#is the ship inherently dicey?

[dubiousanon]

I’m such a whore for highly competent kakanaru where everyone sees kakashi’s obvious protectiveness and Naruto’s smiles and thinks Naruto’s stupid (albeit with a shit ton of chakra) and kakashi just takes care of him.

BUT NO NO NOOOOOO

it’s not even just Naruto being powerful. It’s him being horrifyingly competent and able to pick up skills quickly once he’s shown and adapt to anything without missing a beat because he’s just always fucking watching and has gotten so used to it he doesn’t even realize what he’s doing. It’s just what he does and always has (like bro was always throwing kunai in the anime and while it was a joke about him trying to look cool EVERY TIME there was something weird happening around the area he threw it at!!!)

Just him having sharp eyes people don’t notice under the brightness in them. Or the squint of his smile making him impossible to read. Except for Kakashi who is the king of looking underneath the underneath and clocked him as soon as he could bear to get close to him

Idk I just love skilled and competent Naruto instead of for just powerful and strong Naruto. Ya know?

YOU GET MEEEE!!! Naruto may be a moron but that boy is NOT an idiot. He may not be smart in the same ways most people would notice, but there's a reason he was able to become Hokage and win nearly every fight he was ever in. He literally learned the Rasengan in record time, and he figured out ON HIS OWN how to make it work with his own insane chakra. He's incredibly adaptable, and I really wish more fics would explore it!!!

So many KakaNaru fics capitalize on the age difference and stick Kakashi into a caretaker role, which I'm totally not against or anything. Insane respect to anyone who writes anything, ever, in any form. It's not easy! I just wish more people would emphasize that Naruto is a functioning and intelligent adult who is highly, highly capable. I need more seal master Naruto! More Naruto hiding secrets and using his smile as a shield and/or weapon!!! More analytical and tactician Naruto!!!! More Naruto taking care of himself when things get hairy, not getting saved!!!! PLEASEEEE I'm starving out here 💔

[script-a-world]

Submitted via Google Form:

If we put humanoid life on numerous planets throughout space... with the billions and billions of stars out there... if life can be practically everywhere and filled with people. Just how crowded would my world be? If say every solar system out there had at least 2 planets with life on it. And plenty more if terraformed. Also calcuations might get dicey when we get so many large numbers like the population of an entire galaxy might be decillion or something. Maybe numbers could be heavily geared toward scientific rather than words?

Tex: What’s your reproduction rate per generation? If it’s at or approaching 100% (i.e. every single person that makes it to reproducing age reproduces a minimum of two children per lifetime), then the population will be, mathematically, stable. This does not account for anyone having no children, one children, or three or more children per lifetime, or even people who do reproduce but the children die before they can reproduce.

What you’re thinking of is carrying capacity and sustainable population. Something that falls under your consideration is the pre-existing ecology of the planet that your humanoid life decides to live on. Doing things to “make room”, such as wiping out keystone species, pervasive drilling for materials that poisons the soil with heavy metals, and developing materials for technology development that poisons both your population and the planet’s ecology even further will end up killing off your population long before they can even get through the billions on a single planet.

Another consideration is how many people will live off-planet, in things like space ships, space stations, etc. This is of course also finite space, and carries its own maximum carrying capacity and ideals of a sustainable population, which, unless you’re building a Death Star, is inherently going to carry only a fraction of a population that a planet can.

With a society advanced enough to travel a galaxy (I’m presuming you’re working within the boundaries of a single galaxy), they’re not likely to socially require constant reproduction from a large percentage of their adult population. Reproduction, historically, was meant as a means to secure blood lines, have enough people to work on a farm, and have people to take care of you when you become too old/disabled to work in what’s probably going to be manual labor.

If you’ve solved the food resource, non-food resource, energy, and poverty issues that typically plague a society, then your birth rate will fall - maybe not by enough to have a permanent decline in population, but what that society will consider an ideal population maximum will change drastically after those issues are considered solved.

Whatever the needs are of your story, or non-story worldbuilding, that’s going to end up being the amount of people that you need. Whether your humanoid population considers this crowded or not is up to how you define their cultural interpretation of population density.

