#literally one of only two fandom discourse topics i will engage in

[mazzystar24]

Here's the thing and I'm not saying it's ok, it's obviously not in any way, shape or form, but since I'm assuming you have all the tags of bucktommy filtered perhaps you haven't seen it. Most of the bucktommy blogs (including ones that also ship buddie) have gotten many many hate asks, insulting them, accusing them of something, and just being incredibly disgusting. You literally can't go to the bucktommy tag without finding many posts of buddie fans who tag bucktommy saying shit about the ship, the actors, and the people who ship them. Saying that bucktommy shippers must feel threatened by buddie going canon and that's why they are rude is absolutely crazy (though there might be some that do, who knows?). Now, I'm sure that going to the buddie tag is also hard to do and there must be people who post shit about buddie and I know there are many blogs that are anti the extreme buddie fans. So, what I'm trying to say is that both ships have people that are purposely posting things to make the others mad, that are actively trying to continue this -frankly- stupid ship war. And they are being racist (on both sides, not just bucktommy shippers, I saw a bucktommy blog from a POC person get an ask calling them the n* word) and just plain awful. So, assuming that buddie blogs are better and do nothing wrong is incorrect, and it goes the other way as well. I really don't understand how people can be so mean, and so self-centered over two ships that who even knows what's going to happen? Everyone, absolutely everyone should do better. No one is better than the other one.

Hi anon!

Okay in case you don’t know my blog here is my usual warning that I will be bullet pointing but I promise I’m not trying to be curt/rude (cos you genuinely don’t seem to be on the attack or anything) I just can like explain my thought process better when I can like break it down into chunks 🫡

• I’m assuming you saw either this post which I do end with saying “Like we get it some buddie fans were dicks to you or you disagree or they did something or whatever the fuck but dont start being dicks to an entire fandom???” (Which I feel like it kinda gets the point across of like in general what people shouldn’t do but also it was in the context of me saying that that day there was a surge in the anti buddie fans in the tag, but I also do acknowledge that there will have been buddie fans who have been dicks to them, so I never “assumed that buddie fans are better and never did anything wrong”) Or this one which is just a whole post about why people shouldn’t be misusing tags rather than making people block them and obviously I’m talking in both posts about what I’ve personally seen which is the anti buddie accounts but the principle applies for both and I agree 100% and I did actually make a post earlier than that here where I do talk about both ends and misusing tags as well as not using discourse tags and I talk about both the anti bucktommy/ toxic buddie fans and anti buddie/toxic bucktommy fans so while I understand that you may not have seen that post and out of context it may seem like I only view one side as being better than the other I actually have pointed out before that it’s both and I urge both to just be respectful in fandom spaces, that’s why I even mentioned in the post where I’m complaining about people spamming the buddie tag that I always just politely ask whichever one I see (which again based off what I engage with happens to be the people spamming the buddie tag) but I did make a whole three parter post about how people can improve fandom spaces and how everyone should be doing better

• I actually don’t have the bucktommy tags filtered because as I’ve mentioned before I genuinely don’t dislike them and enjoy seeing their scenes and dynamic they’re just not endgame for me

• okay the racism is a more complicated topic so I do wanna preface this with saying I’m a poc before I have any toxic fans jumping into my inbox calling me a “dumb white bitch” again 😭😭- I don’t know how the racism toward the bucktommy fandom has been -not that any amount of racism is fine obviously like genuinely to those blogs that got shit said I genuinely hope you’re fine- but the toxic bucktommy fans have become a wholeass section of the fandom being racist, which is why I point it out because it’s not one or two incidences but rather an entire subset pushing racist narratives or just posting shit that’s racist u(and again my heart fully goes out to the bucktommy fans who had to deal with people being racist to them I am just personally going based off what I’ve seen and it’s the fact that there are SO MANY racist anti buddie accounts if that makes sense so it’s more widespread in that case)

• as for the comment about toxic bucktommy fans feeling threatened and that’s why there was a rise, i actually didn’t say that but it was pointed out to me by people in my comments and I was like that makes sense and honestly it does because it absolutely tracks that when one side of the fandom is feeling optimistic about something that hints at their ship the other side’s toxic fans will want to put a damper on that, just like I can probably guess that toxic buddie fans probably hounded the bucktommy tag around the time the hospital kiss happened, like it just makes sense

Thanks anon for the ask because I genuinely do agree with most of what you said, and you were respectful with it which I appreciate, but I genuinely urge you in the politest way I can to just check out people’s accounts before sending an ask like this because context is genuinely key and people aren’t gonna be reiterating that it happens on either end when talking about something in the context of one end if that makes sense? And I personally do try to acknowledge it as much as possible even in the posts that I assume you were referring to🫶🫶🫶

[citizen-zero]

I guess part of the reason that the whole “proshipper/anti” discourse is so silly to me is because like. I actually lived the situation that so many of them talk about, the whole “predators will show your fic to minors in order to groom them” thing. Except that’s not…that’s not really what happened.

The 25 year old woman I “dated” when I was 15 was someone I met through the Hetalia fandom; we did a lot of NSFW RPs and bonded over smutty fic. She drew, commissioned, and purchased smutty art and doujins that she shared with me. She came to visit me twice and like, we never went further than kissing, but I know for a fact that she wanted to. She said as much, and I think if I hadn’t been worried about getting caught by my mom, we would’ve. And this isn’t super distressing for me to talk about but it still makes me feel a little dirty. Not in a shame-filled way, I don’t think it’s my fault or anything, but I don’t feel good about it either.

Anyway, point is, it’s literally the situation that people wave around as an example of what might happen if we let people write about Sexually Immoral Topics, and yet I maintain that none of it was the fault of NSFW fan art/fiction. Not even the handful of teacher/student or incest fics I read and enjoyed—even when I was “dating” her, I recognized that that sort of relationship was wrong and should only be enjoyed in a fictional context. That sort of content was cathartic for me because I could engage with it but didn’t have to see or experience it IRL where it would have actual consequences. It’s the same as how playing GTA let me shoot rocket launchers at cops and blow up cars without…you know, doing that.

No, all of it was squarely the fault of the adult woman who was trying to fuck a teenage girl. All the emotional stress I felt then and all the lingering sour taste I have now is her fault. It wasn’t a single one of those artists’ or authors’ faults that, for almost two years, I was denying/unable to recognize the wrongness of my own situation even though I could recognize it in fictional ones. All of it was her fault for earning the trust of a teenager and then pursuing a “relationship.” The only function that the sexual content served was to be just another part of fandom to bond over, just like we bonded over cosplay and merchandise and new canon material and anime episodes and dubs and—you get it. It was one part of a whole. Like, smutty fan works are so common that it didn’t raise a red flag, because, well…everyone likes that stuff. If we’d been hanging out offline it would’ve been a red flag because adults talking about about sex with teenagers in a non-educational context is creepy. But in the fandom space, it’s just normal and part of the fun and it was okay because it wasn’t about us, it was about fake people.

So that makes it hard for me to take the discourse seriously, because 1) I don’t think most of you even know what you’re angry about anymore, and 2) sexual fan works and RPs didn’t have the heavy influence in my situation that you think they did. They were a part of the equation, but that woman could’ve easily groomed me even if we’d never talked about sex before we got into a “relationship.” The reason why I could recognize the wrongness of a fictional relationship but not my own was because she had earned my trust and used it to emotionally manipulate me into believing we were an exception.

I think a lot of you have a very…early 2000s after-school special idea of the role fandom can play in grooming and abuse. I think a lot of you imagine a creepy adult sending a teacher/student fic to a 14 year old and saying, “See, this is normal and okay because it’s in a fan fiction.” And I’m not saying that never ever happens, but I think it’s far more common for it to happen the same way it does offline: the adult bonds with the minor over shared interests, earns their trust, makes them feel cool and special, and then uses that trust and goodwill to convince them that the abuse is okay and that other people “don’t/won’t understand.” It’s exactly the same tactics as adult men “dating” high school girls.

I think it’s unproductive at best to go after artists and authors who create the kind of content I was reading back then, because like, I recognized that the fictional scenarios would be wrong IRL and it still didn’t help. I’m betting most people reading AND making that stuff recognize on some level that it’d be wrong IRL. Blaming abuse on fan work and not solely on predators means that one of the ways that predators can gain your trust is by aligning themselves with “antis,” the same way that right wingers can get you to agree with them on anything by dressing it up in progressive language. I dread to say it but I am confident that it’s already happening.

I’m not saying anyone needs to read something they’re uncomfortable with, or interact with people who enjoy those things, but I do think you need to develop some nuance and recognize that the vast majority of people making the sexual content you dislike aren’t doing so for nefarious reasons. Yes, fiction can normalize and perpetuate bad ideas, but fiction isn’t the cause, it’s the symptom. You’re not going to end sexual abuse by witch hunting people who write about, like, teenagers dating and having sex (which, as we all know, definitely doesn’t happen IRL). At best it’s unproductive, and at worst you create an environment where teens feel even greater shame about wanting to explore their sexuality by writing about characters their own age, and adults feel afraid to draw inspiration from their own life experiences for fear someone will call them a predator. Which sucks for everyone, but it also means that queer teens and adults (who are already made to feel like their feelings are dirty and inappropriate) effectively end up closeted and unable to come to terms with their identities and see their experiences represented somewhere.

So…I don’t really have a smooth conclusion here. I just think the shipping discourse is fucking stupid because it assumes a world that runs on Internet Stranger Danger PSA logic.

[phantomato]

for the choose violence ask game: 14, 18, and 24 for TLT!

Thank you so much!! I never get to go on about TLT here. 💖 From the ask game:

14. that one thing you see in fics all the time

John dubconning or nonconning other characters. I get why it makes sense and I’ve written it too, but tbh I think it’s pretty feasible that he’s not like that. If he grew up in the social context that’s implied, he could be very self-conscious about sexual consent, actually! I could see a John who doesn’t have much sex and only accepts offers from people who are very, very clearly coming onto him (e.g. jizz heist). But yeah, I feel like I mostly see John engaging in consent-issues sex in fic.

Oh, and Third House fancy parties in pre-GtN fic. I would love to see Third House do something other than throw a gala.

18. it's absolutely criminal that the fandom has been sleeping on…

OBVIOUSLY Silas/Colum. Yeah I get it, this is a majority f/f fandom, as it should be. But these two have such a sexy dynamic: loyalty/fealty, religious indoctrination, repression, a weird backward age gap (baby uncle!), they were literally bred for one another. It’s full of amazing potential to explore in a thousand different ways, and while I’d never expect it to be a top 10 ship, I think it’s a crime that its fans are so few. It seems like the popularity is hurt by the divisiveness of the Eighth house and perhaps that’s something that could be shifted by whatever happens in AtN.

I’ve got an idea for a setting-change AU fic which makes Silas and Colum the depraved Victorian family they were clearly meant to be and I’m going to try writing it next year. They’re just such a good ship and I hope that the fandom comes around on them. Also, Silas needs a fisting.

24. topic that brings up the most rancid discourse

Jod. 😬 I remember watching a wank go down last year about John and war crimes and it devolved into the sort of disgusting “liking a villain makes you morally suspect” comments that run me out of engaging with a fandom. I’m neutral to negative on John, despite wanting to have liked him more, but IMO he’s a very standard morally-complicated bad guy and not worth that kind of discourse. He did terrible things, we’re supposed to recognize that he’s not a cartoon and he had reasons for them, and the narrative handles that fine. But I’m going to hide from most mentions of John Gaius because wow, it gets bad.

