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unforth · 2 years

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How to Use Tags on Tumblr

I frequently see people tag their works things along the lines of “sorry I don’t know how to tag,” and I also frequently see people tag badly while at least appearing to know what the fuck they’re doing, so it’s been on my mind to write up a post like this for a while, and with the influx of Twit-ugees, now is as good a time as any I suppose.

Advance warning that I’m the most long-winded bitch up in this place and just neurodivergent enough to never know how much to cut/what details don’t matter so apologies that this just goes on and on and I just hope that if you bear with me you’ll learn a thing or four.

Also note that any time I say "A thing will work this specific way" that is always subject to Tumblr's spontaneous habit of breaking and I can never guarantee that things will actually work at any given moment.

(this is fucking 5,000 words about using tagging on this blue webbed site so. Read more it is.)

Tagging 101

Okay, I’m gonna start at absolutely baby, sorry. The first thing you need to know is where tags go. You don’t tag in the “type text here” box where you’re talking about whatever. This isn’t like twitter, where if I start going hey everyone I’m writing a post about how to #tag things on #tumblr, everyone will see it if they go to #tag and #tumblr. Nope, you gotta put your tags in the box thingy at the bottom if you want people to actually see them when they use tag-search-related options.

You can write #whatever in the body of your post til the cows come home and it won’t do jack shit unless you put it in that bottom #add tags box. So. Do that.

Once you know how to tag, the two most important things to know about tags are:

1. Anyone can see your tags. Everyone can see your tags. Not just your followers. Not just OP. Any random stranger who pokes around in a post can see them, AND they’ll appear in the OPs “new activity” notifications, AND they'll be in the "view all reblogs with comments and tags" button that anyone can select, AND, if it’s an original post and you’re the OP, they’ll appear in the searchable tags on Tumblr. Like. Seriously. We can all see you. So always bear in mind that anything you say in a tag is subject to public scrutiny.

2. If you use a tag on an original post, your post will appear in that tag search. Anyone can search by tag in Tumblr. You go to that bar up top…(note that I’m using MDZS as my example for this post, but you can easily substitute your fandom of choice). (Reblogs that use a tag do NOT, EVER, appear in the tag searches.) So yeah, you're searching for a tag...

…and you get three types of search results. The first, with the #, shows the tag-ified version of your search, and clicking that will take you directly to tag search (and therefore show you posts that have that tag, and specifically exactly that tag - if you go to #mdzs, you won’t see #mdzs fanart, because tag search is narrowly defined). The magnifying-glass marked searches are common and related searches, and will show you posts that have those words in their text AND in the tags, so a magnifying-glass search for MDZS will show you things tagged mdzs, and also #mdzs fanart, and any random-ass post that includes mdzs anywhere in the main text or tags. You’ll get a lot (and you’ll have the chance to narrow that search by top posts vs. latest posts, recent vs. ever, type of post - as in picture vs. text vs. video etc., etc., though note that these searches are always busted and always lean heavily toward recent stuff). If you know you want the tag, you can click #mdzs, but even if you go to search instead (for example, if you just hit “enter” it’ll take you to search, not the tag), you can still see related tags:

Now, see how that says 21k followers? On Tumblr, you can follow tags! Anyone can follow tags! Popular tags often have tens-of-thousands, and occasionally hundreds-of-thousands, of followers! What exactly following a tag means depends on how any given individual sets up their feed, but for many people it means that random posts from that tag will appear on their timeline. Which means that if you tag your original posts (NOT reblogs - this applies to posts for which you are the originator) with a given tag, anyone who visits that tags and/or follows that tag can see it and might even have your post appear on their feed even if neither of you knows or follows the other.

Anyone who visits a given tag will be able to see your post (or, well, almost anyone - a. if you have them blocked or they have you blocked, they won’t see - though if you block a main blog/side blog, and they post from a different side blog, you CAN still see - if you really want to block someone you’ll need to block all their alts too, which is often a challenge since people tend not to be super public about their alts; b. if the tag is in the last 5 allowed tags on a post - more on that later - it won’t show up, uh, basically anywhere, good luck with that; c. if the tag search is broken, which it basically always is at least a little, welcome to our duct-taped hellsite enjoy your stay).

If you want people to see your post, this functionality is fantastic! It gives you a lot of ways to get your content out there. If you don’t want people to see your post…well. It is absolutely critical that you understand that there is absolutely nothing private about tags, and that even though we all frequently clown in tags, you need to be aware of the potential consequences of that clowning, namely that people will see you clowning, including complete strangers, and so you might not want to clown quite that hard.

Personal Blog Organization

But, I hear you say, I want to organize my own blog! If I don’t tag my mdzs posts #mdzs to avoid everyone seeing them because I Don't Want That, how will I find them when I want them later?

Well, first, don’t expect to ever be able to find things easily on Tumblr, lmao. We do have search and tag organization options (more later!) but in the end always assume things you post might become unfindable; if you really want to be sure you can find something again, find another way to store it (I personally keep “things I don’t want to lose” in drafts; some people also use likes, or private side blogs).

That said, this is one of the main reasons a lot of people use personal tags to denote their own content. For example, if I want to post something but I don’t want it to spread too far, I will avoid using the fandom tags and stick to my personal blog organization tags. I personally use “unforth rambles” for my “whatever the fuck this is” kind of posts, “whine whine whine” if I’m complaining, “unforth writes” for my fiction, etc. Lots of people have a personal tag, and not only do they make it easier for you to find your own stuff, they also make it easier for other people to find your stuff.

Want to post about mdzs, want to be able to find it again, but don’t want it in the tag? Try “yourname’s mdzs thoughts” or something similar.

Do you create a thing, and want people to be able to actually find it if they come to your blog, instead of it getting buried under a billion other reblogs and shitposts? Try “yourname art” or “my yourfandom fic” or whatever. Trust me, as someone who routinely tries to find art on people’s blogs? People who have specific tags make it much, much easier, and believe it or not I guarantee there is SOMEONE out there who’d like to be able to interact with your stuff more easily, and if you make it impossible you’ll never even know they wanted to.

Likewise, of course, a personal tagging system can make things utterly unfindable cause sometimes that’s Goals. Take this knowledge and use it as you will.

Aside to the above: queue tags. If you’re on Tumblr for more than 5 minutes you’ll see that a lot of posts have tags like “my queue” or, more often, ridiculous “queue”-related pun tags (when I used to use one, it was “#q hoo hoo”). Why do people do this? Well, there’s surely a lot of reasons, but as far as I know the main one (my own reason, at least), was pretty simple: Tumblr has a messaging system, and a lot of us use it, and if we post something, people will think we’re online and might message us and then get upset that we don’t answer. Using a queue tag makes it very clear “this posted when I wasn’t actually present.” Then, you can (like me) go back to ignoring your messages for days and pretend you haven’t been on Tumblr until you’ve actually got the whatever to answer them.

ETA: it's been pointed out that, depending on what search settings someone is using, using "my thing tag" may still show up in searches, so if your goal is to keep your posts out of the main tags, you'd be better served to avoid using the same full text as the common tag(s).

Tag Limits

It’s also important to know that you don’t have unlimited tags, and they can’t be of unlimited length. Tags have a character limit (...I never remember how much it is, though, maybe 200-something?) and you can’t have more than thirty tags on a post. Conventional wisdom is that if an important tag (such as a fandom tag or character tag that you WANT people to be able to find) isn’t in the first ten tags, it won’t appear in search, though I’ve definitely seen things in tag search that had the tag farther down than that. That said, if you put anything in between Tag 25 and Tag 30, don’t expect to ever be able to find it again. Trust me. I’ve tried. Tag 25 to Tag 30 are a tag black hole, and anything in that range might as well not exist because it won’t be searchable. (Sometimes - but only sometimes - search will be able to find things in that hole, subject to all the bugs that normally make search nigh unusable). Note that on mobile, at least, Tumblr yells at you if you try to tag more than 30; on desktop I honestly don’t know if it does cause I always use XKit reblog features instead, lmao. (more on that later!)

A couple other tag limits include:

1. various punctuation breaks tags, though which has varied over time. For example, currently if you try to make a tag with quotes (#I told him “shut up”) you will NOT get a tag that says that, you’ll get two tags: #shut up and #i told him. And, they’ll be in that order - the tag in quotation marks will end up first, before anything else. For a long time, hyphens also just absolutely murdered tags; theoretically they fixed that recently though in practice I’ve noticed it being hit-and-miss, so if you want to be sure things work well don’t use a hyphen. Further, at least on desktop, a comma tells it “this is the end of the tag” so if you enter a comma it won’t put in a comma it’ll just end your tag and take you to the next one. Honestly, if you want to be sure that your tag doesn’t break your best bet is to stick to…not. Forget grammar. Surrender to the void. People will figure out what you mean…or they won’t. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ We never said this was a great site but you’re stuck with us now, lmao.

2. you can’t edit tags. They recently teased that they’d introduce tag editing, but at least as far as I’ve been able to tell it’s never actually been unrolled, or maybe it’s only been unrolled to some users (we often only get features for some folks, or only on mobile or only on desktop…). An addendum to this is the simple rule that no matter how careful you are you will inevitably make a typo in your last word, often the last letter, right before you hit enter. I’m sorry. It’s a law of nature. On the plus side everyone knows that tags can’t be edited so no one’s going to care if your spelling is janky. (ETA: just to be clear, since it was pointed out in the notes: you CAN delete a tag and retype it. so, it's up to you if you feel like doing that. I meant you can't go back and edit the text entered as a tag, you can only delete it and make a new tag)

Censoring Tags

Do not censor tags. ESPECIALLY trigger warnings. Sometimes people will censor letters intentionally so things won't turn up in the tag search options (for example, if they're saying something negative), and while I think that's valid I also think there are better ways to handle it (like just use a different fucking tag). But if you censor tags, and especially if you censor warning tags, you make it MUCH HARDER for people to consistently blacklist. Just call things what they are (except n s f w - more later), and tag accurately (so if you want to post anti use "anti thing" tags instead of censoring), and make it possible for people to ACTUALLY avoid things and blacklist. Please. I'm begging you.

Finding the Tag for The Thing You Want

Often, finding a relevant tag can be super easy, especially if what you like is common. If you’ve been in online fandom at all, even on other platforms or forums or wherever, you likely already are familiar with common abbreviations for The Thing, and those are usually a great place to start (for example, #mdzs, #mcu for Marvel movies, #spn for Supernatural, #lotr for Lord of the Rings, etc.). However, since people do often use multiple tags (like, they may tag #mdzs AND #mo dao zu shi, AND #grandmaster of demonic cultivation, AND #gdc) you can always try putting in The Full Name For The Thing, and then seeing what tags are on the posts that pop up. Then, once you see that, you can click through a few and check them out. Every tag’s page will have a box like this:

…and it says right there how often the tag has been used “recently” (no, I have literally NEVER figured out how “recently” is…recently). If you want to find the most popular tags for a given fandom, the easiest way is to just poke around in the tags people are using and see which ones have the biggest number in that “XXX recent posts” box. Those are the ones people love and use, and emulating them will lead you in the right direction (assuming you want people to be able to find your stuff).

On the other hand, what if you like something rare, something obscure, something that doesn’t have a consistent naming structure, etc.?

That can get a little harder, but the challenges can be cut through fairly easily.

1. search for every variation of The Thing that you can think of and look through the results until you find The Thing You Actually Wanted.

2. see how that post is tagged.

3. check those tags for more of The Thing You Actually Wanted.

4. keep doing this until you find the tag where people who are into The Thing You Actually Wanted congregate.

5. winning!

Creating Tags and Space

…okay but what if that last step 5 ended with losing instead? Well, BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE IN THE WORLD.

A lot of people on Tumblr use personal tags for their own blog organization…but many also use tags and tag-tracking to create a personal tag meant for publis use. So, source blogs (blogs that act as “clearing houses” of stuff for a specific fandom, character, ship, etc.) will say “we track #thisisourhashtag, use it so we can see your post!”

You can do that! If you really love something narrow and specific, you can at least try to get the word out. It takes a lot of work though - because you’ll need to get the word out yourself. “Hey, I love This Obscure Thing! Do you also love This Obscure Thing? Come join me, use #thisisyourhashtag!” is a start. But just “building it” won’t be enough - you’ll also need to do the leg work to find more of The Thing, reblog it, interact with the people making it, etc. Often on Tumblr, the difference between a really vibrant small fandom community and a small fandom that’s absolutely dead silent is one person taking the initiative to say “I’m going to do whatever I have to, community-building-wise, to find other people to talk to about this.”