Utuabzu: So, the first thing to consider is that space is big. Like, really, really big. So big humans can’t properly conceive of how big it is. It takes over 4 years for the light from our nearest stellar neighbour (Proxima Centauri) to reach us, and current physics says it is impossible for anything to move faster than that because it would break causality. So, one solution to your problem is to not have faster than light travel. Even if humans (and potentially others) have spread out across the galaxy, you’d only have reasonably accurate and up-to-date information on the few dozen systems nearest your own, with everything else being decades or even centuries out of date. So for your characters the answer to ‘how many people are there in the galaxy’ could very well be ‘hell if I know’.

Even within a single star system, as Tex said, you’re not limited just to planets. If you’re colonising other star systems then you have the ability to live long-term in space - space is really big, after all - which means you can build large, sustainable habitats in space. In many ways these are probably preferable to planets, since most proposals generate a pseudogravity via centrifugal force - by spinning - something you can test out yourself by getting a bucket, partially filling it with water, and then holding it arm outstretched while you spin quickly in place. The faster you spin, the stronger the centrifugal force. Which means a space habitat that uses such a system can be designed to simulate whatever strength of gravity you want. Which is good, because we know from astronauts that microgravity has serious health impacts on humans.

Slap a layer of protective ice or something on the outside to shield it from radiation and micrometeorites - conveniently also a reserve of water - fill it up with air and you’ve got new living space. And there’s plenty of material in the asteroid belt and assorted other minor bodies before you need to begin to bother with mining actual planets and moons. Which means that the maximum population you can potentially get away with in a star system is ‘yes’. Of course, as Tex said, most people aren’t going to have all that many kids, particularly not in a developed economy such as would be required to actually build all this, since the necessary technology would mean that children are no longer economic assets - helpful labour - and become economic dependants, and are far less likely to die. This is why increasing urbanisation and economic development correlates with falling birthrates across the world.

But maybe this culture has achieved Fully Automated Gay Space Communism and people are so bored they have to make their own friends. One star system could very believably have a population in the trillions, quadrillions or some number so huge that you do need scientific notation to write it in a reasonable space.

And that doesn’t even consider non-human people, who might have wildly different needs and population patterns and could coexist with humans by thriving in environments where we’d die instantly, while they’d die instantly in the environments we thrive in. The frozen wastes of Titan could be a paradise to some ammonia-based alien, complete with snow beaches along the shores of methane lakes, and they’d be more than happy to leave the inner system to the lava monsters and their water-based hellscapes.

[thosemintcookies]

Hey just a reminder that you can write about whatever content you like. Dark topics and breaking down trauma literally is a good way to expand people's sense of empathy and also a way for victims to feel seen.

I will say that there is a problem sometimes with the attitude with which people write things. The presence of violence and sexual assault in certain creative circles on its face isn't a problem if tagged correctly and honestly might be a good indicator that some people find freedom in writing about such topics.

The attitude behind these things tho is where it gets problematic for me. There's the prevalence of eroticizing of non consent (which again in individual cases might be okay depending), the normalization of and sexualizing of manipulative people, the normalization of pedophilia and incest etc.

Again, I am anti censorship. You can't have a robust and healthy critique of racism without expressly stating the harms it inflicts on people. However. You also can't have a robust critique of racism if you're excusing or fetishizing it. It's not the content or the existence of underage sexuality as depicted in media I have a problem with because let's be honest, underage people do have libidos. But to be voyeuristic of it? To present it as titillating for an adult audience? It gets dicey. There's a difference between writing awkward teens fumbling with getting dates vs. Showing 16 year old characters played by 20 year old actors in their underwear.

A lot of my frustration with mainstream fan creation people is this conflating and strawmanning. It's not me saying certain ships shouldn't exist or that certain themes should be purged. But to treat the realm of fanfic and fanart as a free-for-all where you're allowed to find everything sexy is wrong.

There are laws protecting people and their bodily autonomy. We have these boundaries in larger society for reasons. If you get off on the dual toxic dynamic of a queer person being abused/a queer person being a SuperPredator maybe think about why. I'm not even asking you to stop. Just like. Why is it so important that you protect your ability to write about things that in real life would make you uncomfortable? Why are you more dismissive of something if it happens to people you can't immediately physically identify with? Are any of these perceptions filtering into your treatment of marginalized people in the real world?

One of the more pernicious things that isn't even sexual is the tendency to characterize poc as being "better than" or "more sensible" than white counterparts and thereby excluding poc from the action. As an Asian person, who has been on the receiving end of "positive" stereotypes let me tell you that all stereotypes are dehumanizing heuristics and excuses not to think about people as entire and whole, able to be flawed, able to have ugly emotions and complex joys.

