#some of these people are the reason why the fanbase has a negative rep

[delusionalhours]

Fever fans crashing out over Lexie Hull...I fear we have lost the plot

[queerpuff]

Discussing the TLOU2 leaks.

Obviously do not read this if you want to remain spoiler free for TLOU2. 

I have looked into these leaks and what they mean, and have a few thoughts to crystallise so I have done below. This is mainly a way for me to express my feelings and get them off my chest, I’m not looking for any responses, I just needed to rant. If you have something to say though, feel free to DM me & I’d be happy to chat. :) 

So, in all honesty, the whole news about the leak - the reasons why it was leaked, the fanbase reaction, as well as other speculative elements to it - have upset me. 

Ellie is important representation. The Last of Us is one of my all time favourite games, for a variety of reasons. However, one aspect of the game which will always have a place in my heart is Ellie. I’m sure so many of you feel the same way, but as a lesbian, seeing myself represented in a video game in such a casual, yet beautiful way means a lot to me. Especially seeming as the video game industry as a whole is still massively tailored to the male audience - seeing Ellie written as a lesbian in a non sexualised and normalised way is quite groundbreaking for the LGBT community (feel free to correct me if you think I’m wrong of course, but this is my opinion.). I have always had a deep respect for Naughty Dog for including such representation in their games - as well as portraying characters which aren’t hyper sexualised/unrealistic. 

However, the leaks have really hit close to home due to many factors. The storyline leak/spoilers to me weren’t that bad - I couldn’t escape them as most of the angry fanboys have taken to all forms of social media to spoil everyone who’s still looking forward to the game. The storyline to me isn’t awful, from what I’ve seen it could be an opportunity to tell a fantastic story about revenge and hate. However, there’s been some speculation about [SPOILER] Ellie’s fate in the game, as well as the main story antagonist Abby potentially being a trans character.

Bury Your Gays Trope As we all know, the bury your gays trope is something which has plagued the LGBT community for years. It’s exhausting to see yourself finally be represented in a form of media, only to have our characters killed off in haste or poor writing. I sincerely, sincerely hope that this isn’t the case with TLOU2. Joel & Ellie are the most beloved characters in the ND franchise, and killing them without justification is hard enough. The spoilers haven’t officially leaked Ellie’s or Dina’s fate in the game, only that they get hurt pretty badly. It could go either way honestly. But in deciding their fate, ND are potentially adding to a trope which has hurt and upset the LGBT community for years, as well as leaving the fans completely hurt and unresolved after losing one of their favourite characters. Using the ‘it’s an apocalypse, anything could happen’ excuse would boil my blood. It would be an incredibly stupid move on their part, and I’m curious to see whether they were hasty enough to make it. I have faith that they won’t.

Abby + trans representation On another note, there has also been a lot of speculation on Abby’s character being trans. Although I have not seen proof of this myself (to me she just looks v muscly - something I am very much here for!), I also sincerely hope this is a path ND have chosen not to take. Although trans representation in the media is scarce enough as it is, especially within the video gaming industry, deciding to introduce their first trans character as the main antagonist who [SPOILER] kills one of the main characters and potentially kills the other too - is fucking DISGUSTING. It is actively inviting the players to dislike her and hate her, something the gaming community has proven to do fantastically already, but by the same token, they’re enabling so many gamers to use this as an excuse to be heavily transphobic. Which disgusts me to my core. Which brings me to my next point...

The toxicity of the gaming community The gaming community is quite frankly one of the most uneducated, narrow minded and frankly disgraceful communities that exist around popular media today. It has been largely dominated by straight white men up until more recently, something which has caused a shift in the representation we see in the games. Something that will continue to anger me, is that these men still fail to see value in anything which doesn’t feature their ‘kind’ as the main characters. The minute the representation strays away from this at all, agendas are being pushed, and ‘SJW’s are taking over’. It’s completely mind numbing to see men freak out over a fictional character being anything but a white cishet. What’s unfortunate though, is that this childish attitude is often coupled with these men refusing to invest any of their time or money into these franchises. Which in turn, will be detrimental to the companies who chose to feature this representation. Naughty Dog is going to suffer a lot from these leaks. I have seen a vast array of hateful comments from people saying they’re outright refusing to buy the game, etc, which I know will affect the company in the future. It is unfortunate that a company who actively tries to give us more representation is going to be punished for attempting to break the norm a bit. This statement only stands if they decide to keep Ellie alive, and if Abby is not a transgender character - if not I will also refuse to invest my money in any of their future projects.

Naughty Dog & their ‘disgruntled employees’ A last point to be made, is spoilers aside, the message behind these leaks seem to root from a sentiment of unrest within the Naughty Dog company. I understand to some extent the overwhelming pressure of releasing a sequel to TLOU due to it’s massive success, but this in no way justifies the ‘crunch culture’ of overworking and underpaying your employees. It’s barbaric. It’s deeply saddening to see a company such as ND neglect their workers in such a manner, and I sincerely hope that these leaks will hopefully cause some sort of upheaval in the way things are run there. There seems to be many issues to address - being silenced out of fear of opposing any of the main ideas, the whole concept of bonus pay 6 months after the game’s release etc, it all needs to change. I want to continue to support ND, but I will not if they don’t change things around. 

This franchise has mattered to me since it was released, and ND has been a company I’ve respected and praised since 2009. So naturally my opinions on it are very strong. Nonetheless, I am still looking forward to TLOU2, and I will purchase it as normal - not buying it at all will affect the neglected workers far more. It’s sad to see such negativity spread from something everyone used to be so excited about. It’s also heartbreaking to see so much transphobia and homophobia stem from this too. It’s only cementing the idea that video game companies need to push through with this rep despite all of the braindead fanboys opposing to it. It’s important to a lot of people. 

[itsclydebitches]

I can't remember if it was you or someone else who talked about it, but I wonder if the sharp turn into "all adults are now wrong and the younger generation is the only hope" is because of the current political climate surrounding us. I know RT and Miles are very liberal (I can't speak for Kerry or the other writers), and that they have retweeted some posts with the same sort of theme (pt 1)

This exactly. My issue has never been with RWBY’s messages, only its execution. Younger generation surpassing those who came before them? All girl power team? Dictators are Bad™? Queer rights? Fuck racism? Hell yes to all of it! The problem is simply that, more often than not, RWBY fails to accurately craft and implement the messages it’s aiming for. It’s not a show that’s particularly good at nuance (everyone has one (1) reaction to Ozpin’s vision) and when that nuance shows up it’s often ignored by the writing (Ironwood’s heroics, Blake asking Weiss not to get involved with the racist, Adam’s brand, Qrow’s alcoholism getting fixed off screen, Whitley left on the stairs at the end of the volume, Oscar going shopping, etc.) Which isn’t an issue with some aspects of storytelling, but these are all subjects that demand nuance. Intentions are great, but at the end of the day the viewer only has what we’re given on the screen. Just like a writer might go, “I wrote such a romantic relationship!” and the fandom might respond with, “Actually no. You may have intended to write something romantic but what we got was abuse,” RWBY has a long history now of the writers (presumably) thinking they produced something - a morally gray Ozpin, a villain Ironwood, satisfying queer rep, fill in your preferred blank here - and my side of the fandom is going, “I see what you wanted but that’s not what we got. And canon isn’t superseded by a tweet published weeks later that only some of the fandom ended up seeing. We’re well past adhering to the authorial voice.” 

Which isn’t rare by any means. Stories try and fail at things all the time. In regards to RWBY and RWBY criticism, the disappointing thing is that all of these controversial subjects invite an easy way of slandering other fans. I delete a lot of asks in my inbox akin to, “Just admit that you hate queer people” because the assumption is that if I’m criticizing the execution of something like the Blake/Yang relationship then I must really just hate them together. It’s a stance I can understand because some people do use criticism as an ever moving finish line: to them queer rep is never good enough to justify it’s place in the narrative. They just keep coming up with reasons for why it’s “bad writing” and thus shouldn’t exist. For me and RWBY it’s the opposite though. It’s because I’m invested in all these topics that I want them treated accurately and respectfully (at least however “accurately” and “respectfully” translates into a fantasy story). When we talk about something like generational differences it does no good to have your characters stand up and insist that they’re perfect, they never needed an adult’s help at all. Not unless the story intends to prove them wrong and/or liars and/or you’ve shown us that they’re right to say that. I’m all about media’s impact (though many sneer at the concept that media can actually influence us in any negative way) and we see that kind of mindset here on tumblr all the time. On my dash it’s most prevalent in conversations about queer history and internet safety: younger fans insisting loudly that they know best without even bothering to hear out those who are older than them - those who lived through these situations and thus have experience to impart. That kind of stand-your-ground-it’s-cool-to-say-‘fuck adults’ mindset is learned. So yeah, it’s just a silly animated series. It’s just a couple of scenes. But those scenes impart messages when a) the writing isn’t polished enough to display nuanced sides to the debate or b) the viewer isn’t primed to question whatever the characters are imparting. RWBY is popular and having that popular series suddenly getting its fanbase to identify with characters who treat others this way and doesn’t acknowledge them as villains/morally gray/at least making mistakes to learn from is... a bit concerning. The fans who insist that their faves could never have an impact on their behavior are the same fans who slam into my inbox to cuss me out about it. 

Even if you don’t care about how RWBY handles topics like racism, abuse, political power, generational divides, and how that handling reflects real world situations... that lack of nuance hinders the storytelling. It’s just not as good as it could be which, as you say, is a shame because there’s so much amazing potential. As a writer I get it, it’s damn hard, but if RWBY wants to tackle such subjects they need more revision time. The chance for someone to say, “Okay you want to say A and made a stab at it... but really you’re conveying C at the moment. We need to do X, Y, and Z to actually get to A.” 

