#of course it immediately become a controversy in fandom

[tenok]

.

t.me/stopkhan (author)

[annalarissa]

Jenna Ortega’s fame: a blessing or a curse?

Jenna Ortega, the bright young star of Hollywood, already has a cult of her own - crazy fandom that can make Selena Gomes and Taylor Swift jealous. And tarnish all her great achievements. How did that happen?

About a year ago Netflix released “Wednesday”, which immediately has become one of the most popular series of the platform and a real cultural phenomenon. Wednesday's dance went viral, prompting the teens all over the world to cosplay the goth girl and of course, Ortega, who played the main role in the beloved series, turned from a promising actress into a superstar.

But could we say that fame is a blessing for her? Along with unprecedented popularity, Ortega has acquired numerous aggressive, obsessive fans, most of whom are teenagers living more online than in real life. The behavior of these fans have already turned into a serious problem. Every new project involving Jenna Ortega is dragged into a scandal by the efforts of her own fans that throw absolutely every accusation in the book at her co-stars.

It all started in January, when Percy Hynes White, who played a part in love triangle with her in “Wednesday”, was accused in anonymous tweets of sexual assault, racism etc. The actor denied all the accusations and no legal proceedings followed. Ortega's fans meanwhile organized the massive campaign against White, justifying it with concerns about their idol’s life, both work related and personal. Ortega and White have repeatedly stated that they became best friends during the filming and although the status of their relationship is now unclear, many fans of Ortega continue to campaign against the actor, inciting to harass him on social media. White’s participation in s2 of “Wednesday” is still uncertain.

Martin Freeman was the next to come under fire from Ortega's fans. Freeman is her co-star in the upcoming "Miller's girl" film, where his character, a teacher, has an illicit relationship with his own student, played by Ortega. The first trailer was released recently and immediately caused to resurface the accusation of racism, child abuse etc Freeman has. In less than a day the viral tweet gained more than 13 million views and Ortega's fans actively participate in spreading accusations and inciting the harassment of the actor. And the movie hasn't been released yet! There is every reason to believe that with the release, the hate snowball will turn into an avalanche and Freeman will become the next victim of the cancel culture.

The most ambiguous situation happened around another co-star of Ortega, Toby Wallace, who played her love interest in the recently released Paramount film "Finestkind''. Although Wallace wasn’t involved in anything controversial, did not actively promote the film together with Ortega and even skipped the red carpet premiere of the film, he was bombarded with hateful comments on his Instagram by Ortega's fans, who wished him dead (smt in portuguese), among other things.

Perhaps the situation began to bother Ortega's PR team, because several big fan pages simultaneously called for an end of harassment of this actor, thereby only fueling the interest of others in the issue.

Thus, almost everyone who plays a love interest of Jenna Ortega in the movies finds themselves under attack from the actress' numerous and very active fans. Their actions create quite an unhealthy atmosphere of scandal around the young star, negatively affecting her reputation in the industry, because everyone of her colleagues risks getting bullied and canceled.

Miss Ortega didn’t comment on any of this and fans may see it as full approval, continuing to harass her co-stars on the Internet. Who is next? The release of a new film featuring Ortega and the Weeknd is to be announced soon, and the prospects for the Weeknd, already suffering harsh criticism for his Idol series involvement, are not very sunny.

In the upcoming film Ortega plays a stalker obsessed with the Weeknd’s character, a very controversial role in itself. Let’s just wait and see if he would be the new target for the Ortega’s stan cult.

[cowboymantis]

Random yapping once again but currently getting some random cool and/or funny toku clips for another propaganda post and like. I'm skipping through the whole of Geats for the second time now after watching it (first time was right after Geats ended to get some edit clips and gifs/screenshots of my favs, the usual after finishing a toku show), this time more specifically skimming through the story and dialogue to decide which are good clips to show that are out of context, yet still entertaining and not to spoilery.

And I just wanna say how much I love Kamen Rider Geats, it has a special place in my heart. It was the first season I've watched "live", aka while it was running and the experience was so much fun. Of all the toku shows I've followed so far, Geats and Donbrothers were definitely my favourites to watch in real time and seeing fandom theories, memes, etc.

Something about Geats being all about the audience watching the characters and all that really added to that live experience I feel like?

And then of course, the usual tokutwitter thing where, after a season ends, everyone suddenly hates it 😭 But you could never make me hate Geats, I love this season sm.

((In general, it's probably best to stay away from the fandom, especially on Twitter, since there's so much negativity and everyone just ends up hating every season and will bring that into every conversation, but hey it's still fun being in the fandom if you ignore the fun police :D))

It's kind of funny, people often hate Yuya Takahashi, but I somehow end up reaaally loving and being obsessed over his seasons?? Kamen Rider Ex-Aid, Zero-One and Geats! I LOVE those seasons and all of them (Ex-Aid being bit more of an exception, since this one is more widely loved) are kinda controversial on Twitter especially, like damn. People HAAATE this guys seasons.

And I mean, the writing often has similarities, like for example when I watched Ex-Aid after Geats, I often thought oh. That's. Yeah that sure is written by the same person. But that's not a bad thing to me??? It's not like EVERY Kamen Rider season is written by him and the same. Just a handful that share one or two similarities, but even then, they're completely different.

Sane with Inoue honestly...although I get the love hate relationship between the fandom and him. OUGHHH WJEN I GET YOU INOUE.

Yeah but anyway, Oddly specific thing I've noticed with Takahashi seasons is that I will have one favourite character that I become really attached to fairly early on and then towards the end a completely different character that I either didn't mind much or hasn't appeared much before will fight for the #1 favourite spot with the other one.

For Zero-One, definitely Jin was my main fav at first, and then Horobi took over. Like, BY FAR

Then, for Geats, Keiwa IMMEDIATELY was my fav and then later, Daichi. But I can't say who I love more, so they're both at the #1 spot :3

And theeen Ex-Aid, Taiga, once again quickly became my fav and then. The beginning of my downfall. DAN MASAMUNE. Yeag I'm very normal about this character who is my absolute favourite Kamen Rider character 😭😭 I couldn't pick just one single favourite before watching Ex-Aid, because there were so many good ones. But then it happened in like 5 seconds I feel like 💀

But for ALL 3 OF THOSE SEASONS I keep on coming back to think about them, watch edits, just skim through some scenes because I just loove their characters sm.

So this is what this is now too, to combat all the hate I always see on Twitter this is an APPRECIATION POST FOR TAKAHASHI SEASONS. (Not for Takahashi, just his seasons #sorrynotsorry)

[side-vermin93]

Well.

Long rant below this line if you're just scrolling by.

I normally don't do this sort of thing, I don't post my unfiltered dogshit opinions on any kind of social media, I don't toll the bells when I don't get my way and cry 'Foul Play' unless I truly believe that something is going wrong.

No doubt, everyone has seen the... colourful reaction to TADC's release date being set in May of 2024 (This May) and the Murder Drones tag on Tumblr is exploding for good reason.

Now, before I say my piece, I would like to immediately debunk a common train of thought often used by detractors to devalue the points that others have made when it comes to this controversy:

"Glitch is saying that they are taking their time to make the episodes and the finale as best as it can be." And that we as a fandom are "Overreacting."

To begin with, I personally hope that yes, Glitch is doing everything in their power to make MD as good as it can physically be, I hope that they are giving the finale to the season the sendoff it deserves.

But would it KILL THEM to tell us something? Post teasers, memes, references to Murder Drones or even something as simple as "Hey! You liked TADC, how about you check out Murder Drones while you wait?"