In the same way, treating all male ships as inherently softer or cuter for the consumption of a mostly nonqueer audience is very toxic. Some people actually do suffer abuse by their LGBT partners. Being marginalized doesn't save you from being a bad person. Are we wanting to engage in these things cpmplexly? Do we fully understand the mortifying vulnerability of truly loving another person, beyond blushy first dates and feverish sexual encounters?

I understand that some things are a matter of personal taste and yeah, not everything has to be that deep. There are plenty of published books I could pick up and read. There are non romantic books and media I can get into (and I do! I'm not going to pretend like one person writing for fun should be held to the same standard as people working with publishers, editors, sensitivity readers etc)

But at the end of the day, people are correct. Amateur works are where Wierdness can flourish. How many healthy depictions of polyamorous relationships can you name in popular media? How many works are passionate about depicting even the nuanced hardships of interracial, or even interfaith relationships? How many stories have far too much in the way of corporate propaganda? Where else can you find works with niche playful anachronistic dialogue for works written hundreds of years ago?

These things can legitimately prove to be good outlets for creativity.

I don't know how it got to be this way, but I do think there is something wrong when the primary target for queer relationships turns out not to be queer people.

You know in falsettos Marvin and Whizzer have this wicked intense, sometimes toxic and infuriating relationship which is also full of real love? You know in angels in America where queer death and identity amongst the backdrop of repressive and progressive religious themes is tragic and transcendent? You know in, fucking cloudburst? Big Eden? The lived-in intimacy. The wanting the best for each other. The queer joy in finding your Person. Your People. Why isn't that people are vehemently defending their rights to produce...

[daveedulce]

how is dabihawks healthy when Dabi is quite literally a murderer who would most likely off Hawks when convenient and it's shown that Hawks is mostly playing along to keep himself alive and accomplish his mission?

Since you decided to send this ask to me specifically, i suppose you're asking for my individual input. You wanna know how daveedulce dot tumblr dot com feels abt this sitch. so heres whats basically an essay on what ive observed in the manga between dabi n hawks

disclaimer I'm not the King of Knowing What Makes Ships Good or Bad unless its a really obviously harmful relationship but heres what i look at and consider w my ships

the main thing is how they interact with one another

the other is how they think abt eachother

dabi in canon has not killed anyone he developed a positive (or neutral) personal relationship with. he also has not shown any implications that he will or would murder hawks for any reason, whether it be that he isn't useful or is a hero or whatever else. through character analysis, some argue that he would if needed, and that's a valid thought-- but character analysis is heavily opinion-based with how little we actually know about Dabi. the accusation that he'd murder people who aren't strangers to him is just as valid as those who argue that he wouldn't kill those he knows personally.

it is true that the foundation of their relationship was initially built on business-only mission-related grounds, but with recent evidence shown in newer chapters, hawks is going fucking ham. the dude is acting freely and not eeeeverything he does is for the mission, and he's letting a lot of his personal interest get muddled in with his initial task. the dude is getting to be indulgent, as well as getting himself into deep shit. Hawks also, in more recent chapters, seems to take interest in Dabi further than what was expected of him. The mission doesn't go away and stop existing, but he SEEMS more personally intrigued than just "playing along."  I dunno. He seems like he wants to reach his goal still, OBVIOUSLY, but he's really doing the above and beyond. he doesnt need 2 go this hard but he is.

if one were only to observe Dabi and Hawks' first interaction, it would be dicey. Not inherently bad, but yes, it would look as if they're just using eachother. That's why at that point in the manga most people wrote dabihawks as a slow-burn unintentionally-falling-in-love oh-shit relationship, having initial motives & intentions and abandoning them later for their love for one another. but that's taken out of context of the actual manga, and i suppose im trying to be extremely canon adherent here. 

so, Hawks and Dabi, based off of raw material we see in the manga, are not inherently toxic. When they interact with one another, its mainly playful banter, with no unironic death threats or ab/sive language. They aren't curt and short with one another, rather tossing snippy comments back and forth, like you would with a friend or partner. It's a lot more casual than the interactions between Dabi and Tomura or Hawks and the Hero Commission. Whenever they're thinking about one another, they are not thinking of harming, killing, or using the other. Yes, they describe one another as useful, but there's not enough evidence imo to argue that dabi is going to use and then kill off hawks or vice versa. It's a possibility, as anything is at this point, but hard canon evidence doesn't state any support for that theory, just as it doesnt suggest Dabi would lay his life down for hawks either or anything like that. it doesn't sway one way or the other. 

