#lesbian ships do not have this problem most of the time its just the het and mlm ships | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

starsarefire824 · 2 years ago

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Heeey moot! Just woke up! Even though I'm late, I just wanted to say that you deserve to write whatever tf you want and I'm sorry some peeps were harassing you about The Pact. I don't think folks know how hard it is to not only write, but then to post it for others to see. So, for them to criticize you when it's just a fun fic that they can ignore or filter out (tags on ao3 are meant to be used geez) its wild to me. You're doing something very unique with the characters and including a lot of different subgroups of the queer community splendidly while keeping them flawed like real teens - all in 1 fic. As a demi ace myself, I was so happy to see you incorporate that in your fic respectively and a lot of my queer Sex Ed came from detailed, researched fics bc even though my parents and school system talked to me about sex, there was nothing for the queer kids, let alone ace kids to get guidance on. So, for fic readers/writers like me, using fics to explore sexuality was a godsend.

Can't help but also think it's the biphobia kicking in again, specifically for characters like Mike. No one has a problem hc Max as bi even though it seems like lumax is clearly endgame over elmax or elumax, but when it comes to Mike being bi it's like the world is ending despite it clearly being byler endgame. I personally ship all hcs of Mike's sexuality cuz only Robin and Will have been confirmed queer. Everyone else in ST to me is undisclosed until stated straight or queer. But again that's me.

Also love your poly rep cuz my sib is poly and so were some of my grandma's cousins from 1950s-now. So, again, all or most sexualities explored in fics is a must, regardless if you ship it. I've always been a polypartycule shipper and enjoy how you include all party members and mention Duzie sometimes cuz too many times I found fics/hcs excluding the fact Dustin has a stable relationship with Suzie in favor of just highlighting byler and elumax as the romantic ones of the party.

Sorry for the rant but I had to let it out. I hated scrolling through my feed and seeing that post you made of folks getting heated over fiction like you're gonna convince the Duffers to change the whole script. Anyways I hope my support is felt. This is still me typing in a sleep daze and yeah. I'll continue reading your work cuz I enjoy good writers first and foremost and omg lol you made it having some harrassers cuz the greatest books were on the banned book list. Not saying you deserve the irrational hate, but that's how I'm framing it - this is giving "banned book energy" just cuz The Pact is exploring romantic madwheeler when no one cares about byclair or henderhop or henclair (despite folks labeling El as a lesbian). Anyways, you do you moot be blessed out here

Hello deer moot!!!! <33

Thanks so much for the positive vibes!!! I truly appreciate it. I guess I was just feeling a little let down that a select few people made it so far into a fic and then were angry about the way things were going and/or felt the need for me to tell them the ending. At first it didn't bother me, but after answering the same questions 1,000 times and trying to sort of reassure everyone it got to a point of being exhausting! I want to talk about the fic, but I don't really want to have to defend my writing/story/ship choices every chapter. It's kind of exhausting and was bringing me down a little bit. But anyway, enough about that.

I am SO GLAD that you are like...really vibing with some of the choices in that story? Especially with your unique pov being demi ace and having poly family. I think that fanfiction can be a very important tool for a lot of teen when it comes to exploring sex, especially if it's not a cis het-normative type or even just....dealing with sex from a young person's pov and all of the obstacles that everyone faces in that regard. Also, I think it can just open up a conversation or make a person think about things that maybe they might not of before etc etc. Or! They can just enjoy those scenes for the writing/good time. I'm here for all of it.

I'm not sure if it's a biphobia thing? It honestly hadn't occurred to me, but you may possibly be right. I know a lot of people headcanon Mike as gay, which I fully support. I wouldn't be surprised if that is the case. I think if Byler happens in canon, he'll be unlabeled. BUT I do like to write Mike as bi, I personally think that there were feelings for El at some point. I personally headcanon him as a bi-romantic, and sexually leaning towards men. But that's just me....

But anyway, as that pertains to madwheeler, I also really enjoy the bi for bi Max and Mike dynamic, specifically because it's fun to write, and secondly it's another thing to add to their already similar personalities. And yea. I agree... unless a character's sexuality is specifically stated like El and Will's, there is room for exploration for most characters and that's what fanfic and art is for.

I do think there is this strange thought process regarding bi characters, that if they have a relationship with a person of the opposite sex it's like they're not "queer enough" for other people. Like it's somehow lesser than if Mike has a relationship with a woman, even though he already, in canon, is well, with a woman. And that people tend to forget that people are still bi, still queer, even if they are in the most outwardly straight presenting relationship, cause let's face it....you can't really help who you're attracted to and who you fall in love with. it just is.

And when it comes to the madwheeler in this fic, I am fully aware it is one of the least popular ships out there, but again, that is one of the reasons I wanted to explore it. And a a bi, poly person my self it was really interesting putting these characters in a dynamic where they were both involved with people of differing genders and orientations. It gives you a lot to work with when it comes to having things to write about! シ

And as you said, it also allows for some messy, realistic teenage angst! Which I am always a fan of! ;)

Anyway, thank you for the rant. I appreciate it so much, and am honestly still blown away by the positive responses to this story. Even if it's not everyone's cup of tea!

#anon asks #dear moot <3

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lonesplashy · 4 years ago

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It’s alright to enjoy something and realize it’s not going to be canon.

#tag rambles #zutara #taang #kiribaku #tododeku #thats it thats what tje posts about #lesbian ships do not have this problem most of the time its just the het and mlm ships #not rlly a big fan of taang but I can see why yall like it #Zutaras cute but not rlly my vibe either #tododekus not my favorite either im more of a shindeku guy but so many tododeku shippers dont realize its not gonna fucking happen #most fandoms ive been in recently have either A. been rlly aware about the fact their ships arent canon or B. have had the ships be canon.#but yeah yall need to get your head out the clouds and realize ‘oh this isnt going to happen in canon’#its literally not even a big deal like fanfic exists for a reason #sure having your ship be canon is nice but it isnt super important

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dykesprentiss · 4 years ago

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ok so. i know a lot of this has probably been said before, but i wanted to put my two cents in. very rambly and disorganized because i am just like that.

i think everyone in this fandom needs to examine the way they interract with male vs female characters. why is it easier for you to focus on and create content for male characters that have appeared in 2 episodes maximum, then it is for the women that are in the main cast? why do you gravitate towards ships between two male characters who have never met (specifically jonah and like. his harem of old british men. usually based on one single line of dialogue) then the actual, canon wlw relationships?

like dont get me wrong, when lonely eyes first started cropping up it was funny! i enjoyed it, i enjoyed the multiple divorce jokes, because it was a small fandom in joke that made fun of some old bastards. and now its the second most popular ship in the fandom. now its so popular, people think its canon before they start listening. why are you unable to muster that same kind of enthusiasm for any of the female characters? gertrude and mary have very similar appeal to lonely eyes, and yet its a fringe ship that nobody ever talks about. gertrude and agnes have very significant moments and mentions in the podcast, and yet the only people i see talking about them are wlw.

or we could talk about michael and helen! helen who, as of this moment, has become a key player in the storyline. helen who yeeted michael out of existence, who took over the power of the distortion by her own choice, and with her own strength. and so often i see her relegated to "vodka aunt that coos over jonmartin" is that a bad take on her? of course not! but having her only purpose be to comment on the male characters rubs me the wrong way.

lets talk about elias and mary. elias gets praise, and love, and devotion, regardless of the horrible things he does. the entire fandom has the reputation of eliasfuckers now because everyone goes so crazy for him. mary is just as evil, has just as sexy a voice (i assume lol cause tbh? eel eyes does not do it for me and never will), and people just. hate her. full stop. why is that?

it seems like manuela has been. completely forgotten. i Never see anyone talk about her. she has just as much appeal as the male avatars, so why are you so uninterested in her? sasha and tim have the same amount of importance, and both have died, but there is So much more focus on tim. why.

daisy/basira and melanie/georgie are incredibly well developed relationships, their stories are as beautiful and tragic and intimate as jonmartin, but the f/f and m/m fic ratio on ao3 is abysmal. because it seems to me that the only people writing about them are wlw.

which happens.....a lot. het relationships and gay relationships are for everyone, but lesbian ships? thats just for gay women. everyone goes head over heels for mlm movies, regardless of sexuality, but wlw movies never receive the same kind of treatment. why.

this isn't even touching on the. blatant and disgusting fetishising of mlm. elias is evil because hes gay and skanky. tim is bi so he must sleep around. tim and martin are both mlm in the same vicinity of each other so they must have had a friends with benefits relationship. jon/elias and peter/martin have significant age differences and power disparities, so they must have an incredibly fucked up sexual relationship. jon is ace, but yall just fully ignore that so you can write horny fic of him. (and im going to be completely honest, if you get legitimate joy from writing manipulative r*pe fic involving these characters, Especially involving an ace character, ( edit: i apologize for my wording here, i didnt intend to compare trauma between ace and non ace ppl. my point is that jon seems to be the main target in these fics, and that they seem to be a direct response to his asexuality. fic like this is bad regardless of who is targetted). than that is a big problem. you arent "exploring dark topics in a meaningful way" youre writing fucked up porn for your own sick enjoyment. get angry at me all u want lmao but i stand by that)

i could go on about this forever, but what im really asking is for people to look inward and ask yourselves why you are so against connecting and interracting with female characters? no one is saying you cant like the men, but if theyre the only ones you care about? thats a problem. there are more women in tma then there are men, but they still feel like the minority because of the way the fandom acts. this isnt just a tma problem either! you can put as many rounded out female characters as you want into your content, and every time without fail they will be pushed to the side in favor of the men.

and dont come at me with "oh if you want content of the women you should make it" like we fucking are. the issue is that wlw are the only ones doing it. just take a second and think. are you ignoring the female characters in favor of the men? why? why is that your first instinct? why do you not feel the need to go against that instinct?

