#so much damn discourse

[butchharts]

I feel like a lot of queer people forget that not everyone has gone through the same experience with their gender/sexuality and that it’s okay to not relate entirely to one another

[statementlou]

Tbh i am not surprised that a person who openly talked about having drinking problems since 1d days, because of how crazy 1d worked has been agressive. What surprises me is people being surprised (they never seriously saw drunk person?). But i am also confused about this whole book. Apparently Maya said that that book is not fully bout Liam but compilation about her exes and some of the worst parts are not about him. But recently she said that the book is “ofc about him” so what is true then? Or did she meant it that ofc some parts are about him or that whole book is about him?

Sorry, just confused

I also am not surprised- we've learned so much more about the real stories of things and about the guys' actual lives over the last years, and the story that has unfolded around Liam has been totally consistent throughout if you've been following it, and so the information Maya is telling us is shocking and upsetting but not difficult to believe. I got an anon yesterday saying they were worried about getting similar revelations about the other boys, like "if Liam could be doing this we just don't know, any of them could", and while in a way that's always true I guess, anyone could be doing anything in private like... that doesn't really concern me. Because none of these Liam revelations are coming out of nowhere, there have been many MANY steps along the way leading us here if you've been watching, and he has talked openly about both his mental health struggles and his addiction issues. So to answer that anon... to find out something similar about Louis would in contrast contradict everything we know about him and no I'm not worried about it. Is he probably very irritating, absolutely, but an abuser or a loose cannon, well that news would shock me. But anyway as for the book I don't find it strange that she was nervous when it came out and treading lightly and later decided, fuck it. In the absolutely on point tiktok she dropped today (YES👏GIRL👏FUCKING TELL THEM👏) she even mentions attempts to keep her from publishing the book, presumably by Liam's team, that I am riveted by and cannot WAIT to hear more details about actually- like I said I don't find it at all strange that she was nervous and downplayed it a bit then. But if she says now that it's just about Liam, well, I would say it's been clear from the beginning that the book is their story. Maya herself brought up the parallel of songs being written about stuff and I think it's the same thing; it's true (she was in an abusive relationship that involved certain kinds of events) but maybe not 100% literal (I'm sure details were changed to make the story work, it's not like a word for word timeline of their interactions or whatever).

[nartml]

Nah, you know what makes my blood boil?

Seeing characters degraded, vilified, and desecrated in the name of ship wars.

No, Aang did not strip Katara of her agency nor did he only accept the "digestible" parts of her, leave my baby alone.

No, Zuko isn't just a selfish colonizer, bro did not have one of the greatest arcs of all time for you to reduce him to that.

No, Katara wasn't just a mother to everyone, for fuck's sake, did we watch the same show?

I can go on and on and fucking on, but all I'm gonna say is I'm fucking tired of y'all's shipping discourse.

It was never that serious, it will never be that serious.

I think that both Zutara and Kataang are great ships in their own right, with their respective pros and cons. I also think it comes down to personal taste.

Of course, people can have differing opinions on characters, regardless of the inclusion of ships or not. But at the very least, stick to your own.

Ship and let ship. Remember when this was fun?

Don't invade spaces that aren't yours to start trouble, and stay appropriate with the tags. Fandom etiquette, it's pretty neat.

Y'all suck the joy out of everything.

[tigerbears]

My joker mode moment.

I don't care about shipping discourse. But you can't just claim that Toby's just going to "have Susie reject Noelle" with all of this setup for Suselle happening, and nothing to imply that Susie wouldn't reciprocate Noelle's feelings.

[fiona-fififi]

Honest question: where is all this "bad" bisexual representation on network tv that people keep referring to? Like, I understand that there are stereotypes that people believe could be reinforced with particular representations, but I keep seeing the implication that bad rep already exists and is constantly reinforced on network tv. And just. I actually can only think of two single bisexual characters from network shows off the top of my head, and I don't believe either were represented poorly. Neither were constantly sleeping around, they weren't framed as indecisive, I believe both were generally shown as monogamous and interested in long-term relationships, regardless of the gender of their partners (as an aside, I don't think any of these things would have made them bad rep, but these are the "bad" stereotypes I see discussed most often).

So like, have I just missed a bunch of representation? (Totally possible, honestly.) Because this narrative that all bisexual rep has been bad is a weird one to me.