Maneuvering hero/villain ships is always difficult in the sense that there are going to be many interactions between both parties that aren't all rainbows and sunshine. There are going to be weird boundaries that are set differently from villain/villain or hero/hero relationships. And thats why i tend to look at the way they interact with one another, their individual dynamic, how they get along and isolate that. if there had been continuous blatant evidence that they were plotting to harm, manipulate, or kill one another, then i would feel a lot differently abt it. but based off of what we're given, my own character analysis and bias aside, i just don't see enough to prove that they would hurt each other. 

I guess what I'm saying is that canon evidence is so horribly neutral that things COULD go either way. There's not enough proof to state that they're toxic, there's not enough proof to state that they're wholesome. The events in canon give people who enjoy dabihawks free reign over developing their relationship and story more just as it gives others the opportunity to hash out what's going to go wrong. 

[thesoullessfuck]

Nygmobblepot Tho...

I’m not even sure if this will come out of my drafts or not but I needed to put it somewhere. I was going to go insane otherwise.

If I do post it, it’s gonna be hella long and hella personal. Some of you might relate though or it might be useful to some of you who also see yourselves in these characters like I do. Who knows  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Long ass post under the cut.

So... I have been legit trying to figure why exactly I had such a connection to this ship. This isn’t my first rodeo, obviously. I’m a 90′s kiddo. I grew up in the age of AOL chatrooms and forum boards talking about my favorite couples (canon and not) from The X-Files, Xena Warrior Princess, and The Vampire Chronicles. I was that kid.

But, for some reason, I really can’t shake my Gotham obsession. Like... for real. I annoy all of my friends. I bought a GODDAMN PENGUIN ONESIE.

Maybe it’s because the fandom is actually pretty darn great and all of the people I’ve spoken to in the Nygmobs tag are so, so incredibly nice and supportive. I haven’t felt this way since the aforementioned dark times of dial-up and AOL.

I’ve been rewatching the series in small bursts as I write my own stories and I’ve also talked a friend of mine into watching it with me from the beginning (Gotham Date Night is now my FAVORITE day of the week). But, I think I’ve finally pinned down why I love Ed and Os so damn much... I’ve mentioned before on AO3 that I relate to these two characters a lot. Both of them with their weird little insecurities and unhealthy coping mechanisms. Their penchant for manipulating people and just, in general, being horrible and toxic friends.... yeah. I legit can’t keep friends for long. I always end up screwing it up somehow and it’s really hard for me to get attached to people. But BOYO, when I do! All I want to do is spend time with those people and talk their ears off about anything and everything until, eventually, they get annoyed or I do something stupid and they inevitably leave. It always happens. No ifs, ands, or buts. The only exception to this is online friends... because I can edit away large chunks of my life and make everything look and sound more appealing. But even those friendships are painfully transient because people find new ships, new fandoms, new websites...

While we’re on the topic of transitions: I’m separated from my husband right now and it sucks. He’s probably going to read this and that also sucks.

I’ve been struggling to talk about it with my mom because she just... doesn’t get it. She understands why we’ve separated and even agrees that my husband and I have been horribly toxic to one another and definitely needed some time apart to sort out our lives. But, when I talk about making that separation permanent, she begs me to reconsider. She thinks I’m moving too quickly and that divorce is such a big deal that I shouldn’t just waltz into. And I get that... but I don’t really want to deal with it anymore. I don’t want to keep lying to myself, and my “friends” and to him anymore. My mom keeps telling me that I loved him and that I married him for a reason and that should be enough to keep trying...

But I am honestly wondering if I am even capable of that? And I don’t mean that in the super angsty “My heart is black and full of spiders” kinda way. I just genuinely don’t think I know how to love someone the way I’m supposed to. My dad was abusive, my mom is co-dependant, and my step-dad is a lazy bum whose only real contribution to my life was bringing my beautiful and wonderful siblings into the world (and he didn’t even raise them. I fucking did. That’s a whole other can of worms). So I don’t exactly have the best examples of love in my life. So I turned to books and TV shows.

I grew up reading YA romance novels and obsessed over the idea of soulmates. Twin Flames. All that jazz. I made myself believe that I was not a complete person without having that other half. And, because of that, I was terrified of being alone. I felt like my existence was somehow invalidated if I was single. Which, of course, landed me a pretty ugly reputation in school and also got me roped into some really dicey relationships.