[kurosawa-sun]

This rant has been sitting in my drafts for a good week, and after having some conversations with people in my cherry magic discord server, I might as well publish it since I still stand by the points I made here.

This is just a personal rant but like I notice quite a lot of people like to shit on yaoi/BL for being bad queer rep, and I get why especially since I’m queer myself. At the same time however, you gotta understand that the culture is very different in Asia and straight women reading BL is one of their few ways of exploring their sexuality. Like I remember reading and watching BL stuff way back when I didn’t know I was queer and assumed I was a cishet girl, and it was such a great space for me to explore my sexuality. And it just so happened that it was through BL that I realized oh I was maybe not straight at all and like oh maybe I don’t quite vibe with my assigned gender at birth. And sure you might say something about the problematic content but like for me who is a sex-positive advocate from a very sex-negative Asian society, I don’t like making value judgements on what gets people turned on (unless it’s super illegal shit, let’s make that clear).

I’m not saying that you should like BL, if you don’t like it, you don’t like it. But like at the same time maybe don’t say that they’re all inherently bad and shame the people who happen to enjoy the problematic content. People have different reasons for enjoying the content, and so long as it isn’t directly harmful or bigoted, I really don’t see why not. And like I personally criticize the shortcomings of BL and its straight female audience (I’ve had to deal with this annoying straight girl say that Magnus Bane from Shadowhunters was gay when he was goddamn bisexual). But at the same time I don’t make blanket value judgements of BL and its straight female audience as a whole, since I understand the context surrounding why the genre came about, and like I’ve watched many a show that is considered good queer rep by Western standards and I’ll still take issue with some other stuff they would portray in the show. 

Like I used to watch Junjou Romantica and it was definitely one of those shows with super problematic content, but I remember me watching and it was one of the many things that allowed me to explore my sexuality and my gender. and was a stepping stone to me realizing that I’m very bi and trans. Like I guess what I really want to say is I just feel weird whenever Westerners criticize BL, which had a Japanese origin and gained a huge fanbase in Asia, which has a very different cultural context. Like I can clearly see that you’re viewing it through a very Westernized framework which doesn’t allow for much nuance. 

[gumceline]

Heyo! On behalf of all the Bubbline and Gumshall shippers, I would like to apologize for all the hate you're getting/have gotten. This blog is awesome and you aren't doing anything wrong!

Oh thx it’s very sweet!

Truth be told it’s been decreasing more and more as time goes on, but it makes me VERY anxious whenever i associate with the AT community because i kinda expect to be sorta attacked whenever i do.

And it makes me sad, because i do like running this blog and drawing these characters and having fun, but it’s not easy running it with a lingering fear that every time i post something someone is gonna do well....yeah. It’s why I've spent a bit more time in other fandoms, which has done a lot of good for me, and was much needed because my experience in the AT fandom was just SO negative outside of some good friends that i appreciate.

I do want to be more active here, but i have to take it step by step and at my own pace.

I still love AT the show, love the characters, ect ect.

But i can’t deny the stuff i had to deal with made things harder for me, i’d probably be way more active in the fandom today if things had been better. I mean, i couldn’t even enjoy episode with marcy and pb together because of this and that really sucked.

the funny aspect is, i like all the different pairings (or as i call them, flavors) of sugarless gum (Meaning all 4 variations as a whole), i think they all provide entirely different and interesting takes quite honestly.

I have a lot of respect for marcy and pb as a ship, but i feel the fandom just ended up ruining them for me and made it hard for me to look at them anymore without just getting.....upset about the stuff i dealt with. The irony is i think if the fandom hadn’t been how it was, i’d probably love them a lot, but it’s hard to do much about it now.

They’re a good ship and i like their dynamic, my problems these days just stem from all the negativity from the fanbase at times, which is common in any fandom when it comes to shipping....but still. I’m apart of the star vs community and i don’t even think the shippers in that were nearly as rough, but then again, that’s it’s whole other thing.

I’m a multishippers and a crackshipper, i’m personally more flexible with ships cause shipping should kinda be fun then what it usually is in fandoms.

I personally get why people are so protective of pb and marcy as a couple, but i also think people should be allowed to ship them with other characters if they want to and not have people target them for it to such a heavy amount. 

Like i’m sure there are people out there who do it out of the reasons i’ve been accused of, but not everyone is and those people should not have been attacked how they were when they just had harmless fun.

i know why they’re protective of them as a ship, because it was a step up for rep and means a lot to the community,  but i never think the best thing to do for any ship (Whether gay or straight), is to bully the people into feeling bad that it’s not their favorite ship.

that never works out.

Honestly i’m glad i get the freedom to kinda headcanon the characters sexualities, because it kinda makes things more fun for me and i like having that creative freedom. ^-^

(I was annoyed being told i was “Straight-washing”, when i saw neither character as straight, never had, and never treat either as straight on this blog either)

Honestly, i’d prefer to have a solidarity with pb and marcy or pg and ml (Though they’ve actually been pretty alright, probably because they weren’t prominent characters in the series, also probably because fiolee is kinda a popular thing), and have all four ships be treated as their own separate fun ships because they kinda are....but i probably won’t ever get that luxury.

I think considering the situation we’re just always gonna have people targeting this ship and people who like this ship as being terrible people, even if the people doing it, like bubbline themselves possibly.

Heck, i like gumshall pretty well because that ship hadn’t been soiled for me but there you do (But then again i like gumball a lot and a lot of the crackships and regular ships with him i just find fun XD)

But i hope things do improve, i can’t speak for the fandom much now because i’m not as involved since the fandom kinda makes me anxious. But unless the people are legit terrible people who have ill intent, i just don’t want to see the fandom beating on people who aren’t doing actually anything wrong.

You can respect bubbline and think it’s cool, and also like shipping the characters with other characters too, and it’s totally cool if you like bubbline, but also like gumceline, more power to you honestly.

I think the more the merrier.

[skamsideblog]

I think it's a shame really. The discussion is dead. There is too much dictating what other people can write. Attacking and labeling people if they don't agree with you. People are not willing to listen different sides and opinions. I don't remember it being like this when it was Sana's season. People were allowed to have different opinions about her and also write about other characters.

I’m guessing this is in reference to me saying the tag during OG and France was everything but Sana/Imane?

No one is saying you can’t have a differing opinion. You can express yours, that’s kinda what a blog is for. Similarly, I can express mine within my blog. And in my experience, there’s a pattern within Skam for the Sana counterpart to be pushed aside during her season. With the OG it was usually with evak, both positive and negative posts about them. With France, not only did her season make imane apologise to an explicit racist and fetishiser, but also a significant portion of the fanbase (I’m not saying everyone I know of some nice France stans) seemed to only care about Eliott and Lucas- it was a major reason why I pretty much only watched s4 of France through gifs I saw on my dash, and ended up blocking a load of France blogs.

Don’t get me wrong: I get why people get fixated on the ‘evaks’. I’m a bi girl myself, and skam season 3 actually helped me come to terms with that when I first watched it. They’re important rep and I’m grateful for every version of them. But people act like Sana or Imane or Amira isn’t that same important representation for a huge number of people who have to deal with a lot of shitty ‘representation’ in media, so yeah. I get pissed off when the only non white girl with lines (considering Jamilla only got one scene where she had lines, and in s2 was portrayed as threatening and aggressive) from the OG gets less episodes than the previous three white mains. I get irritated when the tag during a Sana season is flooded with everyone but Sana, and Sana gets excluded from her own narrative. Maybe that isn’t your experience with the skam fanbase. But it’s what I remember seeing. So, yes, of course I’m going to call it out because skam is a show I love and it’s disappointing to see them fuck up. If you genuinely believe people are overreacting to Sana/Imane/Amiras treatment in their season, then express why, don’t just go to the outdated ‘people are oppressing my freedom of speech by expressing their own issues with a show’, especially not when people expressing those issues is keeping the discussion that you claim to be dead alive. If you disagree with an opinion, express it in the tag, ignore the people who’re just looking for a fight, and actually discuss with the people who are debating it.

But also, quick point, no one has to listen to my(or anyone else’s) views on skam or druck or any remake. Your tumblr experience is literally who you follow, and who you don’t have blocked. If posts you see are making you not enjoy something you want to enjoy, block the people posting those things, or try blocking commonly used tags. At the end of the day, you control what you’re reading on here. If you feel like you’re only seeing people who won’t listen to various opinions, get rid of them.

[eirikrjs]

How is it that the central aspect of the MT franchise is so overlooked compared to Pokemon or Digimon, seemingly both within the fandom and internally at Atlus?

I was talking about this with @joshquixote​ a bit, who mentioned this relevant quote from Pokemon creator Satoshi Tajiri from November 1999:

http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2040095,00.html

Tajiri: It’s interesting, because in Japan, everybody goes for Pikachu. In the U.S., the characters Ash [Satoshi in Japan] and Pikachu are grouped together. American kids seem to like that. In America there are more products sold with Ash and Pikachu together, not just Pikachu alone. I think Americans actually understand the concept of Pokemon better than the Japanese. The Japanese focus on Pikachu, but what I think is important is the human aspect–you need Ash. 

Basically, because Pokemon was initially just a monster collecting/trading game in Japan, Pikachu was perceived as being an individual PKMN; in the US, we got absolutely blitzed by a marketing bonanza for the series’ launch that heavily included Ash (particularly the anime), so the two were seen as inseparable. You know, in 1999. It’s probably different now, almost 20 years later.