[andy-the-8th]

I'm gonna go on a little bit of an off-ish topic rant about So Weird for a second and do my best to keep this mostly positive (this blog is about old DCOMs so I'm going to say this is still on-topic, feel free to filter the tag "so weird" if this is outside realms of interest). I will also offer the caveat that I only watched the first two seasons and only ever intend to do so

One thing I actually enjoyed about this series (besides the fact that it was willing to engage with actual grieving and long-term effects of that on family dynamics) is that it was super casual about showing physical platonic affection

The main characters are all kind of a big family (I pitched it to my friend as "the X Files but instead of feds it's a 90s alt rock sort-of-throuple dealing with their blended teenager sibling group's shenanigans"

For the record I use the term "throuple" mostly for humorous brevity - I don't read Molly as having any actual romantic or sexual subtext with the Bells, but I would say they all kind of co-parent together to some extent or another

Platonic affection isn't presented as an uncommon thing between parents and kids, or between siblings/pseudo-siblings, and is casually shown in the series (I think it was the first or second episode that had Clu sleeping on the bus's couch, head on his mom's lap with her just stroking his hair, and this character's like 17 or 18)

I would even say that if you had to pick a single character relationship that the series is About, it's Jack and Fi's sibling bond and navigating that through the lens of having different responses to their father's death (the Mulder/Scully dynamic they have is sort of a whimsical translation of that). I think there's a reason that perhaps the scariest moment in the series is where the Will o' the Wisp is threatening to turn their relationship against them to trap Jack's soul forever, and the way he's defeated is essentially because he doesn't understand the love they have for each other even (or especially) under the ways they conflict with each other

Just in general siblings/parents hugging or casually sitting cuddled together is pretty regular. Maybe the characters are supposed to be just super comfortable being close with each other from sharing enclosed space so much, as 6 mostly adult-sized people literally living on a tour bus together, but it's nice to see

Which leads me to the topic of Carey's relationship with Molly once he replaces Clu in season 2 - I have seen some fans want to read some sort of subtext in there but honestly I find that incredibly uncomfortable. If anything he's just kind of reaching out to a close adult family friend he can come to about his struggles/music aspirations/etc outside his biological parents, and yeah because he's a hot guy in his 20s it reads a little differently than the younger teens, but I don't personally see any plus into reading that as having some kind of romantic/sexual tension

like we see expressly in the flashback scenes that Molly has been kind of a third parent-figure (and I use that intentionally openly; locking parental roles into a strict binary of "the mom" and "the dad" isn't what we're about here) in his life growing up, so shipping or semi-shipping that is extremely unpleasant and strange in my opinion

Same with shipping Clu with either Jack or Fi, or (I have seen it and it's rather repulsive) Jack and Fi together, it feels like a fundamental misunderstanding of the character dynamic

going to comment on fandom in general though, I notice sibling incest ships tend to arise in situations where actors have a lot of chemistry, and writers are channeling that into their family dynamic but it means that love interests feel kind of flat by comparison - it's sort of another side of the same fandom-discourse dodecahedron which posits m/m ships get popular because male characters tend to be written with more dimension than female ones, which gives fans more to be interested in and read into and simply enjoy as narrative devices. You engage more easily with a story and its parts when there's simply more to work with

Shipping as a primary means to engage with media is a thing, I get that, so like do what you want, thought crime isn't a thing and characters aren't real people etc etc etc. However, reading a positive portrayal of (often interestingly non-traditional) family affection as somehow sexual I think fundamentally misses key points of the whole story. The fact that there aren't really any obviously shippable characters in the main cast isn't a bad thing

mumbled aside about the moderate amount of frustration I have with the other fandom I write for where for some reason people feel the need to pair up the entire cast in some combination or another but not going to get into that here

Anyway I am not trying to start fandom discourse in a microscopic old fandom like this; I more meant this to positively comment on how open the series is with letting family members show affection and to give my two cents to the void on the Carey & Molly subtext interpretations

[glitt3r-litt3r]

hi! i'm doing a presentation on the impact and community of tumblr for my media studies final and i wanted to reach out to my mutuals and fav blogs with some questions that relate to my topic. i would so totally love and appreciate if you could answer some of these for me.

it would be so totally rock and roll and awesome and amazing and i'll literally love you forever and ever and ever! :)

thank you thank you thank you!!!!

the questions(i know it's a lot, i'm so sorry):

1. how is tumblr different from other social media platforms?

2. how has the tumblr community affected you as a person/online presence?

3. do you feel more inclined to post more personal or private aspects of your life and or opinions on tumblr rather than other apps? as in do you feel you are less likely to be judged on tumblr than other platforms?

4. what are your favorite aspects of tumblr?

5. what would you do if tumblr got shut down?

6. what are some things that only tumblr bloggers would know/understand?

or

7. are there certain traditions on tumblr that you think other media sites wouldn't understand?(an example being our site wide celebration of the ides of march)

8. what are some of the largest fandoms/inner communities on tumblr? are you apart of these fandoms/communities? if yes, what is that like for you?

9. do you find tumblr to be educational in terms of academics? among other things such as politics and general life experiences?

10. all in all, how has this app changed your perspective on social media, the world, your life, and so on.

11. why do you think people should download tumblr?

12. what's your favorite and least favorite part of being on tumblr

please add anything else you find to be important!!

HiHi!! of course i can help <3

1. One key difference i've found from Tumblr vs other apps is the kind of niche community finding. When I first joined Tumblr it was because I knew there were ways to find exactly what I was looking for which was at the time for fandoms that i participated in. I wanted character analysis, fanfiction, discourse on the themes. On Tumblr I don't feel inclined or forced to share like I do sometimes on other social medias and I really enjoy the way reblogging works here! Being able to add onto a persons thought with your own has been super fun and cool.

2. So there's two kind of answers for this. The online community as a whole is very intense for people and I find that Tumblr has lessened that pressure by allowing this sort of allowing me to share my thoughts under categories that make sense. I think it's also helped my writing skills because as everyone who follows me knows I write fanfiction duhh!! But the kind of writing I see here, the critique/praise I get, even just asking followers what they want to read makes me a better writer.

3. Definitely feel more inclined to share some stuff like my opinions on certain aspects of media. Also it's great for being anonymous because unlike instagram that's used to connect "people you know" I use Tumblr to exist with people I don't know as we engage in whatever we like which is part of the allure. If i wanted to be known on here I could but the fact that it's not forced is nice.

4. Art, fandom, memes. People are hilarious and I get to see it and giggle. I also love the ways we get to interact around movies/books/shows almost like everyone's already friends.

5. die. or something less dramatic like be really upset and long for the days which I could use Tumblr freely.

6. The importance of support through reposting/reblogging people's works. This site isn't instagram or tiktok, liking something isn't enough for artists/writers to get recognition on here. Reblogging opens up their art to an entirely different community than if it just remained on the original persons blog.

Another thing I'd like to mention is that there's definitely bad stuff on Tumblr it's not a perfect site at all. I've seen some really terrible discourse from some chronically online people that made me feel like my brain was gonna leak out of my ears lol. Good thing is, I scrolled away and it didn't cause real harm because I have media literacy and can understand when someone's wrong vs just hurts my feelings.

I love Tumblr a lot, she's like an old friend to me and I hope I don't ever lose that feeling.

[xqueerneurosisx]

No need to respond to this by the way, but I wanted to point out that the original and more correct meaning of proship is simply a person who wants to advertise that they are in favor of shipping, aka they have a "ship and let ship" attitude and don't think people should engage in harrassment. People with self admitted problematic ships are more likely to be proship for obvious reasons (to not be hypocrits), and antis like to confuse the issue by conflating the two, and in general there is a lot of confusion and misinformation out there even among people who are proship.

Being neutral is cool actually. No need to reblog this - stepping into the mess tends to attract people like me who crave discourse lol.

Heyo, I am late because of IRL shit, and I appreciate your concern, but I’m not going to ignore you just because you, or anyone else that finds this wants to open some discourse lmao! If I didn’t want these things I wouldn’t have anon turned on in the first place, my mystery pal! XD

So, for information’s sake, I’m well aware of what I’m doing here. It’s why I made this blog separate from my main. This blog is my separate space FOR discussions like this! There’s no need to worry. Discourse to your heart’s content here.

As for your takes: believe me, I know. Yeep, I was here on tumblr just having fun in the Naruto fandom when the fire nation attacked antis brought their bullshit over here from that website they tried to “scrub clean,” or whatever you want to call it. I know they literally started it by calling themselves anti specific ship names within fandoms first, and I know why and where it lead others to start using the term Proship.

The only two things I would say a little bit differently than you here is:

1) There’s one reason Proship will always differ slightly with each person who uses the label, which has nothing to do with antis lying or twisting words: different people have different interpretations of the fiction they’re applying the term to. Not that the main concept of “ship and let ship” changes much from that, but when you interpret the characters you’re looking at differently than another person who says they’re proship, then you’re going to have slightly different ideas on how TO “ship and let ship,” ya get me? That’s always going to happen, so it might be more helpful to ask “What does proship mean to you?” Instead of just looking for a definition in the most literal way, because you won’t actually find one in the first place.

2) The only thing you have to be careful with when being neutral, on something like this is: you have to make sure that you don’t make it equal being complacent. You can say “I’m neutral” all day, but you’re playing right into the anti side of things, if you look the other way when you actively HAVE the ability and the spoons to report harassment. And that’s not neutral at all. Yeah yeah, and you know I’m not talking about staying away from the dog piles for your own safety and health here. That’s a given.

All this to say, yeah I agree with you, but there’s still a couple of things to keep in mind when coming at these topics. Have a fan-fucking-tastic time of day! ✌🏻

[kitkatpancakestack]

[amendments]

Pro vs Anti-shipping opinions from someone who is Neutral...and will get canceled on both sides anyway

It’s fair and 100% ok to deem ships that are problematic, “problematic”, and be uncomfortable with them...and maybe even try to discourage people from shipping them, but you absolutely do not have the right to act like an authoritarian little sh!t and dictate what people can and can’t do. Block and move on.

Proshippers can effectively draw/write/create whatever they want. This is the internet and no matter how much you whine and complain, the internet isn’t going to adopt a pro-censorship stance. However, if you create content for an obviously disgusting pair, you’re going to get criticism, and people are going to find you creepy. You will be judged, even if you’re using your ship as a coping mechanism. No one is free from it.

Criticism, suggestions, and expression of discomfort are NOT BULLYING. If someone doesn’t like your ship, too bad. However, if you’re blatantly telling someone to kay why ess, hurt themselves, giving them some type of violent threat, or are doxxing them, you’re a disgusting person and no better than the people who commit said actions you’re against.

If you’re a proshipper and bullying kids, you’re also apart of the problem. Be the bigger person and block/report.

No, not all proshippers are creeps, some are just people who are anti-censorship, sick of PC culture and ship said ships out of spite, and/or don’t actually like anything bad themselves.

No, not all antis are annoying harassers, stalkers, or minors, some are people who are genuinely concerned about the questionable work you put out or may expose to minors/victims. Also, the lack of restrictions of minors in NSFW spaces is...sus -_-

Yes, there are predators in proship spaces, but there are also predators in antiship spaces, and literally everywhere else on the internet. This isn’t a ship problem, it’s a fandom problem.

Antis who claim that neutral people are just as bad as proshippers, actually push us away. You aren’t making us want to side with you. In fact, you’re doing the opposite. Most people who are neutral/position-less are actually people who really don’t care. Why? Because ships and fandoms don’t engulf our lives, and we actually have more important things to worry about than bullsh!t that strangers online are fighting about.

No, not saying anything or having a position on a topic is not inherently condoning it, it’s just not involving yourself in the problem. -_- It’s hard to really speak about something that’s not on your radar.

No, literally nobody in real life cares, or will care, about this debate. Most people (surprise, surprise) don’t really care about fandoms in general. (Amazing I know). Frankly, I’ve seen people on both sides that are waaaay to invested in this discourse and need to go outside. If you are super passionate about literal internet discourse, go to the park and touch grass.

Antis who are minors, I can genuinely tell you, that no, bosses in the real world really don’t care about what their employees do as hobbies outside of work. If you actually tried to contact employers about NSFW art (of fictional characters) that an employee drew on their own free time, unless you give them actual evidence of them acting inappropriately towards real people, they will ignore you. It is only a concern if that person has actually expressed illegal behavior which could put actual people in danger. (BDSM art of All Might and Deku isn’t going to get someone fired).

Antis, yeah, people will find problematic ships gross, if you tell someone about them. But, unless they are actively involved in internet fandom culture, which the vast majority of people aren’t, they’ll completely forget about it 5 mins later.

Proshippers, no, people in real life don’t care about what you ship in your private life, but if you make your whole identity about your ship, or proshipping, people will think you’re a creep. You’re chronically online. Get a hobby outside of internet discourse.

I will unfollow problematic people, and people who have caused harm, but if you tag me because I’m following a proshipper, simply because they are a proshipper, and have not actually been a perve to real children, I’m not unfollowing them. And if you pester me about it, I will unfollow, block, and report YOU. Who I follow is my business, and I will not tolerate being harassed over Twitter drama. Buzz off.

I will also not unfollow someone who identifies as an anti, or simply criticized your ship if you do not give me evidence of them actually harassing people. I am allowed to have an opinion and engage with people who have similar disapproving opinions. Who I choose to interact with is my business alone.

I’m not un-tweeting a tweet just because a self proclaimed “proshipper” or “anti” tweeted it. Good art is good art, and good takes are good takes.

Some of you overuse the word “p£do” in references to ships. I don’t care how you view it, a ship between an adult and a minor that has a 2-3 year age gap is not p€dop1llic. This age gap is completely common among teenagers in real life, and you’re honestly sheltered if you think that’s automatically predatory. A 16 year old dating an 18 year old is a LOT less worse than a 20 year old dating a 30 year old, and the latter isn’t any less predatory or weird just because they’re both adults.

No, ships between two adults with a very large age gap, are technically not p€doph1llic, either. They may be predatory in nature, and you may perceive them as wrong and gross, but if it ain’t already illegal in real life, then it definitely ain’t on paper.

It doesn’t matter if she’s 1000 years old, we all know what the underlying intention of that character design is, buddy.

Speaking of underlying intentions, there’s a lot of unspoken racism and xenophobia rampant in anti-spaces...like more so than in pro-ship spaces. Racism is everywhere in fandoms, but white, western antishippers are...a particular breed...oozing with arrogance and ethnocentrism.

Thanks for reading my rambling novel if you made it to the end, this is just a venting post. I hate discourse.

[potteresque-ire]

Can you talk more about the usage of the word "wife" to talk about men in the BL context? I've noticed it in BJYX (particularly with GG), in the (English translations) of MDZS, and then it came up in your recent posts about Danmei-101 (which were super helpful btw) with articles connecting the "little fresh meat" type to fans calling an actor "wife." My initial reaction as a westerner is like "this is very problematic," but I think I'm missing a lot of language/cultural context. Any thoughts?

Hello! First of all, for those who’re interested, here’s a link to the referred posts. Under the cut is arguably the 4th post of the series. As usual, I apologise for the length!

