#same counts for spop

[adorawasright]

i love how ppl will use the argument "why are you still hating on the show? it's been years, just get over it".

except i think many of us took a lot of time to realize the glaring problems within spop. it took me months to "wake up", and i'm sure others who follow my blog or the spop crit tag must have taken even more time to change their minds.

i mean, isn't that a natural process? at the time you watch a piece of media, you might love it. but then the hype dies down and when you revisit it, it sucks. take avengers: endgame for example. i remember a lot of ppl praising the film when it first released, but nowadays i rarely see any positivity online, i mainly see fans (or ex-fans) being disappointed and angry that the mcu's quality dropped significantly. besides endgame just being a trainwreck of plot holes that killed ppl's favorite characters.

like hell, sometimes you revisit your favorite childhood cartoon and you realize there are so many wrong things with it that you never realized before. you know what that's called? growth. i'm pretty sure we've all felt this way about any piece of media. and it's so funny that diehard fans will shame us for criticizing it, as if all of us have been hating on the media since it released.

(some spop crits have always known the show had issues, but not everyone has. including me. and that's more common than spop stans think.)

[spop-romanticizes-abuse]

Stans: Spop says Buff Women Rights!!!

Spop: The buff women in question.

Not buff. Not even athletic in any way. NO MUSCLE DEFINITION WHATSOEVER.

Very buff, but they’re built exactly the same. Also, there’s only two of them. I’m not counting the moth lady or the bar tender.

Not all buff women are built the same. (Yes, I know not all the girls pictured are buff, but they are all athletes and have noticeable muscles or are toned in one way or another. You get the idea)

all of this! adora at least has muscles SOMETIMES in her she-ra form, they’re just very inconsistent. but catra??? fans really saw that one frame where her arms were drawn a bit thicker and immediately decided that she had biceps. even though she was stick thin for the ENTIRETY of the series. pros at cherrypicking really.

and yeah, while i do appreciate that spop gave us SOME buff women, i do wish there was more variety, instead of giving them the exact same body type. scorpia and huntara even look like they’re around the same height. (also we don’t really see much of scorpia’s muscles because most of it is covered by her exoskeleton. we know she’s buff but we rarely get shots of her muscles.)

arcane, for example, does muscular bodies really well and gives us a variety of muscular women who all look different from one another.

same goes for tlok.

you can see how korra’s body is stockier and wider while lin is a bit skinnier with lean and athletic biceps. this makes sense considering their powersets and their jobs too since lin was a cop who often used metalbending to restrain people, whereas korra used brute force to fight people head-on. i also appreciate that they made korra a decently big-chested woman who is still masculine and muscular.

at the end of the day, progress is progress and i will praise spop for playing a role in that progress (even if it was very backwards in many areas). but there’s always room for criticism and it’s especially frustrating when fans act like spop is the most diverse show in existence when it doesn’t even come close.

[edsheerankinnie]

Ok im gonna piss of a whole fandom w this. but here we go lol

So ive been thinking abt She-ra lately (spop specifically) and ohmy god it fucking sucks. like i get so mad anytime i remember it, like and if anyone asks me abt it im gonna warn them do NOT watch this show FOR UR OWN GOOD. unless u dont mind an entire season of fanservice AND BY FANSERVICE I DONT MEAN NUDITY OR THE ANIME KIND, ILL GIVE YALL THAT, i mean specifically how they made catradora canon w virtually no other buildup than they were raised together and ooh they hate each other ouuh ;)) enemies to lovers oouogh🫦 like if ur gonna make a ship like theirs work its gotta have some sort of proper progression w their relationship right? But no, the ENTIRE time up until MIDWAY INTO THE LAST SEASON theyre constantly at each others throats like. its not even fun at that point, it just looks weirdly abusive and toxic. And hey, while were still here, catradora in execution is Such a bad ship bc like. They were raised together. by the Same Person. not even just under the Horde, theyre literally both raised by Shadow weaver. and before their rivalry and in several flashbacks their relationship moreso implicates sisterhood than anything. like idk i dont wanna get too bold here, but it just feels a little too close to !nc3st to just put them together like that?

Omg and lets talk about Fucking SHADOW WEAVER omg. like throughout the whole show were shown and told abt how much of an abusive parental figure she was to adora and especially catra right? But then at THE LITERAL VERY END, Shadow Weaver SELFLESSLY sacrifices herself to help catra and adora save the world. SHadow Weaver, whose entire essence was her desire for Power, who betrayed her own people to obtain it. Who's only semblance of a redemption was her working with the Princesses, just because she would be in a better position of power. no remorse whatsoever for how she treated the two as kids. Nevermind her fake-out to catra that one time, in fact that scene highlights just how easily she'll manipulate those close to her to get what she wants. and u expect me to just "oh wow shadow weaver is so noble for that! This is so sad! poor catra and adora, they lost their now-good mommy!" (again, *their* mommy, eugh). Like im having a hard time believing they were able to mourn her loss like that at all. We've seen them both have very complicated feelings about Shadow weaver. Ok well to be fair we didnt actually GET to see them mourn. which IS ALSO SOMETHING I HAVE ISSUE WITH

the SPEED AT WHICH THE 5TH SEASON RAN omg i HATED IT I HATE IT SO FUCKING MUCH. SO MUCH HAPPENING IN LIKE !) EPS OMG, and on top of that WE DONT EVEN GET A PROPER CONCLUSION???? U EXPECT ME TO BE SATISFIED W THEM ENDING THE LAST EPISODE 5 MINS AFTER SAVING THE WORLD????? And ohmygod DONT EVEN GET ME STARTED ON HOW THEY SAVED THE WORLD AUGHJLFDRCRJ IT WAS SO BAD Like girl i need SOME kind of CONCLUSION, not just "yay the horde is gone! sunshine and rainbows! bye bye!" GIRL WHAT THE FUCK??! WHAT HAPPENS AFTER??? I WANNA SEE THEM REBUILD ???? I WANT A FLASH FORWARD (AND NO ADORA'S 5 SECOND VISION WHILE SEEKING THE HEART DOESNT COUNT), I WANNA SEE EVERYONE ADJUSTING TO THEIR NEW LIVES. I WANT SOME SWEET SWEET BANTER. I DONT WANT TO READ A FANFIC DEPICTING ALL THAT BC THE CREW GOT LAZY. I WANT A NICE BASE FOR ALL THAT. U GET WHAT I MEAN??!?!?