My whole life was staged. I was never truly myself. Only a version of myself that I would curate for the people around me. I would bounce around from friend group to friend group and only get really close to a select few. And, inevitably, they would see me. The real me. And then they’d run.

And... honestly... I still don’t know why. I don’t know what it is about me that people just don’t like. I’m damn near thirty years old, I’m a teacher, and I don’t think I’m mature enough to figure it out. Aside from just accepting that I’m a bad person or something. But I don’t think that’s right. I refuse to believe that’s the answer, anyway.

I was re-reading Our Home in Gotham the other day to refresh my memory on where I left off in my story and it all just kinda came to me. Which is why I had to come on here and write it all down. I didn’t want to forget any of it.

Ed and Os saw each other. All of it. The good. The bad. The terrible. The selfishness, obsessiveness, and capacity for evil. Even if you take the inherent romance out of the equation and just look at their friendship it’s clear that they are so strongly bonded because of that transparency. They can be themselves around one another. And that’s just... enviable.

I relate to both of them so equally- and in ways that I am not proud- and it’s just so refreshing to write about them and pour myself into them and have them be seen. And, most importantly, accepted in spite of that ugliness.

No one has ever really seen me. Or, when they do, they run. I haven’t found that person yet (I don’t think) and doubt I ever will. So, in the meantime, it’s nice to read about it and write about it and watch it on repeat.

And I think that’s why this ship is so important to me and why my experience with it has been what it’s been.

[transdonaldduck]

Dondrake?

[send me a ship/character and i’ll put my music on shuffle, pick a few lines, and write a mini fic based on that]

Breezeblocks- Alt-JMuscle to muscle and toe to toeThe fear has gripped me but here I goMy heart sinks as I jump upYour hand grips hand as my eyes shut

Drake Mallard didn’t trust easily.

That’s what he’d tell you, of course, and while it was mostly true- he tended to keep most at arms length- there were a few people he inherently trusted, people who were unique with a good heart, like Launchpad (which still baffled him, how this random dude had become his bestfriend over the course of one conversation) and Gosalyn (Of course he trusted his daughter) and, begrudgingly, Gizmoduck. And evernt hen, he’d fought againt that trust like a wild animal, refused for the most part to give into it.

So no, he didn’t trust easily. For the most part. He doesn’t even bother trying to trust Scrooge McDuck, he knows what capitalists are like and he’s not too keen on getting chummy with the richest of them all- he assumes this attitude will carry on to the whole McDuck family...

Except, during the middle of a fight, when things are getting dicey and whatever villain of the week is looming over him this time, Donald Duck says “Jump!” and Drake doesn’t hesitate.

He’s practically consumed by fear the moment his feet leave the rooftop, eyes slamming shut, fifteen stories is a long and definitely fatal way to fall- and he’s pretty sure he’s left his heart on the concrete roof. Before he can fully register his panic, a hand clasps around his and stops his fall, yanking him along with the rest of the thunderquack. Launchpad is piloting, of course, but Donald is in the passenger seat, leaning out the window to keep Drake from becoming a darkwing-shaped hole in the ground.

Donald hauls him up and into the ship and, once Drake has had enough time to gather his bearings and open his eyes once more, he realizes with quite a shock he trusted the man. Enough to jump off a building. when did that happen?

Later, once the fight is every and the dust has settled, Donald stops Drake by the shoulder, “Hey,” he says, smiling and pressing a paper with his number on it in his palm, “Let’s get coffee sometime?”

And Drake remembers how seamlessly their hands had fit together, when he was hanging from the planes cockpit, “That... would be nice.” He smiles nervously right back.

[thestuckylibrary]

Hi! As an avid fic reader, there is something that has always bothered me about a lot of fan-fiction I have read in the Stucky fandom or the marvel fandom in general. There is almost always a level of casual sexism against the female characters, for example, in many fics the female characters are referred to as "girls" despite being grown fucking women also is it necessary to talk about how beautiful Natasha or Peggy are in every single fic? Aren't we reducing them to their beauty?

This is actually an incredibly complicated issue. Yes, there definitely is a fair amount of casual sexism in stucky fanfic and in fanfic in general. But on the other hand, compared to general fiction and the world at large, there is significantly less sexism. I’d also point out that the majority of transformative fandom is female identifying, queer, or both, this makes fanfics relationship with sexism a lot more complicated. Internalized misogyny is incredibly hard to sort out and be aware of, because it’s your own internal monologue and in the case of many fanfic authors, your own internal monologue as a woman and (in most cases) a feminist. 