#the magnus archives #tma #i used to have so much more love for the male characters too but now im just tired lol #long post #ok to rb #rape mention tw

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hamliet · 4 years ago

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when does a relationship become queerbaiting? theres a book that i really like and the 2 male leads characters have a lot of storylines and arcs where they get closer and i think some of the tropes used can be similar to the typical romantic tropes, neither of them end up with anyone at the end of the story since its more about found family and the long journey the whole cast goes through. they even get shipped by another character as a running gag. personally i always saw it as being open to interpretation but recently the revised edition of the original novel came out and there were several lines those 2 characters had about each other that were kinda toned down, i didnt think much of it but i saw a post about how it was clearly baiting and the author was being homophobic for toning it down. i didnt think it counted as baiting since as far as i know, the novel was never advertised as anything with romance and the author never pretended they were gonna end up together. i am definitely a little weirded out by the decision to change those specific lines but a lot of the story stayed the same, including a lot about their relationship so idk what to think.

i guess im more confused on if it counts as baiting, or even substext??

Sooooo I am not the best person to ask about this, because I’m a cis woman who has thus far in life only been attracted in a romantic sense to cis men. I can talk a bit about baiting as a general concept in fiction, but you should definitely take it with some grains of salt.

Baiting, for me, is like deliberately playing up an aspect writers have no intention on delivering on. Usually this is done for ratings, to tease fans, fanservice, etc, but without payoff, it is just bad writing. Red herrings are good in writing, but only can be successfully used if the actual result is more satisfying than the herring. This applies to writing in general, not just to romantic ships. However, when the baiting involves historically underrepresented groups for no reason other than to get fans to spend money consuming the story, I think we can all agree that becomes something more grotesque than just bad writing: it’s insensitive, socially irresponsible, frankly hurtful.

Some common examples are Bridgerton which has a gay character, who is extremely minor, yet they played up this character in advertising. Also, Rizzoli and Isles I think actually had its producers mention deliberately playing up the lesbian subtext to hook the audience without ever intending on following through.

That said, context also matters. Like, there are aspects of the culture of the work’s author, the target audience, and such that come into play here also (so like, romantic tropes differ by culture. For example, enemies to lovers is common in Asian stories but less in the west, and the “girl who pursues a guy” is extremely common in Japanese shonen in particular, while it is very much a cringe trope that almost never results in romance in American fiction. So if a writer reads, say, tropes that are common in America into a Japanese work and says it’s baiting, that’s quite possibly not the intent even if it may have been the experience of the reader. So even if there was no intent, there can still be hurt, and that hurt can be real, if that makes sense.

The definition of what constitutes ‘baiting’ varies. I do think that, in true Tumblr fashion, the term gets thrown around a lot and loses its intended meaning, or is so rigidly defined that creators can meet the letter of the “not a bait” requirement while ignoring the spirit of it.

To start with the latter: regarding something hitting the letter of what most wouldn’t consider baiting yet not really the spirit, let’s look at The Rise of Skywalker. This movie had a genuine lesbian kiss in it... between two characters we’d never seen more than a glimpse of while others are celebrating around them. Since it has a kiss, it’s not baiting, right? Well... the director deliberately said in the lead-up to the film that he included it because he “wanted LGBT people to see themselves in the film.” If “see yourselves in the film” is like a nanosecond of background, then, like... idk. Baiting or not, it feels icky, and I know some people consider it baiting and some don’t even if they don’t like, love that representation. But I think this is more queerbaiting than like, Nobara and Maki, who don’t have explicit romantic coding.

Going back to the former, in terms of ‘queerbaiting’ losing its intended meaning... I think there are a lot of really poorly written romantic ships out there, often het, while a lot of same-gender relationships are really well written regardless of whether there’s romantic coding within the text. The main emotional energy in stories with 90% male characters (as frankly many if not most stories are, great job world) is probably between two men. There’s just so much more potential with well-written characters who share a lot of screen time, so of course people are going to ship them. In my opinion, this does not inherently make it baiting, but it certainly creates an environment that lends itself to baiting even if the writers aren’t intending to do this.

Like, you could say the main emotional energy in BNHA is Bakugou and Deku. However, Bakudeku is 100% not queerbaiting. It’ll never be canon romantically (I don’t even ship it lol). There has been nothing to imply romance between them even if the main emotional message can be seen in their development. Deku/Ochaco is likely to be canon, but there is a significant lack of genuine emotional energy between them (the story’s plots and themes don’t coalesce around their relationship), so it’s probably going to feel forced. In contrast, Naruto/Sasuke had an actual kiss in canon, which while played for laughs is a lot more direct romantic coding than anything between Bakugou/Deku. I actually don’t think the majority of Narusasu is baiting, but I definitely think that one moment in chapter like 3 was really poor fanservice for yaoi fans, and has not aged well at all.

It is also the case that fans can confuse headcanons with what is actually in the text, and that just never ends well. For example, Clover and Qrow’s ship in RWBY: a lot of people read Clover as gay, which led to “bury your gays” outrage when he died. A member of the crew stated explicitly they had never intended for Clover to be a love interest for Qrow, and truthfully here was nothing strictly romantic in their relationship--nothing like a kiss or a declaration of love or a parallel to another romantic couple. Hence, I don’t personally consider it queerbaiting or bury your gays, but a lot of fans felt that it was and their pain is legitimate even if I think textually the argument isn’t there. The one thing I do think is true about this in particular is that there was also no strict platonic coding, which encourages headcanons. Clear writing, yo. It can help.

Note the word “can” not “will,” because strict platonic coding doesn’t always fix things, either. In what was probably a reaction to the outrage over Clover’s death, you had extremely blatant platonic coding of Ruby and Penny’s relationship this season leading up to Penny’s death. Ruby refers to Penny as “our friend” three different times, wherein “friend” sends a platonic message and “our” sends an even stronger message that it’s not about the two of them despite the fact that their friendship is one of the sweetest and most interesting in the show. A lingering Ruby-Penny hug then is followed by a lingering Penny-Weiss hug, then Yang, then Blake, etc. The writers went out of their way to hit people over the head with “platonic” and yet they have still gotten accusations of bury your gays and queerbaiting because people will see what they want to see in a story.

Seeing what you want to see in a story also isn’t inherently bad. People who are underrepresented are going to have to read themselves into stories because Lord knows writers ain’t incorporating them well enough if at all. It’s why “Mary Sues” are common in fanfiction, which is primarily written by people who are not straight white men: because where the hell else are we to see ourselves in fiction? So essentially the macrocosm of culture creates this problem, both in terms of baiting and the misuse of the term, and the only fix is a shit ton more good representation.

#ask hamliet #writing stuff #Anonymous

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romolite · 4 years ago

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*Important FAQ*

Aka questions that pertain to what I usually post about or stuff I don’t like getting asks about but continue to get asks about regardless.

[Insert any invasive question about my ethnicity/race]

I’m Ghanaian American. My parents were born in Ghana and I was born here in the US. I’ve seen it more on twitter and tumblr, but Black Africans don’t like me because I’m American, and black Americans don’t like me because I’m African. So I’m stuck in the middle lmao. I’m what you’d consider a First-Generation African, my parents are Continental Africans, and if I have children, they will be considered Generational African Americans.

First Generation African: A black person born in the US to parents who were born in Africa

Generational African American: A black person born in the US to US-born black parent(s)

Continental African: A black person born in Africa to parents who were also born in Africa

Non is just a prefix, black people don’t have a monopoly on the term! I suppose you think nonbinary people are racist huh?

Yeah sure it wasnt coined by black people but the context it’s currently used as was predominantly used by black people. ALL people who are not black benefit from and contribute to antiblackness, even if they are marginalized themselves. That kind of dynamic doesnt exist in other contexts (unless we’re talking about transfem + transmisogyny, but that’s something you’d have to talk to someone who is transfem about. Plus they have their own word for “non-transfem”). Using it in contexts outside of antiblackness is appropriative (Yall are annoying as fuck with the “non-aspec” “non-lesbian”(this term also has anti-bi roots btw) “non-bi” shit etc, stop it. You also can’t complain about the “replacement terms” lumping yall with oppressors when “non-x” does the exact same thing you’re so worried about. “Cis” puts cis gays with cis hets, cis disabled people with cis abled people, cis white people with cis poc, I could go on.)

Plus we’re talking about marginalized groups here. Black people are a marginalized group. Binary people as a whole are not so the term nonbinary isn’t appropriate at all. I dont take issue with terms like “nonamerican” or “nonwhite” because (obviously) whites + americans as a whole aren’t oppressed for being white or american.

Basically using "non-x” in contexts to talk about oppression bad, everything else good.

Follow up: If we can’t use non-[marginalized group], what can we use instead?

There are other words to describe the people you’re talking about

non-transfem- TME

non-LGBT- cishet, or people who aren’t LGBT

non-trans - cis

Black people don’t have a monopoly on the acronym nb! I’ll call myself nb if I want to!

At this point I dont really care, go on your antiblack crusade elsewhere and out of my inbox, I’m always gonna mean nonblack when I use the acronym nb.

And yes, you’re antiblack as fuck if you think black people telling you “nb” stands for “nonblack” is the same as exclusionists claiming “aspec” is for autistic people.

Is x AAVE?

I have a tag dedicated to what is and is not aave and how harmful it is for nonblacks to use aave given its history. I know some things overlap with southern culture but others are specifically for black people. A lot of “stan twitter” language/slang is just repackaged AAVE. No, I can’t tell you how to stop using AAVE. Don’t tell me you’re going to try to stop using AAVE, I don’t want to hear it.

Why don’t you like the n-word being compared to LGBT slurs?

Race and Sexuality/Gender aren’t comparable topics because each deals with a different history of oppression. I don’t care about slur discourse that much because I don’t even use/reclaim any myself except the n-word.

I have a problem with nonblack LGBT people co-opting black culture and struggle(like they always do), especially for trivial online discourse.

And to be honest it goes deeper than slur discourse. Every other day someone is weaponizing the oppression of black trans women, or comparing “cishet aces/aros” in the LGBT community to white/nonblack people invading black spaces (you know, something that ACTUALLY takes resources away from the people who need it, see the cultural appropriation of Black African and Blac American culture in literally any nonblack community while black people get demonized for said culture), or tokenizing their black friends to get away with something blatantly racist. And that’s not even getting into how a lot of gay slang/stan culture is just repurposed AAVE/black culture.

And I’m not gonna lie, I’ve seen this more with exclusionist accounts than inclus accounts, but it’s still not excusable for inclus to do that either. We get erased as black gay/trans/queer/aspec people up until it’s time for discourse accounts to bring us up to one-up each other

Can you give me advice on x?