(Topics: seme and uke; more about “leftover women”; roster of feminisation terms; Daji, Bao Si & the origin of BJYX; roster of beautiful, ancient Chinese men; Chairman Mao (not part of the roster) ...)

[TW: feminisation of men]

In the traditional BL characterisation, the M/M (double male) lead pairing is essentially a cis-het relationship in disguise, in which one of the M leads is viewed as the “wife” by the creator and audience. This lead often possesses some of the features of the traditional, stereotypical female, but retaining his male appearance. 

In BL terms, the “wife” is the “uke”. “Seme” and “uke” are the respective roles taken by the two male leads, and designated by the creator of the material. Literally, “seme” (攻め) means the dominant, the attacking / aggressive partner in the relationship and “uke” (受け), the passive / recipient (of actions) partner who tends to follow the seme’s lead. The terms themselves do not have any sexual / gender context.  However, as male and female are viewed as aggressive and passive by their traditional social roles, and the attacker and recipient by their traditional sexual roles respectively, BL fandoms have long assigned uke, the passive, sexual “bottom”, as the “woman”, the “wife”. 

Danmei has kept this “semi” and uke” tradition from BL, taking the kanji of the Japanese terms for designation ~ 攻 (”attack” is therefore the “husband”, and 受 (”receive”), the “wife”. The designations are often specified in the introduction / summary of Danmei works as warning / enticement. For MDZS, for example, MXTX wrote:

高貴冷豔悶騷 攻 × 邪魅狂狷風騷 受

高貴冷豔悶騷 攻 = noble, coolly beautiful and boring seme (referring to LWJ)  邪魅狂狷風騷 受 = devilishly charming, wild, and flirty uke (referring to WWX) 

The traditional, stereotypical female traits given to the “uke”, the “wife” in Danmei and their associated fanworks range from their personality to behaviour to even biological functions. Those who have read the sex scenes in MDZS may be aware of their lack of mention of lube, while WWX was written as getting (very) wet from fluids from his colon (腸道) ~ implying that his colon, much like a vagina, was supplying the necessarily lubrication for sex. This is obviously biologically inaccurate; however, Danmei is exempt from having to be realistic by its original Tanbi definition. The genre’s primary audience is cishet females, and sex scenes such as this one aren’t aiming for realism. Rather, the primary goal of these sex scenes is to generate fantasy, and the purpose of the biologically female functions in one of the leads (WWX) is to ease the readers into imagining themselves as the one engaging in the sex.

Indeed, these practices of assigning as males and female the M/M sexual top and bottom, of emphasising of who is the top and who is the bottom, have been falling out of favour in Western slash fandoms ~ I joined fandom about 15 years ago, and top and bottom designations in slash pairings (and fights about them) were much more common than it is now.  The generally more open, more progressive environments in which Western fandomers are immersed in probably have something to do with it: they transfer their RL knowledge, their views on biology, on different social into their fandom works and discourses. 

I’d venture to say this: in the English-speaking fandoms, fandom values and mainstream values are converging. “Cancel culture” reflects an attempt to enforce RL values in the fictional worlds in fandom. Fandom culture is slowly, but surely, leaving its subculture status and becoming part of mainstream culture. 

I’d hesitate to call c-Danmei fandoms backward compared to Western slash for this reason. There’s little hope for Danmei to converge with China’s mainstream culture in the short term ~ the necessity of replacing Danmei with Dangai in visual media already reflects that. Danmei is and will likely remain subculture in the foreseeable future, and subcultures, at heart, are protests against the mainstream. Unless China and the West define “mainstream” very similarly (and they don’t), it is difficult to compare the “progressiveness”—and its dark side, the “problematic-ness”—of the protests, which are shaped by what they’re protesting against. The “shaper” in this scenario, the mainstream values and culture, are also far more forceful under China’s authoritarian government than they are in the free(-er) world. 

Danmei, therefore, necessarily takes on a different form in China than BL or slash outside China. As a creative pursuit, it serves to fulfil psychological needs that are reflective of its surrounding culture and sociopolitical environment. The genre’s “problematic” / out of place aspects in the eyes of Western fandoms are therefore, like all other aspects of the genre, tailor-made by its millions of fans to be comforting / cathartic for the unique culture and sociopolitical background it and they find themselves in. 

I briefly detoured to talk about the Chinese government’s campaign to pressure young, educated Chinese women into matrimony and motherhood in the post for this reason, as it is an example of how, despite Western fandoms’ progressiveness, they may be inadequate, distant for c-Danmei fans. Again, this article is a short and a ... morbidly-entertaining read on what has been said about China’s “leftover women” (剩女) — women who are unmarried and over 27-years-old). I talked about it, because “Women should enter marriage and parenthood in their late 20s” may no longer a mainstream value in many Western societies, but where it still is, it exerts a strong influence on how women view romance, and by extension, how they interact with romantic fiction, including Danmei.

In China, this influence is made even stronger by the fact that Chinese tradition  places a strong emphasis on education and holds a conservative attitude towards romance and sex. Dating while studying therefore remains discouraged in many Chinese families. University-educated Chinese women therefore have an extremely short time frame — between graduation (~23 years old) and their 27th birthday — to find “the right one” and get married, before they are labelled as “leftovers” and deemed undesirable. (Saving) face being an important aspect in Chinese culture introduces yet another layer of pressure: traditionally, women who don’t get married by the age agreed by social norms have been viewed as failures of upbringing, in that the unmarried women’s parents not having taught/trained their daughters well. Filial, unmarried women therefore try to get married “on time” just to avoid bringing shame to their family.

The outcome is this: despite the strong women characters we may see in Chinese visual media, many young Chinese women nowadays do not expect themselves to be able to marry for love. Below, I offer a “book jacket summary” of a popular internet novel in China, which shows how the associated despair also affects cis-het fictional romance. Book reviews praise this novel for being “boring”: the man and woman leads are both common working class people, the “you-and-I”’s; the mundaneness of them trying build their careers and their love life is lit by one shining light: he loves her and she loves him. 

Written in her POV, this summary reflects, perhaps, the disquiet felt by many contemporary Chinese women university graduates:

曾經以為，自己這輩子都等不到了—— 世界這麼大，我又走得這麼慢，要是遇不到良人要怎麼辦？早過了「全球三十幾億男人，中國七億男人，天涯何處無芳草」的猖狂歲月，越來越清楚，循規蹈矩的生活中，我們能熟悉進而深交的異性實在太有限了，有限到我都做好了「接受他人的牽線，找個適合的男人慢慢煨熟，再平淡無奇地進入婚姻」的準備，卻在生命意外的拐彎處迎來自己的另一半。

I once thought, my wait will never come to fruition for the rest of my life — the world is so big, I’m so slow in treading it, what if I’ll never meet the one? I’ve long passed the wild days of thinking “3 billion men exist on Earth, 0.7 of which are Chinese. There is plenty more fish in the sea.” I’m seeing, with increasing clarity, that in our disciplined lives, the number of opposite-sex we can get to know, and get to know well, is so limited. It’s so limited that I’m prepared to accept someone’s matchmaking, find a suitable man and slowly, slowly, warm up to him, and then, to enter marriage with without excitement, without wonder. But then, an accidental turn in my life welcomes in my other half.

— Oath of Love (餘生，請多指教) (Yes, this is the novel Gg’d upcoming drama is based on.) 

Heteronormativity is, of course, very real in China. However, that hasn’t exempted Chinese women, even its large cis-het population, from having their freedom to pursue their true love taken away from them. Even for cis-het relationships, being able to marry for love has become a fantasy —a fantasy scorned by the state. Remember this quote from Article O3 in the original post? 

耽改故事大多远离现实，有���年轻受众却将其与生活混为一谈，产生不以结婚和繁衍为目的才是真爱之类的偏颇认知。

Most Dangai stories are far removed from reality; some young audience nonetheless mix them up with real life, develop biased understanding such as “only love that doesn’t treat matrimony and reproduction as destinations is true love”. 

I didn’t focus on it in the previous posts, in an effort to keep the discussion on topic. But why did the op-ed piece pick this as an example of fantasy-that-shouldn’t-be-mixed-up-with-real-life, in the middle of a discussion about perceived femininity of men that actually has little to do with matrimony and reproduction? 

Because the whole point behind the state’s “leftover women” campaign is precisely to get women to treat matrimony and reproduction as destinations, not beautiful sceneries that happen along the way. And they’re the state’s destination as more children = higher birth rate that leads to higher future productivity. The article is therefore calling out Danmei for challenging this “mainstream value”.

Therefore, while the statement True love doesn’t treat matrimony and reproduction as destinations may be trite for many of us while it may be a point few, if any, English-speaking fandoms may pay attention to, to the mainstream culture Danmei lives in, to the mainstream values dictated by the state, it is borderline subversive.

As much as Danmei may appear “tame” for its emphasis on beauty and romance, for it to have stood for so long, so firmly against China’s (very) forceful mainstream culture, the genre is also fundamentally rebellious.  Remember: Danmei has little hope of converging with China’s mainstream unless it “sells its soul” and removes its homoerotic elements. 

With rebelliousness, too, comes a bit of tongue-in-cheek.

And so, when c-Danmei fans, most of whom being cishet women who interact with the genre by its traditional BL definition, call one of the leads 老婆 (wife), it can and often take on a different flavour. As said before, it can be less about feminizing the lead than about identifying with the lead. The nickname 老婆 (wife) can be less about being disrespectful and more about humorously expressing an aspiration—the aspiration to have a husband who truly loves them, who they do want to get married and have babies with but out of freedom and not obligation.

Admittedly, I had been confused, and bothered by these “can-be”s myself. Just because there are alternate reasons for the feminisation to happen doesn’t mean the feminisation itself is excusable. But why the feminisation of M/M leads doesn’t sound as awful to me in Chinese as in English? How can calling a self-identified man 老婆 (wife) get away with not sounding being predominantly disrespectful to my ears, when I would’ve frowned at the same thing said in my vicinity in English?

I had an old hypothesis: when I was little, it was common to hear people calling acquaintances in Chinese by their unflattering traits:  “Deaf-Eared Chan” (Mr Chan, who’s deaf), “Fat Old Woman Lan” (Ah-Lan, who’s an overweight woman) etc—and the acquaintances were perfectly at ease with such identifications, even introducing themselves to strangers that way. Comparatively speaking then, 老婆 (wife) is harmless, even endearing. 

老婆, which literally means “old old-lady” (implying wife = the woman one gets old with), first became popularised as a colloquial, casual way of calling “wife” in Hong Kong and its Cantonese dialect, despite the term itself being about 1,500 years old. As older generations of Chinese were usually very shy about talking about their love lives, those who couldn’t help themselves and regularly spoke of their 老婆 tended to be those who loved their wives in my memory. 老婆, as a term, probably became endearing to me that way. 

Maybe this is why the feminisation of M/M leads didn’t sound so bad to me?

This hypothesis was inadequate, however. This custom of identifying people by their (unflattering) traits has been diminishing in Hong Kong and China, for similar reasons it has been considered inappropriate in the West.

Also, 老婆 (wife) is not the only term used for / associated with feminisation. I’ve tried to limit the discussion to Danmei, the fictional genre; now, I’ll jump to its associated RPS genre, and specifically, the YiZhan fandoms. The purpose of this jump: with real people involved, feminisation’s effect is potentially more harmful, more acute. Easier to feel. 

YiZhan fans predominantly entered the fandoms through The Untamed, and they’ve also transferred Danmei’s  “seme”/“uke” customs into YiZhan. There are, therefore, three c-YiZhan fandoms:

博君一肖 (BJYX): seme Dd, uke Gg 戰山為王 (ZSWW): seme Gg, uke Dd 連瑣反應 (LSFY): riba Gg and Dd. Riba = “reversible”, and unlike “seme” and “uke”, is a frequently-used term in the Japanese gay community. 

BJYX is by far the largest of the three, likely due to Gg having played WWX, the “uke” in MDZS / TU. I’ll therefore focus on this fandom, ie. Gg is the “uke”, the “wife”.

For Gg alone, I’ve seen him being also referred to by YiZhan fans as (and this is far from a complete list):

* 姐姐 (sister) * 嫂子 (wife of elder brother; Dd being the elder brother implied) * 妃妃 (based on the very first YiZhan CP name, 太妃糖 Toffee Candy, a portmanteau of sorts from Dd being the 太子 “prince” of his management company and Gg being the prince’s wife, 太子妃. 糖 = “candy”. 太妃 sounds like toffee in English and has been used as the latter’s Chinese translation.) * 美人 (beauty, as in 肖美人 “Beauty Xiao”) * Daji 妲己 (as in 肖妲己, “Daji Xiao”). 

The last one needs historical context, which will also become important for explaining the new hypothesis I have.

Daji was a consort who lived three thousand years ago, whose beauty was blamed for the fall of the Shang dynasty. Gg (and men sharing similar traits, who are exceptionally rare) has been compared to Daji 妲己 for his alternatively innocent, alternatively seductive beauty ~ the kind of beauty that, in Chinese historical texts and folk lores, lead to the fall of kingdoms when possessed by the king’s beloved woman. This kind of “I-get-to-ruin-her-virginity”, “she’s a slut in MY bedroom” beauty is, of course, a stereotypical fantasy for many (cis-het) men, which included the authors of these historical texts and folklores. However, it also contained some truth: the purity / innocence, the image of a virgin, was required for an ancient woman to be chosen as a consort; the seduction, meanwhile, helped her to become the top consort, and monopolise the attention of kings and emperors who often had hundreds of wives ~ wives who often put each other in danger to eliminate competition. 

