#is this an answer? discourse is reactionary and big controversial incidents like shard and swordgate are especially polarizing

[astralleywright]

what do you think happened with the "pro ashton" side of the fandom post episode 77-78? it used to be where the more nuanced takes on the situation sat, but nowadays it's just seemed to have coagulated into this vitriolic mess towards any woman that makes mistakes or acts rude/selfish and is not instantly abandoned or mauled within an inch of her life. granted, it's been laudna, imogen, and fearne that have been impulsive more recently, but i'm not sure if they'd do the same for the male characters. i haven't seen anybody say that orym should get beaten to death for making a deal with morri but i have seen a lot of "the GIRLS are getting off so easy! they're being coddled and deserve to get screamed at!" complaints from people who took ashton's side back then.

fandom discourse is inherently reactionary. intentional of not, a lot of meta is as much in response to other perspectives on the work a person's taken in as it is the work itself. this was especially true during shardgate, and tbh, that hypercritical, punitive perspective on the female PCs (and especially Imogen and Laudna; i don't really see it for Fearne that much at all) was diffused into the pro-Ashton side even then. since the majority of the people mad at him were those female PC stans who also called out these bad takes on the female characters and were the ones supposedly coddling them in the first place.

Shardgate ended up uniting part of the fandom around bigger, stupider opinions, about how the fandom has a misandry problem and is in fact too nice to women. specifically Imogen and Laudna, who are actually singlehandedly ruining everything for Bells Hells. the fact that Ashton is not a man did not matter, the actual nuance of Imogen and Laudna's behavior did not matter, bc, again, discourse is reactionary. and it doesn't even have to be in reaction to what another fan is actually saying, but what you believe them to be saying, or what someone on tumblr says they're saying, whether its true or representative of a popular opinion or deeply out of context or just completely made up.

Swordgate was obviously the perfect opportunity to reveal this hypocrisy, given how similar the incident was to shardgate, and show who was actually trying to analyze both incidents and who was either specifically reacting to discourse (real or imagined) and/or just playing favorites. a lot of people who seemed very smart during shardgate were revealed to be doing one of the latter during swordgate. while the same can be said about people who ragged on Ashton and were kinder to Laudna, including BH themselves, they benefit from the existence of linear time. there were absolutely people being hypocritical in that direction during swordgate, yeah. but I also saw a lot of those ppl who had softened on Ashton with his growth since shardgate, and in hindsight realized they had been too hard on them at the time. obviously its difficult to prove the reverse, but like. I have not seen nearly as many people soften on Laudna, even when Ashton themself expressed how much her kindness after shardgate meant to him.