#jatp discourse

[williamaltman]

Thought about Julie and the Phantoms and one of the first things that came to mind was how insane the fandom was, trying to cancel the cast at every move they made when they weren't even really problematic 😭

[go-to-the-mirror]

Look upon my works all ye mighty and despair.

(The following is satire, I’m going to make a bloody artist’s statement about this.)

[ID: The Thomas Jefferson Miku Binder meme edited to be of Jonah Magnus. He’s white, with brown hair, grey eyes, a shirt that says “I met God. She’s” and then a drawing of an eye, he’s wearing a green and black bracelet, blue trousers, an eye earring, and a blue binder with a Hatsune Miku design. His info says his name is Jonah Magnus; he speaks English and French; he’s male and uses he/him pronouns; he is trans, aro, and gay; and he is over 200 years old. The additional info says: born and raised in Manchester; Jewish; dating Albrecht von Closen, Barnabus Bennet, Sampson Kempthorne, and Robert Smirke; broke up with Jonathan Fanshawe; has a crush on Jonathan Sims; used to be addicted to “drug smoothies” (cannabis, coca, mescal, morphine, heroin); flamboyant & camp. /End ID]

If you take anything at all away from this post, I want to to be that you should absolutely Not headcanon Jonah Magnus as Jewish, like ever, please for the love of god do not.

The folks on the seasons on the archives discord (esp. @jewishjon @spirallingintotheabyss and @pocketsizedquasar ) encouraged, aided, and hated with a burning passion this. Also inspired. Blame them and me. We did this as a community. They came up with drug smoothie.

Anyway, see Sahar (poketsizedquasar)’s post about Jonah Magnus and why hc-ing him as a minority is fucked up. Also, just, um, take a good long think about why headcanoning him as Jewish is the fucking worst, and you should not! Holy crap.

Finally, if Jonny Sims sees this, I am so, so sorry, but I will never tag anything so you can’t see it, because I live on the edge.

This a work of satire, inspired by a conversation, inspired by a fic that sucked. It is parodying the headcanons around Jonah Magnus — a canonical abusive, white supremacist, capitalist — by comparing him to Thomas Jefferson, who was a real life person, and was a thousand times more fucked up by virtue of being from real life, and causing harm to real people. It’s a joke, but a joke with meaning behind it, urging people to read into the themes of a show before making headcanons that are actually super bigoted.

[preoccupied-educator]

Not to like, ruin anyone’s day or anything but…fairly certain that’s a shoelace belt

Begs the question, was the og shoelace belt a costuming choice or a Charlie choice? 🤔

CC: @tangledstarlight @thedeathdeelers

[thereigning-lorelai]

9 & 10 for jatp of course 🔥

9. worst part of canon

the entirety of episode 5. 😬 my partner now always refers to "bad" episodes of shows we watch together as "this show's episode 5". to be more precise, i really don't care about the whole hgc arc. i realise what it's doing and that it's there to cause tension between julie and the boys. but i find it so utterly uninteresting. i would have loved if the show would've put a bigger focus on the "bobby/trevor stole luke's songs" narrative.

10. worst part of fanon

the blorbofication of bobby. will never understand it. but also the entire discourse around julie and luke's "age gap". 🙄

🔥 choose violence ask game 🔥

[kikikiwi27498]

op here i absolutely agree! i was specifically talking about kenny ortega's recent comments where he said that if jatp had been renewed, julie and luke would be endgame and have kids together

(re this post and my tags on it)

I see! I think I misunderstood - yeah, I agree. I was more...trying to find some explanation for not having the boys cross over, which I assume is what would have happened if Kenny Ortega and Co were planning a one and done show. I used to be Team Juke (or at least indifferent, I'm really only committed to Willex), but now, especially after reading Tabi (@catoptrific)'s analysis here, I have some questions. I'm certainly not here to yuck anyone's yum or tell people who to ship (I'm too old and I've survived too many shipping wars) or start Discourse. It's more like, as Tabi said, what does the boys not crossing over/coming back to life say about Rose? Or anyone else who died? That they don't care enough to want to cross over? That raising their kids (in Rose's case) isn't 'unfinished business' enough to keep them as ghosts? Also does Luke age? Do any of the boys age? And, if not, how does any of this even work? What about when Julie's, say, 40 and Luke still looks 16? (For the record, I love the boys coming back to life in fic, at least the ones where the age difference isn't an issue for the fic or else the boys just age normally). I wish the show had had time to explore Julie's relationship with Reggie and Alex as well rather than focusing mostly on Juke. And, to be honest, I would rather have Bobby and Willie backstory than confirmation that Juke is endgame.

