#my experiences with the fandom and its discourse put me off it like. yeah actually i dont want to be involved with any of this | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

lucemferto · 4 years ago

Text

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT PH1LZA (or Why Philza is a Victim of Narrative Circumstance)

Heyo! Per request I am posting the script to my video of the same name here on tumblr. I must warn you that just reading the script will probably not give you the full experience, so I would encourage you to watch the video (linked above).

There might also still be a lot of grammatical errors in the text, because I don’t proofread.

Intro

LAST TIME ON LUCEM FERTO

Okay, so! I don’t want this to turn into a reaction channel OR a Dream SMP channel for that matter! [echo]

Well, I lied.

[Intro to “Luc is pretentious about the funny blockmen. Episode 2”]

I swear, I’m working on other stuff. It’s just that my dumb lizard brain has only capacity for one interest at a time!

So, something you might not know about me, is that I am on tumblr – who am I kidding, most of you will know me from tumblr. Before starting this whole YouTube thing, I thought that website died years ago – but as per usual reality proves me wrong. I’m also on Twitter and Reddit, but I get the most engagement on tumblr – by far! – and I need those sweet, sweet numbers for the serotonin!

Anyways, one of my favourite past-times on tumblr is to razz Philza Hardcore Minecraft – that’s his full name – for being a frankly awful father [clicking away] – wait, wait, no! Philza fans, this isn’t a hit piece on him, I promise! Please come back!

This is video is meant to be a companion piece to my previous video about Technoblade and the Doomsday event – you can tell by the shared nomenclature – so you should probably watch that one before you proceed. Unless you don’t want to, which is also perfectly understandable.

DISCLAIMER: This video is mostly about the character Philza plays on the Dream SMP. Whenever I talk about the content creator Philza, I will say so properly. Also, Spoiler Warning for Dream SMP Season 2.

… What is that? You’re wondering what the Dream SMP is? Well, if you had just watched the other video like I told you to do, you would know, because I explained it pretty well there. But in case you don’t know, here’s the cliff notes.

Dream SMP is the hottest New Media Series on Twitch right now! It has it all: gaslighting, child soldiers, Machiavellian political intrigue, Hamilton roleplay, desecration of the dead, shounen protagonists, SO! MUCH! AMNESIA! Filicide, furries, a red egg that’s definitely homophobic and teenagers inventing nuclear warfare. And it’s all done in Minecraft – yes, the funny block game where the only way to emote is to crouch.

And you say the perfect brief doesn’t exist!

Now, you might be wondering, why do I want to talk about this? Well, it’s because Content Creator Philza is one of least controversial internet personalities that I can think of. That man exudes pure comfort. So, it’s just very, very amusing to me that his character became one of the most controversial figures on the SMP, only outshone by Tommy and Technoblade.

And it’s not just amusing, it’s also extremely interesting! I want to dig deep to uncover and discuss the dynamics behind why that is. How did it come to this point? How did a man who appears genuinely so pleasant create a character that inspires so much discourse!

Now, if you watched that Technoblade video – like I told you to twice now! – you might know, that I am the resident character analyses hater of fandom! And that impression is false and slanderous! Don’t tell other people that I hate character analyses! I love them!

It’s just that, in the Dream SMP in particular, there is an abundance of character analyses! Every streamer has at least two very good essays written about them, exploring every possible angle to view their characters and backgrounds and everything. All I’m saying is: I don’t have anything to add on that front.

So, instead I want to pursue a different approach – something, that I feel is a bit underrepresented in the fandom! And I’m not just talking narrative analysis – that’s right, this episode we’re going even more pretentious! – I’m talking Transtextual Analysis!

Now, what is Transtextuality? Well, unfortunately it has very little to do with actual Trans people – #transrights, just in case that wasn’t obvious – but instead describes a mode of analysis with which to put – to quote French literary theorist Gérard Genette – “the text in a relationship, whether obvious or concealed, with other texts”.

Basically, you know how the L’Manburg War of Independence heavily quotes and borrows from the hit musical Hamilton? That’s transtextuality! A lot of the analyses surrounding how Tommy mirrors the Greek hero Theseus, who was invoked by Technoblade multiple times in the series, are already doing transtextual analysis! So, it’s really not something that’s new to the Dream SMP fandom.

But how does this apply to Philza and how he is looked at and judged by his parental skills? Well, there are multiple forms of transtextuality, two of which we will discuss today.

But before we continue, I gotta do that annoying YouTuber thing. I know these videos don’t look like much, but I spend a really long time making them. I work fulltime and I try my best to keep up, but sometimes I can’t. So please, like, subscribe, comment to give me some algorithm juice – I really need it – and most importantly share it! Share it with your friends, share it with your family – I’m sure Grandma is very interested in what I have to say about Philza Minecraft.

And I’m trying to be better! If I sound at all different for this video, it’s because I finally bought a new pop filter, so I can hit my plosives without it sounding like there’s a thunderstorm in my room. I hope it makes a difference; it was a very cheap pop filter, so maybe it doesn’t. Maybe it sounds worse – that would be bad!

What was I talking about? Oh yeah, CHILD NEGLEGT!

Intertextuality: Why is Dadza?

You know what’s really interesting about the Dream SMP – aside from, you know, most things about it? Very few of the characters have concrete, fleshed-out backstories – and that’s pretty weird! In no other medium or genre could you get away with something like that – at least for long-form storytelling!

So, how does Dream SMP get away with this? Well, it’s because every character on the Dream SMP is basically a self-insert – and I don’t mean that in the “This character is based on me”-kinda way, but in the “This character, for all intents and purposes, is me!”-way. This, like many things that are fascinating about the Dream SMP, is owed to the fact that this series didn’t start off as a continuous drama – it started off as a Let’s Play.

And while we can talk about how someone’s on-camera/on-mic persona is in some ways a character, it’s still miles off of being an actual, fully-realized, separate character in a storyline.

This is where Intertextuality comes in.

Intertextuality is a subset of Transtextuality. It describes how the hypertext, which is the text, you’re currently engaged with, uses another text, the hypotext, to supplement itself. The interconnection the hypertext establishes with the hypotext, through stuff like allusion for example, uh-hum [Hamilton], can colour how an audience interprets the hypertext. Basically, Hamilton and Theseus are the hypotexts; the Dream SMP is the hypertext.

So, what does this have to do with backstory? Simple: The backstories of the characters in the Dream SMP consist basically of nothing but intertextual references. Through intertextuality their content effectively substitutes their character’s backstory.

You can see it everywhere. Wilbur’s and Schlatt’s relationship and rivalry is hugely enriched, if you are aware of their shared history like SMPLive, for example – I think anyway. I haven’t watched SMPLive, because … there’s only so many hours in the day and I cannot keep up with the Dream SMP and catch up on SMPLive and live a healthy life – which I already don’t do, so…

BadBoyHalo’s and Skeppy’s relationship, which has become the crux of the Crimson-Storyline of Seasons 2 and 3, is hugely supplemented if you know that they’re also very close as streamers and in real life.

Another great example of intertextuality is basically Technoblade’s entire deal. If you just look at him completely within the text of the Dream SMP and try to transplant his entrance to any other medium: It would be extremely weird! Like, he’s just this guy that comes in in the middle of a very climatic arc, no build-up, no explanation what his deal is, and he’s treated like he has always been there. In any other medium that just wouldn’t work – at least not without a flashback or some sort of exposition!

But because of stuff like Minecraft Mondays, the Potato Wars, his Duel against Dream and SMPEarth, we understand that he is a Big Deal!

Anyways, to bring all of this back to Philza Minecraft: What kind of hypotext informs how the audience sees his character? Well, this is where I will have to talk about SBI.

SBI is an acronym that stand for State Bank of India, the 43rd largest bank in the world and…

It also stands for Sleepy Bois Incorporated. Sleepy Bois Incorporated is a loose assembly of content creators, consisting of Philza, Wilbur Soot, TommyInnit and Technoblade. It is most well-known for its very endearing family dynamic – a dynamic that is frequently acknowledged and played up by the creators involved. Tommy is the youngest brother, Wilbur and Techno are the two older brothers and Philza is of course the dad. And when I say, it’s played up, I really mean it! Wilbur seems to be especially enamoured with the idea and leaves no opportunity untaken to bring it up – which we will come back to.

And I’m not saying that they’re faking this and this is somehow an act. While I know none of these people personally, it appears to me, that this is genuinely how they interact – if a little exaggerated for the streaming experience. Even when they’re not consciously playing into the family dynamic, their interactions still very much lend themselves to that interpretation by the viewers.

Philza especially just radiates Dad-Friend energy – so much so that it has become a huge part of his brand identity – yay, I can bring that back (check out my Christmas video if you want to hear me ramble about that). The nickname Dadza stuck even before SBI was a thing.

So, even if we completely disregard SBI – which we shouldn’t for reasons I’ll get back to – Philza has cultivated an image of strong paternal guidance. He is, in my opinion completely deservedly, regarded very positively. He is highly respected and in turn seen as a voice of reason.

All of this would eventually inform the hypotext of the character Philza within Dream SMP.

Interlude: Before Dadza & November 16th

Okay, so now we have established that a) Dream SMP heavily hinges on intertextual readings by the audience to supplement character backstory and b) that Philza’s entire deal is that he’s the dad-friend – more specifically that he’s the dad of SBI (not the bank). I think you know where this is going.

So, yeah, ever since it was on the table that Philza could join the Dream SMP, it was immediately assumed that he would take on the paternal guardian role all these traumatized people on that server so desperately needed – and with good reason! Like I said before, the audience at this point was trained to take intertextual interpretations as basically canon or at the very least canon-adjacent.

I want to emphasize that this is most likely not done deliberately. I’m sure content creators Wilbur and Philza didn’t sit there and said: “Yes! We will rely entirely on the audience’s inclination to interpret our characters intertextually to define character Philza!”. Like, obviously that did not happen.

But it’s also important to remember that unlike with traditional media and the fanbases cultivated there, the separation between the Dream SMP and its audience is almost non-existent – and purposely so. The story events are streamed live, Chats are acknowledged in canon and even outside of livestreams creators are extremely involved with the fandom. So, the weight of fan-expectations is equally amplified and will more likely be incorporated into the writing process. Case in point:

[Wilbur “I miss Philza”/Philza about Wilbur]

During Wilbur’s villain arc, even before his official involvement, Philza became a prevalent point of discussion. The hope that he would be the one to snap Wilbur out of his downward spiral was not only wish-fulfilment on behalf of the fans; it also very much played off of the intertextual reading of the SBI-dynamic in relation to the Dream SMP.

Of course, this still doesn’t make Philza and Wilbur canonically blood-related – but it definitely used the “paternal”-dynamic of SBI to build-up tension and drama.

And that ultimately brings us to November 16th. The Grand Finale of Season 1 and Philza’s first canonical appearance on the SMP.

Now, for this I want to pull back from the transtextual analysis and talk about simply narrative analysis: What is Philza’s narrative purpose on November 16th?

Philza serves as the last threshold on Wilbur’s Villain’s Journey – to appropriate Vogler’s version of the monomyth for a minute here – he is what Vogler calls the “Threshold Guardian”. He is the last enemy the Hero faces before completing his quest – in this particular case Wilbur’s quest is to blow up L’Manberg. Multiple people have at this point tried to dissuade him from this course of action: Tommy, Quackity, Niki and others. So how come this Philza moment is not redundant in terms of dynamics compared to these prior scenes?

Well, it’s through our intertextual understanding of Wilbur’s and Phil’s relationship. Because Philza does not just occupy the role of the Threshold Guardian – he is also implicitly the Mentor. Before Phil there was no character in the storyline that held a higher position of moral authority than Wilbur – Dream and Schlatt, while at points more powerful in terms of actual authority, were never positioned by the narrative as Wilbur’s superiors in the same way as Wilbur was to Tommy, Tubbo or even Niki.

Before November 16th all challenges Wilbur faced were from people narratively subordinated to him. But that trend is broken with Phil. That is why he is the Threshold Guardian, why this confrontation is at the climax of Wilbur’s arc. Because Phil is the last thing tethering Wilbur to whatever morality he held before his villain arc; Phil is the last, moral obstacle Wilbur has to discard before gaining his reward.

And, just a quick sidenote, because I’ve seen it around the fandom a bunch: When I’m referring to Wilbur denouncing his morality, I’m using that in terms of narrative analysis. I’m mentioning it, because Wilbur’s character can very easily be read as mentally ill or neurodivergent and some people have – rightly! – pointed out that the excessive vilifying when talking about his character is … problematic, to say the least.

So, I just want to make clear, this isn’t a character analysis, I’m being purposely broad when talking about Wilbur and Phil.

In the end, Wilbur takes that final step and gets his “reward”: As his final request his mentor takes his life and vanquishes the evil – the dragon of Wilbur’s story slays the dragon of L’Manburg. It’s very Shakespearean in its tragedy – but beyond the larger theatrics it’s not really used to further characterize Phil – at least in the context of Season 1. There’s not a lot of focus on his characters internal conflict during November 16th.

Phil, like Techno, is very utilitarian in how content creator Wilbur writes him: He serves as a moment of hype; an obstacle Wilbur has to face; a participant in the tragic climax of Wilbur’s character and ultimately takes on his implicit and expected role of mentor and guiding figure to the rest of L’Manburg.

I think not a lot of people talk about how Philza does not join Technoblade during November 16th. He takes the side of L’Manburg – he fights against the withers and he joins Tommy, Tubbo and the others at the L’Mantree, thus framing him as loyal to the L’Manburg administration – even though Season 2 would make his loyalty to Techno central to his character. But more on that later.

What’s also important about November 16th is that this is the day when the general intertextual interpretation became canonized text.

[You’re my son!]

Wilbur is made Phil’s canonical, biological son. The intertextual interpretation of SBI as it pertains to these two characters on the SMP was completely reinforced by the narrative. Or to put it in Fandom terms: The headcanon became actual canon. At least when it came to Wilbur … but what about Philza’s “other” children?