I think i should mention that i am in no way shape or form homophobic or anything, i am literally the president of the fruitcake club, ok? but the catradora kiss was probably the worst canonization of a relationship in an animated series ever, period. Like really? while Adora's half dead?? and otherwise the whole world ends if u dont?? And with only 5 minutes of runtime left ?????? I am being edged. I am being edged in the worst possible way. I hate it so much. "Dont leave me adora! I LOVE you! I ALWAYS have!!" HUHHH???? U EXPECT ME TO BELIEVE THAT????? "i love u too🥰" HUHHHHH???? GIRL WHEN DID THIS DEVELOPMENT HAPPEN??? U hung out for literally 3 DAYS and u expect me to believe u guys went from enemies to working out their issues to googoo eyes???? when there was HARDLY ANY OF THAT THERE TO BEGIN WITH???? also just the overall trope of "oh no the world is ending, if i kiss this guy it'll be saved" is sososo bad, idc if its a straight or gay couple, it is probably the most annoying trope ever. like gyattdayum i didnt know i was watching an old Disney movie. i thought this was an epic scifi my bad. Yall need a moment? Do u wanna fuck too? Maximize ur "power of love" slay so the world is extra saved? jesus christ. its the "true loves kiss" trope all over again. Like thats such a rude way to treat a ship too. I want to see it in action, i want to see real progression, ESPECIALLY bc its the main ship, not "ooh they might be gay!!11! ooh they might kiss :) oouhh" and then last second theyre like "btw theyre in love now ;)"

Like id *maybe* get it if there were time constraints like with TOH, id get it if they were like "the idea and concept were there, mr CEO wanted us to shut down the party." but from my research, they didnt really have any constraints like that. And im saying *maybe* bc like with TOH for instance, even though they were forced to cut the show in half, they still delivered everything to progress and end the show properly! They had an *afterword*! they had Lumity and Huntlow and Raeda!! And oh my god the progression of Lumity is so sweet and beautiful! we get to see their "enemy" phase, we get to see them fall for each other, we get to see them date, we get their First Kiss!! We get to see how much they care for each other!! And sure, on the flipside we dont really get to see Huntlow. But thats bc the show got cut before it could *really* take off. There was supposed to be a whole season of Willow and Hunter's hijinks while the gang was in Connecticut. There was supposed to be a whole season of the gang adjusting to Connecticut! We were supposed to see the Archivists involvement and the ultimate showdown in the 4th season!! But they had to be economical bc of the cut, right? So they made a montage of Connecticut, they made three separate, HOUR LONG episodes depicting what couldve happened in the 3rd and 4th seasons. we get to see Willow reciprocate Hunters feelings in the 2nd ep! And most importantly, we get a real conclusion!! we get to see everyone rebuild, we get to see how theyve adjusted, how their lives and relationships have changed. We get a satisfying moment for it all to sink in. we get to properly say our farewells to the characters. All loose ends are properly tied! The Owl House may not be in my top list of cartoons, but u have to admit, it has a very good and satisfying conclusion. And all that with such intense time constraints too.

Now dont get me wrong, She-ra and its characters is written incredibly well (mostly) and its LGBT/POC rep is a game-changer. Heck, i loved Scorfuma, and that was only crumbs of a side ship. And the character designs/animation/colors are absolutely gorgeous, like that is honestly what probably pulled me to watch this show. Im just disappointed in what couldve been, yk? It had so much potential. especially in its last season, it just feels like the writers had too much setup and didnt know how to resolve it. 2/10 would not recommend.

[evelhak]

I felt implicitly tagged by @lilypheria. Here's the template too.

It may seem like I only write KnB these days but I don't consider myself to be done with my SPOP comics yet.

Tagging all my writer friends but I'm going to mention @active-mind-15 because you're kind of new to me. But I really want to hear about all my writer mutuals and followers. By the way if you've written one unfinished fic or tried to start to write your ideas but can't, or haven't written for years, or have any other struggle that makes you feel invalid, you count as a writer.

Going to elaborate under the cut because I felt like it.

My old account was FinFanFun, a Finnish site I used mostly for reading Facebook wall fics about that which should not be named.

AO3 is where I publish my KnB fics though I've considered branching out to see if there's still some fandom corners I haven't reached.

I'm slowly introducing myself to writing smut but the only story I've published has been called mild and soft smut or smut-ish, and I doubt the rest will be much different.

I frequently beta-read for friends, though fanfiction is the minority.

I used to have two beta-readers but they're unable to do it anymore so all my fics rely solely on me for now, which makes me really anxious sometimes. I am pretty desperate for a new beta-reader so if KagaKuro and a million words of "homework" doesn't frighten you, please jump into an adventure with me!

All my fics are self-indulgent in that they're what I want to see play out in the story. They are not personal fantasies, or necessarily what I want to see in real life, but it's what I envision for these characters.

I'm always reading old favourite fics again and I need to branch out actually.

If I'm in need of a short fic to read I will probably pick fluff.

Have written m/m and f/f (and m/? and m/f) but honestly it's weird to put them in the same category when m/m is so overrepresented.

I'm not actually sure if I consider fanfiction as a genre or rather a medium, because all genres exist inside fanfiction. Medium is probably more true but I seem to have checked it anyway because I feel like the point here is whether fanfiction is valid literature and that it is.

I don't know if two fandoms with one being dormant would be considered multifandom so maybe no.