The specific examples you pulled are tricky ones, cause on one hand, yeah theres certainly an element of sexism in there, but on the other hand there also isn’t necessarily a bad wicked thing. In most stucky fics, the narration is third person pov through either steve or bucky, and in the case of two men born in the 1910′s calling grown women girls would absolutely be a part of their vernacular. It’s absolutely sexist, but I’d argue that it’s a strongly internalized attitude and language pattern both of them would absolutely have problems recognizing and or getting rid of. So even if it’s not a carefully thought out choice from the author, it serves as interesting characterization. Also since the majority of fic authors are women, the relationship with using girls isn’t as simple, for one thing it is a part of common english to use women and girls interchangeably and it’s not something that’s closely examined by all women all the time. Also, I think theres as aspect of it’s usage that is reclaiming it in a way. I mean girls isn’t a slur by any means but it’s not free of negative meaning, and by referring to wonderful characters as girls it in some ways seeks to remove those negative connotations- by presenting to the reader a group of people who the reader admires and saying some of them are girls and thats great, it does something meaningful for a woman reading. Using the word girl/s isn’t always something bad, especially when women are using it.

As for calling them beautiful all the time, I’d argue that 9/10 times theres absolutely nothing inherently sexist about mentioning their beauty. I mean it is objectively true, mcu’s female characters are beautiful. Now the reason behind all of them being gorgeous is pretty sinister, hollywood has an insanely toxic and sexist beauty standard and the fact that female characters in movies have to be beautiful in the same way is a whole other barrel of fish and we’re talking about fanfic, we’re dealing with characters who have a appearance and personality not 100% set by the author of a fic. Honestly, I’ve read thousands of Stucky fics and I think I’ve read a handful where women were actively reduced to their beauty. I mean when was the last time you read a novel by a cishet man? It’s absolutely horrifying, the way they treat women is disgusting, and fic is so much better. 

Most of the time in fic, beauty is just one aspect of their character, for example Peggy’s strength and steely determination usually follow any mention of her beauty and Natasha’s dry humour and keen intelligence usually follow any mention of hers. On the other hand yeah, you get a lot of Bucky dancing with a beautiful nameless woman who only appears as an object of desire and jealousy and yeah, thats a problem. But I don’t think it’s a bad thing at all to mention a woman’s beauty provided shes being not shown as important only because she’s beautiful. 

I’d also argue that the vast majority of sexism in fanfic isn’t calling female characters girls or referring to their beauty, its demonizing or ignoring female characters who are “in the way” of a m/m ship. I see this happen a LOT with Sharon in particular, but also Peggy and Natasha. You don’t see the female character who is canonically with one half of a m/m ship is a controlling, violently jealous, homophobic monster plotline often anymore, but it does still come up. More common is the female character who is canonically with one half of a m/m ship is a endlessly pure, patient, supportive and unconditionally understanding prop who exists only to step graciously out of the way of the m/m pairing. I see that all the damn time and it bothers me. 

Female characters tend to not be as developed in canon and because of that often also remain underdeveloped in fanfic and also tend in both canon and fic to be there only to support the male characters not existing outside that context. That or the fact that f/f ships are incredibly neglected. I mean theres like one f/f fic for every like seven m/m fics. Part of that is the fact that there are so many less women than men in fiction. Part of that is on us for just not writing wlw and favouring mlm or m/f ships. I have really complicated feelings about this as a queer woman, I mean I‘m running a ship blog about two men. I could be putting my time into natsharon, cartinelli or claire temple/misty knight, but I’m here instead. I worked through lots of internalized homophobia, biphobia, transphobia and aphobia while reading m/m fics, not f/f and I spend so much more time and energy on m/m ships. I mean here I am, a wlw and here I am investing almost all my leisure time on men. I mean I love it in this fandom and it’s absolutely my choice to be here but part of me wonders what it would be like if I had gone through that process with a f/f ship instead and what it would be like to invest this time on women. I wonder what it would be like to be in mcu fandom if our source material treated it’s female characters better and had more of them.

You also see barely any not white, disabled, unattractive or poor women in fic, but once again part of that is a distinct lack of diversity within the source material. But you know what, I do not see many fics with Helen Cho or Claire Temple in them at all, let alone as developed characters.