Most likely not, because I’m not an expert or an advice blog. I’ll try, but don't take my word for it. I’m also tme, able-bodied, not Jewish, singlet, etc, so I’m not able to accurately answer questions about transmisogyny, (physical?) ableism, antisemitism, “sycourse”, etc.

I might be able to give advice on school-related stuff since I just graduated high school, but remember that students are not a monolith, and what worked for me may not work for someone else.

Can I follow if I’m nonblack/a minor/cishet?

Nonblack and/or cishet can follow but watch your step, minors blacklist the #minors dni tag before following

Why do you hate Ao3?

*long sigh*

I don't, I have a problem with the fact that it allows racist and (frankly voyeuristic) pedophilic/abusive/incestuous content to exist on its platform. It’s a good concept overall, but the devs are complicit in allowing “underage” and “noncon/dubcon” fics on their platform.

And there's the fact that they somehow need donations every year despite exceeding their goal several times over each year?

What’s wrong with Hazbin Hotel/The Ships/Vivziepop?

[WIP, as I have to go into extensive detail about this and I currently don’t have the energy for it]

TLDR: Viv made a half-assed apology for supporting racists (one of whom did blackface [yes the mask was used to do blackface shut up] to mock black activist) and drawing gross content. Her current projects including Hazbin Hotel are full of anti-gay/trans/aspec (Angel Dust, Vaggie, Alastor), antisemetic (Mimzy), and racist (Vaggie again, that yellow cyclops character that I’ve forgotten the name of) content under the guise of humor. If you’re into that shit, whatever, just don’t follow me and don’t whine when I make posts criticizing it.

What’s wrong with Hamilton?

Aside from the fact that it’s very obviously glorifying slave owners and made people worldwide believe the founding fathers were good people, LMM, the creator, is nonblack. This isn't his story to tell at all.

Can you tag x?

I have a list of things I usually tag because they come upon this blog a lot. I cannot do catch all tags, as I have way too many followers for that. The closest thing to that is the “ask to tag” tag when there’s something potentially triggering but I’m not sure what it is. Everything is tagged as “x tw”. If something is extremely triggering, I’ll tag it as “major tw”

Do you tag slurs?

I tag slurs I’m not able to reclaim at all (i.e., d slur, f slur, t slur) or slurs I can reclaim but are being used as a slurs. I don’t tag the n-word, as I reclaim that one. I always tag the r slur

Can I message you about something/someone?

Unless you’re a mutual, most likely no. My DMs are only open to mutuals.

Do you want to be mutuals?

I don’t usually follow back people who follow me, especially if you’re under 16 or post things I’m not interested in.

Why is it important to have byf or about?

1) So I know gross people aren’t following me. This is not up for discussion

2) So I know someone’s not speaking out of their lane, which tends to happen a lot. (i.e, someone refusing to disclose that they are tme when discussing transmisogyny, someone not having their race listed when discussing racism)

3) Some people don’t want to interact with people under 18 or over like 30 or something.

Yeah, yeah, people aren’t entitled to personal information and all that crap but I have a serious problem with people speaking on topics from a place of privilege. Not to say they can’t talk about those things, just perhaps add a disclaimer that you’re privileged when talking about these things and be open to criticism, and NOT blocking people of the said marginalized group when they tell you something you’ve said was problematic.

I also have a problem with people who are intentionally vague about their age. There’s a difference between interacting with someone who’s 20 and someone who’s 29. I don’t want to say it’s the opposite for minors but at the same time there’s a difference for saying something racist at 13 and doing so at 17, and keeping your age vague makes it harder to determine how to deal with something like that. (Not that 13-year-olds shouldn’t know better, it’s just I don’t feel whole ass callout posts and receipt blogs are necessary for someone of that age).

Also anyone under 16, I can't stop you from following, but keep your interaction limited, please. This isnt an 18+ blog but I do rb suggestive jokes from time to time

I sent you an ask and you never answered it!

It’s likely that

I never got it

You were blocked

I’ve already answered this or it’s been answered in my faq

It’s a random positivity ask (which I appreciate but not sure how to respond to those)

You were rude in your ask and I didn’t feel like answering

I forgot until it was too late, which happens when my inbox gets a lot of asks at a time.

You sent it to the wrong blog (I.e, sending asks about my ocs to this blog instead of @ochood )

Hey, the op is [insert post] is [someone on my dni]! I usually double-check myself, just to be sure.

Have you heard about [someone who is mutuals with someone I’m loosely connected with]?

Most likely, no. And unless they’re an immediate danger to someone or they’ve got my name in their mouth, I don’t care.

Do you know who [x person/group/thing] is?Most likely no. Not to sound like a hipster but I don't usually keep up to date with trends. If I do hear about something, it’s most likely from twitter or Instagram.

Why am I blocked? Check here.

Why do you continuously move mains/change URLs/update themes?

I’m inconsistent. And sometimes there are posts on my blog that I no longer stand by.

Can I tag you in posts I think I’d like?Of course!

#lite.txt #long post #faq

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playablekairi · 4 years ago

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What do people mischaracterize Riku as? I'm not that into fanon and am curious

ah... this is gonna get long, sorry. plenty of other ppl i follow on twitter have said it before me, so i don’t take credit for this, but the soriku fandom in particular has a long history of hating kairi, and their flimsy justification for it is that she only exists to be sora’s love interest and how it’s pathetic that her existence revolves around nothing but him. they then turn around and do the exact same thing to riku’s character, and make everything about him revolve around his relationship with sora. so he winds up getting mischaracterized as someone who doesn’t have connections to any of the other characters and is even straight up uncomfortable around girls, because haha gay guys hate women amiright!!

this fails to take into account that uh... riku actually has deeper and richer connections to most of the cast’s girls than sora himself does, even though fandom has no problem characterizing sora as bi. to clarify, i do not mean this in a romantic ship sense. riku’s bond with kairi is VERY important to the plots of kh1 and kh2, equally important whether you interpret it romantically or platonically, because this series is at its core about friendship, and seeing fans say “oh that’s just comp het, he actually can’t stand her and did everything for sora” leaves me flabbergasted, especially as a lesbian who has experienced vicious comp het. also like... did they not play the game or...??? but i admittedly have a rikai bias, so moving along. his relationship with naminé is important, and has been continually revisited throughout the series. i don’t think it’s being set up in a shippy sense (or, at least, i sure hope it isn’t), but i think it’s important to note that they are two people who worked together behind the scenes quite often and there is a shared history there, even if it hasn’t been spoonfed to us. the same goes with xion, riku has spent WAY more time interacting with her than sora himself has (granted, for obvious reasons, but i digress) and their relationship is a messy thing i would really like to see explored in future instalments. even looking at minor characters, fans will use his brief interactions with shiki in ddd to ‘prove’ that he’s gay and not just, you know, an awkward disaster because he’s a sixteen year old boy. even his connection to aqua gets sidelined, which i think is a goddamn shame because i would love to see him be her apprentice after all this is said and done, because noooo riku can’t interact with anyone but sora. this isn’t to say that you have to ship him romantically with any female character, that’s not what i’m suggesting at all, but to outright and explicitly say “he has no connection to these characters at all ew how could you say that this OBVIOUSLY gay-coded male character has female friends you fucking homophobe” is. downright insane.

twitter is a bad place, anon, you gotta block the right ppl or you’ll lose your mind because i know that sounds like an exaggeration but i have honest-to-god receipts. in my opinion, it’s downright biphobic, usually misogynistic, and frequently verges on this weird fetishization of mlm relationships. i think it’s often a projection of their own insecurities, which is really sad, but it’s not my responsibility to hold their hands and walk them through their internalized prejudices. i’m here to have fun.

i like riku a lot, and he’s one of my favourite characters of all time. i find him very relatable. i myself am gay. i... do not need him to be gay? i see a lot of fans act like it’s a personal attack for riku to not be 100% gay. i can’t wrap my head around it.

okay this is getting long lemme tl;dr: mischaracterizing riku as tragic gay caricature who exists to do nothing but pine after sora and has actually always hated kairi is such a bad fucking take that it makes my blood boil. kh is about bonds, particular bonds of friendship, and to insist that riku only has a bond with sora and that it HAS to be romantic or else we’ve been queerbaited for years... goes against everything the series has always been about. it’s also hypocritical as fuck that they cherry-pick evidence that kairi’s role in the game is ‘only’ to be sora’s prize to be won at the end, and then turn around and treat soriku the exact same way. i’m over it.

#sorry anon this is messy as hell #it may also be spaced super weird bc answering asks on mobile sucks #anyway feel free to drop me a dm i’m always down to get salty about the toxic underbelly of the kh fandom #....... i feel like i need a disclaimer here that i do actually love soriku lmao #i just hate fans who are like soriku-or-death #kh #i love my disaster bi son riku kingdomhearts

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sprinkledonion-blog · 5 years ago

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Another real long “I don’t like Bumbleby” post (Part 1)

So this one was a long time coming. I kept postponing it, polishing it, making it look the nicest I could, but it’s finally here. And it’s quite long. Let’s just, uh, start.

The first thing I wanna say is, I watched RWBY without interacting with the FNDM, just at the start of this year. I didn’t know what Bumbleby was, nor its impact in the overall FNDM. I was blissfully unaware of what was going on, so I dived in with a clean, open mind.

First impressions and development (or the lack thereof)

I didn’t think about Bumbleby. For those who know me, I ship characters VERY easily and I don’t really care if it’s a gay, het, lesbian ship, I can and I WILL ship them. I shipped Ruby and Penny like crazy. Ruby and Emerald made my heart jump. Jaune and Ren looked insanely cute together, and Sun and Weiss had very nice potential. And in V2, in the Burning the Candle episode, when Yang had a heartfelt conversation with Blake, and hugged her, I was like “oh?”. It was the first time I had seen Yang this vulnerable, and while I really ignored her through the first volume, this scene made me realize she was more than it meets the eye. And she chose to be vulnerable… with Blake. Oh?

Then Blacksun happened. Oh.

I didn’t like Blacksun. I still don’t like it. It’s predictable and boring for my tastes. But it has a privilege Bumbleby doesn’t: development.