I do anxiously wait for feedback since I'm very community oriented but I'm also very introverted and internally motivated so the lack of it doesn't discourage me. I have patience and I can wait for connection for years and years. Not that lack of connection doesn't affect me, of course it does, but giving up is just a very antithetical concept to my beliefs and life.

I have one on-going long KnB story and one unfinished She-Ra fic that is waiting for a better time. Which is an exception since I tend to finish what I start before moving on.

Editing fanfiction is actually not as bad as editing original fiction because I put much less pressure on myself, partially because you can always edit your fic again.

Always listening to hours long conversations in my head between characters when I'm trying to sleep. They're really bad at shutting up and I'm supposed to remember this stuff in the morning?

I was mildly drunk for ten days straight to write Anything Can Happen. Haven't done that since but it was really fun.

My main KnB storyline gets most of my attention. It's just my thing, I pour everything into it.

I didn't check 'wants to be a professional writer' because after three traditionally published books I consider myself to be that already. I actually went the other way around than seems to be the norm: I was an original fiction writer first and then branched out to fanfiction in my twenties. I can see it greatly affects how I write fic, and it's probably the main reason I feel like a bit of an outsider.

[blonde-and-cat-suc]

choose violence ask game: 3, 12 and 22?

p.s. love your blog, please keep spreading the truth!

And I love blogging <3!!! I do it for the girls and the gays.

>>>><<<<

Answers under the cut . . . This is gonna be a long one.

3) Screenshot or description of the worse take you've seen on tumblr?

Okay, so, the only problem with this one is that I've literally seen too many to count. But the one that I'd often seen and had the most visceral reaction to were definitely the longer, well articulated analysis posts from stans that did SO MUCH bending and twisting to claim Adora being equally toxic/(and or abusive) to Catra. Which, obviously, I also spent time analyzing. Trying my best to understand what was going on. And you know what? I get it. I don't agree. But I get it. Adora and Catra grew up under the same circumstances, so yeah, they wouldn't be entirely innocent of picking up bad habits from their childhood. Realistically. Fine.

But implying that Adora is worse? Worse than Catra?

...

Anyway, I've suffered from my own self-inflicted torture in the past. I wish I hadn't spent so much time reading stan analysis the way I did, but... Here we are.

And that's just on Tumblr. I don't believe that other social media/forum sites are better or worse about c//a and SPOP, but I have seen worse in The Wilds. (At least on Tumblr there's the filtering options. Everywhere else, good luck).

12) The unpopular character that you actually like, and why more people should like them?

Guys. I LOVE SWIFT WIND. I FUCKING LOVE SWIFT WIND I DON'T CARE THAT HE'S ANNOYING THEY'RE ALL FUCKING ANNOYING!!!

First of all, yes, yes, yes, Swift Wind is horrendous wasted potential (surprise, surprise), and yes, of course, I'm still pissed over it. Those scenes where he's so loyal and kind to Adora, and she, having no other point of reference for a friend, much less a resourceful friend... Like, awwhh. Plus, he makes it very clear that he has his own will and isn't just mindlessly following Adora around like a god-honest horse would. He has his own agenda. He doesn't have to go into battle with Adora, and doesn't gain too much from risking his life to help her and her friends in the short term, but Swift Wind does it anyway. He's interested and invested in Adora, personally, anyway. He wants to be there for her and support her growth as a person.

And Adora deserves all of those amazing, raw, sappy, fairytale friendships!

I DON'T CARE THAT HE'S LITERALLY A HORSE HE IS STILL FUNCTIONALLY A HUMAN BEING. THEY ARE BESTIES. THEY LITERALLY HAVE A MY LITTLE PONY FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC LINK GOING ON. THEY SHOULD HAVE CONSIDERED SWIFTIE TO BE APART OF THE BEST FRIENDS SQUAD, I ACTUALLY DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY HE ISN'T.

MORE LOVE FOR SWIFT WIND!!!

22) Favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores?

In my experience, this is the type of fandom that cultivates, um, extreme niches, for lack of a better term. As in, literally what my blog is compared to a "stan's" blog. They're like. Different SPOP fans everywhere, so I don't truly believe that there's a portion of this show that is genuinely ignored... There's someone out there that liked even the tiniest, unimportant fraction of this show. Just got to go find them. (Hell, I know people that love, like, Tall Star specifically, out of all the other characters. Nothing has gone totally unnoticed, which is something I really love about the fanbase as a whole, despite everything).

Anyway, to keep it short, my favorite "underappreciated" parts are hm... Maybe the parts where Adora gets to explore the world around her? And not in a super plot related way. I know that the BFS goofing off so much isn't totally ignored. But I like to see that Adora especially was still learning new things everyday in canon, just like, randomly. Nothing to do with the Horde or the Rebellion. Just. She should be excited for the new world around her, dude. Those are pretty rare moments in the show, actually. Wish there were more.

[askweisswolf]

Fanfic Writer Questions

Thank you for the tag @foibles-fables!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

19!

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

Currently at 89,257.

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Oh man, uh. I think it would be better to say what fandoms I don’t write for at this stage, it’s still crazy to me to think it’ll be twenty years this year that I started writing fanfic. Currently I’d say Baldur’s Gate 3 has me by the throat, with a little bit of the DCAU (specifically, Justice League/Unlimited) and the occasional dash of Fallen Hero and Dragon Age that I post to Discord servers. I’ve also got a few Mass Effect short pieces floating around. I really need to post to my AO3 more.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

I’m going to mess with this one a bit and go off of my top five finished fics by fandom and stick to the ones I wrote solo, that way it’s a bit of a mix. I apologize in advance since a lot of these are years old at this point, but it definitely goes back to what I said before about writing in multiple fandoms, ha.

Rest for the Weary (Frozen) Flare (SPOP) The Same Big Sky (Fire Emblem: Three Houses) Skin Deep (Dragon Age: Origins) At The Door (Baldur's Gate 3) 5. Do you respond to comments?

