up faster and shoulder too much responsibility for their age, and that in no way makes them adults. It makes them more vulnerable to manipulation not less. They not only don't require any less protection, they are the ones who are most likely to be victimized.

Perpetuating the idea that those kids who are in the most vulnerable positions in society, and are forced to somewhat give up their childhood, are more mature and therefore it's okay for grown adults to take advantage of them is a problem.

If anybody actually read all this, thank you very much, and I hope I didn't sound aggressive. It's just a subject I find very important. And I truly don't think shipping something means you endorse it in real life, I just don't like to see that argument spread. Ship what you ship.

Of course fantasy racism isn't the only type that is pertinent to analysis of Rose's character, the word exotic is used to describe her and directly linked to her Turkish heritage quite a lot, but that's a whole other can of worms.

For English language sources those articles I cited are quite good, and there are some good videos I could rec.