(The best example I know of for this is the Daomu Biji fandom. Like seriously, they’re a fucking case study on how to take a tiny group of people who are Really Into A Thing and turn it into a vibrant, supportive community that is, frankly, a joy to be a part of. If someone wants more info on kinda…how this works…I think it’s outside the purview of this post but I’m willing to babble about it some other time.)

Navigating Tumblr, Your Own Blog, and Other People’s Blogs Using Tags

One of the cool things about tags on Tumblr is that every tag has a static, usable link, which - if your own blog or a blog you’re trying to access has a consistent tagging format - can make it much, MUCH easier to find things. ESPECIALLY because static tag links constant and consistently work about 80 bajillion times better than “search.” Posts that are unfindable using “search” WILL (usually) be findable using the tag’s link. (Exceptions include if the OP has blocked you or you’ve blocked them, and if the tag is in the 25th, 26th, 27th, 28th, 29th, or 30th tag slot; ETA: another exception is that in the PAST this wasn't the case; Tumblr has greatly increased the visibility of tags over the years, and may do even more in the future). So, how do you do this?

For all of Tumblr: the link you want is https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/(THE TAG)?sort=recent (or ?sort=top for them in order by most popular. Note that this is one of the cases where what’s after the ? ISN’T A TRACKING LINK ffs it’s not ALWAYS tracking you can’t ALWAYS delete it without consequences sometimes the internet is exhausting).

For your own blog: https://yournamehere.tumblr.com/tagged/thetagyouwant

For someone else’s blog: https://theirnamehere.tumblr.com/tagged/thetagyouwant

A lot of people use this for personal blog organization, and it’s especially common for source blogs to have very structured tag lists to help with navigation. For example, in the art sideblogs I run, anyone can look up any tag using links like this, and it’ll enable them to find every post with that tag. See? https://www.tumblr.com/mdzsartreblogs/tagged/mod%20post

NOTE: Tumblr, in the last few weeks, changed how this feature is set up. As you can see, the link is now structured differently than what I typed, BUT the original link formatting still works, just how it appears has changed. That said, because Tumblr can never change a thing without breaking it, there’s now sometimes a problem where if you type the link in, it’ll replace a space ( ) with a plus (+) instead of with a fake-space (%20 is how browsers classically translate spaces into Internet Speak so that the urls don’t break). If your space gets made into a +, Tumblr will say there are no results, so you’ll have to manually go into the link and change it back to a space and THEN it will work. Yes, really. No, I don’t know why. Also, if you try to get rid of the plus in the search bar instead it will NOT work correctly, because if you remove the plus, put in a space, and then hit “enter” on text written in the search bar, it’ll switch you from “show all posts with this tag” to a standard search (which will have all the bugs that standard searches usually have in Tumblr).

But, basically, once you know the tag that someone uses for a thing, or have established what tag YOU want to use for a thing, navigating your own or other people’s blogs to find Every Post Tagged With The Thing is really easy, and can be a great way to find niche content, a user’s own creations, or That Thing You Posted Two Years Ago That You Need Again For Some Reason.

ETA: Someone mentioned in the tags that if you add /chrono to the end of these links, it'll show you all the same info BUT it'll show the OLDEST posts firsts instead of the newest and I did not know that and that is A.MAY.ZING and thank you to the person who told me and now y'all know too.

Blacklisting Tags

You’ll see me talk a lot in this post about the ways that Tumblr is broken and how that can make it harder to accomplish whatever it is you’re trying to do. There is one notable exception to the brokenness. At least in my experience, and in the experience of basically everyone I’ve ever spoken to about it, Tumblr’s internal/built in blacklist works pretty darn well.

Don’t want to see a tag?

Go to Account Stuff -> Settings. Scroll down to “Content you see,” which is where Filtered Tags and Filtered Post Content are.

Filtered Tags will only filter The Thing if it’s literally #the exact tag you put in filtered tags.

Filtered Post Content will filter any post that mentions the thing.

Note that Tumblr blacklist is actually over assiduous. I personally ONLY use filtered tags, and I’ve found that it will often filter a post even if the current reblog of that post doesn’t HAVE the tag - like, if anyone has EVER tagged The Post with The Thing, it’ll get blacklisted. Also note that while theoretically, filtered posts will still show up as a box you have the option to show, in practice some will just. Not show. I’ve absolutely had blacklisted things just Not Even Appear. Which can be annoying, if it’s actually a post you want to see, but there’s no perfect system.

Also, never EVER let anyone tell you that “blacklisting is only for things you hate.” Look, you curate your own experience. If your bestie is posting about a fandom you’re not in, and it’s clogging up your dash, you’re not obligated to scroll through their 80 posts about that thing. Just blacklist it. It’ll make your experience using this website much happier. (if your bestie doesn’t tag the thing…you can try post content filtering. But yeah that’ll make it harder). I personally blacklist a fuckton of fandoms that I’ve got nothing against, I’m just not IN them, and seeing content for them is of zero interest for me, and if I blacklist them then I have more time to interact with the things I DO want to see.

And yeah I know I prefaced this section by saying blacklist actually works. Take this entire section as what my ten-years-on-this-site ass sees as “functional” on Tumblr.com.

Making Tumblr Actually Vaguely Useable

Do yourself a favor and download XKit. (It’s on Chrome too, but fuck Chrome. Y’all Chrome users can go find the link yourself sorry not sorry). XKit includes a fuckton of REALLY DAMN USEFUL functionality for making tumblr (on desktop, not mobile!) function better…

…and especially, Quick Reblog, Quick Tags, and Tag Replacer can help with tagging and tag management. Quick Reblog gives you the ability to rapidly reblog things without having to click through to the reblog window, and it gives you a box to type in all your tags when you quick reblog. Quick Tags makes all existing posts on your blog and sideblogs have an extra little button that lets you add new tags to it without having to open the edit screen for the post. Tag Replacer lets you swap a tag you no longer want to use for a new tag. Get XKit. It’ll help you. I promise.

Okay, so now you know something about how tags work, time to learn some tag etiquette.

The most important thing to remember when trying to figure out how to tag an original post is that people follow tags because they want to see The Things About That Tag. This has some obvious consequences, namely:

1. They won’t want to see things that Aren’t About The Thing.

2. They won’t want to see someone Hating The Thing.

So that leads to…

Tagging for Fandoms

DO: tag fandoms that are relevant to your post. Feel free to tag variations on that fandom - you can tag #mdzs and #modao zushi and #mo dao zu shi, or #spn and #supernatural. No one will mind.

DON’T: tag fandoms that aren’t relevant to your post. Yes, even if it’s a fandom by the same author (looking at you, people who tag #mdzs, #tgcf, and #svsss on every mxtx post you make, I see you and I seethe). Yes, even if it’s a different version/adaptation of your work. If you create a sub-fandom-specific work (for example, to stick with MDZS for now, if you create a work for The Untamed that includes the Yin Iron, don’t tag it MDZS; there’s no Yin Iron in MDZS, and while yes some people who follow the MDZS tag will want to see it, there will also be plenty who don’t. This is especially true when there’s a popular adaptation that a lot of fans of the original don’t like. People who adore the BOOK of the Hobbit? May be pretty reticent about seeing things about the MOVIE if they didn’t enjoy it!) Try to maintain awareness of this; it’s courtesy not to just tag Every Vaguely Relevant Fandom. You won’t make people happy they’re seeing your stuff. You’ll make them annoyed that you spammed irrelevant tags.

Tagging for Ships and Characters

DO: tag the characters ships that feature in your work. Doing variations of their name is fine as long as those variations are relevant. So, if you make a piece of “wei wuxian” for example, you can absolutely tag that “wei wuxian” and “weiwuxian” and “wei ying” and “weiying” and “mdzs wei wuxian” etc. But.

DON’T: tag every single iteration of a character. If someone is following a tag for a specific variation of a character (to stick with MDZS, maybe they follow the “yiling laozu” tag) then they want to see that variation, not…NOT that variation. So don’t post your, idk, fluffy Lotus Pier Wei Ying pre-canon thing to the “yiling laozu” tag. And I know this sounds like gibberish to people not in this fandom, but like. Just extend it to your own fandom. Lots of characters have different fandom nicknames or self-presentations for themselves at different points in canon. People who specifically follow the "pre-serum steve" tag isn't going to want to see "post-serum steve." That's the entire point of following a specific tag instead of an over-arching tag. So, when you tag your original stuff, stick to the ones that actually have something to do with your piece.

DO: tag the ship in your piece in multiple ways. Like, to use a non-MDZS example, does your piece have Destiel? Go ahead and tag Destiel and CasDean and DeanCas. It’s okay. WITH THE ADDENDUM THAT: in some fandoms and in some parts of the world, it is common that writing Character A x Character B is actually NOT the same as writing Character B x Character A. Especially for East Asian and Southeast Asian fans, people often list them in a power-dynamic related order. Whether you think that’s a good thing or not (I personally think it’s a silly but whatever, they can do them, it doesn't effect me) is irrelevant; you need to understand that if you tag every order of a ship, you might have people ??? you over it. (Yes, really. It’s happened to me.) And that doesn’t mean don’t do it! Just. You should know. Knowledge is power. Or something.

DON’T: tag ships that aren’t in your piece. I don’t care if Wangxian is the most popular ship in the fandom; if your piece doesn’t show Wangxian, people who like Wangxian don’t need to see it in the tags. You’re doing no one any favors. Often people will say “if your piece doesn’t feature a ship PROMINENTLY don’t include it,” but that one imo is a bit more flexible. It depends on what your work is “doing” with that ship. Which leads to…

Sharing Your Negative Opinions

Please. For the love of fucking god. Do NOT post hate in the main tags. Yes, it’s just your opinion. Yes, you are absolutely entitled to your opinion. But it’s fucking rude. People go to tags because they enjoy the thing being tagged. You’re just being a dick if you therefore use that tag to shit all over that thing.

Now, this is NOT to say “don’t post negative shit,” but rather more importantly: if you want to tag negative shit, find the tag that people use to tag that specific negative shit and use that tag instead. Like. if you hate Jiang Cheng from MDZS (you’re wrong and I will block you) you do you! But don’t tag your hate #jiang cheng. People follow #jiang cheng because they LOVE the angry grape. Instead, do a little tag research (see above on how to find tags for That Thing You Like, and yes it applies even if it’s “That Thing You Like to Hate”) and find out what tags people who Hate The Thing use. Often just “anti (thing)” is a good start, though commonly the biggest groups of haters/"popular" anti opinions will have a tag they favor that’s different (for example, “canon jiang cheng” and "grape hate" are the common anti-Jiang Cheng tags; “destiew” is a commonly used anti-Destiel tag, I’m sure there are loads more but those are the ones that spring to my mind after a decade on this hellsite).

Using an anti tag is a MUCH better way to handle your hate, anti-ness, negative opinions, etc. You can find other haters to wallow with, and everyone else (like me) who just want to enjoy our shit in peace can do so. And like, I’m personally very against antis, but I also absolutely respect the right of people to have negative opinions AND to share those negative opinions, which is why I’m explaining this. It really does help like-minded people come together, and also enables people who want to avoid the vitriol protect themselves. It’s a win-win.

Tagging Trigger Warnings and Other Warnings

Tagging triggers and other potentially challenging material (such as flashing images) is a courtesy. It’s not required, but it’s certainly polite. There are some standard rules (for example, don’t use “tw epilepsy” because it’ll show up on epilepsy-related searches which is the exact opposite of the point of tagging it; tag “tw flashing” or something similar) but there’s generally NOT a “one size fits all” tag system. Instead, most people just establish their own system and make it clear somewhere “this is the system I use” so people can blacklist. Alternatively, you can see what tags your mutuals are using, and use those. Alternatively, alternatively, people will sometimes put “please tag X tw” in their pinned posts or bios - though always remember that there are risks involved in publicly advertising what someone with bad intentions can do to hurt you!!!!

Standard trigger warning formats on Tumblr include: “tw thing,” “thing tw,” “thing,” “thing for ts,” “cw thing,” “thing cw.”

