#people wanted my two cents on this because parasocial fans keep going on about how

[finsterhund]

the more time passes and the more I grow and mature as a young man the more I can actually articulate exactly why an internet celebrity targeting an indie game by "think of the children-ing" about comical violence on the level of the average looney tunes cartoon, subtle - likely unintentional- reinforcement of normalized ableism in society, and devolving into a tangent about how irreplaceable the nuclear family is (because the main character is implied to have a single mother) was so shitty. Then to go on and claim the game's fans were attacking him for pointing out that everything he said was a reflection of his own issues, even though his fans were the ones engaging in harassment.

[kkyujikoo]

These are my... 2...? Maybe 50, cents about the whole "freejk" thing. I'm gonna be extremely petty and at some points a whole lot sarcastic and it's gonna be long but I had to say it. As soon as I get my computer I'm gonna make it under read more, but the app does whatever it wants, as we know.

Listen, this ain't my first fan rodeo, and not even the first fan rodeo where I've been directly or indirectly accused of being some sort of pervert or delulu. I've been in fandom spaces since I was a teen, I was shipping mlm couples when queerbaiting in TV shows was still something that was seen as the norm rather than some cheap disgusting trick. I was there when fanfic spaces saw "slash" fics as something "different" and to be tagged with a more mature rating even when they just looked at each other.

I was in BBC's Sherlock's fandom and I shipped Johnlock during the hiatus between S3 and S4, at this point I'm not even feeling it when people call me delulu or a weirdo.

So, yeah, take this with a grain of salt: as a person who has seen thousands of times fandom drama unfolding and has lived too much of it... This whole situation is so ridiculous it makes me laugh. Like, yeah, it's maddening how people will blame anyone and everyone because they don't even see their own bias and homophobia, granted, but like... It also makes me laugh for the sheer dumbassery of the reasoning behind it all?

Like... Y'all are getting mad and for what? Because it sure as hell isn't the invasion of privacy, since y'all are watching the same content we're all watching and you're paying to see it the same way everyone else is. If you don't want to "invade their privacy", you should just... Stop watching content that isn't their music videos, RUN episodes or interviews. Memories and any kind of dvd/video that shows what they're doing behind the scenes shouldn't be part of their job as musicians, and therefore we're intruding in their privacy... Or aren't we?

Or maybe it's more nuanced than that: maybe the content they release on dvd/on their official channels is part of their job as entertainers, and it's been approved, and it's a small window THEY are granting us.

You know what's the REAL invasion of privacy and what REALLY invalidates someone autonomy? When you, who maybe aren't even paying to see that content (which is something I understand, like, dude, I'm not covered in money either), DEMAND what kind of behind the scenes content you want when I swear ABSOLUTELY NO ONE has asked you. Once again: you don't like it? You think it's some huge invasion of privacy? Don't buy it. Don't interact with it. Convince your friends to do the same. For all I care, just go and petition to boycott this kind of content. I know you won't do it, because... That's the thing, isn't it? It's not the invasion of privacy that bothers these people.

Y'all aren't mad because we get into their business or else you would have gotten real mad when we were privy to REAL private moments like people crying their hearts out.

No, no. Y'all are mad because it's "shipping content" and "fanservice" which apparently bothers you because it lacks authenticity.

Pick a side, lovelies: either you DON'T want to invade their privacy, and thus all the content they release should be focused on what fans want to see, or you WANT to know how they interact TRULY in private.

And here's the catch: "shipping content" can be anything. Shipping existed WAAAAAYYY before the word for it was invented, same way with fanfictions. Shipping means, literally, "seeing two (or more) people interact and thinking they would make a good romantic pair". That's it. That's quite literally it. Everything else is just some nuance of the concept of shipping, but at its core, it's nearly impossible to ban all shipping content when it's a group of seven people, because they should for real go in social distancing mode to do so. Most people who have parasocial relationships tend to have "ships" whether they know it or not, because we've all, at least once, looked at a dynamic from the outside and thought "oh man they look cute together". So, even if, o dear ones, your wishes were granted... What the hell do you mean by "shipping" content? Should they just film solo clips, avoiding talking about the other members? But wouldn't that be fanservice, since it's focused on pleasing the fans? (Which, ultimately, is what fanservice MEANS, and I hate to break it to y'all but the whole concept behind entertainment and thus all the content BTS releases it's... For the fans. Like, they're not going out of their way to just meet our expectations but they're certainly doing fanservice by the mere act of releasing bonus content.)

