#liking a book that has an asshole author =/= agreeing with their problematic shit!

[hazbinbabbling4ever]

Did we all collectively forget about Dæmons or did Philip Pullman do some problematic shit or

Spirit Animal is racist.

Patronus was invented by a transphobe.

I think it’s time we all suck it up and say what we mean: fursona.

[serendipitous-magic]

You know what, fine, I’ll say something about it. Because as an author and a librarian, I feel pretty damn qualified to.

If we expunged every single creative work on earth that had any kind of harmful or hurtful content at all, there would be nothing left.

Nothing.

There’s not a single thing on earth that isn’t problematic in some way.

Before you jump into rage mode, what I’m not saying is “Whatever, people can do whatever they want in art and it doesn’t matter!” Because… obviously not. (Just look at me ranting about how Joss Whedon treats women in his works. But don’t get me started there.)

No one is out here saying “antisemitism is fine” or “racism is fine” or “homophobia is fine” or what-have-you. Similarly, no one is out here saying “it’s unnecessary to hold authors and other artists accountable if they’re shitty.”

What I am saying is, yes, books and other works of art have harmful content in them. Pretty much always. Give Tumblr 10 minutes and I guarantee you they could find something problematic in Blues Clues. However, the internet has cultivated something really unhelpful where these echo chambers build, and everything ever is either black or white. No gray.

I.e.: purity culture.

If something isn’t absolutely irreproachable in every way, it’s heinous.

Except it’s not.

(Let’s make a disclaimer: there ARE works and artists that are just total pieces of shit. Say, Might is Right by “Ragnar Redbeard” (nice Asshole L.A.R.P. name, Arthur Desmond). We can pretty reasonably toss that whole crock of bullshit and the bull that produced it. We’re talking about normal literature here, not like… literal Nazi screed.)

If we forbade anyone from ever participating in or enjoying things with harmful tropes or stereotypes, well, goodbye literally every 80s movie and everything before it. Goodbye like 99.9999% of movies, actually. Goodbye every classic book ever. Goodbye Stranger Things. Goodbye Batman. Goodbye Holy Bible (that’s a WHOLE other can of worms). Goodbye… literally all media, ever. We’d lose all of it. Especially the stuff from like… any past decade. Is that all useless? Is there nothing good or useful about any of it? Of course there is! Because nothing is 100% good or 100% evil. (Again, we’re not talking about Nazi screed or the like, that’s a different ballpark all together.) So are we saying that a work with both good and bad in it, even if it’s mostly good, is absolutely useless and evil? It just doesn’t work when you try to apply it to real life situations outside of a Philosophy 101 classroom.

And furthermore, what I’m also saying is, people are perfectly capable of reading (or watching, or whatever) a work that has societally hurtful elements in it, and using their brain, and saying “hm yeah that’s a pretty outdated harmful stereotype,” or, for example, “the fuck, Rowling.” And then moving on. It doesn’t mean the reader agrees with the sentiment expressed there. You could even - gasp! - read a work with harmful stereotypes and enjoy the work as a whole without enjoying or agreeing with those stereotypes. And that really, really shouldn’t be a controversial statement.

To assume that people aren’t capable of reading or even enjoying an entire work without agreeing with or supporting *every single theme and message in that work* is frankly ridiculous. We’re not toddlers. We have rational thinking. It’s honestly kind of insulting to humans in general when you assume they’re not smart enough to form their own opinions and recognize when something doesn’t line up with their morals or ethics.

Furthermore, if people only EVER read and enjoyed things that met someone’s (say, your) standard of what’s 100% good and pure, those people would have a pretty anemic set of morals and ethics. Because guess what? People need to be exposed to ideas they don’t agree with in order to figure out “hm, I don’t agree with this.”

The sterilization of media will only ever lead to a morally and ethically stunted population.

This is why we don’t take Republican propaganda off the shelves at the library. Yeah, it’s bad! But if people are never given the chance to interface with these harmful ideas, they’ll never actually form their own opinion - or even form the ABILITY to form their own opinion. Morality is a *skill*, not an inherent trait. Take away any chance to exercise it, and you’ll end up with pretty weak morals, even if they’re the “good” ones.

Going on a witch hunt for people who enjoy fiction that has problematic elements is useless. Especially because it shuts down conversation. It shuts down the possibility of any growth. If two people had a conversation like “oh hey I see you’re reading Brave New World, there was some fucked up shit in there,” and they had a discussion about what parts of it were societally harmful and what parts of it were thought provoking or impactful or whatever, they both come away with a better understanding of their own morals, the literature, and the wider world. That would never happen if the conversation stopped at “You’re not allowed to like Brave New World because there’s some fucked up shit in there.”

And finally, refusing to participate in Harry Potter fandom won’t affect Rowling in literally any way. She’s already richer than the dreams of avarice. Same with, like, Marvel. If this was, say, one woman doing online publishing through Amazon, and she turned out to be kind of a gross terf, then sure, don’t buy her stuff, don’t encourage her by applauding her books or whatever. But that’s not the situation. And even if it was - see above.

If an individual chooses not to participate in a fandom because they don’t agree with the creator’s ethics or morals, great! You do you. However, it is not your place to demand that everyone else make the same choice that you do.

Punishing people for enjoying Harry Potter, and demanding that they banish it from their lives entirely, does not affect Rowling being a terf, or whatever else. If people want to fight racism, transphobia, antisemitism, homophobia, etc. in media (or outside of media), good news, there’s a ton of ways to do that. But getting pissed off because people still enjoy a fandom that’s like 98% not those things is… not gonna do shit except make people upset. Yeah, it sucks that the 2% of grossness is there. And we shouldn’t ignore it. It deserves to be acknowledged and held to task. But pitching out the entire series and the entire huge fandom surrounding it is a child’s way of dealing with this. And it won’t have any meaningful or lasting effect on the actual core issues.

TL;DR: You’re right, harmful shit like racism in media *should* be held accountable and scrutinized and fought - but the way to do that is not to expunge the whole work from the earth. People are thinking, intelligent creatures. We can enjoy a work without supporting each and every single theme and message in it. And if people *don’t* have the maturity to do that, they probably don’t have the maturity to safely navigate the internet alone.

There’s a LOT more that could be said here but frankly I’m tired of typing.

Inbox person, I probably sound mad and/or intense, and it’s not directed at you. It seems like you come from a place of confusion or hurt, and this isn’t an attack on you. It is, rather, a very tired and frustrated response to the increasing purity culture witch-hunt the internet has been staging (and yes, I know you disagree with that phrase being used here). You happened to trigger thoughts on a much larger topic. I’m not answering your asks because I don’t want to seem like it’s a “fight,” and I don’t want to potentially enable anyone to come bother you. But please give this some thought. I doubt I’ll convince you because this is a VERY hot topic for many people, with emotions running very high around it, and opinions are pretty polarized. But I’ll be happy if I can introduce an alternative perspective, at least.

[cassandraclare]

I'm sorry to hear that your hard work was leaked but I was curious about what happened. I hope the person faced consequences because that was a very selfish thing to do leaking your work like that :(

I haven’t taken action against the person who leaked the book. I know who they are, since they uploaded the page I signed for them, and I was able to match that against my records. 

I haven’t refrained from taking action because I feel sympathy for them. I don’t. It’s beyond shitty behavior to receive an early, signed book as a gift, and to then leak the entire book online. It’s a shit thing to do to the authors and an equally shit thing to do to other fans. However, I don’t want to put myself (and Wes) through the exhausting, grim and expensive process of legal repercussions. It doesn’t mean what this person did isn’t horrible, and it doesn’t mean they haven’t cost the entire fandom any chance of there ever being an early contest giveaway like that again. They did. There never will be. There will be no ARCs of Chain of Iron, either, and you can thank them for that, too. 

Part of what makes piracy such an issue for authors goes far beyond the individual assholes who upload and distribute and translate stolen books. It’s that the whole system is set up to make it incredibly difficult for us to do anything about it. Publishers do little to nothing to prevent piracy, and authors shoulder the entire burden of searching out and reporting illegal copies of their books. And even then, we’re dependent on whether or not the reported website feels like complying with copyright laws or not. Twitter is incredibly slow to respond, Tumblr is about fifty-fifty on bothering at all. They’re legally required to take action, but they also know that the effort of doing something about it if they do not falls on exhausted, overburdened artists who often can’t afford to follow up with a lawyer’s letter.

And like, I get being broke and wanting to read books; there were a lot of books I had to pass up reading when I was broke (I will be forever grateful to the library system of New York and Brooklyn, which is how I read books at all from about 2001-2004.) I was broke enough that I slept on a bare mattress because I couldn’t afford sheets, but I’m pretty sure if I broke into Bed, Bath and Beyond and stole a bunch of fitted percale bedding I wouldn’t have encountered much sympathy if I got caught. 

I talked about this on Twitter before, and I’ll say it again here though I know it will make very little difference: pirating books doesn’t just hurt the author of those books. It hurts everyone at the publishing company, where the margin of profit is razor-thin (and yes, publishers should do more to protect themselves against piracy; I agree there); it hurts bookstores, especially indie bookstores (I remember doing an event at a store that told me, sadly, that they were likely going to have to close because people “came into the store, looked at the books, took notes, then went home and pirated them.”) It hurts libraries, who rely on circulation for funding, and the shutting down of libraries hurts people who actually can’t afford books.

Now, I know is no way to talk people out of piracy; the internet has normalized it, and besides, people will generally do the cheaper, easier thing — you can’t talk people into not doing something they want to do by telling them it’s wrong, in my experience. They’ll find ways to justify it, whether it be that they can’t afford the book or it isn’t yet available in their language or that they find the author “problematic” and this is the way they’ve chosen to punish them. 

The reason I put “problematic” in quotes is because yes, of course you can read and enjoy work that has problematic elements. Pretty much everything has some element that’s going to be found problematic by someone — which is exactly why deciding that it’s morally excusable to steal from people you think are creating flawed work is more than problematic. Holding creators accountable for their work means critiquing that work, not stealing it.

I listen to a lot of political podcasts, and some of them review work by extreme right-wing politicians etc. who have written books that the podcasters find morally despicable but wish to, or need to, review and discuss. Since they don’t wish to give money to the authors, they buy second-hand copies or take the book out of the library. They certainly don’t steal, translate and distribute copies of the books because they genuinely do not like them and do not want more people reading them. That’s what it looks like when you have an actual moral problem with a book or author. 

However, running multiple fan accounts for a book series, naming your internet identity after characters from that book series, and talking endlessly about “your favorite parts” and how this is “your favorite book” entirely invalidates any argument that you’re doing this because you think the books are bad, evil, etc. If you claim a book is actively homophobic or racist but are so desperate to read it that you’ll steal it, so excited about it that you’ll share that stolen copy, so obsessed that you’ll illegally translate a whole book and provide that stolen translation to as many people as possible, and so dedicated to the fandom that you’ll name yourself after the characters in the books and write poetry about them, I have to tell you: the last thing that looks like is that you actually find the books problematic, regardless of what you say to the contrary. It looks like you like them but don’t want to pay for them, because in fact, that’s the case. (Either that or it looks like you’re really into racist, homophobic books, and making sure as many people read them as possible, which is your problem.)