Note that tw - “trigger warning” - is usually used for things that are likely to be triggering (such as blood, gore, etc.) whereas cw - “content warning” - is often used more for things that some people may want to be aware of (such as flashing or depictions of food) but that isn’t necessarily a common “trigger” per se, especially in cases like food where even calling food a trigger can often itself be triggering for people who have are recovering from ED-related challenges.

Also as an aside, the “ts” is generally a sign that someone is a Tumblr Old, as it stands for “Tumblr Savior,” which is a blacklisting extension a lot of us used before Tumblr had built-in blacklisting features. So if you see “long post for ts” (which is when I see it most) it’s like seeing a fossil, a tag that’s become so standard for a type of post that a lot of people still use it even though the use of Tumblr Savior isn’t very common anymore (at least…I don’t think it is???)

When in doubt, if you want to respect people, listen to them - see how people are tagging The Thing you’re worried about, and follow those tagging conventions. Don’t reinvent the wheel if you don’t have to - someone who triggers to something will already have the most commonly used tags for it blacklisted (and may not follow you if you aren’t willing to also tag for it) - so you make the site more usable for everyone if you use “tw eye trauma” instead of “this is my personal eye trauma tw tag”.

Also also as another aside, don’t use n s f w. Don’t even type it in your posts. They’ll get buried. They’ll go where tumblr posts go to die, and none of us even know where that is, because they're that gone. They won’t appear in regular searches. They won’t be in tag searches. They won’t even be discoverable on your own blog. Yes it’s fucking annoying. Yes it makes it harder to avoid explicit material. But. Find another tag. “lemon” is a common one, as is “nsft” (not safe for tumblr).

Tagging Systems and Spoilers

For the most part, if anything has been out for a month or so, you should assume that no one will tag spoilers. Don’t get me wrong - a minority of people still will, definitely! - but if, for example, you’re in the first chapter of MDZS, and you don’t want MDZS spoilers…don’t go into the MDZS tags. Just don’t. You’ll see everything you don't want to see. (Unless like me you WANT to see spoilers, in which case HAVE AT.)

For fandoms that still have new content being released, spoiler tags are often determined by community consensus, and a lot of people will put up posts saying “this blog isn’t spoiler-free for Thing. Blacklist #spoilersforthething to avoid spoilers.” It’s generally fairly standard to have a spoiler tag be “#thing spoilers” or “#episodenumber spoilers.” When in doubt, yet again, look at what everyone else is doing and emulate that.

hoookay. 2.5 hours after I started writing this, I am finally done. I hope folks find it helpful, and hopefully I didn't miss anything obvious. Feel free to hmu with asks if you want to know more!

#unforth rambles #long post #no seriously like stupidly long post #tagging #tumblr tags #tagging on tumblr #resources #tutorials #hellsite (affectionate)#hellsite (derogatory)

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heytherejulietx · 2 years

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as a writer, i've found that people are more likely to reblog if you don't mention it constantly and instead tell them only once in an encouraging way like 'i'd love to hear your thoughts' or something. if the lack of engagement is really bothering you, i think it helps to only write what you want to read! i've found that it helps a lot when i write for myself because i know i'll be proud of it even if the engagement isn't great :)

i don’t know, i think no matter what content interaction on this site sucks

i’ve only been writing on this app since september 2020, and i was writing for a fandom that’s basically the same in numbers as stranger things. and interaction sucked in 2020, but even just two years going past has changed a lot and the interaction is even worse. i cant for the life of me remember the post i read (it might have been @ao3commentoftheday but im not entirely sure, either way they have a GREAT take on this and i suggest reading their posts) but content nowadays is tailored so that people have to use as minimal effort as possible. the tiktok algorithm gives you videos based on what you watch, so you only have to like, and tiktok is arguably the biggest social media site at the moment. and all of the new people joining tumblr from tiktok are going to use the same rules. interaction is shit on tumblr and even worse on ao3 where there is no algorithm, but people treat it like it is.

i’m really glad that you write for yourself and enjoy writing what you’d like to read — i promise i’m not trying to tell you that you can’t or that it’s bad. if i’m being honest i’d love to settle with that. but everybody loves hearing good things about what they’ve done. engagement isn’t about popularity or however many followers you have, it’s about appreciation for the work that content creators spend their own time making for free (not including commissioned work, though that isn’t to say they shouldn’t receive good feedback too). and when you receive a compliment on your work, you’re more likely to make more because you know people enjoy it.

i’ve done many requests that didn’t get feedback from the requester. i’ve made fanfiction based on other people’s fanart and never heard back from them about it, even though they are also a content creator. and as much as i’d love to sit here and not care about the interaction, it’s disheartening when you put hours and hours into writing that people won’t even reblog or say anything about, but they’ll reblog from creators that already have a big following because they’re popular, but that’s a whole other thing i won’t get into.

i think it’s great that recently i’ve seen so many writers talking about the shit interaction because it gets people noticing. for example, if i hadn’t spoken about it then you wouldn’t have sent me this ask. tons of people are currently joining from tiktok and twitter, and they won’t understand how tumblr works unless people tell them. maybe this whole post is just a dumb ramble but i think it’s important that people know why reblogging / commenting is so important. and if they do nothing about it after they’ve read about it then it’s on them.

this is no hate to you btw nonnie, it’s just something that really annoys me as a content creator.

sending love :)

#amber’s asks #writeblr #content creation #lack of engagement #content interaction #important

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tallysgreatestfan · 4 years

Text

Transcript Ableism In Fandom (Example She-Ra) Part II

(Link to the video in reblog)

I planned to upload this like, two days or so after the first part, and now it’s two months. And in this entire time the issue of ableism and harassment in the She-Ra fandom has sadly not died down at all.

The second part will consist of interviews with other disabled or neurodivergent fans of She-Ra, and I actually said they could either sent me a voice file or a word document in which they had written their opinion, and all of them sent the word document so I will read their experience and opinion out.

This is actually inspired by the Fansplaining podcast – very good podcast – and their episode about race in fandom and racism in fandom.

Most Entrapdak fans are either disabled or neurodiverse or queer, or both. So of course antis love to claim that this is not true, because it would mean that they are hurting minorities, but there are at least two twitter polls to prove it.

I hate that I have to say this, but antis love to twist words: Disliking Entrapdak is not the problem. How they dislike it is the problem. It just not being your thing because they are not your favorite characters or you are not a monsterfucker is not your problem, uhm, I mean is no problem. But claiming you are morally right for disliking it, harassing people and using ableist arguments is the problem.

Let’s begin!

[Soranis Sunshadow is both on twitter and tumblr and I’m going to read out her answers]

How do you usually interact with fandom, what is your role in fandom? Which fandom(s) are you in?

This is the only fandom I am a part of. It’s the first time I’ve ever been invested enough to ever actively participate in one.

I usually write essays analyzing characters, character arcs, motivations.

I’ve also been the creator of many memes and shitposts along with some fanart and my own very fanfic.

As far as interacting with the fandom itself, I’m usually the mother bear type that will defend fellow fans whenever drama is brewing. I am an older fan (Entrapta’s age) so it’s easier for me to be more emotionally detached from “personal attacks” that have been thrown at me for it.

What is your disability and/or neurodivergency? Are you part of other marginalized groups?

I’m on the autism spectrum, a highly functioning autistic woman that has been diagnosed in her late 20s. I also have lumbar sciatica due to my profession [Addition: chronic lower back and leg pain due to standing all day]

Do you think ableism in fandom exists, and what are your reasons for believing that?

Yeah, it definitely exists. I’ve encountered a lot of it. Things that range from shaming disabled ppl or making fun on their disabilities to bullying neuro-divergent fans because they are an easy target to get a rise out of.

Some ppl do it deliberately because the drama amuses them, some do it accidentally but it is a definite problem within the fandom.

How does ableism in fandom shape your fandom experience?

I’m an adult with her life in order. Words of internet strangers don’t really bother me. At most, their obstinacy and rudeness gets a laugh out of me. Other neurodivergent fans however are young, vulnerable and are definitely not as able to shrug it off with such ease. I find myself trying to defend them or at least comfort them.

This has led to the confounding phenomenon of ppl trying to stop me from helping them or telling me that as an “old person” I should get a job instead of bothering with fandom or any other reason to justify allowing this bullying to continue. (see the thread I have on twitter that documents fan on fan aggression and the reactions of other fans in the comments and quote tweets that are defending things such as suicide baiting being “harmless fun between kids”)

Where do you think does this problem come from?

For the most part, a lack of empathy.

It comes from a lot of the fandom splintering into small groups and religiously defending their opinions and actions. The ppl they surround themselves with are people just like them, that share their opinions and this has led to a process of distilling the extremes.

It’s a lot easier to hurt strangers if you see them as other, wrong and deserving of this treatment.

This process is coupled with an absence of critical thinking, where any opinion that differs from the “group accepted one” is unfounded critique at best and a personal attack to the creeds of said group at worst. People feel personally attacked when their favorite character or their own headcanon is questioned and violently lash out without even considering anything that is actually communicated. This fandom is, quite frankly, allergic to discussions and differing opinions.

What do you think can (disabled) fans do on a small and on a large scale against it?

On a small scale.

My advice is this: You can’t choose whether people try to offend or attack you, that’s their choice. What you can do is chose whether you let yourself be offended by it.

What some ill-mannered internet stranger tells me has no real life impact on me besides my emotional reaction to their words. I chose to be amused by their idiocy rather than offended by their “insults”

Their assumptions tell more about them than about me. Someone calling me a white cis het man is not going to make me a dude bro that watches football, it is however going to make me laugh at their inability to continue an argument logically. It’s more a reflection of their failure to argument back and knee jerk reaction to defend their convictions with any means possible rather than anything I might have done.

On a large scale,

the splintered groups of the fandom are locked in a pointless conflict that is mostly one-sided and exists solely to justify the self-victimization narrative that one group has going on. They thrive on this dynamic.

The best reaction to their instigating of drama would be “that’s rough buddy” and doing our thing.

Throughout the few months that I’ve been part of this fandom, I’ve been convinced that no amount of attempts at discussion or bringing logic and evidence is going to stop them from trying to target our group - Especially the neurodivergent younger fans. You cannot convince someone of anything if they are not willing to listen. A dialogue has two interlocutors. If they don’t want to listen to us, then I’m fine no longer listening and trying to argue with them. I’m done offering them a courtesy that they will never return.

I love how short and clear this is. I would have probably rambled a lot more. And I appreciate the no bullshit attitude she has about antis, its very badass and something I try to acquire too.

Next is a fan of color who was more comfortable with staying anonymous.

How do you usually interact with fandom, what is your role in fandom? Which fandom(s) are you in?

I use to be in SPOP and The Owl House, I'm now in Animaniacs, K/DA, Kipo, and Infinity Train

What is your disability and/or neurodivergency? Are you part of other marginalized groups?

I am ADHD and self diagnosed with Autism, and then I have cronic back pains and tumors in my back. I am also a Bisexual WOC.

Do you think ableism in fandom exists, and what are your reasons for believing that?

Ableism in fandoms do exist. While most know and care for Autisic people and those with ADHD, they often forget the other neurodivergent and physically disabled people apart of the disabled community. They never seem to consider these groups in their arguments and seem for forget other Neurodivergents can be ableist to others and disabled people, and that Ableism isn't just exclusive to being Autistic and ADHD.

How does ableism in fandom shape your fandom experience?

It shapes my experience by feeling very left out all because my hyperfixations weren’t the popular choice. I've seen many of my friends with similar experience deactivate or their fixations become triggers. I've seen my friends get death threats or have their identity completely erased. No only have I experienced ableism, but colorism and racism by white fans and some other BIPOC who are fans that go after those with unpopular fixations, such as the entire spop fandom when to comes to Entrapdak fans, who mostly consist of lgbt+, disabled and neurodivergent, victims of cults or different forms of abuse, BIPOC. I've had white fans completely erase my identity without even knowing all because of what I liked not being the popular ship, I've been told to shut up when calling out the ableism in cast and gotten death threats, and along with White latinos telling me to be silent when talking about the racist implications of Catra. It made’ em compeltely just leave fandoms, even ones where I felt really represented by characters.

Where do you think does this problem come from?