Nowadays, women of tremendous beauty are still referred to by the Chinese idiom 傾國傾城, literally, ”falling countries, falling cities”. The beauty is also implied to be natural, expressed in a can’t-help-itself way, perhaps reflecting the fact that the ancient beauties on which this idiom has been used couldn’t possibly have plastic surgeries, and most of them didn’t meet a good end ~ that they had to pay a price for their beauty, and often, with their lowly status as women, as consorts, they didn’t get to choose whether they wanted to pay this price or not. This adjective is considered to be very flattering. Gg’s famous smile from the Thailand Fanmeet has been described, praised as 傾城一笑: “a smile that topples a city”.

I’m explaining Daji and 傾國傾城 because the Chinese idiom 博君一笑 “doing anything to get a smile from you”, from which the ship’s name BJYX 博君一肖  was derived (笑 and 肖 are both pronounced “xiao”), is connected to yet another of such dynasty-falling beauty, Bao Si 褒姒. Like Daji before her, Bao Si was blamed for the end of the Zhou Dynasty in 771 BC. 

The legend went like this: Bao Si was melancholic, and to get her to smile, her king lit warning beacons and got his nobles to rush in from the nearby vassal states with their armies to come and rescue him, despite not being in actual danger. The nobles, in their haste, looked so frantic and dishevelled that Bao Si found it funny and smiled. Longing to see more of the smile of his favourite woman, the king would fool his nobles again and again, until his nobles no longer heeded the warning beacons when an actual rebellion came. 

What the king did has been described as 博紅顏一笑, with 紅顏 (”red/flushed face”) meaning a beautiful woman, referring to Bao Si. Replace 紅顏 with the respectful “you”, 君, we get 博君一笑. If one searches the origin of the phrase 博 [fill_in_the_blank]一笑 online, Bao Si’s story shows up.

The “anything” in ”doing anything to get a smile from you” in 博君一笑, therefore, is not any favour, but something as momentous as giving away one’s own kingdom. c-turtles have remarked, to their amusement and admittedly mine, that “king”, in Chinese, is written as 王, which is Dd’s surname, and very occasionally, they jokingly compare him to the hopeless kings who’d give away everything for their love. Much like 傾國傾城 has become a flattering idiom despite the negative reputations of Daji and Bao Si for their “men-ruining ways”, 博君一笑 has become a flattering phrase, emphasising on the devotion and love rather than the ... stupidity behind the smile-inducing acts. 

(Bao Si’s story, BTW, was a lie made up by historians who also lived later but also thousands of years ago, to absolve the uselessness of the king. Warning beacons didn’t exist at her time.)  

Gg is arguably feminized even in his CP’s name. Gg’s feminisation is everywhere. 

And here comes my confession time ~ I’ve been amused by most of the feminisation terms above. 肖妲己 (”Daji Xiao”) captures my imagination, and I remain quite partial to the CP name BJYX. Somehow, there’s something ... somewhat forgivable when the feminisation is based on Gg’s beauty, especially in the context of the historical Danmei / Dangai setting of MDZS/TU ~ something that, while doesn’t cancel, dampens the “problematic-ness” of the gender mis-identification.

What, exactly, is this something?

Here’s my new hypothesis, and hopefully I’ll manage to explain it well ~

The hypothesis is this: the unisex beauty standard for historical Chinese men and women, which is also breathtakingly similar to the modern beauty standard for Chinese women, makes feminisation in the context of Danmei (especially historical Danmei) flattering, and easier to accept.

What defined beauty in historical Chinese men? If I am to create a classically beautiful Chinese man for my new historical Danmei, how would I describe him based on what I’ve read, my cultural knowledge?

Here’s a list:

* Skin fair and smooth as white jade * Thin, even frail; narrow/slanted shoulders; tall * Dark irises and bright, starry eyes * Not too dense, neat eyebrows that are shaped like swords ~ pointed slightly upwards from the center towards the sides of the face * Depending on the dynasty, nice makeup.

Imagine these traits. How “macho” are they? How much do they fit the ideal Chinese masculine beauty advertised by Chinese government, which looks like below?

Propaganda poster, 1969. The caption says “Defeat Imperialist US! Defeat Social Imperialism!” The book’s name is “Quotations from Mao Zedong”. (Source)

Where did that list of traits I’ve written com from? Fair like jade, frail ... why are they so far from the ... “macho”ness of the men in the poster? 

What has Chinese history said about its beautiful men? 

Wei Jie (衛玠 286-312 BCE), one of the four most beautiful ancient Chinese men (古代四大美男) recorded in Chinese history famously passed away when fans of his beauty gathered and formed a wall around him, blocking his way. History recorded Wei as being frail with chronic illness, and was only 27 years old when he died. Arguably the first historical account of “crazy fans killing their idol”, this incident left the idiom 看殺衛玠 ~ “Wei Jie being watched to death.” ~ a not very “macho” way to die at all.

潘安 (Pan An; 247-300 BCE), another one of the four most beautiful ancient Chinese men, also had hoards of fangirls, who threw fruits and flowers at him whenever he ventured outside. The Chinese idiom 擲果盈車 “thrown fruit filling a cart” was based on Pan and ... his fandom, and denotes such scenarios of men being so beautiful that women openly displayed their affections for them. 

Meanwhile, when Pan went out with his equally beautiful male friend, 夏侯湛 Xiahou Zhan, folks around them called them 連璧 ~ two connected pieces of perfect jade. Chinese Jade is white, smooth, faintly glowing in light, so delicate that it gives the impression of being somewhat transparent.

Aren’t Wei Jie and Pan An reminiscent of modern day Chinese idols, the “effeminate” “Little Fresh Meat”s (小鲜肉) so panned by Article O3? Their stories, BTW, also elucidated the historical reference in LWJ’s description of being jade-like in MDZS, and in WWX and LWJ being thrown pippas along the Gusu river bank. 

Danmei, therefore, didn’t create a trend of androgynous beauty in men as much as it has borrowed the ancient, traditional definition of masculine Chinese beauty ~ the beauty that was more feminine than masculine by modern standards.  

[Perhaps, CPs should be renamed 連璧 (”two connected pieces of perfect jade”) as a reminder of the aesthetics’ historical roots.]

Someone may exclaim now: But. But!! Yet another one of the four most beautiful ancient Chinese men, 高長恭 (Gao Changgong, 541-573 BCE), far better known by his title, 蘭陵王 (”the Prince of Lanling”), was a famous general. He had to be “macho”, right?

... As it turns out, not at all. Historical texts have described Gao as “貌柔心壮，音容兼美” (”soft in looks and strong at heart, beautiful face and voice”), “白美類婦人” (”fair and beautiful as a woman”), “貌若婦人” (”face like a woman”). Legends have it that The Prince of Lanling’s beauty was so soft, so lacking in authority that he had to wear a savage mask to get his soldiers to listen to his command (and win) on the battlefield (《樂府雜錄》: 以其顏貌無威，每入陣即著面具，後乃百戰百勝).

This should be emphasised: Gao’s explicitly feminine descriptions were recorded in historical texts as arguments *for* his beauty. Authors of these texts, therefore, didn’t view the feminisation as insult. In fact, they used the feminisation to drive the point home, to convince their readers that men like the Prince of Lanling were truly, absolutely good looking.

Being beautiful like a women was therefore high praise for men in, at least, significant periods in Chinese history ~ periods long and important enough for these records to survive until today. Beauty, and so it goes, had once been largely free of distinctions between the masculine and feminine.

One more example of an image of an ancient Chinese male beauty being similar to its female counterpart, because the history nerd in me finds this fun. 

何晏 (He Yan, ?-249 BCE) lived in the Wei Jin era (between 2nd to 4th century), during which makeup was really en vogue. Known for his beauty, he was also famous for his love of grooming himself. The emperor, convinced that He Yan’s very fair skin was from the powder he was wearing, gave He Yan some very hot foods to eat in the middle of the summer. He Yan began to sweat, had to wipe himself with his sleeves and in the process, revealed to the emperor that his fair beauty was 100% natural ~ his skin glowed even more with the cosmetics removed (《世說新語·容止第十四》: 何平叔美姿儀，面至白。魏明帝疑其傅粉，正夏月，與熱湯餅。既啖，大汗出，以朱衣自拭，色轉皎然). His kick-cosmetics’-ass fairness won him the nickname 傅粉何郎 (”powder-wearing Mr He”).

Not only would He Yan very likely be mistaken as a woman if this scene is transferred to a modern setting, but this scene can very well fit inside a Danmei story of the 21st century and is very, very likely to get axed by the Chinese censorship board for its visualisation. 

[Important observation from this anecdote: the emperor was totally into this trend too.]

The adjectives and phrases used above to describe these beautiful ancient Chinese men ~ 貌柔, 音容兼美, 白美, 美姿儀, 皎然 ~ have all become pretty much reserved for describing beauty in women nowadays. Beauty standards in ancient China were, as mentioned before, had gone through significantly long periods in which they were largely genderless. The character for beauty 美 (also in Danmei, 耽美) used to have little to no gender association. Free of gender associations as well were the names of many flowers. The characters for orchid (蘭) and lotus (蓮), for example, were commonly found in men’s names as late as the Republican era (early 20th century), but are now almost exclusively found in women’s names. Both orchid and lotus have historically been used to indicate 君子 (junzi, roughly, “gentlemen”), which have always been men. MDZS also has an example of a man named after a flower: Jin Ling’s courtesy name, given to him by WWX,  was 如蘭 (”like an orchid”). 

A related question may be this: why does ancient China associate beauty with fairness, with softness, with frailty? Likely, because Confucianist philosophy and customs put a heavy emphasis on scholarship ~ and scholars have mostly consisted of soft-spoken, not muscular, not working-under-the-sun type of men. More importantly, Confucianist scholars also occupied powerful government positions. Being, and looking like a Confucianist scholar was therefore associated with status. Indeed, it’s very difficult to look like jade when one was a farmer or a soldier, for example, who constantly had to toil under the sun, whose skin was constantly being dried and roughened by the elements. Having what are viewed as “macho” beauty traits as in the poster above ~ tanned skin, bulging muscles, bony structures (which also take away the jade’s smoothness) ~ were associated with hard labour, poverty and famine.

Along that line, 手無縛雞之力 (“hands without the strength to restrain a chicken”) has long been a phrase used to describe ancient scholars and students, and without scorn or derision. Love stories of old, which often centred around scholars were, accordingly, largely devoid of the plot lines of husbands physically protecting the wives, performing the equivalent of climbing up castle walls and fighting dragons etc. Instead, the faithful husbands wrote poems, combed their wife’s hair, traced their wife’s eyebrows with cosmetics (畫眉)...all activities that didn’t require much physical strength, and many of which are considered “feminine” nowadays.

Were there periods in Chinese history in which more ... sporty men and women were appreciated? Yes. the Tang dynasty, for example, and the Yuan and Qing dynasties. The Tang dynasty, as a very powerful, very open era in Chinese history, was known for its relations to the West (via the Silk Road). The Yuan and Qing dynasties, meanwhile, were established by Mongolians and Manchus respectively, who, as non-Han people, had not been under the influence of Confucian culture and grew up on horsebacks, rather than in schools.

The idea that beautiful Chinese men should have “macho” attributes was, therefore, largely a consequence of non-Han-Chinese influence, especially after early 20th century. That was when the characters for beauty (美), orchid (蘭), lotus (蓮) etc began their ... feminisation. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which started its reign of the country starting 1949, also has foreign roots, being a derivative of the Soviets, and its portrayal of ideal men has been based on the party’s ideology, painting them as members of the People’s Liberation Army (Chinese army) and its two major proletariat classes, farmers and industrial workers ~ all occupations that are “macho” in their aesthetics, but held at very poor esteem in ancient Chinese societies. All occupations that, to this day, may be hailed as noble by Chinese women, but not really deemed attractive by them.

Beauty, being an instinct, is perhaps much more resistant to propaganda.

If anything, the three terms Article O3 used to describe “effeminate” men ~ 奶油小生 “cream young men” (popularised in 1980s) , 花美男 “flowery beautiful men” (early 2000s), 小鲜肉 “little fresh meat” (coined in 2014 and still popular now) ~ only informs me how incredibly consistent the modern Chinese women’s view of ideal male beauty has been. It’s the same beauty the Chinese Communist Party has called feminine. It’s the same beauty found in Danmei. It’s the same beauty that, when witnessed in men in ancient China, was so revered that historians recorded it for their descendants to remember. It doesn’t mean there aren’t any women who appreciate the "macho” type ~ it’s just that, the appreciation for the non-macho type has never really gone out of fashion, never really changed. The only thing that is really changing is the name of the type, the name’s positive or negative connotations.

(Personally, I’m far more uncomfortable with the name “Little fresh meat” (小鲜肉) than 老婆 (wife). I find it much more insulting.)