One of the issues I have with piracy is that it teaches you to hate creators. You have to hate them, because you’re doing a fucking awful thing to them and you have to justify it. This results in lying about creators — about their process, their translations, their research — as if somehow, even if they were bad researchers, that would justify widespread theft. (It doesn’t.) Those who steal books wind up in a headspace where they are obsessed with the content of the books, and entirely unwilling to accept the reality that those books were created by a real person that they’re really harming. It encourages the mentality that I didn’t create Jem or Magnus or Will or Cordelia: they came from some kind of sparkly outerspace planet and I was just lucky enough to get to write down their adventures. It invalidates the hard work creators put into what they create, and in fact, erases their very existence. The internet attitude toward creators is already incredibly toxic (especially if they’re women, LGBT+ and/or BIPOC) and the feeling of entitlement to free content, and vicious hatred toward those who aren’t providing it (even though a lot of creators, me included, provide a great deal of free content) contributes to that. Genuinely, if you’re stealing someone’s work, the least you could do is not also be an asshole about them. (Or pretend you’re Robin Hood. He stole from the rich who had taken property and goods from the poor, and returned that stolen wealth. He didn’t steal from artists and independent bookstores and use that stealing to benefit himself and his friends. The idea is actually kind of funny.) 

 I understand there is a pressure to be up to date on the books that are being released so as to participate in fandom, and I do get that. Unfortunately, piracy has real consequences that stretch beyond just hurting me and Wes. Because LGBT+ books are pirated at such an incredible rate, and we’ve definitely seen that with TEC, I am left wondering if there will ever be an actual Spanish translation of TEC, or whether the publisher will decide not to bother because it’s already been so thoroughly pirated in Spanish. I have to wonder if there will even be a third book of TEC at all, or whether publishers will feel it isn’t worth doing. And I have to wonder why the people who create this situation so often have usernames that include Jem or Magnus or Alec or Cordelia or Julian or Tessa. What an incredible misunderstanding of those characters, to imagine a world in which Will Herondale or Magnus Bane or James Carstairs would approve of stealing books and harming writers. And why name yourself after a character who absolutely couldn’t stand you? I don’t know. I don’t get it, any more than I get hating someone who provided you with something you claim is your favorite book. 

That was a much longer answer than you were probably expecting or hoping for, and I know I’ll get yelled at quite thoroughly for writing it. Writers always do, when we engage with the issue of piracy. I know most of you reading this acquire your books honestly; most of you are not like this at all. But like most things on the internet, a small amount of people really do have the power to make things pretty rotten for everyone else.

[persepholline]

I've read that article about the romanticization of the Darkling and while I absolutely understand people who are pissed off/sad and I agree that it's shitty, I find LB's attitude towards Darkles stans very funny in a "girl what are you doing" sort of way because it's so petty like I've never heard of a bestselling author writing a portion of their fans into their books as a crazy cult before, it clearly hit a nerve

I'm new to the fandom but the feeling I get is she wrote something problematic ten years ago and became very embarrassed about it afterwards so she turned on the fans that liked it as a way to absolve herself. Especially since fandoms in general have become a lot more focused on discussion of what constitutes healthy/acceptable relationships to write about. And in a way I get it I had a huge Twilight phase in high school and afterwards I was super embarassed about it because of how problematic and cringe it was. But now with distance and more maturity I'm able to both still see why it was problematic and also why I was drawn to it (mostly the very unhinged representation of female desire) and like...it's really not the end of the world and no it never made me believe that breaking into somebody's room at night to watch them sleep was actually ok in real life lmao. This feels so obvious to me but apparently it needs to be said.

(More under the break this is turning into an essay, I've been thinking of this a lot recently)

And of course it's good to have these discussions about how historically romance tropes have echoed social dynamics of men's shitty behavior being romanticized and excused. But these days they often are so simplistic and focused on chasing clout that they become this weird new puritanism and moral panic about oh now women are reading novels it's going to make them hysterical or something

So you have these weird assumptions that you can't like a character and also be critical of their actions, or enjoy certain parts of a character and not others, or wish they were written differently and like them more for their potential (which I'm sure stings a bit for an author lol) - it assumes that if you like a character it means you would approve of their actions in real life, or that people just stupidly reproduce whatever they see on TV. That tendency to treat fictional characters like real people is the thing that actually worries me, to be honest, because it indicates a lack of distance and critical capacities regarding how stories are used and received. But people - fans and authors - are so scared of being called out as problematic and harassed for it that they're going to shy away from any nuance.

And yeah I think that it's good that standards of what constitutes an ideal relationship are evolving and becoming more feminist and communicative and all that and we definitely need more of that. But not all fiction has to be aspirational! Sometimes you just want to read about fucked up shit, because it's cathartic or fascinating, even healing at times because with fiction you are absolutely in control and can choose when to close the book. Toxic relationships in fiction can have an appeal specifically because they go to extremes of feeling that we don't want to go to in reality, in exactly the same way as horror movies or very violent action movies - which I don't see a lot of people besides fundamentalist Christians argue that they turn you into violent psychopaths (and that feels very obviously sexist). And for women, who are often taught growing up that love is the purpose of life, the "saving someone with your ability to love" can be a power fantasy in the same way that being a buff superhero who saves the day with their capacity for incredible violence can be a power fantasy for men. Still doesn't mean those women are going to fall in love with actual murderers or that those men are going to start beating up people at night. And love is scary, and weird, and weirdly close to horror at times, with all the potential for loss of self and being vulnerable and overwhelming feelings and potential for being horribly hurt and it should be possible for stories to explore that without anybody screaming about how this is going to Corrupt the Youth or something

And I mean I get it LB wanted to write a cautionary tale for teenagers, but it just did not work for reasons a lot of people have already written about - the fact that the Darkling is the leader of an oppressed minority and is the only one with a real political agenda to end that oppression in the first trilogy, the fact that he helps Alina come into her own power while her endgame LI is someone she keeps herself small for, that she's shamed for wanting power after growing up without any, a generally very wonky conception of privilege, and a lot of other stuff with yucky regressive implications to the point where stanning the villain actually feels liberating and empowering which is a surefire sign that the narrative is broken (unless it's a villain focused story lmao). But of course that Fanside article makes almost no mention of the political dynamics, it's all about interpersonal stuff which is an annoying trend in YA, there are those massive events happening in the background but it's made all about the feelings of the hero(ine) ; war as a self-development quest (which is kind of gross). Helnik is kind of an example of this too - I like them, I think they're fun ! But Matthias spends a big part of the story wanting to brutally murder Nina and her kind, and he mostly changes his mind because he finds her hot. Like you don't feel there is some sort of big revelation that his entire moral system and political framework is completely rotten ; it's all better because of feelings now.

As a teenager that kind of sanctimonious bullshit would have annoyed the hell out of me ; I read those books in my early twenties and I found the ending so stupid I wouldn't have trusted any message or life lessons coming from them. And I liked reading/watching dark stuff as a teenager, as a way to deal with the very intense inner turmoil I was dealing with - and I turned out fine ! Meanwhile I've seen several times women in very shitty relationships being obsessed with positive energies and stories ; they were so terrified of their life not being perfectly wholesome they ended up being delusional about their own situations.

Like personally I think the Darkling is a compelling, interesting, alluring character and also a manipulative, murderous piece of shit and that Alina should get to punish him (like in a sexy way) - but he's also the end result of centuries of war, oppression and trauma and reducing that to "toxic wounded boy" feels kind of offensive ngl ESPECIALLY since the books don't offer any kind of systemic analysis or response to oppression beyond "the bad guy should die" and "now the king/queen is a good guy our problems are solved!!!!"

In Lives of the Saints, we see how Yuri is abused extremely badly and almost killed by his father, and so when his father dies when the Fold swallows Novokribirsk, he thinks the Starless Saint has saved him. Later in KoS/RoW he's turned into this fanatic who explains away all the Darkling's crimes. The other followers talk about how the Starless Saint will bring equality for all men. Then the Darkling comes back and actually thinks his followers are pathetic, which feels again like a very pointed message to his IRL stans. Which is absolutely hilarious to me. Like oh no, if he was real he would not like you and think you're pathetic ! Yeah ...but he's not. Real. Damn right he would not like the fics where Alina puts him on a leash. I'm still going to read them. What is he going to do about it, jump out of the page ? Jfjfjjdhfgfjfj

Anyway I think the intended message is "assholes will use noble political causes for their own gain and to manipulate people" and "being abused/oppressed is not an excuse to behave badly." Which. Sure. But that's kind of like...a tired take, honestly ? A big number of villains nowadays are like this ; either they've been bullied as kids, or they're part of an oppressed group, or they have "good ideals but too extreme". This is not surprising because a lot of mainstream heroic narratives present clinging to the status quo as Good and change as chaotic and dangerous. And like sure in real life people often do bad shit because they're wounded and in danger. But if you want to do a story like that, you have to do it with nuance, talk about cycles of violence, about how society creates vulnerable people to be exploited, about how privilege gives you more choices and the luxury of morals, etc. The Grishaverse does not have this level of nuance (maybe in SoC a little bit but definitely not in TGT). So it kind of comes off as "trauma makes you evil" and "egalitarianism is dangerous" and "if you're abused/oppressed you're not allowed to fight back". And ignores the fact that historically, evil generally comes from unchecked privilege.

I guess my point is that there are many things I like about LB's writing, she knows how to create these really exciting character dynamics, and the world she has created is fascinating. But these stories are not a great starting point for imparting moral lessons. And her best characters tend to be, at least in canon, the morally grey ones. I hope one day she'll be at peace with the fact that she wrote the Darkling the way she did and leave his fans alone but in the meantime I'm just not going to take this whole thing seriously I'm sorry

[dragynkeep]

Everyone always hyped up got and told me oh it's so awesome! The political intrigue, the sex, the hot people, the battles you gotta try it, since I'm a big fantasy fan.

Meanwhile it still has: a patriarchal society, racism, sexism, slavery, rape, fucking child marriage, incest of all things. Like what it's supposed to be fantasy! You mean to tell me that even with dragons, and magic, and prophecies we still have to deal with medieval bullshit that has no business leaving the middle ages?

I love fantasy because of the escapism, adventure, and larger than life story. Unlikely allies because of a common goal or destination, learning cool fighting moves or magic, saving the kingdom because it's the right thing to do. I don't care for the white supremacy littered throughout. But even with all of that aside being aro ace I don't care for graphic sex or in your face nudity. I care even less for the human squabbles for power what about the giant magic army coming focus on that! No . . . still only giving a shit on which asshole has the right blood or money to sit on that chair? Fucking really?

That's not even getting into the author's inability to finish his own damn books. What two bit hack doesn't even have the ending to their books properly written out? How is he not finishing and meeting deadlines? How is he published most other authors would lose their book deals for less.

I've never been interested in the series but the gratuitous violence and problematic elements without criticizing them just turns me off so hard. Forget the reputation that the show ending is the worst of all time.

it's so disturbing because the tv show actually added on more rape & gratuitous violence than what was there in the books; sansa's entire ramsay storyline was transplanted from jeyne poole's in order to torture her character into being "stronger" & drago / dany's marriage, while still fucked up, was wholly consensual from the off. there was no need for dany to prove she needed to have consensual sex by "taking" rape enough times to learn to "be strong."

the idea d&d had of rape making a woman "stronger" was something that absolutely should've had them dropped from the show at day one, not given a further seven seasons to make a bigger mess.

grrm is definitely the model of a procrastinator & i absolutely don't think we're not getting the next book before his death; which is an absolute farce. like you said, other authors would've & should've been fired for less but he skates by on the weight of his name & a tv series that went down the toilet faster than a taco bell shit.

i won't deny that there are intruiging elements to both asoiaf & got, i've read & watched both but like you said, the gratuitous violence, rape scenes & so much worse have all turned me off. especially with that rotten tripe ending for my favourite characters & how the actors couldn't even pretend they liked the ending, let alone agreed with it.