This problem comes from mostly younger fans thinking they're apart of this "woke" and "purity" culture, and I think most going through that big phase of finding out your identity and just consuming anything that caters to it and denying anything out of it. Which ain't a bad thing, everyone goes through it, and eventually they'll grow out of it and see their faults. This also is just the works of "purity" and "cancel", culture, which gets abused and worked down to if you did or like something someone dislikes then you are problematic. Not actually cancelling them for serious things such as racism, sexism, lgbt+ phobic things, but just if you enjoy a form of content that someone else doesn't like. I've seen young children be called abuse sympathizers for enjoying villian characters or just drawing art of them. I've seen people me bite up and arms about that then people being biphobic or racist. Those who been raicst later become jokes and causally discussed on. I've seen my black friends and indigenous friends be called colonizers for liking a character whos black-coded but was called a colonizer by the racist WHITE show producer. Fandoms only care about the popular opinion rather then actually listening to other minority groups. I've seen white fans use their friends who are BIPOC to justify their harassment to others.. it's disgusting.

What do you think can (disabled) fans do on a small and on a large scale against it?

It could be stop caring about what the popular opinion is and left up the voices of other disabled groups. ACTUALY educate and also stop using your neurodivercity and disability as an excuse to harass other disabled and neurodivergent people. Stop using your entire identity to harass people. Call out your friends for being ableist and uneducated. Just stop caring about what others think, and a temporary follower count, and actually care about your community.

I totally know feeling left out because my special interest isn’t the popular thing to be excited about.

Anon raises a important point with how even the disability movement mostly focuses on ADHD and autistic people and tends to leave out others. It is definitely something we have to be aware of and consciously watch out to not do it when we are not disabled in these other ways ourself.

This other phenomena she brought up, of antis who are disabled or neurodiverse themselves using that trait as a shield to justify outright hunting down and bullying neurodiverse or disabled fans who have different opinions, is something I recognize as well. It’s always just sad and shocking, and it’s also really convenient for ableists because here they have actual disabled people backing up their views, so you can’t criticize them. Sadly these people are usually to ignorant and hateful to be able to still talk with them and reach them, but just know that neurodiverse and disabled people can sometimes be ableist too. (A indication for this is when they do their best to harm other disabled people, as these antis do).

The rampant racism is another thing that gets glossed over very often. As a white person (albeit of several other minority groups) I saw it, I saw antis justify being racist to actual fans of color just because according to their arbitrary opinion some character is racist or not pure, but I was not comfortable with exploring it further because it’s not my place to do that, and I could never understand it as well as fans of color do. Every white person should do their best to listen to them and support them.

ImpStoleMyShoes is active on tumblr and twitter, where they are also quite prevalent in fighting against bullies in the fandom.

[trigger warning for a short mention of rape in this part]

How do you usually interact with fandom, what is your role in fandom? Which fandom(s) are you in?

I’m most active in She-RA right now. I don’t usually become involved with any fandom enough to devote a lot of dedication to it but she-RA changed that for me because of Hordak and how he relates to me.

Usually I talk about fandoms in fam groups. Now I write, rp or draw and I’m in bigger groups on discord with dedicated fans of She-Ra. That’s how I interact with the fandom.

What is your disability and/or neurodivergency? Are you part of other marginalized groups?

I have autism, adhd, epilepsy, ocd, depression, anxiety and ptsd. It feels strange to say “marginalized group” about this but it is one that’s noteworthy for not being respected or treated well.

I’ve been raped and have post-cult trauma these two things are things people don’t take very seriously either because they don’t understand it or they accuse these things of being your fault when it’s not something you could have controlled.

There’s a lot of hate and negativity by people who just don’t understand and don’t care to. Or think they know more than you about your trauma while never having experienced it.

It’s unfortunate and very harmful to people with trauma to the point it could push people to suicide. It’s very serious.

Do you think ableism in fandom exists, and what are your reasons for believing that?

I absolutely do. I’ve experienced it a lot in the She-Ra fandom. It’s pushed many of my friends out of the fandom. I myself have experienced a lot of my triggers being forcibly used to hurt me. Or disability erasure by fans and even fans that erase characters disabilities like Hordaks in order to either push me down or defend their nonsensical arguments.

Hordak got me through the months directly after leaving the cult Atmosphere just knowing there was a character I could relate so much to.

And while I was telling my story on Twitter, I once had someone erase my post-cult trauma and my story of how Hordak helped me through by both stating they knew how cults worked and how horrible a cult is. But that Hordak was both not mentally traumatized or had been in a cult despite the creator of the show stating he was in a cult. They proceeded to yell at me and berate me over liking a character that is not real as though I was not allowed to have survived my cult trauma through Hordak.

How does ableism in fandom shape your fandom experience?

The ableism I experienced only wants to make me fight more for my friends and myself. It does not effect how I feel about the show unless it’s the creators saying something. It makes me feel bad but I realize you have to separate a character from their creator in that instance. So many people worked on the show and with that character not just one. And so it makes me feel better to know that. I have never and will never put up with bullies. And I will not allow them to hurt my friends and fellow NDs

Where do you think does this problem come from?

Honestly I think that it stems from a lack of exposure and teaching when people are young. And it’s fueled by ableist parents and their environment. And then in turn encouraged by the fandoms and how creators act.

What do you think can (disabled) fans do on a small and on a large scale against it?

Those who can , stand up for those who can’t and those who can’t, bring attention to it and make it know we won’t tollerate it. Form a union with each other and make sure you stand up for each other.

The next “interview” is from LP, and she is on twitter and tumblr, but under a different name.

How do you usually interact with fandom, what is your role in fandom? Which fandom(s) are you in?

My interactions with the fandoms I am in vary, depending on the kind of fandom itself, on the size of the fandom, whether any of my close friends are part of the fandom, and other factors. In general though, most of my interaction with fandom consists of consuming fanmade content, particularly fanart, fanfiction, fanvideos, etc., and supporting the creators of the said content by liking and sharing their work I like on social media (e.g. reblogging on Tumblr and retweeting on Twitter). I have also been a fanartist myself for several years now, running a small DeviantArt account as a hobby. Aside from that, my ways of interacting with fandoms are rather passive and limited. Hardly ever do I start or engage in conversations or discussions with other fans (aside from my close online friends) when it comes to opinions, headcanons, etc. – instead I prefer to let my opinions known by sharing posts I agree with.

Fandoms I am in (with very varying degrees of my interaction with them): My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, The Arcana, Undertale, Steven Universe, Dinosaur Train, Toad Patrol, Good Omens, Frozen, Howl’s Moving Castle, Minecraft, My Hero Academia, The Great Gatsby.

What is your disability and/or neurodivergency? Are you part of other marginalized groups? I am an autistic 18 year old girl diagnosed with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and mild social anxiety, in the present getting therapy and medical treatment. Being an asexual demiromantic, I am also part of the LGBTQIA+ community.

Do you think ableism in fandom exists, and what are your reasons for believing that?

I definitely believe ableism in fandom exists, as it does in every other part and aspect of society and is deeply ingrained in people’s everyday lives. Another reason for believing so is that representation of disabled and neurodivergent people in media (therefore the canon material our fandoms are based on) is itself still often subjected to harmful stereotypes and stigma, misinterpretations, bad writing, and so often not done properly.

How does ableism in fandom shape your fandom experience?

It undoubtedly worsens my experience and ability to fully enjoy the fandom. Witnessing disabled/neurodivergent characters getting misunderstood, misinterpreted and/or even hated by fans on the basis of being disabled or neurodivergent can be really unpleasant. However, probably the worst is when disabled/neurodivergent fans get harassed, ridiculed, silenced or assaulted by ableist neurotypical/abled fans for speaking up, calling out ableism or simply voicing their opinions, views and feelings. Such behavior is unacceptable.

Where do you think does this problem come from?

As mentioned above, I believe it comes primarily from the systemic deeply-ingrained ableism, stigma and prejudice present in society, lack of education and understanding, as well as not listening to disabled people and not letting disabled/neurodivergent creators write for characters with said or similar disabilities.

What do you think can (disabled) fans do on a small and on a large scale against it?

Sadly, in my view, our possibilities are very limited. I definitely think making posts which address and call out and educate on these issues on blogs and other social media is a wonderful, factual and straightforward way of bringing attention to these issues, and I am immensely grateful to creators who put time and effort into such posts and analyses. Aside from that, though, it is difficult for me to think of other effective ways.

I totally agree, it is difficult to do something as a single person against this issue. LP also has a point with this being a systemic issue.

Thank you for participating.

So… Last but not least I will talk about my own experience. And please ignore the voices from outside, it’s very sunny here, so there are many families with small children outside.

How do you usually interact with fandom, what’s your role in fandom?

I make fanart and fanfiction, sometimes I also write meeta, metta, meta – how is this pronounced? – I make G.I.Fs, GIFs, urg… damn, sorry, I… my problem is I read English a lot but hardly ever hear it, so I have a lot of words from which I don’t know how to pronounce them.

Uhm, yeah, also I make fanvideos from time to time. And of course I reblog stuff from others.

Right now I am mostly in She-Ra, but also in Star Trek, particularly Star Trek Discovery, and for a very long time I was in Babylon 5, but I had to leave because it was very toxic.

What’s your disability and/or neurodivergency? Are you part of other marginalized groups?

I am autistic, and I was quite ashamed of it as I was younger, but by now it’s became a quite important part of me. Through the trauma of being abused by my peers because I am autistic I also have severe bipolar disorder and also some other mental illnesses. I take medication for that, but said medication also causes physical side effects, but I rather have this side effects than depression.

And outside of that I am also a bisexual woman.

Do you think ableism in fandom exists, and what are your reasons for believing that?

Oh, it definitely exists. I had the suspicion already in the Babylon 5 fandom, because the most hated character was very heavily autistic coded, and other characters had way larger crimes but somehow everybody hated him the most. But I couldn’t prove anything because it was very subtle and very covert.

It’s very more overt in the She-Ra fandom. There is not a single day without direct or covert ableist hate on twitter, and it’s slightly more rare on tumblr, but it’s definitely still existing.

There are just so much higher standards for Hordak and Entrapta than abled, neurotypical or neurotypical passing characters like Catra. And they are called bad rep for things other characters are praised for.

Also almost all anti arguments are based on ableist ideas. So, Entrapta is called childlike, innocent and unfit to make decisions, Hordak is described in terms real live physically disabled people are often called. And I actually saw several physically disabled fans talking about that and how much it hurts, because the antis call him gross and old man and not worth existing.

Very often, the antis also use psychological problems against people and gaslight and use other abuse tactics such as DARVO, for example they purposefully triggered someone, they send death threats, they suicide bait.

How does ableism in fandom shape your fandom experience?

I… It feels a bit dangerous to talk about this, because the antis want to hurt people, they want to affect people negatively and drive them out of fandoms, so I am afraid that by talking about how much this hurt me I’m giving them what they want.

But… it really, really took the fun out of it. Its also quite, uhm, yeah, I can’t describe it any other way than traumatizing to see just how many people don’t think you are a person, that you shouldn’t be allowed to have relationships, that you shouldn’t be allowed to be happy, that you shouldn’t be allowed to make own decisions.

This hostility – especially on twitter… On twitter it doesn’t feels like doing your thing because you are having fun with it, it just feels like being constantly in a state of alert and just defending yourself and not doing much else. And this wasn’t always the case, I remember that as I got into the fandom, twitter was super nice and it was actually a escape from the toxic Babylon 5 fandom. But now you can’t even go into the tags anymore because these antis deliberately clog these tags with their hate and then they have the nerve to pretend that harassing disabled people, neurodiverse people is some kind of morally pure because they like villains – while they are liking villains themselves, but of course that’s different because these villains are conventionally attractive and female and abled and neurotypical.

It got to the point where I was actually nervous to even participate in online fandom.

And… People say that trauma makes you stronger, but sadly I am not one of these people. I was bullied very heavily and have a lot of trauma because of that, and sadly my trauma just makes me weaker and more sensitive, and this stuff is going directly into all of my triggers and… it’s not nice.

I honestly thought about leaving, but there are no couples consisting of people like me anywhere in media, and the thing is, you can’t just change special interests, sadly. And also leaving would have felt like doing what the antis want, and I don’t want to give them what they want.

What is also incredibly frustrating is seeing how much hate these people spew all the time and saying things that are very blatantly wrong, both about the show and on a larger, more dangerous note about certain disabilities or minorities, and they just don’t get any consequences! And you can’t give them consequences because they are to ignorant to react when you prove them wrong. Because they are loving themselves so extremely that if something proves them wrong they just don’t believe it. From time to time there are ones that get suspended by twitter, but they usually have second accounts and they say twitter is homophobic instead of finally realizing that they are just horrible people who should change.