I will never understand this choice. Barb said it was planned from the beginning. The question is, then: why didn’t y’all spend time developing Bumbleby? Bees will tell me it was developed, but I’ll suggest y’all to take off your rose-colored glasses and revise those interactions. I totally understand the warm, fuzzy feeling when your ship talk, even look at each other (my ships are 99% rareships so I take what I can get), but deep down you know reality isn’t like that. I’ve seen the 40-minute essay about Bumbleby; yes, you can attribute to every interaction a romantic feeling, but I can do the exact same with Jaune and Ren, and fans will roll their eyes at me and tell me it isn’t like that. The only remotely romantic interaction was the whole Burning the Candle episode. It was a nice episode.

“But Onion”, y’all will say, “are you going to ignore V3 onwards? The plot completely ties Blake and Yang together”. Same as Blake and Sun. Yes, Yang lost an arm for Blake, and yes, she feels betrayed and everything, but… why should I think it’s romantic? Blacksun is being developed at the same time, following common romance tropes that apply to the rest of canon ships, so why should I think it’s any different? Yang could have lost an arm for Weiss and I have no doubt she’d have felt the same. (I also think Weiss would have called her and checked on her every day, until Yang even heard her in dreams.)

That brings me to my second point. Let’s trust Barb, it was planned from the beginning. Then what was Blacksun supposed to be? “It makes the point that romantic relationships don’t always work and sometimes it’s better to stay as friends.” Valid point, but… Blake? Sun? Why did you keep at it? Blake, why did you kiss him on the cheek? That’s misleading, for the audience I mean (Sun already knows the script). When I friendzoned guys, and when the girls I know friendzoned guys, absolutely none of them kissed the dude on the cheek. The most they did was give a pat on the back or shoulder. Let me know if it’s an American thing to kiss guys you friendzone, because maybe it’s the cultural barrier that keeps me from understanding “yes, they’re friends and nothing more!”.

And yes, I know Sun told Neptune it was never about that. What was it about then, Sun? Were you trying to get Weiss’ attention by making her jealous? Were you trying to get Blake to paid for the food? I don’t buy that Sun explicitly flirted with her just to be friends. Else I’m an alien and it’s my second day on Earth, or Sun tried to convince himself to feel less pain. Or who knows? Maybe he really was flirting with her to be friends. Maybe he flirted with Neptune too. Writers, give us proper answers. And no, FNDM, filling in the story holes with “show don’t tell, there’s a logical explanation for it” is still fanon and doesn’t count as canon. Show don’t tell is a rule, not an excuse.

Anyways, after the whole coming and going, Sun finally leaves the scene for Bumbleby to thrive on sudden romantic interactions, which are a little late at most. It’s confusing. Yang never felt jealous when Blake showed attraction to Sun. They didn’t choose to clearly spend time together, at least with the “we’re partners” excuse. I’ll delve into this point later, but for now: we had Blacksun, suddenly we have Bumbleby, and we’re supposed to have been cheering for them the whole time. Uhm, was this supposed to be a plot twist?

Okay, I may be biased on this one, but listen to me. I don’t like this kind of plot twist. Oh, we have a heterosexual couple… OR SO YOU THOUGHT! THE TRUTH IS THAT THE LESBIANS ARE CANON! WE’VE TRICKED YOU, WHAT MADMEN WE ARE!

Get it? My problem isn’t that Blacksun isn’t canon. My problem is that the writers are using a wlw relationship as a tool, a surprise, manipulating and tricking the audience. It doesn’t feel genuine--it feels like they just wanted to cause controversy--or sell. At the end of the day, Bumbleby is way more popular than Blacksun, and a big part of the FNDM came for the bees. Don’t y’all ever wonder why voice actors don’t talk as much about other characters, or Ruby herself? The main main character?

Let’s bee honest: at this point in time, the biggest thing keeping RWBY afloat is Bumbleby.

“And what’s the problem with all that?”, bees may ask. “What’s wrong with feeding us some good bees?” Ship whatever you want, y’all. But I don’t like getting ships shoved down my throat and treated as peak LGBT+ representation when it didn’t get the time and treatment it deserved. Not all that glitters is gold, guys. (Especially Yang.)

Racism

Oh boy.

Racism is quite the great deal in Remnant… at least that’s what the show tells us. It doesn’t show it. No, Velvet doesn’t need to get stones thrown at her to show us discrimination. But, you know… if there was discrimination, I don’t think she would be in Beacon in the first place. Or that Leonardo would be the headmaster of Haven… Adam Taurus, pack your things and go home; there’s no faunus discrimination worth the fight. (Wait! Don’t go yet, you still have work to do.)

What does racism has to do with Bumbleby?, you may ask. Well, it’s Blake’s main plot. I think it has a lot to do with Bumbleby… but uh, it seems I was wrong. Yang isn’t interested in it, so I guess it’s just Blake’s problem. Until uh, Adam makes a scene, but that doesn’t have much to do with the fact he’s a faunus. It’s still pretty distasteful of a human to kill a faunus, but I’ll tackle that point a bit later.

Blake’s faunity? is very important to her. If she’s an important person to Yang, why doesn’t Yang show interest in it? She didn’t even defend Velvet, even though she could have punched Cardin in the face. She sits around sighing “It must be hard to be a faunus” and annoys Blake with a lighter. This only shows me Yang doesn’t care about Blake’s identity, and not in a good way.

I know, I know, I take the faunus issue to heart. It must be because I’m a person of color. I could talk hours and hours about the horrendous execution of faunus racism (reinforcing stereotypes, horrible analogies and really unfortunate implications), but I’ll limit myself to Blake for now.

Yang doesn’t care. She’s not one bit interested in reading faunus’ history, in asking Blake about her experiences, in thinking how she could help as a human. She’s like those people who say “I’m blind to race” as if it were a good thing. Yeah, you don’t discriminate, but you dismiss other people’s culture and background. It’s part of who we are. Some of us will take it better, some of us worse, but acknowledging Blake’s identity in this case could do wonders. That way Yang could show interest in her as a person, her motives to fight, her struggle.

But she didn’t. In fact, she did quite the contrary.

Bonus: I’ve recently seen a… hysterical headcanon. As it turns out, some bees were excited at the idea of Blake getting branded and Yang going berserk, later saving all the faunus in the mine. It was supposedly justified by “faunus needed a reason to respect her” and of course, Bumbleby angst. Do I need to point out the White Savior trope and how blatantly racist and harmful it is? Do I really need to? Considering faunus are supposed to represent the civil rights movement? Especially knowing Adam’s previous treatment? If faunus were explicitly Black, this would be… well, this is a disaster, but it gets swept under the rug. As a woman of color, this headcanon just makes me want to cry.

I think I’ll have to divide it into two parts so it doesn’t get too heavy. Part 2 is here.

#bumbleby rant #rwde #rwby #rwby rant

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elizabethemerald · 5 years ago

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Shipping Game

I was tagged twice! Thanks to both @autumnalfallingleaves and @eurazba for this fun game!

Pick your top 10 ships without reading the questions. [or if you’re a one ship dedicated blog, feel free to answer all of them for just that one, or do all the ships from one fandom, this is just for fun].

1. Jlaireby - Jim x Claire x Toby

2. Barbmura - Barbara x Nomura

3. Hammerhunter - Jim x Toby

4. Girl Power Polycule - Darci x Claire x Shannon x Mary x Aja

5. Main Protagonists - Jim x Darci x Claire x Toby x Aja x Steve x Eli x Krel

6. Stricklakerot - Strickler x Barbara x Angor Rot

7. Blinkbarbmura - Blinky x Barbara x Nomura

8. Mary x Shannon

9. Darci x Claire x Toby (Does this have a ship name?)

10. Trolldads - Blinky x Aaarrrgghh

[God I have 6 poly ships in my top ten, and not a single het appearing one.]

Do you remember the episode/chapter/scene where you first started shipping 6? Stricklakerot

There wasn’t a canon scene but when I first saw this piece of artwork (X) I thought of it as a possibility, fell in love with it after that.

What’s your favorite fanfiction for 4? Girl Power Polycule

Honestly, I don’t know that I’ve ever read a piece of fanfiction focusing on all of them. I am however thinking of writing that very story.

What’s your favorite fan art/picture for 2? Barbmura

That is...really hard to say. I think it’s going to be this one (X) because it my dream to have an amazing wedding like this.

What’s your favorite headcanon for 1? Jlaireby

I have so many headcanons for them, it’s hard to choose. I think my favorite and one I’ve written about several times is that Toby will video call Claire and Jim as “Video dates” while they are on the road to New Jersey. It’s the cutest headcanon to me.

What do you like most about the dynamic between the people of 7? Blinkbarbmura

This is one of the ships that is the most likely to absolutely lose their minds if something happens to Jim. Barbara was willing to throw hands with Merlin when Jim was hurt. Blinky straight up blew up a dude when Jim was on trial. Nomura has no hesitation with doling out punishment, and willing sacrificed herself to allow Jim to escape the Darklands. Together there isn’t a restraining force among them. So Jim gets hurt, and these three rain an ungodly hell on the perpetrator.

When 9 10 have sex is it more giggly or more serious? Trolldads

Uhhhh, I’m not to create a head canon for how three teen aged kids have sex, so how about I do Number 10 instead? I think it would be more serious. Blinky and Aaarrrgghh can be silly and lighthearted, but I feel like when its just them things are more serious.

Out of all the ships who do you think have the best chemistry?

In order of best chemistry my ships are: Jlaireby, Hammerhunter, and Darci x Claire x Toby. These kids are the ones who have gone through the most. Their relationship is started on being best friends. There’s nothing these kids can’t do together.

Which ship has the strongest bond?

I feel like saying the Main Protagonists is a little cheating, so I will say Barbmura. These two women, have a longer life experience and more in common throughout. They understand each other, understand what drives the other.

Which ship do you spend the most time reading fanfiction for/talking/writing about?

Again, in order of how much I’ve written: Barbmura, Jlaireby, and Mary x Shannon. These three ships are the focus of my entire After the Eternal Night extended universe.

Which one was your first ship?

Jlaireby. Being poly myself, I’m always all for shipping all the protagonists. Teen Titans? Lovers. The Mystery Gang? Lovers. The Trollhunters Trio? Lovers

If 6 were to break up, how would it happen? Stricklakerot

Unfortunately it would probably be because of Strickler and Angor’s history. One did kind of enslave the other. That might be hard to forgive.