I try to! I’m not always the best at it but I genuinely appreciate everyone who takes the time to comment on one of my fics, it means the world to me and I always love hearing everyone’s feedback and thoughts, it makes me so excited for my own writing.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

If we’re going purely by just what’s on AO3… hm. For stuff that’s a bit older, easily The Silence Is Your Answer (Fire Emblem: Three Houses). For something I wrote more recently, Few Finer Torments (Baldur’s Gate 3) because I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about Shadowheart in Act 2 specifically.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

… Most of them. Oh my God I’m mainly a fluff writer, like I knew this about myself but to actually realize it so starkly is something else. Of my most recent stuff I’d probably say A Little Slice (Justice League Unlimited) has possibly the softest ending I’ve written in awhile.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Thankfully not.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Not often but I do sometimes! All of it so far has been for f/f ships, mostly with a lot more focus on like… the thinking and the feeling aspect of it and not so much the physical aspect, if that makes sense? I just like using sex as a way to explore the characters, when I’m in the mood to write it.

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

Oh, man, okay. I have written a few crossovers over the years, but my favorite is still one I co-wrote with a friend of mine for the Beast’s Lair fan forum back in the day that was just a complete off the walls one-shot crack crossover with Fate/Stay Night, Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, and I think we had a dash of Highschool of the Dead right at the end. It was insane, we wrote it on a Skype call in a matter of hours.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not as far as I know, thankfully.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

I have not! When I was more active on FIMFiction.net though I did have a few people who did live readings of my fics, those were always neat.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes! I’ve co-written with him a lot before, but Pen Pals (Frozen) was co-written with Moczo. Just a heads up that I think he has it set that you can only read it if you’re logged in, if you want to check it out.

14. What's your all time favorite ship?

… I don’t think I can only pick one, man. I really don’t. If I have to, my brain always comes back to Shayera/John or Raven/Terra.

15. What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I feel like I owe everyone who started reading my The 100 fic or my Black Widow fic an apology at this point.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Dialogue, emotional payoff, character study (I guess?). I have one friend who told me I write very good Catholic guilt.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Sex and fight scenes are the absolute bane of my existence, for as much as I enjoy the character potential of the former in particular. I’m also slow as hell, I’ve been working on this one Shayera/John fic now for like a year trying to finish it before I post it and ugh.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

If it fit the context of the fic I would, yes! I’d double check it with someone else who knows the language first, though.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Like, ever? Chip and Dale: Rescue Rangers to my old Fanfiction.net account when I was 13. I had a bunch of old stuff saved to floppy discs that I never posted, though.

20. Favorite fic you've written?

This changes on a nigh daily basis, but currently I’m having an absolute blast with my The Beast Whisperer series focusing on my Tav who romances Shadowheart, so I’ll leave the link for it here.

Going to gently tag @optiwashere, @kittlesandbugs, @antigonick, @miabicicletta if you guys want to participate, no pressure! And of course anyone who sees this is free to respond as well.

[tooningin]

Catra getting chipped doesn’t count as “consequences”

One thing I see among the fandom when it comes to defenses of how Catra’s redemption was written is that she suffered a lot from getting chipped, and that she doesn’t need anymore punishment. The chip experience certainly does look like hell, so I’ll give them that. But I think this part of the fandom doesn’t realize that…

Suffering is not the same as consequences.

Consequences are the result of your bad actions. Suffering is when bad things happen to you.

Again, I’m not saying that the chipping doesn’t look painful. But it has nothing to do with Catra’s actions and/or how she’s hurt the BFS, Scorpia, Entrapta, and others, therefore it’s not consequences.

The chipping doesn’t address Catra’s abuse of Adora and Scorpia

The chipping doesn’t address Catra sending Entrapta to die on Beast Island

The chipping doesn’t address Catra activating the portal, causing Angela’s death

The chipping doesn’t address Glimmer’s grief and trauma from the loss of Angella

The chipping doesn’t address Catra assisting Hordak in the destruction of Salineas

It added nothing meaningful to an already crappy redemption arc and made it worse

(I finally got a new Ipad, so expect a video criticizing SPOP season 5 sometime in 2024 ;D)

[freedfromthegalactichivemind]

I just want to take a moment to wonder / baffle at how different fandoms can be. It seems like some things are constant between all fandoms - an abundance of smutfic and art, self-insert and OC character-creation fun, people inserting characters into popular memes, people making the wildest aus (Let's fanart them as werewolves!" and the like). However, there are just such interesting differences. In Spop fandom, I will never, NEVER get over how much visceral HATRED exists for Hordak on one "side" of the fandom and how much of the same kind of hatred exists for Catra on another "side" of the fandom. Additionally, discourse over Glimmer and etc. It seems like all the people in this fandom (who haven't just said hang it all to just make cute fanart and funny comics) talk about are WAR CRIMES and "who deserves redemption more?" in a show that is clearly about restoration and kindness. Horde Prime's destroying planets aside, I can count the canonical deaths in this series ON ONE HAND. And everyone's upset at all of the war crimes committed in a largely non-lethal local-to-the-main-setting-planet war on this... almost utopian planet where we'd all probably like to live. Meanwhile, over in Trigun fandom... The body count is in the literal millions and not in passing mentions of genocide Jell-O at dinner, but in triumphant arms to the sky as a burning fleet of spaceships incinerate in the sky in a deliberate attempt at a genocide (not as a side-effect of ruling). Many on-screen deaths of characters you get to KNOW. There is this huge complex moral dilemma centered around the survival-needs of a population that depends upon sentient beings that are both dependent upon them and overused and abused by them. There's another huge complex moral dilemma revolving around the justification of lethal force vs. the prices of a life of chosen, ardent pacifism. It's not a Y-7 series by any means and the manga / comics version of it gets really super dark (yet somehow Trigun Stampede made the Tesla-arc even darker, bravo, I'm gonna be sick). And yet the villains - from the mini-boss assassin characters to the ur-villain who LITERALLY WANTS TO DESTROY ALL OF HUMANITY and also wishes to manipulate his hero-brother to his side through severe traumatizing emotional torture... it's like... there are loads of people in this fandom who are "Oh, Millions Knives is my favorite character!" and it doesn't seem like anyone bats an eyelash. There are probably more fandom essays exploring Knives' side of things and why he feels the way he does and how his character-arc makes sense than even people in any way actively against him. Yes, most people in this fandom "side with Vash" (as do I), but it's like... we understand the villain here, or try to, and here's a fandom where people find sympathy for and "humanity" in the blatantly cruel person who on-screen slaughters swaths of people in some of the most gruesome ways possible. It's like, in this fandom, if someone's a Knives-fan, or a Legato-fan, or a Midvalley-fan, or even those of us who love the greatest villain of all, he who shines in the darkness, BRILLIANT DYNAMITES NEON!!! (oh, my two-episode wonder, missed you in Stampede oh so much, my sparkler-smoking baby...) it's like... no one cares? It's like "Yeah, they're great characters, aren't they?" It's just so... different. In the non-fatal sparkly princess show, everyone's scrutinizing everyone else for liking characters who do (largely non-lethal) WAR CRIMES! and then the mature-anime/manga fandom I am in where there's this whole extinction of humanity and the uses of their adjacent created-resource-species at stake everyone's like... chill. And enjoying the villains - and different ones, at that, is NORMAL.