I just hope that this purity culture bullshit finally stops in some time because it’s just so exhausting.

Where do you think this problem comes from?

It’s a intersection of antis aka purity culture with systemic ableism.

Ableism is systemic, and this means it is part of society, it is taught in school, journalism and fiction, and over the course of your whole live you hear these ableist ideas again and again, and so it’s especially pervasive, more so as if this came only from hearing it one time or so.

Most of these antis probably never met a openly disabled person in real live, so they only know stereotypes. And this means that the stereotypes feel true. On the flipside: Seeing autistic or physically disabled people how they are in reality feels wrong then, so it has to be fitted into their idea of how a disabled person is. See “Entrapta is like a child and manipulated by Hordak” or “Hordak is not disabled”.

And the second part of it are antis. They rely on their ideology feeling right. Because if you are young and don’t know how extreme this goes and how harmful this can be “doing morally wrong things or thinking morally wrong things means you are wrong” feels like a thing that is true. Because of that they are preying on children, because children don’t have as much live experience as older people and so lesser often understand how damaging having to be pure hundred percent of the time is.

Also, antis and ship wars need enemies. They have a fixation on characters who are exactly like them, but neither Entrapta nor Hordak are like them, so the representation they are is also overlooked.

Also through the ingrained systemic ableism disabled characters and fans already feel wrong, so they are a good target.

Another point is that disabled and neurodiverse fans are very often traumatized because society is very ableist and traumatizes them through how they are treated. But traumatized people react in ways that are, well, make them easier targets for them and also more fun targets because bullies think it’s funny when someone is hurting.

What do you think can (disabled) fans do on a small and on a large scale?

On a large scale sadly not much since through systemic factors the disabled fans are rarely the ones in a position of power.

On a small scale: The most important thing is to find likeminded fans and communicate with them. If you have enough spoons show ableists that their behavior will not be tolerated. If you have not enough spoons, report the tweet or reblog if possible, block the person, ask others with enough energy to deal with this for help, document it and add it to soranis twitter threat, also share blocklists and use twitter blockchain on Chrome. It lets you block all followers of one troll with one click, and its very usfull, especially, well, only on twitter, since sadly there is no such thing for tumblr, but that is what blocklists are for.

Another thing is that positive content for your faves is more effective than anger, since it directs attention away from the hate. Easy ways to do this that take don’t much energy, because all this stuff is very draining and you often don’t have energy, are: Screencaps, maybe with captions. You can DeepDream edit screencaps – DeepDream is a program that makes it possible to basically copy the art style of something and overlay it on the other picture you put into it, and it’s really nice, it makes such beautiful pictures with so less effort. You can also put random surface level observations on your twitter or tumblr, and the way I do this is to look at a word generator and then write down the first thing that comes to mind. Of course also higher effort stuff like art, fic and deep meta is very good, but these are ways that are easy to do and don’t require much energy. It’s also possible to prepare these beforehand and publish if there is especially much hate.

What is also very important and healing, even, is taking days or even months off of toxic pages. I know that it feels like you have to fight constantly but this is needed to be able to continue to fight. And you don’t really own anybody your energy, even if it feels like this. I even made a list of reminders for disabled fans, and I put it in the links.

I really wish I could end this on a more positive note, but I hope that this at least showed you that you are not alone and that there are others like you.

#transcript

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starsgivemehp · 4 years

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The Argument Against and Defense of Hetalia

Let me preface this by saying that I have not watched the show or read the manga in a few years now, and thus I am working mostly off of memory and what fan content I see these days, which is not a lot. Also, I am a gentile, and I don’t claim to know a lot about the Jewish community or traditions. I am, however, a writer and I have plenty of practice analyzing and criticizing works of fiction from multiple angles. With that in mind, this essay is an attempt to explain everything that is wrong and not wrong with the show, the comic strips, and the fandom.

I’m putting this under a read more for sheer length, this was 11 pages on Google docs.

Let us start with the list of grievances assembled largely from one post, the majority of which I had to go digging for as the original person in this post who mentioned Hetalia said, and I quote, “i dont feel the need to link a source for [hetalia] because…” and then listed two things, one of which is incorrect entirely. But I digress, I will address each one at a time. The list of grievances is as follows:

It is called ‘Axis Powers’ Hetalia

One of the main characters is a personification of Nazi Germany

The entire point of the series is:

Advocating for eugenics

Racial fetishization

Advocating for fascism

Nazi sympathizing/propaganda

The entire franchise is terrible due to rape jokes, racism, and Holocaust jokes

Hetalia fans are all terrible due to rape jokes and other issues

Death of the author cannot apply to this fandom

There may be more that are in other reblogs of the post in question, and I may add addendums further in this essay, but for the time being, I will address each of these grievances and explain the validity or non-validity of each, from a position understanding of both fans and of non-fans. Thus, in order:

‘Axis Powers’ Hetalia

When people talk about Hetalia, they usually are referring to the anime due to its widespread popularity. However, Hetalia began as a series of strip comics posted on a forum by Hidekaz Himaruya (and I spent a while trying to actually find the original comics, but I can’t, there are links to his blogs there in what I’ve provided). It later was formatted into a manga, and then later became an anime. While it was originally titled Axis Powers: Hetalia and the first two seasons of the show are named as such, it usually is only referred to as Hetalia. The anime seasons after said first two seasons have all been ‘world’ focused: Seasons three and four were titled World Series, season five was titled Beautiful World, season six was titled World Twinkle, and the upcoming season seven is titled World Stars.

For the purposes of tagging everything, I tend to see the tags ‘hetalia’ and ‘hws,’ which is short for Hetalia: World Series. This name of the third and fourth anime seasons is the most widely accepted and used name for the series as a whole. While it is true that, years ago, people referred to it as ‘aph’ for Axis Powers Hetalia, the fans and the series have put that behind them, for good reason. It is understandable, even righteous, to not accept the title ‘Axis Powers.’ It does draw focus to the WW2 era, and place the fascists and nazis as the ‘main characters,’ or even, ‘the good guys,’ which is not the case. Obviously, the Nazis were terrible and the entirety of the Axis Powers did horrible, unspeakable things during the war.

It must be noted, to anybody who has not seen the show or read the manga, that the first one to two seasons do have a ‘focus’ on the WW2 era, per se, but it largely talks about interactions between countries, as they are the personified party, and makes extremely few allusions to the war itself, and none to the Holocaust. I will address that in a later section. For now, the point to make is that after these original two seasons, Hetalia branches out into a much wider worldview, adds several more characters, and focuses more on said characters in individual arcs and offerings of historical facts - as generalized as they may be. Nobody claimed that Hetalia was correct in everything it said, but it aims to play out some historical information in a simplified and humorous way. This is due to the fact that the characters are all singular people meant to personify entire countries, which leads us to point two.

The Personification of Nazi Germany

This is the second complaint of the strand of the post in question that I was presented with, quoted as “one of the main characters is a personification of nazi germany.” This is an entirely incorrect statement. ‘Nazi Germany,’ as people call it, is the state of Germany during the era leading up to and of World War 2. The country is still Germany, the people were still German, the Nazi part comes from the political regime in power, a real world nightmare. In the Hetalia series, the characters are called by their country names, because that is who they personify. This may change at times. For example, the character now known as Turkey was previously called Ottoman Empire. They come to be when civilization starts or a colony is introduced to a place. This can be seen in the strip or episode where China ‘finds’ Japan as a small boy and begins to teach him reading and writing - and Japan thereafter invents hiragana. It can also be seen in the comic where a young child, Iceland, questions who he is and why he knows his people are “different beings” than him. The country that speaks to him (I only have the comic here in my likes in that list, the name isn’t mentioned and it’s been a while, but it might be another of the Scandinavian countries) explains that he is Mr. Iceland, they don’t know why he is Mr. Iceland, but they know he is.

What I am attempting to explain with all of these other examples is that there is no ‘Nazi Germany’ character. There is a character called Germany (or Mr. Germany), and all of his adult life, he has been called Germany. He is never addressed by anything else. He does, however, look remarkably similar to a childhood friend of Italy’s, Holy Roman Empire (or just Holy Rome), but as far as it has been explained in canon, Holy Rome went off somewhere and, later on Germany and Italy met as strangers. The general consensus is, due to the area where the Holy Roman Empire used to be is around-ish Germany, the characters are the same. But never, in any of the comics, anime, or movie, is Germany referred to as Nazi Germany. I don’t believe the word ‘Nazi’ appears at any point in time, even, though I cannot claim I have seen every shred of content, so I may be wrong. But I doubt that very much, as it is not in the nature of the series to do such a thing. Moving on.

Advocating for Eugenics

I will start and end this section by saying that Hetalia was, in the original post, roped in with Attack on Titan, of which (as far as I know) the author advocates for eugenics - or the idea that certain people should not be allowed to produce offspring due to their race or other factors. There is no example of Hetalia content wherein this disgusting opinion is ever mentioned or supported in any way. This is at worst a flat-out lie, and at best lumping Hetalia in with a much worse show that does do this (but I won’t get into that, I have never seen more than a few episodes of Attack on Titan and I don’t care to see any more of it. Throw your opinions or defenses elsewhere, I care 0% about it entirely). I have no more need to prepare a more detailed response to this accusation. It simply is not true.

Racial Fetishization

This particular accusation is a difficult one. Fetishization may be a strong word, as the series is largely a comedy. Everyone gets their turn in the spotlight, so to speak, so I find it hard to plainly state that any one character is fetishized or displayed as the most powerful. There is, of course, Rome, who only appears in small segments as Italy’s grandfather and is, in the series, touted as an amazing empire who had it all. I do not believe this is what the accusation is referring to. This accusation seems to be some sort of insistence that the show and creator believe that white people (or possibly just Germans/Nazis/the Aryan race?) are touted as the most powerful and nobody else can compare. I can confidently say that while that is never said anywhere, there are a few issues. Hetalia, particularly the animated series, had (and may still have) a longstanding issue of whitewashing countries that should not be white. This includes Egypt and Seychelles (who both later got a darker skin tone, probably still not dark enough though) as the worst offenders, and even Spain, Turkey, Greece, and Romano (southern Italy), and so on. Yes, this is a big problem. There is no defense against that. It should not be the case. These characters obviously should have darker skin. I will note, however, that many fans are already completely aware of this, have been complaining about it since the beginning, and tend to draw these characters with more correct skin tones in their fanart. This is a case where yes, the original content is not good, but the fans make their own fixes. If you are angry at Hetalia for whitewashing, good. You should be. But I do not believe this should reflect on the entirety of the content and the fandom (And note that I am not linking any particular fanart here, because I want nobody to go attack any fans).

It is also important to note that yes, a large majority of the series builds upon stereotypes. No, stereotypes are not good. No, you should not assume that the personifications of the countries encompass all citizens of said countries. The entire premise of the show is one person = the embodiment of a country, and that person changes and adapts with the times in terms of uniform and personality. It is extremely hard to do this without stereotyping. Most serious fans are aware of this, and do not in any way believe that these characters represent everyone from these countries. It may be true that much younger fans used to, and it may be true that people do not want to watch the show because stereotypes are, arguably, bad. But do remember that this is a comedy, and every character is picked on. Every one. And it is understandable if this branch of humor is not for you. I, personally, don’t like Family Guy or South Park or any shows like that for their humor. I also don’t attack the people who do. I ignore it.

Advocating for Fascism

This is another area wherein I believe the accuser is simply lumping Hetalia in with the original poster’s subject, Attack on Titan. Again, I will not defend or attack that show, as I do not care about it at all. However, regarding Hetalia, I can confidently say that it does not advocate for fascism. While the first two seasons are (sort of) set in WW2 era, as previously mentioned, the fighting is not really a big part, and nobody is touted as correct - only struggling in the conflict. For example, there is a scene where Germany, post WW1, is shown making cuckoo clocks by hand and lamenting the fact that he has to make so many thousands in order to pay back France. This is by no means painting fascism as a good thing, or explaining anything about how poverty and other struggles lead to the formation and rise of the Nazi party. It is simply a scene where we see a man frustratedly making cuckoo clocks and complaining while France’s big head jeers at him in his imagination. The surrounding scenes and the end of this one are making note of how Italy keeps coming over to his house to try and be friends and Germany keeps kicking him out because Italy is annoying and whiny. The episode further goes on to mention that Germany is attacking France again, and Italy has suddenly become his ally, and he is not happy about it for the aforementioned reasons. Again, this does not in any way paint Germany as being ‘right.’ The purpose of the segment(s) is/are to show him disliking the annoying Italy (whom the show is named for) and trying to get him out of his house before eventually giving up and accepting that they can be friends. Is it all 100% historically accurate? No, not by a long shot. Does it paint him as sympathetic? Sort of, you feel bad for the guy making a thousand cuckoo clocks, but only in the sense that he is one person doing a lot of work, a completely fictional situation. But Italy - and the audience - obviously know that attacking France again is not a good thing, so does it advocate the Nazis or fascism? Also no.