Well, that leads to our second form of transtextual analysis:

Paratextuality: Is Dadza?

These titles are just getting better and better.

The Paratext is defined as all those things in a published work that accompany the text. It comes in two forms: One of them is the Peritext, which are non-diegetic elements directly surrounding the text – like chapter titles, author’s notes, and stuff like that. Translated to the medium of the Dream SMP, it would be stuff like this:

[Examples]

And, trust me, I could make a whole separate video about how people on the SMP use their peritext as a tool for storytelling – I’m looking at you, Ranboo – but that’s not what we will talk about in the context of Dadza.

Instead, we will focus on the second form of Paratext, the Epitext, which consists of all authorial and editorial discussions taking place outside of the text. That’s stuff like interviews, private letters or J. K. Rowling’s Twitter Account – you know, before she decided to become a full-time asshole.

[Wilbur: Transrights]

After Season 1 ended, Wilbur indulged pretty heavily in providing epitext for the Dream SMP, something he had not done prior to November 16th. His paratextual additions ranged from the playful, like assigning DnD alignments to various SMP members, to the extremely impactful, like the whole three lives system!

You probably think, you know where this is going. Wilbur provided some epitext about how Tommy and Techno either are or are not biologically related to him … and I have to be honest I thought that too. But then I began looking into the impenetrable web that is the SBI-canon on the Dream SMP and found this!

[Ghostbur explains family]

So, it wasn’t paratext, it was just straight text. Said in character, in canon, without any implication that we the viewers should question this. The text of the SBI family dynamic was explicitly linked to Dream SMP-exclusive lore, namely Fundy being Wilbur’s and Sally the Salmon’s son. This is as clear as Philza’s anguished declaration on November 16th in establishing the intertext as text. And because Wilbur also had a very heavy hand in the discussion of paratext around that time, it gave his character’s words even more “canonical” weight. Metatextually speaking, this very much read like the author giving exposition through his character – exposition that we should understand as reliable.

And, by the way, before I continue, I need to give a huge, huge shoutout to kateis-cakeis on tumblr, I hope I pronounced that right, who was just so quick in providing me with these crucial clips. Without him I would have looked for days because these people don’t archive their shit! And the Dream SMP Wiki was NO help, by the way! I love what you guys do, but stuff like this belongs in the Trivia section on characters’ pages!

Anyways, basically during the entirety of early Season 2 the SBI family dynamic was basically canon to the SMP. Sometimes it was only alluded implicitly, again letting the intertext fill out the rest.

[Philza clips]

But just as often it was just explicitly talked about – both in the text and in the paratext.

[Fundy clip/Wilbur “Twins” clip/Tommy clip]

So, I know what you’re thinking: “Why is this part called paratext, if the entire family tree is just textual”. Well, that last clip might give you a hint, as to what I will talk about. Notice how Tommy, one of the people most directly impacted by the canonization of SBI lore, is both unaware of and seems generally unenthused about it, to put it nicely? Well, that would soon turn out to be a much bigger deal than anyone could have imagined as he wasn’t the only one.

[Technoblade decanonizes SBI]

Yeah …

This happened on 20th of December. Regular viewers of this channel will remember that I put out a 90-second joke video, where I complain about this very development. And while I was mostly kidding around, the core idea is still true. The paratext provided by Technoblade and established text were in direct contradiction with one another – and that brought a lot of confusion into the fandom. Confusion, that would soon be followed by frustration.

Because Techno only decanonized himself as part of the SBI family dynamic – but what about Tommy and Tubbo, the latter of which was incorporated into the dynamic exclusively within the lore of the Dream SMP. Was this still canon or wasn’t it?

What followed was a muddled mess of contradictions, intertextual implications, text and paratext in conflict with each another. It was for the most part inscrutable to figure out how Tommy and Philza related to one another. I’ll spare you every comment made about this – mostly because I want to spare myself from looking for all of them.

In the end, the current status is that their familial relationship is … unclear. Philza said, again in paratext, that it’s ultimately up to the writers to decide, whether or not Tommy is his son … which, I personally think he and Tommy should be the ones to establish that, but I’ll come back to that later.

But why is all of this important anyway? Why would this ambiguity create such an uproar, such controversy – especially when it comes to Tommy’s character? What makes Tommy’s and Philza’s relationship such a target for discussion in the fandom?

Well … this is where we will have to talk about the storyline of Season 2.

Interlude II: Tommy’s Exile and Dadza in Season 2

Okay, Season 2. This is where the spoilers are, so I will just sneakily drop this again. It took me five seconds to google this gif and I will milk it for every penny it’s worth!

At the beginning of Season 2, Philza’s narrative role has not changed much from where Season 1 ended. He is in L’Manburg dispensing earthly wisdom, being a paternal figure to Fundy, Ghostbur and Tubbo, helping with the nation’s rebuilding efforts; just generally occupying the role of the mentor.

[clips]

And then came … the Exile. The Exile Arc took place between December 3rd and December 15th during Season 2 of the Dream SMP. It revolves around TommyInnit getting exiled from L’Manburg and slowly getting psychologically tortured and broken down by Dream. It’s a really great arc, at least in my opinion, that explores and deepens a lot of Tommy’s character relationships, whether that be Tommy and Dream, Tommy and Tubbo or Tommy and Ranboo. One relationship, however, is noticeably missing.

So, yeah, Philza spends basically the entirety of the exile doing pretty much nothing of consequence. And that’s not a problem specific to him – One big criticism I would levy against the Exile Arc is that a lot of characters are left spinning their wheels. Which is why we get zany stuff like El Rapids, Drywaters, Eret’s Knights of the Roundtable, Boomerville – anyone remember Boomerville, that was a thing for 5 seconds, wasn’t it? – basically a lot of storylines are started and then unceremoniously dropped. Now, I will talk more about this, when I make a video about Season 2 of the Dream SMP … in ten years, look forward to it.

In the case of Philza, this inaction was especially damning, because at this point it was still a considered canon that he was Tommy’s dad. So, the fans were left with a situation, where just a few weeks prior Philza was occupying a paternal role for Fundy and Ghostbur … but now, that his youngest son was in a very concerning predicament – to put it lightly – he was nowhere to be found.

So why is that?

Well, the most obvious answer is that Dream and Tommy didn’t write him into the storyline. We’ve seen that Tommy wasn’t particularly interested in exploring a familial relationship to Philza, at least at the time. And it would just not fit in with what Dream and Tommy tried to do with the Exile Arc: they wanted to tell the story of Tommy being isolated, completely under Dream’s mercy, slowly worn down and manipulated. If Philza had been constant presence for Tommy during that time, it would have definitely shifted the narrative focus. That doesn’t mean that they couldn’t have done that, it’s just a matter of fact that they didn’t.

This also reveals another truth about content creator Philza’s character work, that I think is extremely crucial: He takes what the writers give him. Outside of a few choice moments, he doesn’t seem particularly interested in expanding or even solidifying his character on the SMP.

What I’m saying is that he is very go-with-the-flow: Wilbur wants to enact a Shakespearean tragedy? Philza’s up for it. Fundy wants him as a parental figure and mentor? Philza’s here for him. Tommy, conversely, doesn’t want him as a paternal presence, even though it would make sense for Philza’s character, as it was established so far, to be there? Philza will oblige.

The reason I’m mentioning this is because, while Tommy and Dream were unwilling to utilise Philza in their storyline, someone else was more than happy to. Which leads us back, like it always does, to everyone’s favourite Porky Pig-kinnie in a crown: Technoblade.

Technoblade and Philza, from everything I’ve seen of them, seem to be very good friends – and they share a lot of history even outside SBI. So, it’s commendable that they would collaborate on a storyline together.

A consequence of that, however, is that Philza’s narrative purpose shifts completely with very little transition. His entire character changes from being the Mentor-figure of L’Manberg to being pretty much exclusively defined as Technoblade’s ally; his man on the inside. It is a very sharp turn from the end of Season 1. Their relationship is once again informed via intertext – this time the Antarctic Empire on SMPEarth serves as the hypotext – but there isn’t a huge effort made to smoothly integrate that aspect of Philza’s character into the larger narrative framing around him.

How much the narrative utilisation of Philza has shifted can be very easily observed through the Butcher Army event on December 16th, a story event that I like less and less the more I think about. Here Philza is used to show just how corrupt and violent Tubbo’s administration has becomes. He is no longer the respected mentor, he is now the stand-in for the oppressed populace, similar to Niki’s role in Season 1. On a narrative level, he is here to prove a point.

If you’ve seen my Technoblade video, you know how I feel about … just that entire storyline, so I will not reiterate too much on it. I just want to make clear that I’m not principally against this development – if they wanted to truly explore Tubbo going down a dark path and getting corrupted by power, so much so that he would even treat the person who effectively raised him like a prisoner, I would be extremely here for it, I cannot stress that enough.

The problem I have is that it’s just so sloppily done. It is not coherent with how these characters behaved and, more importantly, how they were narratively framed prior to the Butcher Army event. Fundy gets one token line about Phil being his Grandfather – a far cry from the very emotionally complex relationship they had established at the beginning of Season 2 – and Phil then callously disowns him.

The major problem simply is that we don’t see how Philza changes from Mentor-figure to embittered, oppressed citizen. And there was enough time to build to that. During the entirety of Tommy’s exile Tubbo was pretty much spinning his wheels and Quackity and Fundy were opening up plot cul-de-sacs that didn’t end up going anywhere. This is time they could have spent on developing their relationship to Philza and the dark path they were going down – but again, Season 2 video.

There is not much to say on Philza’s narrative purpose and framing beyond the Butcher Army event. He remains pretty much exclusively Techno’s consigliere with his role as Mentor to L’Manburg a distant memory. He has some cute character moments with Ranboo, because content creator Philza is just big dad-energy whether he wants to or not, and whenever he and Ghostbur share a scene suddenly the narrative remembers that there are people other than Technoblade that should exist in Philza’s inner world. But aside from that, Philza’s storyline in Season 2 remains … pretty definitive is the nicest way I can put it.

Most importantly his relationship with Tommy continues to be completely unexplored – whether by chance or choice – and that combined with ever vaguer paratext leaves “Dadza” in a very peculiar situation.

Conclusion: Is Dadza a Good Dadza?

So, the question to end all questions. The big, obnoxious text, that I will probably have put in the thumbnail – I haven’t made it yet, but I know myself. The honest answer is: I couldn’t tell you.

I have, in the past, been expounding the virtues of narrative analysis. That is because I feel that Narrative Analysis and Textual Analysis, like in this video, can provide certain tools that Character Analysis lacks. Often times I see people trying to get at a writing problem or query and getting frustrated because they’re not using the toolset, they need to figure out what they want to figure out.

But I’d be a hypocrite if I pretended like everything could be solved through the modes of analysis I prefer. And I think the Dadza-issue is exactly such a case.

I set out to explore why the Philza-Tommy-“Dadza”-relationship has become so controversial. It’s a combination of expectations build up through intertextual readings, that were partly canonized – something that is very common for the Dream SMP – conflicting pieces of paratext, which only serve to muddle the issue further and a text that is not only completely uninterested in actually exploring Tommy’s and Philza’s relationship – as it stands right now they might as well be strangers, narratively speaking – but also completely changes Philza’s narrative purpose as it relates to characters like Fundy or Tubbo about half-way through with little to no transition.

That is why I say, that Philza’s character is a victim of narrative circumstance. Because unwittingly, through all of these factors and decisions, there is not coherent reading of Philza that frames his parental skills in a particularly kind light.

The question of how we can judge Phil as a paternal figure ultimately falls within the purview of the character analysis – and that’s a very multifaceted issue, highly dependent on which POV you focus on and how you interpret the other characters in that POV’s periphery.

To put my cards on the table, I think that Philza is a very flawed father/father-figure – and I find that absolutely okay. Flaws are the spice of character building. He is not Cinderella’s Evil Stepmother – but he’s also definitely not Mufasa. If we were to read Philza as a paternal figure, then he would have made a lot of mistakes and decisions to the detriment of his “children” – least of all everything that happened on Doomsday.

But I also have sympathies for Philza fans who are tired of the Dad-Debate and would like to have his character judged independent from his relationship to Ghostbur, Fundy, Tubbo and Tommy.

Ultimately, to bring it all to a point, I’d like to end with saying, that I think that Philza, out of all the characters on the SMP, has the potential to be on of the most intriguing, multifaceted ones. There are all of these different patches of story, character moments and narrative and transtextual implications, that, if brought together, could create a beautiful tapestry of the character Philza.

You have his relationship with Techno, which holds the potential for so much emotional conflict and vulnerabilities, you have his time as mentor of L’Manburg, which is just criminally underused; the complex relationship between him and Ghostbur/Wilbur; and – for me, personally – most intriguingly this weird, almost uncomfortably distant non-relationship with Tommy. That last one is intriguing to me, because it contrasts just so much with our intertextual understanding of the characters and streaming personas – and it just holds the potential for so much conflict, so much drama, so much angst. Which I live for!

And, yes, I do believe that most of this is narrative happenstance, that this was largely not intended by Philza or really any of the writers. It’s just what happens when hybrid-roleplay-improv a long-running, livestreamed storyline in Minecraft.

But I want them to realize the potential they have on their hands, because it could – with barely any adjustments – turn Philza from a victim of narrative circumstance to a champion of it!

Outro

Thank you so much for watching this video. Usually, I don’t record outros this standard, but after this beast of a video I felt it necessary. I hope that whether you’re a Philza fan or a Philza critical or just completely uninvolved in the whole thing, there is at least a little entertainment you could get from this.

I want to take this opportunity to say that my next few videos will probably not be Dream SMP related – a sentence which undoubtedly lost me a bunch of subs – simply because I don’t want to burn out on it. I genuinely enjoy watching the SMP and being exhausted by it would be something I wouldn’t want to force on myself.

But who knows what will happen? The Karl Jacobs video was something I did spur of the moment because the idea just came to me – so I can’t guarantee that the next video won’t be a three-minute joke about Purpled or whatever.