[adorawasright]

tumblr keeps recommending me c//a and pro Catra posts, it's both entertaining and irritating. anyway, i'd like to know your thoughts on this post!

personally, i feel like c//a stans misunderstand our point. we keep saying that Catra does deserve a redemption but she doesn't deserve forgiveness, or at least, instantaneous forgiveness when she has put no effort into trying to change. but they take it as "CATRA IS AN IRREDEEMABLE MONSTER WHO DESERVES TO ROT IN HELL" (which, ironically, is what they say about characters like shadow weaver).

also Adora "wanted" Catra in the finale season because that's how the authors wrote her. it made no sense for her character to suddenly want Catra back after it took her so long to finally cut Catra out of her life.

Do not go after the person who wrote the original post. (this is mostly for my other followers)

Tumblr has been doing the same thing to me, too. It showed me a post that said that as similar as Catra was to Shadow Weaver, she improved to be better. Which is a lie, lmao.

I hate that people think redemption and forgiveness are the same thing. You are allowed to improve as an individual, but the people you hurt don't owe you forgiveness. Sadly, SPOP doesn't have a single character that chooses not to forgive Catra. Even though Frosta punched her in the face, she was more accepting of Catra than Entrapta. Same counts for Perfuma and the other princesses. Though I'm pretty sure anyone would be demonized for not believing that "Catra got better!!!". S5 already does this when Adora vents about Catra being a stubborn brat, she just looks pathetic and Glimmer doesn't take her seriously.

And indeed, most stans think characters like Shadow Weaver or Hordak are not allowed to be redeemed, that's really because they're older and physically disabled.

Finally, yeah, Adora in s4 completely gave up on Catra, she didn't hesitate to nearly kill her without any remorse. Adora's priority was her friends, but especially Glimmer. "I want to be the hero she deserves". But you never see C//A stans talking about that, lol. They only bring up Glimmer and Adora's conflict or Glimmadora at all so they can shit on Glimmer and prove that Catra is a better girlfriend. Which is also bullshit.

Adora is allowed to want things, yes, but s5 pretty much sums it up as her wanting Catra of all people. Not her friends, not a family, or knowing more about her origins, idk. Just Catra. It's literally always about her. Adora is not a character that exists outside of Catra anymore. S5 definitely reinforced this, and the fandom only repeats this. It's annoying.

[shivasdarknight]

Bi women are, at best, not as queer as "real" queer ppl, and at worst, simply equivalent to straight women

I want to expound upon this one and something people mentioned in the replies because it frankly drives me crazy given hi, hello. I'm a bitch that doesn't shut up about biphobia. And I wanna start it off by pointing out that the tumblr community has seen a diminished bisexual population and overall support of bisexuals - especially bi women - since a good amount of us were driven off the platform and onto sites like twt, which turned into open season and continues to be a rancid place to be openly bisexual on.

It doesn't really escape me that this has become a site that prides itself on the lesbian community and population while several bisexual theorists were harassed off of this site. If you want to talk about "why didn't I see this coming" with regards to Somerton, you need to first address the fact that issues regarding bisexuals (and even just bisexual positivity) never leaves bi spaces. No, bisexuals are ignored for the most part and if we're not we're the current target. We need to address the fact that many of you were fine accepting the fact that he lied and called countless bi women "straight women" when it'd been long corrected in the past. We need to address the fact that this man constantly erased bisexual characters in media (referring to Zagreus and Thanatos as gay despite the former being explicitly bi and the latter being implied bi; calling Yuuri Katsuki gay when he's bi; borderline refusing to acknowledge korrasami or halrivy as bi4bi; calling Valkyrie from the MCU a lesbian when she's bi because Tessa Thompson is bi), erased ACTUAL bisexuals (Becky Albertalli, who he repeatedly called a straight woman, pretty sure he called Kristen Stewart a lesbian when she's bi but I know for a fact that y'all do this constantly) or would just refuse to even mention them (hey, did you know that Glimmer and bow in spop are bi4bi canonically? Or that Ava of the cancelled Warrior Nun is bi? He also refuses to acknowledge queer women in Hades, like Persephone who is shown to be very clearly into both Hades and Nyx so like.).