There’s undoubtedly a split in perception between the US and Japan for Shin Megami Tensei’s demons, too. Here are some random thoughts about the topic (including those from a discussion with @sorenblr):

Japanese fans are naturally privy to every MT/SMT novel, game, book, anime, interview, etc. ever released while the English-speaking world has access to a fraction, much of that fraction from fan translations. The average JP SMT fan just has a better understanding of the series’ context and content than their non-JP counterparts. (If you are reading this blog, chances are that you aren’t a casual SMT fan, so this might not apply to you.)

SMT features more Japanese demons than those from any other single region. It doesn’t mean the average Japanese person will know every single one, but they might still claim affinity with them in ways a Western player won’t. Ame no Uzume, Tenaga, and Waira are not household names here. A fair number know Amaterasu, but as a wolf.

Related to that, Japan’s religious systems of Shinto and Buddhism ensure that the average person there will be more familiar with polytheism than our monotheistic culture, including comparisons to Hindu deities imported to Japan through Buddhism; in the West we are most familiar with polytheism through Greek and Norse myths and only the Norse are well-repped in SMT (moreover, the famous names are generally high-level, which many players may never access). A good 75% (honestly, just a number I’m throwing out there) of any given SMT compendium has little significance to the average Western player.

Building off that, monotheism and Euro folklore figure in plenty (25% is still 100+ demons in recent games) and will probably be the most-recognized overall by Western SMT players. Angels, Fallen demons, Jack Frost, fairies, and Alice come to mind for this category. 

In a personal example that intersects of all the elements discussed so far, I read so many passionate defenses of Amemiya’s angel designs in SMT4, but I can’t remember a single one about the similarly bizarre looks for SMT4′s Japanese demons like Michizane, Koga Saburo, or Yamato Takeru. The interest or awareness for JP demons just isn’t correspondent among the English-speaking fanbase.

The lack of regularly introduced demons doesn’t help; the lack of new faces may cause the average player’s eyes to gloss over the old. Seeing Patrimpas for the third or fourth time isn’t going to ingratiate him further (or at all) in the hearts of players.

Some demons have become memes, for better or worse. Awareness of YHVH is high, as antagonistic depictions of him are rare; sometimes SMT is called the series “where you kill the Christian God,” which is amusing to me. Then there’s Mara, of whom only a small minority of non-JP SMT players seem to know his actual significance. And like Mara, some demons are able to coast by merely from their appearances alone, esp. “cuties” like Alice, Moh Shuvuu, Jacks, and Decarabia.

Other demons are remembered if they have exceptional utility. Daisoujou is popular in Nocturne not because he’s a mummified monk but for having essentially unlimited healing at a relatively low level, as are the other Fiends for their exceptional resistances. There’s probably disappointment when the same demon isn’t broken from game to game.

Demon mechanics probably don’t agree with a lot of people, either, lending them the effect of negative conditioning. Complaints about demon negotiation and even fusion are common. Even though fusion is easier with manual skill selection, demons still require a level of micromanagement that may be too much for some. Demons are also meant to be expendable in ways that say, Pokemon, aren’t.

Speaking of things that are expendable, expectations of what “monsters” are from other RPG series likely affect attitudes towards SMT’s demons. Plenty of RPG series use names of mythological beings for its disposable mobs, to the point that it’s unusual when they don’t. Worse, SMT doesn’t do a great job of informing people that there may be something more to its demons. Even as a “monster collecting” series, SMT probably come out too late in the US after the likes of Pokemon, Digimon, or Monster Rancher to have much impact with its traditional formula.

Demons/personas will also forever be overshadowed by human characters. This is to be expected as they are the focus of the narrative. People like me who really don’t give a damn about the humans are squarely in the minority.

Finally, and this is likely isn’t as relevant now, but there’s how Atlus USA initially marketed Nocturne. It didn’t get anything near a Pokemon Red/Blue campaign, but it did get this fascinating print ad. Here’s a snippet:

“The RPG for the GTA generation.” “Dark and gritty.” “Controversy.” “Mature.” “Post-apocalyptic.” I mean, it’s all accurate, and then there’s the “over 100 different demons” as a caption for an image of Dante, the Geralt of 2004. Dark, mature armageddon + lots of demons to collect. But really, I’m not implying they made any mistakes here; these are the limits of marketing. Calling it “Religions Battle 200X” and describing it as “a granular exercise in the representation of myth” doesn’t make for enticing ad copy.

This answer was difficult to write; ultimately, the exact reasons why the demons are overlooked are entirely subjective, but I think the common patterns have been identified here. Against all odds, the value of myth in SMT is something the individual player needs to discover for themselves. Look no further than my own example, as when I first played Nocturne in 2004 pre-myth I found it boring, then a year later post-myth it transformed into one of my most engaging game experiences ever.

I think SMT’s biggest fault re:demons is that it doesn’t provide them enough in-game context for the Western audience; they’re plopped into a modern setting and they want to kill you, or they look like Sarutahiko and they want to bland you to death. To get the most out of it, SMT basically requires you have outside knowledge of myth and religion, which is a lot to ask for a general audience. Unfortunately, I don’t see demon awareness improving anytime soon.

[inkagnedotv]

During a recent interview on VladTV, DJ Akademiks recalled an instance in which Nicki Minaj allegedly attempted to “silence” him by trying to get him fired and went as far as threatening him and his family. According to Akademiks, his issues with Minaj began to heat up in 2019, when he commented on the rap star’s breakup with Meek Mill and shared his belief that Meek’s career would not be negatively impacted by the split. Akademiks’ words got back to Minaj, who began inquiring about his whereabouts before contacting him via direct messages on social media. “You’ve been mad since I made a joke about you with Joe on my show,” said host DJ Vlad as he read off the alleged texts Minaj sent to Akademiks. “The people you rep won’t stop your job from being broke. I know too much about your family for you to be playing with me, you h*e a** rat. Where you at now? Send your number. My husband wants to talk to you. If I were you, I’d send my number ’cause you’re gonna make it worse.” Previously, Akademiks commented on the artwork of her 2014 single, “Looking Ass,” which used the iconic photograph of Malcolm X holding a firearm while peering out of his window, which he felt was in poor taste. “That’s a reason why social commentary will come into play,” explained Ak of his stance regarding the artwork. “So, I gave my opinion on that and it clearly wasn’t well received. And at this time, I’m getting hundreds of thousands of views on everything I speak about and I believe I got some legal notice that it was copyrighted, which it’s not and I fought against it, but I was very public in fighting against that. I said, ‘Nicki is trying to take my sh*t down.’ I let it be known and it ended up staying up.” However, Akademiks credited the Queen artist with building such a powerful and devoted fanbase that supports her without question, against any and all detractors. “You know why Nicki’s good? I wanna say great…her audience, and she has the best audience in Hip-Hop. Them Barbz, they will never believe anything—and Nicki does a good job of not making it apparent. —Preezy Brown, VIBE Follow @inkagnedotv #djakademiks #hiphopblog #hiphopculture #musicindustry #nickiminaj https://www.instagram.com/p/CaPs-kKreeK/?utm_medium=tumblr

[shirlleycoyle]

A Totally Reasonable Explanation for Elon Musk Tanking Tesla’s Stock Price

It's Friday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk is making a ton of reckless tweets, and the sun is out, so now seems like a good time to blog. I've got an argument for why Musk tweeting that Tesla's stock price is too high—theoretically an insane thing for a CEO to do, especially given that he's already been barred by the SEC from tweeting about Tesla stock without permission—is the least ludicrous thing he's tweeted today. It involves Bitcoin, because honestly we all died in 2012 and reality is now a Möbius strip of punishment.

After Musk's tweet, Tesla stock immediately fell by over 10 percent.

Two things first: One, Musk equating life-saving social distancing measures to fascism is ridiculous and irresponsible. Two, take for granted that Tesla investors, especially of the more casual Robinhood stock-picker variety, along with Tesla stans are losing it over Elon's tweet today. I would be too, if I'd overindexed on one stock that the CEO just tanked in the middle of an unhinged online fever dream. These are folks who believe in Musk not because of the original and beautiful Tesla dream of saving the planet, but because Tesla stock has a growth arc similar to Bitcoin.

Seriously, take a look:

Price of Bitcoin. Image: Coindesk

Tesla's stock price

I got the Bitcoin tracker from Coindesk, which does not go far enough back to track Bitcoin's price when it was under $100 in the early days, but these graphs have four notable, similar features: an early peak (for Bitcoin, this unfortunately starts where the graph shown starts, as Bitcoin hit its first major price peak as it got lots of attention in 2013 and 2014), a long trough, and later two peaks roughly 5-10x in size, followed by a shorter trough.

(This is where I'll just make the blanket note that Tesla is obviously a real company that makes real products that real people buy, and has done so for a long time; this fact, combined with the fact that its production numbers and earnings reports more directly affect its viability as a company than Bitcoin is seemingly affected by anything it itself does, has meant both that its stock price is more rooted in reality than Bitcoin's, and that its current boom cycle has been compressed into a very weird year of good corporate news, a global economic disaster, and erratic tweets. So while they're very disparate topics in a strictly economic sense, I'm not here to talk about The Economy, but instead trying to suss out Musk's need to post something seemingly so counterproductive.)

Tesla and Bitcoin aren't comparable in really any way other than one crucial thing related to their price: Tesla's stock value and Bitcoin's own value have both been dramatically influenced, not merely by the "market price" of the value they create, but by the psychology of both being assets that are highly recognizable, easily acquired, and (crucially) seemingly "obscure" enough that if you are in the know, you can get rich. More on that in a second. But to support this argument, take the fact that car company CEOs have perennially confused why Tesla is worth so much when it makes comparatively so few cars (isn't the market rational), and for Bitcoin, just take the fact that its price has never been rationally pegged to its utility as a currency alternative.