[beclynn-herondale]

Thoughts on Cassandra Clare ? Are u pro cc ?

dear Anon,

So I am gonna start this out with I wouldn't say I am pro CC,

do I enjoy her writing? Yes

Do I think she does ignorant and hurtful things? Also yes

Do I think it is okay to criticize her In a non hateful way? Yes, i don't approve of hating on someone that's something you can never take back, nor do I support pulling people apart cause let me tell you it fucks people up I have experienced this it is one of the worst things you can do to a person, you make them doubt everything about themself and for some you can fuck them up mentally and it can lead to more extreme measures.

Criticism doesn't need to be hateful or mean, it can be civilized and educational instead, in my opinion we need to educate and explain why it's wrong not hate them or cancel them that's not gonna solve anything, it's not gonna erase what the person said or did, you're only causing more pain and hate and let's be honest there's enough of that already.

Do I agree that she doesn't handle her POC well? YES

Do I acknowledge she said some islamophobic things? YES

Do I agree she may fetishises? Yes

Do I acknowledge she mistreats her wlw ships? Yes but also I do understand that LGBTQIPA+ rep is harder to get in cause publishers can be assholes and the world is still not as accepting of LGBTQIPA+ as we wish it would be.

Do I think it's wrong that most of her POC are half white? YES, and she needs to acknowledge it and give better representation.

Do I think her incest fetishization is wrong? YES, but also I wish you all would stop bringing Clace into this I have my reasons on why I love them but also keep in mind they were teenagers who Valentine manipulated and tried to take away what they loved most, he saw how much they loved each other and used it to try to destroy them cause he knew how powerful they are together and that together they could take him down, but also he saw that he was losing control over Jace and an abuser can't stand that, I know cause I have abusers and everytime I do something that's out of their control they do something to get it back. I saw through it from the beginning and maybe that's why, but it was never a story about incest, was some of it wrong? Yes but also they loved each other so much and you can't just stop loving someone with the snap of a finger, if you did then It wasn't really love, it would be lust, so the fact that Jace and Clary never stopped loving each other proved how much they did love each and that it wasn't lust. Listen I'm not saying it was right or that CC handled it well but I am saying that I get Clace and Valentine knew what he was doing, also CC is who you should be criticizing, as you can see Clace is actually later on a healthy couple and we need that for Heterosexuals just like we need healthy mlm and wlw relationships, the world is so negative right now so why do we have to make it more negative?

So instead of focusing on the bad parts (I'm not saying to not acknowledge them cause I do, but i also acknowledge people grow and change ) let's focus on the good parts as well like how much they love each other, Jace showed me that I can heal from my abusive past and that I can love and be loved in return. They showed us to never give up. Jace showed us Family isn't Blood. Clary showed us that you can be both a warrior and still be whatever hobby you like. Even Simon said in City of Heavenly Fire that they are a team and that's development and in my opinion what a relationship should be. Emma Carstairs said that they are girlfriend and boyfriend but also best friends again an important part of a relationship. Let's acknowledge the fact that Jace went from and Ignorant, angry, broken, mentally unstable boy to as he says a happy man and he isn't who he was at 16, he has grown a lot and it's time to acknowledge it, you wouldn't hold other characters to their past mistakes so why do you do it with other characters? And yes in order to acknowledge the growth we need to acknowledge the mistakes but I have done that myself and I love Jace cause he wasn't perfect, he wasn't automatically a the best person, he had to grow, he had bad qualities and that is human, and I don't think we are gonna hate people for being human? Jace showed abuse victims they can be happy and heal. And honestly I hate how I have to explain personal things for people to understand how important he is to me, and I am tired of hearing how I should find a different character to love this much cause Jace is shit, well I will say I am very much like Jace so i guess I'm shit too then, but also I have sadly tried to not but I can't help but love this character cause he came into my life when I was not great and I needed him and he's always there for me in my darkest moments along with Clary, I could be having a panic attack and guess what I see fanart of Clace and I feel better and it calms me down. Also of it weren't for Clary's bravery I would have had something really bad happen to me recently but because I remembered how brave Clary was and still is I made the brave decision and saved myself from bigger trauma then I already have. Recently Clace is one of the only things keeping me going. So just be respectful and try to understand. Also again it wasn't incestuous. Also when you say Jace is terrible it makes people like me who love him and relate to him feel evil and like we are terrible people for liking him, at least for me it does, i am constantly doubting myself after someone told me Jace is shit and a terrible person. Keep in mind when wording things what you are saying and how it will effect others. (Please be civil about this and remember that we all interpret the story differently, I saw things a lot of people didn't see) also we need to keep in mind that TMI Gang were all teenagers except Magnus and Alec and Alec was a young adult at the time, when they all went through all that stuff and had to save the world, they had to things Teenagers shouldn't have to do and make decisions they shouldn't have had to, and let me tell you as someone who has had to do things as a teenager that I shouldn't have had to, it sucks and you don't know how to feel about it or how to act about it.

Do I think some of her POC are stereotyped? Yes, but also some people like the characters for that, and some see other things in them that. I am no way saying your opinion is invalid, you can be offended and hurt by the stereotyping and feel unrepresented, that's your right. And I really do hope she does better in the future, cause I want POC to feel as represented as i do, and you all deserve it.

No CC's books are extremely important to me, but I can also acknowledge she can be problematic, but everyone can in their own way, and sometimes we need to be called out. So we should criticize her in a none hateful way. Hate Breeds Hate.

And do I think she should give her LGBTQIPA+ couples explicit scenes? Yes but I can understand how CC may not want to mess it up and maybe she is trying to handle it right, and publishers don't always allow LGBTQIPA+ explicit scenes. CC did have to fight for Alec to be Gay in the time she was writing him. Am I hoping for better rep? YES!! And maybe TLBOTW will give us that but I don't know.

Also even if you don't agree or don't understand, Listen To POC When They Say Something Is Racist! Hear their opinion and take their opinion and thoughts into consideration.

I would also say to stop whitewashing characters and find models, actors/actresses, singers, that are the same race and ethnicity and use them for reference for art and edits, and writing descriptions in fanfics and books. Educate yourself on it and ask people, get other prospectives.

But no I wouldn't say I am Pro CC but i am not Anti either, I acknowledge her mistakes and ignorance, I acknowledge her mishandling of POC and wlw and her problematic ways. But I also enjoy her books, I can criticize the author and still love the books.

So in conclusion Listen to POC when they say something is Racist and take it into consideration. Acknowledge that you may not know why someone loves a character, and respect them. Try to be more sympathetic towards others. Remember you can criticize the author and still love the books. Educate yourself and try to learn. Try to understand others. Ask yourself if what you are saying is the right way to be going about things. Just try to be nice and respectful and listen, try to see where the other person is coming from.

( again like I always say you don't have to have the same opinion and you don't have to agree that is your right however you can be kind and respectful and civil)

( I will add more later )

[citrineghost]

Humans Are Historically Known for Being Terrible

Hi I’m here with an opinion today. Let’s see how many words it will take for me to adequately get it across on this very fine 15th of January

I personally believe canceling things from the past* is fruitless, pointless, and accomplishes about as much as censorship does

*We aren’t talking about shit like nazi Germany, let me elaborate further

So, as I occasionally do, I have seen a post on my dash today criticizing something historical that people are ‘problematically partaking in.’ That thing today was the wellerman sea shanty due to its ties with colonialism, slavery, and so forth. 

I’m not going to dive into this specific example, because I don’t know enough of the details and am not interested in going to find them out because I’m not planning to defend it or its history, so there’s no point. I learned what I needed to know from said callout post and it’s enough to work with.

To me, it is important that we remember that people, in general, have been historically pretty terrible.

There’s colonialism, there’s slavery (of all kinds, including chattel), there’s thievery, murder, genocide, sexism, the murdering of queers. There’s lying, manipulation, propaganda, and so many more things that I couldn’t possibly list them all. I’m not saying that everyone was equally shitty. I am aware that, especially in the most recent couple hundred years, white people, especially Western Europeans and Americans, have been pretty Shite.

Am I excusing them for their actions? Absolutely not. I think it is always important to bear in mind the way they played a part in cultures’ growth, death, and, ultimately, development from one year to the next.

The reason I’m pointing this out is because the result of people being historically shitty is that most, if not all, of our historical content, our history, is steeped in horse manure. 

There is not one thing you can enjoy from centuries - even decades - passed that is not here because of something inhumane, unjust, or otherwise terrible.

The only thing keeping us from canceling every other historical thing that we enjoy is our lack of awareness of how each thing ties into the whole mess.

So, we’ve learned that wellerman was sung by slavers and thieves and colonialists. What about that nice little folk song from uh, idk, Ireland or something? Let’s take this metaphorical song and ask the question, “who wrote it?” The truth is, for many folk songs, we just don’t know. There is a very very good chance that 90+ percent of nice, soft folk songs about lying in the grass or feeding chickens or baking bread for your spouse were written by racists, sexists, abusers, homophobes, and so forth.

Does that make it wrong to enjoy that song about lying in the grass and looking at the stars? I don’t think so. No one is profiting off of you listening to it, regardless of who wrote it. It’s hundreds of years old. Do you even know the name of who wrote it?

Remembering that times were different may not absolve something of its wrongdoing, but it does provide us context.

We have to allow ourselves to admit that most, if not all, historical things, came from or benefitted from atrocities or injustices that we would not stand for today. That’s just how human progression works. Frankly, if people 200 years from now don’t look at US, CURRENTLY, and think we’re terrible assholes, I am actually very concerned by that. 

The nature of humanity is to get better and better over time and to build a world and a society where we don’t feel the need to be controlled by greed or to consume unethically. The problem is, it takes time. It takes lots and lots of time. Would it take less time if certain people weren’t terrible, terrible people? Yes it would. But they are, and so it doesn’t.

The fact is, human progression and improvement will never reach its end because, as things improve, our perception of our past actions will change as well and we will begin to realize that what we were doing wasn’t acceptable and is no longer necessary nor excusable. 

Hate Jeff Bezos? Look around and see that 90% of people still buy from Amazon, because it provides the only affordable source of many products for people who don’t make enough money under capitalism to buy from a small business.

Hate Bill Gates? How many of us are willing to switch to Linux to quit using Microsoft? Speaking of Microsoft, they own Minecraft. Do we stop playing Minecraft?

Think Steve Jobs is a terrible person? Why are people still buying iphones, ipads, and macs? Why don’t we stop buying those so that he and current CEO, Tim Cook, quit making billions of dollars?

These are just a tiny amount of examples, using big names. We also must consider, if you have 100 books on your bookshelf, how many of the writers of those books are racists, homophobes, sexists, or abusers? I guarantee you it’s a non-zero answer. The thing is, an author who’s relatively nobody is not someone who gets canceled. No one knows anything about them but that they wrote a neat work of fiction and it’s a good book.

The question is, should we be expected to quit buying, consuming, and enjoying things made by problematic people?

In some cases, the answer should be yes. If someone is currently profiting massively from people consuming their media or products and people are ignoring their atrocities, that person could end u making millions or billions of dollars despite being terrible, which is something that undoubtedly affects all of us, economically.

In the other cases, the answer should be, do you want to? If you’re not comfortable with something, you should, of course, stop consuming it. If you can ignore the thing, you might not need to bother. And, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re excusing it.

If we look at all of humanity, even in the present day, mathematically speaking, 50% of people are more bigoted and terrible than the rest. There’s no other way for it to be. Less than 50% would be a mathematical fallacy. Does that mean we only consume content from the better 50%? Does that mean we rigorously research producers and creators and their personal lives only to decide it’s not worth the risk of ‘contributing’ because they have no trace online except for a private Facebook account? Is them having a Facebook account enough of a ‘sin’ that it’s not worth it to buy their book?

This brings us to the censorship point

If you know your history, you know that censorship is a nasty thing. When one person decides who or what is unethical to consume from, they sometimes seek to get rid of that thing so that no one has a choice - so that no one is Allowed to consume that thing.