Nazi Sympathizing/Propaganda

I pretty well covered this in the previous section, but I will expand. I have alluded to the first two seasons as “focusing” on WW2, in a way, and also mentioned that this is a generalization of sorts, so here I will attempt to clarify. The first few episodes do, indeed, touch on ‘the way they all met’ in a sense; Germany is starting a war and he reluctantly becomes allies with Italy, and less reluctantly becomes allies with Japan, who examines both of them and decides he is content with this situation. However, none of it is very serious, and these ‘formalities’ give way easily to more humorous personable interactions, such as Italy hugging Japan without warning and the touch-anxious Japan pushing him off and getting flustered, Italy petting a cat and then freaking out when he is licked because a cat’s tongue is rough, the two of them ‘training’ by doing your regular old exercising and jogging and Italy being late, etc etc. Stupid, personable jokes.

On the flip side, the show covers the Allied Powers quite a bit too. A lot of this is the five big ones - America, Britain (/England/UK), France, Russia, and China - all meeting around one table and squabbling about various things. I fondly recall one scene where China arrives late and has a bunch of workers suddenly building a Chinatown in the meeting room because he was hungry and wanted his own food, and the others protesting. They are then offered food and become okay with it, because food. Other such nonsense plays out in other, similar meetings. There is also a segment where the Axis powers are all stranded on an island for… some unknown reason… and they set about attempting to survive via campfire and fishing and such. Twice (three times?) the Allied powers ‘attack’ them on this island via China whacking them each with a wok and, as the three of them are in a sad heap, something interrupts the scene to make the Allies retreat. One time, it is Rome’s sudden and also unexplained entrance across the sky singing a song, and another time, it is England’s preoccupation with a cursed chair. Also, at one point, Austria is playing a piano. Does any of this magic logical, real life sense? No. It’s stupid and funny and has nothing to do with war. These are just personable characters thrown into weird situations so they can be funny, with some extremely mild historical context along the way.

I will note again that WW2 is pretty much completely dropped after these two seasons, with the war hardly addressed at all, and future seasons focus more on other characters. The Scandinavians get to all have fun together, the Baltic trio is mentioned, there is a lot about Switzerland taking care of Liechtenstein (wow I spelled it right after all these years, go me) and being stiff and formal with Austria. There is also plenty about people mistaking Canada for America, and England and France squabbling throughout the years, and Spain finding Romano cute but also very grumpy, etc etc… This series is largely Eurasia-focused, yes, and it can be criticized for not being as diverse as it should be. But boiling it down to ‘Nazi propaganda’ is outright, obliviously false.

I don’t know if this is the best place to put this particular note, but I couldn’t think of anywhere else to place it, so here it will go. I would like to mention that in the series, some characters, like Germany and Russia, express outright fear of their ‘bosses’ in certain points in history. It is important to realize that Germany, Japan, America, etc… these characters are not the actual, real-life humans in charge of these countries, but people of a fictional, separate species than humans who grow up as the nation grows and have lives that are affected by these world leaders (we even watch in the show America shooting up from child to young adult as the colonies expand, and England comments on how quickly he grew up - but not as quickly as his people, of course. We’ll get to Davie later). The president of the United States is America’s ‘boss,’ and naturally, that boss changes every time the president changes. The emperor of China is China’s ‘boss.’ It follows, thusly, that at one point, Hitler was Germany’s ‘boss.’ The terrible person himself was alluded to, as far as I know, exactly one time, not by name, and no face was shown. In a very brief scene, Germany laments that his new boss is scary and he was just ordered to go force Austria to come live with him. Said boss is shown as, I believe, an evilly laughing shadowy figure. That’s it. That’s the scene. There is no other mention of Hitler, nor is there any mention of the Holocaust anywhere. One could argue that the show is then trying to say that the Holocaust didn’t happen, but I think such an accusation is frankly absurd. It’s a comedy, it was always a comedy, and what in the fuck would be comedic about a mass genocide in any way? Nothing. None of it is funny. Of course it is not brought up in a comedy.

Rape Jokes, Racism, and Holocaust Jokes

While I did somewhat address racism already in the section about whitewashing and racial fetishization, I have another clarification to make, especially regarding the jokes. A lot of people complain that there are rape jokes throughout the series, and that there are two Holocaust jokes. I will begin by saying yes, this is all true, those things did happen during the course of the show. However, it is important to note that all of those things happened in the English dub of the animated show, and none of these terrible jokes exist in the Japanese/subbed version, or the original comic strips.

The English dub is, on all accounts, pretty terrible. Everyone has an over exaggerated accent, there are the aforementioned jokes, there are name changes (England referred to as Britain, among them, very confusing), and the voice actors themselves make mention in commentaries that their goal in this job was, to paraphrase because I haven’t listened in a while, ‘to be as offensive as possible to absolutely everyone’ (and one of the English dub voice actors is even a convicted sex offender, but that’s it’s own mess). Not the most glamorous or noble of goals. One could say ‘at least if it’s everyone, it’s not really racism, is it? Just humor?’ There is a case for that. Many comedians will say that they poke fun at everyone to avoid singling anybody out as inherently superior. It cannot be said to be the best way to make humor, but it cannot be said to be the worst way, also. Overall, I don’t like the English dub, I don’t watch it, I prefer the subs. And yes, the subbed version has a few issues of its own, but I can say that at least, no, it does not make any Holocaust or rape jokes. Are those kinds of jokes excusable? Fuck no. They’re completely inappropriate. Should you judge the whole series and fandom based on the grossness of the English dubs? Also no, the people who did the English dubs have zero to do with the original creator, the animators, and the fans. Screw them.

The Fandom Being Terrible

I must again preface by saying I was never super active in the fandom at large. I had my own little niche of friends and I stuck to them and I didn’t often branch out. I did, however, go to cons back in those days, and saw plenty of cosplayers. The main complaint I see regarding the fandom is that most of the fans are completely rabid, make a bunch of rape jokes, and even dress up as ‘Nazi Germany’ (iron cross and red armband and all) and pretend to shoot up synagogues. Now, I have not seen cosplayers do the nazi solute or do such photoshoots, but I can believe that people have done it. I have seen plenty of rabid fans, and some of the OCs created for Hetalia, especially many interpretations of individual states (or Antarctica), were extremely cringey, racist, and overall just not good. And yes, these things are undeniably bad. They are very bad things! Those people should be ashamed. They should know better, regardless of their ages or anything, for fuck’s sake. The nazi salute is not a thing you do jokingly, pretending to shoot people is not a joke. Everyone is aware of this. The people who did, or maybe even still do, those things need a serious sit-down and to be woken the fuck up, because they are acting terrible.

However, it is extremely unfair to paint all Hetalia fans in the same light. That is a very stereotypical thing to do, no? As I mentioned earlier, I stuck to my little niche friend group of fans, and while we all had our own flaws and were younger and kinda dumber, we never did things like that. I never did things like that. Rape jokes were never funny, I never liked them, I never accepted them. I have people I still know who still like Hetalia and they never made those kinds of jokes either. I think, as the years have gone by, a lot of the more rabid fans have died out of the fandom. They’ve either grown the fuck up or they’ve went off to pollute some other fandom. Recognize that, especially in the beginning, the anime was low-budget and had a lot of that old and gross queerbaiting and stuff like that, so it was undeniably a magnet for crazy yaoi fans. But the majority of fanart, fanfics, and just overall fan stuff that I see these days are nothing like that. Overall, the fandom has seriously calmed down. A lot of the focus is much more on taking these characters and applying them to other historical events with more accuracy than the show might give. The history in these fanfics and fanarts may also be of questionable accuracy at times. I personally once wrote a fic where I made allusions to the death of Joan d’Arc and, later, the death of Elizabeth I, but did I add much historic fact? No, do I look like a history major spilling all this? The point of the fic was England - the character - maturing through starting to love one of his rulers and recognizing a terrible thing that he did before. It’s not the best piece of work out there, and maybe someone could point out a few things I did wrong with it, but for what it’s meant to be, it’s harmless. Takes on characters not actually in the series, like Ireland, Scotland, etc etc are generally pretty mature from what I see, fanart tends to just be the characters in various poses and styles. The overall love the fandom has, I think, is in the better character designs and in the very concept of the countries as people who laugh and cry and live through war and peace for thousands of years. And here is where I address the final grievance that I personally saw in the notes of the post which started this whole thought process and essay.

The Death of the Author

A lot of people might not fully understand what ‘The Death of the Author’ means. The death of the author is a belief rooted in the 20th century that the personal intentions, beliefs, and prejudices of the authors of certain works can have no bearing on their produced content, because once it is out in the public, every reader may then have their own interpretation and belief system. By publicizing the content, the author ‘dies’ and the reader is born.

There are some scenarios where this cannot apply. One example is JK Rowling, a very special case of a very problematic woman who happens to be so powerful, and so rich, that consuming any type of official (or even unofficial) Harry Potter anything can and will give her that much more power to spread her TERF bullshit. Let me be frank: Any time that consuming a product is allowing a bigoted or problematic person to gain extra money or extra power that they then use for evil, the death of the author cannot apply. You cannot use it as a moral justification. You might perhaps use it as the reason why you struggle to let go of a fandom near and dear to you, as Harry Potter is to so many people, but you absolutely must recognize that purchasing the books, the movies, or any other official content is outright supporting a TERF.

That in mind, there are dozens of other cases where the death of the author absolutely can apply. The easiest, of course, is with authors who are actually dead, such as Lovecraft. Lovecraft was a complete bigot and racist, an overall terrible person, and his works are saturated in that racism. But he is dead, and his work is very popular, and there are ways to take and use his work that do not contribute further to racism and bigotry. All you have to do is slap a non-racist cthulhu on a page. Make that cthulhu eat everyone equally. That’s a good cthulhu right there, a nice, safe cthulhu.

So where does Hetalia fall in this spectrum of can or cannot have death of the author? I believe it leans more to the side of yes, you can apply it. For one thing, you can definitely find the show for free in some places, and watch it without giving Himaruya a single cent. The comics are also available online for free, and while you might be giving your ‘support’ by being a viewer, I think overall, that’s not only negligible, but does not contribute anything bad? The author of Attack on Titan has many charges levied against him in the post which prompted this, and arguably, giving him any money is bad. But as far as I have seen, while Himaruya might have started out with a flawed premise and may have some whitewashing issues, I have seen nowhere that he funds any kind of racist, nationalistic, fascist, etc anything of any kind. This is not like Chick-Fil-A, where offering any kind of patronage is (or maybe used to be) sinking funds into terrible organizations. This is not supporting literal Nazis, as the complaints claim. This is a largely mediocre series with good parts and bad parts and zero ties to horrific organizations or ideals. Consuming good fan content does not make someone a racist or a bigot or a nazi sympathizer. Even rewatching some old favorite scenes or checking out the new season doesn’t make someone that. By all accounts, the show is flawed but not a means to fund nazis.

The Bad Anything Else

I will now take some time to talk about some other problems Hetalia has, because no, it is by no means flawless. I already discussed the whitewashing and stereotypes and the mess of the English dub, but there is more. I made mention of the fact that battles and seriously bad events such as the Holocaust are not mentioned, and this holds true throughout pretty much all of the series. There are certain points where ‘battles’ of a sort are seen, but only flash moments. One scene in particular that I really enjoyed as a tween and can now see the problems with is the whole revolutionary war scene. This was a scene split into two episodes (for some weird reason, even an unrelated episode in between, like, what? Why??) about a particular (unnamed) battle in the American Revolution where England faced down America, they each had a gun with a bayonet, and England charged America and his bayonet deeply scratched America’s gun, and America declared he was no longer England’s little brother, and the whole thing was played out as an extremely emotional scene. England is lost in the past of seeing America as a cute little kid he took care of, who has now grown up and is being reckless and stupid, and America is all righteous and independent and proving he’s a grown up, it’s all very emotional, I cried, other fans cried, there was much fanart.