And I mean, I would generally argue that queer rep on network television is overly sanitized and kind of obnoxiously heteronormative in an attempt to make it "acceptable" for a general audience. But I don't think that's what people are referring to, and it's honestly a little disheartening to see fellow queer people arguing for these overly sanitized representations to appease non-queer audiences. Queer rep does not (and should not) mean all queer characters adhere to an acceptable heteronormative standard (one that heterosexual characters are NOT beholden to, by the way) in order to be considered worth of representation, and trying to pretend like all queer rep must uphold "good" moral standards to make it palatable so that bigoted people accept queerness if it's done the "right" way is not helpful to the community, actually.

[childofaura]

I’m definitely gonna make a stance on this, I’m on the side of Skullgirls fans who are angry about the censorship going on in the game.

If people were mad about the boobs and panty shots, maybe they shouldn’t be playing the boobs-and-panty-shots game. Just a thought.

[jimmysea]

Defending day on the internet is not enough I need a gun

[littleshopofhorrors-confessions]

Dentorin is cute, but also for cowards. Seymourin is where it’s at. Far more sick and twisted

---

[raskies456]

on second thought, most of y’all never did actually figure out the whole aphobia being perpetuated by joke posts equating asexuality with cringiness thing so idk why im surprised to see so many of y’all falling for the same exact shit when it comes to polyamory

[fuck-em-up-your-grace]

How did I end up on the insane anti-transmasc pro-transfemme side of tumblr 😭

[kamomie]

It might be unintentional on reds part, but they did wait until the last minute when there were no players there to counter their strategy and they made sure to do it so other players were unable to redeem any quests before time ran out. So, it's not 100% the same, but it's close enough that you can't blindly cheer for red and hate on blue for it.

[nartml]

it's not "entirely made up", which is the entire reason people are complaining lol have you seen what the fandom has done to the nazi allegory?

i agree that the people complaining are toxic, but also, a lot of the changes are both misogynistic and homophobic, and there's a lot of toxic masculinity and abusive romance tropes being romanticized, are people not allowed to call them out? representation is important, isn't it?

you literally tagged your post, adding to the toxicity

most new works follow the "new model" and people who write different things are harrassed (i've seen people be harrassed simply because they don't ship wolfstar). how are we supposed to change that if we don't call it out?

discourse in fandom is normal. you can just as easily follow your own advice and not read it/block it.

Y'all are quick lmao

Okay, okay, so, to get the easy stuff out the way:

I unfortunately made another hasty post, I didn't elaborate enough, that's definitely on me.

In my defense, it's 2:30am, I need to be up in five hours at the latest, and I saw the fifth post hating on jegulus and/or other fun parts of the fandom that I genuinely cannot find anything objectively problematic about.

I got pissed.

I tagged my post, and I agree that I further fueled the discourse.

This has been something that I've done before, unfortunately. I'm used to thinking of tags as part of screaming into the void, I'll be sure to erase them after this.

But as you said, it's normal for there to be discourse in fandom.

And honestly, that's what I usually do. Ignore it. Like I do with a lot of things I don't agree with on the internet.

I don't remember contributing to this whole ordeal before tbh, and I've been here for a decent amount of time.

But I got so ticked off, I wanted to get it off my chest for once.

Lost my grip there, but I honestly didn't think too deeply about it.

Anyway, yes, yes, obviously it's not entirely made up. We have the HP series, aka the source material, in which we do see quite a bit of Remus and Sirius.

I was more referring to the fact that every single other character in the marauders era, is, in fact, made up.

It's undeniable that, despite the bits and pieces we've heard throughout the books, we can't possibly have any sort of concrete understanding of how these characters were during their Hogwarts days, before the war.

Not only because the bits and pieces don't in any way make up a whole picture, but also because some of them might've been entirely unreliable.

So these characters; younger Remus and Sirius, as well as James, Peter, Lily, Regulus etc etc etc, have more or less been crafted on very arbitrary ideas.

They are made up, and very rarely reconcilable to their adult counterparts, which makes sense from several standpoints. (E.g. their canon characters have been severely beaten down and traumatized. AUs take place in entirely different settings; the context changes entirely, and so do the characters)

Now, as for the nazi allegory, I assume you're referring to a) morons who are glorifying the death eater tattoo (jesus christ), or b) the 'Slytherin Skittles'?