Instead, Glitch has spent months of complete and total radio silence, completely forgot the existence of the anniversary of Murder Drones' pilot, and as they did this, they continued to post teasers of TADC, including a personally vexing post that basically amounted to engagement farming, literally "If this gets 100k likes, we will open the door"

Stuff like this DOES NOT help assuage the fears of fans who believe that Glitch has begun to ignore MD simply because it isn't as popular or as profitable as TADC has become, it smacks of blatant favouritism and foul play when the fans of Murder Drones get nothing, meanwhile TADC is getting WEEKLY teasers, which is only serving to inflame the controversy between TADC and MD fans.

The thing that infuriates me the most is that Murder Drones is in its final stretch for (HOPEFULLY) its first season finale, and yet we have recieved nothing aside from the initial trailers and the release date of "sometime in early 2024" and we are now coming up on the end of the second month of the year, meanwhile TADC gets a concrete release date in MAY, which does NOT excuse the constant teasers and content for TADC that was produced before this point.

As for the overreaction? I think its personally an acceptable response considering the current controversy, but the biggest problem is what Glitch has said today.

"We're also working hard on Murder Drones & will be releasing final episodes soon!"

This, reader, is a very vague statement made by Glitch in their announcement today, and... well, notice how they said "Final Episodes"

Now, this could be Twitter and its word limit screwing them over, but Glitch (and most corporations) is very deliberate with their wording, and this could be no different, do they mean the finale of season one? Or is Murder Drones as a SHOW coming to an end after episode 8? We don't know because Glitch is being vague about this.

Now, because we don't know, we are (reasonably considering how companies often tend to focus on what is most profitable as opposed to any concept of "loyalty") reacting in a negative way towards this wording and believing that MD might very well come to an end before Liam is able to fully finish his story or for us to enjoy the show he has been working on for a long time now.

If it is the end of Murder Drones, then of course people are going to blame TADC for "Killing Murder Drones." Corporations have no loyalties and no qualms about being underhanded, only an appetite for more funding and appeasing their investors, and the most juicy of cash-cows practically fell into their lap.

Now, perhaps we are WRONG, maybe Glitch really did screw up because Twitter loves its word limits, then in which case, shouldn't Glitch try and clarify that in another post as soon as possible? Say that MD isn't going anywhere and that they meant the season finale?

Ultimately, we are in a very turbulent time and tensions are the highest they have ever been, and the next two months will either cool down into something to laugh about later, or there will a shitstorm. No inbetweens.

If it is a false alarm, then I will be there laughing with y'all about how I was doomposting like an idiot, but if it isn't? then I will continue working on my projects in the fandom until I believe I am satisfied, and I will be there when the shitstorm drops.

God, I hope it's the former.

Also sorry if the tags for this are crap, but I don't have the energy left over to fix them.

[lovewillthaw-j]

What are your wishes for Frozen 3?? Would you rather see Elsa staying in the forest or move somewhere else?

I want to be swept off my feet. I want to be mesmerized again by the animation, so mesmerized that I would gif non-stop. I want to fall deeper in love with Elsa and Anna (than I already have). I want to be addicted to the music and the songs like I was for Frozen 2 when I listened to the soundtrack perpetually on loop for weeks and dreamt it in my sleep (true story).

I wish the plot will be good and not attempt to accomplish too much like in F2. I hope they won't retcon things that we all hold dearly onto. Some retcon is to be expected, but I hope it won't divide the Fandom.

I hope the film makers will be able to challenge their strong ideals for the movie and dare to sacrifice them if it makes for a better movie. (for example: For F2 they wanted Anna to go thru depression partly because of director Chris buck's journey through it (he lost his son during the production of F1, RIP). But in order to make Anna depressed they had to kill Elsa. Elsa's death in F2 was controversial and not fully explained. Why would Ahtohallan crown her as fifth spirit and then kill her immediately. Another example - Jlee and Klopez strongly wanted a story element of a parent/mother letting a growing young adult be free and independent (they have said this in interviews). This was based on their own life experience as their daughters were progressing into teenage-hood. But this led inexplicably to Anna becoming a mother figure to Elsa who wants to leave Arendelle.)

I hope it stays true to Frozen 1. I definitely don't want Olaf to take centerstage like he has post-F2. You can't sustain a movie on a side character.

I hope that the world will be ignited by Frozen madness again.

I'm in 2 minds about what Disney will produce. Of course they want $$$ out of Frozen. (the merch sales are so huge that's why frozen is not lumped together with Disney princess) but I don't want a cheap cash grab. On the one hand I think elsa will have another big song(s) and a dress transformation (for the merch). Yet I don't know what other transformation (plot-wise) elsa can go through. Part of me wants a simple story with the characters spending time together. I have always thought, why can't we just see more of what happened between F1 and F2, meaning, happy times like FF and OFA. But, u could also argue that that's pretty mundane and not going to sustain a whole movie and may not ignite frozen madness. And these kind of happy time adventures are already fleshed out in all the little story books.

Musings - I wonder if Anna will get powers. I wonder if elsa will turn evil (Anna died, or something?) I wonder if Hans will come back. I wonder if elsa will lose/give up her powers. Sometimes my plot musings merge with superhero movie plots lol. I wonder if the parents are still alive somewhere. I wonder if runeard is still alive. Rapunzel crossover? (I'm going into superhero territory again lol)

OK I've rambled and I don't know where I'm going with this. Suffice to say I am excited but scared for F3.

I just hope it won't be a mad rush like how F2 was (as documented in the ITU documentary which looks like anatomy of a mess that somehow pulled itself together at the last second. Still can't believe we ALMOST didn't have show yourself in the movie!)

[idrisofficial]

if this were a fandom, where would the discourse be

discourse would be EVERYWHERE.

i think the biggest flares would be around brinne and rowen because that’s where the political meat is and also where the decisions become the most morally gray. the people love their ship discourse too, and i think brinndrian would quench their thirst more than enough.

brinne is a very mentally ill young adult given an extraordinary amount of power immediately following a lifechanging traumatic event. she is a terrible ruler and cannot bring herself to care about the people she oppresses. but she also has no support system or anyone to help her be better; if anything, everyone around her only encourages her worst tendencies. especially considering how she’d be working against centuries of propaganda and cultural bias, hope for her improving idris as she once wanted to are virtually futile in these conditions. essentially: she doesn’t stand a chance.

of course, fandoms generally cannot handle nuance like that. there’d probably be two camps, one that excuses brinne’s actions as a result of her mental illness and trauma, and one that entirely vilifies her and her decisions. brinne is a product of her parents and idrisian society, as well as of the trauma artemis gave her. her actions are absolutely explainable, but far from excusable. reading people’s takes on brinne would probably kill me.

i think something similar would emerge with rowen. people would either fully agree with her tunnel vision philosophy or lose all faith in her because some of her actions are morally reprehensible. rowen is acting in the name of an extremely benevolent group. but like- she mutilated a teenage girl who she thought was already dead just to make a symbol of it and relish in her victory. she works as an assassin because it brings the rebellion greater resources than other jobs. she manipulates vulnerable children into joining her rebellion. that’s really awful shit!!! and again, i don’t think fandom could handle it. rowen is the hero of this story. but she is also a terrible person.

brinndrian would also be super controversial because of the Everything, but mostly the power dynamics. by virtue of being the monarch, brinne has a lot of political and social power over adrian. this majorly impacts their relationship and adrian’s feelings of needing to please brinne throughout their adolescence. eventually it also contributes to the dynamics of their sexual relationship. however, by virtue of being the high priest, adrian has religious power over brinne. this doesn’t really affect anything during their adolescence, but once he is actually named the high priest and brinne tries to become more devout, it absolutely is impactful, especially considering that this is a time where adrian desperately craves contact with her. they have some fucked up chapel sex about it. so again, fandom wouldn’t take that too well.

other more minor discourse points include: vanta and octavius’s weird subtextual gay thing going on because vanta is 15 and octavius is 18. brinne and kori’s arranged marriage because kori is 17 and brinne is 22. the grace/natal/lennox incestuous love triangle. the power dynamics of rograce. whether lennox is justified in his usurpation. if all the nobles deserve to die or not. author’s political views.