Between 3 and 8, who would last the longest if they were in a zombie apocalypse?

Ok this is between Hammerhunter and Mary x Shannon. That’s a tough call. Fortunately it just happened to line up two of pair ships, rather than my many poly ships, so no unfair advantage. Jim’s biggest weakness during a zombie apocalypse would be his weakness to sun (I actually have an AU idea focusing on this idea, that I haven’t started writing yet) I think Jim and Toby would win out. They are experienced fighters with magical armor and weapons. Shannon has magic, and Mary’s no slouch in a fight, but I just think experience would win out. Or they would end up working together and be unstoppable.

Does 7 hide their relationship, and if so, why? Barbmura

I think there might be a brief period where they hide their relationship. Barbara may be unsure how Jim will feel about her dating his father figure Blinky and his former enemy Nomura, much less at the same time. I think when Jim tells he is dating Claire and Toby at the same time, she implies that she might also be dating multiple people. Jim guesses right away that her partners are Blinky and Nomura. He’s happy for her and for them. Toby and Claire are the ones to give them both the shovel talk.

What is 9′s favorite date to go on? Darci x Claire x Toby

So far in my writing they have gone on a date to a coffee shop and a funeral. Of the two they definitely seemed to prefer the coffee shop. I think staying in would probably be their favorite dates in the future.

What’s your favorite canon moment between 10? Trolldads

So my two favorite moments are when Blinky lovingly touches Aaarrrgghh’s statue in the library while Jim is in the Darklands and when Blinky is human and Aaarrrgghh is wounded by Creeper’s Sun and they are both being awkward around each other and so sad that things are weird.

What do 5 argue most about? Main Protagonists

Ok. Ha ha ha. Take your pick. There are a lot of powerful personalities here. A lot of different ways of approaching problems. They’ve all had their share of arguments about how to deal with their trials. I mean even in a domestic setting where they have a massive house in Arcadia, or in the Royal palace on Akiridion-5, or cave in New Trollmarket. There could be arguments about so many things. I love them all, but there are quite a few hot heads in this group.

If you had to pick an OTP which would you chose?

Even the concept of choosing one can go fuck itself. The closest I could get would be the choosing two. All the Teenagers and All the Adults. Every teen is dating every other one. Every adult is dating every other adult. Two massive love webs. Who even chooses?

What’s the biggest kink that 1 2 shares? Barbmura

Uh,, Still not making sexy things for teens so for number 2 instead? That’s a hard one. I don’t think its anything related to bondage or domination (Mostly because i feel like they are both doms) I think it would be “marking” the other. Scratches, bites, hickeys and the like. In her troll form Nomura has to be careful not to make the marks permanent. Barbara will cover her body in lipstick kisses, when they are both human, the fun can get intense.

Do 8 want children? Mary x Shannon

Hell yeah! Shannon is from a long line of lesbian witches. She knows a spell that can allow two women to conceive. Their kids are going to be so pretty and they’ll have a share of Shannon’s magic. Plus they will have so many magical aunts and uncles as the rest of the Reckless Club jump over themselves to take care of the kids.

Between 10 and 4, which would you rather become canon?

Which one is more likely? Trolldads. Which one would I prefer? The lesbian power polycule. Like let’s get all the ladies to date each other. It’s super gay and very wholesome. And they can all kick the asses of any guy who messes with them.

Does 2 do much PDA? And does it annoy their friends? Barbmura

Uh, probably yeah. In my story I’m writing for these two, they are pretending to date at first so they do a lot of PDA to prove that they are dating. Then when they are actually dating that trend continues. They are both in other matters pretty private people and probably wouldn’t normally, but they love each other so much they can’t help it. The PDA annoys Toby and Jim but no one else minds. Barbara is basically Toby’s mom, and literally Jim’s and they are both done with having to see their mom kiss changelings who tried to kill them.

Which of the ships would you say is the most romantic with each other?

Jlaireby, hands down. These kids who have, almost literally, been to hell and back for each other? Oh yeah. They know exactly what the others need, when to hug, when to kiss, when to give them space and when to hold them tight like they will never let go. They all go above and beyond for each other Valentines is a glorious disaster every single year. And their anniversaries (there are multiple depending on when each felt they started dating the other. None of them agree on the actual dates) are always magnificent.

How would the proposal between 5 go?

I already wrote this! (X) Like so many things, it’s a god damn disaster of a romantic night. All the planners and over thinkers interacting with all of the spur of the moments. They didn’t even mean for it to be this poly or this gay, but it sure as hell was. After everyone proposed and danced they retired to Jim’s house (it was closest) and fell asleep on the floor in the living room. The next morning they tried to sort out who had proposed to who. The relationship web became increasingly silly. A few folks who didn’t get the chance to propose to everyone they wanted to did so in the morning. Which made the relationship web even more difficult to read. They gave up when someone asked what a wedding like that would look like. I am now going to write this up!!!! This is great.

Who cooks more often in 3? Hammerhunter

Is there ever any doubt? Jim all the way.

I’ll Tag @yellowmagicalgirl, @imthegingerninja and @sombra-core Uh if anyone else wants to do this please feel free! I don’t know how many people have been tagged already.

#I have so many ships #how am I supposed to tag this?

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sol1056 · 6 years ago

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My ask box continues to fill up, and I have no answers for any of this. I’ve gotten comments that @dreamworksanimation is good about things like fair representation in other shows when it comes to disability, queer relationships, racial diversity, and just plain solid storytelling. Why was @voltron the exception?

Or you can just have the questions from my asks:

I really, really wanted [Dreamworks execs] to address the situation, to tell us why VLD took that enormous shitty turn and to apologize and do us better. But I'm guessing we already know the answer (arrogant inexperienced EPs) and I think they won't do anything about it, just try to fade Voltron to the background as it's ending and focus on She-ra, if they ever decide to apologize, they're just gonna focus on the LGBT rep as if its the worst problem of their story.

You know what, I hope someone makes an extensive list of all the morally questionable messages Voltron has sent with all its characters (Shiro & Kuron everything, and Lotor as abuse victim in particular), all in detail and shove them in their faces saying, but to you it's 2 guys in love and in a healthy relationship that is wrong, instead of ableism, racism, homophobia, etc. When I think of what the kids will take from Voltron I feel sick. But queer love is the problem here, right. I’m disgusted.

Us: can we get a happy ending too like the het people and couples in the show?

VLD: no, not a happy or even semi-happy ending, you'll get a miserable ending but get this, we're going to write the last survivor of the 4 queer characters we killed off to be totally on board with this. We'll write him and animate him as if he's happy and got resolution, growth, and catharsis and not as if he got demoted, sidelined, isolated, discarded by his family, worst of all by Keith. We'll say a monster like him can’t be a paladin.

Let’s also go back to talking about how they not only made Lotor, a victim of child abuse not to mention biracial character who grew up with everything against him: suddenly evil, be the same as his abusive "father" and "mother" (who even after remembering who he is pulled the same crap as before), took every happiness away from him and had the nerve to mock his abuse in S7?! As a child abuse survivor I'M HORRIFIED.

The messages in the Shiro/Adam scene is disgusting, this is such a difficult subject, even for adults show with plenty time to explore and be fair to both characters while being explicit about it all. I was worried: in a kids’ show? how can they write this in a way they'll get it? With barely time for it? but look what they wrote, Adam gave an ultimatum instead of support and died, then they blamed the disabled guy for everything. Message: you’re gay so your relationship and your life are worthless, you'll be miserable and alone.

For a team that is all about working together, voltron members after 7 seasons still don't feel like a family and more like colleagues from work. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It feels odd knowing that they weren't actually battling homophobic higher ups. It feels more tactical and greedy for social justice points than out of genuine desire to showcase diversity. Is it coincidence that the character they dislike the most is the one selected for this honor? As a lesbian fan i'm skeptical and angry and refuse to watch anything else by these two.

People keep trying to excuse this stuff with "Voltron is a kids' show", but you know what? There are gay kids out there. There are disabled kids out there. Much as we may wish it otherwise, there are kids out there experiencing trauma. Do we REALLY want to teach those little kids that they are broken and tainted forever and nothing good is waiting for them in the world from here on out? People need to know how damaging it is to have ZERO stories in media showing realistic healing of trauma.

The lady who betrayed them got a proper send off scene even tho she send Adam & the others like pigs to slaughter & betrayed them & caused them all to almost lose and die. Got screentime & some characterization. But sure why respect Adam that way too. I will never forget the dread I had for him when I saw he was with the fighters who were sent to die, then watched them one by one lose their lives until he too, was killed. I still feel sick thinking about it. We never even learned his last name.

I know it's been a while but I'm not over how they treated Lotor in s6. I'm from a broken and dysfunctional home and this show I watch for escapism told me I'm doomed to repeat the same mistakes of my parents, end up just like them. ... Are they even aware of the messages they send to their audience? Not all of us had good childhood like Allura.

From a chronically ill perspective, I felt downright insulted by the choice they made to give Shiro a degenerative illness. The idea of a chronically ill hero is cool but they pull the cure narrative, they don't give him a real illness, and it's just used for cheap irrelevant drama. Plus the whole "Has to choose between loved ones and goals" thing was pretty insensitive, we're already expected to sacrifice so much as ill people so the reinforcement of that was unpleasant to watch and read meta on.

Even if everyone was white cishet abled guy the messages sent to kids were awful: One who fought to carve his own path was forced to become someone else, one who suffered and fought till the end was told he’s a monster that can’t be a paladin, the insecure one will never be worthy as himself and he'll always be someone else’s replacement, one who survived genocide and suffered loss upon loss until reduced to nothing, one who suffered by his parents’ hand became like them, the whole Kuron thing. You cant brush off all THAT.

going into the new semester with the horrible messages of s7 on my mind...i’m lethargic. i have been since the “retired paladin” interview. it was bad for me to balance my mental health on the state of a fictional character, but it was really effective. Until that awful message that disabled people are helpless in controlling their own lives. I’m trying to disconnect and thrive anyway, out of spite against ableism if nothing else.