Anyway, what I’d like to say is this: feminisation in Danmei ~ a genre that, by definition, is hyper-focused on aesthetics ~ may not be as "problematic” in Chinese as it is in English, because the Chinese tradition didn’t make that much of a differentiation between masculine and feminine beauty. Once again, this isn’t to say such mis-gendering isn’t disrespectful; it’s just that, perhaps, it is less disrespectful because Chinese still retains a cultural memory in which equating a beautiful man to a beautiful woman was the utmost flattery. 

I must put a disclaimer here: I cannot vouch for this being true for the general Chinese population. This is something that is buried deep enough inside me that it took a lot of thought for me to tease out, to articulate. More importantly, while I grow up in a Chinese-speaking environment, I’ve never lived inside China. My history knowledge, while isn’t shabby, hasn’t been filtered through the state education system.

I’d also like to point out as well, along this line of thought, that in *certain* (definitely not all) aspects, Chinese society isn’t as sexist as the West. While historically, China has periods of extreme sexism against women, with the final dynasties of Ming and Qing being examples, I must (reluctantly) acknowledge Chairman Mao for significantly lifting the status of women during his rule. Here’s a famous quote of his from 1955:

婦女能頂半邊天 Women can lift half the skies

The first marriage code, passed in 1950, outlawed forced marriages, polygamy, and ensured equal rights between husband and wife.  For the first time in centuries, women were encouraged to go outside of their homes and work. Men resisted at first, wanting to keep their wives at home; women who did work were judged poorly for their performance and given less than 50% of men’s wage, which further fuelled the men’s resistance. Mao said the above quote after a commune in Guizhou introduced the “same-work-same-wage” system to increase its productivity, and he asked for the same system to to be replicated across the country. (Source)

When Chairman Mao wanted something, it happened. Today, Chinese women’s contribution to the country’s GDP remains among the highest in the world.  They make up more than half of the country’s top-scoring students. They’re the dominant gender in universities, in the ranks of local employees of international corporations in the Shanghai and Beijing central business districts—among the most sought after jobs in the country. While the inequality between men and women in the workplace is no where near wiped out — stories about women having to sleep with higher-ups to climb the career ladder, or even get their PhDs are not unheard of, and the central rulership of the Chinese Communist Party has been famously short of women — the leap in women’s rights has been significant over the past century, perhaps because of how little rights there had been before ~ at the start of the 20th century, most Chinese women from relatively well-to-do families still practised foot-binding, in which their feet were literally crushed during childhood in the name of beauty, of status symbol. They couldn’t even walk properly.

Perhaps, the contemporary Chinese women’s economic contribution makes the sexism they encounter in their lives, from the lack of reproductive rights to the “leftover women” label, even harder to swallow. It makes their fantasies fly to even higher, more defiant heights. The popularity of Dangai right now is pretty much driven by women, as acknowledged by Article O3. Young women, especially, female fans who people have dismissed as “immature”, “crazy”, are responsible for the threat the Chinese government is feeling now by the genre.

This is no small feat. While the Chinese government complains about the “effeminate” men from Danmei / Dangai, its propaganda has been heavily reliant on stars who have risen to popularity to these genres. The film Dd is currently shooting, Chinese Peacekeeping Force (維和部隊), also stars Huang Jingyu (黄景瑜), and Zhang Zhehan (張哲瀚) ~ the three actors having shot to fame from The Untamed (Dangai), Addicted (Danmei), and Word of Honour (Dangai) respectively.  Zhang, in particular, played the “uke” role in Word of Honour and has also been called 老婆 (wife) by his fans. The quote in Article O3, “Ten years as a tough man known by none; one day as a beauty known by all” was also implicitly referring to him.

Perhaps, the government will eventually realise that millennia-old standards of beauty are difficult to bend, and by extension, what is considered appropriate gender expression of Chinese men and women. 

In the metas I’ve posted, therefore, I’ve hesitated in using terms such as homophobia, sexism, and ageism etc, opting instead to make long-winded explanations that essentially amount to these terms (thank you everyone who’s reading for your patience!). Because while the consequence is similar—certain fraction of the populations are subjected to systemic discrimination, abuse, given less rights, treated as inferior etc—these words, in English, also come with their own context, their own assumptions that may not apply to the situation. It reminds me of what Leo Tolstoy wrote in Anna Karenina,

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Discrimination in each country, each culture is humiliating, unhappy in its own way. Both sexism and homophobia are rampant in China, but as their roots are different from those of the West, the ways they manifest are different, and so must the paths to their dissolution. I’ve also hesitated on calling out individual behaviours or confronting individuals for this reason. i-Danmei fandoms are where i-fans and c-fans meet, where English-speaking doesn’t guarantee a non-Chinese sociopolitical background (there may be students from China, for example; I’m also ... not entirely Western), and I find it difficult to articulate appropriate, convincing arguments without knowing individual backgrounds.

Frankly, I’m not sure if I’ve done the right thing. Because I do hope feminisation will soon fade into extinction, especially in i-Danmei fandoms that, if they continue to prosper on international platforms, may eventually split from c-Danmei fandoms along the cultural (not language) line due to the vast differences in environmental constraints. My hope is especially true when real people are involved, and c-fandoms, I’d like to note, are not unaware of the issues surrounding feminisation ~ it has already been explicitly forbidden in BJYX’s supertopic on Weibo. 

At the same time, I’ve spent so many words above to try to explain why beauty can *sometimes* lurk behind such feminisations. Please allow me to end this post with one example of feminisation that I deeply dislike—and I’ve seen it used by fans on Gg as well—is 綠茶 (”green tea”), from 綠茶婊 (”green tea whore”) that means women who look pure / innocent but are, deep down, promiscuous / lustful. In some ways, its meaning isn’t so different from Daji 妲己, the consort blamed for the fall of the Shang dynasty. However, to me at least, the flattery in the feminisation is gone, perhaps because of the character “whore” (婊), because the term originated in 2013 from a notorious sex party rather than from a legendary beauty so maligned that The Investiture of the Gods (封神演義), the seminal Chinese fiction written ~2,600 years after Daji’s death, re-imagined her as a malevolent fox spirit (狐狸精) that many still remembers her as today.

Ah, to be caught between two cultures. :)

[utilitycaster]

What’s your thoughts on tm9 suggesting working with Trent? Do you think tm9 are being “bad friends”? I have seen a lot of discussion on it and I was wondering what your thoughts are. Apologies if you have already shared your thoughts.

Hi anon,

I have shared at least some of my thoughts but, as always, give me an inch and I will take one thousand miles and then take one thousand more. If you wanted a normal answer, please click on that link and then feel free to stop reading. If you want me to yell about behaviors in fandom that fill me with rage (and also some additional thoughts about the Mighty Nein in this episode, to be fair, which I’ve marked so you can skip to it), read on.

GOOD FUCKING LORD I AM PRETTY SURE A CERTAIN SMALL BUT LOUD PORTION WITHIN FANDOM, AND THIS IS ABOUT FANDOM IN GENERAL AND NOT SPECIFIC TO THE CRITICAL ROLE, ACTUAL PLAY, NOR D&D FANDOM, HAS NEVER HAD A FUNCTIONAL FRIENDSHIP OR RELATIONSHIP IN THEIR LIVES WHAT WITH THE WAY THEY TALK ABOUT CHARACTER INTERACTIONS. LIKE WHAT THE FUCK.

I don’t think that any of the Mighty Nein were being at all inappropriate during this conversation in the first place, and more on that below, but also like, people say insensitive things to their friends all the time! It’s impossible to account for every situation that could potentially upset someone, and sometimes people need to have difficult conversations! I’ve said this before with people in private conversations but there is an exhausting amount of discourse for CR (but also, like, in general about fictional media by people who are Way Too Online) regarding who really understands and cares about whom and it’s like. They are all friends. They have all referred to each other as found family. They all care about each other. And with that in mind, it’s also true that if you or anyone else were to give me literally any pairing of two characters in the Nein, romantic or platonic, I can without considerable effort name an interaction in which one of them said or did something hurtful or insensitive to the other, because this is a thing that happens when different people with different perspectives and experiences talk to each other for any length of time.

A not-insignificant amount of discourse, in my opinion, has nothing to do with how real interpersonal relationships work and is entirely "this is my favorite/least favorite character (or ship) and I think everyone should also think they are flawless/terrible” and if I had to guess this is probably more of the same. But even if it’s not just that, the idea that the only “good” friendship is one devoid of arguments, slip-ups, and even the most minor of transgressions and anything else is “bad” or “toxic” is so divorced from reality I absolutely cannot engage with it without wanting to scream. Which is not to say that a single action by a friend, even a close one, could never be enough to invalidate the friendship. But it has to be a pretty significant and deliberate violation, and in my opinion the events of this episode do not even budge the needle.

With that out of the way before I return to it at the end: I think the overarching attitude of the Mighty Nein on the whole is “this is going to be an incredibly difficult fight, and we need to discuss all of our options, even distasteful ones that none of us particularly like.”

The linked post talks a lot about why I think Fjord brought it up in the first place, but from there, I would say that Yasha was the only one who was consistently on the side of “No,” which is in line with her character. We know Caduceus is fairly sure they’re going to die without additional help and has seen by far the most terrifying visions of what happens if they fail; that Jester likely has some similar ideas to Caleb regarding “if Trent’s with us, at least he’s not going after Marion”; and while Beau brought up the downsides of working with one’s abuser it’s highly worth noting she was still entertaining it: she floats that maybe this could kill two birds with one stone [2:01:10-ish on the Twitch video].

Veth strikes me as the one who came closest to “pushing” Caleb, and this has been a theme recently. I’m not fully sure about this - Veth is often a character I struggle to get a handle on - but I think it’s a combination of her family being at risk in the same way Jester’s is, her own feelings of guilt or shirked responsibility about leaving the Nein after this before Caleb has achieved his goals particularly given how instrumental he was to achieving hers, and a little bit of still seeing Caleb how he was earlier on, when they first met. That last reason is definitely frustrating when it happens in real life, but it’s a very real phenomenon, the first one is wholly understandable, and the middle one is both. Basically, are those actions a little selfish? Yeah, but people are selfish sometimes. There’s a reason why even when I don’t understand her Veth (and, tbh, all the Mighty Nein) feels like a wholly realized person, and it’s because of things like this, where she has real reactions and emotional turmoil in response to an incredibly stressful situation instead of being blandly understanding.

On top of that, anything that denies that Caleb was not entertaining it, particularly after he quite literally says he’s considered it, feels like ignoring his response because it doesn’t fit a particular narrative. It ignores the entire conversation with Essek, in which Caleb is the one who brings it up first, Caleb is the one who continues to argue for it after Essek expresses his discomfort, and Caleb is the one who says he’s frustrated that his attempt to persuade Essek fails.

Returning to the generalized rant but at what point do you (the abstract you, not you the anon) stop overlaying how you think someone should react and actually listen to people? One of the things in this world that genuinely angers me the most that isn’t, you know, atrocities, is when people assume how someone feels instead of asking them and persist in doing so even when told otherwise, and this is probably why the whole “the Mighty Nein are bad friends” statement has prompted such a strong response from me here. I don’t think I’m saying anything revolutionary here but all the arguments in favor of that statement are stupid! If you don’t ask for a hug, sometimes you won’t get one! If you don’t say you’re uncomfortable you can’t assume people will be aware of it! The realest distinction between good and bad friends, actually, is whether they listen to what you’re saying or if they just project what they think you should be saying, and whether they tell you what they want from you or if they make up elaborate unspoken rules that you’re supposed to magically intuit and follow. Not whether they never make mistakes, or disagree, or bring up difficult topics.

Uh, anyway, this is probably a whole lot more and maybe not even related to what you were looking for but really, the idea that a deep friendship can be reclassified into a binary from good to bad based on two conversations, and the related idea that every interaction that isn’t perfectly harmonious must have someone to blame instead of acknowledging the full depth and breadth of normal healthy interpersonal interactions, are both absolutely terrible ideas and I would love if people in general would immediately stop having them.

[itariilles]

My Statement on Tolkien 2019

[ French translation and German translation availible. ]

It has been incredibly difficult for me to speak on my experiences regarding my experiences of hostility and othering in spaces that I loved and still hold dear to my heart, and for that reason I have been silent. That is until now. 

I have decided that now is the right time for me to come forward with my experience and statement regarding my negative experience as a person of colour engaging in Tolkien spaces. 

I want people involved in the wider Tolkien community to reflect on their roles in the specific spaces they inhabit, and how you can foster a better environment for marginalised groups to interact and engage with those spaces in a safe and inclusive manner. 

Take your time to listen and put effort into listening to fans of colour when they are speaking about their lived experiences and their grievances especially when they are speaking about a topic as personal as racism. Being critical of a work you love and the media surrounding it is not easy thing, but we need to recognise that these criticisms are valid and deserve to be taken seriously when it affects a collective of people across different backgrounds. 

I want to preface this by stating that I am speaking only for myself and my own lived experience as a vocal young non-black POC in a predominantly white space. I acknowledge that my experience is by no means universal or indicative of all POC in Tolkien fandom spaces. 

I also understand that real life interactions differ widely from interactions on online fandom spaces, but there are disturbing similarities across both online and real life spaces with specific regard to the environment and treatment of vocal POC in both. 

The tragedy is many people do not realise their impact not only on the individuals involved, but on the wider attitude towards POC voices in fandom when the topic of racism is discussed. We need to build safe environments where critical discussions of diversity and race from the people most affected by them are taken to heart, not invalidated or spoken over as targets of microaggressions. 