This has led to book burning, the destroying of decades and centuries of research about sexuality and gender. It’s destroyed religious texts. It’s destroyed content created by women that painted any single man in a bad light. It’s destroyed progression.

“But I only want to get rid of the bad thing that everyone agrees is bad!”

It doesn’t matter. If you open the door to censorship for yourself, those who wish to use it for worse reasons will become just as justified, in their own eyes, to do the same. You’ll have Christians saying it’s okay to get rid of gay content because it’s objectively wrong according to the bible. You’ll have conservative parents burning books with complicated topics like abuse and assault because they don’t want their children to have access to anything controversial or complex like that.

You cannot open the door to censorship for one group without opening that door for everyone. And that is why we do not censor things.

The question then becomes, but what of the people consuming that media? Even if it’s not censored, consuming it still makes someone bad, right? 

Not necessarily. People consume problematic stuff all the time - things considered objectively bad. However, people don’t always consume said media because they support it being normalized in the real world. For example, fanfiction or books with rape in them may be something a victim reads to cope with their own past or present. A book with abuse depicted may actually make a young teen aware that what they’re going through is abuse. Content largely seen as ‘problematic’ can often play a part in solving the problem it portrays.

Then there’s historical, problematic media. Now, this is an area where I feel things have actually been OVER complicated.

Because everything historical has some tie to injustice, there is no ethical way to consume it. 

There is no ethical consumption under passed time.

So, how do we judge whether something should or shouldn’t be consumed? It is my opinion that something historical should stop being consumed and become shunned when its meaning is well-known enough and its message is still pervasive enough that it is actively causing problems.

For example, we generally try not to consume content when it is made by someone who is a known nazi. This is because nazis are still a problem in our society, presently. We have antisemitism all over the place. Therefore, we cannot let the message become that it is okay to be a nazi by way of us treating nazis like normal people and allowing them to succeed in society without consequence.

However, there are certain problems that are no longer particularly prevalent or which are agreed to be terrible on a large enough scale that consuming the content does not necessarily imply you believe it is okay. For example, if you look at literally any media from the 1800s or which is placed in the 1800s, you will see a lot of casual sexism and gender roles. Should we despise that time period because sexism was readily available at every turn? Should we refuse to enjoy 19th century fashion or culture because it had problems? I think not. I think it would be pointless to refuse to consume, read about, or otherwise engage with the 19th century. It wouldn’t change the past and it isn’t going to somehow undo the progress we’ve made on women’s rights. 

As a matter of fact, if someone merely suggested that perhaps the people of the 19th century were right for forcing women to wear long dresses and darn socks all day, they would be laughed into oblivion and called a shitty, sexist incel (which would be correct).

Does enjoying media from or placed in the 19th century mean you support sexism? I certainly hope not, since I enjoy it very much and know a lot of progressive people, women especially, who do enjoy that kind of thing. It is common sense enough, at this point in time, that people don’t generally believe that the sexism of the 1800s was acceptable. I am not going to see someone watching a period drama and assume they desire for our present-day social laws to be like what’s portrayed. That would be a ridiculous assumption. However, I could not assume the same about someone I saw watching openly antisemitic content. I would quickly wonder if they’re an antisemite/nazi/white supremacist.

So, what about that one thing I heard had a sordid past?

Listen, if we’re being honest here, most things from history have a sordid past. Sea shanties? You bet. But then when we talk of sea shanties being steeped in colonialism, we have to look at the bigger picture. What about pirates? Pirates were, by and large, a huge contributor to slavery, theft, colonialism, and murder. Does that mean enjoying media with pirates is glorifying or contributing to slavery, theft, colonialism, and murder?

(I’m about to talk a lot about pirates but this can be applied to anything that was historically bad but is no longer prevalent)

Pirates of the Caribbean is only a movie, but pirates did once exist and they did kill people. They did raid ships of merchants and tradesmen and they killed them and stole their goods. They took many good men from their families and even killed working children aboard the ships. Does that make enjoying pirates in media a contributor to these things? No. It doesn’t. We are looking at a dramatised, cleaned up version of the original piracy. I think most people are aware that pirates, in the real world, are bad and harmful and should not be supported. That doesn’t make pirate media any less fun in theory, and under our own terms.

Then we arrive at our perception - because most of this does come down to perception. When you watch pirate media, should you enjoy that, are you able to divorce yourself from their actual history enough to enjoy the media? If you can, you might enjoy it a lot. If you can’t watch a movie about pirates without thinking the entire time about how terrible they were and how much damage they did, then pirate media just isn’t right for you. But, it doesn’t mean you should attempt to take it away from others. Your opinion and perception of pirate media is not the global perception.

I have to ask, do you think others view it the same way you do?

When you read that question, you may be wondering what exactly I mean. What I’m asking is, do you believe others view that media with the same “clarity” that you do? Do you believe they understand the atrocity of real pirates and Feel that the entire time they watch the media and still enjoy it anyway?

Perhaps that’s why your response to someone enjoying something you feel guilty partaking in is, “these people all must not care about the real-world damage pirates did. The fact that they can watch this (despite sitting here and feeling the same things I do) makes me sick.”

However, if that is the case, you must remember that for a lot of people, the awareness of real world consequence is suspended during dramatised depictions of it. It doesn’t mean they have forgotten about the real-world consequences of piracy or that they don’t know it at all. It just means they are choosing not to think about it in that light while consuming media.

There is also the assumption that people must not know about something when partaking in it. You may think, “How can they enjoy this media? They wouldn’t be able to stomach it if they realized what really happened with pirates.”

In many instances, you would be correct. A lot of people are ignorant to what pirates have done in the real world. If you told every ignorant person the truth, maybe 5% of them would then become turned off by pirate media, and the other 95% would keep the truth in mind and then divorce themselves from it to continue enjoying said media.

There are realities that it is safe to divorce yourself from, and there are those that are not.

Is allowing yourself to enjoy dramatizations of pirates making you ignorant to present day conditions? Not largely. There are still pirates today, but not nearly enough for the average Joe to need to take them seriously. Those who need to know about them and do something to stop them are aware.

However, it is not safe to divorce yourself from, for instance, the holocaust. Divorcing yourself from the holocaust and seeing it as merely a dramatic setting with dramatic events and not a present-day real-world problem is exactly the kind of thing that leads to young teens being sucked in by white supremacy and naziism as well as what leads to many average conservatives believing the rise in white supremacy isn’t actually real or is not a big deal. They have distanced themselves so far from the real-world atrocity of the holocaust that they have forgotten it was real and that real people, like them, were contributors. They don’t want to believe that everyday people had any power in it and that it was tiny acts of willful ignorance that made concentration camps so successful. 

All in all, there is a different answer for everything we consume.

Want to know if something you’re consuming is okay to consume? Ask yourself: is this produced by someone who is contributing to present-day conditions? If the answer is yes, quit consuming it. If the answer is no, ask yourself, does this media make me uncomfortable because I’m aware of its roots? If the answer is yes, stop consuming it. If the answer is no, it’s probably fine. You are most likely not doing any damage, so long as you are aware of what is wrong with the content and are not using it as grounds to perpetuate harm. 

If, when thinking about something problematic in an old piece of media, you cringe? You’re on the right track. If you feel inclined to make excuses for it or justify the wrong in it, it’s time to step away and reevaluate why you feel the need to do so. If you’re doing so because you feel guilty for consuming it, you need to realize that it is actually more harmful to make excuses for the wrong in order to justify your consumption than it is to admit, “Yeah, this media is problematic and contains a lot of sexism, but I still enjoy it for its other qualities.” It is better to admit that you enjoy something problematic than to spread the message that what is happening in it is okay.

Some of you may be thinking, “Or, just stop consuming problematic media.”

I think in many cases, especially recent media, where your consumption has an effect on production, this is true. However, for media that is no longer being produced, I will remind you that most things have something wrong with them - yes, even pretty recent stuff.

Supernatural kills off women constantly, queerbaited the fuck out of its viewers, and sent a huge character to fucking mega hell for confessing his love.

Scrubs has no end to its sexism, transphobic and homophobic slur usage, and other problematic content.

V for Vendetta glorifies and shines a heroic light on a character who kidnaps and tortures a woman for what appeared to have been weeks or months so that she would be forced to understand his trauma and “no longer be afraid.”

Star Wars has incest, the producers/directors abused Carrie Fisher and sexualized her as a young teen, and probably a lot more that I’m not aware of because I haven’t seen the movies nor read the books.

I don’t even need to start on shows like Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Community, That 70s Show, and so many more. Almost every popular piece of media has something worth canceling in it. There is no point trying to curate your media consumption to only unproblematic content, because it simply can’t be done.

Curate where it makes a difference. Sigh heavily the rest of the time. Make yourself aware what and how things are problematic. Put critical thought into how your consumption is capable of supporting or perpetuating a problem and how it is not. Make informed decisions.

Do not feel guilty if you are unable to flawlessly live up to the standards of purity culture. None of us can - not really.

[bondsmagii]

hey do u have any more thoughts on the whole twitter "activism" thing, and/or dealing with bigoted authors, content creators, etc. in general? i've been having trouble articulating my stance on it and i thought you would probably have some intelligent points to make. it's cool if that's not something you want to delve into, though!

I try to have absolutely zero thoughts on Twitter activism and social media activism in general if I’m honest; it’s all mostly pointless, and with very few exceptions it seems to just be busy-work for people who won’t actually go out and do any real activism. I tend to listen to pretty much nothing I see people saying on Twitter or Tumblr, and I recommend everyone to do the same.

with the wider question of dealing with content creators, I’m very much for separating the author from the work. I have critical thinking skills and contrary to what people on this website believe, a book isn’t a carbon copy of the author’s intent, nor is any creative piece a carbon copy of the creator’s full views and personality and beliefs. if you have basic critical thinking skills you can identity and reject the nasty parts while still liking the work as a whole. just don’t support the creator with your money, etc. you’re allowed to take what you like from a piece while rejecting the things you don’t, and even the author or director or actor or whatever. to use a recent example: J. K. Rowling. she’s full of shit, but she can be as full of shit as she likes, because literally nobody is listening to her. her work, while now read critically (as all work should be) has become something larger than herself. it’s like a child growing up and moving away -- they’re going to bear marks of influence from the people that raised them, but if they’re a decent enough person you’re not going to reject them because their parent is a transphobe. hell, if we did have that attitude, none of us would speak to one another seems I’m sure all of us have at least one racist parent or relative running around out there.

this kind of attitude -- that if something has any problematic elements or was created by someone with problematic beliefs it should be cancelled and we should all act like it never happened -- is counter-productive and absolutely ridiculous, if I’m honest. if we truly committed to this attitude, we would have to cancel pretty much everything ever written. it’s totally possible to engage with creative content in a way that both acknowledges and disagrees with elements that are a product of the times or of current bigotry; just because you enjoy watching a show or reading a book that has an asshole on the team doesn’t mean you yourself are an issue. people need to learn to separate work from creator, and I vehemently disagree with the idea that the two are one and the same. I speak from experience. I am a writer. no, you do not know everything about me from reading my work. my characters have opinions and do things I do not agree with. if you think you can look at an author’s work, or any creative work, and thing you know everything, you’re wrong. likewise, if you think that someone with shitty-ass opinions is incapable of creating good work outside of these issues, you’re also wrong. nothing is black and white, and it sucks, but the answer isn’t to go around cancelling things like a literary censorship committee in Stalin’s USSR.

something to keep in mind in the present age, however, is that there are a lot of creators who are very accessible and have huge ranges of impressionable fans. I think in the case of like, certain video game streamers who have been proven to recruit people to the alt-right, we should definitely be boycotting. but with wider things -- books, films, TV shows, etc -- we need to understand that we can enjoy the work while still remaining critical. I’m not going to give up something I love because the creator turned out to be an asshole, and I’m especially not going to turn to Twitter for my moral code on what constitutes an asshole.