I had this horrible realization: you know how Shiro is a victim of abuse and him getting the Black Lion was him regaining the control the lack of he suffered in his capture? I think they gave him the illness and handwaved it with the clone, so as to argue for his removal from the Black Lion. They claim that the reason he wanted control was the illness and not the victimization in the Galra hands. They're essentially erasing his trauma.

Writers: so we'll write endearing multidimensional characters with many layers, we'll have them subvert stereotypes, especially those that characters like them usually are written with, ie. Keith isn't a loner nor is he angry just 'cause, but a lonely abandoned kid with trust issues due to his mom leaving him, thus has poor emotional control and anger management, struggles to connect and open up, he is the one whose arc embodies the found family theme more than anyone.

EPs: nah we want stereotypes loool

We talk about Shiro and all the ableism in his story but we don't talk nearly enough about how horrifying the message is that Keith is the one to take it all from him and kick him aside. Keith chose to discard Shiro because he's broken and useless, so he can take his place. I've been through things they both have and I find all that horrifying. S7 sent terrible messages to kids watching.

They had the chance to let Shiro overcome and be a hero. To defeat his own abuser (Sendak) except Keith takes over everything and fixes everything for him while he lies helpless on the ground without a new arm yet. They had the budget. The animation. They could have empowered Shiro. They saw how many people saw themselves in Shiro's struggle. They must have seen the concerns. And they actively chose to go against that.

The Bury Your Gays trope is even worse this season when you consider the heavy lesbian subtext with Lotor's former generals who get blown up on screen. And naturally, it's the one with a crush on Keith who turns good and survives.

Was there a minority that hasn't been screwed over? Bury Your gays was merely the last shocking straw, because the whole season was chockful of terrible messages and proved they would never treat their characters right and address stuff from before. Homophobia, racism, ableism, sexism, mocking of abuse, excusing abandonment & so on.

I’m adding my voice because I'm so, so tired. None of the characters i see on screen are the characters we got to know in s1/2. The character i most related to was beaten down out of spite for 4 seasons and now may as well be a cardboard cutout. DW and the EPs don't seem to give a single shit about how badly this season has affected people. i don't know whether to jump ship or spit fire over everything. i'm just... exhausted.

I want a transparent statement & apology from DreamWorks. I want to know THEIR stance & role in this, ALL the events that ended up with us getting a show that is not only homophobic but also ableist, racist, mocks child abuse and so much more. I want them to acknowledge & explain why they allowed the marketing team to bait fans with ship content in their videos, thumbnails and even that EP interview about shipping. I want to know who and why allowed the show to to take a worse direction in recent seasons.

I have no answers for any of this, @dreamworksanimation. If there are any explanations, any reassurances that you’ll work hard to prevent any repeat, you need to say so. The longer you’re silent, the more it looks like you’re fine with the story and all its horrific messages. Are you?

#vld #voltron #representation

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notashrew · 5 years ago

Text

In this time of Tumblr being, well, Tumblr, I think it’s good time to sit down and change the meaning of term “forced diversity.” Because Tumblr has a reputation of being over-zealous about whatever its people are standing for to the point of harrasing people for reason they do not deserve and ruining their reputation and lifes, in the name of being accepting and ““““tolerant”“”” about minor groups like LBGTA+ and non-caucasian/non-white

Let me clarifyi:

Old meaning:

Term used by usually -phopic or racist people who do not accept whenever a media creators, such as movie makers, comic artists and writers add characters, who’re other than straight and white (and usually men), in their content. Especially if the media hasn’t had these groups before for whatever reasons

New meaning:

When someone who’s not part of creating the canon content (a member of a fandom, for example) changes the canon traits of a character into something else they clearly are not, like their ethnicity or other feature that’s canonically been confirmed. Does not include headcanons about something that’s not been specified by canon, like if character’s sexuality hasn’t been named or clarified.

This is pretty much the same thing as “tumblrfying” something. I want to bring this up because I’ve seen fandoms where people take the canon character and change them into something else they clearly are not, like turning clearly white person into black even when absolutely nothing says they are other than caucasian. And I don’t mean to say this in racist way, because diversity is good and I love if there’s other characters than just cookie-cut white straight neurotypical men.

But when you’re changing a character into something they’re clearly not, you’re just making yourself look like a fool. They can be trans if not otherwise stated, they can be gay or autistic if not otherwise said!

Have your headcanons! You’re allowed!

But something like race cannot be headcanoned. But there’s people in Tumblr who’re obsessed switching them from white to other, and don’t even flinch an eye at it when they’re editing the character’s skin color to dark, but don’t change any other features. And in result the character ends up looking really, really bad design. (If you want to have fun with this, remember to change other ethnic features too if you please. The design makes more sense then)

I’ll make an example of Team Fortress 2 because I’ve seen this a lot in the fandom lately and how people present it makes me hate the fandom for it

(source: http://www.teamfortress.com/gargoyles_and_gravel/)

(edit source: fagfortress2 in Tumblr)

First of all, that’s absolutely horrible edit. You can’t just slap the different color of skin on the person and call it a day. It doesn’t work that way and you’ll have horrible thing in your hands in the end. It’s ugly and looks very unatural. Not to mention, you made a character who already is black even darker. His ethnicity won’t change to any more diverse by making him darker when he already is black. Like seriously.

Now the problem is not that very should not have diverse, non-white-straight-male characters. This is what I mean by changing the meaning forced diversity. You are on purpose changing the features and traits of a character into something else in the name of diversity.

And like I said, yes the character can be non-cis-het because you can’t see those things from the outside. But then there’s this: People who start a riot, if a lesbian character is given a male partern in shipping manner, suddenly change a male character into gay - and very often explicitly gay and gay only- even when in canon they have had a woman partner or love interest. Now that doesn’t mean they’re entirely straight, bi/pan/poly people exist. But people will terminate you if you don’t agree with their headcanon of the character being explicitly gay. If you want to agree with canon, but want to make them be non-straight, make the character bi/pan/poly!

And the worst part about this whole thing is? The fandom, who wants the community being open and welcoming and friendly for everyone, they surely do bully and harras and mock people who don’t agree with something they made up themselves. You can’t just decide “hey it doesn’t say like this in original source, but I believe this character is [insert minority] and if you don’t agree you’re -phobic and horrible person!!!!” and feel like you’ve done the good work. I see a lot of actually good and sweet and very accepting people getting harrassed and bullied by people who claim to be fighting for good and more accepting environment, ruining the lifes and well-being of content creators who don’t deserve it. Just because you came up with an idea and others who didn’t know about it are now toxic ones. When in reality it’s you.

I’m pretty sure most of these people who make such edits and then make blacklists about Tumblr users are just trolls and they should be ignored. But they can be just as harmful as people who take the Social Justice Warrior title too far, to the point of rather harming than fixing anything. They speard filthy rumors of good artists and people don’t even do fact checking, sending more hate and shit on them and ruining their possible good future as artist, or even their mental health. For rumors that aren’t accurate at all.

It’s disgusting to see people even make BLOGS and DISCORD SERVERS specifically to hate and mock people. Seriously. People create platforms to hate something they could just avoid by blacklisting, blocking or simply ignoring and looking away. And then they blame the artist for making them uncomfortable by whatever reason. Like it’s the basic rule and etiquette of Internet: If it has a warning of something you don’t want to see, don’t look. Blacklists exist to keep your dash clean from content you don’t like. Block users you don’t want to see. Unfollow someone making the content appear on your dash. Blacklist the tags or possible trigger words. If you don’t like it, don’t look. Don’t throw the shit on someone who created something else you don’t agree with. You have all the power of using the Internet and you choose to complain about seeing something you could avoid of seeing? Shame on you, not on them.

No, I’m not saying there shouldn’t be more diverse characters. No, I don’t say you should stop making other than white cis-hets. No I got absolutely nothing against other groups of people.

I have a problem with those people, who harras others for sake of their own headcanons and in need to be more superior than others in the community. You can have headcanons. But remember that they’re still headcanons. And people don’t have to agree or think in the same way as you do.

And that’s why I’d like to start using term “forced diversity” in it’s new meaning.

#welcome to my rant talk #in this essay i #but seriously fuck these people and you ever even considering my friends being -phobic about anything when theyre not #im disgusted with tf2 fandom's shit right now #not pointing at you actually good people youre great #but shame on those who do this shit #i needed to steam this out #im done #tf2 #i want to tag the fandom now because thats where im seeing this shit altho im sure its a common problem elsewhere too #pep talk #tumblr #sjw stupidity

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takaraphoenix · 6 years ago

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Odd question but what do you think of the “fujoshi” community? Harmless fun or harmful fetishization?

Oh, oh I’m getting a headache just reading that question…

No, it is not fetisihzation that is utter bullshit. No it is not harmful, that is even more bullshit.

The people accusing fujoshi of fetishization do the exact same thing. They write the exact same stories and draw the exact same fanarts about the exact same gays. But because the creators in one case are females, they are the devil and they are fetishizing.

By every definition of the word, I am a fujoshi too - a female fan of mlm ships. Yaoi or shounen-ai, if you wish to continue using Japanese terms.

What fujoshi discourse boils down to is a group of people being misogynistic crybabies and not allowing females to have genuine interests.

The term “CIShet woman” is thrown around like a slur in this discourse - disregarding that not all fujoshi are CIS or het. I, for my part, am a lesbian. It’s literally only about those people’s hatred for women, really.

Because the exact same content is totally fine if it is made by a gay man.

They don’t even realize how ridiculous that is.

If we would ever only get representation if it gets written by a person from the group in question, we would literally barely get anything.

Most gay stories were written by straight men and women. Most stories involving characters of color used to be written by white writers. Someone has to pave the way - and it is the group that is most “accepted” to do the job. In the case of writing for Hollywood, those would be the white men. Does that mean we have no right to see movies about women or characters of color or non-straights? No, no it does not.

As a lesbian, I can still enjoy Willow and Tara as a lesbian couple on Buffy even though they were written by a CIShet man. I still get to enjoy Elena’s coming out story on One Day at a Time even though the show was not written by a lesbian.

So if you, as a gay man, can not accept seeing a mlm couple written by a woman, then the problem is not the woman who invests her time into writing this, it is with you.

Especially since we are talking fandom here.