Anyway, my concrete plans for future Dream SMP videos are essays on Season 1 and Season 2 as well as one for Tales from the SMP.

Before that I have a longer video in the works, which I’ve already teased a bunch, so I hope it will finally be finished sometime. And I also may be working on something … eboys-related? Maybe. I’m not making any promises!

118 notes · View notes

olderthannetfic · 4 years ago

Note

I get that there has been a lot of mostly young people harassing and such, but like... the amount of hate I see young people getting seems kind of hypocritical?? Like older fandom members are great, and yeah these kids probably don't know the half of it, but... I doubt the fandom moms were perfect as fandom kids. No one is. But there is zero empathy to be found, and all these people espousing downright hatred for kids on the internet. I *work* with kids for a living, if anyone were to dislike them it would be someone who is with them 24/7, but... they don't deserve this. Especially since some TERF or SWERF or some other conservative shit fuck got to them first, probably a parent. Idk. It's complicated.

“Fandom mom” is almost always a pejorative applied by somebody else, honestly. I’m middle aged and trying to get pregnant, and I would never use that dumbass term for myself. But yes, no generation of fandom is flawless. In the past, the m/m shippers tended to be more pro-kink simply by virtue of a homophobic world classing m/m with extreme shit, while the people yelling about ~problematique~ fiction tended to be overtly conservative homophobes. But my fellow m/m shippers were idiotic in plenty of other ways.

Having now spent several years hearing from more randos about the depressing shit that has happened to them, I find myself knowing a lot of 20-somethings who got ostracized by their entire friend group and threatened with all the material those “friends” knew because they had been friends. Even if they were shitty little bullies as part of that pack (and quite a few of them were), that’s no way to live! Nobody deserves to live in fear that all their friends will turn on them if they’re honest about themselves or that their tastes make them a future abuser or that it will be impossible to find another group of friends later.

The problems of ostracism by the other side are very real. It came up memorably after a bunch of the thanfiction stuff in the past and after Laura Hale fought with OTW supporters. I remember the conversations around how it’s important to give people space to back off from their more toxic friends without viewing them as Forever Suspect. All you do then is isolate them with that person you don’t think they should be listening to, whether that person is a full on abusive cult leader or just a persuasive jerk. (And the fact that those conversations were happening points more to the fact that being the bigger person isn’t the norm in these situations and never was.)

I’ve seen some of those conversations in recent years with that “support ex antis” stuff, but it’s pretty small compared to the volume of messages I see that are like “If I back off from my friends, they will hunt me, and nobody else will want me now either”.

I also pretty regularly run into 20-somethings who are much more ship-and-let-ship in the first place asking me where on earth they can go find some “pro ship” friends, and I never know where to send them. The fact is, all that “conservative Protestantism in a gay hat” stuff has its claws into their age group, no matter which labels people put on themselves.

I don’t think there’s zero empathy. I think when directly asked about it, a lot of older people who are actually paying attention to fandom drama will talk about the social forces in play and how it’s not every young person. But when it’s not the direct topic, people make sweeping cranky statements that are the age equivalent of “Ugh, men!” or “Ugh, the straights!”

I agree: objectively, young people don’t deserve all this blanket blame. OTOH, all the people bitching didn’t deserve all the harassment they’ve suffered, and overly general salty statements are a fact of life on social media. I’m not holding my breath for this pattern to improve any time soon.

I say 20-somethings because, in my experience, a lot of this is 20-somethings and not people younger than that. Tumblr discourse and a fair quantity of twitter discourse is a bunch of 25-year-olds fighting with a bunch of 35-year-olds. Or a bunch of 22-year-olds fighting with 27-year-olds. It’s old vs. young, but it’s not even all that old or all that young. I assume the actual kiddos are off fighting with each other on Amino or something.

People can be dumbasses, including about history, at any age. (Try asking your average person lecturing about strikethrough literally anything about anime fanworks fandom history...)

#fandom meta #Anonymous

62 notes · View notes

lilydalexf · 5 years ago

Photo

Old School X is a project interviewing X-Files fanfic authors who were posting fic during the original run of the show. New interviews are posted every Tuesday.

Interview with Circe Invidiosa

Circe Invidiosa has 11 stories at Gossamer, but there are even more X-Files stories at her website. Some of my favs I’ve recced here before, like Make It Worse and Slap a Goatee On Me and Call Me Evil. She also made a bunch of X-Files collage art, including some cover art for fics (hers and others), which you probably saw if you were reading fic back when authors posted fics on their own websites where art could be shared. Big thanks to Circe Invidiosa for doing this interview.

Does it surprise you that people are still interested in reading your X-Files fanfics and others that were posted during the original run of the show (1993-2002)?

Well, it would surprise me if people did read my fic. As it happens, I don't hear much feedback from my fic these days. Probably because the bulk of it is on Gossamer and my own site rather than AO3. Also, I was never a BNA. I worked a lot behind the scenes – hosting other authors' sites and making fanart and dustjackets. I think that's what I'd be remembered for, if anything.

What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience?

I miss the collective excitement and discussions we had as groups. When you got in with a group in the XF fandom, you felt like you knew everybody there. Now the fandom feels a little faceless except for the people I still follow from my old groups.

Social media didn't really exist during the show's original run. How were you most involved with the X-Files online (atxc, message board, email mailing list, etc.)?

Most of my experience was on Yahoo Groups. I joined Scullyfic while it was still there and then E-muse when it became an e-mail list, which I'm still a part of. I was part of several Yahoo Groups (can't remember all of them now), where I'd post my fic, RealPlayer slideshows (remember those?!), and collages. I never really took part in discourse because I'm shy and don't think anyone cares about my opinions (still don't!). The e-mail address I used for those groups was purged a couple of years ago, so I've lost all those messages.

What did you take away from your experience with X-Files fic or with the fandom in general?

My take away is that fanfic made me a better writer, thanks to having some great betas, and it made me a better professional writer for it (my real-life work is writing but not fun writing) because I learned to take criticism.

I also used to make a lot of fanart, collages and dustjackets for fic mostly. My big take away from that was that I really got into graphics and I got super proficient at Photoshop, which helped my own artistic endeavours and photography. I didn't realize how much skill I had developed until I've had to help someone with their graphics or photo editing.

What was it that got you hooked on the X-Files as a show?

My mother was watching X-Files before I was and she was raving about it. I don't have a great relationship with my mom, but one thing she was usually right about was TV shows. It's where I got my love of Sci-Fi.

I think the first episode I watched was Ice, which definitely hooked me. As for when the shipping started, I remember we were watching Lazarus, and when Mulder was yelling at Lula (I had to look that up) about hurting the hostage Scully, my mom said, "Oh, he's so in love with her." And I was all, "What?! Pfff." But then I could not stop thinking about it. And then I thought about it way, way too much.

What got you involved with X-Files fanfic?

I was in my late 20s, and it was around the end of S7 and I kept thinking about what if these two dumb idiots actually talked one day. And I kept thinking about dialogue in my head about what they'd actually say. The internet was still in its infancy back then, but I'd seen fan sites here and there. So I decided to search around to see if other people were talking about it and thinking about it like I was. I was such a noob I'd never even heard of fanfic. Imagine my delight when I discovered it. I found a few stories and thought, 'Well, I can do that.' And I wrote up my first story, found a place to post it (wasn't Ephemeral the best?), got some kind feedback, found a really nice person (not sure she wants to be named since she used her real name in the fandom back in the day) who encouraged me a lot and directed me to all the e-mail lists and Yahoo Groups that I needed to be on, and then, Bob's your uncle, I wrote more and more.

What is your relationship like now to X-Files fandom?

Periphery. Most of my experience in any fandom is now on Tumblr because that's where my attention span is. Show me pretty pictures and funny stuff. I am old now and don't want to think hard.

Were you involved with any fandoms after the X-Files? If so, what was it like compared to X-Files?

Veronica Mars was my next fandom experience. A number of my XF friends got me hooked on VM. The VM fandom was a LOT younger compared to the XF fandom. When I joined the XF fandom, I was the kid compared to most of the other fans who were all goddesses and royalty in my eyes. But in the VM fandom, I was in my 30s and the rest of the fandom were all in their early 20s if not younger. It often showed, so I stayed out of discussions and just posted my fic once I started writing it. I took a new handle (invida) when I started writing VM fic. Just in case these kids felt like my writing sucked, I didn't want it getting back to the XF fandom that I’d branched out and failed spectacularly.

By then fandom experiences had moved over to LiveJournal. I never really got involved in the discourse or the fandom fights. I knew what people were saying and where the schisms were, but I was all about the fanfic and the pretty pictures. Most of my LJ friends just discussed the episodes and posted their fic and that was good with me.

What got me writing fic for VM was Anjou's brilliant VM fic Into the Blue. Seriously, if you love VM S1, read her fic. Just so beautiful.

VM was also where started writing a WIP, which was a wild trip. I wrote a much-loved WIP called Damn, Damn the Circumstance which people still ask me about finishing to this day. Someday…*wistful sighs*

Who are some of your favorite fictional characters? Why?

Scully. She was everything! Lapsed Catholic, degrees in science, skeptic, always trying to work within the rules but still not taking crap. Yeah, she was the best.

Veronica Mars was great until she wasn't. I have a lot of issues with her beyond S2. And don't even talk to me about S4. For me, S1 was the best, I enjoyed the movie, the books were okay, but nothing else happened after that. NOTHING.

And the first character I ever loved was Princess Leia. She was also everything to me growing up. I wanted to be her. I still do.

Do you ever still watch The X-Files or think about Mulder and Scully?

Now and then. Not as much as I used to. I sometimes have it on in the background when I'm doing other things. Back before the pandemic, my BFF and I would have get togethers where we would play Scrabble, eat a lot of candy, and binge several XF episodes. I miss doing that. Hopefully, we will get back to that soon.

Do you ever still read X-Files fic? Fic in another fandom?

I am not an active XF fanfic reader right now. I will read any stories my friends put out. Otherwise, I only occasionally read some I come across on Tumblr in my feed, but I am not seeking them out. I will beta for any XF author who asks me as well.

I am reading fic in other fandoms though – Endeavour, Broadchurch, Sherlock…huh, I'm just realizing that's a lot of British stuff. I have been really into British detective series for the last few years.

Do you have any favorite X-Files fanfic stories or authors?

I used to run an XF fic recommendation site called How Will It End usually with at least one other person (I went through at least 4 partners on that project because I'm a control freak). We'd compile our recs and then I'd post them on my site. We'd also feature authors we really liked and interview them. Not unlike these interviews!

I'm terrible at giving feedback/comments. So I solved that problem by making a rec site. That way I could tell authors I loved their fics by recommending them. I didn't have to comment, I'd just say, 'I'd like to rec your fic'. And then they'd get promotion. Win-win. Back in those days, the fandom would absolutely roast you for promoting your own fic, so to get on a rec site was a big deal. Not that I had a popular rec site or anything. But I think authors really enjoyed being asked.

All that to say I've liked a lot of fics. I can pull up the archives of HWIE and show you all the faves I liked. :)

What is your favorite of your own fics, X-Files and/or otherwise?

Back in the day, E-muse would hold Improv Challenges, where other members would give you a prompt that you had to include in your fic. I was always really proud of the stories I created from those challenges (No Earthly Means and Elephant in the Room if you want to read them).

I enjoyed writing Dead to Rights which is an XF/Dead Like Me crossover because I loved the challenge of writing a crossover. It was the first crossover I ever tried writing even though I only recently published it.

Otherwise, I like re-reading In a Graveyard, Importuning Life for Life, and Some By Virtue Fall. Of my more recent fic, I like Slap a Goatee on Me and Call Me Evil because the premise was ridiculous and I think it's funny as all get out.

Probably my favourite of my VM fic was Stay Outta Riverdale. Because: 1. The title is a Simpsons reference who doesn't love a Simpsons reference? And 2. I think I was hilarious throughout it.

Do you think you'll ever write another X-Files story? Or dust off and post an oldie that for whatever reason never made it online?

I'm always open to writing more fic (and, of course, I don't mean my WIPs…don't look at me like that). Lately, my only motivation has been from writing prompts on Tumblr. I haven't had anyone give me a prompt in over a year, so here we are. I have snippets of dialogue in journals and word documents that have never found their way into stories. I'd be happy to dust off any of those and shoehorn them into a new story.

Do you still write fic now? Or other creative work?

The last fanfic I wrote was a mini-fic over a year ago (with a prompt from Lilydale!). I've written a bit of original fiction but I haven't been able to finish it. Otherwise, I do have a number of real life hobbies which are where my creative outlets lie now.

Where do you get ideas for stories?

Lately, challenges and prompts. It used to be from wanting to see more from a scene. I really had a thing for fill-in-the-blanks or scene continuations. And sometimes my motivation is just plain old spite. :)

What's the story behind your pen name?

Circe Invidiosa is the title of a painting by John William Waterhouse. Love the colours and the absolute malice on the face of the subject. It felt like a good pen name – the envious witch. That's me!

I chose it when I posted my first XF fic (which I cringe to read now, ugh so terrible) without knowing there was already a Circe in the fandom. Whoops. I tried to go by the full Circe Invidiosa or Invidiosa as much as possible after realizing that (invidiosa is my url and my username on a lot of sites, etc.). Now I think that I've been around long enough that it doesn't matter as much but I still like it.

As I said, I took the name Invida for the VM fandom which is just a shortening of Invidiosa.

Do your friends and family know about your fic and, if so, what have been their reactions?

My significant other knows and that was quite a reveal (oh how awkward). However, the SO has been very supportive and has read all my stories since the reveal and sometimes betas them. The SO also wants us to collaborate on writing some original fiction but we haven't found a project that works for both of us creatively or timewise.

My BFF knows because I dragged her into the online fandom. We've known each other since we were 14, but our love of XF really solidified our bond in our 20s. She wrote some short but sweet fics under the penname Helen Quilley which I bullied her into posting, and we wrote Of Ladies Most Deject and Wretched together. She is mostly embarrassed that she wrote fanfic now but we still fangirl together.