[caddy-crystal-queen]

Because humanity decides to be fucking stupid I need to return to the wonderful world of a fandom I am beginning to consider myself no longer a part of...fun.

Hello game of thrones fandom, apparently I need to come back to you because I am once again getting swamped with bs that I really shouldnt care about but is becoming almost impossible to ignore.

First off why are you all still dwelling on this bullshit? The show is over, and the next book probably wont be out for another twenty years or so (insert eye roll). I think it's time for everyone to move the hell on. There are more important things to be angry about in the world right now. Are all you bastards so bored, or so lifeless that you have to dwell on a fictional show that no longer means anything?

Second: I've been particularly hit with posts that basically pin Sansa fans against Dany fans. I am so fucking sick of seeing these goddamn posts saying that if you like Sansa you're every kind of -ist and-phobia there is. Theres seriously no middle ground with these people and I dont get it. I dont agree with how Sansa was written in the final season along with the other characters, but liking a character doesnt make you racist. It's getting to be bullshit and I'm beginning to feel awful for people who like both dany and Sansa for different reasons. I will admit, I was a total dany stan and for a short while I hated Sansa for how she was in the final season. But i realized my anger shouldnt be going to the characters, their actors, or their fans. The characters arent real. The actors were only doing their jobs. And fans just have this weird ass pack mentality that I'm beginning to think is incredibly harmful. My anger lies squarely with the writers, DB Weiss and David Benioff. Which brings me to my next point.

Third: I'm actually beginning to feel sorry for these two. Yeah, an unpopular here, but news flash: YOUR GENDER AND/OR RACE DOES NOT IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM CORRELATE WITH YOUR WRITING ABILITY!!!!!!

Stop calling them racist/sexist because they're two white guys who made terrible writing decisions. I know some of you especially point to the death of missandei as proof of their racism/sexism. Yeah, I can see why it could be interpreted this way, and to a degree it's even agreeable. But I also know that this is also a very toxic way of thinking. It leads to very toxic thinking. I've seriously seen entire posts about how white men cant write women or people of color correctly because of these two. Well...what the fuck is correctly? Are we seriously about to condemn every white male author just because of the terrible writing decisions they made regarding their characters of color? What about white women who write colored characters, because I'm a white woman writing a book in which the main character is a black man and if this is how I'm going to be received, then that's bullshit. I refuse to be condemned because of the actions of two guys who seriously need to work on their writing. Hindsight is a bitch, and they shouldve known that killing missandei off in the way that they did wouldve led to terrible consequences. Theres no excuse for it, but theres no need to condemn them forever and a day for it because a year has just about gone by since the ending of GoT and nothing has changed, and I dont think it's going to matter ten years down the road either when a potential remake of the show could be on the table because hollywood is now out of ideas. On to my next point.

Fourth: these characters are not toys. They're characters. They exist, or maybe its existed because the shows over yet the books arent, to tell a story and literally nothing else. They don't exist to push an agenda. They dont exist for you to fight over them and make ridiculous and unfounded claims about others you may not like. And yet what am I, someone who isolates herself from the fandom specifically because of this toxic nonsense, seeing? Supposed fans bickering, arguing, and bitching at one another, pitting these fictional characters against one another like toys on a playground being controlled by entitled, spoiled children who dont fucking appreciate them. You can love more than one character for more than one reason. Like people, these characters are flawed, and you, you spoiled brats, need to accept that. Liking sansa doesnt make you racist, and shitting on dany just because shes dany makes you look like an asshole. You dont have to like the same characters, but you sure as hell have no right to call someone horrible things just because they like a character you cant stand. Let people love the characters they love and dislike the characters they dislike. Neither of these concepts require justification from either side of the fence, since liking a character is a matter of preference and is highly subjective.

Finally: just fucking let people enjoy things. Like seriously, the world is going to hell in a handbasket bad enough. People deserve to like what they like without being labeled something they arent. I happen to love both Dany and Sansa, and I really wish they had been written better and gotten along. But I've also long since accepted that wasnt what happened and moved on. If someone doesnt like dany but likes Sansa, fine. Let them. If someone likes Dany and doesnt like Sansa, that's fine too. They dont need to justify why they like one and not the other to you, and you as an individual have no right to cast judgement on someone just because they like a character you personally find problematic. If you have nothing nice to say then just dont say anything at all. Or better yet, compliment them on something else. The world just needs more accepting and open minded/hearted individuals.

Be kind. Be compassionate. And for fucks sake, just be respectful of peoples likes and dislikes.

[bitchryver]

"and also that nesryn faliq is one of the funniest characters in the whole series"- FINALLY someone else who appreciates Nesryn! She is so under rated by tog fans

nesryn faliqs greatest hits include:

being able take on an assassin single handed

telling a man, who literally only asked a girl to take her hood off, that she was gonna go tell his wife that he was fucking moron pervert

willing to defend and protect said girl despite literally trying to kill her 24 hours earlier

using her wealth and privilege to get into the overwhelmingly male guard in a racist colonising city to help victims of adarlan and protect immigrant families like hers

chaol: fuck off and die aelin everything is your faultaelin: if i die im absolutely going to haunt you stupid bitch lmao i cant fucking stand younesryn: not to be,,,,,you know,,,,focusing on the TASK AT HAND or anything but theres a guy about to die here?

a wealthy handsome prince is like “I’m in love with you and I want to marry you” and ms faliq is like……could you let me think about it 

on that point, when sartaq says he would take all day and nesryns first response is UH I GOTTA WRITE A LETTER HANG ON

going out to get drunk with the woman her commanding officer used to fuck and currently hates because she thinks he’s being a whiny bitch 

when sartaq and the rukh riders are like “GASP you’re neiths arrow you’re a legend” and nesryns like……. i thought everyone could shoot bullseyes from 12 miles away…. is that not…. a thing….

shooting bullseyes in front of a legion of trained warriors like its not shit and not noticing that they all fall in love with her 

in tower of dawn when the narrative is chaols “aelin is an unholy godless being who uses her uncontrollable power for EVIL and must be contained” and yrenes “that mysterious dangerous stranger who saved me and nearly killed me……..that violent strange young girl….” nesryn faliq sat on a mountaintop in antica and just went “ aelins rlly gna get her dumb  ass murdered someday lmao love that bitch”

when aelins on the warpath after rowan gets injured n QoS and nesryn isn’t fazed and just follows behind her paying the staff like….yes this is my friend aelin…..yes she will kill you shes not kidding…..no shes not really that scary shes a good egg if you.squint a bit…

responding to aelin saying shes with chaol like 

chaol: when i broke things off nesryn wasn’t phased,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,and when i met her again she seemed not to mind that I had,,,,,,left her

nesryn, sipping iced tea: hey…….kale wasn’t it?

no fuss no mess no feelings, just bounced on a man that didnt respect her 

loving her family unconditionally and taking great pride in both countries she feels are home and working to make them better for their citizens

nesryn holding aelins hand when lysandra gets taken in QoS, nesryn bringing rowan clothes despite the fact that chaol her commanding officer doesnt want them to have anything to do with her

find out the Valg exists and gets straight to killing them no room 4 talk kiss this arrow

when aelins like “your a SHIT spy you fucking asshole” and nesryns like “sick well this shit spy has an ARROW pointed at your torso and really wants to let it fly start running bitch”

nesryn questioning authority and actually listening to aelins opinion instead of assuming chaols way is the best way 

actually genuinely caring about the people of adarlan despite the racism and intolerance she faced

actively and continuously  working to help those in need, actually caring about them from a genuine goodness in her soul and not because she wants to make herself feel like a hero and pretend she wasn’t complicit for years :) unlike :) others :) 

being an incredibly loving, thoughtful, joyful character all while having an incredibly reserved and stoic personality and seamlessly combining the two 

nesryn faliq is everything yall want in a character, she’s intelligent, kind, she’s skilful, she holds aelin accountable which is what yall foam at the mouth for, she��s an incredible backstory and her journey throughout a racist country as a woman of colour and her reconnecting with her fathers homeplace is beautiful? she’s independent and has no time for overly romantic displays of affection, which is when yall should be chiming in w ur “yasss my cold queen” or w/ever like u do with manon and nesta

and yet  i cant be 5 minutes on goodreads or on the nesryn tag on this very website without some Scholars either 1) pretending she straight up doesn’t exist 2) ignoring the fact that her journey and character are more than the white man who treated her badly and subsuming her role in the story to just chaols romantic interest 3) saying nesryn is problematic for leaving chaol in antica to do her fucking job 4) calling her boring like you don’t have a blog dedicated to the two flakiest pieces of white bread in the gd books 

derailed this totally lmao sorry you were being so nice ! so basically id die for nesryn faliq i agree :)

[electric-sympathy]

So deadendtracks is pissed I used MS13 as an example-- no reference to their nationality, race, place of origin, status, nothing-- because somehow I’m discriminating against immigrants for it? lmao. I even said in the post how evil an instance of deportation could be. Screw off. It’s the only brutal drug org I actually know the name of and who I figured a simpleton like the OP might recognize, calm down.

You are aware gangs like MS13 victimize Mexicans most of all, right? Pretending they don’t exist doesn’t help them at all. They do that because, like the Mafia, they know that the police don’t care about immigrants. We can’t help them with that if we pretend it isn’t an issue.

She just can’t help herself, can she? It’s ridiculous cherrypicking-to-find-problematicness bullshit every time I see her interact, I swear to God. Not just with me, but with loads of other nice, reasonable people. Everyone on this planet is an evil piece of shit to her at the drop of a hat.

And by the way, “comparing someone I don’t like” to a drug gang is somehow unfair? Uh, dude, you know Sam allied himself with DEMONS, right? Inestimably worse than basically anything on this planet???

She wrote the book on Sam’s shittiness years ago but somehow she has problems with the ~entire~ post? lol, okay. I didn’t realize criticizing a fictional character on a shitty tumblr blog nobody cares about was on par with responsible journalism. Did I ever claim any kind of authority in that post other than being a salty asshole? No???? 

We promised each other fucking ages ago we wouldn’t interact but I guess that’s moot now lol. Who knew knew blocking people could wear off over time?

And do I feel bad for saying all this behind her back? No. She did this to me constantly back in the day when I first joined the fandom. It got so bad I cried. I thought she was the absolute coolest and tried my best to make friends with her, and that’s what happened. So no, I don’t fucking care how vindictive I’m being.

At least I am using her name and mentioning the specific post, so people can go find it and judge it for themselves-- not shady bullshit where everyone will agree that this mysterious person is a total asshole without knowing who they’re talking about.

There’s a good person in there but God fucking damn does she need to learn the basis of good faith. I see people I like on here say things that seem problematic all the time, but I know they’re decent people so I treat them that way when I take issue. I don’t indiscriminately bite the fucking heads off of people that clearly have no ill intent.

[dracereads]

I am both apologetic and unapologetic for this. I am... stupidly wordy and don’t know how to shut the fuck up.