Instead, the prices of both are susceptible to the same hype cycle, based around four events in the lifecycle of a much-hyped, obscure tech investment that appeals to a certain type of investor looking for 10x gains.

First, the most important part is that each has clear “early adopter bubbles” that built fervent, rabid fanbases focused on the fact that they made a ton of money extremely quickly. Both of these bubbles then popped because there wasn’t actually enough fundamental utility/market success for either entity to sustain that initial bubble. Things settled down, but this initial bubble does two crucial things: First, it gives a proven narrative of an asset's ability to grow in value quickly, regardless of if that's rational or repeatable. Second, it creates a large fanbase of investors who have the stories to tell of their huge gains and every incentive to keep that narrative alive. Crucially, in the long term, these first bubbles look tiny now but they were huge growth at the time. That fact is all one needs to keep proselytizing.

That initial bubble is driven by people who genuinely are savvy investors in one way or another. They knew about something hot before other people did, and were enough in the scene to understand what they were buying. They're not going to be hurting too bad when the stock/Bitcoin prices correct themselves, which is why we have a long trough to follow.

Sure, everyone got excited there for a minute, but let's be real: both Bitcoin and Tesla weren't ready to sustain that level of expectation. So you've got a few years of growth for the company/cryptocurrency that irons out a ton of fundamentals; Bitcoin got easier to use, Tesla started making and selling a whole lot of nice cars. They were, for sake of me being concise here, succeeding at their functional goal in ways they weren't during their first bubble.

This is a good thing, so why wouldn't this success drive their prices higher? Well, lack of attention is one thing; negative attention and skepticism following a burst bubble is another. But most likely this is actually when both were priced correctly. You see some slow, steady growth commensurate with the successes of both entities, which is what you'd expect since the fundamental output of each requires them to grow more linearly than the pure exponential-growth tech entities they were viewed as by investors in their first bubble.

As both Tesla and Bitcoin improved their fundamentals, they both had savvy, highly-vocal fanbases of investors who a) had prior wins in the first bubble to prove their bonafides and b) every reason to point at each success and say "see, trust us, this thing is gonna go to the moon again."

(It's notable that both Bitcoin and Tesla have huge, very vocal fanbases built around subreddits, forums, and blogs focused largely on their investments' success. Every company has a fanbase somewhere, but Ford forum posters aren't talking over and over about when their investments are going to pay off. They're talking about Mustangs.)

I would not be surprised that in a moment of clarity, he decided to tank the stock because high prices and high expectations from stans were setting him up for more long term scrutiny than him being in trouble with the SEC short term

Eventually, all of that success-as-a-useful-product growth and here-comes-another-boom talk sustains a significantly bigger growth, driven by the fact that a) there is the fervent fanbase from the first explosion, b) years of those people pointing to “just trust us, it’s ready to blow!“, and c) the price-accelerating psychological effect of hitting new price peaks after years of dormant growth. No one wants to miss out on a sure bet, especially in the hallowed 10x world of highly-publicized tech investments, so this next peak is HUGE, helping sustain the myth.

This peak is unsustainable too, but unlike that very first bubble long ago, this peak is built on a foundation of stress. It's not propped up by a bunch of investors who understand a good roughly well enough to take a flyer on it, like every early Bitcoin person did, but on the mere idea that a stock has to go up, because everyone is talking about it! I mean, really, I have absolutely no idea what's actually going on in Tesla factories. Are they doing a good job or not? Who knows! Big-time institutional investors would, but I have no idea. Ultimately though, that's irrelevant, because I'm not buying a potential fast-growth stock like Tesla based on whether the price is based in reality, I'm buying it based on whether I think I can get rich as shit really quickly! And for that, investors only need the IDEA that it can go up, and buy-in from other bandwagon investors who are also buying in.

You know the story by now: everything comes crashing back to Earth, but rather than the initial small, fervent, obsessive fanbase, now you have a whole bunch of NEW folks who saw the potential to get 10x as rich in half the time in a significantly more mature market (which is impossible), and so they all lose their goddamn shit through the next trough, and all this attention (and smart narrative building by Tesla) accelerates into a second peak.

In the case of Bitcoin, the price stabilized somewhere around half its peaks as a bunch of people lost their money and exited, and others held on figuring they could afford to wait for more growth. And all along the original grifters got paid, but the folks who lost by buying too late on the first and second peaks lost their minds (and wallets). In the end, the Bitcoin system has been so perennially bogged down by boom and bust cycles, with many power players moving in and out over the years, that it's moved into a world a whole lot different than its original promise.

Musk is fully steeped in the VC-to-forum-poster hype cycle outlined above, so I have to believe he knows that eventually valuations can get so high—not based on actual product success but on the psychology of wannabe exponential growth investors—that shareholder demands end up steering the company more than he’d like, especially since he takes obsessive control over the company's image, operations, and stock price.

So I would not be surprised that in a moment of clarity, he decided to tank the stock because high prices and high expectations from stans were setting him up for more long term scrutiny than him being in trouble with the SEC short term. And maybe then the Tesla price stabilizes again with lower expectations as he continues to try to build a profitable car company in the midst of a global economic collapse, which is hard enough without a bunch of Bless You Stonks God reply guys and r/WallStreetBets bros battering your mentions for months by begging you to save them from economic ruin by doubling their Tesla investment in the next three weeks.

Hey, it worked for Bitcoin, more or less, but instead of a master plan by one guy it collapsed because Bitcoin people are insufferable con artists.

A Totally Reasonable Explanation for Elon Musk Tanking Tesla’s Stock Price syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[thefirstknife]

Listing out your identities doesn't really do anything here so I'm not sure what that's supposed to signify. Members of the LGBT+ community can be homophobic.

More importantly, they were aware of the information. When O14 was confirmed, the topic of the word "brothers" being used was brought up. It was explained many times over and over and over.

Actually, your partner posted this post in November before they were even confirmed, telling us, the rest of the poor community, that based on the Destiny wiki, they're brothers. After many members of the community reasonably replied to the post debunking the "brothers" thing, your partner deleted the post (which is why I'm linking it from another source since the original is no longer there).

Screenshots because y'all are so keen on deleting stuff:

The post sits at over 350 notes with many other people chiming in. Including your partner who reblogged from spartanlocke (meaning they have seen the replies with explanations):

Upon deletion, however, they posted this. Meaning they did not retain a single correction from the entire fanbase and decided to keep ignoring the facts and keep claiming that the rest of us are deliberately and knowingly shipping incest, including Bungie's official writing team.

Screenshot to prevent more deletions:

Your partner claimed they're brothers, got corrected by multiple people, wrote a guilt-tripping reply about how they're "fucking sorry" and then retreated back to their blog and continued to claim they're brothers.

Continuing to call people who enjoy the canon relationship as "shippers" further proves how little value you hold over official representation which is hard to come by. By calling us "shippers," you're painting us in the negative light like some unhinged weirdos who are out there attacking people over fictional shipping. Meanwhile, your partner is the one who is upsetting REAL GAY MEN because they are in love with a fictional character and can't get over the fact that that fictional character is in a canonical relationship.

Yes, gay rep is important. I agree with that. But what is the point if it causes you to turn on someone in the community like a rabid dog because they simply don't like a ship you like? You're just doing the homophobe's job for them.

We are pointing out homophobia. Your partner is being homophobic. These two are not the same. Nobody would've said anything if your partner didn't post about how Bungie including art of O14 in the TWAB was bad, despite that being art made by a gay man (who has received homophobic attacks since the art was featured in the TWAB) about a canon gay relationship. During PRIDE, no less. Bungie is supporting their LGBT+ community and your partner is mad about them for it.

They specifically continued calling the relationship a retcon (untrue) of brothers (untrue) in order to "cater to fans." Why, yes, Bungie is catering to the LGBT+ community. I thought that was a good thing? They're one of the few companies that actually put the effort into making actual representation, even if they sometimes make mistakes. But they're not a corporation that hangs a pride flag on their profile picture while continuing to ignore LGBT+ fans: they are dedicated to supporting and amplifying the voices of said fans.

Your partner, however, is angry about them for doing so. What other conclusion can be drawn from this? Enlighten me.

I've proven that your partner has been more than adequately informed about the truth, since November. Yet, they kept claiming the opposite which is quite honestly disgusting beyond simply homophobia. It's disgusting to think that the entire community AND Bungie are over here gleefully supporting incest. It's demeaning and insulting to the community and to the writing staff at Bungie.

I don't care if you both support other LGBT+ relationships in Destiny. Saint and Osiris are by far the most prominent and most important, given how they're both extremely important characters that feature prominently in the story and the lore and gameplay and how much they shatter some of the negative stereotypes about gay men (Saint especially). It's easy to performatively support lore-only gay characters who never show up in the game but then turn around and do everything in your power to bash a canon relationship of two characters that are front and center of the game. Besides Devrim and Marc, the others aren't even confirmed. Devrim and Marc don't interact in the game. We don't even know what Marc looks like. You could've at least chosen better examples for this, honestly, but even then, none of the other confirmed gay men rep come even close to the value of Saint and Osiris.

If you truly support LGBT+ people, their rights and the community, do better. Being hateful is not incurable and I am open to people who change and throw out views rooted in bigotry. Your partner acknowledged their mistake many months ago. They however haven't stopped attacking people over the same thing to this day. Directly or indirectly attacking, to clarify.