No one else really knows other than fandom folks I've met in real life. And some friends know I've written 'short stories' but I don't elaborate. I work in a stodgy, uptight industry where anything fun or actually having a life is frowned upon.

Is there a place online (tumblr, twitter, AO3, etc.) where people can find you and/or your stories now?

Over the first lockdown, I got my shit together and got my fic site, invidiosa.com, up and running again. My site houses fic by Rain (now @doctorhelena on Tumblr and AO3), Helen Quilley, ML (who I miss so much), Folieadeux, Shelba, TLynn, Oracle, Piper Sargasso, Diehard, and me. And I made all their dustjackets (except Folie's). The site got hacked a few years back and it was so much work to get running again that I put it off for years and years. I still feel terrible that I did not get the site back up before ML passed away, especially when ML had asked me about it a few months before she passed.

Anyway, all my XF fic is here: circe.invidiosa.com. I have 3 of my newer XF stories on AO3. And my fic-LJ also has some of my stories. Some of the newer stories are on Tumblr but the tagging is so erratic that I'd have to list several tags before you'd find them all. I don't know why I haven't moved everything over to AO3. Probably laziness.

I'm @invidiosa on Tumblr. I'm still on E-muse. I'm still on LJ. I'm always reachable by e-mail (invidiosa at gmail).

Is there anything else you'd like to share with fans of X-Files fic?

Thanks for reading, writing, and commenting. It is always appreciated.

(Posted by Lilydale on January 5, 2021)

#new post #old school x #xfiles fanfic #xf fanfic #xf fanfic author interviews #circe invidiosa

56 notes · View notes

theshopislocal · 4 years ago

Text

So I joined tumblr in December after seething about 15.20 for a little while. Before that I’d been an AO3 lurker and occasional writer in several fandoms, and before that I was (proudly!) kicked off of LJ for my disgusting and offensive PG-13 Harry/Draco drabbles that apparently squicked (a term I’ve recently learned no one uses any more :/) the random Christians who were inexplicably trolling LJ.

I knew very little about the spn fandom - specifically their demographics - when I first came here. I’d sort of been enjoying the show (usually? Eh, like 70/30) in my own little bubble - the same with fanfic and fanart.

To be frank, I was startled to discover the sheer number of younger folks and LGBT+ who are fans. Of course, reading all of your discourse and meta and musings, it makes perfect sense that spn and its characters would speak to young members of the LGBT+ community; I’d just been a little too ‘in my own head’ to put that together.

I’m a cisgender woman, and I’m generally fine with being called straight, though it’s not 100% accurate (what ever is, really?). That said, I wasn’t sexually or romantically attracted to anyone until I was in my early twenties, and my interests didn’t really align with those of other girls when I was in school. So, around seventh or eighth grade when most of the other girls started to go a little boy crazy, a few of them (my friends, actually) decided I was a lesbian. Their 12-year-old, early 2000s reasoning was “well, if you don’t like boys, and you keep your hair short, you’re probably a lesbian.” And I sort of just said “yeah, okay.”

So, when I was around 13 or so (and a newly minted “lesbian”), I started to get interested in media with gay themes. I started with shows like Queer As Folk and The L Word, and oddly enough, even though I didn’t relate to the romantic or sexual stuff because I didn’t feel things like that at the time, I did relate to the characters’ struggles. Feeling like no one knows you, like people can’t accept you, want to change you, feeling alone and different and outcast. Maybe it’s because I wasn’t very pretty, maybe because I was one of the only black girls in my grade, maybe because I was an only child and a latchkey kid; whatever the reason, these gay characters spoke to me. I felt like I knew them, and they knew me.

In true millennial style, I blew through pretty much all the gay stuff my mom would let me watch (she actually got suuuuper into The L Word, we watched like seven episodes in a row on Christmas Eve once), and then started scouring the internet for more content. That’s when I came across sites like Ink-Stained Fingers (a Harry Potter slash archive that might still exist? Idk) and Library of Moria (same thing but for LotR). And suddenly - anyone could be gay! And even though I wasn’t actually a lesbian (though at the time I was rather convinced I was), it still felt fantastic that I could actually relate to these characters, some of whom I’d only vaguely liked in reading their original canons.

I very quickly became a fanfic connoisseur - and it even went beyond slash pairings or any pairings at all. I just liked seeing characters in a new light. I liked seeing people and relationship dynamics that were different, taboo, subversive - because it made me feel better about being me.

I went off to college. Screwed around with some boys, some girls, some people who didn’t call themselves either. Became pretty sure I wasn’t a lesbian, but still didn’t really know what I was; this was over ten years ago, and all the various terminology was still pretty new. Eventually, I met a boy who made me smile and turned me on - both of which were entirely new and singular experiences for me - and I married him.

Cut to: my husband and I watching 15.20, and both of us - cisgender and predominately straight - looking at each other like “wtf is this bro-y bullshit?”

So I thought “fuck this, I need to vent,” hopped on tumblr, and - low and behold - here you all are! It took me a minute to wrap my head around it, to get past the initial excitement of just look at all the people the different people the real people the people who are so very unapologetically themselves!

I don’t think any of you could possibly know how happy I was (am) to see you all, how very beautiful it is that you’re all here.

Anyway. To all the LGBT+ shippers reading this, I just want you to know (re: the deancas wedding, but also just... everything): if even my dumb, straight, weird, who-even-am-I ass can see it, it’s real. You’re not crazy, you’re not delusional, your opinions are not invalid. You’re not just “projecting,” and even if you were, there’s no damn law that says only straight people get to project. Please don’t let shitty people (who are literally too stupid to even capitalize on your interest for their own gain) ruin anything for you.

To any straight shippers: if you’re anything like me, you’re not fetishizing or objectifying gay relationships - you’re relating to characters that you adore in the best way you know how. You’re celebrating the qualities in people that make the world diverse and colorful and beautiful.

To any young shippers: it gets better. You’ll get out. You’ll find better answers. You’ll learn better questions. You’ll figure it all out, or (slightly more likely) you’ll figure out that not everything needs to be figured out. People do hear you, and people do care about you and what you have to say. Your voice matters.

To everyone: there’s nothing wrong with you. And I’m so damn sorry that anyone has ever made you believe that there is. Honestly. I’m sorry.

#idk how to tag this #I guess um #destiel #???#deancas wedding #stfu #chad lindberg #extra stfu #samantha ferris #fandom stuff #tmi #sorryyyy #i love you all

29 notes · View notes

quillquiver · 5 years ago

Text

Alex’s Big Nerdy Destiel Canon Rant

I love talking about canon: what it is, what gets to be part of canon, etc. so I want to add my two cents to all the discourse! To my mind, yeah, literary theory uses the word ‘canon’ to describe the complete text (including subtext), but like... that definition isn’t necessarily useful in a fannish context, and it’s certainly not useful in the Destiel fandom.

Just hear me out: even deciding what is part of SPN canon text-wise is a mine-field. Are we counting what Jensen and Misha have said at cons? Are we counting tweets? What about the series of SPN tie-in books that exist? If all these things are paratext, and we’re really only looking at what has been said on the show that’s cool, but I suspect that many people have differing opinions on what SPN canon even consists of! And this makes a lot of sense: the show has been around for 15 years, and the fandom is composed of a whole bunch of people whose ideas about canon, even coming into the fandom, are probably pretty different. Plus, we’re an online fandom, so things are de-centralized and it’s wayyyy harder to even agree on or establish a definition of what the actual, canonical source text even consists of.

Setting that aside, language has also always evolved to suit the needs of the community using it. Queer culture, for example, re-appropriates, reclaims and creates new terms all the time (that then may get picked up in mainstream media, where the meaning may change yet again!). Because fandoms can sometimes drastically differ in terms of language usage, I can’t speak to other fandoms besides the ones I’m in. But! By my reckoning, Destiel fandom took the word canon, (which in a perfect world refers to a single, total, indisputable source text, subtext included), and changed its meaning. In the linguistics world, this is called a semantic change! We’ve largely removed ‘subtext’ from one of the things we consider canon, because that doesn’t suit our purposes - due to the really fraught history between SPN creators and DeanCas fans, canon for us has come to mean something different. But more on that later.

At this point, I know a lot of people are gonna argue with me. BUT THAT MAKES IT SOUND LIKE THERE’S AN AGENDA! LANGUAGE IS OBJECTIVE! IT’S A TOOL! To which I say: language has never ever been objective, because people aren’t objective. If you think that language does not exist to serve a purpose, consider the assimilation of Indigenous peoples through the use of English. Or the fact that the Ancient Greeks used to describe colour differently than we do, because that served them better. Language always exists so we can better communicate and understand each other, and policing it has always been a form of subjugation, whether that be through the policing of what language or dialect you are/are not allowed to speak, or how to speak it. One of my profs loved to remind us that grammar is classist - as long as we can understand each other, how something is spelled really shouldn’t matter.

But back to SPN. We as a general fandom have a really unique relationship to our content producers. We always have. It’s the reason we’re the go-to case study when fan studies scholars want to look at the fan/producer relationship in western media fandom. Destiel fandom? An even more fraught relationship, because for a very long time, the producers did not consider Destiel as part of the canon of their own show. If they had, we wouldn’t be having this conversation! But the first time SPNs narrative even deigned entertain the idea of Destiel as existing seriously and explicitly in the narrative, it was during their 200th episode, and it was a “you have your interpretation, we have ours”, which super invalidates the mocking hell they put us through beforehand. The fact that DeanCas fans have been condescended to and queerbaited for so long means that, largely, we’ve decided that DeanCas canon cannot and does not include subtext... even though, yes, the existence of Destiel romantic subtext technically means the ship is, was and has always been canon (i.e. part of the complete episodic source text). After being told you’re delusional, you’re wrong, you’re crazy for so many years, the idea of a canon DeanCas became entwined with the idea of explicit, incontrovertible romantic text in the show, because it’s not only about Dean and Cas... it’s about the recognition that our reading is also correct. That we were right all along.

People will argue with me here, but don’t misunderstand me: I’m not saying that fandom needs approval or validation from the creators - we really, really don’t. Whatever we see in any show is canon just by virtue of it being there, and so is a valid reading, and that is definitely enough. But SPN is nothing if not the exception to almost every rule, because context: 12 years of being told you’re insane by the people in the diver’s seat, and 15 years of having this on-and-off fraught relationship with creators in a way that had previously never happened. SPN fans are close to the writers and producers and actors in a way that very few other shows are, and we have been for a long-ass time. The writer’s room is an authority, for sure, but they’re also like a group of fans we're constantly at odds with, and that means we treat them like we would other fans. We discuss, we ask questions, we argue. And yeah, the mentality of fighting over ownership of the narrative is one that is very early 2000s, but considering that’s when the show started, it’s not a surprise that it never really left us. In other words: because of our closeness to TPTB and our history with them, there’s a desire for recognition and validation (vindication?) that is unique, but nonetheless there and important.

Back to canon. In the literary world, canon is used to describe a complete text (which again, people have a hard time agreeing on what that even consists of), but it’s also used to describe a complete body of literature. For example, you often hear literary scholars talking about “British literary canon”. Here, canon is used as a way of organizing the most important, worthwhile works of a community, and so is also used as a tool of exclusion and subjugation. Canon excludes people, like BIPOC and women writers, to serve the most powerful culture’s interests - it has a very specific purpose. In this same way, I’ve seen people using their own definitions of canon to invalidate the feelings, experiences and definitions of other fans. For example, there have been a couple posts floating around saying that we absolutely and in no uncertain terms need to use the canonical definition of literary theory (one single, subtext-included source text to rule them all) and I have an issue with that because first of all, not everyone knows literary theory, and second of all... why? Canon is and always has been a polysemic term - it has multiple meanings. The OG example of this is religious canon: it eventually stabilized, but like, I’m Greek Orthodox, and my bible does not look the same as that of a Catholic Christian. But to hear both sides talk, they each have the real canon. So canon can mean something different depending on who you’re talking to, even when you’re talking about the same thing. The important thing is that whatever a community decides is canon, that’s it. That’s what canon becomes.

But what if your community doesn’t have one single definition, because canon means something slightly different to everyone? Well, that’s also fine! Because again, language is only there to allow us to understand each other. If we’ve all been talking about canon and largely understanding one another for the past 12 years, that means we actually never had to have these kinds of conversations, because we largely agreed that subtext was not canon, and destiel never really left the subtext. But we just had Castiel confess his love to Dean (still reeling from that), and so the minutiae of what constitutes canon (a kiss, a hand-hold, a love confession) is suddenly pertinent and important - because we’re all on the same side, but we all have slightly different ideas regarding the details, and who the heck knows what we’re gonna get in the finale, if we even get anything. So we’re all talking and yelling at each other, all trying to say my very specific definition is the right one because xyz when in reality... all of us are right.

Believe it or not, this discourse about what the minutiae of canon is, is actually how we come to a more specific definition. That takes years, and will be infinitely more difficult in a community that is so de-centralized and whose members are always changing, but it’ll eventually happen. Maybe. For now, though: your definition? That’s the right one for you.

Do not let anyone shame you for thinking Destiel was already canon, or not thinking it is by the end, or insisting their definition is the best, right and only one. Canon is a polysemic term, and that means your reading is in there. But that also means everyone else’s is, too.

#fan studies #canon #how do i even tag this #canon discourse #?#destiel #linguistics #literary theory #i'm a big nerd #alex attempts to be a lady and a scholar #long post

48 notes · View notes

starstuffandalotofcoffee · 4 years ago

Note

Tumblr took that one piece of information about goblins being antisemitic caricatures in some specific historical context and has just been running with it for like 5 years now and indiscriminately applying it to any gross or creepy character. Preschool level literary and artistic analysis mixed with a desperate need to look woke i guess but still 🙄

Yeah...it goes so far beyond that though, and it’s not just limited to fantasy although as someone who consumes mostly fantasy/sci fi and whose Tumblr fandom presence is mainly in those circles that’s a big part of what I see. It’s like people unconsciously picked up on the concept that Jewish people are the ethnic group most targeted for hate crimes in the U.S., but are also are a small group with sufficient internal diversity such that experiences within the group can vary wildly so you often won’t get huge amounts of pushback, and went culturally-Christian buckwild.