[tea-with-evan-and-me]

Anonymously Yours: The Rise & Fall Of A Real-Life Tumblr Mystery Girl

A TWEAM Investigative Journalism Exclusive

Dolls, make yourself comfortable and settle in because I am about to tell you the true story of Tumblr Girl, or Mystery Girl as she is alternately known. Today, we will call her Tumblr Mystery Girl.

The past several months have seen a resurgence in interest in Evan Peters’ love life, mostly due to Evan’s star rising once again with the success of Netflix's Dahmer, the fact that he is very elusive and not on any social media platforms, and his most recent girlfriend, Frances Mairead, was and still is a controversial figure in the Evan Peters fandom.

I’m not sure who the first blogger was to receive the ‘’Tumblr Mystery Girl’’ story, but it wasn’t me, because I hadn’t started my blog yet! Still a humble lurker, nary a blog post to my name. Well, at least not since about... 2015. Who knew anyone still used Tumblr? Not me! Unlike many other things from that era, such as nautical themed clothing and accessories, finger mustaches, and Anastacia Beverly Hills brow pomade, Evan Peters has stood the test of time. Yes, us nostalgic millennials still love us some Evan Peters. We'll never forget the way parts of our bodies tingled when we saw Tate Langdon on our screens for the very first time. Countless Lana Del Rey songs were passionately sung in dedication to this both average looking and somehow also intensely sexy and desirable, pale-skinned, dark-eyed man with a heart of gold and an ass that just won't quit. Ah, yes. Even Ryan Murphy himself couldn't keep from pointing a lustful camera on that bare behind. Gratuitous? Maybe, but we're not complaining.

Tell me I'm your national anthem.

Anyway, let's get down to it.

All I know for sure is that somebody received this anonymous ask, because it was posted on the EvanPetersLovers subreddit February 7 (https://www.reddit.com/r/EvanPetersLovers/)

One thing immediately stands out to the reader, which is that the asker writes without proper punctuation.

Once this ask was received, the information seemed to quickly circulate within the community, and over the course of the next several days, it's believability would become a re-occurring debate. By the time this blog was created on February 12, the story had been passed around from tea account to tea account, with many details getting muddled along the way. There were now major discrepancies across these asks, with details like hair color, eye color and weight varying as curious people went off memory to retell the story they heard and search for answers.

Within days of opening this blog, I began to receive ''tips'' about the Tumblr Mystery Girl myself. On February 18, another sighting was reported; this time, Evan was allegedly seen with her at a night club in Burbank, California.

As multiple users began to rapid-fire discuss this anonymous message, one asker seemed to return time and time again to build the case. One with a very recognizable typing style.

And soon after, we would come to see this screenshot of the blog that was said to belong to Tumblr Mystery Girl herself, groovyheartland:

We all wondered, how did someone find the Tumblr page for a girl whose name we did not know, whose face we had never seen? How did a rumored sighting with no photographic evidence lead to the discovery of an otherwise unknown and unremarkable Tumblr blog? It seemed highly unlikely, nearly impossible. Even more unlikely were the odds that enough people had found this unknown's page, having associated it with Evan's possible romantic interest, and sent her taunting asks about them dating. The anonymous messages alleged to have been received by ''groovyheartland'' also bare the same lack of punctuation seen in the previous asks about this subject. This is the part where I tell you I believe that our anonymous asker does not speak English as her native language. French, perhaps? But let me not get ahead of myself...

By February 20th, after much back and forth, I felt confident that I was being used as a pawn to build out a story crafted by the very ANON I was speaking to! I hadn't yet put all of the pieces together, but I knew that I couldn't in good faith keep posting about this story. I decided then that I would pause the discussion, and purposefully end engagement with the pro-Tumblr Mystery Girl anonymous askers. I regret to say I didn't screenshot the last couple of anonymous messages I received and deleted without posting, however, it was more of the same: someone claiming that they had followed the now-deleted Tumblr blog, describing her physically, speculating that she was probably French, etc.

Here is my Tumblr post from February 20th when I decided to begin filtering out the Tumblr Mystery Girl asks:

After this, many readers joined me in my assumption that it had all been a scam. Still, I would occasionally receive asks about Tumblr Mystery Girl, either referencing her as a past sighting indicating that Evan was dating, or as the butt of a joke.

Fast forward to February 26. Evan Peters attends the SAG awards solo, with no mystery woman in sight. However, he arrives at the after party with Haley Lu Richardson, where the two are said to be flirting and enjoying each others' company. In the following days, a hookup rumor courtesy of Deuxmoi is the new hot topic of discussion. But one anonymous asker wasn't willing to let go of Tumblr Mystery Girl just yet.

By this point, the Tumblr Mystery Girl had become more of a running joke to those involved, with many asking where she was during the alleged hook up between Haley and Evan.

The day that Deuxmoi released their Sunday Spotted stories including Haley and Evan's burrito date, I joked with another reader about the situation. You can see I have adopted the now familiar typing style we've come to associate with this anon.

Our stubborn anon did not like this joke. I received a long, angry message defending the existence of Tumblr Mystery Girl. This time, the writer is taking on yet another identity: friend to the Tumblr Mystery Girl. Yes, this anon is defending her friend and the secret relationship she had with Evan Peters!

Now, I have to admit that I had a little chuckle as I read this message, but I had long ago decided that this story was a hoax. I screenshotted for good measure, deleted it from my ask box, and moved on to the next. This is it, I thought. The last of the Tumblr Mystery Girl - she's officially been ''killed off'' in this story of Evan Peters' rumored love-life, the final blow delivered by Haley Lu Richardson.

But then, a spark of hope emerged that her story was not yet finished. As Natasha Bedingfield once sang, the rest is still unwritten. So it seemed.

The week of March 6th brought a Twitter spotting of our favorite cave-dwelling actor and professional Amazon Product Reviewer, Evan Thomas Peters. He was on the move, headed for Missouri and the loving embrace of his family and hometown friends. Realizing he had arrived solo, any (rumored) Haley Lu lovin' would have to wait until he returned to his love-cave, his domain: the blandly furnished Burbank condo where the American Horror Story and Dahmer - Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story actor relaxes and enjoys a nightly ritual of blocking pseudo-fans from his Spotify account, eventually22. These persistent, Gen-Z Twitter edgelords are a different breed of ''fans'' who feel a sadistic thrill imagining a defeated Evan Peters trying in vain to free himself and his multiple public playlists from the intrusive and speculative gaze of unemployed young adults on their parents' internet connection. Every night, the struggle begins anew.

At approximately 6:00pm EST on March 9, an anonymous ask was received.

The anon sent in two nearly identical asks, however, only one was published. The Twitter link lead to a post sharing a purported sighting.