[kybee1497]

Okay genuinely and not in a bitchy way.

people that dislike Bobby because he didn’t credit the boys. What did you want him to do?

Be like oh, I know I suffered a terrible tragedy that I’m still in therapy for 25 years later. My best friends all died on what was supposed to be the night of our lives and I’m alone now. I got back into music and I released music we already had been playing as a band under my new name. The music that we had been playing as a band that I’m the sole survivor of. This music was written by my best friend who’s dead now. Let me open myself up to being hounded by the media about the tragedy and my loss and 10 years from now I’m going to get invasive questions from reporters.

Like was he supposed to be “shout-out to my boy luke for writing this song for our band. He’s dead now, the rest of my band is also dead now and I’m traumatized. Anyways thanks luke, you’re a real one. No questions please.”

Canon: Bobby was close with his friends and band mates. They had inside jokes and Luke was hanging off Bobby just as much as he was the other boys.

Canon: Bobby stayed behind to flirt with Rose, they stayed close enough that their kids were close

Canon: Bobby released some of the bands music, he left at least unsaid Emily, bright and finally free, maybe edge of great I can’t remember. It’s logical to assume he only released the music the band was already playing/was on the demo

Canon: Trevor has a therapist that he can go to at the drop of a hat. Carrie is used to this. He panics often enough that it’s not odd that he’s flying off to visit his therapist all of a sudden, she just embarrassed that people are seeing him.

Canon: he loves and supports Carrie very much.

Canon: he never mentioned the boys to julie.

Canon: rose and Trevor were still close recently.

Canon: Luke and the boys felt betrayed that he didn’t mention them. Luke is mad about the music as he wrote the songs. Reggie is more mad about the money. Alex seems uncomfortable. They want to talk to him and confront him to see why he did it.

Canon: the boys are dealing with the trauma of dying and coming back 25 years later.

Canon: trevor and Carrie live in the hills, secluded where it’s safe and they have a hardcore gate to keep people out.

Canon: rose also knew about the boys and the music and she also never told Julie

Canon: Julie is 16, rose has been dead for a year, following this. The most recent Julie could have spent a lot of time around Trevor, she was 14-15 at the oldest. The trauma of losing his band and the technicalities of who wrote the songs aren’t really appropriate to discuss with a 14-15 year old, her mom knew, if she thought it was important she would have told Julie, and if Trevor had convinced her not to and she was uncomfortable, she wouldn’t have let julie be around him which there’s no evidence of.

Canon: Bobby was a 17 year old kid who lost his best friends, then went on to record the music the band had performed together. He has not obviously stated the songs were written by Luke in his conversations with Julie.

We don’t know why. We don’t know if it was strictly because it wasn’t something he wanted to talk about with a child as it’s a heavy topic. We don’t know if he didn’t want to bring up trauma and open old wounds? We don’t know if he got roped into a contract with a clause that he couldn’t talk about the band. There aren’t enough canon clues to understand what actually happened or his intentions.

There are two main theories

Bobby chose to profit off of the music his bandmate and friend luke had written. He changed his name and avoided all mentions of his past life. He is a liar and a cheat and the boys are right in their hatred of him and feelings of betrayal.

Bobby was a traumatized kid. He was probably taken advantage of by a cutthroat industry. He also probably didn’t want to discuss that with his daughters best friend, a literal child, or share his trauma and grief.

One of these theories is not any more canon than the other. It’s totally okay to not like Bobby, you don’t have to like any character, do what you want. But it’s not fair to act like you’re simply following canon and that your posistion as an anti is more valid and ‘canon’ than a stan.