But it's not even quite that, is it? Because no one bats an eye if it's Tae kissing Nj's cheek. I've seen no hashtag against everyone - and I mean literally every one of them - wolf whistling at Nj. It's okay to show intimacy... Because they're bandmates and it's okay to be close to someone who you see basically 24/7, I hear you. And it's also okay when people see that and gush over that closeness, because it's such a nice thing to see.

Soooooo... We've got to free JK from whom exactly? From what?

Are y'all mad cause people pointed out there's very little way a bruise that stayed for a whole ass night could be a quick bite? Because that doesn't harm jk, at most makes fun of him and jimin and their poor excuses (seriously, guys, next time consider using mosquitoes or "I was doing stuff". It'll be equally embarrassing but at least the meme will be funny), and it's literally... A fair observation. Like. It's a hickey, people are gonna make jokes about seeing a hickey and poor excuses of covering it up in the exact same way they're gonna make jokes over jimin falling out of chairs. And yeah, a hickey is AT LEAST something that happens in a sensual context. Like, I could understand "people who are extremely familiar with each other will have different body language/touch in areas where usually you wouldn't see friends touching each other", but that's not. Not a hand on the thigh. It's a hickey on the neck. I don't even know a more stereotypical placing for a hickey. But once again, are y'all mad because someone is pointing it out? Because that's not being delulu or even being a shipper, really, it's just commenting on something that was approved to be shown and discussed in something that was released BY THEM.

Are y'all mad at hybe for showing something that literally fell onto their hands? Cause like, unless someone (I'm counting on Jimin, since as we know Jungkook was busy spinning him round and round and had both his hands busy) called at hybe headquarters to say "yo bang pd substitute, is it okay if I give my friend jk here a hickey? Cause he's being really annoying rn and he has to pay", I highly doubt anyone expected Jungkook to come to rehearsal all neatly marked up. Or idk, maybe someone at hybe asked them "we need Jungkook to come in with a hickey but refuse to say it's a hickey, so that fans will feel reeeeally served." That sounds perfectly plausible too. Or a good marketing strategy.

Now, if you're a big company and your objective is to have some footage of the rehearsals for a concert, and the fandom is too good at noticing stuff for their own good, and one of your artists comes in with a very visible mark, and he and his bff bropal4lyfe come n with a story about how they were playing and a bite happened, you've got three choices: 1. Cut the artist out of aaaaalll the footage. Someone would have noticed the "bite mark" anyway, you best believe that. If you don't want anyone to notice it, you gotta cut him in most of the footage where it's visible. 2. Keep the hickey, discard the explanations. You could do that, but also it would feel a lot more unfaithful to everyone involved. Also they clearly worked their ass off to invent an explanation, come on! They truly tried to do their best inventing something that was not "it's a mosquito bite", they should get some credit! 3. Keep the bite, keep the explanation.

Notice how none of these solutions include the biting never happening because... They couldn't prevent it? The only thing they have any control over is how they're framing each "accident". And that's not an easy job.

I applaud you, people on the editing team.

So... On whom should we cast the blame now? Ah, yes, I think it's finally time for the ultimate scapegoat of this fandom: Jimin. Which is funny, cause... You know... If this were really about privacy, or being "victims" of shipping... This should be about freeing him too, you know? But obviously Jimin does it for attention, while Jungkook, poor angel that he is, doesn't even know what shipping is.

Furthermore, don't we all know how much Jimin imposes himself in Jungkook's life? To the point where he, multimillionaire man feels compelled to share a car with Jimin even if they're both late in the process. And can't you see how uncomfortable he is, draping himself over Jimin, making Jimin drap himself over him?