So there are two different types of things that I consider to be fun reading. There’s like. academic stuff. and then there’s non-academic stuff. So academic works have certain stipulations. If it’s sociology related, such as things like Critical Race Theory, Feminist Theory and any sort of positive LGBT+ Rights theory I can find, I won’t pick up books by new authors unless it’s within the last 2-3 years of publication. Academic writing (and frankly reading) is abhorrently glacial. Because doing well-cited and sourced research is a lot more challenging then spitting the hottest discourse solution you can think of in 20 minutes. However, I will go back and pick up old stuff by authors I am familiar with to see how their arguments and logic has changed over time. I will also go back and familiarize myself with the ye ancient discourse by picking up what a lot of people would consider “problematic” and then reading that. It’s why for this feminist theory [paper/book? what do you call publishing your doctorate thesis on?? I’m stupid] about how love and romance is the destruction of women/feminism and calling for the abolishing of stereotypical romance and love stories and liberation through basically flip scripting... I have like 4 or 5 different feminist manifestos in my closet that the author pretty much either A) agrees with and cites as fact, or B) rips into and denominates as garbage. Seeing as I hadn’t read these manifestos before I started working on her thesis, I paused reading her thesis so I can take the time to read the items on her shit list so I can have a head in her argument to either remain neutral, agree, or disagree on her lambasting other academics. That’s because it took her 12+ years to do relevant readings in order to get her doctorate; and I’m just an idiot who enjoys reading the academic social discourse tea apparently. Oh. I also like reading books on writing, literary theory, and stuff of that nature as well. Then there’s history. Which my stipulation for history/writing/general psychology books is that the author better have some sort of degree or education in the subject they are talking about, and usually I look for ones that aren’t a total and utter asshole using criteria laid out in sociology theories above. for example: *cough*historians who would have no idea why a man might have a phallic shaped object in his boudoir or shit like that yaknow *cough* Basically all of this reading helps me put into words stuff that I know  and feel is true, but have trouble articulating the finer mechanics of  it. So if I can wrap my head around that stuff, then I feel less anxious  about how I feel, why I feel, and what I’m thinking.   So. Then that leads me into the normal non-academic readings. there’s A) my trash goblin stuff and B) books that are consciously or unconsciously social commentary. Trash Goblin stuff has the least amount or few rules: I don’t care when, who, or why it was published. I like this garbage abhorrent flaws and all. You can judge me all you want I will still love it regardless. They get read as soon as I get my hands on them irrespective of time or date. I get in so much trouble by literally coming home from work and inhaling an entire novel in 6 hours because I work nights, LMAO. Though a lot of the stuff I would consider trash goblin stuff has a pretty big social media following (I’m coming to learn) so I feel. a lot less like a goblin hiding in a dumpster like a few of my friends would make me out to be. Maybe it’s because my friends have become literal literary-based academics and I have not. So I should probably try to make new, less academic friends as well so I feel less self-conscious about being apparently normal and having semi-normal reading habits and taste. Social Commentary Books get bought and shelved until I am on a tangent. In which case I’ll read literally every single one I own (rereads included) if I can make time for it. Stuff that I love gets kept. Stuff that I don’t moves on to a new home. I track new releases fairly religiously. I’m always looking for authors that align with my views / challenge me, even if it’s not something I would typically read or readily choose for myself. Some social commentary spheres are like the wild blue yonder for me. I just want to know what’s out there and what isn’t. and maybe possibly write something that isn’t out there that’d I’d love myself. My motto is “if I bought it, I’ll read it... eventually. Even if it is just to rag on it.” What people consider the popular books is always fascinating to me. My ex-girlfriend was heavy into the like bookfluencer booksphere stuff and would read the fairly popular ones all the time. Now a-days I generally happen into popular books by stupid serendipity because I no longer have her influence?? I guess in my recommendations feed. Which is both good and bad I guess;;;

Do you read backlog books? How old are they? A year? Five? Two decades?

[janiedean]

www(.)slate(.)com/articles/arts/culturebox/2017/02/how_sensitivity_readers_from_minority_groups_are_changing_the_book_publishing(.)html This seriously worries me. Tumblr mentality spilling over real life

... yey.

okay, no rewind. first thing, I’m sad to say but tumblr mentality has spilled over irl a long time ago and at this point the only thing we can do is hoping this historical moment passes a long time ago (it had already spilled over the moment I had to read actual articles about people actually asking to remove Ovid from a ***classic literature*** curricula because there are rape scenes in the metamorphoses). whatever.

now about this, the problem is: I do think that if someone writes about X character that belongs to a minority they should do their research before touching the topic if they care to write a good book (if they don’t then it’s another problem entirely but let’s just assume they do), but it has to be a thing you do before you actually write that shit. I absolutely don’t agree with write what you know only because otherwise we wouldn’t be publishing a damned thing and honestly some people also write so that they don’t have to always rehash what they know, but if you’re doing a socially sensitive theme you have to try and do it right - if I decide I write a book with a trans character I can’t do it before I talk to a sizable amount of trans people and I don’t read more than a bit on the subject, same as if I decide to write a book set during idk the vietnam war where the protagonist is a ptsd vietnam veteran I can’t do it if I haven’t read a ton of lit/history books about the vietnam war and talked with a few psychologists or psych students or read something about ptsd. but that’s a thing that’s your duty as the author, if you want to do a serious book about a serious thing. if you just want to dick around it’s another problem entirely but let’s just say that I want to do that, it’s on me to do it, not on my **sensitivity readers**, and anyway a sensitivity reader (which once upon a time should have been called editor but never mind) shouldn’t have that much power, ie: once I read a tumblr post which basically said ‘white writers couldn’t ever write poc characters because they possibly can’t understand [now what POC meant in that sense is an entire other question that was left unanswered of course, bc poc doesn’t mean just black but nvm] but they have a moral obligation to because poc writers aren’t as popular/are hired less than white writers, and even at their best they will never get it right and they’ll fuck the poc characters up but who cares, they have to do it and take the criticism so they realize how it feels to be discriminated’.

now, I personally would never hear any advice from THAT above person if they were my sensitivity reader, because the concept that if I’m white then I can’t possibly get it right means that they already decided my work is going to suck ass even if it’s a masterpiece, and then... fuck that? I mean, I have no moral obligation to write anything I don’t want and with that attitude you basically make sure that someone is never gonna try to branch out. and where were the sensitivity readers when fifty shades came out, and all the subsequent YA porn books where it looks like your ideal man should be a stalker? we just don’t know, but no one cares to have sensitivity readers on ***that*** shit because guess what, it sells.

like, the problem shouldn’t be that you as a writer might offend someone with your writing because that can be because you’re actually offensive or because you’re nabokov and you wrote lolita and people who don’t get the point of it think it’s offensive and that it should be burned. you can’t start writing shit thinking of whether you’re going to offend someone or not with it because otherwise you’ll never get anywhere and you couldn’t touch one single sensitive topic (and on this, I’d appreciate sensitivity readers when it comes to atheist characters but NEVER MIND THAT XDDD /joking). what people should do is encourage potential writers who want to write socially sensitive stuff to talk to other people first and research their topic if it requires it.

What I mean is, let’s do a practical example: let’s take the basic lady chatterley plot (woman has a husband that neglects her both sexually and as a person and finds happiness with another guy who lives just under the husband’s nose). the original lady chatterly is already socially sensible because it has class issues and whatnot, but if you just want to write your torrid romance novel about the white suburban mom falling in love with the new white hot neighbor while her white husband doesn’t notice her existence and they have all the a+ sex in the world you’re perfectly entitled to and like, just get yourself an editor that will tell you if your porn sucks or not. there, this one’s easy.

but, let’s say that you want to have the white suburban mom being a victim of domestic violence instead of having the husband being just neglectful then you should research something about domestic violence and the effect it has on people. it has already become way more socially sensible, because you can’t just shrug it away and the sex she’ll have with her new guy won’t be the same as the sex she used to have with her husband, or alternatively, if the husband’s neglectful only you can have a difference between quick missionary and hot steamy long fucks with the new guy, if he’s abusive and he abuses her sexually you have to have nonconsensual vs consensual which is already a whole new heap of problems.

or, let’s flip it around: the domestic violence victim is a man, the wife is the one abusing him, he falls in love with the new female neighbor next door. this implies that you have to look into female on male domestic violence and research how frequently men aren’t taken seriously especially if the perpetrator is a woman, so you have the above plus this.

or, the victim is a man, the perpetrator is a woman, he falls in love with the male neighbor next door. in this case you have to make sure you know how to write a guy who has to get out of an abusive relationship and have a sexuality crisis if he didn’t know he was also into dudes.

or, all three are male, or all three are women: you have to look into statistics to see how male on male or female on female abuse works, on top of all of the above, on top of you have to know how to write an abuse victim. and, if there’s children involved? you have to deal with that too and you have to make sure the abuser isn’t a complete stereotype or some kind of boogeyman because that kind of story is effective if the perpetrator is someone who doesn’t look out of a twilight fanfic *cough*. if you make any of those characters trans then you have to look into it, too, if you make any of them not white or not your ethnicity you might wanna look into that too, and so on. and if you wanna throw in the lady chatterley class thing then you have to also think about what it means if some of the characters are rich, if others are poor, if they’re all middle class, if they’re all poor, all rich and so on.

what I mean is that the same plot, with some changes, can require zero research beyond what metaphors to not use while writing porn (example one) to a whole fucking lot of research and it’s on you to find people to discuss it with before and then to possibly proofread it before you send it to any publisher so you at least are sure you have a thing in your hands that doesn’t suck or has glaring inaccuracies. at that point your sensitivity reader should be able to give it a look and maybe give you advice which you should be able to reject if you don’t think it sound - for example, let’s say I write the above book in its most socially sensitive approach. like, dunno, let’s say the abuser is a cishet white man, the protagonist is a white ftm trans person who also can’t/won’t transition because of their abusive husband and the neighbor is, dunno, a black cishet woman. this would require a shitload of research should I try to write it. but then let’s say I do it and then I decide to write it from the pov of the abusive husband. which is a legitimate literary choice and I’m taking it with the entire intent of making him an abusive asshole without trying to justify his actions and to pull a less skilled humbert humbert in the world (because I’m not nabokov and no one is, but one could and should be able to write villains as a POV if they want to) and that I made sure to depict him as The Worst. if my sensitivity reader says that it’s offensive that I would write it from that guy’s POV in the first place and nothing else matters, it wouldn’t matter if I wrote the best book of the last ten years, it would still be deemed offensive. and that is a thing that shouldn’t fly - meaning, that if this is just a background check to make sure you don’t do bad representation (which you should have already done yourself anyway) it could have its usefulness, if it becomes a way to say that you can’t write what you want or problematic characters/villains shouldn’t be a POV choice even if you show them to be terrible then we’re straight into censorship land and that... shouldn’t be a thing.

tldr, you didn’t even ask for this entire rant but tbh I’m worried about that possible outcome (especially since that article mentioned roth which on this website is already hated as the champion of the white old man protagonist who wants to bang his students by people who don’t understand shit about either roth or writing in general) more than about checks on whether a thing is offensive or not, which anyway seems to me like is thoroughly ignored if the book sells (see: every other stalker seen as an ideal dude in YAs post-50 shades *sigh*).

[rawringryu]

tEn cHaRaCtErS

I was tagged in this meme by the awesomely rad @francisthegreat whom I’m lucky to have as my friend :) Also I’m sorry this is so late! I didn’t see you tag me until like yesterday, I had exams this week haha. This was very hard to make because I have a LOT of feelings.

Ten characters from ten fandoms:

This list is going in ascending order, meaning my very favorite faves will be last on the list.

10. Bill Cipher (Gravity Falls) First of all on this list is this asshole, gosh I have no idea why but there was a period of time where I absolutely loved Gravity Falls and I shipped with a human form with Dipper mostly because of the amazing art and some pretty complex fics written for the ship. It was a wild ride and honestly thinking about this phase of my life always makes me feel weird, like I liked him purely because I liked reading shippy fics starring him. 