People here act as if bisexuals are simultaneously the most privileged of the queer community while also the community punching bag, when the suicide rates of bisexuals is close to equal to that of trans people (40% for bisexuals compared to 25% for gays and lesbians), bisexuals have less access to resources or people they can trust, and overall have higher mental health concerns than the rest of the community (source). Another statistic on this:

When the researchers looked at the specific intersection between minority sexual identity and race/ethnicity, they found that white and Black women who identified as bisexual were more likely to report suicidal thoughts relative to white and Black women who identified as lesbian or gay. Looking at the intersection between minority sexual identity and age, the researchers found that suicidal thoughts were also relatively higher among bisexual women in the 35-64 group compared with lesbian or gay women in the same age group. (source)

That's not counting DV and all else, but this is in part because it's common place for bisexuals to get shunned from queer spaces and tumblr is a good example of this. Bisexuals only find solidarity and support from other bisexuals, major queer days and weeks are acknowledged and celebrated by everyone but when it concerns bisexual specific ones there's utter silence (during bi month this year, "bisexual" only trended twice during bi visibility week and was outperformed by lesbian all other days including on bi visibility day). When these issues get brought up, the response is to attack and harass them into silence - I've had too many mutuals be harassed off of this platform and twitter just for being loud about being bi, and I myself have been harassed for pointing out when someone's being awful. I mean over on twitter, we had people - including cis gay men - trying to coin a derogatory word for bi women in the form of "cocksucker" (which is RICH since it's both vulgar and transphobic).

Considering biphobia is never called out or taken seriously, no one is ever made to consider what they're doing to make spaces welcoming to bi people - especially bi women - we get people not noticing how rancid folks like Somerton are until it's too late. His usage of "white straight women" was used to go after bisexual women he didn't like, and not all of those people were white or even women seeing as he went after ND Stevenson and Rebecca Sugar and misgendered them to seem like he was in the right. If he's saying straight women, more often than not he means bi women. If he's saying white woman, they may not even be white. And people took this unflinchingly due to their own biases instead of questioning why (insert very open bisexual person/character) is being ignored or erased in topics about queerness. Why do we expect people to read queer theory but leave out anything that has to do with bisexuality? Whenever resources are passed around, there's nothing about bisexuals. There's especially nothing about bi women.

Why are your spaces so vacuous when it concerns bisexuality? Why do you celebrate other people - notably, loudly celebrating gays and lesbians - but you refuse to celebrate bisexuals? I've seen this happen with my mutuals, I take note of who engages with what. And 99% of the stuff that's about bisexuality gets outright ignored by non-bisexual mutuals unless it's some shallow positivity post and not about their shitty actions. Why do so many sapphic spaces completely ignore bisexual women yet cater exclusively to lesbians when others sapphics exist? The same goes for bi men and spaces for queer men: where's the support for them?

We are not inherently more privileged because you see us as optional queers. We do not have support in the queer community and it makes bisexuals extremely vulnerable, and the response from the wider community is mockery, harassment, and expulsion from spaces that should be where we can build community and seek aid. We can't even seek aid within bi spaces because they're either underfunded or don't exist due to underfunding compared to specifically gay or lesbian spaces!

You all seriously need to care more about bi people. You expect us to show up for you and we do. But when we ask you to show up for us? No, we're just the half-gay/half-straight punching bags that you loathe because you think our capability for multi-attraction makes us privileged somehow when really it just leads to higher rates of violence among bi women (did you know Amber Heard is bi? And that Depp attacked her based on that? And instead of supporting her, people blamed her and her bisexuality for why she was getting abused).

Required viewing:

Reading:

Epistemic Contract of Bisexual Erasure by Kenji Yoshino (a gay law professor, by the way)

The entirety of "Bisexuality and Transgenderism: the InterSEXions of the Others" - huge book, but I'm specifically recommending:

Bisexuality and Transgenderism: InterSEXions of the Others by Jonathan Alexander and Karen Yescavage

GL vs. BT: The Archaeology of Biphobia and Transphobia Within the U.S. Gay and Lesbian Community by Jillian Todd Weiss

Bisexual and Transgender Identities in a Nonclinical Sample of North Americans: Suicidal Intent, Behavioral Difficulties, and Mental Health Treatment by Robin M. Mathy, Barbara A. Lehmann, and Deborah L. Kerr

Things I've seen tumblr memeing about James Somerton doing à la "How did no one see how bigoted he was!" as if those things haven't been a significant part of tumblr culture for over a decade :

Presenting untrue and bordering on conspiratorial versions of (queer or otherwise marginalised) history without any sources

Completely disregarding and disrespecting any expertise on socio-cultural topics/humanities and distrusting academics and historians (incl. acting as if no academics or historians could be queer or marginalised)

Downplaying the role misogyny played in the historical oppression of queer women and concluding that queer men must have been more oppressed than queer women

Bi women are, at best, not as queer as "real" queer ppl, and at worst, simply equivalent to straight women

Despite nominal trans inclusivity, transmasculine ppl are functionally women when convenient (combined with the above, bi transmascs are functionally straight women)

Despite nominal trans inclusivity (bis), shamelessly attacking, threatening and actively endangering any trans woman who questions them or smth they find important (often by unfairly presenting her as violent or as a threat)

Having absolutely fucking wild and reductive takes about ace ppl, the oppression they face and their place in the queer community

Stating that marriage equality is an assimilationist fight while completely ignoring its direct roots in the horrifying consequences of the AIDS crisis for partners of ppl who died of AIDS

Praising western media creators from the past for queer coding even under censure and in the same breath condemning current non western media creators for being homophobic bc their representation isn't explicit enough

Blaming China for all existing homophobic censoring in western media

Assuming all queer media would be better told by western creators and by western standards

Only out queer ppl get to tell queer stories

Heavily criticising almost all queer media created by women or ppl they see as such (see above points about trans ppl) or involving/starring a significant amount of women for any perceived or real amount of "problematicness", but fawning over and praising and negating criticism of queer media created by and starring mostly or even functionally exclusively men (even when it could be argued that, you know, not involving/seriously sidelining women is a pretty clear example of misogyny which should probably be considered "problematic")

And I'm probably forgetting stuff or there's stuff I have internalised myself and don't recognise as an issue

Like idk but I feel like the takeaway from Hbomberguy and Toddintheshadow's videos should maybe be "be aware of such patterns in your communities bc they definitely exist" and not "this guy is uniquely awful" and I feel like a lot of the discussion I've seen surrounding this has been severely failing at that. Most ppl who've spent any significant amount of time on tumblr prob either have internalised at least one of those thought patterns, have had to de-internalise them, or have had to be extremely vigilant to not internalise them (which is done by, you know, seeking out other sources, which also seemed like an important takeaway from the videos)

[spop-romanticizes-abuse]

On the topic of SPOP's LGBT+ representation.