The tweet had a very familiar feel, referencing a brunette girl. I decided to take a thorough look at the Twitter profile the tweet came from to determine it's authenticity. With a March 2023 join date, random, seemingly unrelated retweets, and no other original tweets from the account owner besides the Evan Peters/Brunette sighting, I quickly recognized that this was a burner account. Alas, I myself am a bit of a Twitter burner account aficionado, and it would take a much more well-orchestrated lie to fool me. I had a feeling, but wasn't yet 100% sure that this Twitter account was created and shared for the sole purpose of reigniting the Tumblr Mystery Girl rumor. But I felt sure the anon was not to be trusted.

Shot through the heart: The crestfallen anon retreats as she realizes the jig is up.

All anon could do was deny that she is the ''Tweeter post creator'' and leave with one final insidious blow to my (astonishingly large) ego: comparing the behavior on my blog - a premier gossip and discussion juggernaut, with that of the disgraced Frances Mairead archivist slash anti, legal adviser to herself and secretkeeperlove, and mistress of the IP address: goneforteawithdad, or gftwd, for short.

Moments later, the Twitter account disappeared. A near confession that the Tumblr anon and Twitter burner account were operated by the same person, who had faced defeat at the hands of logic and sound reasoning, and seemingly decided to disappear back into the shadows.

And so, that's where the story ends. It seems that one anon was responsible for peddling all the lies and folklore we've come to associate with Tumblr Mystery Girl. From the groovyheartland Tumblr page itself, to the "anonymous" Evan Peters girlfriend asks groovyheartland received, to the Twitter post about the burger joint brunette - the signature writing style remains consistent in this one-woman show.

We all still have questions. What was the endgame for this anonymous false witness? Was the groovyheartland Tumblr meant to ultimately play a bigger role by returning once interest was at it's peak? This would have given the perpetrator a chance to actually introduce a character into the story: a face. And a name, eventually. We'll likely never know the answer to these questions, unless the anonymous asker emerges from the shadows to give us a satisfactory explanation, with or without proper punctuation.

It should be noted that it was an average Thursday night on Tumblr; a weekday like any other, when truth rang out across the app and gossip-lovers rejoiced that we'd untangled one anonymous asker's web of lies. In real life, mysteries aren't solved in 60 minutes and wrapped up all tidy in a bow so you can sleep sound tonight, like on TV. In real life, solving mysteries can take weeks, months, even years. Without so many anonymous and nosy Evan Peters fans willing to think critically and ask important questions, we may never have learned the truth about Tumblr Mystery Girl.

[asknarashikari]

Kari-chan, what are your thoughts on the Baby Rider, the Chemy befriender, the one the Mini-cons follow, multiple other things, and Kamen Rider Gotchard himself.

Houtaro Ichinose

Honestly, I think he has the makings to become one of my favorite main Riders, which hasn't happened in a while now.

I love his earnest enthusiasm for his passions, his compassion and love for people, and his good nature. I kinda want to spoil him rotten because he's just a sweet kid who wants to help people find their "Gotchas" and sees the Chemmies as friends and partners instead of tools (fuck you Spanner) or problems he has to contain (fuck you Alchemist Union).

He's another one of the -Taro riders I adore (the others being Gentaro and, of course, Shoutaro)

Also, he treats his friends well, doesn't hide important info from them (see how he immediately tells Rinne about how her dad was made a scapegoat by Geryon) and doesn't take pleasure in others' misfortune even when they antagonize him (see how he comes to Spanner's defense over his parents being used against him, despite Spanner being a jerk to him).

This may be controversial, but because of these traits I find him more likeable as a protagonist than Ace, whom I never really found all that impressive even with nearly the whole fandom hyping him up as the GOAT or whatever. Houtaro just makes me care more about him than Ace ever did

So yeah. I really, really like this kid. I want to put him in my pocket and protect him forever

[wildskissed]

I think this is just a good time (as I'm seeing a lot of other people address it), that I also address some of my rules that I don't think everyone has read. I feel like it's especially a good idea given the amount of canons that I interact with, and just in general because I don't want anyone to be uncomfortable with anything. I want this to be everyone's safe space so...

I DO interact with some people that write triggering topics that I don't myself engage in.

I don't really believe that writing controversial topics automatically makes you a bad person, and I don't believe in what the purity police culture has become. I am very firm that I don't write r*pe or inc*st, but I do engage with mutuals that do that with other people within their other fandoms. It's not my job to tell people what to do, and since my boundaries have been respected, I choose to live and let live. However, I know that some topics can be extremely sensitive to people, so if that bothers you, it's very important that you curate your space for you so that YOU feel safe. If that means needing to block me so you don't see particular urls of people you don't want to interact with, then you should. I won't be upset about it. You matter the absolute most, and I need you to understand that.

I DON'T do exclusivity in any form.

My in real life romantic partner also RPs on here with me, and we RP together in just about every fandom we are part of. We decided years ago, that exclusively only shipping with each other was silly (it's just our personal preference to not), so we don't do it. Even when we're on canon blogs (this is not my only blog, just my main at the moment), we ship with other characters that aren't each other's characters because we're here to write. No one writes a character exactly the same. Another Catwoman they ship with, isn't the same as my Selina Kyle. Another Yennefer they ship with isn't the same as my version of Yennefer. I think because of that, I got used to just...letting chemistry between characters and other writing partners dictate the ships that I write. It's why I have always practiced "mains" instead, and given those people admittedly a little more attention than everyone else. My partner's characters would of course, get PRIORITY, but that didn't--and doesn't--at all mean I wouldn't/won't write with other people. Maybe RPing since 2006 has made me set in my ways or something, but that's just what is comfortable for me.

That's not for everyone though, so it's important that we all communicate. I'm okay shipping with multiple versions of the same character because I have always been okay with it in the past (again I practice mains, and I do this on my other accounts even as a canon), but I know that this idea of "collecting" characters has become big in the RPC now. That in shipping/writing with a bunch of the same character, that is immediately some faux paus now. I don't want you to feel that you are being disrespected, so I do try to make sure I'm acquainted with everyone's rules when we're writing together, but sometimes I miss stuff. I'm only human. I also go out of my way to make every starting interaction PLATONIC, unless it has been discussed beforehand, out of respect for not just auto shipping with every canon of a character I like--I wouldn't do that anyway, but I know the problem that I run into sometimes is that I'm also cool with things just being thrown out into the ether and us trying things out between our characters to see if they'd just mesh well. I'm in that way, very ship positive, and sometimes, that does end up with me shipping with two or three of the same canon and just prioritizing my mains, while still writing with everyone. I'm here to write, and to have fun, not to get stressed out--this is my HOBBY. I am too old to take this so seriously that it ruins my day. I work six days a week, so when I'm here, I'm here to create beautiful things with you guys, I'm not here for Junior High level drama.

Again, though, your comfort is always the most important to me. I'm honestly not just saying that. I think that boundaries are incredibly important, and I think that communication is KEY to this even though it's a hobby. We're all trying to enjoy this together, so if this bothers you, platonic interactions are still so important to me, and they can be some of the BEST threads, and the BEST relationships that our muses can have. Unrequited relationships and the like are also fun to explore, so it's not like we can't figure something out if my pointing these out from my rules has made you want to curate your space accordingly, and yet you still want to write. If we need to change our characters' dynamics, I am open to that, and if you need to cut ties completely for your own comfort, I'm open to that too, even though I really do appreciate all of you, and don't want to lose any of you.

For now, that's all I have to say, as this is already too long, so if anyone wants to talk about it privately, just let me know.