9. Pearl (Steven Universe) This one is kinda weird too? Idk man I absolutely love Pearl’s design and the way her character is written. I’m not in loop with the SU fandom because ugh it’s not a happy place to be but I absolutely love browsing art of her. I love how she’s such a broken character for a kids show! I used to read SU meta and they’d go on and on about how she’s a shit character, an asshole towards Amethyst and toxic. But tbh, I feel like she’s just a complex character that made bad choices at times, she’s trying to get better, she’s trying to cope with the loss of Rose someone she probably loved in more ways than one and how she felt Rose chose Greg over her, and now she’s gone. I mean, she just can’t let go and I think that’s very human.

8. Pitch Black (Rise of the Guardians) Alright but this fandom was the first one I’d ever been in once I started out in tumblr. It was very cool and leaves bittersweet memories tbh, I absolutely adored the art and fics this fandom churned out, I used to ship Pitch and Jack Frost. The thing about Pitch is the fact that the fandom practically merged the movie with the lore from the original Guardians of Childhood the movie is based on. In the book, Pitch has such a tragic backstory, his name was Kozmotis Pitchinier and he was the best general of the Golden Army. After capturing all fearlings, he was designated to guard the prison of their imprisonment , he was haunted by their whispers and pleading and his only solace was his daughter, of whom he kept a photograph of in a locket. But one day, sensing his weakness, the prisoners imitated her voice and hypnotized Kozmotis to believe she was being held inside with them. Frantic, he opened the doors to release her, but was instead possessed by ten thousand Fearlings.

Sorry for the long summary but I just want people to know more abt his backstory haha.

7. Loki (MCU) I didn’t really know about Loki until I watched Thor: The Dark World in the cinema and I was instantly in love despite this movie being the absolutely worst of all the MCU movies, which looking back I’d have to agree. Loki is yet another tragic character whom I’m sure everyone already knows about. I think Loki is a vulnerable character who tries to be good, wants to be good but he just can’t, or he tries and other people just won’t accept him. He’s a frost giant and those people are considered monsters, how can he not be bitter that he’s the very thing ha’s been indoctrinated to hate and fear. He is a very complex character that the MCU practically does not do enough justice mostly because he’s portrayed as a villain in the movies. But I wouldn’t consider him a villain, more like an antihero, nobody trusts him and he doesn’t think anybody can love him either. I’ve only read a bit of his comics and I gotta say Loki deserves so much more than what he gets.

6. Dr Strange (MCU) (I’m breaking the one character per fandom rule idc) I know a shit ton of people absolutely HATE Dr Strange, and for a variety of reasons too. They hate him because Benedict Cumberbatch plays him and hating on BC is practically the new edgy on tumblr. People think Dr Strange should have been played by an american asian and all that yada plus the ancient one being whitewashed. While I agree some aspects of Dr Strange is problematic, I think people need to give it more credit, at least watch it for the cool effects that the stupidly huge amount of people worked on. Also as an asian, I can guarantee you most people outside of America doesn’t give two shits about these controversies and movies should be a source of pleasure instead of thinking about all the negative shit only. Dr Strange deserves so much more, he’s an interesting and while he does share some qualities with Tony Stark, he’s his own character with his own issues. Plus his comics are very fun to read, come on, magic in the Marvel is such an awesome concept. Fuck you haters, I just wanna have a good time with the magic man.

5. Sherlcok Holmes (BBC Sherlock) This is also one of my earliest fandoms on tumblr. Sherlock season 4 absolutely ruined it with all the queer baiting and the shitty plot. But Sherlock had always left bittersweet memories for me too. Mostly because of the absolutely amazing and complex fics written for it, I will never understand how fic authors do it but Sherlock fics were amazing and I would gladly choose these fics over canon any time. 

4. Asuka Langley Soryuu (Neon Genesis Evangelion) I have so many feelings about this bitch right here, honestly one of the most relate-able characters for me. Asuka is a very human character, she’s very proud and has emotional issues. She was considered the best of the best and was trained to be an Eva pilot since she was four because she’s a child genius. However she has a tragic backstory, her mother underwent some tests and became insane, believing that Asuka's doll was her daughter and refusing to acknowledge the real Asuka, referring to her as "that girl over there." She eventually commits suicide by hanging herself; Asuka found her body when she went to tell her the good news that she had been chosen to become an Eva pilot. She couldn’t let go that Shinji the main character was starting to become a better pilot than her despite training for months only. She suppresses a lot of her emotions and had unhealthy ways of coping. I just want her to be happy.

3. Edward Elric (Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood) Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood is what I would consider the holy grail of anime tbh. Edward is just about the most selfless person out there in the fictional world of anime. I love the fact that Ed and Al started their journey off with mildly selfish reasons that is to return their body parts whom they lost to in a deal with Truth to bring back their mom which ultimately failed. In the end, Edward is willing to lose his alchemy, the very things that defines him, that started this whole mess, that is the source of his joy and misery for the sake of gaining his brother’s body back instead of selfishly using the Philosopher’s stone that’s made using human souls. I just want this shorty to be happy and I’m glad he is with that satisfying end.

2. Hitsugaya Toshiro (Bleach) The reason this guy is ranked so high in my list is mostly because, he’s been there for me since I was a smol kid, I’ve had a crush on him ever since I was 10 and I could never let go. He’s the one fictional character whom I still fallback to every time things stagnant, I love reading fics about him, he’s just so cool! He’s a child genius with a sword that can shoot ice dragons. Plus he’s always written in such a complex way in fics, Kubo missed his fucking chance by not expanding more about his character in the manga, but clearly Kubo is incompetent when it comes to plot so whatever I guess.

1. Kylo Ren (Star Wars) The Star Wars fandom or specifically the Kylux subfandom is probably the happiest plave I’ve ever been in since forever. It’s the first time I’ve ever talked to anyone at all online, I only lurked around in other fandoms but Star Wars made me able to brave the fandom and talk to people in it, I’ve met so many amazing people and read amazing fics in it, it’s mostly due to the KRB discord chat that I’m still going strong with this fandom. I absolutely love Kylo Ren and can he please crush me between his thighs. The thing that attracted me to him besides his unconventionally attractive appearance is his emotional vulnerability. Kylo has been neglected by Leia and Han as a kid and sent away to jedi school with Luke, he’s been manipulated by Snoke as a kid and Leia and Han just don’t think they can take care of him properly, they’re afraid of him and always too busy with their work, Kylo wasn’t planned, the way their relationship worked just wasn’t ideal for child rearing, Kylo was left alone with Luke, unable to understand why his parents don’t want him anymore, how he was too emotional for the jedi way. While what Kylo did was not justifiable with all that murdering, it’s not a stretch to say that he was very mush a victim of circumstances too. I related to Kylo a lot as I’d been sort of neglected as a child too, both my parents were always busy with work and I only saw them during mealtimes and before bed.

Sorry for the long post ya’ll! I have so many emotions about fictional characters haha.

I’ll be tagging @magicandmalice , @omega-hux, @tezzypants, @darktenshi17, @comraderevelin, @kylocatastrophe, @dargason-under-the-fantasia, @oblioknowlton, @evilblubber, @plasticpill and @glass-oceans that is if ya’ll want to, I had fun and went super overboard.

[irregularjohnnywiggins]

My Pitch for how to rewrite Arrow.

So, a while back, after me and my brother had a chin-wagging session on why Arrow was a legitimately terrible show after Season 2, I decided to do a little think piece: say I was tasked with rebooting Arrow a couple of years down the line. How would I do it? What would I change (a lot)? What would I keep the same (not a lot)? I decided to sit down and write out a basic outline for a rewritten Arrow Season 1.

...two weeks, 2000+ words and another basic outline for Season 2 later, I am pleased to present my pitch for Arrow Season 1 under the cut to anyone who might give a shit.

WARNINGS for: discussion of violence, mental health and swearing.

The first season is almost exactly the same as Arrow, but with a few not that big rather large differences

1.       First off, no Felicity. You could probably bend her characterization into something likeable, but it would just be too much work for too little payoff.

Seriously, if we need someone to do hacker bits? Oracle is right there, you guys.

2.       More overtly a Robin Hood story-Team Arrow are the Merry Men, Malcolm Merlyn is the Sherriff of Nottingham, some episodes are entirely ripped from lesser-known Robin Hood stories, etc. (Full disclosure: this is mainly because I love Robin Hood, and will fight to the death to have another good Robin Hood show for this generation)

3.       Have Oliver be explicitly an SJW. I say this because Arrow really lost something the instant it turned Oliver into just another Batman clone. If I may reference a comic I haven’t read (yet) I think one of the most interesting (and easily incorporated) elements of the Rebirth story is Oliver coming to terms with the idea that he can’t really ‘fuck the man’ if he is ‘the man’, and it could also give Thea something to do besides be all ‘self-destructive teen’-and also it’s a great way to introduce Roy.

4.       In addition, have Merlyn be an actual morally opposed antagonist. Maybe have Tommy bring up that Merlyn could do anything to help the people of the Glades and be more faithful to his mother’s memory, but it’s easier for him to pretend that he’s ‘curing’ the city by getting rid of the poor people.

5.       And for God’s sake, don’t have Oliver open up a nightclub in the middle of a dilapidated area that needs literally anything except another fucking nightclub. Like… anything. Hell, have him open up a soup kitchen that also gives out really expensive clothes he doesn’t need any more, and have Moira be all ‘but charity? What is the SJW bullshit?’

Thus Thea’s whole ‘I work at a law firm except now I run a nightclub aren’t I a caring soul?’ becomes ‘I worked at a law firm and now I run a soup kitchen because this will actually help people.’

6.       But the biggest change has to be to Black Canary.

So, when Oliver returns from the island Laurel is… different. For one thing, she’s going by Dinah now. She’s also got a new personal trainer (Wildcat), and… that scene in episode 2 when China White attacks them? Dinah kicks ass.

But that’s not the only thing that surprises him.

See, when he goes to strike the first name off the list-a name, I may remind you, that Dinah is suing in court to no real effect-he runs into complications.

Complications in the form of an apparent thief named Black Canary.

See, Dinah’s been doing this Daredevil shtick for a while now. Apparently she compulsively activated her meta-gene in grief after her sister’s death, and the Canary Cry is actually effective in this-the Canary Cry in the comics can take out Wondy if she’s not prepared, so we’re talking that level of effectiveness.

Why she decided to be a vigilante is up for debate-maybe she actually has a Daredevil-esque ‘I trusted in the law, and it screwed everything up, so fuck it, I’mma do it myself!’ or maybe she found out her mother was the first Black Canary and took up the mantle (or both. Both is good)

Regardless, she’s here to hack into Hunt’s computers and release a ton of info onto the web to use in her case against him. Oliver’s here to hack in and give the money Hunt stole back to the people.

Neither of them mention this.

They fight.

Dinah wins (of course)

And thus, for more or less the first half of the first season, both of these dorks are convinced that they’re having a ‘Batman/Catwoman’ style romance, with the other one as Catwoman.

They arrive in more or less the same area, they trade witty banter, they both somehow get what they want despite the other person opposing them, rinse and repeat.

Even better, Oliver goes to Dinah in her civilian identity in like Episode 3. So Dinah starts thinking ‘maybe he’s not so bad after all’. So she starts pulling her punches. Which results in Oliver sometimes winning (rarely, but sometimes). Which results in him thinking that it has more to do with his skills than it probably does.

Meanwhile, out of costume, Oliver and Dinah exchange as much flirty banter as in costume. Like, sometimes it’s the exact same flirty banter.

Diggle, after he joins Oliver, immediately susses out who Black Canary is based purely on the flirty banter, and spends the rest of the first half of the season constantly going HOW HAVE THESE TWO NOT FIGURED IT OUT YET?

7.       The mid-season finale has GA and BC fighting Merlyn, wherein a) they both discover who the other is and b) Oliver gets sure-fire proof that Moira is involved in the Undertaking

8.       This leads to Dinah and Diggle both telling Oliver to give the evidence to Lance (who has been hunting for both of them, but keeps on hinting that he knows who Black Canary, at least, is) but Oliver is all ‘but she’s my mom.’