To give a bit of context, Tolkien 2019 was an in person conference organised by the Tolkien Society (which I was a member of at the time). The official website for Tolkien 2019 has been taken down but the Tolkien Society has a nice summary written in August 2018 breaking down the event here. 

I was approached by the Education Secretary at the time about my possible involvement in a panel discussing the history and future of the Tolkien Society which I elaborate on further in my statement. It was the first time I had felt that I had a platform where I could freely express my voice as a diverse reader and consumer of Tolkien media who held diversity in Tolkien as a core value in the wider Tolkien brand. 

I felt that as the only non-white member on the panel I had an obligation to speak out on the topic of diversity when it was raised. I tried to speak briefly about some of the points and discourses I had heard on portrayals of diversity in Tolkien media with as much nuance as I could manage at the time. In response to some points I had made I was met with vocal disapproval by some audience members and visible signs of disapproval and hostile body language from others. 

This was made even more jarring when later during the course of the event when two white creators hinted at vague notions of diversity were met with a far greater degree of approval. The former instance was during the context of a panel regarding the upcoming LOTR on Prime series, and the latter was during a talk presented by the chair of the Tolkien Society.

I felt intimidated and reluctant to involve myself any further in the Tolkien fandom, especially in real life spaces as my experience at Tolkien 2019 had only solidified and reaffirmed my fears and unease I had engaging in a predominantly white fandom with few visible POC members and creators who tackle topics of diversity and racism in both the community and source texts.

Following this event I was approached by an affiliate of one of the attendees who very kindly took the time to listen to me and suggested that I should write a statement in response to my experience. To my knowledge, my statement has not been shared or published on any platform yet and this will be the first time I have ever spoken about it publicly. 

Since then some of my thoughts and opinions on certain aspects of Tolkien fandom and meta have shifted or evolved which I will hopefully expand on in the future, but I wanted to share my initial unchanged statement I wrote reflecting my immediate reaction to my experience. 

I want to be seen as a Tolkien creative and critical thinker above anything else, but I cannot move forward with my work without speaking about my lived experience in a space which has been consistently hostile to me and so many others across different Tolkien spaces for so many years starting with my account of this one experience.

I hope my statement finds itself in good hands and I will always be willing to engage with others about my experiences so long as you engage with me in good faith. 

The statement I wrote on 25/09/2019 is as follows:

From the 9th to 11th of August of this year I attended a conference held by the Tolkien society aptly named “Tolkien 2019” that advertised itself as the “largest celebration of Tolkien ever held by the Society” in which I both spoke as a panelist and independant speaker. The event itself was a mixture of both formal and informal panels, papers presented by selected members of the society, and evening social events.

My invitation to speak on the “History of the Tolkien Society” panel was presented as deliberate choice made by the panel organiser as a gateway for discussion about diversity and representation in Tolkien. On the official programme, the panel was described as a discussion concerning “what the Tolkien Society and Tolkien fandom in general may become as it encounters digital spaces, issues of representation and diversity, academic interest and a myriad other factors that make up our lived experience today”.

Although there was much excitement and anticipation on my half in the weeks and days leading up to the event, it soon turned to dread when the tone and climate of the discussion dawned on me when I took my seat alongside five other panelists ranging from seasoned Tolkien scholars, long-time members of the Society, and a member with a leadership position within the Society. On that four person panel, I was the only one racialised as non-white. In fact, I was one of only three people in a room of approximately fifty to sixty people racialised as non-white.

It wasn’t long before the true motive of placing me — a young, new member of the Society, who felt already out of place and out of my depth even being offered the opportunity to participate in the first place — on a panel of what I perceived to be more seasoned members of the society.

When the topic of diversity and representation in the Tolkien fandom was raised by the moderator, I saw it as an opportunity for me to share my own experiences as a young fan who predominantly consumed Tolkien content online, as well as some observations I had made regarding the current pop-cultural perception of Tolkien as being heavily influenced, if not wholly entered around the Peter Jackson trilogies and being deeply ingrained with the issues that seep from those interpretations into our overall perception of the Tolkien brand.

One of the talking points that seemed to have caused the biggest uproar and dissent was one in which I referred Tolkien’s description of Sam’s hands as brown in two instances �� the first in the Two Towers, and the second instance in Return of the King and how this has been translated into film as both literal and symbolic interpretations. The former in the Ralph Bakshi’s the “Lord of the Rings” released in 1978 in which I noted that the decision to portray Sam as more ethnically ambiguous compared to the other Hobbits was a deliberate choice, whereas the latter was depicted in the recent Peter Jackson trilogy released in the early 2000’s took the description symbolically and cast the white American actor Sean Astin for the role.

The backlash I received for this was, I believe, absolutely disproportionate to the views I expressed. I saw members frown and grunt in disapproval, as well as some visibly shake their heads at me. In spite of me parroting how I saw both interpretations as equally valid as a defence mechanism in the face of such an aggressive response to what to me seemed like an innocuous observation made by a young person of colour who did not see many portrayals of people of colour in Tolkien. 

Comments such as “I don’t care who they cast as Sam whether he’s black, brown, yellow, blue or green!” and “Tolkien’s message is universal I don’t see how race factors into this!” were shouted in between points I was making, and countless others were made as an effort to dismiss the effort I put in to hopefully start an open dialogue about the lack of diversity in adaptations of Tolkien and how it has coloured our perception of the overall brand, and perhaps fantasy as a whole.

Some other talking points I decided to mention included Peter Jackson’s Easterlings (coded as being North African or Middle Eastern in the film) as being appallingly Orientalist and damaging in a post-911 world, as well as referring to Tolkien’s vague descriptions of certain characters and people groups that can be interpreted as ethnic coding or perhaps hint at a more diverse cast than the popular brand of Tolkien that may have us believe. I iterated that it is the responsibility of consumers of Tolkien and Tolkien related media to push for different interpretations of the text in order to break the perception that Tolkien’s works are entirely Anglo and Eurocentric with no place for people of colour in the vast world he had created in my opinion as a love letter to his own.

A month later it is still difficult for me to fully wrap my head around what I had experienced during the conference, much less articulating it in a statement, but if there is a note I would like to conclude on it would be this: it was never about changing Tolkien’s works, but reinterpreting his 20th century text littered with colonial artefacts and reimagining the foundations of his work through a 21st century lens in an attempt to decolonise the interpretation of his works in popular culture.

To change the way we read, write and depict the Tolkien brand is to fundamentally change the landscape of the entire genre of fantasy which has and still derives so heavily from Tolkien’s works and the global Tolkien brand.

End.

[florenceisfalling]

Okay so you misinterpreted my post entirely. Your post was also was in the tag. You didn't mention their name exactly but you did in the comments and for the fact them being the only tea blog around these days its quite obvious.. (if you don't count im-lmfao who imo is worse at this point for spamming the tag with reminders of blue existing) The whole point of bringing up tea blogs in the tags at all is what I have a problem with. It's so easy to just ignore them. The fandom did for a while and suddenly there's this big surge of people once again looking at blue, interacting with blue, posting about blue, interacting with posts about blue and you are contributing to that and probably don't even realize it at all. I know you had the best intentions and wanted to tell people to NOT post about blue, but by posting that you ARE posting about blue and engaging some sort of conversation about it.. So please. Just ignore the whole tea blogs topic. avoid it, act like it's not there so we can all get on with our lives. (And please if you see ANYONE talking about blue or tea blogs in the tag at all, send them an ask or dm kindly reminding and asking them to not do that.. Only then will we REALLY get rid of them.. Not by publicly reminding everyone that they exist, but by uniting and ignoring)

anon. anon please. i am picking you up gently like a child with a small pet pig. i am looking you deeply in the eyes. anon, my beloved.

the misinterpretation goes both ways here. from what i can gather, you want people to stop bringing up tea blogs in the tags at all because you don't want to see shit about them. that is not my goal here. i want people to stop trying to put in their time and effort to debate blue. these are two different goals.

the reason i'm not deleting my post is because it was about not, like i said, "[calling] them out". i briefly mentioned them to say, hey, guys, that won't work. some people agreed. that's it. you, on the other hand, have commented, sent asks, and also called out other discourse blogs by name. your attempts to fix this have literally been more inflammatory than mine because hey, look at this, now we're engaging in another disheartening debate.

the idea that im "contributing" to this whole ordeal is so wild to me because i have like... minimal interaction compared to a lot of people in this fandom. i barely post in the j**cksepticeye tag at all. the person i was discussing discourse with in the comments literally isn't even in this fandom anymore, they're just a friend.

my blog is just where i vibe. i don't think it's cool or nice to tell me to ignore the tea blogs topic when you're the one bringing up a conversation i finished long before you messaged me. i don't think it's cool or nice to talk about how "we all want to get on with our lives" when you are the only person who has negatively reacted to what i said, and you should not have authority over what i post. and i don't think your last suggestion is nice or cool, either, 'cause i'm not gonna individually call out people + make them feel bad about sharing their opinions,, when my goal was to just help people avoid getting basically bullied by blue in a one-sided argument.

what i said in my original post was an attempt at a helpful suggestion, and i'm sorry if it came across too vague and bothered you. but no one else expressed that they had a problem with it and i'd really appreciate if you would move on like you claim to want to do.

[aegialia]

self-indulgent reflection on being on tumblr

so i recently hit 1000 followers on here and this blog has existed for almost exactly 8 years, so i wanted to ramble about tumblr and my experience of it for awhile. under the cut so definitely feel free to ignore this.

i started this blog right around when i was fourteen and had just started high school. at that point, i was out to my parents (and no one else) as bi, i had an inkling i was Struggling with something but i had no idea what and felt like i couldnt actually acknowledge it, and i had left leaning but very vague politics. tumblr definitely has shaped my journey around sexuality/gender/mental health/politics, both for good and for ill. 

for good: 

seeing other ppl talk about being lesbians helped me realize i could be a lesbian w/o being a traitor to the concept of bisexuality. hearing trans ppl talk about their experiences and explaining non-binary stuff and dysphoria helped me understand what i was going through 

i don’t like talking about my mental health stuff in detail on here, but suffice to say, i was Going Through it in high school. i’m still going through it now, but i am in a much better place (thank you medication and 7 years of therapy!). seeing ppl talk about the weird, dumb, awful parts of mental illness let me acknowledge that i was going through those things too, that i wasnt like evil for feeling like that, that i could change. people talking about adhd/autism was particularly helpful---being able to identify why i’d always felt like my brain just didn’t work right is the first step in the (ongoing) process of not hating myself for the way my brain works

politics is definitely the area where i think tumblr was the best for me. i got exposed to so many opinions i definitely wasn’t hearing in school, from intelligent, well-read people who could articulate theory in ways i could understand. tumblr didn’t give me my politics and i didn’t learn everything i know about theory from it, but the communities of people i was around pointed me in the right directions. tumblr was also a good place to learn how to react to criticism. this doesn’t seem to be most people’s experience, but getting called out over minor things on tumblr genuinely helped me learn how to take a step back, look at my behavior, apologize, and try to change, which, as it turns out, is a helpful skill irl as well

for ill:

wrt sexuality and gender, it’s probably pretty obvious someone who’s journey is ‘cis bi girl -> cis with a million different microlabels -> nb w a million different microlabels for both sexuality and gender -> nb butch lesbian who’s not super into romance’ would have some bad times on tumblr. the bi circles i was in made being a lesbian seem like an immoral choice, the ‘’’mogai’’’ (or whatever u wanna call them) circles made me feel like i had to divy up and perfectly label every aspect of myself in a way that really wasn’t helpful for me, the lesbian circles i was in made me feel like being a lesbian was about ending up in a monogamous butch/femme cottagecore relationship and that there was something wrong with me for not really wanting that. to be clear i think microlabels can be very helpful for people/a monogamous butch/femme relationship is a perfectly fine thing to want, they just didn’t work for me. im very very glad ive reached a point in my life where i dont feel the need to stay up to date on the latest discourse and am more focused on finding a way to exist that is comfortable for me and supporting my community irl. 10/10 would recommend to everyone

not going to get deep into it, but social media is. not good for my brain in general. i still enjoy using tumblr, but these days im pretty careful to step back from it frequently and treat it as an occasional hobby. 

the cons of political stuff on tumblr are probably also very obvious. there are some just awful discussions on here and the culture surrounding the way we handle bad behavior and justice and accountability and working to become a better person and make up for the harm you’ve caused has historically been fucking awful and trying to unlearn it and find new ways to engage with this stuff is exhausting. 

for all that i’ve changed over the course of having this blog, this blog has stayed pretty fucking static. i started out being super into diana wynne jones and the iliad and those are still two of my biggest interests and things i talk about the most on here. there are definitely specific things that have petered away (i started this blog almost entirely to keep up with good omens fan stuff and i pretty much haven’t touched it since the miniseries came out, i haven’t sought out pacific rim/supernatural/elementary/mcu content in years), but im still pretty much interested in the same things. i like relatively small fandoms, i like weird side characters, i like to be a grumpy child playing with my toys in the corner. when a fandom im in gets popular, i tend to stop engaging with it entirely (hello rqg/tma/good omens/enola holmes!). i dont think its a pretentious ‘i liked it before it was cool’ thing so much as a ‘people get Weird and awful when a fandom hits a certain level of popularity and there’s too much content and i really, really hate the bad faith arguments larger fandoms tend to spawn’ thing. i’ll consume content from big fandoms, but i pretty much refuse to actually engage with them at this point.