Oh lordy, truly such an awful eight years Jungkook spent, choosing to have vacations with someone who made him uncomfortable, spending free time with him, even having to suck his ear in public to the point you can see his saliva just because Jimin was sad :( truly an all-around bad time for Jungkook, as evidenced by alllll those times when he said Jimin was pretty, cute, and all-around knowing every little thing about Jimin. I absolutely concur, the dude would be so much more happy if jimin was not in his life.

Did that sound weird and absolutely ridiculous and a really absurd joke? Because that's what y'all sound like to me. Like. Jungkook is out there living his best life, getting hickeys and showered in affection and y'all paint him as a fucking martyr??? I'm sure he's really truly desperate that Jimin holds him in such high regards 😭😭😭 I can see him suffering whenever he starts doing his own serendipity rendition 😭😭 and when he claimed you are me, I am you as his and Jimin's only 😭😭😭 I cannot believe this poor baby 😭😭😭

I've reached a point where every time I hear this stuff I laugh because the levels of twisting reality when it comes to jikook are extraordinary, Jungkook will have a literally blissed out face and people will cry in outrage.

But coming back to my point: let's pretend you're not mad at Jimin and the possibility that jikook are dating: are y'all mad... At the hickey? Because at this point it seems like the only feasible solution. And if you are, do not worry: I'm sure Jungkook's skin was throughly healed by his boo. A kiss soothes even the worst pain, doesn't it?

[buscemifan]

more of my two cents abt the vin situation but under the cut if you don’t want to keep being subjected to it

i did actually skim through the entire 39 page document and found some stuff to be more compelling than others. at this point I’m going to go out on a limb and say that nearly every email screenshot we saw was fake/doctored in some way, but that first phone call audio...it’s hard to say. that sounded nearly exactly like him but because the audio was definitively tampered with (presumably for the sake of the victim) nothing about it can be certain (for example, it could literally just be thrown together from the hundreds of thousands of hours of stream footage that exists). the next parts of the audio were less convincingly vinny in both content and voice. the testimonials were in a surprising level of detail at some stages and then lackluster in what really mattered (ie the first account kept talking about a convention but never bothered to say which convention, a detail that would probably make the story a little easier to corroborate) in a situation like this, assuming literally everything was true (which, again. at this stage I am doubting) I think vin’s alleged behavior is SCUMMY but not unexplainable nor unforgivable. as alluded to by many, vinny isn’t really a celebrity in the actual sense. At the risk of downplaying the situation, it probably would be hard for him to create boundaries if he has trouble seeing himself as anything more than a guy with a small following. that doesn’t excuse some of the other stuff he’s being accused of, but I do think it humanizes him a bit.

ON THE ENTIRE OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN, the fact that there were people who were so quick to decry the accusations and not even think about whether or not vinny could be capable of something like this was downright insulting. nobody who’s talking about this in the first place knows vinny, even if they think they do. he’s some e-clown we watch play video games, no matter what your parasocial relationship with him may have you believe. SA victims deserve respect and decency when coming forward; I can’t imagine how soul crushing it would be for a person to come forward and only be faced with “this obviously isn’t true based on this one interaction I had with the accused in 2017, does it bring you joy to try and ruin their life?” i won’t disagree that evidence in a situation like this is important (in the same way that it’s literally always important whenever someone ever makes a claim) but expecting victims to have a notarized and timestamped collection of every interaction with their assailant is ludicrous.

TL;DR - for my money, most if not all of this situation is fabricated. a lot of the emails have been debunked (the email icon being wrong, emails being sent on days that weren’t sunday, generally out of character language and on-the-nose vinesauce meme references, emails being sent AT TIMES WE HAVE RECORD OF HIM STREAMING) and other than that, we have a few doctored audio files and hearsay. people point to vinny’s silence as a clear indication of guilt, but I know if I were in a similar situation I’d probably wait for the "drama” to die down before fanning the flames, for the sake of everyone involved. still crossing my fingers for an official statement from vinny himself, which I think is only a matter of time, but here’s hoping it’s adequate, mature, and clears things up at least a bit. in the meantime, I’m wishing vinny well (innocent or guilty, he’s struggled with mental health before and I hope he doesn’t do anything rash) and sincerely hoping these allegations are entirely false. if not, my heart goes out to the victims and I’m hoping to see less situations like this in the future.