Like, just off the top of my head: my mother has been an LOTR fan since the 70s. My sister stayed up to listen to Evermore when it dropped despite having work the next morning. I’m one of four kids and three of us play Dungeons & Dragons regularly, and both of the D&D games I’m in regularly are at least half Jewish. None of these things are in any way inherently antisemitic, in my opinion, and many, many Jewish people like them.

Also I’ve seen like 20 times more discourse about goblins or Ferengi or making a character with green skin than about, say, Shakespeare and specifically The Merchant of Venice, or (with the caveat that I haven’t seen it), The Umbrella Academy. [note: I enjoy a lot of Shakespeare, who was antisemitic in a time when Jews were literally banned from Britain; I refuse to watch the Umbrella Academy because come the fuck on]. It’s almost like the things these people cancel are things they already didn’t like, or things people they don’t like enjoy, and ‘problematic’ ironically becomes a way to justify being a really hateful person while simultaneously making it much harder to address real-world bigotry because of alert fatigue. (see also the recent ‘crypto-terf’ blocklist for an example of that whole fucked up way of being). (also with the major caveat that the complex relationship between Jews and whiteness aside I am personally someone who looks white, a lot of the white people wringing their hands over goblins ignore or even defend biological essentialism regarding a tendency towards violence, or noble savage stereotypes in sci fi and fantasy which is...interesting.)

Some of it is preschool level literary analysis and Woke Points, sure, but I think a lot of people are just too chickenshit to address that antisemitism in history didn’t look like veiled references to goblins. It looked like their own white European ancestors kicking mine out of various countries and launching violent genocidal attacks. Sure, modern-day antisemitism sometimes takes the form of dogwhistles, but also like, the synagogue I went to when I lived in the midwest was vandalized with swastikas on the eve of Rosh Hashana, as was my local train and park when I lived in NYC, and the kol nidre appeal I heard in 2019 referenced that the cost of a security guard, after Tree of Life, is a significant expense. A lot of white Christians have the luxury of looking away from the obvious stuff, and boy, do they luxuriate in it.

My slightly wild theory, and believe me, I’m very aware of the irony in this, also goes back to my general belief that a lot of people really want to seem smart and they think this involves uncovering conspiracies, or focusing on ‘insidious’ secret bigotry. Of course, this means that they outright ignore the stuff in front of their faces; it’s why people will talk about goblins and Ferengi but not actual antisemitism [sidebar: did you know the ‘The American people are not intellectual, to put it mildly’ line came from an interview in which someone claimed the Jewish people perpetuated a ‘counter-holocaust’ against Germany?], similar to how people will happily reblog posts about those White Bitch Karens and feel woke never caring that they were written by white men. When wokeness is a competition, you need to feel like you have extra insight when the uncomfortable fact is bigotry in all its forms is usually much more obvious and blatant and when you’re not the target and when the perpetuator is a creator you like, it takes some actual strength of character and effort not to look away, let alone to address it. It doesn’t take that strength of character and effort to regurgitate tired talking points in yet another flaccid call-out post.

#antisemitism #a rant #Anonymous

18 notes · View notes

mariaiscrafting · 4 years ago

Note

I’m the anon about fanfic and fanart. I just want to say that I’m fine with analysis when they talk about how dnf react to each other when they say or do something but don’t really like how they bring that point into their relationship. It’s one thing to me to say they have a flirty friendship but insisting that they have something more in private bothers me. I always thought that fanfiction and fanart are ways to analyze creators or dynamics so I was curious on what you thought of them. Fans always project things onto creators they like so they make things arolving them. I know you’re worried about how this can strain the content creators and other fandoms, but establishing boundaries is important and it was already addressed by the Dream Team themselves so I don’t see why you have to go out of your way to tell dnf shippers to not to analyze them. I’m not here to hate you but wanting to understand how making a call out post to tell dnf shippers to not to psychoanalizing interactions instead of trying to put more of a distance between yourself and the blogs without putting them down. On Twitter, there was a tweet that misinterpreted Dream and George’s first meeting and Dream corrected them but never condemned them for shipping. He also said in many tweets and said in stream that just how they are and said that fans are allowed to do what they want when it comes to them. Also liking a fan tweet where #Dreamfell was dnf related even though the situation didn’t need to be. Twitter is directly involved with the creators themselves so of course it’s hard to ignore. Even then in Twitter you can still mute words. I’m here for a conversation and not out hate. This is Tumblr where it’s mostly Fandom focused and some dnf shippers like to analyze to project whatever onto them so if we don’t want to see it, asking for a tag so you can block it here. Like #dng long post or just block the analysis tag. We’re all responsible to create our own fandom experience so I don’t want to call fans disgusting when they haven’t done anything wrong since Dream had stated He’s fine with it. I don’t want you to feel excluded in the dnf side of Tumblr since you still find the ship nice, but if you don’t want the long analysis posts since it feels morally wrong to you then we can try to agree on separating the casual and the analytical side of dnf. Your feelings towards dnf blog analysises are valid so your fandom experience should be catered to.

I am actually half delirious while answering this, so Imma keep it short and simple.

I do cater my own tumblr experience to what I want. I do block people who post stuff I don't like so I don't see it in the tags. All your advice is nice, but unnecessary.

I think that I should be allowed to criticize circles that I am in in the hopes that they will approve and shift what they consider the norm. Yes, Dream said that he is okay with shipping and has engaged with it and panders to the audience with it. But to take anyone's green light on any issue involving their personal lives, and to run rampantly with it is still fucked.

And look, I don't think I've properly articulated why I call this behavior disgusting. I want to emphasize that I view it as dehumanizing. To reduce a person's behaviors and tendencies to whatever vicarious romantic gratification you can get from them is an appalling act, devoid of empathy. It exemplifies the commodification of CCs for the audience's sole entertainment and that audience's lack of basic respect for them or acknowledgement that they are real life human beings who function beyond whatever romantic framework you fantasize them in. I keep bringing up this example, I know, but it's what incited this whole discourse for me in the first place, but that analysis of Dream's few seconds of silence as him focusing on George's voice because he's just so in love with him? That analysis, and the overwhelming consensus on that post perfectly exemplify just how dehumanizing this crossing of a line can be. It erases the conceptual space for any other, rational and non-romantic explanation for a few seconds of silence that could have easily been attributed to distraction, a moment to collect his thoughts, etc. It also perfectly exemplifies how, through the overanalysis, shippers force CCs into two-dimensional boxes that best fit their wants, devoid of nuance. In this instance, Dream is not a busy content creator who hasn't streamed very often for the past few months and might be readjusting to consistently talking in front of a live audience, or a young adult with ADHD whose brain jumps from point to point in its search for dopamine, or literally any other kind of human being with multiple characteristics and personality traits influencing his behaviors; he is a prop for our self-idulgent ship. I'm reading way too much into this one example, I know, but I just want to also say that this is like a much higher problem than just one post. I don't care about the content of one fucking post, I care about what that post and the methods of analysis employ imply about the rest of dnf shippers. This community is following behaviors that are concerning, and this is just one example of hundreds that exemplify that.

Projection is fine. Projection is employed in RPF fanfictions, character headcanons, different fanart styles - it's all over the mcyt fandom and I don't have a problem with it. My PROBLEM is with people who act like their analyses of Dream and George and literally any other content creator are actually representative of reality. My problem is with people who don't understand that there is a difference between stanning and creating/consuming fan content for a creator's persona, and theorizing about what that creator's actual character as a real life human being is.

Okay, also, I might just be getting more irritable because it's 2 am and I want to be asleep, but I actually do have a problem with you essentially saying that a preferred solution for me is to simply cut myself off from half the community. Basically, I should just plug my ears and shield my eyes if I see problematic content I am morally against? Fuck off, mate. There are many, many things I choose not to start discourse on and simply block or mute because I don't care enough to try and change it. But dnf shipping is something that I actively engage with, is kind of a significant part of my online presence and experience, and also a way I've made a lot of friends in this community. So yeah, I have a vested interest in making sure it doesn't go down the same, fucked paths I've seen other shipping communities go down, and if that means making a discourse post that makes you uncomfortable, I suggest you block me.

I'm not advocating for this fandom to partition up based on what we all think is right and wrong. I want integration of different ideas, useful discourse, and self-growth. And none of that is solved by creating a separate hashtag

#asks #why did i answer this rn im so tired #also not proofreading this v sorry in advance #discourse #just btw im.prolly not answering any more anons on this line of questioning #if you want to send a public ask or just @ me go ahead and we can beefpublicly #but otherwise nah this is taking up too much of my time and mental fortitude #/neg

12 notes · View notes

playingbaseballwithyourson · 5 years ago

Text

A Comprehensive List of Why REFLEKDOLL is One of the BEST EPISODES

1. I mainly come to this show to watch Ladybug and Chat Noir bitch at each other for a solid 15-20 minutes and, my god, does this episode deliver.

2. “You’d better get going before you lose your clown costume.” I C O N I C.

3. For real, confirmation that Ladybug sees Chat as as much of a goddamn clown as the entire fanbase, it’s great.

4. I know people get on this episode because the ladynoir banter is apparently “”mean-spirited””? But honestly like, banter between friends CAN sound this mean-spirited from an outward perspective while all the friends involved in it are totally fine and in complete understanding that it’s all just joking and in good fun. Ladybug really starts tearing into him (jokingly) and Chat still finishes the sequence by bouncing away yelling “SEE I WAS RIIIIIGHT!” in an upbeat, teasing tone. Like, they’re fine. This is just how they talk to each other as friends and it’s clear neither Ladybug nor Chat Noir take their banter very seriously. (Honestly my banter with my friends can be far more scathing than anything in this episode. XD)

5. Watching Juleka and Luka interact... It’s pure. It’s good. :’3 Just an all around good scene. It’s also nice to follow up on how Juleka’s been dealing with her issues since Reflekta, even though it does turn out she’s made very miniscule progress.

6. Alya’s galaxy brain moment of inviting Adrien to help Marinette with a fashion shoot: Makes a lot of sense and is a great way to capitalize on both the love square’s hobbies to get them to hang out more! It’s the single part of this episode that isn’t a contrivance!

7. Adrienette look cute in the matching outfits. Sorry but they do.

8. Okay, the thing that is truly great about this episode is that everything about it is a massive contrivance to make the kwami swap happens. ML wants it’s fucking kwami swap and it’s going to bend over backwards to make it happen, and it is NOT shy about it and it is NOT sorry. And honestly?? I FUCKING LOVE THAT. Does a kwami swap make logical sense for it to occur without the heroes having planned for it? No. Are we going to do it anyway? YES!!!! BECAUSE A KWAMI SWAP WOULD BE FUCKING FUN!!! That’s what’s great about ML, and this episode is a great showcase of ML’s priorities as a cartoon (which is probably why this episode rubs some of the fandom the wrong way). A kwami swap is illogical, but it’s fun as fuck, so the show is going to do it. That’s the priority above all else. FUN. AND IT PAYS OFF!

Seriously, everything is a contrivance. Why akumatize Juleka again? Reflekta’s power can handicap the kwamis’ abilities to find their humans in the commotion. Why have Marinette and Adrien change for the photo shoot? Get them to take their miraculous off. Why have them keep the kwamis in the car instead of in their pockets? So they can’t find their own kwamis right away. This episode is jumping through flaming hoops to make this happen and it’s fucking gold. Might there have been a much more natural way to have a kwami swap? Yeah, sure, most likely. But literally WHO EVEN CARES cause this episode starts out fun and ends fun, and it works well enough that I don’t give a flumpty. Hell, I appreciate it even MORE for not being shy about its priorities in this episode. Kwami swap fun? Then kwami swap will happen. Fuck everything else.

9. “Are you okay, Marinette?” “YEAH. HE’S TOO HOT. I MEAN--” This is a top tier Marinette flub.

10. I recognize I’m a minority on this, but I fucking love Mayura. She is a goddamn queen. So gosh darn fabulous with the long coat and the fan. I just love it whenever she shows up so I’m glad she’s here. Makes the villains a touch more intimidating in this episode since there’s two, which pairs well with Marinette and Adrien being somewhat off their game due to the kwami swap.

11. Literally any time Tikki and Plagg interact together is great.

12. Adrien telling Marinette to hide in the car... TTToTTT <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

13. No one ever believes me when I say Marinette is pure chaotic energy but she HECKING IS! When she finds Plagg with the cat ring, this girl does not waste a goddamn second. Will swapping powers probably mess them up? Yes, but FUCK IT PARIS IS IN DANGER AND WE NEED HEROES NOW SO GIMME THAT RING. SHE JUST DOES NOT WASTE A GODDAMN SECOND TRANSFORMING. SHE CAN TAKE ANYTHING AND ROLL WITH IT. I LOVE MARINETTE.

14. Also Ladynoire’s design is fucking choice.

15. Okay, go onto youtube right now, look up Mister Bug’s transformation sequence, and look at the way he puts on his mask.... I know right??? :D

16. This is a very personal thing, but I love seeing Adrien powered-up without the cat eyes. This is the only time you ever see it, and trust me while I fucking love the cat eyes, it’s a really eye-catching change to see him with his normal eyes here! Think about it, Ladybug has never seen her partner’s real eyes until this episode. It’s cool! (Marinette with the cat eyes, on the other hand, is neat as well, but I don’t think she wears them as well as Chat Noir.)

17. Adrien smacking himself with the yo yo.

18. I’ve said this before but I find it absolutely adorable how, when swapped, Marinette and Adrien base their new names off of each other, rather than making up new ones from scratch. Mister Bug? It’s Ladybug, but boy. Ladynoire? It’s Chat Noir, but girl. Seriously that’s adorable.