Do better. Some self-reflection will do you both good. You're still young and I believe you can correct your views and behaviour. I'm not invested in this because of some fictional characters: they aren't being hurt, they're not real. I'm invested because this behaviour hurts members of the community in a way that's far more insidious than gamer dudebros hurling slurs on twitter.

why do we exist? just to suffer? every day i see o/14

[voluntarydemise]

The 100 S3 Hiatus Diary

Once again, let me present to you a chronicle of our fandom’s most glorious hiatus moments. In truest hyperbole fashion we did not scale back after last year’s already impressive BS recordings. Here’s all the drama we managed to fit into the 257 days between the Season 3 finale on May 19, 2016 and the Season 4 premiere on February 1, 2017:

FYI: Entries are mostly focused on the Twitter fandom unless otherwise noted. Also beware, this diary deliberately generalises from the loud few to the many. 

Day 2: Emma Caulfield of EW writes a *love letter* bashing Bellamy into a verb and adjective. Half of the fandom cackles, other half is ready to “bellamy” her. 

Day 3: Ongoing belittling of Jasper’s PTSD in tandem with outrage from same people that show didn’t depict enough PTSD victims.

Day 6: #GiveBellamyBlakeABoyfriend circulates and is amusingly shared by lovers and haters.

Day 7: Kass Morgan is confronted with fandom members defacing and even burning her books. Because we are classy.

Day 10: Tumblr heats up when Johnny Depp beating Amber Heard gets compared to how Bellamy treats Clarke. Because bisexuality. Oh yes.

Day 11: Devon zings Harry Styles - and popstars in general - for trying to act. Somewhere Shawn Mendes cries a tear. 

Day 12: The Fandom-is-Broken article hits. Outrage everywhere, while our fandom is like “yup, sounds about right”. 

Day 15: Bob at Phoenix con says Bellamy wouldn’t have sided with Pike had Clarke returned earlier. Somehow he gets hate for that. Still unclear why. Most likely for no reason at all. 

Day 16: More Phoenix con: Bob utters word “YET”, causes avalanche. Emma Caulfield tweets her and Bob’s are besties now. Fandom responds in typical forgiving ways. 

Day 18: Tumblr has Brollexa gaining traction among BCers, the polyamorous turn it into Clexamy. Not appreciated by the CL fandom. Devon tweet-deletes, shits on cast members for making money off cons instead of donating to charity.

Day 21: Eliza and Bob get nominated for Teenchoice TV Chemistry. Disgust in CL fandom as entertaining as surprise in BC fandom. 

Day 23: Fan at Oz Comic Con asks Eliza about Chemistry nomination and gets booed. Bob speaks slloooowwwhhhuuurr to the iddiiiooootttss on twitter. Most likely entirely unrelated. 

Day 24: Eliza gets called fake/lost/drunk by BC fandom for voicing opinions about Bellarke. Beware of having opinions about ships.

Day 25: Bob replies to hate tweet. Backfires into him getting criticised for passive aggressively focusing on negativity only. 

Day 26: First hiatus hack! Eliza’s instagram. Leads to Alycia unfollowing her. Fandom entertained for a while. Plus the gem of someone comparing Lexa’s death to the Orlando shooting.

Day 28: Alycia cancels Brazil con. In a roundabout way it’s Bob’s fault.

Day 31: On the shipping front Bob  & Shampoo compete against Lexa & Bullet. Because why not. 

Day 33: Somehow BC fandom hits jackpot by criticising both Adina and Mike on same day. For not being pro-BC enough. Adina! Mike! 

Day 35: Layne Morgan attacks Ben Batemen for elevating himself to lgbt+ spokesperson. Fanbase first stunned, then divided. 

Day 37: Second hiatus hack! Layne’s phone. Apparently private numbers get leaked, some idiots message Jason’s wife.

Day 41: Third hiatus hack! (@)emiliascara hacks into Marcus Catsaras’ (Alycia’s boyfriend) icloud, finds footage of him cheating. Catsaras deletes his twitter/fb accounts. Because hell has no fury like a riled-up CL fandom.

Day 42: Lindsey jumps in to fight hackers, (@)morleydebnam jokes about hacking Lindsey.

Day 44: Hacker exposed as guy from Toronto (Michael Brand/Bahramian). 

Day 46: CL fandom overruns and impressively wins 9 of 11 E!Online polls. Still peeved over other fandoms bonding and voting against them. 

Day 48: Jarod speaks up after Alton Sterling shooting. Ends with him getting attacked over *representation* issues. 

Day 52: Eliza vs Alycia in Radiotimes quarter finals. Which fosters minor drama.

Day 56: Layne officially disinvited from clexacon. 

Day 57: Some panelists boycott clexacon after Layne’s exit. Meanwhile the gullible have a clickbait-freakout over O killing Bellamy. 

Day 58: Ben Bateman steps back from clexacon allies panel. (@)riserellamy makes it their mission to get all Arryn-haters blocked by Bob. 

Day 59: Eliza talks freely and excessively about Lexa and Clexa at Brazil Con. BC fandom really wishes she wouldn’t. 

Day 60: From the fanfic policing front: Author gets such harsh attacks for writing Lexamy they pull the fic. 

Day 61: S3 DVD is out! Deleted scenes reheat old rage. While Ricky retweets shade about him not being in the bloopers.

Day 62: #OlicityMafiaExposedClexaParty happens. CL fandom first fandom ever to cheat in a poll. 

Day 64: She said “ship”.

Day 65: Whole fandom aflame over the shit/ship debacle. Shit memes everywhere. Aaron doesn’t give a SHIT. Eliza probably avoids her mentions. Tumblr births Bellarke Drags. The best of days.

Day 66: clexasources promotes WB survey asking people to criticise show. Eliza shall be saved by cancellation. 

Day 67: ELSchaaf claims Eliza speaks condescendingly of Bellarke because she’s threatened by Bob’s popularity. Fandom appalled. In conjunction CLs figure out ELSchaaf is involved with Unity Days. 

Day 68: ELSchaaf on tumblr rampage, invites haters to call her names at con in person. Unity Days reacts swiftly and removes ELSchaaf. 

Day 70: Bellarke Shit necklace sparks controversy. 

Day 73: Wizard Con: Marie says Clarke has *nappy* hair which Eliza laughs at. Racism outrage in some fandom corners. 

Day 75: Jason’s SDCC talk about bi-Clarke getting “with everyone” resurfaces. Not the most well received. clexasources deactivates after Bob+Eliza photo post leads to attacks by followers.  

Day 78: Supposed insider troll Jason Blue stirs up rumour drama of Octavia dying. 

Day 82: Bellarke fanart repurposed as Braven fanart. Bob-birthday charity criticised for being organised by a BC shipper. 

Day 84: Pedowitz stands behind show at TCAs, does neither criticise nor cancel it on the spot, as some had hoped. 

Day 103: Fanfic policing, part 2: Bellamy goes down on Clarke in the commander’s throne. People - ignorant of the concept of *fanfiction* - are mad. 

Day 106: Eliza posts candid pic with guy-boy-friend. Apparently this makes her a lesser lgbt+ ally. 

Day 111: Fanfic’s blowjobgate! Briller&Harper fic on kinkmemes ignites long and nasty Bellarke fanfic community wars. Who gets to and with whom and with how many is not the author’s choice alone. 

Day 125: Tumblr aflame over Bellamy hating Aurora Blake, with usual shades of misogyny and racism. 

Day 130: HYPE article about ADC at Copenhagen Con calls out fans for slightly inappropriate fan behavior. More inappropriate fan behavior in reaction leads to article edits. 

Day 132: Kim retweets Fa Panini’s cute Becho fanart. BC fandom takes that as confirmation of things to come. Mild panic. 

Day 135: A clearly mangled and misrepresented SDCC comment about Clarke and love interest in S4 causes freakout. Because fandom will forever step into all clickbait traps willingly. 

Day 144: The usual bi-monthly kerfuffle about Clarke being forgotten as bi-rep in article. 

Day 145: Layne Morgan sick of TV bi girls ending up with men. Not that stats have discredited this stereotype at all. 

Day 155: Supposed insider troll Jason Blue claims insider cancellation knowledge. Insider arguments quickly debunked. 

Day 159: Photoshopped Variety tweet circulates, claiming show cancellation. Mo Ryan refutes it. 

Day 165: Lindsey stumbles into sexypilgrim drama. Apologises later for wishing people would get involved in causes beyond online outrage. 

Day 166: Press day! Drama day! Fandom-uneducated Nadia voices “Luna is stronger than Lexa”. She may forever feel the consequences. 

Day 167: Nadia tweets “Fiction”, deletes account. #NadiaDeactivatedParty follows. Eliza and later Arryn claim account is fake. Fandom thinks Eliza would rather lie than defend Nadia and her anti-Lexa statement. 

Day 170: Meanwhile in the fanfic warzone: “Bellamy rapes Lexa” gets countered with “Lexa castrates Bellamy”. 

Day 190: Bob reaches annual patience-for-twitter threshold, carries out annual twitter deactivation. States he was made to join. Fandom: lol, ok, see you in a bit. 

Day 199: Bellarke and Clexa both in same Hottest-Ships-of-the-Year list. But fandom can’t share nice things. 

Day 201: Guess who’s back on twitter, guys?

Day 216: BC-shipping jewellery artist called out for making money off Clexa art. Not allowed in the age of receipts. 

Day 219: In spirit of Christmas, Aaron issues Lexa apology. Fandom - less spirited - counters it’s 9 months too late, and never enough. 

Day 221: Katie affirms in slightly too bitter way that show is more than just Clexa. Bad move, girl.

Day 222: (@)bellamysbriller - whom Katie retweeted the day before - is exposed for catfishing and bullying. 

Day 228: More jewellery controversies, as jewellery donations to charities can only come from people who’ve never made controversial statements. 