one of the stranger parts of my experience of tumblr is the social side. i’ve never really known how people make friends online---how do you go from liking each other’s posts and occasionally replying to them to actually being friends who communicate off social media? i’ve had conversations with ppl on tumblr and i’ve had sort-of friendships that are contained to tumblr where i’d like to get to know them better, but i’ve never figured out how to do that. my best friend’s job is pretty much to make friends/connections on the internet (she’s an activist and artist), my dad knows people everywhere in the world from twitter, and i’m just sitting here like a little old grandpa who doesn’t understand how you can have internet friends. 

at this point in my life, i’m fine with this, but this has made me feel real fucking bad in the past---like, if everyone online, even the ppl who say they’re weird and brainbad in a similar way to me, can make friends on the internet, what’s wrong with me? particularly in high school and my first year of college, when i was just horribly lonely all the time, it made me feel super disconnected and like there was something fundamentally bad about me. these days, i’m a lot chiller about it. i use social media to engage with stuff i enjoy and share my thoughts about it. it’s okay that my social difficulties extend to me not knowing how to use the internet to socialize.

on a somewhat related topic, it’s wild that i have 1000 followers. obviously, that’s not an actually super large number and a huge number of them are probably bots or inactive. if you post consistently for eight years and follow lots of people, like i do, it’s not a surprise to end up with this many followers. it is also, thankfully, the sort of followers that are not fans. probably most ppl following this blog dont remember why they followed and dont know anything about me or my interests. this sounds like its meant to be depressing but it’s not. i like that my way of engaging w the internet lets me do pretty much whatever i want and no one will care. the mere concept of being. like. tumblr famous in any capacity, even just in one community/fandom, is viscerally horrifying to me. 

i really enjoy the space i’ve created for myself on here. on one hand, going back through my blog is obviously embarrassing and full of hating my past self. on the other hand, i now have a very nice collection of things i enjoy in this blog. i like seeing what i’ve been interested in and (when i’m in a good mental health place) i like to be able to remember how i thought and talked about the things i loved when i was younger. im not at the place in my life where i can love a younger version of myself, but sometimes i can laugh at zir with a level of fondness. 

i’ve always been paranoid about sharing details about my life on here (and the fact that my parents have always been able to see it certainly contributed), so the version of jack on here is a carefully curated version, who’s super enthusiastic about the things they love, was very conscientious about apologizing and trying to do better when ze messed up, and tried to be polite to others. that’s a younger version of myself that i’m closer to being able to have compassion for than the version i find in essays and poems and memories. 

i’m starting grad school in ten days and i’m still using the blog i started when i began high school. tumblr has helped me in a lot of ways and hurt me in a lot of ways, but i still have to admit that it’s been a significant factor in shaping me. i’d be incredibly embarrassed to admit that irl, but it’s true. other than my family and like one friend, this blog is one of the only things that’s ‘known’ me since i started high school. i’ve changed so much in that time and im glad to have this weird little record of myself throughout those changes, even if i’d probably warn my younger self away from tumblr if i could go back in time.

tl;dr i have had a mixed experience on tumblr and i have mixed feelings about that experience. no idea if anyone read any of this very long, very rambling internet memoir

p.s. fun facts about this blog:

i’ve never changed my icon or blog title

i recently got a second version of the poster i got my blog title from. i chose my blog title by looking at what was hanging on the wall directly in front of me. 

my original url was gloomthkin. this was not, as you’d probably assume, an otherkin thing. i had literally no idea what otherkin was at that point. i’d just learned the word gloomth from a bill bryson book and thought it would be cool n edgy to be the child of the quality of gloom. i changed my url after i learned what otherkin was and realized everyone probably assumed something about me that wasn’t true which i hated (not bc i had an issue w otherkin, just bc i don’t like ppl thinking untrue things about me)

during my good omens days, i once sent a tumblr ask to nail guyman which, in retrospect, was kinda rude. i stand by the content but id never send an ask like that now. he replied to it privately in a way that so deeply embarrassed and shamed 15 year old me that i’ve never gotten over it. i still get nervous and embarrassed when i see anything about him or his books

[dualitysdownfall]

No I Will Not “Just Unplug” (a ramble)

[tl;dr: sometimes the internet is a shitty place but we don’t have to completely throw it away, we can still enjoy it and spend a lot of time there, we just have to focus on what matters most at any given moment. sometimes that does mean engaging with doom-and-gloom type stuff or discourse, but sometimes it just means finding things we enjoy and taking care of our mental states. what is often called “terminally online” topics/discourse is really a matter of forgetting that that topic doesn’t really matter irl. you can be online a lot without being “terminally online” if you focus on stuff that actually matters to you, whatever that may be, not necessarily in the activism sense, but also just things that make you happy.]

i am very Online.

most of today i spent on tumblr. most of yesterday i spent on tumblr. as of typing this i have another day’s worth of queued reblogs. i spend so much time on tumblr and twitter it isn’t even funny.

so many people say “we all need to unplug” “go touch grass” “let’s just quit entirely”

this is a message that stems from wanting to get away from the sheer toxicity that can be found on social media, which is undeniable and i can appreciate the message for that reason. but every time i hear it, my gut instinct is “hell no.”

for one thing, i couldn’t stay off socials if i tried. i get bored very easily. if i’m not fully focused on something, my optimum state of being is at least two things happening at once. so checking my phone while i watch something is basically an autopilot action for me at this point.

but for another thing, it’s like, my main connection to the world. even pre-pandemic. to be brief, i’m autistic and have trouble making friends in a face-to-face setting. online, i can just seek out the communities based on my interests and i have done so and therefore formed mutuals and friendships based on fandoms and identities. it would be so much harder to find in my irl spaces someone who i could tell that i like homestuck and deltarune and i’m autistic and asexual and agender but i use all pronouns, and they would just Get It the way you probably Get It if you’re reading this. the way my friends and partner Get It. the way i only Get It because i learned about things like gender and neurodivergence from tumblr.

so i can’t just abandon the internet. it’s where i can be fully openly myself.

but what about all the bad shit? and boy there is a lot of bad shit.

well, it’s kind of hard to avoid. tag filtering helps but i mostly use it for fandoms i’m not in (no offense intended to those fandoms, there are just sometimes a lot of posts that may be long). and some topics, like national/global news, i feel obligated to stay up to date on because i’m not going to hear about it anywhere else and i want to do good things where i can, or at least know what the right thing is.

but sometimes it is just too much.

sometimes the terf lady is trending again, and sometimes some new project comes out that’s about autism but actually supports eugenics ideology, and sometimes the fandom i follow is full of discourse and conflict, and sometimes governements are terrible (lol jk that’s all the time), and sometimes i do a stupid thing and some asshat who doesn’t understand what autism is starts picking on me in the replies. the times we are facing seem increasingly bleak, which makes it so much more glaringly obvious that when the internet allows us to hear from all over the world it allows us to hear a world’s worth of pain and suffering and our individual psyches just are not meant to handle that.

i cannot leave the internet. i don’t want to, and even if i did i would be worse off for it.

but i can know my limits and enforce boundaries on myself.

i am not obligated to be an activist and an informer for every shithead in the replies. i am not obligated to engage with literally anyone. i do not have to look at what i don’t want to look at. social media can be entertainment and escape, and i am free to curate my experience to align with that. i can handle exactly what i’m capable of handling and if i can’t handle something, who cares ignore it go do something else.

the way people say we should all just quit social media and we’d all be so much healthier if we unplugged... the way they say as if social media is nothing but a drain on our minds and causes only damage... just strikes me the wrong way. i mean, i can say from experience that it can be incredibly healing to just focus on something irl with the people around you for a few hours, but i couldn’t do that forever. and the internet has taught me so much, and it brings me so many things to smile about.

the key is balance.

the trouble with the people y’all are calling “Terminally Online” is that they get so tied up in intense discourse about micro-issues or whatever the hell else they do that they don’t seem to grasp that none of that shit is important. none of it matters in the real world.

i don’t like discourse as i can’t argue for shit and get very stressed in instances of conflict, so i imagine the online problems that trouble me are more tangible in the real world than meaningless micro-arguments. but they are tangible on the large scale. i do not have to be working for large-scale change all the goddamn time. i can take some time to bake cookies with my siblings or whatever, and most if not all of the things that trouble me while i’m online don’t fucking matter at all.

they’re allowed to matter at times. but they do not need to matter all the time.

there is such an emphasis, on social media, to know EXACTLY who and what you are and to know EXACTLY where you stand on every topic and to ALWAYS be showing who you are and where you stand.

you don’t have to know, and even if you do know, you don’t have to show it all the time.

it’s good to call out issues when you see them. it’s good to help spread the word. it’s good to help teach people about marginalized identities and how to show acceptance and support. but those things take energy, and eventually your energy will run out, and it’s ok to skip past an activism post because you’re just here to look at memes, or to give up trying to teach someone why the gender binary is bad because they’re a stubborn asshole, or to just do a craft or go someplace and not think about the internet at all.

i think that the issue lies not in “the internet is terrible” and more in “we need to take a step back and think about whether what we’re about to do really matters”. sharing my artwork with a fandom can matter to me. arguing with some stubborn dipshit in youtube comments about kris deltarune’s pronouns does not have to matter to me. spreading kindness and happiness matters to me, and sometimes that takes the form of advocating for marginalized identities, and sometimes it takes the form of posting a joke or a pretty picture for the sake of simple smiles, and sometimes what really matters is making sure that i’m happy too.

we don’t need to get rid of the internet. it’s not killing our brains just by virtue of existing. we just need to care about what matters to us. and some internet things do matter to me, like seeing wonderful fanart or funny videos, and reading about interesting things that exist in the world or how to avoid being shitty to a minority, and shouting my thoughts into the void, and replying to my mutuals’ shouted void-thoughts in the hopes that i can bring them a smile. sometimes the shit the internet brings with it doesn’t matter to me as much as letting in the sunlight or hugging my siblings or going somewhere with the people i care about. and that’s fine too.

i guess what i mean is, we can have it both ways.

i’m not even saying that people are commonly saying we can’t. i guess i just need to teach myself the lesson over and over again, that when given a choice between A and B, the answer is probably both or neither. (see: my romantic orientation, my gender, how long it takes me to grasp morally gray characters, my tendency to like media that i describe as “goodbad”, the list goes on)

i’m not Too Online. my sense of humor might indicate otherwise, but i know my limits and i know when i’ve had too much doom and gloom, and i can just go watch tv or eat dinner or maybe even (gasp!) hang out outside. it’s fine for my current emotional state to matter more than reading about widespread bigotry or whatever. and you know what? i can still come right back online later. and that’s fine too.

i guess i mostly wrote this for me. if you read the whole thing, wow. good for you i guess? did you take anything away from this?

[voxofthevoid]

Taking It Up The Ass Isn’t Character Growth - A Rant

So, in response to an ask a while back, I said I had a rant brewing on fandom and sex positions, and well, a lot of you wanted to see it, so here you go. You literally asked for it.

Disclaimer: This is going to talk a lot about top/bottom roles in slash fic and fandom attitude towards them and is heavily filtered through the lens of my own tastes and experiences with fandom. I’d also like to be upfront that I am 100% in favor of people writing whatever fictional content they want, and it’s not what fandom does with characters that bothers me but rather how that translates into attitudes towards real, live people. Also, this is the essay version of a slow burn AU because I regurgitate my entire fandom history before getting to the point. Beware.

I discovered fan-fiction around a decade ago, had no clue what the hell it was, got hooked and dived deeper. I started participating in fandom circa 2013, and I was fairly young and also completely inexperienced both sexually and romantically. The fandom in question was Hannibal and my ship of choice was Hannibal/Will. It was/is a very chill fandom in general, but we had our drama. And chief among the contentious topics was—you guessed it—the top/bottom debate. I can’t actually remember any other topic that was discussed and argued for so ardently in that fandom, at least in those days. Even after I drifted away, I came across a few posts on the matter.

Generally, you had two camps—people who supported strict roles and those who were in favor of switching*. And because we’re a society plagued by illogical assumptions, the strict role camp mostly had people who thought Mr. Big Bad Cannibal in the Fancy Suits wouldn’t take it up the ass because he’s older, more experienced, more mentally stable, and of course, more ‘dominant’ in personality. Yes, that sentence is chock full of problematic shit. I am aware. Lots of people were aware and argued strongly against attributing top/bottom roles to personality. I don’t remember anyone arguing as enthusiastically for Top Will, but those voices were also there. But the general idea was that assigning strict top/bottom roles to a male/male couple was casting them in a heterosexual mold and thus, the progressive option was to make them switch. Strict roles also garnered comparisons to “yaoi” and uke/seme stereotypes, which was of course bad and fetishizing and we, the Western media fans, of course had to do better. Stealth racism is fun to untangle.

Anyway, I lapped up the woke juice. Partly because I was a baby queer from Buttfuck Nowhere, Asia, who had zero exposure to LGBT+ communities and what queer folks did with each other. Partly because it was the stance taken by most of my favorite writers so it seemed like a good position to emulate.