[wlwcarries]

i'm becoming more and more convinced that charlie's dms are real. i’m going to give you guys the evidence there is so far, for you all to make your own conclusions. personally, as much as i hate to say it, i think the dms are real.

i want to preface this by saying that i hoped as much as everyone else that the screenshots were fake. i honestly debated even posting about it at this point because everyone seems to have made their peace that they’re fabricated and moved on, and i don’t want to start or rehash anything. i promise you, i hated making this post as much as you guys are probably going to hate reading this. but i feel like we as a fandom deserve to know and address the truth, and choosing to ignore this will only do more harm than good.

there are two tiktoks showing proof of the messages: here and here

it’s pretty clear imo that charlie sent those messages in that group chat. there’s publicly available information proving a lot of what i’m going to talk about, but i’m not going to expose anyone especially since a lot of the people involved are minors. if you want to talk more about it, feel free to dm me but i’m not going to post anything publicly beyond those tiktoks. 

so yeah. charlie talked about smut in a group chat with at least one confirmed minor as far as we know. in the screenshot you can see that someone explained what smut was to him, and then he continued on talking about the explicit fic. 

i know that a lot of us on here, myself included, love to harp on l*lex shippers, and while the racism involved with the ship should by no means pushed aside that's also not my biggest concern at the moment. a lot of these people are young teenage girls and there’s a clear power imbalance involved. they’re fans, and he’s an adult man who they look up to. yes, they shouldn’t have sent the fic to him in the first place, but charlie’s an adult and should have known better than to encourage this. this is on him. he really can’t see that interacting and talking about sexually explicit material with minors isn’t alright??? is he that scared of his fans turning on him if he doesn’t act like he’s their close personal friend???

he needs to realize that he’s not going to lose his fanbase if he establishes boundaries with them. honestly, there’s more of a chance that he’ll lose them if he doesn’t establish boundaries. other people said this better than me (i’d like to link chloe @willexx’s post here which makes a lot of really important points regarding this as well as discussing madi, and this post by @reggieshairflip which goes really in depth into a lot of great points), but this is really concerning. 

i also went on twitter last night to see what people were saying on there, and i’m beyond words. the majority of the commentary seems to be along the lines of “protect charlie from the smut!!” 

y’all. charlie isn’t the one who needs protecting. regardless of the legal situation, if he wants to read fanfic he’s gonna find ways to read it. he’s a grown man, he’ll be fine. that’s so far removed from the actual point, i don’t know how else to explain it. charlie will be fine. we don’t have to be worried about him. 

maybe people should focus on the fact that he’s talking about smut in a group chat with minors on it? like first off, don't be in a group chat with fans of your show, but especially don't talk about smut with minors, what the fuck. and the fact that he doesn’t even seem to realize the issues with what he’s doing is troubling in and of itself.

charlie has been involved in various other groupchats with fans for a while (this isn’t a new thing by any means), and i will admit that most of those interactions thus far have been innocent and harmless. regardless, the fact that he’s in group chats with fans at all worries me. these people are largely young, teenaged girls who idolize charlie--they’ve practically developed a parasocial relationship with him, and that’s not healthy in the slightest. 

he’s not their “bestie,” he’s a celebrity. he keeps up with the innocent and harmless things, and encourages them, but doesn’t establish boundaries--and that’s what leads to people thinking that doing more is okay because he hasn’t said otherwise. people meeting him at the airport at 2am, fans showing up to owen’s house at midnight and then charlie entertaining them. that’s what this kind of behavior leads to, and i fear that it will inevitably lead to much worse in the future. i’m not trying to take blame away from the people who did these things--fans have to respect boundaries, set or not--but as a public figure charlie has a responsibility to set clear lines.

the point of this post is absolutely not to “cancel” him or anything. that wouldn’t be productive at all, and one of my favorite things about the jatp fandom on tumblr is our ability to have actually constructive conversations about things like this. this is tumblr, and i know i’m basically speaking to an echo chamber here-- but i feel this is important enough that it has to be said, even if nobody outside of this site will probably see it. 

he needs to be held accountable and made to realize that what he’s doing isn’t okay. i get that this is his first experience being at the center of a large fandom like this, and i understand that he’s probably really excited about all the fans and wants to connect with them as much as possible. but he would do well to take notes from jeremy (and hell, madi, and she’s sixteen and didn’t have any prior acting experience at all), and engage in a healthy, responsible way like they do. i’m not going to speak about owen because i don’t really have much info or knowledge about how he interacts, but this potentially extends to him as well.