This scene is problematic in a way. Boiling down an extremely nasty conflict following lots of really bad laws and protests to this one scene doesn’t do history any justice. It says nothing about the struggles of the American colonists, the struggles of the British empire, the awful things the colonists did to the natives, etc etc. It is one small scene and it focuses on these characters as humanoid, with feelings, and completely ignores the complexities of history. And yes, in a way, that is bad. But it is bad in the sense that nobody can - or at least should - take this show to be the end-all be-all of history. It is not. It is not often entirely correct, and it picks and chooses what points in the past several thousand years to play with, and trying to use it as a map for history is a bad idea. However, this focus on the countries as human-like and struggling can also be a good thing.

It is also important to note that there have been other problems. The portrayal of South Korea, for example, is extremely controversial, and while I do not know all of the specifics, I believe that it was banned in Korea due to this, and the character was entirely removed from the anime, among other things. Obviously, a bad take, a bad character. There are also just straight up not great characterizations in certain cases. I don’t, for example, like anything about how Belarus is portrayed as a crazy psycho constantly begging Russia (her big brother) to marry her? I think that that is ridiculous, and I know nothing about Belarus as a country but I am pretty darn sure that that is not how one ought to go about portraying the country. There are a few other examples, but my purpose here was not to pull up a list of every country and explain what is correct or incorrect about each characterization. It is enough to say that some characters were not portrayed perfectly. But with that in mind...

The Good Anything Else

It is the most important to remember that this, all of this, is fiction. This is a silly, silly fantasy series. The countries are not humans, they are some weird semi-immortal species that share a universal language and know they are not human and are referenced by humans as ‘those people.’ They are fictional constructs. But the good out of all of this is that they explore human emotions. The American Revolution scene should not be taken as how the revolution was, and who might have been right or wrong. But it is a very emotional story of a big brother unable to accept that his little brother has grown up and wants to make his own choices. That, right there, is a heartfelt scene that I’m sure plenty of real people can feel something about. And there are plenty of other scenes that really grab you by the heartstrings, especially given how crazy, stupid, and humor-oriented the rest of the show is. And I will take a moment and enthuse about some of the more popular scenes that I think are, in fact, pretty good.

There is one episode in season 5, Beautiful World, where an American woman visits France (the place). This woman, Lisa, is blond and bears a striking resemblance to Joan d’Arc. While visiting some historical place somewhere or another in Paris, France (the person) spots her and rushes up with an odd look. When she questions him, he apologizes and offers to give her a tour of the area, which she accepts. He then proceeds to lead her around and explain some history and show off some beautiful sights, and he mentions some stuff about Joan d’Arc. She butts in and lists off some stuff she knows, he beams and looks proud and says yes, she’s right. The end of the scene has the two of them standing alone somewhere and him commenting how young Joan was when she was killed, and that he always wished she could have had a better, nicer life. He then states that he is very happy that she got it, while giving this American tourist a gentle smile. She looks away for a moment, distracted by something perhaps, and when she looks back to ask just who the heck he really is, talking about a historical figure like he knew her, he is gone. It’s a very emotional scene in a quiet sort of way, because the watcher/reader understands that he took one look at this woman and instantly believed that she was, in fact, Joan d’Arc reincarnated into a totally different and totally average life, and he is so genuinely happy that a woman he saw as a hero gets this chance to live normally. Whether or not you may personally believe in reincarnation, and regardless of how often other times in the show France is shown as an obnoxious sexaholic, this is an extremely tender scene that lots of fans seriously love. It is very ‘human.’ And I feel like this is what the series as a whole strives to offer. These human moments. They may be peppered in a sort of lackadaisical style in the anime, but they are far more prominent in the comic strips, so it is important to realize that that kind of scene is more of what the creator likes to focus on.

Another very popular and touted scene is the Davie scene. I don’t remember if it was put in the anime or not, I read it as a comic. It was a scene set in colonial America, where the man himself was just a very small child. Little baby America was hanging out in a field with a rabbit and sees this boy, who introduces himself as Davie. Davie brings America to his house and opens up a botany book and points out a blue flower (possibly a forget-me-not) that he wants to see but that isn’t in the New World. America assures Davie that he will find him one of those flowers, and goes off to do so. He fails his search and goes back to Davie, who is older now, but Davie looks embarrassed and turns and walks away. Distressed, America runs to England and explains about the flower, and England says the flower is not there, but they do grow at home, and he will bring some the next time he leaves and comes back. America happily waits, and when England returns with a bouquet of the blue flowers, America takes them and runs off to Davie’s house. He is let in by a boy who looks just like Davie and presents the flowers, and the boy then puts them on (or maybe in) a coffin of an elderly man. America, smiling, does not seem to understand what is going on, and hopefully calls the boy Davie.

This entire scene, in the comic, has very few words. Davie’s name is repeated a few times, but most of the rest of the ‘dialogue’ is in images. The flower, England saying it is not there, etc. This makes the scene extremely poignant, and when we reach the end, we, the audience, realize suddenly that while baby America was fixated on finding a special flower for his new friend, years and years went by, and that friend grew up and got married and had children and eventually died, all while America remained looking the exact same age and understanding the exact same things. Look, folks, I don’t know about you, but that is some angsty stuff right there. I cried. We all cried. We all miss Davie. Mention the name to fans and you will get sobs. We love you, Davie.

Which brings me to my penultimate point, that this series is heartfelt and, while it avoids a lot of the bad of history, can be very poignant about what human nature is like. Human lives are long, very long, but also so very short, they fly by. Some lives end in tragedy, others are mostly peaceful, and maybe we get second chances if you believe in reincarnation, maybe not. Maybe it’s good that our lives are so short, maybe the fate of living forever and watching people you connect with die is tragic. Or maybe it would actually be really fun, having friends for thousands of years that you may squabble with at times but ultimately care for. Maybe nothing is simple and life is about finding joy where you can, and everyone needs to sometimes take a step back and realize that everyone is flawed, and there might be good and evil but the vast majority of people are in a grey area, trying to live their own lives and do what good they can for whatever reason they might give. I want to end with one last topic, one I have not yet addressed this whole time. The big white alien in the room, if you will.

Paint it: White!

There is a Hetalia movie, folks, if you didn’t know it, and it’s called Paint It White. This movie has just as many silly parts as any other Hetalia thing, but it also has a plot! In this movie, strange, all-white aliens are starting to invade the Earth. They arrive and anything they touch, they turn into completely identical white humanoid blobs, even the country personifications. With this scary and seemingly-unstoppable threat, the main eight - America, England, Russia, China, France, Japan, Germany, and Italy - all try to infiltrate the alien spaceship in frankly hideous uniforms to find out more and figure out a way to defeat them. Hijinks and disaster ensues, and at the end, each of them is fighting a mob and gradually being defeated. Italy is the last one standing, and as Germany is slowly being transformed into a blob along with the others, he tells Italy to smile. Italy then finds (or has? the plot isn’t great, it’s just there) a black marker and he suddenly starts going around drawing ridiculous faces on everyone. He draws fitting faces on each of his friend blobs, like a stern face on Germany-blob, a deadpan face on Japan-blob, etc etc. The invaders suddenly stop. They look at each other, marker-faced, and start to laugh. Then their leader of sorts comes out and is basically like “wow, we thought you were all stupid and you have wars and stuff, but this? This is beautiful. Wow. We all look exactly identical on our world, and these faces are cool and new and unique. We’ll turn everyone on your planet back if we can have this magical thingie you’re holding.” And of course Italy hands the marker right over, and everyone is put back to normal, and crybaby, scaredy-cat, useless Italy saves the world.

The plot is, obviously, not super great. It’s not going to win anybody any awards. But it has a very poetic premise. The strength of humans is that they are all unique. Every human has a different face, a different body, a different life. Our differences may cause conflict, but they are also something to celebrate. At the end of the day, Hetalia is an okay show that can get you hooked on history and tries its best to teach you that we’re all only human and there might be war and conflict and bad things, but you have to reach for the good things and find yourself good friends and have stupid laughs and enjoy life, however long or short it may be. I think that that’s a pretty decent message to send out to people.

The Bottom Line

In the end, this is a fandom like many others. Hetalia has its flaws and its cringe moments, and it certainly had its fair share of awful fans. But I truly believe that painting it overall as nazi propoganda and one of the most problematic and harmful shows out there is a blatant lie and disregards… just about everything of the actual content. I think it is difficult for someone to concretely say anything is super good or super bad without seeing at least some of it, or doing some research, and this business of blithely going along with what everyone else says just because they use big danger words does not do anybody any favors. Spreading misinformation is, I’m sure, the exact opposite of what most people want to do. And make no mistake, I am definitely not saying that everyone needs to like, or even watch, the show. If you never ever want to watch this show in your life, that is absolutely fine. Go forth and never watch it. But mindlessly following the herd and yelling overgeneralized, unsupported opinions about it is not a good thing. I beg of you, do research on the things you want to form or share an opinion on, think critically, and for the love of God, do not swipe a giant paintbrush to forsake every single individual fan of a show as a terrible, awful person. By all means, hate nazis, they are pieces of shit. Boycott things that support genocide and fascism, yes, fight for equality, yes. But do not go accusing without thinking, and do not overgeneralize. I leave you with the words of my old laptop bag that I bought years ago at a convention:

Make pasta, not war.

Thank you for reading.

#I wrote an essay #I could probably source this way more #but I've been working on it for hours #Just take it

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lavenderek · 4 years

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i have a thought to express, feel free to scroll past.

i’m gonna discuss rape and sexual abuse in this post. it’s also long because i don’t really have a conclusion, it’s just some thoughts.

so i was looking into that reality show that facilitated shane dawson’s horrible movie “not cool” and i stumbled across a reddit thread posted by someone who was a fan of his as a preteen. the OP alleged that shane’s content contributed to them developing some serious issues including body dysmorphia and the normalization of sexual behavior involving children.

some of the comments were in support and agreement, but a large amount of them were like, “where were your parents? it’s not shane’s job to police what you see online. it’s not his fault you were too young for his content.”

now, shane was well aware from the jump that his fans were mostly kids and teens - he talked about it multiple times - but that’s not what this post is about. this post is about that particular argument, which does not sit well with me.

it reminded me of a couple years ago when i made a very critical post about c*ptive prince.

pause: i want to make it crystal clear that i am not drawing a comparison between people who like cp and shane dawson. i’m not mad anymore, so i am not making this post making a value judgment on cp or fans of it, positive or negative.

specifically, i was really bothered by the way cp content was posted and shared with no mention of or reference to the actual material. people were calling it a queer romance. it was a little-known series by a little-known author, so there were no synopses anywhere online, only the summary you’d see on the back of the book. so people would seek out cp thinking it was a romance and be blindsided by the fact that, spoilers, the story is set in a fantasy world where child rape is a major tenet of society. the scenes are explicit, detailed, and many. it’s not a thing that happens once or twice and is a major plot point, it’s a thing that happens multiple times in every chapter and is just kind of a thing that’s going on. if you’ve ever read twilight, i would compare the presence of rape in cp to the presence of rain in twilight.

like, that’s how often it happened, that’s how it was treated. sometimes with indifference, sometimes with a negative opinion, sometimes it caused problems, bella talks about it every two pages. it is a very rapey series.

and people like, did not want to discuss this. they were like, “the characters decide the rape is bad in the end. and that’s not even what the story is about, it just happens in the story. i don’t know what to tell you.” like... people were not receptive to any kind of conversation about this topic lmfao, it was very touchy. they wanted to acknowledge that rape itself is bad, and then they wanted the subject closed.

now, why is this a problem? i read the books. there were parts i enjoyed, and there were parts i didn’t enjoy. i’m not gonna reread them, but i’m still game to talk about it. ultimately i wanted to be able to talk about books with a friend of mine, and while i was like, “yikes, this is a lot of rape, was not expecting the volume of rape,” it didn’t occur to me this would be a pervasive issue at all until a different friend of mine happened upon it. this other friend was a rape survivor, and i happened to know she would find this content very upsetting. when she said she was thinking of buying the book, i was like, “halt, you know what happens in it, right?”