Day 233: clexaspoilers surfaces, claims access to screeners, reveals Clexa parts. Fandom calls it baiting to make them watch, even though account claims now they DON’T have to watch. 

Day 238: BC fandom gets high on SHE HAS BELLAMY, and actually manages to trend for once. Stunning friends and foes alike.

Day 241: Unity Days report of Lindsey supposedly saying Bellarke is boring. Lindsey gets attacked and goes on twitter detox. BC fandom to blame.

Day 243: Fourth hiatus hack! Ricky’s phone. Beware of Ricky nudes. 

Day 245: Alycia’s management removes The 100 from “known for” section on IMDB. BCers shocked, CLs shrug. 

Day 248: BCers think 600 cookies might be helpful for show renewal. Laughs and eyerolls all around.

Day 249: S4 poster arrives. Cast, writers and fans partake in a who’s-who guessing game with silhouettes. Body shaming leads to #titsoutforeliza, someone leaks S4 callsheets and Funko whitewashes Raven and Bellamy. A busy day.

Day 252: CLs set up White House petition to get Jason fired. A single signature last we checked. 

Day 257: Final hiatus day: (@)the100leaked pops up to generously leak part of the Season 4 finale script and cause mass hysteria. Tadaaaaa! 

And that’s it! See you all next hiatus! Just kidding. I accept more entries, if you can link me to the evidence.

[junker-town]

Forget San Diego and L.A., these are the StubHub Chargers

The Chargers, stuck between the city they left and a city that doesn’t want them, are finally where they should be.

T11n pronounces his name “Twin,” because he is a twin, and that’s an important part of his identity. It also means that there could conceivably be two large diehard Chargers fans barreling through this impromptu dance floor setup in the StubHub Center parking lot (and there are space considerations). He’s part of We Charge LA, one of Los Angeles’ largest Chargers fan groups, established long before the team moved. The Chargers may have an identity crisis, but T11n’s got an answer for that.

“Southern California, Boy,” he tells me. “Make sure you use that slogan, kid.” T11n explains what he means by doing some call-and-response with a nearby fan.

“What do we rep? 619, right?”

619 baby, one hundred.

“I'm 323, right?”

Yeah, that's all day.

“So what is it? Southern California. Southern California dog. Fuck LA Chargers. Fuck San Diego Chargers. Southern California Chargers, that's what the fuck the team name should be.”

A row of tailgates called Thunder Alley has fans from all over Southern California, many from San Diego, and it feels like a block party. But Thunder Alley used to be much bigger, according to Jeff Dotseth, a former pre- and post-game host on the Chargers’ flagship network. “Even on the worst days in San Diego, tailgate city would be six of these, and now it's one.”

Relocation has been costly to the fanbase. Shawn Walchef, a barbecue restaurant owner in San Diego, was near the forefront of the Save Our Bolts movement to keep the team. Most of the people who had joined him then have moved on now that the team is in L.A.

“Maybe 20 percent remains of the Save Our Bolts group. And that's pretty much the fanbase, too,” Walchef says. “I have friends, they're no longer Chargers fans. They gave me their shit. We're a Charger bar, we have Charger gear, memorabilia. People are like, 'Well, aren't you going to take down all your Charger gear?' Absolutely not.”

Walchef and Dotseth both commute up from San Diego to see the team. Walchef is a diehard among diehards — he was inducted into the Pro Football Ultimate Fan Association this year. They’re part of the winnowed but rock-solid core that still believes in the Chargers despite so many good reasons not to. The Chargers left San Diego with a whimper after accepting a deal that left neither fans, nor players, nor ownership completely happy. Walchef’s estimation is consistent: Every person I speak to says that somewhere between 70-80 percent of San Diego fans no longer support the team. The organization, meanwhile, arrived in L.A. to apathy and almost no fanfare after the Rams beat them to the market.

In many ways, the Chargers deserve this. They’ve had to strain to fill the StubHub Center, their 27,000-seat temporary home, which normally serves as the home to the MLS franchise LA Galaxy. It’s the very picture of the Chargers’ decades of uneven success and the tense relationship between fans and ownership. They are a cheap ticket in a small venue that is maybe 85 percent full and half-filled — at least — with fans of the other team.

For a team that’s no longer San Diego and not yet Los Angeles, these can’t be the Southern California Chargers, all due respect to T11n. These are the StubHub Chargers, a team borne by the players and the fans who stayed, and only them, in this space, for as long as it lasts. As ownership bides its time waiting for a new stadium, and now that so many supporters have left, the Chargers’ endless journey to find themselves continues in a strange place.

“And that's unfortunate,” Dotseth says. “When I walk through this, I see a lot of people trying to put on a brave face, but I see a lot of people who are really heartbroken that it's not the normal routine.”

Photo by Tom Antl

The Chargers had an identity crisis from the start.

No one can quite pin down exactly where the team name came from, but a tale goes that the team’s then-owner, Barron Hilton, of Hilton Hotels lineage, held a naming contest, opened a letter that suggested “Chargers,” and didn’t bother reading another. The name reminded him of the bugle calls at USC games imploring fans to yell, “Charge!” — or perhaps he liked the affiliation with the Carte Blanche credit card he was releasing at the time; it’s unclear.

A Charger was never specifically a horse or a lightning bolt, which is what was drawn on the team’s first official shield. There’s no particular reason why the team came to be colloquially known as the “Bolts.” “Thunder Alley” is only tangentially related to a name that is itself tangentially related to whatever a “Charger” actually is. To make the situation muddier, a lot of Chargers fans outside StubHub Center wear Lucha masks.

Stadiums have been the crucible for the Chargers’ troubles. Team owner Dean Spanos fought with the city of San Diego for roughly 15 years to get a new stadium built to replace Qualcomm Stadium, a place that even San Diego legend Dan Fouts called a dump. Among dozens of proposals, none were ever good enough for San Diego nor the Chargers, and eventually a long game of chicken led us to where we are now: For three years, the Chargers will play in the smallest NFL stadium since the Oakland Raiders moved out of 22,000-person Frank Youell Field in 1965.

It’s strange to think that the Chargers’ old home, Qualcomm, was once regarded as an architectural marvel. The stadium ran the gamut of bad sports stadium features: obstructed seats, bare concrete, and home team locker rooms that were worse than most of the visitors’ quarters in the NFL. However, it was also considered a shining example of brutalist architecture, a structure that conveys both strength and functionality. When it was opened in 1967, it was cutting-edge, a forerunner of the trend of multi-purpose stadiums that could accommodate both football and baseball.

Qualcomm — initially called San Diego Stadium, then lovingly dubbed Jack Murphy Stadium after the longtime San Diego Union Tribune columnist — had the largest parking lot in the NFL, which gave it an unrivaled tailgate scene, one that begat Thunder Alley. And when the place rocked, its efficient, vertical design made sure that it ROCKED. After the first game ever played there, commissioner Pete Rozelle said, “It might be the best stadium I’ve ever seen.”

There’s an easy metaphor to make here about how time makes all things obsolete, and how a deteriorating stadium mirrored the team’s own struggles. But what the team has become — 4-12 in 2015, 5-11 in 2016, and 0-4 through four weeks — has a lot more to do with Spanos. After taking over as owner for his father in 1994, the same year the Chargers made their only Super Bowl, the team quickly declined.

Photo by Tom Antl

The Chargers wouldn’t record a double digit-win season again until 2004. After a franchise-record 14 wins in 2006, Spanos fired head coach Marty Schottenheimer because of a quick playoff exit and rumored insubordination. Another decade of squandered rosters under Norv Turner and Mike McCoy have culminated in the Chargers having won just nine of their last 37 games. Since 2010, they’ve made the playoffs just once.

Spanos might have been a sympathetic figure, but he withdrew from the public eye as the team struggled and the prospects of a new stadium sank to nothing. In his place, he propped up a PR consultant, and then fans withdrew as well.

Home games came to be dominated by opposing crowds. The last game ever played at Qualcomm was an awkward and somber loss in which the team was booed. A year before, when the team was still facing relocation, the players lingered on the field, celebrated a 30-14 win with fans, and reflected on what San Diego had meant to them.

Quarterback Philip Rivers gave an impassioned farewell to San Diego at the end of the 2015 season, then couldn’t muster up the energy to do it again in 2016, admitting that the farewell had “come and gone” by that point. The weariness of the final year was mutually felt.

Two years ago, I talked to Chargers, Raiders, and Rams fans about their feelings toward their favorite teams as they threatened to move. One of those fans was Andy Glickman, a former TV writer who lived in L.A., and yet swore he would stop rooting for the Chargers if they moved out of San Diego. He followed through on the threat, and more. Now he is often actively rooting against the team.

“Maybe I was so disgruntled, even as a fan, that the groundwork was laid for being a hater,” Glickman said. “As everything kind of went on — they drafted Mike Williams, and then he got hurt, and then I laughed.”

Robert Carlson still roots for the Chargers, though he lives in the San Diego area. He worked at a healthcare company that was on the same street as the Chargers’ practice facility. It wasn’t an easy decision to stay a fan, however, and most of his friends gave them up. His father is so mad at Spanos that his relationship with his son has become strained.

“It was one of the things that we bonded over. Now it's not there as much, and it's sad,” Carlson said. “He just gets so angry and negative towards them, I can't have a conversation with him about it. It just brings me down. It stinks because I used to hang out with him every week.”

That the Chargers left San Diego specifically for Los Angeles may be the team’s most spiteful act of all. In his statement announcing his decision to relocate the franchise, Spanos used more words to praise L.A. than to say goodbye to San Diego and its fans. The Chargers made a Fight for L.A. ad to court Angelenos, an endeavor that has only seemed to be successful at alienating San Diego. Whatever the Chargers are, it isn’t the diverse group of smiling regular folks seen in the ad saying things like, “Fight for Burbank.”