In b's case, I'd wager it started with Regulus and the potential to explore the Black Family dynamics, which then escalated to giving him his own friend group and creating entertaining dynamics between them.

However, I genuinely do not see the harm in this.

It hardly matters that they're canonically deaths eaters, or that they were most likely blood supremacists and horrible people; or whatever else could've been going on with them.

They were so barely mentioned in the actual story. Doesn't matter what effect their existence had on the story and how it served the narrative, because they were barely ever directly there.

We know next to nothing for fact. So it's next to impossible for most people to care for their actions in canon, and just see them as blank canvases.

I can't really fault them for that.

People project whatever they want on characters that are firmly established and thoroughly explored; characters that are borderline non-existent are free real estate.

And yes, changes can totally be problematic.

A prime example is definitely the hyperfeminization of Sirius, to make wolfstar fit the classic heteronormativity that plagues queer ships.

As for the romanticization of abusive romance tropes, I honestly have never seen it.

I mean, I hear people complaining about it, but I swear to fuck, it feels like you guys are fighting ghosts sometimes 😭

Either it's a part of the fandom I've somehow steered clear of, despite being balls deep in it, or some people are exaggerating, which isn't out of the realm of possibility, but I kind of doubt that's the case.

As for toxic masculinity, again, I literally haven't seen it. Hand to my heart, scout's honour, I have not.

Hyperfeminization? Definitely.

Toxic masculinity? Macho men? Written in any context that's not challenging it, and is promoting it? Nope.

Representation is important, and that was the other part my post was based on.

I've seen people hate on the liberties others have taken to explore gender through these characters, which ticked me off even more.

And this is coming from a cis individual, who doesn't really fuck with he/they Sirius, they/them James, etc etc.

I don't think that there's any harm in people creating/enjoying content that is representative of their struggles/experiences with gender (or any other part of life).

Exactly because in the marauders fandom, characters are incredibly flexible, for aforementioned reasons.

Blank canvases, remember?

Usually this hate, from what I've seen, comes from people who prefer sticking to the canon part of this whole story.

In which case, totally, the 'new model' is very. Very. Unrealistic.

(There are definitely harmful headcanons out there. Even within this context, there also exists content that fetishizes the very thing I just defended. But I physically can't sit here and list off every problematic thing that has happened in this fandom. I don't have the energy. And that's not what the post is about anyway)

-"People who write different things are harassed".

Yes, glad that you get my point, even though I obviously didn't get it across.

This goes both ways. This goes all ways. Yeah, people who don't ship wolfstar get hate.

But people who headcanon Regulus as trans get it too.

People who prefer Jily get hate.

But jegulus shippers have their hands full as well.

People giggling over silly headcanons that are honestly just that: silly; can't catch a break.

What was that, you like the new model? Here's all the ways I think it sucks ass.

Oh, you prefer canon? What a loser, you're in the wrong fandom.

Ultimately, the joy gets drained out of everything.

This is meant to be fun. This is meant to be a break from real life stress.

It's not meant to leave you exhausted because you're too busy apologizing about not taking something too seriously, or defending your ship preferences.

In the end, however, I obviously get what you're saying. There are harmful changes that deserve to be pointed out.

But I never said that they didn't. Calling out the notions that are inherently problematic when perpetuated is important.

Constructive criticism is welcome. It's crucial. It only adds, it deepens people's understanding of media and brings attention to problematic aspects of certain interpretations.

That's not what I was referencing in my original post; at least, not intentionally.

I was talking about how so many people love to mindlessly complain about things they don't like, without actually bringing up any substantial points.

The only goal is to tear other people down.

As we've agreed, some of these changes are problematic.

But so is the way some people convey their disagreements.

Some of y'all use your complaints about new character developments to also hide your general prejudice against something.

Like, there's no need to get this heated over genderfluid Sirius.

In this particular instance, it's because the general concept of the 'new model' is pretty mainstream, so it's hard to avoid it. So I know that I'm being a bit unfair when I say, 'ignore it'

Ignoring it is rarely easy though, no matter how mainstream or minor.