We’re not even talking Hollywood. We’re talking about authors on AO3 and fanarts on DeviantArt and on here. We’re talking about fans, people who love something and dedicate their own time into creating something for free, something that you and everybody else gets to enjoy without getting any form of payment for it.

So instead of being grateful for the content, those people insult, belittle, bully and even threaten the creators.

THAT IS WHAT IS HARMFUL.

A woman creating art or stories is and can by definition not be harmful, because it is fiction about fictional characters and it is on the internet where you can just avoid it if you do not agree with it.

But those people who made this into a “discourse”, they are the ones being harmful because they mistreat people who do something they enjoy.

People crying that “Those women enjoying what I am enjoying and what is clearly aimed only at me because it represents me, they are ruining the thing for me!!!” are the exact same type of whiny babies as the men who started crying this exact same sentence when women started showing interest in nerd culture - you all do remember that, right? The uproar against female fans in the MCU and DC and Star Wars and Star Trek culture because how dare women show any interest in these things that “belong” to men. All this shit about “fake nerd girls” that female fans of those shows and movies have to put up with, just for being female and interested in this thing.

Women aren’t allowed to have interests.

That is literally what this boils down to.

95% of canonically gay anime and manga were written by fujoshi - most of the things those antis consume was created by fujoshi.

The most ridiculous thing I ever saw on the topic was an anti making a post that fujoshi aren’t allowed to go and see Love, Simon because it is not meant for them, it is meant for gays.

It is not.

I, as a lesbian, wish to see this movie about a gay teen romance, because heaven knows I won’t get my lesbian teen romance any time soon on this big scale.

And the wildest part? Love, Simon was literally written by a fujoshi. By the very thing they hate - the CIShet white woman. The very kind of person they want to forbid from seeing this movie. That is the author of the book.

It’s a ridiculous double-standard and it baffles me that so many people on this hellsite don’t seem to grasp that.

Representation only matters if it is written by the minority represented and no one else aside from said minority is allowed to enjoy this.

That is literally like saying white people and non-black POC aren’t allowed to watch Black Planther or make fan content to it because it solemnly belongs to black people? Aren’t allowed to see Coco because it is clearly only aimed at Latinx people…? Oh yes, it is very clearly created for this group of people and from everything I’ve seen on this site, they’re the ones who get the most enjoyment out of it and out of the representation it brought with it - but that… that doesn’t mean that no one else is allowed to enjoy this.

I saw Coco five times by now and I’m white as fuck and I highly doubt that Latinx people in the fandom will give me shit for writing fanfiction for it, or accuse me of “fetishizing” their culture just because I’d write fanfiction for this movie. Which I am, literally working on a fic for that, hence the example.

Just because something is aimed at a certain group does not mean only they can enjoy it.

It’s a ridiculous concept of double standard that is being used in the fujoshi discourse.

I’m a woman, but I’m still allowed to consume media aimed at men - holy shit, aren’t we literally trying to break gender norms these days, like, seriously?

I’m a lesbian, but I’m still allowed to consume media featuring straights and gays and bisexuals and everything else under the rainbow. It’s not like I am only allowed to watch lesbian shows… because then I would literally have nothing to watch.

I’m white, but I’m still allowed to consume media featuring and focusing on characters of color. Because holy shit, I also don’t want the all-white casts anymore, it’s intensely stale and boring and outdated?? We are literally glad that we finally broke this kind of writing when it comes to representation in this aspect, so how could you want to revert back in the case of representing sexualities…?

If everyone is only allowed to consume media that focuses on representation of themselves, then you are really living in the stone-ages. They do know that this led to Hollywood and TV shows being predominantly white and male, right?

Fujoshi are female fans creating content for other fans.

Fujoshi discourse is overgrown babies crying about women having interests, using bogus claims like “Stop fetishizing ME!!!”.

No one is fetishizing you, unless you are a male celebrity and reading RPF about yourself. Those are literally the only people who can cry out about personally being fetishized. Celebrities who are being directly lusted after and have smut written about them.

Someone writing about something that includes part of your identity does not and will never personally fetishize you.

Hentai anime about big boobed girls? Does not personally fetishize me just because I’m a busty girl. It’s gross as fuck and I don’t like it, but I can just avoid it and I don’t feel personally victimized by its existence.

That is fetishization though. Women with waists that should break under the laws of physique and boobs trice the size of their heads. That is fetishizing women.

If fujoshi would be fetishizing gays, then they would be with such emphasis of their glorious cocks and mighty balls or some shit.

Essentially 50% of the things fujoshi create are soft. Fanfiction, fanart, doujinshi - fluff, about cuddling, two characters holding each other, that 50k slow-burn coffee shop AU you read last month.

Writing about a healthy, slow relationship is not and never will be “fetishization” - and it sure as heck will never be fetishization of you personally, because it isn’t about you.

Now to get back to a point I mentioned earlier.

Not every fujoshi is CIShet. For me, personally, writing about mlm relationships and reading about them was dealing with my own homosexuality - because we don’t get female gay love.

I could walk into any bookstore and thanks to Japanese fujoshi authors, I could just buy a manga about two teenage boys, discovering their sexuality and dealing with it. No sex involved. Not a single manga I own written by a fujoshi is even yaoi. Sex doesn’t have to be in it. Like I said, most content is impossibly soft and fluffy in nature.

And it helped me come to terms with my own sexuality, with the fact that it is possible to not be straight.

It’s harder to write about wlw ships than it is to write about mlm ships by sheer math alone.

Look, say, at the Avengers - you had one female character and five male characters in that lead team. There wasn’t even an option to write about a wlw ship, while you have ten possible mlm ships. So, what are you supposed to write about as a woman? Natasha masturbating for 20k words, or what? Because I, as a woman, am not allowed to write about men…?

Look at the Voltron fandom, where you have five male characters and two female… but oh my, one of the females is literally 15 while the other is an ancient alien; not the kind of ship I sail, so again no wlw ship to write about, but just as many mlm options as in the above mentioned.

And that is a pattern.

Franchises - anime, manga, cartoon, TV shows, movies, books - are dominated by male characters. Most lead characters are male. They are more fleshed out, better developed than the rare female characters.

Even nowadays, the male characters are still mostly more dynamic and more interesting than the females, because the females are either the Mother Character, the mere bland Love Interest who doesn’t get developed beyond being a love interest to the male lead, or the Badass Female whose only real trade is that she can kick ass, but real personality mostly still comes short.

So yeah, it’s virtually not a surprise that fanfiction authors - male and female alike - mostly latch onto mlm ships and write and draw about them, because there are statistically speaking more male characters in fandom and more mlm options than wlw options.

And if you forbid women from being interested in male characters and their relationships, if you forbid women from participating in fandom, if you forbid women from creating for the things they love…

There would be no fandoms.

Literally.

Fanfiction started because women wanted to see Spock and Kirk fuck. While there are many male creators by now, fandom has always been rather dominated by women, who created and set the path.

So we are good enough to put you where you are now, but now we are forbidden from participating in the very thing we created? Literally, the thing we created - because most of your boyslove manga and anime were created by fujoshi. So you are allowed to consume that but you do not allow the people who are like the author to also enjoy it…? Really?

And then there is also still that accusation that, somehow, “we” evil CIShet women get off to fetishizing “you” poor gay men.

I’m ace. I don’t get off to the smut I write. I write the sex scenes because they are part of the relationship, just as I write the wooing and getting together. It ain’t about “getting off”. It’s about the enjoyment of writing.

And while I, personally, don’t identify as a fujoshi because I don’t like the term, others do - and others have a right to. Just like I would never call myself a stan of anything, because I don’t like the term - but by definition I most likely do stan a lot of characters and shows and things.

I think a big problem is that fujoshi, translated, means “rotten woman” and somehow the butthurt crybabies who feel personally victimized by fujoshi see that as meaning something bad.

Yes, the words rotten woman do not exactly scream “Oh, this is a nice thing!”, but those people don’t even bother looking up the meaning - because words have meanings, connotations attached to them. And meanings change. Just because something seems to “say” one thing if you do a literal translation of it does not necessarily mean that the word also means the same thing that said literal translation offers. That is not how language works.

And at its very core, all that fujoshi means is “female fan of mlm”. The term itself was coined during times where liking gays and being gay was even more scandalous than today. You were rotten if you liked gays, a disgusting, rotten person - and yet still those women weren’t stopped. They created.

They created things that future generations got to enjoy. They created a pathway.

And if people today want to call themselves fujoshi because they identify with the term, then absolutely no one has a right to judge them, has the right to assign a different meaning to that term.

How do we, today in this day and age where we are all about claiming our own identity, have people out there who think they can dictate the identity and interests of others?

How is the gay community so rotten that there are people not allowing women to have an interest and condemning them for the label they chose for themselves…?

That is the disgusting and harmful part of the fujoshi discourse, really.

#Fujoshi Discourse #Misogyny #Misogyny in Fandom #Anonymous

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alternativeproject · 7 years ago

Note

Im here to ask u about ur hot takes on alvin and the chhip munks plz i must hear ur thoughts all i never see enuf criticism of that franchise !

i’m a chipmunks critical blog now, change my url to critical Theodore.Thank you for asking so that i know have a reason to go on, at length, about my very strong opinions on this franchise that nobody wants to hear lmao.

[Also fair warning this started off as a joke but rapidly turned into like actual shit that i’ve spent too much time thinking about.]

In my opinion the only good chipmunks tv series was the alvin show (1961) and everything after the 80s revival (beginning with chipmunk punk 1980) is tacky 80s cheese. The 80s series is overly sweet, complete with heavy handed end of the episode morals. Alvin like trains this disabled kid and learns a lesson, common trope but always nauseating. It’s not even funny its just boring and cheesy. The movie, the chipmunk adventure is racist as hell, like really intensely racist. You got savage chipmunk eating natives, misogynistic arab (?) boy ruler who wants to take britt as one of his wives, and just stereotypes across the board. In one of the songs they’re listing countries they’re gonna visit and they just say Africa. Just Africa. The whole damn continent.