[lady-of-the-spirit]

For the OC meta asks, for Cara:

What plot points would change due to the inclusion of your OC in canon?

What controversies/drama would your OC incite in fandom?

If your character had a breakout show/film/comic, what would the plot be? Who would be in their supporting cast?

Cara!!! Missed her.

What plot points would change due to the inclusion of your OC in canon?

Well in her canon, the Avengers all lived their best found family life in the Avengers tower post Avengers, but that's not because of her as much as it's because of me and my sister ignoring canon for our OCEUs.

But if canon stayed the same, just with the inclusion of Cara, I can imagine that Steve, Cara and Sam find Bucky sooner after TWS and finding him goes different than CW, because Cara has a whole Hydra-related backstory that means she not only knows the trigger words (or knows they exist anyway), but also has some understanding of the Winter Soldier's state of mind and can track him based on understanding that. She would also insist on telling Tony that the Winter Soldier killed his parents, because Tony is her friend and she's not going to hide that from him. So by the time they find Bucky, Tony has had time to, for lack of a better word, deal with it enough that his reaction to meeting Bucky isn't attacking him. So CW is thrown off-course because the Bucky plotline is completely altered.

Also if everything else somehow stayed the same, she flat out refuses to let Zemo join her, Bucky and Sam in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, so Zemo is not around for the show.

(Bucky: I have an idea-

Cara: If what you're about to say has 'Zemo' and "break out of prison" in the same sentence I will kill you.

Bucky: Never mind.)

What controversies/drama would your OC incite in fandom?

She's a woman of colour in the MCU fandom so that immediately becomes an issue. She also tends to be cold and kinda mean, and while she's an assassin with the same murderous kind of backstory as Natasha, her lack of sassy comments and her cold nature as she kills people would probably cause some issues in fandom. She also grew up in HYDRA, not realizing until she was grown up that HYDRA was fucked up in so many ways, and that would be a controversy as well - how could she not know they were fucked up, why didn't she leave sooner after she found out, etc. She's on Tony's side in Civil War (if it happened anyway despite the above mentioned canon divergence), and we all know how controversial that drama was. And she and Steve fight all the time (having a weird sort of frenemy, "only I can be mean to you" relationship), so Steve stans would pick a fight with her for being mean to their fave.

If your character had a breakout show/film/comic, what would the plot be? Who would be in their supporting cast?

My sister made an edit once of a fake Netflix show about Cara! It was her origin story basically. Starting with her basic childhood, moving through her figuring out HYDRA is bad, actually, the SHIELD raid that got her sister killed, her joining SHIELD despite all of that, and slowly moving up the ranks until she becomes Agent Eris and meets the Avengers. Supporting cast would be Odette Annable as Quinn, her identical twin, their older brother Max, her parents (none of which have been officially cast), Jeremy Renner as Clint Barton, Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff, Cobie Smulders as Maria Hill, and Samuel L Jackson as Nick Fury.

Meta asks: If your oc was canon

[biblioflyer]

Raffi & JL before the fall, The Raffi Controversy, Picard s1e3 Rewatch.

Who was Raffi before she became the messy person we meet fourteen years after Mars? One flashback isn’t much, but it may be richer in detail than one might expect at first glance. Of course this is also a story that is still being written and those caveats definitely apply.

This is part of a series of essays reevaluating Star Trek Picard and interrogating the widely held fandom criticism that Picard made the Federation into a Dystopia.

It is worth recalling that season three is apparently exploring Raffi’s backstory to some degree or another and a more fuller picture of the character and her place within the narrative and the setting is coming into view.

The Raffi we see immediately after Mars seems extremely impressive. She correctly anticipated every objection Starfleet Command would raise to a renewed effort to evacuate Romulan space. She seems like a very effective aide de camp to Picard. As nicknames go, I wasn’t super fond of J.L., but the familiarity hints at a strong working relationship and that Picard allows Raffi a degree of latitude that perhaps other subordinates haven’t had.

Why might that be? My theory is that Picard’s secret hobby is adopting strays. That is to say, he’s the sort of classical command officer who is defined by his ability to spot talent in rough crewmen who are struggling to apply their gifts in Starfleet and for Starfleet to recognize those gifts. 

This archetypal character loves to rehabilitate troubled officers less through force of unrelenting discipline, but by recognizing that some people need to not just be told what the rules are and be punished for breaking but instead need to understand them and believe in the rules (and themselves.) See also Commander William Adama and Kara Thrace, or Honor Harrington and….everyone she encounters (don’t @ me about David Weber, I’m well aware he and his body of work are.....a bit complicated, I just think the character of Honor embodies this archetype well.)

This is precisely the situation that defines Seven and Shaw’s relationship in Season 3. Seven knows the rules but doesn’t value them, Shaw understands the rules but is so submissive to authority that it makes him incredibly reluctant to act outside his mandate or follow his conscience.

While the timeline of Raffi’s life is vague, when she is questioning Picard about the outcome of the meeting with Starfleet Command and anticipating his success, she presents as oriented, intelligent, and driven. Season three provides a bit more context as well for the circumstances in which she found herself in Starfleet, but I am on the fence as to whether including it here represents “cheating” and if it makes judging season one on its own merits unfair.

To allude to season three without spoiling it, it's implied that Raffi has always possessed an inner darkness inclined towards quickly becoming irritated with small minds who can’t see what she sees and Starfleet seems to have been an opportunity to either start over or put her skills towards a higher purpose.

Her breaking point, at least in this scene, seems to be Picard’s resignation and the collapse of the Romulan relief effort. She quickly becomes angry and turns on Picard, infuriated by the hubris of him believing he was indispensable. She lashes out, citing a future for him comfortably retiring to Chateau Picard and writing his memoirs and compares it to her own future, which she immediately assumes to be bleak.

One might be justified in assuming that Raffi has not had the best of luck with commanding officers, whereas Picard had the finesse to coax her talents out of her while tolerating or disarming her more difficult traits. Alternately, Raffi is a person adrift without a clear purpose to focus her energies upon.

As I've alluded to a few times, I've known and loved a few Raffis. Getting through the outer defenses is challenging. Riding the maelstrom even tougher. They are more deserving of patience and compassion than they know, but they'd be a whole lot easier to appreciate if they could know it.

[kitsu-katsu]

I was thinking and... This fandom really has a problem with addressing when characters who have caused harm, get harmed

That's not the clearest wording, but let me explain:

I'm gonna take Wilbur as an example because he's probably the biggest exponent of this and also I analyze him a LOT, so I'm most familiar with the issues the fandom has when portraying him (which are, in no uncertain terms, a fuck ton)

So, the fandom has kind of come to this point of classifying characters as either "causes harm" or "is harmed", and at large, the fandom won't perceive a character to be able to be both at once, especially within a short time-frame

Wilbur, by virtue of being the first to cause larger-scale destruction at the end of the Pogtopia arc and being a bit mean was classified as a character who "causes harm", thus we start the nuance erasure

So, if Wilbur says "let's be the bad guys", it can't be because of underlying issues having to do with his non-existent self worth and him believing that he's actually in the wrong for considering Schlatt's non-democratic ascension to power and their exile immediately after as unfair, because he's a character who "causes harm", so of course by the fandom's logic, he's just saying it to upset Tommy, a character thus classified as someone who "gets harmed". This then carries over the whole Pogtopia arc, where everything he does is interpreted as coming from malice and to harm others, because he's a character who "causes harm", thus everyone around him automatically becomes someone to get harmed by him, which is why people never look at his underlying issues, at what he believes in really, at his character evolution, at his emotions, etc, etc