this is a really complicated and messy situation, and i get that. feel free to share your thoughts, but please be respectful. sending love to all of you guys rn 💜💜💜

EDIT: TO CLARIFY. i have seen this post making the rounds on twitter. i’m okay with that as long as it’s not a screenshot and the post is directly linked HOWEVER charlie did not straight up send smut to that group chat. they sent him the title, and he looked the fic up and sent the link in the group chat to clarify it was the one they were talking about. he was informed that it was smut, but it wasn’t just him sending the fic unprovoked. everything i said above still applies, he should not have engaged or encouraged the conversation but please don’t spread false information. 

[sunsetcurvesoldout]

I WANT TO START DISCOURSE! PINEAPPLE IS SUPERIOR PIZZA TOPPING AND NO I WILL NOT BE TAKING SUGGESTIONS

[sk8rwillie]

this is all i’m gonna say for right now on the situation, fandom spaces and internet spaces should be safe for minors, we as adults should providing these safe spaces and protecting them. I am an adult and i don’t know how many minors are following but i know some of my mutuals are minors and i want you to know that i am a safe person to talk to. I want you to feel welcome and invited into fandom spaces.

here’s where some of you might get mad and i’m telling you right now if you clown i’ll turn off anon and block you no questions asked.

if you are an adult and your first thought when watching or reading any form of media with characters that are minors is to sexuality them or write smut about them- that is gross and borderline porn. i do not care if they are fictional characters. i don’t understand it, i really don’t. i’m not here to tell you what you can and can’t write because that’s not my job but it isn’t just about you. fandom is not just about you, there are minors in most fandoms and jatp is a KIDS show with a fandom curated towards MINORS

minors deserve to feel safe and RESPECTED just as much as us adults do. they are more at risk here and some of you don’t understand that. i’m begging you to just respect and protect minors online

[lowkeyhighkeysuperduper]

y’all I got a bone to pick with the lalex (luke and alex) shippers of the jatp fandom, like for the record I’m fine with lalex shippers like the thought of them having a thing in the past, strictly in terms of fanon, is like cute but if it’s your fav ship and you genuinely want to over look two wonderful interracial ships to have lalex be endgame, I’m not gonna call you racist but maybe take a look at how that might be problematic and it doesn’t always have to be non racist or racist but it’s also like let’s look at the conditioning you’ve grown up with and get to the root of why you ship lalex over willex and juke because it sure as hell isn’t cause they got more chemistry because if that’s the case then I don’t see people shipping ruke with the same fervor so let’s think about how it’s the pairing of the two most “thirsted” over white boys in the show, let’s think about how how Owen and Charlie, the two actors behind the characters, are coincidentally the two that are always made into thirst trap compilations, like let’s think about that and then talk about it because even if you don’t think you’re being racist, and maybe you don’t mean to be, but it inherently reads as very microaggresional, so yeah let’s talk about that

[whattfisausername]

[pamesjatterson]

today on “what is jatp tumblr doing”

[janegrey9]

@meangirlsx do you think it's worth bringing back the jeanscourse for this jouch?

[fadingdysphoriac]

My deepest thoughts & straight facts! 😁

Y'all need to vibe check yourselves & contemplate what you're doing with your time in the fandom!!! Things are getting out of hand 😤!!! You've got to do better, we all do!!! Thank you for coming to my TEDx talk 🤐!!

For those not doing said sketchy, rude, & inappropriate things...thank you! You are doing it right & are hopefully more a majority of the fandom. Those who know how to support the cast without taking it too far & such!! Love y'all 💓!!

[supergraphicultramoderngirl]

is. is this not what happened

[may-grant]

no nuance november jatp cast edition:

• flynn’s rap was good, just because its more tailored like a kidz bop rap doesnt mean its bad

• the amount of people who decide julie isnt their favorite character when its her show is... concerning

• flynn didnt have much character growth in s1 because it wasnt about her and they could only do so much in a season that establishes the show premise

• im a proponent of ship what you want... but stop reading too much into white m/m ships when there’s two canon interracial relationships

• carrie had a point about julie doing nothing for a year but it was still a bitchy thing to say about someone grieving