I have a lot to say about the chipettes because I really want to like them but so many bad decisions were made about them. They’ve got these bullshit comp het ships with the boys, garbage. They’re designed to be more human and appealing than the boys so they’re colored lighter with human hair. They sing a song called “gettin lucky” to a room full of snakes in the chipmunk adventure?? And you can’t even chock it up to it being a gross 80s cover because it’s an original song written for the movie. There are so many panty shots in the chipmunk adventure? So many and it’s so gross. They’ve also got this weak girl power idea just tacked on for brownie points.

I have a whole spiel on girl power in media. It’s the basic entry level baby feminism that says girls can do anything and just stops there. There’s no critical thinking involved its just a cash grab. That’s not a problem specific to the chipettes that’s just a common trope in kids media and it sucks. Personally, i think the most feminist thing media can do is center stories around girls (all kinds of girls) being human. That’s it. Being weak, being strong, asking for help, succeeding, failing, facing oppression dead on, or just acknowledging the way it affects girls’ lives in weird subtle ways. That 80s girl power bs just doesn’t get anything done. It’s too easy to digest.

The whole franchise is just a cash grab at this point. I mean 4 cgi films, live shows, another tv series, albums, and toys. it’s a mess.

And of course brittany’s a lesbian.

My new and improved chipmunks canon involves all these chipmunk kids being gay, dave being irritable but loving and also gay, redesigning the chipmunks and chipettes as cartoon chipmunks, and hiring a new voice cast for the non chipmunk characters. I’m sick of Janice’s weird nasally voice for every other character. Hire someone else please I’m begging.

#weedbrownie #this is a lot longer than anyone wanted #aatc

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terresdebrumestories · 7 years ago

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stop. sexualizing. the. friendship. of. real. people. (anti-gross Scömìche bullshit forever). it baffles me how you all think they approve of this stuff because of a little teasing.

Youknow, I was gonna go for a flippant reply but you haven’t beenquite as insulting as the previous anon I got on the topic, and Ifigure putting my thoughts on this in order can’t hurt, so you geta long answer under the cut.

Preface:while I have written a couple of RPF fics before, including a coupleof shippy ones, I am not involved deeply with the RPF community andintend to keep it that way. Also, I will not get into the question ofwhether or not Scott Hoying and Mitch Grassi really are dating ornot, because I believe it is ultimately irrelevant to the discussionat hand and to the writing of RPF fic in general.

(Inany case, it’s completely irrelevant to my shipping, and I tend tothink the contrary would demonstrate an unhealthy levelof investment, but that may just be me.)

Withoutfurther ado (but with apologies to the tag for the unnecessary drama)let’s get on with:

Fanfan’sthoughts about RPF

So.‘Gross Scomiche bullshit’. There are two ways to read this:either you’re implying that RPF is gross in general and onprinciple (which I disagree with) or you’re saying that implyingthat these two guys, who are both part of the LGBTQ+/MOGAI/Queercommunity, could be in a romantic relationship is gross, which I alsodisagree with except with a lot more passion.

I.‘RPF is gross!’

Thisassumes that I (can’t speak for other RPF writers, obviously) writeabout Scott Hoying and Mitch Grassi as actual people, the way I could(but personally wouldn’t) write about a neighbor or a classmate.I’m writing about them as characters, by which I mean I am writingabout the fictionalized version of their persona they present throughtheir work with Superfruitand the various videos, interviews and live chats they’ve given asmembers of Pentatonix.

Here’sthe thing, we don’t actually know anything about what they are aspeople. What we see is a facsimile designed to imitate their lives,but whatever we see—and this is even more the case now that theyhave actual notoriety and actual PR to think of—is always releasedwith the knowledge that thousands of people will see it, analyze itand judge it, meaning it is notthe same as what they’ddo when unwatched.

Howmuch the two differ, I have no idea and, in any case, I don’t thinkit’s my business. They get to decide what they put in the publicsphere, and they get to decide whether the stop line moves, how far,etc.

However,once they put something up on YouTube or wherever fans can see it, itbecomes part of this semi-fiction that are public relationships. (1)I mean, I get why people don’t want to dig into that aspect offandom. Some people prefer to keep more distance with thenarrative—because, again, itisa narrative—because they can’t dissociate it from the peoplebehind it, just like some people can’t dissociate a movie characterfrom the actor who plays them, and that’s fine.

Ijust find it disingenuous to pretend like people shipping or writingRPF is the causeofthat dissociation when it is inherent in the very principle ofcelebrities sharing with the public. (Whether or not thatdissociation is a good thing or pronounced/obvious enough is aninteresting conversation, but it’s neither here nor there.)

Now,I won’t pretend there aren’t any problems with RPF. The fact thatcelebs get tweeted/mailed/forwarded links at RPF isa problem.They have a right not to be unwillingly exposed to stories writtenabout their fictional personalities, which I know can feel weird. (2)

Ialso acknowledge that sometimes things go far enough to weird meout—conspiration theory exists in every domain, apparently, and itlooks odd everywhere. There’s also the…oddly entitled tone thatsome anti shippers such as the anon I got a few days ago, who soundedalmost offended that Scomiche wasn’t an actual thing, like it was abad show plotline. (3)

Thatbeing said, I would also like to point out that I have, as of yet,never seen or heard of an artist sending links to their works(especially not their erotic work) to celebrities themselves. In myexperience, celebs getting linked to RPF usually comes in threeflavors:

A friend/acquaintance of them somehow found the RPF and sent itforward, presumably out of a ‘this shit is hilarious and they haveto see it’ sentiment

ATV/radio host went on a ‘I need something to laugh at and thesestupid delusional fans are the perfect target’ binge

Theceleb themselves went ahead and read fic, but those are usually awareof fanfiction beforehand, imo, should know better than to go lookingif they’re not ready to handle the levels of whackadoo-ing. (4)

However,none of these problems are inherently tied with the fact that thesubjects are actual people: they come from how people treat the ficthemselves. Actors and actresses have similar problems with beingshown fanart of their characters (which have their faces so I doubtthe weird effect is entirely absent there) and fans who write regularfanfiction are also mocked for what they do.

Soif you don’t like RPF, honestly, it’s your prerogative. You couldalso not have a problem with RPF but find certain fics gross, whichis alsofair. Heavenknows I’ve noped out/away from enough fics not to blame people whodo the same.

ButRPF isn’t inherently gross, any more than regular fic is, and whilethere are things to pay attention to in writing it (just like thereis in any kind of fictional writing) I honestly think the systemicproblems lie more with how people handle it than with its existenceas a whole.

II.‘Ew why can’t two guys just be friends?’

Thesecond possible reading of your ‘gross Scomiche content’ commentis that you basically find the possibility of them having a romanticrelationship gross which, well. You do realize how saying that to alesbian isn’t exactly the most polite thing, right?

Imean, honestly, I don’t want to spend hours on that part. Therehave been thousands upon thousands of words written about how the‘let them be just friends’is often mostly a newway of saying ‘keep thegay out of myface!’. Now, maybe you are LGBTQ+/MOGAI/Queer person, in which caseI apologize for the assumption of lingering homophobia.

Honestlythough, the only pairings that get more ‘ew, just let them befriends instead of making them all gay’ than white males are peoplewho are even more marginalized (lesbians, trans people, women ofcolor, you name it) so forgive me if I’m not exactly receptive tothat line of thinking, especially given the fact that, again, ScottHoying and Mitch Grassi are both somewhere on the rainbow spectrum ofsexualities.

Toput it succintly, that second possible reading of your commentstrikes me as either really bad wording or a frankly gross sentiment,and while I’m hoping for the former, the fact that I’ve literallynever seen or heard of similar comments for het-RPShipping makes mefear it’s the latter…and if it really is the latter I don’treally have any answer to the sentiment than a giant, rainbow-coloredfist-shaking.

(1)As an FYI, when I say PR is a fictionalized version of the truth, itdoesn’t only apply to celebrities. For example: two days ago, thenew French Ambassador of Cambodia visited my workplace. We werewarned several days in advance, and the whole place got scrubbedfloor to ceiling in preparation. Then, about 10-15minutes before thelady came in, one of my bosses made sure none of the teachers wereeating in the teachers’ lounge and told us, verbatim ‘pretend tobe working’.

Whenthe Uber-boss and the regular boss noticed I was looking at a boardgame in the corner, they hurried to explain that I teach children soyeah, this is totally work.Which it was, the ambassador just didn’t get to see that I was alsowatching Superfruit vids in between preparing activities for my kids.

Whatwe presented that day wasn’t a completefiction: I really am a teacher for kids and we really do work in theteachers’ lounge. But also we eat, we banter, we have fun, none ofwhich fits with the accepted workplace fiction of everyone being 100%at work all the time…which is why we had to create a facade. It wasclose—very close—to reality, but it still wasn’t real.

Celebritieswho are paid a lot and work very hard to make us think they’rehaving so much fun it’s almost like their don’t work, and alsolike there’s nothing they’d rather be doing than to meet a bunchof us and have the same four or five conversations over and overagain, probably get a bigger difference between their actual livesand their public persona. But I digress.

(2)Fun fact, @talysalankil once got an anon ask that shipped ustogether (I can’t remember if it was a friends ship or a romanticship) so I can confirm the thought of seeing stuff about beingshipped with someone myself was a strange one. I’m fine with it aslong as I don’t see anything (if there is even anything to see,lbr, it’s not like I’m actually famous, even on Tumblr) but Ialso acknowledge that I would probably not feel very comfortableabout seeing that potential material.

Thatbeing said, imagining there were any content to be found about me(again: highly unlikely) all I have to do is not go see it andeveryone can be on their merry ways because no one gets hurt.

(3)Full disclosure: my personal opinion, given the recent material I’veseen, is that these boys are either really, really unsubtle abouttheir love life and its current state, or they’re pushing the PRgame quite far indeed. Neither outcome is going to prevent me fromwriting RPF about their fictionalized lives if I damn well want to.

(4)Like, for example, I haven’t watched the Superfruitvid where they read RPF yet (I’m going through their channel inchronological order, sue me) but I do know Mitch mentioned being ontumblr all the time so I’d be really surprised if he didn’texpect at least someweirdness going in. Sometimes you get more than you bargained for,it’s true, but basic self preservation is a thing, guys.

#Scomiche #Writing Process #RPF #Comment Response #I should probably turn this into a tag #f: Scomiche sex friends to lovers #Nonners #My Posts #Assbox Adventures

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