This then also means that he's binarily NOT a character who "is harmed", thus the occasions where he's called "crazy" or "insane" by others, which were confirmed to in canon affect his mental state, with him always replying that he wasn't those things, can be overlooked. Moments where other characters disregard his deteriorating mental state don't matter, moments where others didn't help him don't matter, because if he's a character who "causes harm", then he isn't a character who "gets harmed"

This then colours the way that ALL of his subsequent actions are looked at. He says it's good that him and Tommy are dead because he's relieved to have company for once and is also self loathing and projecting? Of course it means that he's evil and just says it to hurt Tommy! He talks with Ranboo about how he feels he's in a social limbo and how he feels people won't perceive him as having repented enough to ever trust him again? Of course, he must be "trauma dumping" or "manipulating"

Tommy says to him that he should feel worse than he did at the lowest point in his life wherein he sincerely wanted to die and tells him to go die again just after he's revived and shows happiness at being alive? It's completely disregarded in common fandom discussions or treated as a very delicate thing everyone has to put ten disclaimers when speaking of to make sure that the readers understand they aren't a Tommy anti because at large, being upset at the treatment of Wilbur, a character who "causes harm" by characters who "get harmed" is controversial

But when Wilbur yells at tommy to shut up and immediately apologizes? Oh, he's evil, he's wrong, he "causes harm", plus the fandom already ran with it and did ten animatics about Tommy having a panic attack from it, which didn't at all happen in the canon scene, while erasing the apology while you weren't looking. Because Wilbur has to cause harm and Tommy has to get harmed

Quackity and Karl tell him he's a party pooper at Niki's birthday because he's being depressed? Not talked about. Phil says he was just insane and a terrorist? "He's so right, he's dadza". Characters say Wilbur "ran away" or "abandoned them" when he committed suicide? They must be right because it's Wilbur

He asks to be actually killed because his self worth got so inexistent, his hopes so crushed, his sense of security so torn and his self-hatred so overbearing? He must be just "escaping consequences" and the man who stabbed him was in the right and the one actually hurt by it. Because it's Wilbur. It's why Ghostbur can't mention that Phil stabbed him as something good or that his scar hurts. Because he'll "hurt Phil :((" with those comments. Because he's a form of Wilbur, so he can't be hurt, he can just create harm for others

We end up erasing all nuance and treating these characters completely differently, erasing either their good or bad moments and putting up ten disclaimers when we want to acknowledge that "Hey! Maybe this dichotomy is false and all of these characters are capable of both hurting others and being hurt and are ever-changing products of their environment!"

[scary-senpai]

Bestie you shouldn't have done this because I'm going to ask you the worst one. (I almost went with the most controversial tropes I could think of but decided it was too mean.) 🔪 Fuck, marry, kill: Florist AU, Band AU, Soulmate AU?

Ah, Bestie, CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!

Fuck the Band AU (affectionate), because that’s what it’s all about, right? Raw attraction, carnal indulgence, “making beautiful music together.” It’s mostly fun and a little dangerous—always a good time

Marry Florist AU. It’s sweet, it’s stable, there’s nice symbolism… in a Florist AU, nothing can hurt you, not even bees.

…Unless your flower store is all about money laundering and (plot twist!) it’s been a mafia front all along. Anyway I did end up executing on that idea (no pun intended…or is it? 🔪🔪🔪☠️), but since the Jujutsu Kaisen cast happened to be a better fit, the OPM-verse is safe from me..for now.

You see, as I was brainstorming the Money Laundering Florist AU, it lead me to marry all the Flufftober and Whumptober prompts into some terrible, 31 day bastardization of two wildly disparate fandom events. Anyway, I hope for everybody’s sake Flumptober doesn’t take off—especially mine—but who knows. Maybe it will become tradition.

By process of elimination, this would lead me to kill the “soul mate au,” but as I’ve taken a personal vow of nonharming, I won’t be killing anything, which makes the ant problem in my office a bit of a sticky wicket.

I don’t the soulmate au needs to die, but I do believe it could benefit from more reincarnations. I think about how often we attribute strange, conflicting feelings to noumenal elements like the spirit or soul. And while I’ve never neither fully believe nor disbelieve in such things, I find myself leaning towards whimsical thinking when I want to escape the reality of something—historically, a bad romantic relationship. I feel like I’ve seen other friends experience more or less the same (especially late teens / early twenties). It’s hard to conceptualize healing from a broken heart when it hasn’t happened to you yet.

Anyway, even if soul mates are a scientific given, there’s still uncertainty in real science—even a seemingly straightforward diagnosis—so I thought it might be interesting to apply that same uncertainty to the concept of soulmates. I’m thinking back to okCupid algorithms, how you answer a litany of questions and get a percent match. I met my nest partner on okc and we eerily always order the same things, which makes sense since food / drink preferences were some of the questions asked.

Or what about different flavors of soulmates? Why just one kind, or just one soulmate? I (briefly) worked in a linguistics lab (even though I’m not really cut out for research), because I felt such a deep and immediate affinity for the grad students and faculty. We were on the same wavelength about pretty much everything except for how lack of diversity consistently and profoundly impedes developmental psychology research. I’ve (seriously) joked that my senpai John is my creative soulmate because we’re always absurdly on the same wavelength and people sometimes think we are dating if they see us together. (We are not flirting, we are “yes, and”-ing and they are not the same). But I do feel that way, that there are other types of otherworldly bonds aside from the standard romantic ones. My best friend and I were born exactly six months apart and I’ve always felt there was something auspicious about that.

And, of course, I’m a huge fan of The Good Place take, which is that “If soulmates do exist, they're not found, they're made. People meet, they get a good feeling, and they get to work building a relationship.” Because as I get older I find that the most fulfilling and beautiful aspect of a relationship is not that it just magically works, no matter what, it’s that I commit to making it working. Repeatedly. Every day. I think that this is a massively underutilized approach when it comes to prickly characters, because it can show two partners working to change behavior and strengthen communication as opposed to potentially excusing a “ride or die” mentality.

I had a whole rant about the unbearable lightness of being, but I decided to spare you because this is a Wendy’s an anime blog 🤷‍♀️

Thank you so much for the ask! I really enjoyed this (and I got a lot out of this question, including a new WIP)

[ashdumpsterpile]

I know you talk abou st*cky in the interracial ships stuff, but can we talk about st*ny? Iron husbands is literally right there, but I also always sees Rhodey as Tonys moral support only. And ik Tony is very shippable with most characters, but the fact his ship is Rhodey is one of the lowest ships in ao3 (ironstrange, winteriron and god forbid stark*r all had more fics in ao3).. It's pretty telling this side also has racism problems...

I'll go ahead and answer this here, but letting y'all know that I do have a marvel sideblog if you want to hit me up there (@themarvelarchives).

Hey, I'm going to ramble for a good minute.

So after I posted my very incoherent, controversial take on St*cky vs SamBucky, there were a ton of ppl who came onto anon saying that St*cky shippers were racist. I think I only answered a few, but y'all were pretty insistent on it. I personally have not observed that St*cky shippers are so I'm not calling anyone out on that side of the fandom for that.

I also did not call out anyone on this side of the fandom bc that's not what my meta was about. I think I mentioned maybe once or twice in the whole post that there was underlying racist in the fandom, but since you asked, we can talk about it here.

Covert Bigotry In Fandom Spaces.