Emulate it I did. Most discussions I had about this happened in private with the handful of close friends I had in fandom. Where it really showed was in my writing. I made sure to write switching—maybe not in every fic, but then I alternated between fics. Thing is though, I did have a preference. I liked Top Will. I created and consumed a ton of Top Hannibal, and sometimes it was okay, sometimes it was not, but I couldn’t pinpoint why it made me uncomfortable. Back then, I thought I was a cis questioning/bi girl and once again, the impression I got was that not being MLM, having a preference was automatic fetishization. So I tried my best to justify my preferences, to my friends at least. I think what I said was that fandom was skewed towards Top Hannibal, and I liked the opposite because I’m a contrary fuck. Which I am, to be fair, but this was just me desperately trying to figure shit out without being offensive.

That’s the line I touted all the way until 2018, which was when I fucked off to grad school in A City, finally freed of Buttfuck Nowhere and able to actually date. At this point, I was settled in my sexuality (girls only) and questioning my gender (non-binary or trans guy). I had also tentatively figured out during undergrad that I’m an exclusive top and a Dom. Actual attempts at dating cemented that, yes, those are my preferences, about as flexible as a steel rod. Cue motherfucking epiphany over my fanfic tastes.

And see, over these years, I was engaging intermittently with fandom. I dutifully wrote switch couples. I also continued to have rigid tastes and continued to explain it away as being a contrary fuck—to be fair, until Steve/Bucky, my preference did seem to be the opposite of the larger fandom preference. But correlation, as we know, isn’t causation. Until Steve/Bucky, I continued to write versatile couples because I honestly didn’t have the guts to just say I liked it just one way. I do now but even then, I feel compelled to add that it’s because I want to see my own taste reflected in fic, so I write/read the character I relate to as a top, it's not that deep etc. Would I be as forthright if I didn’t have that reason? Would I have such strict preferences in fic if I didn’t have strict preferences IRL? The latter’s a mystery, but the former isn’t—I wouldn’t be because fandom is still entrenched in the same ideas that got me to this point to begin with.

In every fandom I’ve been in, I’ve seen some version of this debate go around. Sometimes, it’s one party saying “why would you write Character X as a bottom, he’s so Reason A” and a reblog chain that insults the OP and/or extols the virtues of switching. Sometimes, it’s a general-ish message that says they don’t understand why people have strict preferences when we all know real gay couples switch. Sometimes, it’s blanket statements that accuse anyone with preferences of fetishizing. Sometimes, it’s the same reasoning that gets you “Character Y is a top because of Reason B” transposed on versatile couples except this takes the form of “they switch because they’re equals.”

Ya’ll, I’m fucking tired.

I have long since lost count of the number of stories I’ve seen where an exclusive top learning bottom and liking it is character growth. Where a character who prefers to bottom taking a turn on top is empowering.

Isolated, these are fine. But I’ve seen enough of such stories that it’s distinctly discomfiting and a major squick. Sometimes a trigger, if I'm too immersed in the story. I’m not going to try and burn an author at the stake because they pissed me off. I am just going to close that window and quietly handle my shit. People can write whatever they want. But this one theme hits too close to home, as you can see from this 1.6k rant.

My friend (also my ex-girlfriend) and I had an all-out bitching session about this the other day. Both of us are kinky fuckers who have rigid, complementary roles we prefer and we have both had our grueling days of struggling to reconcile our sexual tastes with our ideologies precisely because of how these things are frowned upon in conservative and progressive circles. Seeing that in fandom, of all places, is both insulting and exhausting. Topping and bottoming aren’t personality traits. Neither is D/s. It’s sexual preference and power play. It really does not have to be that deep. I am not exorcising childhood trauma using the bodies of women. My partners, former and current, have not been brainwashed by the patriarchy. We will not become better, more complete individuals once I magically stop being a stone top and my partners embrace the joys of a strap-on.

I have, with my own two eyes, seen someone say that in a really committed relationship, of course the couple will switch.

Bullshit.

It’s transparent bullshit. This does not get attributed to cisgender M/F couples. Even when the automatic assumptions of woman = bottom and man = top get addressed, switching isn't presented as the default. No one’s saying “oh, if you really love your husband, you’ll peg him”. I do know butch/femme sapphic couples get their own share of shit. Because it’s all heteronormativity, right? Can’t have any other reason for top/bottom roles.

You have two extremes with “so who’s the woman” on one end and “it’s woke only if they switch” on the other, and as far as I’m concerned, they’re equally damaging. There shouldn’t be a pressure, however subtle, to conform your taste in fiction to some arbitrary idea of progressiveness. People are going to like whatever they want anyway; all this does is create an atmosphere where those likes can’t always be freely expressed without a lot of mental gymnastics. We’re seeing so many versions of this in the pushback against so-called problematic content, but smaller, subtler versions exist too.

Fictional characters aren’t real. They can be whatever you want them to be. And yes, other people will often want them to be the exact opposite of your ideas, but that’s just how things work. Meanwhile, the people behind these usernames? They’re real. No one should be throwing real people under the bus to ‘protect’ characters that don’t exist. Hannibal Lecter doesn’t care whether he gets fucked or dismembered in Author B’s fanfiction, but the discourse that surrounds the dick up his ass? That does affect flesh and blood people.

I am not claiming that this is the only attitude in fandom. Middlegrounds do exist. Plenty of people abide by fic and let fic and there are folks who pipe up to say not every RL queer couple switches. But it’s often the extremes that reach most people. That was certainly my experience, and I’m not the only one.

I don’t really know how to end this post. It is 100% a rant and one that’s been building up for a while. Bottom line is that people’s sexual behavior varies wildly and whenever you attack sexual tastes in fanfic by saying it’s unrealistic - or worse because let’s be real, that’s a very tame word choice - please remember that there’s likely someone out there who practices it.

* I’m using switch and versatile synonymously in this post. It’s mostly concerned with top/bottom debates. A lot of what I’m saying is also echoed in portrayals of and discussions surrounding D/s dynamics, but I’m not addressing that as much for now.  

[savnofilter]

Official Callout Post (5 - Q&A)

TW: mentions of suicide, ephebophilia, grooming, pseudo racism (microaggression). toxic friendships, harassment towards minors, mental health, fandom discourse.

*DISCLAIMER: THIS IS NOT BECAUSE OF MY AGE OR SOCIAL MEDIA. THIS IS BECAUSE TOXICITY/TREATMENT. This post is not just minors. This is for the people from different ages 16-22 who feel like they did not have a voice by fellow BNHA writers.*

Important Topics:

Clearing last statements

Addressing my callouts

Alienated mental health

Fic stealing

BNHarem server regulation

Where is the proof that there are people not speaking up?

*1

*2

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*4

*5

*6

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*12

*13

What’s wrong with aging up?

@mci-writing: There isn’t a problem with aging up in specific, but rather how you go about aging up the characters, especially in NSFW pieces. If you’re going to age the characters up, make it apparent that the characters are aged up rather than just slapping the 18+ label, whether it be in an offhand mention of living in a house of their own or maybe something small about being in college if dorms are such an integral part to the work in question.

“If the minors knew it was an 18+ space, why did they join?”

@mci-writing: Their server is a 16+ server, so they were invited and welcomed once they proved their ages. Many minors that joined their server saw it as an opportunity to meet new people and make friends, all while being able to interact with their favorite writers in the fandom.

If the discord discussion wasn't about harassing Lady-bakuhoe, why did it happen?

@mci-writing: The first discussion quite literally was a couple of people active in the fandom, mainly writers, venting about how hard it is to currently get your works out there and just how hard it is to properly get involved in the fandom without some form of help from a clique. No one in specific was named that time. The other discussion was Sav venting about how she was treated after a whack ass callout post was made and simply because a writer was mad that Sav ran her server the way Sav wanted to, which led to her elaborating on the situation (it then prompted other people’s responses, whose responses are fairly similar to how many of you reacted to Jo’s small “callout”).

What legal offences have they done if charged?

@savnofilter: Well since you guys like supporting people you think should be in jail, considering Lady-Bakuhoe has shared a minor’s face and age, the offense would be up to the parents in question. It's stated in laws that even if the minor is a felon, you do not have the rights to share such information without law/parent consent. Although I cannot find anything about age, sharing a minor's face comes with consequences. 

- UK source: 1 

- US source: 1

Charges will be:

Lawsuit: exposing minor information without parental consent.

*****

To put in perspective, the U.S and UK are basically flip flopped. In the U.S it is not against the law to groom, but in the UK it is. It is illegal to have relationships with minors in the U.S, while in the UK it is not. 

For knowingly engaging sexually with a minor (DMs), you can also be trialed for having depictions of any picture/video of minors. (ex: students in school uniforms) or minors in sexual situations. Although having a sexual relationship with a 16 year-olds is permitted, consuming child pornography is not. Grooming is also outside of sexual abuse, you can groom anyone for any reason.

- UK source: 1 

- US source: 1 

Charges will be:

Misdemeanor: for knowingly engaging NSFW with minors, causing mental anguish.

Felony: for knowingly engaging NSFW with minors, causing mental anguish.

2 Years Prison: sexting any sort of NSFW content to a minor.

Registered Sex Offender: engaging sexually with minors (U.S).

*****

For the acts of gaslighting, you can be sentenced if proven with evidence.

- UK source: 1, 2 

- U.S source: 1, 2, 3 

Charges will be: 

Misdemeanor: causing mental anguish, this is categorized as mental abuse.

Felony: causing mental anguish, this is categorized as mental abuse.

*****

Sharing false and hurtful posts about someone with intention to hurt someone's image constitutes cyberbullying. This includes false posts to make someone look bad and sending hate (whether you directed it or not). 

For perspective, once again it is flip-flopped. The U.S has many states so there are not any direct laws against cyberbullying (in my state and my friends it is illegal), but you can categorize abusive behaviors exhibited online as a form of abuse. In the U.K it is illegal, grooming is considered being one of the offenses. 

LBH and or any adult who participated in posting, sending hate, or anything that repeatedly tore our image down would be classified as a Verbal Adult Bully. 

UK source: link

U.S source: link

Charges will be:

Lawsuit: defamation of character, harassment.

Misdemeanor: harassment, abuse.

1-2 years jail or fine: harassment, intimidation, or bullying.

12 months jail or fine: classified as stalking.

*****

You can categorize abusive behaviors exhibited online as a form of abuse. In the U.K it is illegal, grooming is considered being one of the offenses. 

- UK source: link

- U.S source: link

Charges will be:

Lawsuit: defamation of character, harassment.

Misdemeanor: harassment, abuse.

1-2 years jail or fine: harassment, intimidation, or bullying.

12 months jail or fine: classified as stalking.

*****

Since you only promote 18+ blogs in your 16+ server, the people who run/host the server will be trialed for exposing minors to NSFW

UK source: link 

U.S source: link 

Charges will be: 

Misdemeanor: exposing a minor to pornographic content.

Third degree felony: exposing a minor to pornographic content.

1-15 years jail: exposing a minor to pornographic content.

Fine: $1,000 - $10,000

Don't you (minors) know it's illegal to consume and produce erotica? 

@savnofilter​: As long as we (minors) don't go as far to engage (message privately) sexually with people who are 18+, it’s not illegal. Reblogging or commenting on a work both ways isn't illegal either 1, 2. It’s only illegal if you approach minors and send it to them personally. If it was illegal, porn websites wouldn’t even exist. If you’re concerned about minors reading your stuff, don’t put them in main tags.

Can't the person producing the content get arrested?

@savnofilter​: To put it simply: No. You will not go to jail if a minor reads your smut. With the other way around, you won't go to jail reading a minor's smut either. The laws state that you can only go to jail if you send porn (video, art, pictures) to a minor or produce depictions of a minor in sexual acts.

Therefore if you do not approach a minor with such contents, you will not be trialed. If this was the case, there wouldn't be platforms such as PornHub and etc would not be able to run.

Do you have a problem with them writing the content that they do?

@savnofilter​: No. If we did it would be hypocritical. It’s more of the personal jabs to alienate teens feel in the writing community. This means having to go out your way saying stuff like “fuck minors” “minors are stupid”. People like to shove down our throats that we want to go into “adult spaces”. Tumblr is an open site for 13+, the anime being a Shounen anime. Again, if you don’t want minors interacting with your stuff, keep it out of main tags.

What do we want from this post?

The main reason why I even decided to speak up is because I was tired of always talking about how toxic it is here and always being accused of starting drama to shut me up. Sure, call it “bitching” and “whining” but why should I take bullying because I have less followers and half someone’s age? 

The double-standard that I’ve touched upon in CCC or even how small blogs are treated. Fandom is supposed to be fun, and it’s not okay to let things slide just to keep things “happy”. Stop intimidating and shutting down people who finally have a choice to talk about the things they have been through just because your favorite says so. Don’t campaign about listening to hurt peoples voices, then proceed to ignore and ridicule people who do it in your own environment. 

I’ve had people come into my inbox and mock me for admitting to being mentally ill and say I’m doing this because I’m sick in the head, or call me a liar only because I spoke up. The BNHA fandom needs to stop the popularity mob mentality. Before you blindly someone, think to yourself: why? Stop giving toxic people passes because there is always a high chance in them not even caring about you. Don’t be a sheep, think for yourself. That’s what I want from this post. Even if people don’t believe me now, you can’t say I didn’t warn you. 

Here is what a few of our members have had to say: 

Continuation here: main post, one, two, three, four, ▸five◂.