“If you're from Philadelphia and I move the Eagles, and I call them the Boston Eagles, you're not going to like that,” Glickman said. “Philadelphia to Boston is what, 90 miles? That's even closer than San Diego to L.A. You wouldn't even think of doing that.

“If you're trying to court San Diego fans, then don't fucking call them the Los Angeles Chargers.”

Photo by Tom Antl

The experience at StubHub Center is, truthfully, really good. The small concourse means you can get in the stadium, get food, and go to your seats quickly. The tickets were relatively cheap for “nosebleed” seats that won’t make your nose bleed at all. Every seat leans out over the action on the field, and the worst seat might be considered mediocre at another NFL venue, but I doubt it’d even be that bad.

The PA announcer warns you before kickoff that the cannon that shoots off after every Chargers score is very loud, but — oh boy — will it scare the shit out of you when the team kicks a short field goal you were only peripherally paying attention to. StubHub can get loud, and — though, yes, as many if not more Chiefs fans showed up for the Week 3 matchup in Carson — the Chargers fans that showed up make it sound as raucous as a stadium four times its size before the opening kick.

Their excitement dies down as the Chiefs scoot out to a 14-0 lead, but that’s to be expected. No one is under any delusions that the Chargers aren’t a bad team right now. When Rivers throws two interceptions before completing his first pass, everyone acknowledges, rightfully, that he’s playing like crap. But Chargers fans are proud of their crappy team, buster. And frankly, they’re tired of how the media have portrayed the crowds at StubHub by tweeting photos of empty seats before kickoff (they’re right, those photos are unfair).

“I was watching Inside the NFL, and they were like, 'Oh it only holds 27,000, the players are used to playing in front of 70,000,’” Brett Atkins tells me. “And I'm like, You sonovabitches, you haven't even been here yet. Why don't you come down here and experience it before you start trashing it.”

Photo by Tom Antl

Sandy and Brett Atkins

Atkins and his wife, Sandy, bought season tickets. Brett became a fan because he started working in San Diego during the Chargers’ Super Bowl run in 1994. Sandy is actually a lifelong Raiders fan, but she wears a Chargers jersey nonetheless, and she cherishes her chances to study a number of NFL teams.

“Wearing a Chargers jersey as a lifelong Raiders fan, isn’t that sacrilegious?” I ask.

“No.”

“Yes,” Brett says.

“I'm a football fan,” Sandy says. “I like all of the teams. I thought the Seahawks played awesome in the preseason, and so did the Chargers. They're really good, close games. When are you going to get this chance to be so close up?”

It’s hard to coax the same vitriol for Qualcomm out of fans that media and ownership seemed to have. Shittiness can even elicit something like pride as long as it’s shared shittiness. Solidarity is forged out of trying circumstances. Nick Frost and Jeff Blauer went to Chargers games for years despite how angry the team made them, if only because they were together. They brought their sons to the Chiefs game.

“Here's my son who was conceived in old Jack Murphy stadium,” Blauer says, pointing to Kyle Blauer, who had walked up to the conversation from the other side of their car.

“What?”

“You didn't know that?”

“It was in a porta-potty,” Frost says.

They can’t deny that the Chargers have a better home right now. Frost took his father to the Week 2 home opener against the Dolphins and says that his old man was blown away.

“My dad — who had pretty good seats, he had press level seats when he was in San Diego — he sat down and went, 'man,'“ Frost says. “You're just right there. It's intimate. If we can get people to get out of their seats and cheer a little bit more, we'll be good.”

Photo by Tom Antl

From left to right, Nick Frost, Alex Frost, Jeff Blauer, Kyler Blauer

That intimacy is intentional. Soccer stadiums put fans closer to the action by design. Bruce Miller — a senior architect for Populous, a Kansas City design firm that has worked with MLS on six stadiums — explained to me that NFL stadiums need deep sidelines for dozens of players, officials and cameramen to stand and walk, so their first rows tend to be set back and up high. Soccer players, on the other hand, sit when they’re not playing, so the first row of fans can come up almost to the pitch.

“Soccer is really an incredible experience because of the fans,” Miller says. “They drive the energy in the building. They create a lot of noise. There isn't a lot of pumped in music going on because the fans are literally chanting and singing and playing drums the entire 90 minutes.”

The fans power the stadium in soccer stadiums, essentially, and they could power football stadiums if StubHub is an indication. For the start of the second half, I sneak down to the first row of the north end zone where Walchef, Dotseth, and many of the same people I had met earlier in Thunder Alley are sitting. From there, I was practically eye level with the players when they lined up on the field, and a shout away — maybe 10 feet — from back of the end zone.

Early in the fourth quarter, as the Chiefs were backed against us facing first-and-10 in a 17-10 game, the crowd was as loud as it had been at any point since kickoff. Linebacker Jahleel Addae pointed right at us — Walchef, Dotseth, Boltman, NFL Road Warrior, and me, half-assedly maintaining professional decorum — and waved his arms to implore us as we made eye contact and obliged.

Then Kareem Hunt ripped off a 20-yard gain to give the Chiefs a first down at the 26-yard line. To reiterate: The Chargers aren’t very good. But for a few moments, that was very easy to ignore, presuming it mattered in the first place. Down at the bottom, I saw fans and athletes commune without middlemen, in a space that they defined themselves.

Photo by Tom Antl

Frost says he’ll have season tickets for as long as the team is at StubHub. After that, he’s unsure whether he’ll be able to afford seats when the the Chargers move into Los Angeles Stadium with the Rams.

“I figure for three years, we're going to have a great time, and after that we're probably done,” Frost says, then points at a palm tree next to his car. “But this tree is ours. We own this spot.”

Los Angeles Stadium won’t just be a place to watch football. It’ll be part of a “sports and entertainment district” on top of the old Hollywood Park Racetrack that has been compared to an NFL version of Disney World. Around the stadium there will be a 300-room hotel, a 6,000-seat performance center, 1.5 million square feet of retail and office space, 2,500 homes, and 25 acres of parks, all on a 300-acre plot. It is by far the most expensive sports development project ever — one that, even when adjusted for inflation, could have bought Lambeau Field’s original construction costs 566 times over.

We know what the future holds. Al Michaels will fawn over the facility at some point early in the 2020 season, and then it will be fawned over again — probably by an in-his-prime Tony Romo — when it hosts Super Bowl LVI. Beyond that, you probably won’t notice that the Rams and Chargers are playing in perhaps the greatest sports arena ever built. You’ll be watching on TV, and that experience has remained largely unchanged for almost 80 years — 11 guys in one set of jerseys squaring off against 11 other guys in another set of jerseys on top of a flat green expanse.

Photo by Tom Antl

You almost certainly won’t be getting in Los Angeles Stadium. The price of tickets to an NFL game has increased by nearly 50 percent in the last 10 years, according to Statista — from $62.38 in 2006 to $92.98 in 2016 — with newer stadiums generally commanding higher prices. Last year, you could see the 2-14 49ers in two-year-old Levi’s Stadium for $139 a ticket, or the 12-4 Chiefs in 34-year-old Arrowhead Stadium for $128.

Or better, you could stay home for nothing. Los Angeles Stadium will be conveniently located 20 minutes from LAX and feature 260 suites decked in the latest in executive couture. It isn’t being built for Rams and Chargers fans. It is a $2.66 billion bug lamp for suckers.

For the Rams and Chargers, that may be just fine. They’re at one end of a transaction and that’s that. Dotseth argues that the NFL outgrew San Diego, and it’s hard to disagree: “We were not, as a community, ready to put down $25,000 for a personal seat license. We were not ready to pay $75 for parking. We wanted everything to stay 1983, and it wasn't going to do that.”

The next question is whether the NFL may be outgrowing the NFL. The Chargers and Rams have faced the most ridicule of any two teams this season for their stadium and attendance problems, but even the 49ers, owners of a state-of-the-art facility, can’t put people in the stands. The team screwed up in so many ways. To name three: It was built an hour of traffic-hell outside San Francisco; the turf was one of the worst in the league; and the designers never considered that fans might not want to sit under searing sunlight for four hours.

For decades now, NFL owners have behaved as if they were impervious to market shifts and largely stopped focusing on football as their product after they negotiated revenue sharing and a fat TV deal. The Levi’s Stadium fiasco illustrates that there is ceiling to how much fans will put up with, however — it took a while, but we found it — and it should make the league think about what the future is.

If the 49ers and their five Super Bowl titles can’t fill a brand-new, cathedral stadium, then what chance will the Rams and Chargers and their combined one championship have in a new market? And if more people aren’t showing up at games, then what will the effect be on TV viewers when the stands are empty and games even sound like no one cares?

Photo by Tom Antl

It’s time to consider what the StubHub Chargers have to say about all this. For the next three seasons, they are a fresh petri dish, an experiment in what the NFL could be if it thought about fans first. They are starting from scratch, with nothing to build a fanbase with except a beleaguered history, a cool lightning bolt logo, and the most unique stadium in the league.

The StubHub Chargers are in a place where no NFL franchise really wants to see themselves, but for the time being they are also one of the most precious things in sports: an honest-to-god underdog, a team that can say “nobody believes in us” and mean it. They are playing in Jerryworld’s diametric opposite, somehow both a product of the NFL’s empire and an affront to it.

With roughly five minutes left, the Chargers with the ball and still down 7 to the Chiefs, Dotseth turns to Walchef and says, “Hey Shawn, we’ve got Philip Rivers, five minutes, two timeouts. What more do you want?”

Someone behind him says, “If only Ken Whisenhunt was back on the sideline.”