9.       And because Diggle and Dinah are having none of that shit, Dinah goes to her dad and he starts investigating Moira.

Oliver is not happy.

They fight.

Dinah wins (of course)

10.   Oliver spends about three episodes brooding about this, until Diggle, Thea (unknowingly) and Dinah kick his ass back into gear (This is also where we get the majority of the island flashbacks, which, btw: almost the same, but no Slade and more Yao Fei and Shado.)

11.   Tommy finds out who GA and BC are (how I’m undecided on. Maybe Dinah tells him, maybe Oliver does, maybe he figures it out on his own, idk) and agrees to help investigate his dad, because Team Arrow figure that Malcolm has to be involved.

Btw, Tommy’s been working in the soup kitchen because Oliver’s paying him and he, at least at the start, thinks he can convince Ollie to give up this weird SJW thing he’s got going on and go back to being a partyer

This all changes when he meets one Roy Harper, because Roy is basically him but with no money and an even bigger chip on his shoulder (also Native American cos I’ll be fucked if anyone gets whitewashed in my fucking Green Arrow show)

Basically for every scene the show devoted to that fucking love triangle I want a scene of Tommy and Roy being bros.

12.   Moira isn’t convinced to out the Undertaking by Oliver tricking her, but by Oliver confronting her at the same time as Tommy confronts Malcolm, and the two giving more or less the same speech eviscerating the notion that the Undertaking is good for anyone.

Seriously, I want full on Marxist, socio-economic and class-based ideas being raised. I want this to be so overtly political that newsgroups will be talking about it for years. You wanna prove comic books aren’t just for kids anymore? Have an adult conversation about the world comic book Green Arrow would want us to live in, and see the conservative nerd sites explode.

For a bonus, have Malcolm talk like a commentator on Fox News, all ‘entitled poor people’ and ‘benefit thieves’ and ‘they shouldn’t be born poor if they didn’t want to get killed by an earthquake machine’.

13.   Ultimately, the speech convinces Moira that she needs to turn over everything on the Undertaking to the authorities, and convinces Malcolm that Tommy just doesn’t understand his plan, and that he needs to start it right away.

14.   From then on, the finale goes more or less as it goes in canon, with one major exception: Oliver and Dinah are both there when Tommy dies.

15.   But before we get on to that, a word about the Green Arrow and killing:

Now, straight up front, I prefer my heroes to not kill if they can help it.

I do have caveats to that belief (e.g. I am in general agreement with @bluefall-returns‘ stance that Superman and Batman’s ‘killing is okay as long as it’s not humans’ ethos is… problematic, to say the least, and Wondy’s whole ‘don’t attack until you first talk, but if someone is a proven threat and killing is your only option, make sure they aren’t getting up afterwards’ is such a refreshing concept that I even incorporated it into the morality of one of my main characters) but on the whole, a superhero like Green Arrow, who stands for a specific set of real-world beliefs, shouldn’t kill unless absolutely necessary, and certainly not admit that he enjoys doing it (seriously, wtf Guggenheim?)

That being said, I will acknowledge that Oliver should kill at the start of the series. That only makes sense. He’s got fucking PTSD for fuck’s sake. Of course he’s reacting the way he did on the island.

But – and here’s the key thing – YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THE PTSD!

YOU DON’T HAVE YOUR ‘LOVE INTEREST’ MAKING JOKES AT YOUR EXPENSE ABOUT FUCKING ‘FANTASY ISLAND’!

YOU DON’T HAVE HER ACTING ALL CLUELESS AS TO WHY YOU’RE OPPOSED TO KILLING NOW!

YOU DON’T HAVE PEOPLE BEAT YOUR MAIN CHARACTER DOWN FOR MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES AND CALL HIM AN ASSHOLE IF HE RESPONDS NEGATIVELY TO TRIGGERS!

I APPARENTLY HAVE TO TELL PROFESSIONAL WRITERS THAT PTSD ISN’T SOMETHING THAT CAN JUST SOME AND GO AS IT PLEASES

I’S SO FUCKING STUPFOWRBUORVN PNFWEONVOEWVN OWRENVORENVREO

…

…sorry

Anyway, have Oliver go to Dinah for help, because hey, she took an elective in psychiatry in college, maybe? (I don’t know how American school works)

(That may seem a bit too Mary Sue for some of you, but I say that if Batman can be a detective/ninja/billionaire/whatever else, and TV!Ollie can be a member of the Russian Mob before he even comes back to the city and no-one questions it, the fucking Black Canary can be a therapist if I want her to be. Also, at the very least it’s from a piece of comic book media (Young Justice) and associated with the right character, which already puts it ahead of anything Error has done with its female characters.)

So Ollie stops killing people after a while (which, for bonus points, removes a lot of the ‘WHAT WERE YOU THINKING’ from the Huntress episode)

(Yes, episode, because the second episode was pointless and I hate it.)

16.   So, anyway, that happens. Thus, when Ollie fights Merlyn, it’s less external ‘will Tommy forgive me if I kill his dad’ and more Batman style ‘if I kill him, will I be able to stop/will I go back to what I was before?’

I still haven’t figured this out, btw. If Oliver kills him, then events proceed as they do in the show and Oliver is left with the realisation that killing Merlyn didn’t do anything except add another casualty to this insane plot. If Oliver lets Merlyn live, everything Merlyn does in later seasons are things Oliver could have stopped in this moment.

17.   Where’s Dinah during this fight? Simple: she’s helping the evacuation of the Glades, because she may be able to help with the fight, but both her and Oliver know that’s secondary to getting the people to safety, and Merlyn’s all kinds of right wing shite, so it’s reasonable to assume he’s also sexist (he probably isn’t, but they assume he is) and so more willing to fight just Green Arrow than just Black Canary.

18.   But, yeah, back to the angst.

19.   So, Tommy dies. More importantly, Tommy does not die propping up Green Canary, because killing off people and having their final moments be about propping up another ship is a terrible idea. So, no, Tommy dies exactly as he does in canon, but with Oliver and Dinah there, and they both get closure.

20.   The result is Oliver doesn’t just go fuck off to Lian Yu, but instead walks up to Dinah after Tommy’s funeral and is all ‘This city is going to go down the shitter. Thousands of people are now homeless, the rich bastards (Dinah ‘you know it’s not healthy to speak about yourself in the third person’) are gonna be trying to get as much of the opportunity pie as they can, and on top of all of that, we need to find out just how many of them were involved in this. It’s gonna be a hell of a job. You up for it?’

21.   Dinah smiles. It’s simultaneously beautiful and dangerous.

22.   ‘I thought you’d never ask’ she says.

So, that’s my idea. I’ll freely admit this isn’t complete, nor is it perfect - I didn’t really have many ideas for Detective Lance other than ‘Commissioner Gordon meets Sam Vimes’, which doesn’t really come across here, and my lack of knowledge about Roy Harper beyond Arrow and Young Justice (both of which I’ve been reliably told by @oathkeptroxas are not good representations of his character) lead me to be unsure of what to do with him, but I just wanted to get this idea off my chest. Thanks for listening to my rambles, and if you have any questions, ask what you will.

[janiedean]

@ anon I’m c/p ing because like hell I want anyone in the OP to find me

OKAY WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS

okay so let’s - what the hell.

I don’t generally agree with anything that starts with ‘this blog needs to be shut down’ unless they’re a) actually harassing people ie sending them death threats, b) serious reasons. as in, I can’t go and say that I want a blog closed because they post content I don’t like when it comes to fictional characters.

I’ve gone there to see what the fuss was about (thanks now I’ve seen so much jon/dany content I want to rip my eyes out gdi) (like guys I’m glad for the shippers but why) and... like... if it was like in the spn kinkmeme back in the day where they had an actual prompt about holocaust fetishism asking for one of the characters to be like anne frank bringing up real people I’d be concerned, but this is... like... shit I don’t know how the hell I can say it without people wanting to murder me, but people are seriously going after this person for a fic that they haven’t even written or published accusing them of GENOCIDE with the tumblr staff when there’s... actual.... NEONAZIS... ON HERE like I’m entirely fine with people asking them to reconsider the idea nicely (which is what’s going on in the tags of that post except for a couple of people who are the ones pushing for the banning) because maybe they don’t get the implications and/or don’t understand why it’s not generally a good idea to go there, but asking for a blog removal over that... I mean, wait until this thing exists but like ao3 won’t remove it for the content so either they convince him it’s not a good idea but like... talk, don’t jump to the IF THEY DO THIS THEN THEY DESERVE TO BE DELETED AND/OR BANNED FROM TUMBLR FOR FICTIONAL CONTENT THAT DOES NOT EXIST YET.

apparently my villain origin story is involved and I honestly wouldn’t trust any argument she has a part in as far as I can throw her, I checked and of course she’s calling people moronic over her tagging the ship and using a fairly not nice nickname for them of course let’s still remember the times she came out with the personal fave white boy thing making money out of completely misunderstanding my point that had to do with personal mental health issues which she of course couldn’t know about because I don’t need to bring up my issues to discuss text but okay never mind that she trash talked me in public until I posted screencaps of our conversation which btw I still have even if her old blog got deleted ops

also I’m lol-ing because I don’t know if that content could fly somewhere with laws specifically against nazi ideology but since in the US you can apparently march with a nazi flag raised because it’s freedom of speech according to the first amendment no one is gonna shut that blog down for a thing that doesn’t exist yet and is fictional. like good luck getting it closed but as far as I see there’s nothing on there that would get tumblr to close it when tumblr doesn’t even give two fucks about its own terms of use or reporting assholes since the two times I tried to report someone who was actually harassing me the automated reply was ‘close your askbox’ like good luck but I really doubt it’s going to work.

anyway. I don’t know the OP because dany kink is not my thing, I don’t ship anything involved in this mess and I don’t think writing fanfic about that specific topic (or romance books, which do exist sadly) is a good idea, and I think people should be educated thoroughly on the topic so that they know for sure that it’s really not a great idea to go there in the first place, but I don’t think pre-emptively shutting anyone down is a good idea - censorship is never a good idea - especially when legally they’re not doing anything they can get shut down for. I think talking to the person civilly is entirely acceptable, but I don’t think crusading is a good idea, and any crusade coming from villain origin story is not a thing I can take halfway seriously given how coherent she is when she goes on crusades.

also... guys. I was around for the spn rps haiti au fic. the one that had an article on fanlore. I thought it was a really fucking shitty and inappropriate idea and I still don’t know how it got as far as being publicly posted without no one asking the author what the fuck she was smoking when she thought it up, though eventually the problem wasn’t that she was *racist* as much as how it was possible that she didn’t even notice she was being racist, which spawned a fairly interesting discussion. at some point, people pointed out that someone wrote a gen kill fanfic set in timor est where the two dudes did get together but was really well done and managed to be respectful and to shed light on the historical event at hand and like... what I mean is that it is possible to write fanfic about *problematic* topics if you’re careful and you know what you’re doing. I don’t think kink fic about WWII is exactly what fits the bill, but if we go with the idea that ‘any kind of problematic content in that sense has to be censored and the OP stopped before they post it’ you prevent people who can write about it from talking about it and it turns into censorship central which is... actually...... a thing that most dictatorships do.

like.

discuss it and talk about it and engage with the discussion, but don’t shut it down or call for pre-emptive censoring, because that’s just... not a road I want to trod on, especially because it brings straight to ‘let’s ban dystopias because the bad guys win in them’.

also if your first instinct is asking me ‘are you defending people fetishizing nazism’ please re-read this post because I don’t have time for that bullshit thank you