[opulent-today-slope]

From my Twitter (with a few coherent adds and edits)

Threads HERE and HERE

If the Harry Potter culture has taught me anything, it's that one should be careful when they want to include so many social issues into one topic. In that sense, it’s like Glee: it wants its two cents about every social issue in the book but puts in so many issues, it ends up saying nothing at all.

The Houses were most likely a simplified commentary on British classism for an under-11 audience, since boarding schools are usually for rich kids. How JKR fell on her arse is when she made the wealthy kids with pure families be in one House for a "down with the prejudiced system" narrative, but not only do you have to have certain genes to get into the wealthy-coded Hogwarts but Harry, Ron and Hermione are a complete contradiction to this theme:

Ron may be poor but his family are pureblood

Hermione's parents are dentists, so she's most likely middle-class

Harry lived with his middle-class extended family (in Surrey, a middle-class stereotyped part of England; on Privet Drive -- wealthy people live on a street named Drive) as a peasant but inherited loads of money from his definitely-not working-class parents

This “down with the system” narrative is “middle-class vs upper middle-class” disguised as “rich vs. poor”. And then you have the other things, such as the elf slavery and Hermione being concerned about it for as long as the plot says so, and then Ron's prejudice towards giants seems more like a quirk than something he needs to learn from... 

I think this is also a problem with HP's reception: JKR probably just wanted to write an entertaining, meaningless kids' book that would blend into any library bookshelf, but when the world overpraised it for childish, surface-level allegory, JKR "needed" to add more of it. Things like Neon Genesis Evangelion and even The Hunger Games knew what they were going to be from the first draft -- nine times out of ten, JKR knew how she wanted HP to end, but critics were too busy going "OMG! Dobby = slavery!" for her not to notice. I feel like "Hogwarts Houses = British class system" was going to be the only allegory she'd use, but when the foreign critics didn't pick up on it and the non-British readers went "Why is Slytherin full of snobbish rich kids?", she tried something else, so she went with racism (this isn’t based on fact - it’s an assumption).

But the Harry Potter culture has taught me a lot about fan culture too and how much they won’t take responsibility whatsoever. I remember being at school and seeing people shamed for not reading the books, let alone liking them. Harry Potter created the modern Spoiler “Culture” that the Marvel movies have exploited for the last decades (”Snape kills Dumbledore”, anyone?), therefore making the world a worse place (I’m half-jesting, of course).

As for the "JKR revealing everything after the books are done" narrative ... it wouldn't have happened if ungrateful fans didn't ask her about characters' X, Y and Zs when fanfiction exists! The fans couldn't let her say that Dumbledore was gay and leave it at that? They’ve had seven books, eight movies, tons of merchandise, a fandom and wizard rock, yet they had to ask whether Sirius was intended to be gay and then get mad when they don't hear the answer they want. Despite being a big advocate for representation, Harry Potter ain't it and it didn’t intend to be it. Now, thanks to these ungrateful fans, there's the Fantastic Beasts movies, a stage play, and a website that reveals that plumbing didn't exist in Hogwarts until the 20th century, and JKR can't keep her mouth shut about opinions that nobody asked for. Meanwhile, Twilight got mocked to death and Percy Jackson would kill to have a decent film series!

Am I sorry for the Harry Potter fans? Yes and no. Yes, because they've spent the last four years discovering that this was a parasocial relationship all along (and JKR didn't know her unwanted opinions hurt the very people who made her famous, apparently), and no because their greed opened a Pandora's Box. The Hunger Games may be getting a prequel book but Suzanne Collins didn't invent representation that wasn't there because several THG fans asked her about a character's religion on Twitter. Hideaki Anno shuts down most NGE questions with "Interpret it however you want." I'm barely a HP fan (the 2nd book is the only one I've read) but I'd respect JKR a ton if she had been a Hideaki Anno or a Suzanne Collins. Because ever since 2015, it's like she can't turn it off!