Anyways sexism in fandom is a lot more complicated than it initially appears. Nothing is ideologically pure, even fanfic, but due to the nature of fanfic being written by people who you can easily contact in the sometimes caustic forum of tumblr I think it’s incredibly important to be gentle with authors who violate what you individually see as correct. Much of tumblr’s atmosphere of callout culture has a very black and white view of what justice is and what is correct, when in reality theres a lot of layers to this, it’s not a simple black and white dichotomy. People are at different places in their journeys, theres a lot of reasons why authors write things the way they do that you might not be aware of, broad sweeping statements saying x is always bad are a real dicey area to step into (and yes, I see the irony in saying that)

So while fandom certainly needs to take a closer look at our own internalized misogyny (and racism and ableism and audism and so on), I think theres much more to be gained from larger conversations, self reflection and making an active effort to be kinder to women than there is from things like carefully abstaining from words like girls.

[pervincetosscobble]

i don’t think there’s like. an inherent problem in writing fic about traumatic or negative things? like, for example, i definitely wrote some short, never-gonna-post-publicly-anywhere things when i was going through tough times about characters dealing with sudden deaths of friends, and even forward momentum has a sideplot about disability and car accidents, neither of which i have any personal experience with (and that’s a discourse for another day, this weird concept that you need to be traumatized/gay/nd/whatever enough to write certain things, it’s......... weird)

but like. you have to do it respectfully? you can’t be like “oh this character has panic attacks lol!!” and then move on? disabilities are not quirks. traumatic pasts aren’t character traits, they can be the basis of personalities and you absolutely must honor that. and furthermore you have to be open to people telling you that you did not honor that, you need to be open to the possibility of doing it wrong because guess what? you might! even if you try your hardest you might do it wrong.

and now, dropping any kind of veil about what i’m talking about here: like. okay. i understand magnus shipping fic is....... dicey, given the how often travis has said “he’s not interested” and the total lack of interest magnus has displayed in dating people. so when i wrote epilogue, i tried to keep that in mind: this can’t be an immediate “they fall in love” type thing. i did my best to treat the situation with respect, and thankfully people have said i paced it well but if someone comes along and says i didn’t, i will listen! because guys, holy shit, i don’t know what the fuck i’m doing, and i’m willing to let people TELL ME THAT

and this post is disgusting and messy, it’s half midnight and i’m writing this instead of my paper about violence as epidemiology which is actually super interesting conceptually but definitely not what this post is about, but i think what i’m trying to say here is: you can’t. complain about criticism? there is a difference between “i don’t like your subject matter” and “i don’t like the way you handled this subject matter.”

like, okay, the question of “don’t like don’t read” is another post entirely, but going back to the example of epilogue i did my damnedest to warn through tags and the a/n that this is a story about magnus falling in love and that julia is mentioned a couple of times (because how can you write that story and not mention her) and i understand that could be upsetting to some people so if i got a comment that was “magnus shouldn’t fall in love again” then. i guess i interpret that as a statement that’s more open to debate than “it shouldn’t have happened so quickly” ??

like. i dunno. i have just realized how deeply deeply pretentious this entire post sounds and that my self-importance is artificially inflated, and i think i’m gonna go to bed, but if anyone has like questions or comments or even disagrees i encourage messages because i’m trying to work through my own feelings about this and would love to hear what other people have to say. good night friends thanks for coming on this journey

[rebelsofshield]

Panels Far, Far Away: A Week in Star Wars Comics 7/10/19

A new writer and artist takeover Marvel’s flagship Star Wars title and Captain Phasma leads an army of ill-fated Stormtroopers into battle. What do the two have in common? Rock people!

Star Wars #68 written by Greg Pak and art by Phil Noto

Sixty eight issues in and it is time to usher Marvel’s main Star Wars series into new, if familiar, hands. Taking over from Kieron Gillen (and Jason Aaron before him) is Greg Pak. Pak is most likely best known for his now classic run on Hulk in the mid-2000’s that gave us the iconic “Planet Hulk” storyline. Star Wars fans will know him from the fun, if not entirely memorable, Age of Rebellion limited series earlier this year. Pak is joined in the art department by Phil Noto, who returns to doing interior art work after drawing the first two arc’s of Charles Soule’s Poe Dameron ongoing. Both are strong choices to usher in this next era of Star Wars comics especially as we inch ever closer to The Empire Strikes Back.