nope! she didn’t. she saw cute fanart and a ficlet on her dash, somebody told her it was a queer romance. nowhere was there any indicator in summaries online or the posts she was seeing that the book would describe a person being drugged and sexually abused. she was pretty relieved that i’d warned her and shaken that that’s what happens in the books lmao. she would never have guessed. the cp fandom was made up of people who loved the main pairing, and they’d talk about them being in love and draw them being in love, and it felt like everybody was just acting like the rape wasn’t even present in the books lmao.

pause: i didn’t go in the tags. this is not representative of the fandom as a whole. this is just my and my friend’s experience of it as passive internetgoers.

people got uncomfortable and a little defensive if i brought it up. they’d agree to tag for cp, but if you don’t know what cp is about, that isn’t helpful information. like that post that’s like, “waterboarding at guantanamo bay sounds like a lot of fun if you don’t know what either of those things are” lmao. if you don’t know what cp is about, tagging for it just tells you what it’s called. and it very clearly ruined everyone’s fun if i talked about this.

so that’s what i was mad about, i was mad that i felt as though there was no recourse here, and i was mad because i felt like the cp fandom was the emperor’s new clothes. nobody was acting like it even existed and everybody got uncomfortable if i brought it up, like, i legitimately wondered at some point if i had somehow accidentally read a kinky rewrite of it, that the real version did not have rape in it and nobody knew what i was talking about. i felt like i was going crazy and i got shitty in the middle of the night one time, and wrote that post.

i ultimately deleted it, so i do not remember how it was worded; but i do recall that it was a venting post, it was not intended to reach a wider audience. i was not trying to convince anyone in that moment, i was just talking shit. so i can bet that it probably came across as very judgmental and unkind.

i made a bunch of people very angry with that post. somebody got thousands of notes by reblogging with an impassioned smackdown saying basically what those redditors were saying about shane - it’s not their job to police what people see online. it’s not their fault you were unprepared for cp.

i do not think this is a nuanced enough argument because i do not think it acknowledges that not all content is created equal.

i even got an anon ask in good faith saying, well, a huge trigger for me is body horror, and people will draw or reblog stuff with body horror in it, and i can’t hold that against them.

and like, no, you can’t, but body horror is not the same as rape or child sexual abuse. body horror isn’t the same as sex trafficking. right? like those things aren’t comparable in the way that i think the anon was wanting them to be. they were saying that both of these are common triggers that people would want tagged and be unable to move past in media, you know? and i get that, i got what they were saying.

kind of like that cartoonist who wrote a spooky horror comic a while ago and somebody sent them an ask being like, “that was really scary, you usually post fun comics, this was damaging, unfollowed :/” like obviously a stranger’s fear of spooky things is not something he should be expected to take on on his own blog lmao. i am deeply afraid of ghosts, by the way.

but according to rainn.org, 1 in 5 women experience rape in their lifetime. 1 in 5 women are not frightened by literal ghosts in their lifetime. 1 in 3 girls and 1 in 7 boys aren’t body horrored. body horror and ghosts aren’t used on a global scale as tools to control and abuse people and they do not have the same connotations of shame, degradation, and control. the things are not the same.

i don’t have an easy answer. i can’t wave my magic wand and make people not enjoy the rape erotica, nor was that my goal in the first place. i wasn’t clutching my pearls like, “how dare you! do not draw this art! think of the children!” and i don’t know how else i would have solved the problem, aside from having a weird disclaimer under your art of two dudes cuddling that says “warning, these dudes are from a book that’s got several thousand words of explicit rape in it, and i know that, you’re not the only one seeing that,” like that’s a lot and i get it.

i don’t have an easy answer because there isn’t one. i felt like “well, that’s not my problem” was an easy answer.

as i get older, the more responsibility i have as an adult online to maintain boundaries between me and minors, for example. i am not responsible for their internet experience and they can’t get mad at me for cussing or writing about gay werewolves on my blog, but i do have to be mindful of that context if i’m interacting with someone online. that’s where the complexity comes in. you can’t wash your hands of the context of the things you say and do online.

just how to solve these problems, i did not know then and i do not know now. i guess we take it on a case by case basis.

if you’re curious about shane dawson and his horrible movie, by the way, this guy did a few funny videos about the horrible movie and this guy did a not funny but comprehensive breakdown of shane and his career.

and i tried to tint my eyebrows for the first time the other day, i have red hair and my eyebrows are darker than my hair for some reason, so i tried to use an eyebrow tint to lift my brows just like, a shade, so be closer to my hair? but in doing this i discovered that my eyebrows are a mixture of red and brown?

so the red hairs lifted to a sunny orange, and the brown hairs stayed brown. so my eyebrows are fully like, calico right now. boom, orange juice, that’s life

#diary post #long post

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musicofthenightphantomoftheopera · 7 years

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Dear Voltron Fandom (an open letter)

Dear Voltron Fandom,

You don’t know me, but I know you. Before I get into this, allow me to introduce myself so I’m not a stranger. My name is Paiton. I’m 19 years old, and I have high functioning autism, and the character I relate to and love the most is Pidge. I have traversed through many a fandom in my life so far. From Avatar:The Last Airbender, to Sailor Moon, Steven Universe, Disney, you name it! All of these fandoms are loving and wonderful in their own way. However, every fandom has a dark side; It’s just the nature of fandoms, unfortunately. Despite that, I was able to look past that, and be proud to be a part of them! But NEVER have I EVER been more ashamed of being in a fandom when I got dragged into Voltron. Before that, I heard rumors of how toxic the fandom was and all of the crazy stunts some fans tried to pull in order to get what they wanted into the show. So, I tried to avoid the show and its fandom like the plague at all costs.Two months went by and my curiosity got the best of me and I decided to check out the show just to see what all the fuss was about. Turns out I really liked the show and Pidge quickly became my favorite! Hell, I even started a Pidge Ita Bag; just added the first charm to it a couple of days ago! I started out just keeping to myself on my quiet little tumblr blog just reblogging fan art and fics as well as interesting theories and talking to my friends about it. And I can’t forget about buying Voltron fan swag! All was well, despite the occasional bits popping up about the latest fandom disasters. That is up until quite recently. I thought I had seen it all when I had to fight to defend Sailor Moon fans that were being bashed for liking Sailor Moon Crystal or for getting into Sailor Moon in general because of Crystal. I thought I had seen it all when I saw SOULESS Steven Universe “fans” telling an artist to kill herself for drawing Rose Quartz skinny. I thought I had seen it all when I saw the Brony fandom in general. But this....sending death threats to the voice actors and their families, blackmailing the creators in order yo make Klance canon, and a rumor that some antis were burning fanart?! This is absolutely UNACCEPTABLE! To those who participated in ANY of these horrible actions or any other crimes against the fandom, you ought to be ASHAMED of yourselves! Your actions are SHAMEFUL and you should /feel/ ASHAMED. People like you are a disgrace to this and every other fandom out there. You are the reason why the Voltron fandom has such a bad reputation. Now for the sake of this not being me dragging the voltron fandom for the entirety of however long this is going to be, I’m going to play devil’s advocate for a minute or two. I know that not everyone in the Voltron fandom is bad. Hell, my best friend is a Klance shipper and a Lance fangirl and she’s one of the chillest Voltron fans I know! And you want your ships to be canon, I get it. Every fan wants their ship to be canon, weather its a strait, or LGBTQ+ ship. We need more LGBTQ+ representation in...well, pretty much everything really. And it is coming. Its getting there, but its gradual and you have to be patient! “Patience yields focus” , in the immortal words of our beloved Space Dad. But I also understand that fandoms can change things as well. The first example that comes to mind is Kim Possible if any of you reading this are old enough to remember. When Kim and Ron finally got together in the movie that was supposed to be the series finale, the fans flipped every last crumb of their shit and wrote in, demanding another season. And another season they got, ending with Kim and Ron graduating high school. So fandoms /can/ change things, but this.... Blackmail, death threats, is NOT the way to do it! If anything, stuff like that will steer people away from creating representation just because of the sheer mass hysteria it causes within fandoms! Its the toxic people in the Voltron fandom that pull this sort of stuff that steered me away from the show in the first place. To the toxic people in the Voltron fandom who call themselves proud members of the community. You know who you are. I am calling all of you out. You are not fans. You are bullies. Plain and simple. The kind that beat up the little kid with glasses and stuff them in a locker for being a nerd. The kind that steals lunch money in the cafeteria when the teacher isn’t looking. The kind that spread awful rumors about that shy little girl that likes anime, telling her that nobody would care if she died, only worse. You are the very same kind of bullies that I tried to get away from by joining fandoms (supposedly an accepting environment for people who are different and like the same stuff) in the first place. Now I am the kind of person that doesn’t have a temper. However, stuff like this is one of the very few things that get me righteously pissed off. But I don’t yell, or scream, or punch a wall. Instead, I channel that anger into fuel I can use for something else. Which is what made me write this open letter to you, the Voltron fandom. Like I said earlier, not everyone in the Voltron fandom is bad. To all of those that just enjoy the show and respect other people’s ships, or don’t give a dam about ships at all. thank you for being decent human beings and trying to clean up the mess these toxic, souless antis made of our fandom. After seeing all of this I can tell you that I am officially 1000% DONE with this bull. So I am calling the antis out. Consider this a reality check for ALL of you. This is a fucking CARTOON. The people you are shipping so feverishly together are fictional characters. Underline the word “Fictional” as in “not real”. At the end of the day, they are just a bunch of lines and colors moving frame by frame and voiced by real human beings with feelings. They are not above emotions like some of you idiots think they are. When are you going to get it through your tiny brain cases you call heads that how you are acting is childish, immature, and just plain sadistic?! I want to get something strait right now. I do not hate the voltron fandom, not at all. I hate what its become. These horrible antis and haters and toxic people are infecting the fandom like a deadly disease; like a fast spreading plague that causes the slow and painful death of its victum. However, unlike the real Black Plague, there is a cure! And a contagious one at that! So I’m sending out a call to action to every decent human being in the fandom! Those who are here just to enjoy the show for what it is with other people and have a good time, the older fans who got into Voltron: Legendary Defenders because they grew up with the older versions, the Multishippers, those who are respectful of other people’s ships,, or don’t give a dam about shipping at all, as well as those who keep their accounts as safe spaces for all fans. Do your girl a solid and help make the Voltron fandom a better place. Please, be a voice for good. If you see a fan getting harassed by an anti, just politely shut them down. Don’t go full on Leroy Jenkins and fight back, don’t feed the trolls, guys! Just politely tell them to back off and ignore them after that. Then, turn around and try to cheer up the person who got harassed! Share your favorite fan art pieces with them or give them fic recommendations! Who knows, you just might make a new friend! If you see someone you follow on any social media platform doing any of the bullshit I’ve previously mentioned earlier, unfollow them immediately. You don’t need that kind of negativity in your life and neither does anybody else. Let your followers know that your account is a safe space for all decent Voltron fans to geek out and that there is a ZERO TOLERANCE policy for antis. If someone disagrees with you on your ship or theory, politely ask them to explain their reasoning in a civil manner. Get a dialogue going so the whole thing doesn’t turn into an all out screaming match. It can be done, people! It is possible! It just takes a little effort. It may take some time, hard work, blood, sweat, and tears, but I beleive we can fix the fandom if we all work together. Now I also want to take a moment to send a message. To the voice actors of Voltron; Bex taylor Klaus (My Queen), Jeremy Shada, Steven Yeun, Josh Keiton, Kimberly Brooks, Tyler Labine, Rhys Darby, and A.J. Locascio. To the Co-Creators of Voltron; Joaquim Dos Santos and Lauren Montgomery. I am not apologizing for the actions of the toxic part of the fandom (that’s a mess they gotta clean up themselves), but I am speaking for the good part of the fandom and myself when I say that we apologize for what these souless people have put you through. Nobody should ever have to go through that just some people want a small sense of validation in their ship being canon. We love all of you and we hope that you can find it in your hearts to give the fandom a chance to redeem itself. I wrote this in hopes of waking some people up and start to to change things for the better. At least that’s what I hope will come of this rant that I wrote all in one sitting at 4 am. Just know that we all love and respect you and I am going to try my hardest to help change this fandom for the better with the help of my friends and followers, as well as the rest of the fandom that actually has a soul and a conscience. We are going to try and remind everyone that we are all on the same side. We all love the same show and the same characters and the same story. After all, we’re all made up of the same cosmic dust.

signed,

Paiton

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