“Give me Norv,” someone else says.

“Ryan Leaf.”

“Billy Joe Toliver.”

“Ooh, that’s a good one,” Dotseth says. Meanwhile, the Chargers get two first downs on penalties, the first when Rivers underthrows yet another pass down the sideline to draw pass interference.

I really want this weird Stubhub Experiment to work. In my mind, the Chargers are a team with squatters’ rights. They have the freedom of no equity. They abide by that set of no-rules that seems to only apply to people with nothing. And if only they could play this right, they would empower their fanbase and build a new generation of fan — because who hasn’t felt beat down and hard-lucked and hungry?

Miller, a Chiefs fan, tells me the next day he couldn’t tell the game was being played in a dinky stadium in an L.A. suburb. “If you hadn't reminded me, I would not have known it was a venue with 20,000 seats vs. 60,000,” he says. “On television it looked and felt loud, intense.”

So it seemed in-person, too, until the Chargers inevitably punted on fourth-and-21. A pair of good runs by Hunt gave the Chiefs third-and-1 when the Chargers finally took their second timeout. Chargers fans largely didn’t stay to see if they would get the stop. At the two-minute warning, after the Chiefs converted, StubHub was mostly empty, and maybe 80 percent of those left were fans of the away team.

Walchef tells me then that he never leaves a game early. He says he has seen too many weird Chargers games to possibly get up before the final whistle. And almost on cue, Hunt breaks off a 69-yard touchdown run through the biggest running lane of the day.

Walchef laughs and looks straight ahead. I ask what his expectations are now for the team, and he says “nothing.” When he opened his restaurant he stopped betting on football and the Chargers.

“Since then my relationship with the team has changed. I get the opportunity to hang out with Jeff and his kids. I get to hang out with my friends. I’ve stopped focusing on whether they win or they lose.

“But hopefully the team does start winning. And I hope when they do it’s in this stadium.”

[gumceline]

another massive bubbline shipper here too say i got mad respect for this blog. as much as i stand by my ship 1000%, i also stand by the fact its totally okay too ship them with other people. i admit the bubbline fandom can be pretty toxic, but alot of us will stand by you. not only are you being super respectful even when you get hate, but you arent straight washing. also the way you looked at the negative parts of our community with understanding in last post, that was real great

oh i appreciate it! I prefer never to judge an entire fanbase by one dude because EVERY fanbase has THOSE people, no fanbase is ever perfect.

I really wished my experience with bubbline shippers had been better, it really was unfortunate to have countless hate, to have people make posts mocking me, to be put on “Lists to block”, not to mention that i legit had supportive friends who were bubbline shippers, but they pretty much turned their back on me, abandoned me, and called me a “Homophobic uncaring asshole”.

It really broke my heart dealing with the stuff i did, and i wasn’t perfect either, but i still don’t think i deserved what that was. I was a kid at the time, and was still having fun and i REALLY wanted to be a part of the fanbase because i love the series and loved the characters, but the fandom just....hated me.

Because i was a multishipper and had different opinions on the characters.

It really didn’t matter to them that i also shipped the characters with other female characters, or i said myself i don’t consider them straight. Because the fandom didn’t really care, they took one look and decided nothing i said mattered.

Being in the star fandom is widely different because the biggest ship there is Starco, a MXF (Which i personally don’t really like but that’s just me), and my favorite ship was...and still is Tom and Marco, because i love their chemistry so much and i genuinely consider them to be a much more believable relationship then the romance they wrote for star and marco.

And trust me, it’s always annoying if you don’t ship the most popular ship and like another pairing more but are succumbed to it everywhere regardless of the characters themselves.

But me not shipping star and marco didn’t make me someone who hated straight people, so i don’t think it’s collectively fair to tell anyone who may of liked marcy or bonnie with finn or maybe they ship them with a male oc of theirs....hate lesbians or were just homophobic.

it’s Like if i took finn out of his (Maybe) relationship with huntress and shipped him with....Tiffany (Who is a male character)...that wouldn’t mean i suddenly hated all straight couples and think finntress should burn.

That’s still a huge leap to jump to and extremely dangerous because you’re collectively accusing someone of something serious without really knowing much more about them then “They like this ship”.

Without any knowledge of them outside of that.

You could effectively damage their rep and make their time in the fandom a living hell out of something minor or something you just assumed, i would know.

I welcome progress, i am quite happy for the bubbline shippers who got their ship, heck...i’m STILL mad that we didn’t get poly tom x marco x star on star vs and felt VERY baited by the crew on that.

but even though i am happy for those people, i don’t think it’s validation to beat up on other shippers either, it does nothing for anyone’s case to do that. If the people are actual bigots who are actively acting terrible and throwing around nasty words and doing terrible stuff, then by all means, call them out.

But people who are just causally shipping stuff for fun? In a way it just feels like using them being a gay ship as a weapon against everyone else, because if they disagree with you and have a different opinion you can effectively boil them down to a bigot and no one might question it...especially when it’s the vast majority.

And that should not be acceptable to do, i ended up hearing from a friend of mine that this fandom actively started purging out other creators for having opinions people didn’t like, and now people are starting to regret that they shunned out so many members of the fandom based on things that were probably incredibly trivial in the long run.

And i get it, it’s an important ship, but it’s important as a rep of that ship to be respectful to others, because if not what you’ll end up doing is turn people away. I would like to be more celebratory of your success in getting the ship canon, but it makes it harder if i’m getting several messages asking when i’m deleting my “Hateful” blog because bubbline was now canon.

I’d like to get along with and support these people, but they don’t want to try and support me and have almost just decided to hate me and it sucks, and there’s not much i can do. That’s why i am thankful for those who don’t just immediately decided to judge me and want to know more about my views on the characters. 

This of course does not apply to the community as a whole, not everyone is acting like this, but it is a problem and it has consequences and i hope the fandom does work on it in the future. Please do better in the future.

Now when it comes to shipping, I have my limits personally, like if the characters have canon sexualities i tend to stick to those sexualities, i for one, have a oc that’s gay. I effectively tell others if they make fanart with him for fun that’s great and i love it, but i want his sexuality respected if ships are involved.

Since the AT ones are left in the air, it means i am left to come up with my own ideas, so that’s what i do. I think everyone should be allowed in that regard to have their own interpretations, marcy could be bi, lesbian, ace,pan, ect and all of those are perfectly acceptable headcanons.

i don’t think one should be held superior over another.

I’ve never looked at Marcy or PG and said “Oh yeah, these two are so obviously straight”, they’re about as straight as a bent nail. XD The people who say this stuff clearly don’t follow me to know that they’re not treated as straight here and i think that’s just frustrating because it’s attacking for completely incorrect information.

And the main problem i think i have, like the biggest issue, is i see the F&C characters differently.

Because i know where the fandom is getting this impression people who these other pairings are homophobic is coming from, it’s because most of the fandom doesn’t really see those characters as much more then well...GB characters.

If i saw tomco, and one was turned to a girl to avoid them both being boys, i would be annoyed, i would, i wouldn’t assume the person was homophobic without other evidence but i’d be annoyed. (I mean for all i know it could be an au and i could be mistaking the situation entirely)

What makes this different for me, is because for one, these aren’t fan-characters, the fans didn’t make a genderbent world and design these characters for fun or anything. These were show characters, that were in episodes and have their own comics and all that.

The way the show approached them for me, makes me feel like they’re kinda misjudged, and people don’t have to agree with me on that fact. But i just feel like between them being fanfiction characters ice king made up, the fact their canon is different, the fact the characters do things the F&J characters don’t do, i just can’t help but feel like treating them as if they were something fans did for fun and have no difference outside of their gender is not the right approach for them.

(I mean ice queen died in one comic and has her own unique origin story which is apparently tied to cake’s, flame prince apparently speaks cat and is the most nervous and awkward cutie I've ever seen, gumball is apparently a card wars superfan and legit takes it WAY too seriously, i just can’t really look at these characters and say “Oh, these are all just Ice King, Flame Princess, and Princess Bubblegum but the opposite gender”).

I feel like the show does enough with them,and had a unique enough approach, that i feel like they should be judged as different characters. Like the redraws of regular episodes with the F&C characters are cute but they’re for fun and probably not what ice king wrote for them in his weird stories.

Like i can’t imagine ice king knew PB so well he made sure gumball had her entire backstory and motivations.

And i feel like the people who do enjoy these ships, heck, ALL FOUR of these ships, feel the same way i do. I’m sure some could def be shipping them for the wrong reasons, but i can’t help but think it’s less about their gender and more that other people recognize they’re different and have considered the different dynamics...like they would if they were shipping any other pairing.

And people don’t have to agree with any of us on that, but i don’t think the alternative should be to accuse us of something so heavily either.

These days i have newer friends who like bubbline who are chill with me, and yeah that’s cool, and i personally don’t really draw the ship myself because i’m still not too comfortable in the AT fandom or with the community right now....the situation with it never leaves me feeling safe frankly.

But we get along, they’re lovely, and the shippers who like bubbline but support the blog are also lovely people and i adore them.

At the end of the day i just want to have fun, i’m fine being in a small subsection of the fanbase and who knows, maybe i have gotten people to think about the F&C characters in a new light, i’m not sure.

But i hope maybe at some point the fandom can chill down and we can support each other without turning it into...whatever that entire situation is. Because i don’t want to be fighting with that community and would prefer to get along with them, but only time will tell.

But thanks for the support! I wish you the best ! I sometimes still have a lot to learn but i hope throughout this whole thing I've gone about it as respectful as possible.

I love the show and all the characters and the fun ships and relationships, i hope someday in the future i can be comfortable enough to get back into the fandom as much as i used to be! ^-^