19. ADRIEN USING LUCKY CHARM AND GETTING EXACTLY WHAT HE WANTED IS ONE OF THE SINGLE FUNNIEST MOMENTS IN THE ENTIRE GODDAMN SHOW. I’M SORRY BUT IT IS. IT’S FUCKING HILARIOUS. JUST ADRIEN BY SHEER LUCK SCHOOLING MARINETTE WITH HER OWN POWER, AND THE COMPLETELY OFFENDED LOOK ON HER FACE AFTERWARDS-- IT’S PEAK ML COMEDY.

20. I’m not the first one to make this comparison, credit goes to @buggachat on that, but Marinette in this episode is like the parent trying to teach their kid how to drive but ends up flipping their shit the second their kid touches the gas pedal. And it’s fucking funny. X”D Marinette has a strong sense of responsibility along with an incredibly specific way of how she likes to do things as Ladybug. Her process is you battle the akuma, gather info about your opponent, use lucky charm at the exact right time that only she knows in order to take them down, and then capture the akuma and/or amok. Her routine is pretty broken in this episode, since it’s now Adrien who needs to do all those things, so that combined with Marinette’s acute awareness of Adrien being a Child Who Causes Problems On Purpose has her veerrryyy on edge this whole episode and it’s just fun to watch. Her asking Adrien if they should switch back, correcting him every time he mis-speaks about how to do Ladybug correctly. It’s not a side of Marinette we get to see every day!

21. Additionally, getting to watch her relax for once in a fight since she’s now in the canonical clown costume is wonderful. I love Marinette. I want good things for Marinette. Relaxation and fun are good. She’s got a lot on her shoulders so this episode is nice, especially with the s3 finale in context.

22. Yknow, I can very happily buy that chataclysm doesn’t work on sentimonsters, since it’s already been established that Miraculous magic can protect from chataclysm. (See: Miraculer)

23. I’ve written already about why Mister Bug wasn’t actually bad with the ladybug miraculous, so I’ll only touch on a couple of those points again. But it is weird to me how people cry about Mister Bug being shit at the ladybug miraculous when he’s so clearly not? He just has a lot of stuff to think about that he usually doesn’t have to worry about cause it’s not his job. When to use lucky charm, HOW to use lucky charm, when to use miraculous ladybug, capturing the akuma once it’s released, capturing the amok. He just quite literally never has to put thought into any of that so it’s pretty understandable that he doesn’t have a handle on it just, automatically. Meanwhile, Marinette doesn’t have a ton of extra things to think about with the cat miraculous, AND she’s canonically naturally talented with handling different miraculous, so it’s very believable that she’d be fine? I get people don’t like that cause they have a problem with Marinette (and any WOC) being competent in general, but she’s just a talented girl. We see her take and roll with anything to stop the villain in every episode of the show, so there’s not actually a reason for her to notably struggle with the cat miraculous. But hell, she actually DOES make things worse by chataclysming Reflekdoll, which might have not happened if she paused before just rushing in and using her power (after proudly declaring she is now the Team Clown). But it’s understandable that she didn’t predict the sentimonster to react how it did, and I can see Adrien making the same mistake, so eh.

24. But my point is that in terms of this discourse, I think this episode is fine. It’s about Ladybug and Chat Noir learning that they’re both quite good and very comfortable in their default roles. She’s great at handling her job and he’s great at handling his. That’s a perfectly fine lesson for this episode, and it’s not super necessary for them BOTH to learn that their partner’s job is actually super hard! The episode starts with them teasing each other about their roles, and it ends with that little bit of conflict between them being eased away due to their experiences from the kwami swap. Chat Noir is still a clown, Ladybug still is too concerned with her usual responsibilities to spend a lot of time clowning with him in fights, and that’s okay. They both learn to relax about it. It’s a good lesson for them to learn about each other, and it feels natural for the show to spend some time exploring their dynamic as partner heroes!

25. I actually fucking love how it’s established that the lucky charm works differently for different people. This episode BASICALLY CANONIZES that Marinette’s lucky charm is so insane because SHE HERSELF, IS SO INSANE. Adrien thinks much simpler (which I’ve written about how that’s not a bad thing in previous posts), so his lucky charm is just: You need a mirror? Okay, here’s a mirror. And it’s actually very fun and interesting to me that his ability to use his lucky charm was handicapped specifically becuase he’s only ever watched Marinette use it. Marinette’s lucky charms always yield wildly complicated plans, and that’s the exact thing she’s shouting at him the whole episode, so he expects it to be complicated and thus can’t figure out how to use the mirror. It’s only when they sit down and realize that they’ll have to think on Adrien’s level instead of Marinette’s that they figure out what to do with it! Marinette’s spent the whole episode basically backseat driving for him (understandably), so the fact that the resolution is her meeting Adrien at his own spot and working on his level instead of hers- It’s a good way to wrap the episode up!

26. Duuzu.

27. dID HE JUST DAB?!?!

28. Oh my god he did. And people actually hate this episode, smh.

29. Marinette flirting with Chat Noir will always give me life, and we get so much of it in this episode! Her calling him Bugaboy is this perfect combo of flirtatious and teasing that’s just very on-brand ladynoir. It’s perfect in this episode for literally so many reasons that I don’t even have time to list them cause this essay is already really long.

30. Adrien and Marinette interacting with the others’ kwami? Wholesome. Marinette and Adrien reuniting with their kwamis? Very wholesome. They’re both so attached to their kwamis in different ways, and they’re also together with their kwamis practically every waking moment of their lives. I can imagine being apart from them even for a little must’ve been a touch anxiety inducing, so it’s nice to see how sweet everyone is when they’re reuniting!

31. Adrien says at the end that he’s not cut out to be Ladybug and honestly y’all... That’s okay. Adrien has his role and he’s incredibly good at his role, and Ladybug is incredibly good at hers. They’re both SATISFIED with their roles. He’s not upset when he says he’s not cut out to be Ladybug, not even a little. He very happily takes Plagg back and steps back into his usual territory. Again, he wasn’t bad at the ladybug miraculous. It just came with more to think about than he really wants to, things that Ladybug is very HAPPY to think about, and if their dynamic already works, then he’s perfectly happy to focus on his part and leave her job to her. That’s great!!!

32. Juleka getting to do the fashion shoot... Yay. :’D I just want good things for Juleka.

In conclusion, this episode is pure unbridled fun from start to finish. It’s chaotic, it’s got top tier banter, it’s a phenomenal change of pace from the rest of the series. I actually love watching this episode with folks for the first time because seeing the look of complete shock and glee on their face as Marinette grabs that cat ring from Plagg is just FUN! And at the end of the day, this episode is a statement on three things:

- Marinette is a talented girl. -Adrien is great at his job. - And ML as a show’s priority will always, first and foremost, be fun.

And none of those are a bad thing.

Hope you enjoyed the essay! :D

#miraculous ladybug #reflekdoll #marinette dupain cheng #adrien agreste #ladynoire #mister bug

54 notes · View notes

true-intha-blu · 6 years ago

Text

I propose this simple Question

First: why I ask this. Since the infancy of the KH fandom all the way back from KH1, I noticed this simple trend one that picked up tremulously after kh2. No this has nothing to do with shipping. Also to note; I have genuine curiosity if anyone else notices this and this is from my perspective and experience with dealing with the Kingdom hearts fandom. Others may have very different accounts but others (that I have asked) have indeed noticed this as well in my own view. I am not aiming to stir up hate or discourse. I aim for peaceful fandoms. However, this subject is something I see no one ever addresses and well... maybe breaking a status quo or ‘unspoken rule’. I hope this can be a reasonable discussion where I can learn another perspective or some people may notice it and just go... “Oh yeah. That is a thing.” To which the question at hand. “Why does R*ku always have to be cool?”

(Disclaimer I do not hate this character. This question is not hateful. It is not anti or whatever. I mean exactly what I say. I will not be tagging this in the R*ku tab to prevent any misunderstandings. I ask others do the same. Anyone who reblogs this with hate is in no way associated with me.)

I will state the positive traits about R*ku. He has had the greatest character arc out of all the Kingdom Hearts Characters. A great redemption arc from his lowest to blooming into practically a whole new person in his own struggle against his KH1 self. He’s loyal to his friends. Smart. Gets along with Mickey and Yen Sid. Mellow. Saved Kairi and Sora. Knows what he has done. He’s honest and shares his concerns with others. Since KH2 he has always been trying to help Sora in the best of his ability. In acknowledgment of his misdeeds in CoM and Days is very good and we see a character who has genuinely f’d-up and his trying his best to move past that by helping his friends despite the limited resources offered to him. ^These are very good traits for a character to have. Any character. Besides his one time self in KH1, what else is there to him? What can be addressed as a flaw or criticism of him? (I approach characters as even though a character goes through a development arc, does not mean they are void of flaws. No one works like that. Not characters or actual people.) I say this. I love Sora and Vanitas in the Kingdom Hearts fandom. However, I am not afraid to draw them doing stupid or silly things and point out they have various of unfavorable flaws. Sora is utterly dense and I hate the fact how he was portrayed in DDD but I accept it and I will drag him along pointing out that fact. It is part of his character. He’s a dork (and not always in a good way). He impulsive and is kinda a mess of a human being. He's stubborn in the worse ways and volatile. Vanitas appears to be on the surface a straight up evil villain. As far as the games go, he is just utterly vile in his contempt for the characters and his actions have brought suffering and misery to various of characters. (though there may be other traits that could set for his own arc) (I still love them both) But note how none of these flaws listed above are ‘endearing’ or even remotely positive. They are problems, that hinder the characters and those around them. These are persistent traits even though both Sora and Vanitas have mellowed. Sora far more than Vanitas. I just do not see this done with R*ku. I rarely (they do exist but in comparison to the likes of Sora, Org XIII, even foretellers, or Roxas [who could be compared to be as “badass” as R*ku], its rarely ever there) I don’t see anyone talking about Riku doing dumb stuff. Being silly or being the butt of a joke or just not, not being good. Example of the latter: When there was talk about Sora cooking in KH3, rarely did I see that, ‘oh, Sora learns how to cook and becomes very good at it’ and most I see ‘R*ku is already a fabulous cook’.... what about Kairi? What about even Lea? Aqua? There is no mention of these other characters being good at cooking. R*ku is usually A.) always the cooler looking one, or must be made to look cooler and B.) always be the better or best at something. I know that is kinda the thing in KH, that R*ku is talented and gifted as a person. As for the coolness factor, Nomura does this as well. Sora gets a keyblade, R*ku gets an edgier cooler keyblade with more details. Riku gets the powers of both light and darkness. R*ku gets the Keyblade Master title. R*ku gets actual growth in his body. He gets the more competent companion (Mickey). I am not saying these things are detractions or upsetting, they are just there and be defacto, cooler than other characters. He becoming edgier and emo was a good play on Normura because back in early 2005′s people thought that was cool and hot. Silver hair is automatically an attractive trait and western audiences love a person with a muscled body like R*ku’s. I don’t blame fans for being appealed to his character. But I suppose I am getting off-topic. Why do fans keep feeling compelled to make R*ku perfect? When people make fanart of him like say a monster form or pirate outfit, they always make it more detailed, edgier or just cooler than anyone else who would be drawn that way. He always looks more impressive than an original canonical design when other characters are drawn or written in ways that are not as impressive or equally the same to a canonical design/form/power. Has the cool wolf animal companion or the cooler weapon, the more detailed designs etc etc Even Axel who is a badass assassin can be silly or dumb-looking. Heck, they even did that in games. They made Axel failed and acknowledge it. I see Aqua who is awesome in design and badass moments, be criticized for her flaws that persist and others who wish to see her have more moments of weakness even with what we have seen in 0.2 Xion who has had a great arc in Days (Character arcs don’t always have to be a positive development) doesn’t get the coolness factor. Roxas who is probably the second most popular character still is known as a goofy boy who thought he could fight heartless off with a stick. That’s hilarious. The most notable thing about R*ku recently that wasn’t cool or badass or edgy was his infamous “WHAT?” response to Mickey in Kh3. And that was one thing. Only really that. But how Mickey worded it, anyone would have done the same. And I noticed that people use what Mickey said “Aqua is like Sora’ is a way to poke fun at Sora by implying that Aqua is like a dense 15 year old. (Again these are just observations I have made over a decade worth watching the Kh fandom). In talks with other people who are Sora stans or other stans, there is nothing but a lot of talk about R*ku being really good about things. Being superior to Sora, or Kairi, or Aqua and Terra. Over Roxas. Giving Axel two keyblades is never done, but people have given two to R*ku. I get it, people who love characters like to do so much with them. I do the same. I just... never seem to regard the characters I love as perfect as others see R*ku. Also... I just don't see anyone criticizing him (I mean criticism in actual acknowledgment of his character and not hating on said character). Or taking about traits or flaws that are not endearing “He cares too much about his friends” is not really that bad of a flaw in consideration. A lot of people would prefer to have that over say... anger issues. What about the fact he falls back into following the orders of others or doesn’t often decide things for himself?... What about Minor flaws? I just never see them in regards to these characters. Alright, so these are my observations I have made over... 14+ years of watching this fandom. And I want to ask, why do fans see him as such? Besides the only reason being for them is “I like him.” Has it just become such a normal thing to make R*ku better? Is he really that good of a character than he is so universally loved? Or is the backlash of actually criticizing R*ku and seeing that maybe, making him too perfect is... not doing favors for him? An arc is just that, an arc. Doesn’t mean a character is perfect or done with. Doesn’t mean those flaws that persisted in him, are gone. Make your favorite character silly, or doing something very dumb (that does not even have to do with shipping), or put forth of what you would like to see improve in this character or express more about their flaws and their struggles. I love pointing out the negative traits in all my characters because I like seeing their struggle and how that makes them interact with new nuances in other characters. Maybe it's a running joke that R*ku is ‘Mr Perfect’ in the Kh fandom and I am just not seeing it. But it's daunting and just kinda rubs me the wrong way that all these characters in Kingdom Hearts have so many nuances to them and the one who has the best character arc so far in KH is regarded as... ‘Perfect’ I would like to know your opinion and if anyone else who is not a R*ku stan notice this, or is it just me and my own personal bias? (anything said above is in no way should ever be used to promote hate against R*ku or even bash him. In no way, I want to make others hate R*ku. I do not blame people who love this character to portray him in a superior way over everyone else. My address is that I just see this all the time. And I was wondering... why is it so widespread? Not even Axel who has a great redemption arc gets this.) (also another things is the whole sexgod R*ku that is also about however that may go into shipping and that I will not poke a stick at)

#kingdom hearts #character development #just a question #i wish to hear opinions #no bashing #no character hate #fuck antis #fuck character bashing #be mature people #positive and supportive enviroment

78 notes · View notes

bigskydreaming · 6 years ago

Text

lesbianscottsummers replied to your post:

Jfc. Okay, let me be perfectly fucking clear,...