To understand what's going on in the MCU, we have to first look at what I call "woke-queer" fandom.

So "Woke-Queer" Spaces is the phenomenon where certain fandom members like to call ppl out on their bigotry, while covertly harboring their own queerphobia/racism/etc. An example of this that we're all familiar with is TERFS and how they like to claim that they are progressive and woke, while also claiming that trans women are fake and trans men are sexist.

How this translates to fandom, however, is the hypocrisy that is cancellation and callout culture.

For example, Supernatural in particular is a fandom that likes to call out the writers on their homophobia and racism, and yet, somehow, the fandom is chalk full of homophobia and racism. If you want to read more about this, here is a truly excellent article from the perspective of a queer woman of color.

Moving on, I've also talked in a previous meta post, on the internalized acephobia that exploded in 2019 after Good Omens was released. Rather than reiterate everything I said in that post, I'll just leave it at this: the controversy in the Good Omens fandom can be summed up by the fact that queer audiences are claiming that Ineffable Husbands is the wrong kind of queer. The hypocrisy oozes off the screen, doesn't it?

A final way this viably translates to fandom, is in how the Doctor Who fandom evolved over time.

So Steven Moffat takes over as head writer and showrunner in 2010. It's a new series, a new Doctor, a new Tardis, and new branding. He steps up the action, changes the color grating, and raises the stakes. Women are sexier, the Doctor is smarter (and more of an asshole, but that's another meta post), and every companion comes with their own impossible mystery that makes them Special™.

Series 5-10 got tons of woke points for having lesbian characters, an episode where the Doctor is homoerotic with James Corden, and an underlying trans narrative with the Master's reincarnation. What a lot of people forget, however, is that his series was incredibly sexiest, incredibly lesbian/biphobic, and basically turned the Doctor into everyone's fantasy sex-object.

This, unfortunately, brought out the worst of the fandom. There was RTD Era vs Moffat Era wars exploding in certain corners, TenxRose shippers vs ElevenxRiver shippers.

What does this have to do with covert racism in fandom cultures though?

Hnnngng ok, so back in RTD era's we get Martha Jones, the Actual Best Companion On The Entire Show. Except for the fact, of course, that she is written to be in love with the doctor. She's a brilliant character--smart, sassy, flawed, funny, flirtatious--and her entire plotline is reduced down to a school-girl crush on a white man.

She doesn't do well with fans, they scrap her after one season.

We move on to Donna Noble (The Other Actual Best Companion On The Entire Show) and RTD's era ends with them scraping her too and regenerating David Tennant's Doctor.

It will be five more series (not seasons, SERIES) until Doctor Who will have another black companion--who gets extra points for being gay--only to fall victim to "bury your gays" at the end of the season (but not really bc no one stays dead on Doctor Who).

The fandom's reception of Martha Jones was historically bad. The comparisons to her predecessor, Rose Tyler, were rampant and everyone was finding a reason to hate her.

The fandom's reception to Bill Potts was also historically bad, as everyone was screaming that she was being written for more "woke points" and that they wanted Clara back.

Fandom has a historically bad reputation of being problematic and, I would argue, the majority of it has to do with these toxic undertones of bigotry that slip under the radar. "Woke-queer" spaces, as I call them, are these instances above where spaces that claim to be inclusive of gender/orientation/race are covertly bigoted.

Marvel and Cancelling

Now is an excellent time to talk about the MCU.

Anthony Mackie (Sam Wilson) has recently come under a lot of criticism from fandom members for shutting down shipper speculation.

"The idea of two guys being friends and loving each other in 2021 is a problem because of the exploitation of homosexuality. [...] something as pure and beautiful as homosexuality has been exploited by people who are trying to rationalize themselves."

I can't find the rest of the quote, but Mackie goes on further to say that it was important to him to portray "a sensitive, masculine figure" without insinuating that there was romance involved.

Woke culture lost it's shit. Everyone was suddenly claiming that Mackie was calling them exploitative for shipping a gay ship as a queer audience, which could not have been further from the case.

Mackie actually makes some very excellent points in that sensitivity is not gay/queer. Woke culture loves to rag on Toxic Masculinity, but the minute someone plays a character who is loving and sensitive with no queer narrative in mind, they are immediately canceled.

What Am I On About

Okay, let's actually address what your ask was about, Nonnie. You pointed out--rather truthfully--that it is unfair to call-out racism on one side of the fandom, while ignoring it on the other side.

Well, I've gone back through my St*cky vs. SamBucky analysis (which is incoherent at best, I apologize for that) and I see maybe once instance where I called out fandom members for being racist. Here's what I had to say about racism:

"[...] Iron Husbands is a rarepair, probably because it’s an interracial ship."

"[there is] nothing wrong with shipping two white men, but it does become a problem when you ignore/bash POC/interracial ships to the determinant of your own white ship."

And then there was the post you brought up where I addressed interracial ships in the fandom. That one is probably more relevant to this topic, to be honest, as I actually addressed fandom racism there. I assume that your reason for bringing up Stony is because it's a ship that is more relevant to my side of the fandom, HOWEVER, the reason I highlighted Stucky instead was because I was comparing the fact that they've both been around the same amount of time and are relationships that feature the protagonist and their best friend.

You brought up St*ny in the ask, however, so I'm going to talk about St*ny for a minute.

As someone who never has nor will ship St*ny, it never even occurred to me that some of the problem behind the Iron Husbands tag being so small is because everyone ships the white, boring ship. You brought up a very valid point, but because I was never in that part of the fandom, I can't really speak to any possible underlying racism there, besides what I've already said above.

I would be interested in hearing a St*ony shipper or ex-St*ony shippers thought on this, but sadly I don't know any. If you have any more thoughts regarding this, Nonnie, pls drop back into my inbox.

You do make some excellent points in this ask though, and I would like to talk about racism on my side of the fandom.

So back to Mackie and his Twitter cancellation. Notice that Disney made him address the rumors and not his co-star, Sebastian Stan. Anthony Mackie is put on blast and made to answer fan demands and receives backlash, while Sebastian Stan gets to fly under the rader. This is not, by the way, a criticism of Stan, but instead of the blatant racism Disney has been displaying over the past few years.

How this ties in with the rest of my post has to do with my "woke-queer" spaces bit. The outcry across the MCU fandom over Mackie was swift and unforgiving. He was cancelled on charges of homophobia and bigotry--all the while these same fans turn a blind eye to any queer interpretation of other interracial ships and discourse in their own fandom.

The racism that I'm speaking about, of course, is an almost passive racism. Of course if you don't ship a specific ship for reasons other than their race, it's perfectly fine. It's okay not to ship Iron Husbands or SamBucky or any other interracial fandom ships. However, the distinct lack of shippers in the fandom IS telling because there are people who would ship that exact ship if not for the fact that one of men is black.

I don't have much more to say about this except to thank you for bringing it up and for listening to my long rambling post.

(Feel free to bug me about Tony Stark, MCU ships, MCU Meta and anything you want to talk me about on this blog and @themarvelarchives.)