Seeing as adora was straight in the original, doe's it even count as proper representation making her a lesbian in the reboot, personally don't think so.

honestly, i personally didn't think that was a big deal. i think it's fine to change characters' sexualities, especially since characters are never outwardly confirmed as being straight. straight is usually the default so the authors just give the character a partner of the opposite sex and call it a day. i haven't watched the og she-ra but i'm willing to bet it was the same in that one too.

i think changing sexualities, races or gender just comes under creative license. as long as you're not going against the character's nature itself, it's fine (for example, mulan's ethnicity is an incredibly essential part of the story and thus cannot be changed). so yeah, personally i don't have a problem with adora being turned into a lesbian but i would love to hear all of your thoughts on it!

[hyenabeanz]

Fic Writer Interview

Tagged by @hsavinien

Tagging: you, if you wanna. Seriously, always like reading stuff about people I follow.

How many works do you have on ao3?

10. Mostly Owl House, couple of She Ra, couple of Steve Universe short things.

What’s your total word count?

19,566, though one is co-written.

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

One Breath in Front of the Other (She-Ra, Catra centric)

All of You, All of Me (The Owl House, Raeda NSFW)

Do You Have a Flag? (The Owl House, Luz and the Hexsquad gen)

Sleeping patterns (Steven Universe meta about Ruby and Sapphire)

Catra's Shield (meta about SPOP finale)

Do you respond to comments? Why/why not?

Almost always! I appreciate them so much, and I like fandom as interaction.

What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

Of the ones on Ao3 probably "Legacies." (Steven Universe, no longer canon compliant.) It's Pearl yearning for Rose Quartz. But while most of my fics are angst filled, I try not to end them there. For real angst you'd have to uncover my teenaged ff.net account and Fruits Basket fics.

What's the fic you've written with the happiest ending?

"Plans (Fulfilled)" Raeda has some of my favorite fluff I've written, but "One Breath in Front of the Other" has like, real positive character growth and recovery that warms my soul deeply.

Do you write crossovers?

Not really. I’m very rarely interested in worlds crossing that way for whatever reason even as a reader, so writing it doesn't happen.

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Not on anything I've written as an adult on ao3, no. Some on much older stuff I wrote as a kid.

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Lmao yes, though only two so far. Old witch monsterfucking, apparently. I'm open to writing more, I just haven't. I have part of another Raeda smutfic in progress where no one turns into a giant monster first. ......but there might be plant magic involved.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Not that I know of.

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yep! With @hsavinien Eda's Reprise (Be Refreshed, and Be Well) (Owl House, Eda/Raine) was really fun. We both are big fans of the ship and generally jive in how we like them written.

What's your all-time favourite ship?

That's hard because it always shifts, but Raine/Eda touches on some deep parts of my soul, particularly with Eda's character development. But I think Ruby/Sapphire from Steven Universe too. Both of these have some staying power due to personal feels and connections about the characters and ships.

What's a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

I have a fic I was noodling around about Eda having to quit grudgby because of the curse. My angst fics tend to be me working though some shit; I was going to write this one because I was feeling utter despair at some of the ways my disabilities were limiting me from doing sports I cared about. But I've since worked through those things a bit, and am more at peace. I still DO wanna write the fic, but a lot of the initial motivation has (thankfully?) waned for now.

What are your writing strengths?

I think emotion and creating images. it was what people said they appreciated in the non-fandom writing workshops I was in, and what comments seem to imply.

What are your writing weaknesses?

Just actually doing it. Like so many things in my life, the executives don't function well so I do far less of it than I want. Which makes me sad, because I went to school for this shit, and was constantly told I have a talent for it. I'm good at words. I feel bad that I mostly waste it.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

Needs to be a reason for it imo. If everyone is speaking the same language, it usually makes little sense to suddenly interject it. It makes sense if the characters aren't speaking the same and you have a limited perspective. Or if you have a character that is bilingual and switches back and forth the actual way bilingual/ESL speakers do. So there are times that it's appropriate, but saying sacre bleu! to occasionally signal these characters are all speaking French! Or whatever is not one of them.

What's a fandom/ship you haven't written for yet but want to?

I kind of have some Locked Tomb ideas bouncing idly in my head but nothing concrete yet.

What's your favourite fic you've written?

Idk. I like many of them. Maybe The Blood Behind the Dam, which is an Owl House Raine and BATs centered fic that not many people seemed to check out for whatever reason. But I loved writing it, and I still like reading it sometimes.

[disregardcanon]

i feel like there’s something VERY telling about the current culture where we seem to keep circling around the idea of the chosen one not as some actual work of destiny but as piece of manipulation by a malevolent actor who is trying to fuck people over. and that by saying “no” and breaking out of it the “chosen one” is actually saving not only themselves, but others as well

[aprillikesthings]

I promise I’m going somewhere with this: There’s a phenomenon I’ve seen among people with ADHD, where if one of your parents was abusive, they are nearly always the parent who also has ADHD (and gave it to you via genetics).

And yes, some of it is that anger is a source of dopamine. And yes, some of it is a lack of impulse control. Or that smacking a kid (and temporarily stopping whatever behavior is bugging you) is satisfying.

But I do often think it’s also self-hatred/self-harm by proxy—seeing a kid do all the shit you used to do, that you have always hated yourself for. Being annoying, fucking up in school, etc. Some parents lash out because it’s so upsetting and frustrating to see you make the same “mistakes,” and learning other ways of handling it would mean confronting their own self-hatred and they just refuse to do it.