I just wanna day as an inc*st survivor myself I’m so sorry what has happened to you, what these anons are putting you through, and what they will undoubtably continue to put you through. I’m here if you ever need to vent/talk/etc ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️

*hugs to you for your shit as well*

Thanks, I appreciate it, but honestly I’ll be fine. The thing none of these anons ever get is how fucking powerless and pointless they are. Its like....LMFAO, I’ve survived abuse, rape, and a gaybashing. You really think your shitty little hostile messages are what’s going to break me or shut me up? LOL, please. You’re embarrassing yourselves. The most they’ve ever managed is being obnoxious gnats that are hard to swat and annoy the shit out of me.

Tbh, its not the anons that really bother me. Its the silence about their behavior. I’ve been out here catching shit like this for years...and so does most every other survivor I know who’s vocal about their trauma and how unsupported they feel by the very fandoms that pay the most lip service to caring about abuse, rape and rape culture. Not to mention all my friends of color who are vocal about racism, etc, etc.

And yet how many non-survivors (most white, because let’s be real, the vast majority of other ‘antis’ who are non-survivors themselves are people of color due to the overlap between people who fetishize and invalidate racial generational trauma and people who fetishize and invalidate survivor trauma of all types and individuals).....like, time and time again, you hear about ‘anti’ behavior and how disruptive it is to fandoms....with this signalboosted and perpetuated by people who just claim they want to ‘stay out of it’ and be civil and mannered and can’t we all just get along....

Well, no. We fucking can’t.....because the day some of us, whether survivors, people of color, nonbinary or trans individuals, started to say “hey, there are elements of fandom that actively are HARMFUL and ostracizing to us” a lot of people decided they just didn’t want to hear that, and only peeked their heads up to acknowledge when ‘antis’ rocked the boat a little too loudly.

But yeah, its only us who go around harassing people, never the other way around. At least, that’s the impression anyone would get from looking at any of the blogs of people who just want everyone to be nice and civil to each other....but only seem to get the alert when that goes in the direction that requires zero action on their part.

I mean, just speaking strictly to matters pertaining to being an abuse/rape survivor, I’m just so fucking sick of hearing all the lip service about how “I support survivors”.....from people who then make it clear that only is actionable for them WHEN NO ACTION IS ACTUALLY REQUIRED.

Hence why there’s always that tiny little qualifier in arguments around various forms of ‘anti’ discourse.....stuff pertaining to rape, incest and pedophilia fetishization....so many people when they say they support survivors in fandom ACTUALLY seem to mean “well I really MOSTLY support the survivors who say they write these things to cope, because even though I don’t ship or read or write these things myself, I support their right to do so, as opposed to those other ‘anti’ survivors’ right to have fandom experiences that don’t require being IMMERSED 24/7 in romanticized reminders of their own traumas.’

*Shrugs* I’m sick of it. I’ve watched it happen for YEARS, being right in the middle of it, and no one can tell me this isn’t EXACTLY what’s been happening for all this time, and why so many fandoms have remained exactly the way they are, problems and all, with zero effort to change or be more inclusive of all the people on the margins for various reasons saying “HEY WHAT ABOUT US”....and then turning around and patting themselves on the back for being so civilized, so courteous, so ABOVE descending into the kind of barbaric behavior that only antis are guilty of. Never the reverse. Never the things that INSPIRE our anger or vitriol as a reaction to the fact that we’re just trying to fucking EXIST in fandom spaces and everyone else who was just fine with the way things are now saying “no, change doesn’t actually work for us, because that means....effort?”

How can you say you support survivors if you never actually DO anything supportive? How can you say you support people of color if you never actually SPEAK UP for them when you see or are surrounded by blatantly evident racism? How can you say you support LGBTQ+ individuals if your READING PREFERENCES are more of a priority to you than their living experiences?

I’m not pissed off about the barrage of insects in my inbox, honestly.

I’m pissed off by the crickets that resound from everyone who at other times is first in line to say “I absolutely support xyz! Just, y’know, in that quiet, invisible way that’s more enabling of toxic, harmful, racist, homophobic, transphobic and rape-culture tropes and individuals than like....the actual people I’m claiming to actually support.”

Here’s a “if a tree falls in the middle of the forest and no one’s around to hear it, does it make a sound” for the social media age:

“If your support can’t be pointed to, quantified, singled out, observed, identified, or in any way meaningfully proven to exist....then DOES IT?”

Idk. I mean, I just really love how in just the few months I’ve been an active presence in this particular fandom, I’ve garnered a reputation of being unreasonable and disruptive and overly aggressive....all while sticking ENTIRELY to my own blog, not going NEAR any tags, only jumping on someone else’s post a grand total of three times that I can think of....and all while my own fandom related posts are continually garnering hundreds and even thousands of notes and being spread around by people who at the same time actively avoid interacting with me as an individual because I’m ‘unpleasant’.....as opposed to all the big name incest shippers who well, even if someone doesn’t ship those icky things themselves, at least they can say those incest and pedophilia shippers are a lot less disruptive and unpleasant to be around and know how to be polite and well-mannered.

LOLOL.

When civility is indistinguishable from apathy, you’ve fucking missed the entire freaking point of civility.

THAT’S why I don’t bother blunting myself with it, when I don’t particularly feel civil. Because its become pointless. People have fucking WEAPONIZED it to use it to silence people, and that’s so gross to me. Nobody benefits from that unless they’re already benefiting from the status quo, and the status quo is fucking gross to me too.

My question, to all the people who see things they think are wrong and never say a damn word about it...is and will always be:

WHY????

5 notes · View notes

orionsangel86 · 6 years ago

Note

It will forever baffle me how there can be so much intelligently written material on Destiel and bi!Dean, often by people that are queer, writers, have backgrounds in television etc. and non believers will just not have it, but have nothing backing them. It makes me wonder, have you ever come across sensibly written meta or discourse from people that don’t believe bi!Dean or Destiel? Dean’s ‘boner’ scene, the mixtape, the commentary on Aaron all come to mind as things I’d love to hear explained.

Lol nope.

I would love it if someone could actually point me to any intelligent meta or analysis of any Destiel or Bi!Dean scene that concludes that Destiel/Bi!Dean is NOT a thing? Anyone?

I actually did read some anti posts trying to disprove Destiel a while back and I pretty much laughed the whole way through it, since it was based on the same 4 arguments that we have disproved with canon evidence over and over again. The only evidence antis have against Bi!Dean and Destiel is wishy-washy at best and from earlier seasons such as Dean telling Victor and that one Vampire that “he doesn’t swing that way”.

In the later seasons, the Destiel/bi!Dean evidence is so clear that antis have resorted to screaming “PANDERING” to Andrew Dabb rather than actually trying to provide a non gay explanation.

Their arguments about the mixtape were the BEST! OMG I laughed for DAYS after reading that!

I believe it actually went something like “Destihellers keep saying that Dean gave Cas a mixtape! He DID NOT give Cas a mixtape! He gave him a tape with a mix of Zepp songs. It is NOT THE SAME THING!”

I mean, if you want me to make it clearer, this is what they sounded like, whilst claiming every variation meant a different thing:

“The mixtape”

“the mixtape for Cas”

“the tape that is a mix of Zepp Songs for Cas”

“Cas’s mixtape”

THEY ARE ALL DIFFERENT THINGS CLEARLY

But yeah what interests me in fandom is peoples backgrounds, because among us meta writers several of us are writers, or have backgrounds in film/TV production, or are actually working in academia or publishing/editing/journalism. Most of the meta writers I know are people in their late 20s to 40s with full time careers and college educations. We are all intelligent people and we have all clearly come to similar conclusions.

I don’t know the backgrounds of the antis. All I know is that they are blinded by their hatred of Castiel/Destiel and our side of fandom. They can’t articulate themselves clearly, because everything they say is powered by hatred, so they resort to screaming blindly and overusing an outdated gif of Jensen on a bad day. They make up lies, and rely on fear tactics and manipulation to gather followers. They spend hours using photoshop to edit Misha/Cas out of promotional material where he is front and center. But the one thing they have never been able to do is put down an intelligent debateable argument counteracting the mountain of evidence we have for Destiel/Bi!Dean. Instead they resort to mockery and limiting our meta to overly simple examples out of context. They say all our evidence is about “Cucumber water” “Shirt colours” and “cake”, but they don’t ever see the context of these tiny examples when put alongside the rest of it, because they blatantly ignore the rest of it. They cherry pick the parts of the show they like, and ignore the rest. I honestly don’t understand why they even keep watching other than out of sheer spite tbh.

If you found a general audience viewer with no biased or knowledge of this show, and watched Destiel coded episodes with them, they would point out how they came across kinda gay. They might brush it off as a joke, since mainstream media has been using queerness as a joke in television for decades. But if you gave those people a little nudge, asked them to think about it a bit more deeply, then I bet that you could get them to see it. I did this experiment myself with my 28 year old brother. He admits that Destiel is a thing and whenever I go home to visit he occasionally asks me if they are together yet. He still teases the hell out of me for it, and makes a joke out of it, but the guy works in one of the most toxically masculine environments you can find (a prison) and therefore isn’t exactly the most switched on with these things - I’m sure the Gilette ad offended him. Ha.

It may take more effort if they are a particularly heteronormative person, or a straight dude, or a homophobe, but eventually, everyone would see it. Because it is there to be seen and discovered. We are not delusional. Even the antis SEE Destiel, they just deny it and then scream “pandering!” at the writers. It’s not about whether people see it or not anymore.

What it is about is how far they will take it. Whether it remains beneath the surface or if it will be brought to text. That is the antis biggest fear, and its why they are currently louder and angrier than they have ever been. We just have to keep on ignoring them and drowning our their voices with love and our own intelligent analysis and meta.

But if anyone does have any evidence of a solid and well thought out counteractive argument please link me, because I would love to sit down and read such a rare unicorn of a thing.

#destiel #spn meta #anti antis #fandom problems #fandom analysis #meta meta #asks #anon #Anonymous

269 notes · View notes

quiznakchronicle · 8 years ago

Text

A collection of discourse/vent asks

So over the last few weeks we’ve gotten a bunch of discourse/vent asks, mostly from people frustrated at the number of events in the fandom and/or how they’re being managed. We understand that people turn to us because we’re the ones in the thick of all these events, but please keep in mind that this isn’t a discourse blog. We’ll answer all the asks we have in one shot in this post (under a cut) because we don’t want people thinking we’re ignoring them or don’t care about what they’re saying, but after this we won’t be answering such asks publicly anymore. In the future we’d ask that if you have a grievance regarding events in this fandom please either talk to us in private about it (send an off-anon ask to this blog or DM Mod Pidge at @ace-pidge) or make a separate post about it on your blog. If you just want to anonymously vent/rant at someone may we suggest something like @vld-rage-confessions

Thanks for understanding <3

- Mods Pidge & Shiro

Anonymous said: 12 days ago regarding that anon complaining about event capacity, I think it might be helpful to also bring up a discussion about how certan events are run. Some events are run very smoothly by mods that are mature and act professional, while others are either run by well-intentioned newbies or people who don't have the skill to run the event they are. I have had to drop out of several bangs because the mods have refused to use email for sign-ups or check-ins, instead forcing all the work on participants1/2

2/2 They put all of the responsibility for both creating the piece, communicating with partners and performing check-ins on the participants and then people drop out due to poor communication and confusion. I have asked mods to please use email and send out confirmation / check-in emails and many have been rude and self-righteous about it, calling those that ask for better modding skills lazy or entitled. I am frustrated since I have always handed my work in on time, but have had to drop

3/2 from events due to absolute silence on the part of mods. It is not good practice to run your entire event out of tumblr / twitter and expect all participants to keep checking your blog / check in with you. It is teh responsibility of mods to send out emails and check in with participants, not the other way around. it is the responsibility of mods to make sure the communication is there, and the responsibility of participants to do the work and hand it in.

4/2(sorry) I don't wnat to make a c=major call-out post or shame particular people, but I feel like this is a trend that needs to stop. Certain events (big bangs, I've noticed) are being run like drag-and-drop set-and-forget events that mods don't need to put effort in to beyond putting up a tumblr. Running a big bang is a HUGE amount of effort and if you're not willing to put the effort in to run it properly, you run the risk of burning the entire community. We need to focus on a few well-run events. Sorry, finished. (no need to publish this ask)

I think this is a very good point and in fact I was partly thinking of this ask when I made my events etiquette post with my list of advice to organizers and participants. The importance of good and consistent communication during events simply cannot be understated, it’s what will make or break your event

Anonymous said: 12 days ago thank you so much for posting the thing about too many events. i'm thinking about not accepting zines if i get in because i don't think they'll sell and i don't want to work on something for nothing and i don't know how to get that across to these mods because they think selling a hundred is good but i get more kudos on my ao3 fics than that

Honestly the situation with zines has me particularly worried, because there is actual money involved. In previous fandoms I’ve only ever seen a few zines overall, never this many and all at once. It really does saturate the market. The last thing anyone wants is for people to put in all that work only for it to flop at the end because few people actually order it. It’s not any one person or zine’s fault, because all of them have neat concepts and themes. The problem is in having them all at once.

Anonymous said: 12 days ago I don't know how recently the problems with dropouts have started getting worse, but it could also have something to do with school starting back in a lot of places. If students didn't think about school starting or didn't expect to have more work this year than last year, they might be dropping stuff because of that. Oversaturation is definitely a problem we have, but things might even out a little bit in a few weeks once people adjust and it might get a little bit better? Hopefully?