The Empire has dispatched thousands of probe droids throughout the galaxy in the search of Luke Skywalker and the new home of the Rebel Alliance. With Imperial eyes now scouring the known corners of the universe, the rebellion has to act fast to hide some of its most precious assets and make the best of a dicey situation. General Riken splits our heroes into three teams with three distinct missions. Luke and R2-D2 are charged with luring away Imperials from a vital Rebel outpost. Han and Leia are to set up a conflict between the duplicitous crime lord tipping off the Imperial droids and the Empire. Chewbacca and C-3PO have to set a trap for Imperial ships on an unstable planet. Soon our heroes are scattered just like those pesky probes and things certainly aren’t going to go to plan.

After the sometimes brutal military storytelling of Kieron Gillen, Greg Pak’s take on Star Wars feels like a callback to the more playful status quo of Jason Aaron’s run. Our heroes are each tasked with different missions that run the gamut in tone and genre, but there is an overall sense of fun and adventure throughout. The first issue of “Rebels and Rogues” reads quickly and with an enjoyable spark.

The script as a whole though proves uneven. Pak spends so much time setting up the parameters for our heroes’ missions and getting the ball rolling on their respective stories that we don’t really get much time to settle into any of them. Of the three, Leia and Han’s mission seems poised to be the most interesting in terms of plotting, but it’s really hard to tell given how little time we are allotted for each.

There’s also a sense of familiarity here that’s hard to shake. We’ve had almost seventy issues now of Han and Leia flirty bickering and Luke’s good natured frustration at his sputtering Jedi training. Sure the stories and adventures have been fun, but these characters are starting to feel more and more like archetypes and less like people. We need to shake up these dynamics soon.

The good news is that Star Wars hasn’t looked this good in years. Phil Noto’s art is almost always a pleasure and when he colors his own work, it is by far some of the best stuff in the big two’s wheelhouse. Noto has a great sense of character design and visual storytelling and it’s his well-structured panels and visual personality that help this comic move with the speed that it does.

In particular, it is great to see Noto get to play with exploring different facets of the Star Wars universe. The rock people of C-3PO and Chewbacca’s adventure pop with a palpable sense of heat but also carry with them an obvious good naturedness just from their first panel. It takes what is an inherently silly concept and quickly wins over through beautiful visual execution. On a similar note, Pak has a great time diving into the cyberpunk-noir sensibilities of Leia and Han’s mission. It feels like the sort of pulpy space crime story that you would expect to see from the late 70’s/early 80’s and is populated with all manner of visors, cool jackets, and neon lights.

Even if Greg Pak’s script might need a little more time to lift off, it is great to see Star Wars soar visually once again. Once these adventures begin to develop and grow we may be in for a great time.

Score: B

 Star Wars Age of Resistance: Captain Phasma #1 written by Tom Taylor and art by Leonard Kirk

Captain Phasma has had a weird couple of years. She went from hyped up villain to comedic disappointment to a fleshed out amoral pragmatist in the lead up to The Last Jedi to apparently being killed off unceremoniously in that same movie. Whether there was ever any larger plan for “Chrome Dome” is a mystery that will likely never be solved, the two pronged media push in the lead up to the Sequel Trilogy’s middle installment accomplished the strange feat of actually making her one of the most understood characters in its ensemble. Captain Phasma went from an enigma to an antagonist with a clear agenda and a well fleshed out past, which is more than you can say about most other characters in this newest trilogy for better and for worse.

As a result, we enter Tom Taylor’s “Fallen Guns” with a clear idea of what to expect. Even when she might be leading troops into battle Phasma will always prioritize her own success and survival above all else. Purpose and honor mean little to her. The First Order is also more of a means to an end by which she gets to thrive and commit violence. Taylor’s narrative, which follows a Stormtrooper with maybe a tad bit more compassion than is needed in this fascist organization, ends up having an unexpected sense of foreboding. “Fallen Guns” does just enough work in getting us to sympathize with this trooper and it makes the obvious conclusion of this story all the more haunting and sad. Is it predictable and reinforcing of traits we already know about Phasma? Certainly, but in a way Taylor just uses this to twist the knife.

Leonard Kirk’s art proves well suited for this battle heavy issue. Whether it’s through rendering explosions, dynamic splash pages, self-sacrificing rock beasts, or a thundering, oncoming wave of enemy vehicles, Kirk excels at thrusting the reader into middle of galactic war. Large scale action has always been Kirk’s strongsuit and he proves a smart fit for Taylor’s script even if some of the more low key pages can feel a tad awkward.

Score: B+