[appleflavoredkitkats]

being in other fandoms made me realize that, as surprising as this sounds, the mcyt fandom actually deals with controversies much better. or at least, there's a significantly good amount of people who actually respond to controversies properly.

i walk into other fandoms and when a controversy occurs, everyone's quick to think the situation is black and white and will qrt and reply the people behind it with the nastiest remarks. especially towards accidental and easily fixable controversies!

and it kind of made me realize like, for how much i give the mcyt fandom shit (i am part of it ok), a lot of us don't immediately think ill of someone after a mistake. and i think this ideology is slowly becoming widespread in the fandom. we've gotten to that point where we do realize our cc's are not perfect, which actually makes half the fandom handle controversies really well. it's not perfect, of course, but compare that to literally any other fandom— when something remotely shitty happens, people are quick to jump the gun to say x and y are problematic. no room for growth, just callouts and derogatory remarks. we have that in mcyt too, but because of the multiple experiences we had, we started to learn how to deal with controversies more correctly (and frankly, in a more human way).

so yeah, food for your thoughts. something positive about the fandom because for how much we call ourselves immature, we actually are a lot more mature in certain aspects that people don't give us enough credit for.

[killjoyhistoryarchive]

Mike Milligram: The Lost Killjoy

Edit: On July 21st 2020, a Mike Milligram comic by Gerard Way and Shaun Simon was officially announced. However, I’ll leave this post as it is for future reference.

—

In 2009, while My Chemical Romance fans were eagerly awaiting news on their upcoming album, Gerard Way had another surprise in store: the announcement of a new comic series called “Killjoys.”

Co-written by Shaun Simon and illustrated by Becky Cloonan, Gerard told CBR that the series would “deal with much more mature and controversial themes, such as hate crimes and homophobia, the homogenization of American culture and American life.” Unlike “The Umbrella Academy,” which was set in a fantasy world, “Killjoys” was set in modern-day America.

But what nobody realized was that even after an album, two music videos, and a six-issue comic series, Gerard’s original conception would never see the light of day.

In 2008, Gerard Way and Shaun Simon developed the Killjoys universe in a frenzy of inspiration. Gerard’s original sketch features Mike Milligram on the left–named after Gerard’s brother Mikey Way–with a host of other characters that accompanied Mike on his journey. The comic was announced a year later at San Diego Comic Con, with a release planned in 2010.

With My Chemical Romance wrapping up their fourth album, Gerard and Shaun were ready to start writing. Becky Cloonan drew concept art for Mike Milligram, as well as promotional artwork that they planned to use at the Comic Con announcement. However, the Mike Milligram art was scrapped and replaced with a simple image of the Killjoy spider–a move that could later be seen as prophetic.

In 2009, “Killjoys” was an entirely different concept. There was no Party Poison, no Dr. Death Defying, no Battery City, no girl with special powers. The original comic involved a surreal road trip through America that reunited offbeat characters and confronted harsh realities along the way. In 2013, Shaun Simon offered this description in the introduction to the special hardcover edition of the comics:

The old version of the story focused on Mike Milligram, a late-twenty-something living in a desert trailer park and working a crappy job at a supermarket. Mike’s teenage years were a blur. He couldn’t tell if the things he remembered had actually happened or not. Part of him believed he was part of a gang called the Killjoys who fought fictional things in the real world. The other part of him believed it was all just a dream. Music was the only thing that kept Mike going, so when the music was erased from his Ramones tape, it sent him over the edge. He went out and got his old teenage gang, who were now living normal lives, back together because, yes, it was all real. Other members of his gang included Ani-Max, now a high school history teacher; Code Blue, a rabble-rouser who was a working girl in Vegas; Monster, a new young member they met on the road; and Kyle 100%, who was a B-list actor now. They all had strange powers based on objects. Halloween masks and costume accessories, puffy jackets, toy ray guns. It was a story about a group of old friends getting together and discovering what America really was. Reaching deep inside its pretty facade and pulling out the ugly guts. (It was semiautobiographical. I toured with Gerard and his band for a couple of years before realizing I needed to find my own path.) The gang would have found out that another former gang had now become the largest health care corporation in the country and were hell bent on making the world a safe and clean place by removing all that was dirty, like the Ramones. It would have been a great story, and I’m sure parts will end up in Gerard’s and my’s future work.

Of course, we all know what happened after that announcement. After Gerard took a fateful week-long trip to the desert, MCR decided to scrap “Conventional Weapons” and fueled their energy into writing “Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys.” But even as Gerard delved into this new post-apocalyptic version of the Killjoy universe, the comics remained the same. As late as 2011, Gerard claimed in an interview with Artrocker that the comics hadn’t changed at all:

No, none of the characters, even our characters, are in it. It is a completely separate thing, even almost a separate setting. It shares all the ideals behind the record and the theories and the commentary but it is nothing like the videos you have seen. I think the car is probably the only thing that’s the same!

But as the band took on more responsibilities–filming music videos, promoting the album, going on tour–the comics kept getting pushed back. First the release planned for 2010; then it was pushed back to 2011. And while the era had kicked off without a hitch, MCR eventually hit one of the first of many roadblocks: they didn’t have enough money to film the third video. So as Shaun Simon told CBR, the original story featuring Mike Milligram was scrapped, and replaced with the story of the girl and the Ultra Vs:

[A]fter the record, Gerard had built this whole world around the Killjoys. When it came time for the comic, Gerard called me up and said, “We ran out of money. We wanted to make the third video, but we don’t have the money. So do you want to make the idea for that video into a comic?” We started talking about ideas, and we had so many that it turned into this whole series.

In an interview with Paste (2013), Gerard went into more detail about the process:

The deal is that I had written three videos (“Na Na Na,” “Sing,” and “The Only Hope For Me Is You”), and the third video had never gotten made. By the time we had completed the second video, we just ran out of budget money. At the time, somebody was managing us and not keeping an eye on this stuff. Long story short, there was no budget. So I wrote a video, and of course it ends up being the most expensive one, as the last part would usually be. But we couldn’t make it! Killjoys started its life as a very different comic. It was heavily-rooted in nineties Vertigo post-modernism. There’s a lot of very cool, abstract ideas in it; I wouldn’t even call it a superhero book. That (comic) was a visual and thematic inspiration on what would become the album Danger Days. It was pretty loose, though. This was going to be my interpretation of the story, so there’s way more science fiction involved. And what I need to say to the world needed to be a little more direct, so I boiled it down to something that’s still very smart and challenging, but I thought was definitely easier to understand through song or visual. Then (Killjoys artist) Becky Cloonan drew a 7-inch for “The Only Hope For Me Is You,” which was going to be the last video single. I realized I was out of budget, so I said ‘just make this the girl from the first and second video at 15. And have her shave her head or chop her hair off like in The Legend of Billie Jean, because that’s how the video was supposed to start.’ So (Cloonan) sends this drawing over and I’m on tour with Blink 182 in a hotel on an off day. I get this drawing and I’m so immediately blown away by it. I call Shaun, my co-writer and co-creator, and I say ‘open your email, I’m going to send you something.’ I ask him ‘how does this image make you feel?’ We talked for two hours. By the end of the conversation we both realized that that image was the comic, and the third video was basically the comic. So we figured how we were going to make this interesting and exciting for six issues and complete the story. And that was the final direction. It was pretty obvious to us.

In a way, Mike Milligram’s spirit lived on, as fans noticed the similarities between Mike Milligram and Party Poison. But it’s inaccurate to say that Mike Milligram became Party Poison, though “Party Poison’s real name is Mike Milligram” became a persistent rumor in the fandom. Mike’s story was not Poison’s; he wasn’t a post-apocalyptic rebel, but a teenager searching for his identity in modern America.

Will Mike Milligram’s story ever be told? At this point, it’s not likely. But his tale offers a glimpse into the creative minds of Gerard Way and Shaun Simon, and makes us ponder the fact that with a few changes–the comics being released earlier, for instance, or MCR having the money to fund the third video–the comics could have been entirely different.