That’s definitely a possibility. As I’ve said in the past it’s very important to consider your long-term life/work/school schedule when considering whether to run or sign up for an event. I have noticed in the past week or two less new events have popped up, so either I’m not finding them lol, or we’re heading into a lull which will hopefully allow things to even out

Anonymous said: 12 days ago on top of "too many events", there are a lot of /competiting/ events. 3 keith zines (for example) are all gonna compete with each other, period. people only have so much money to give, so someone buying 1 keith zine can't spend THAT SAME money on the other 2. (nor can they spend it on a lance zine, klance zine, etc). thinking these don't compete is the 1st mistake. creators are gonna spend time making things no one will buy and the mods are gonna lose money producing it.

Yeah, I touched briefly on the situation with zines a bit further up. I think the one saving grace for these zines is that while they may all be in production more or less at the same time they don’t go on sale at the same time. But I definitely hear you. We all want all the zines to do well, but like you say people aren’t made of money

Anonymous said: 12 days ago confession: im in an event run by the worst mod ever and its incredibly fucking frustrating. it feels like they dont give a shit about the event. i applied to their zine before i knew that but if i get accepted i WONT participate and in the rejection i will tell them why (its been over a month). they havent done ANY check ins as scheduled have basically disappeared and my artist hasnt replied either. im so mad i want to cry and drop out and never do an event again. this hurts us too you know

Aw Nonny I’m so sorry you’re stuck in this situation... The flipside of poor event management is fandom creators like you being turned off from participating in projects and that’s really upsetting. Fandom events should be a source of fun and creativity, not stress and anxiety. I’m so sorry, I hope in the meantime since you sent this your situation has improved ;A;

Anonymous said: 12 days ago Guys please don't encourage mods who are continuously late on their dates or end up canceling their event due to their poor planning. I get that you want to treat them well but not giving honest feedback ("please keep to the schedule in the future" or "I'm disappointed this was cancelled") tells them that there are no consequences to their bad management. But there are: one week only had 2 participants. Zines aren't making money. Too many events + bad mods = poor participation. I'm sick of it.

This is important. If the way something is being run isn’t working it’s important to say so, otherwise how will the mod grow and learn to do better in the future. I know it feels like “calling out” but it needs to be said. Seeing an event to completion is a partnership between the organizer(s) and the participants and both sides need to be proactive and be willing to listen to each other

Anonymous said: 10 days ago My 2 cents on the events discourse: they're optional so don't sign up. Personally I'm sick of having shitty mods and terrible experiences so i won't be doing anymore vld events. Sucks because i love fandom events but apparently no one who runs them gets the point of them so...

Yeah, I’m seeing more and more people saying they’re just not gonna participate in anything anymore and it sucks that it’s come to this. I totally understand though ://

Anonymous said: 8 days ago dear people who follow QC: we do not have unlimited money. zines for profit are going to continue to do worse because more people will hit their spending limits. we do not need multiple character zines, ship zines, or race zines (galran/altean/etc). if you think galra keith, nature keith and gen keith don't compete with both each other AND the lance zines then please take an econ class before launching. we have plenty more seasons, let's not run this fandom into the ground, shall we?

Anonymous said: 6 days ago I'm quitting fandom events. There are so many bad mods and it's made this experience really terrible for me. I'm telling you in hopes that you publish this ask so people who see it will think about if they're modding for 15 min of fame or if they're taking it seriously. Enough is enough

I think I’ve pretty much said everything further up, so I’ll just leave these last two ones here like this

#answered #anonymous #discourse /#mod post

26 notes · View notes

qqueenofhades · 8 years ago

Note

Hey Hilary! I haven't seen "confederate" or "the man in the high castle", I only know their basic premises, but how are they different? I don't understand why are people so upset about one but not the other (this is probably me just missing something), can you explain your point of view?

Confederate isn’t out yet, it was only announced recently as the next project of the Game of Thrones co-creators (Benioff and Weiss). People are giving this all kinds of side-eye because a) Game of Thrones is overwhelmingly white, and b) has a huge, HUGE problem with violence against its female characters, especially rape. So when you have a couple of white guys who are known for their shock value style, and who have seemed obsessed with rape as a plot device, proposing to make a show about modern slavery, when black people are well aware that violent racism has never gone away and when neo-Nazism and the Confederacy are still proudly identified with, has… way too much possibility to just be gross as hell. I understand they have hired some black writers, which is better than not hiring black writers, but… why do we NEED a show about this? Why do we need more misery porn, more depictions of African Americans as slaves, more images and mainstream space for this ideology, when the president of the country is a self-confessed white supremacist? What are we getting out of this, fictionally or in reality? It’s not the right of fiction to take a historical premise and redo it that I object to – I love alt-history as a genre. But this is not particularly new. “What if the South had won the Civil War” has been done to death, and represents more than a little wish fulfillment. And as noted, Benioff and Weiss’ previous work makes everyone rightfully wary that this is going to be “shock, rape, and violence.” And we… have that every day in reality against black people. We don’t need more.

If you want a show about the Civil War turning out differently, Amazon is developing a series (with actual black showrunners) about a post-Reparations America where black people have received several Southern states for their own country. This puts the power and agency back in their hands, does not present the degrading and mistreatment of black people as entertainment (when again, we get that enough in reality) is an interesting and not-overdone premise, and allows us to imagine an opposite reality that is actually different from our own and promises a critical reflection on the way things are. Maybe Confederate can do that, but.. yeah, my hopes are not high, and it’s not something we need or which tells us anything different. At worst, it’s grimdark torture porn masquerading as “bold” and socially engaged media.

Meanwhile, The Man in the High Castle is based on a novel from 1962 and which, in my view, actually takes its premise both seriously and which never pretends the Nazis winning WWII was a good thing. Its contrast with our universe becomes (no spoilers) a major plot point. All the main Nazis are white American men. The people who suffer for it (and who make up the resistance) are women, Jews, people of color, Japanese-Americans, and others. The show is dark and violent, but it never substitutes gore or shock for story, and actually does what a well-constructed alt-history should do, especially one with such troubling resonance for our present moment. It makes us look really hard at who we are and how we got here.

Believe me, I heard about its ill-advised marketing campaign by putting up swastikas, and that made me cringe. I also cringe at the unsurprising tendency in fandom to woobify John Smith and Joe Blake (the main American-white-man Nazis, who at the moment are both unrepentant Nazis) and make pretty edits for them and ship them with Juliana Crane (the main female heroine). I… can’t do it. They’re complex characters (though I think Joe is just a lame asshole, frankly) and I recognize what they bring to the story, especially Smith, but he’s a villain. I recognize that problems exist around and outside the show, but as a narrative itself, I haven’t seen it glorifying Nazis or acting as if this is something to be aspired to at all, and which urges critique of their reappearance in our own present moment. As I said, it’s based on a book from the 60s, and it is actually reflecting our current events in a way that makes us THINK about these events, our complicity in them, and the way in which white America has become happily Nazified in TMHC’s world – because let’s be real, that is exactly what would happen. And again, its contrast with our world is something that is acknowledged, comes up, and is dealt with. If they take a U-turn in season 3 and change these premises, then yeah, I’m going to call them out for it.

The point isn’t to say that twisting a historical premise is inherently “wrong,” or that fiction has no right to explore controversial topics, or to posit alternate outcomes. But the way in which these stories do it, the message they are sending, the ideology around its creation, and the way in which those themes are handled in resonance to the present, all has to be done carefully and critically. Every piece of historical fiction, especially around charged events like these, is produced for a modern audence. You can’t ignore that in the name of some supposed “purity of historical experience.” It doesn’t exist. You have to reckon the world into which you are putting this creation, and why.

So yes. Fiction has every right to imagine “what if the South won the Civil War” or “what if the Nazis won World War II” or anything else. But that places an added responsibility on it to do it very carefully, with relation to our existing popular media and political discourse, and one which I have absolutely no reason to think Benioff and Weiss can pull off.

#ransomideas #ask

10 notes · View notes

zagenta · 8 years ago

Note

I don't mean to be annoying, but what's wrong with liking Hamilton? you don't have to answer btw I understand if you don't want to I just want to know why

It’s… complicated… I don’t even know if I should be the one to explain it. Keep in mind that at any explanation I personally give on the situation is essentially going to be far too forgiving and apologist bc I rly like the musical. Just.. Yeah anyone reading this just keep in mind that I’m inevitably going to fall in favor w the show despite its flaws bc I suck

Anyways for anyone that doesn’t just take the show as a popular thing at face value & therefore popular = good, It’s somewhat controversial bc ppl laud it as this super diverse show full of Pee Oh Cees & but there’s also been some fair critique of the show’s possibly anti-black elements b/c it treats white racist slaveowners as cool hip guys you’d wanna spit bars with.

To be fair, the show is critical of the characters/historical figures but I can understand this criticism bc it only seems to be critical up to a point? Like. Sure Hamilton is a dick for cheating on his wife and TJ is called out for being a demon but it still glosses over some of the more unpleasant & ngl sometimes downright despicable elements of the characters/historical figures, PARTICULARLY the ones we’re supposed to root for such as Hamilton, Eliza, Mulligan, Laurens, Washington, etc.

And perhaps more worryingly although Lin claims the intent is to “put PoC back into American history” (im paraphrasing), the show erases instances we actually do appear in history, such as Mulligan’s slave Cato. Or making a kind of tacky jab at Jefferson abt Sally Hemings—which to be fair that entire song is supposed to have this dissonance between the cheery tune and how messed up TJ actually was, but it’s still… weird.

Tbh I think this was inevitably going to happen bc musicals abt revolution are rly popular but always end up being reproductions of the status quo bc the majority of ppl who support & can afford to see shows on Broadway are rich & white, they don’t want anything too challenging to their worldview.

Also Lin’s not black, he’s Puerto Rican so he has a somewhat tenuous claim to the history he’s trying to reclaim in the first place, other minorities are definitely affected by America’s racism & history but this specific part of history addresses white owners of black slaves.

And he’s using rap a historically & largely black genre to tell the story, too. I mean, there’s overlap between the experiences of the Latinx/Chicanx community and the black community, but they’re not the same. & it doesn’t really have to do with “ownership” of a genre either, but the reception to Hamilton is super off-putting bc a Latinx guy is getting all this praise from rich white ppl while they don’t give a crap abt the rest of the genre. They don’t even get all the homages in Lin’s music. (If you need proof, literally any post by a basic white person talking abt how the rap they like is abt cabinet battles unlike that “other rap” about bitches and money).

(Sidenote: I know a lot of ppl have developed negative feelings towards the musical & while that’s fair I literally give 0 fucks abt white ppl’s opinions on the show. It’s important to listen to criticism from black people definitely but they fail to treat it like the complex phenomenon it is. Too often they have annoying self-righteous superiority complexes bc they think they’re better than the nasty Pee Oh Cees who just don’t get it man.)

Tbh I’m personally unsurprised that the first real hip hop musical to be a big hit is about the whitest thing ever (remember, musicals have to hit that perfect balance of revolutionary and complacent).

Also there’s the problem with fandom too… Like… People have rightly gone “what the everloving fuck” at the realization that there’s a Hamilton fandom at all & I mean that’s completely fair. I personally don’t see a problem with like… Drawing a pretty fanart of scene you like or of Daveed in his Rad Velvet Maroon Suit, but ham fandom is just descending into this huge pile of wtf bc people ship and fangirl and look up weird minutiae abt American history to justify their headcanons and it’s just bizzaro. Also thank god it’s relatively died down bc early on it was just the biggest cesspool of disgusting racism and fetishization & apologism in the world.

“Why do you still like it, Janelle?” Because I love suffering

Now some people just like the musical for its catchiness and artistry and are rightly weirded out by the hardcore fan community, and honestly I’d recommend that approach bc ngl I’m never ever going to forgive myself for being convinced that TJ & JMads were totally a Thing™

But I like both. Honestly I like them for almost entirely different reasons. Honestly at this point if I didn’t think Hamilton was literally a Masterpiece™ I would probably end up hating it just bc there was so much discourse surrounding its hype, but I think it’s just a tribute to how catchy the songs are and how talented the cast is and just the combination of everything that I still love the show despite its problems. I know it’s not great of me but I know pretty much everyone is an apologist of something they like despite its Problems.

& the fandom in my experience is a fascinating phenomenon to me personally bc in my headspace it’s practically this entirely different entity to the musical itself? Like a lot of people think it’s cringey & it definitely is but the entire reason I still am engaged is bc I found my niche of practically a handful of close knit mutuals and Only care about Their Content, except for like… The occasional drawing. Bc our personal niche is so detached from the reality of the show or the history that it’s practically original content & has lead to some rly creative works that are much less Problematic Musical abt Demon Men but with Catchy Songs and much more along the lines of Intriguing Character Studies on the Themes of Parenting, LGBT+ Experiences & Relationships, PoC’s experiences,( and also lots and lots of self-destructive behavior)

I think Hamilton is a very interesting phenomenon. In my personal opinion even in this somewhat glorification, I’m glad Hamilton is getting people interested in history, even if people are way too excited abt it and tread the demon father’s like they were Fun Quirky Guys. I understand the horrifying response to everyones giddiness, but I don’t think it’s wrong to be excited abt history/interested in history even if it verges into dark territory, heck, learning abt history in its entirety important so we don’t glamorize the terribleness that is the past. That’s why posts abt Hamilton’s bisexuality doesn’t matter bc he was a slave owner rub me the wrong way—I mean he definitely isn’t someone we should treat as the pinnacle of ideal representation, but we should also acknowledge the totality of him as a person.

Also the show a good stepping stone that will hopefully lead to more hip hop musicals in the future. I know it being a “baby step” is a rly lame-ass excuse for why the show is good but it’s making me hopeful for the future.

Sorry abt how long this was.

#my asks #long post #anon #mutuals feel free to input or smthng

9 notes · View notes