It should be, because logically this is all fictional and it doesn't matter if someone dislikes your OTP, or if you think someone's hc is painfully unrealistic.

But we can't help it. It's impossible to care about how fictional something is when it means so much to us.

And seeing something antithetical to our interpretation can feel like some sort of personal attack, even when it's really not.

Part of it also stems from how, when you see fifty other people throwing in their two cents, you also want to.

Because it's a base instinct to want to be heard.

All that said, ignoring it, despite the circumstances, is often the best way to go, because a lot of the time it can be irrational.

Hating on someone because they don't like your ship can be irrational.

Starting a fight over someone's differing interpretation of a character can be irrational.

Think critically before you speak, and be careful when phrasing your points.

Being respectful is crucial, and if you're not getting the same courtesy, then stepping back is the smarter choice.

I'm still working on always maintaining these things myself.

I've been doing a bang-on job, broadly speaking.

I had a slight moment of weakness earlier :P

(For those wondering, I took the og post down. It wasn't anything tragic, I just said that most people who complain about the fandom's toxicity actively contribute to it when they hate on stuff others enjoy.

In the tags I went off a bit, my ultimate points being that the fun is often sucked out of everything, and that if I personally don't like something, I avoid it, stick to my stuff, and don't venture into others' spaces if I'm not willing to be open minded.

But I was definitely more aggressive with the delivery, which was my bad. I hate it when I break my own rules on how I want to behave on here.)

Anyway, so sorry for this long rant, and sorry if I've missed something or made a bad/harmful point. I'm borderline asleep.

And it's now 4:10am and I got too absorbed in this *sigh*

[helianthus-tarot]

People's comprehension skills nowadays

Situations below were subjected to creative adjustments because this is not a college thesis

Example 1

Someone: This is a fruit

People: OHHH so you are saying it's not an orange????

...

Example 2

Someone: I love this fruit, I think it's the best

People: You are saying that people who like vegetables are dumb then for thinking that vegetables are the best???? You are insulting us.

...

Example 3

Someone: To make this dessert, white sugar and cream were used

People: Why are you justifying that amount of sugar?? Don't you know it's unhealthy???

...

Example 4

Someone: The vegetables you planted and grew yourself taste pretty great bro

People: That's so insensitive?? Don't you know that not everyone has money to buy vegetables?? Some people have to plant. You are applauding the fact that someone is too poor to buy vegetables and has to work harder to have healthy food, when this is something people should be angry about because everyone deserves to be able to afford healthy food.

...

Example 5

Someone: I think they should not plant that fruit tree in their backyard because the roots will eventually cause the wall to crack

People: People actually need their walls to be of that height.

...

Example 6

Someone: It is recommended to eat this as breakfast, it's good for your stomach

People: People can have it at night too, it's not something you can only eat in the morning!

[saturnshari]

tiny fandom rant

thinking abt how being an Intellectual Brown woman isolates me from fandom experiences bc since i call out orientalism/racism against swana and my people in media that makes me too "anti" but the shit id be into and ship since i was 13 would land me 100ft deep into "proship" territory....

[magefelixir]

my life after leaving the scream fandom

[impostoradult]

Seeing stuff like the bottom comment makes me want to kill myself

i want stories that revolve around queerness but y'know...minus all that Bad Sex Stuff™

ok. so you want stories where SEXUAL ORIENTATION is at the forefront of the narrative. but without any of that horrible icky gross perverted...y'know...sex.

(and I just know someone is gonna jump on this and be like "SO YOU WANT TO SHOW EXPLICIT FULL PENETRATION WITH TEENAGERS WHILE THEY'RE HAVING ANONYMOUS HOOK UPS IN A SEX DUNGEON?" Which has to be the most bad-faith, false binary, dumbass interpretation of this critique. first of all, no. but there is a monumental amount of middle ground between depictions that are totally desexualized (i.e. utterly disingenuous assuming the characters in question are allo) and hyper-graphic-full-penetration-just-shy-of-actual-porn. Like....there is so much goddamn middle ground between those things it crosses multiple fucking time-zones. ALSO that kind of response was exactly the kind of thing ultra conservatives used to pull out any time people were like "hey, maybe queer youth experiences should be part of media." Why are any of you recycling BS discourse ultra conservatives used to revel in using against you?)