Did my dad love me? Yes. Did I grieve when he died? Absolutely. But also I hadn’t spoken to him in six months when he died, because I realized he hadn’t stopped being a piece of shit, he’d just changed tactics, and I was DONE. I am still angry for how he raised me and my brothers and I don’t know if I’m ever going to not be angry. In the long run his death was a relief.

One of the things I love about spop is the Shadow Weaver storyline, even (especially!) when it’s hard to watch*, because it’s so accurate to my experience. (My parents didn’t pull the golden child/scapegoat thing, at least.) Catra being desperate for her approval and affection (even knowing she’s a manipulative piece of shit), or being upset at her death and trying to stop her—yeah. I understood completely.

(*the scene where SW drags Catra to Hordak and they both assume she’s going to be punished (and instead is made force captain—Catra is visibly shaking in fear. And holy shit, do I know that feeling. Like, in my bones. I cannot count how often I felt like that.)

So it's not that Shadow Weaver didn't love Catra less than Adora, but she felt Catea hadn't 'earned' it yet?

When you see yourself in other people and you have conflicted feelings about yourself you’re likely to have feelings you don’t understand about the other person. They might irritate you, you be irrationally bothered by some types of their behaviour, or you might end up behaving towards them as people in your position now behaved towards you. In general, the behaviour you most hate in others is behaviour you subconscious recognise in yourself, or behaviour you’re subconsciously TERRIFIED you’ll manifest because you recognise you have the capacity to manifest it. 

But yeah, so in my opinion, Shadow Weaver behaved towards Catra the way her carers had towards her, because in her opinion she Turned Out Good as a result of the treatment. Therefore, she’s just getting the most out of Catra by treating her the same way. She may even have consciously thought, “Catra needs a firm hand or she’ll turn out like I might have if I hadn’t been treated with a firm hand!”

I genuinely think Shadow Weaver loves Catra. The clearest evidence we have of this is when Catra screams in the finale, despite being on the cusp of either taking the heart for herself or letting She-Ra/Adora absorb the heart (and therefore completing the task she’d set herself to and saving Etheria), she has an immediate limbic ‘Oh no!’ reaction about Catra being hurt. If she didn’t love Catra, she’d be annoyed by the distraction and ignore it. 

Then, as further evidence, she puts on hold the exact task she’s been single-mindedly focusing on: saving Etheria, and goes to rescue Catra. Then she essentially chooses to die doing that. 

I don’t think you can make a case for her not loving Catra, she definitely does. She’s more complex than just ‘evil villain with no feelings’.

[cookiescr]

another castapella and the hot elf commander/general

[freedfromthegalactichivemind]

*Sees a post in my other, current main fandom that gives me pause and makes me realize something about my OCs in this fandom.* So, I make no secret oflong-term being into Trigun and of having been swept BACK into that fandom by the recent "Stampede" reboot. That set of fiction has influenced me greatly in life and my fiction writing (fanwork and regular writing) in a big way. I just sort of had a revelation today about my clone OCs. Everyone who ever did stuff with Horde clone stuff in this fandom, particularly when it was a fad, had their own takes on them and did "Instant OC, just add water" to them - because the canon just had them as random minions and wouldn't and couldn't spend a lot of time on them because that was not the story being told. They were essentially free for the fandom to use post-series and so, a lot of fun. We generally had fun with them being / coming from a hive mind, but still having had some independent thoughts the entire time (even though they had to suppress them, because, you know, cult) and discovering their independence. I remember even when I was full-bore into Spop and not into my old fandom as much thinking about Horde clone parallels to the Plants of Trigun. I'm especially thinking about it now, but even then... It's not entirely the same, as the Plants are not in a cult (more like what a human cult worships - see manga and Stampede, it's not detailed in the '90s anime), but they are a used and abused enslaved race. The number of "Independents" (including the protagonist and antagonist of the series) can be counted on one hand. Anyway, without digressing into chattering about my other fandom too much, I saw a thread about Vash the Stampede's and Millions Knives' brotherly relationship, particularly about Knives' twisted protectiveness of Vash and I just had this weird flashbang to my Spop Horde-clone OCs. So, Robin and Jerome, I'm talking about them again, even though I've pretty much decided never to write about them again for personal reasons (death in my family last year that I took pretty hard, making them a bit "too real" for me, given the themes of their stories). I'm glad they existed in my brain, I do believe that they prepared me for what I didn't know was coming. They helped me parse grief before I had it? Anyway, even though the two are literal clones, I gave them an adopted brotherly relationship that was an "older brother, younger brother" thing. One is of an older batch and the other is from a younger batch, but most of their relationship is more like the "gruffer, more stoic clone" and the "sensitive, emotive clone." (Granted, Robin isn't like Knives at all - he's not genocidal. I'd say he's probably more like Wolfwood if you wanted to find any parallels, sans having a giant gun and a bad smoking habit - Wolfwood's even an undertaker instead of a priest in the new series, which made me raise my eyebrows). And then Jerome has as one of his defining characteristics some rather prominent scars. (Vash-influence. Vash is just RIDDLED with scars, although there aren't any of them on his face like what I did with Jerome). So, I don't know... I think I am being confronted with how much of my love of good ol' Vash I actually put into one of my OCs here - a sensitive guy who is treated as the "younger" of a set of unnaturally-born brothers mainly based upon his sensitivity and who's got some gnarly scars (for trying to save a life). An older brother who has an urge to protect his more sensitive younger brother (albiet the fact that Robin is in no way twisted and abusive in his protection). Still, some of the same gist. I recall some of it being purposeful, but some of it was probably subconscious, too. Thank you for letting me talk about my OCs for once in a dog's age. (For all of maybe two of you who care)? (My blog, my rules, I'll talk about whatever I want, even if it's stupid).