#sometimes swoony writes essays for no goddamn reason

[bangchanswolfpelt]

hello hi we're gonna go through this point by point (or something resembling that) and i'm not putting it under a cut because i am, quite frankly, sick of seeing this shit in fandom spaces. rip to everyone who followed me for smut, we have Opinions here actually

There's an issue with x readers when I read it. When it says, "gender neutral" some people use she/her pronouns instead. When writing a gender neutral fic you use they/them. It's an issue, why?

NOT ALL READERS ARE FEMALE!!

Your use of the word “female” right off the bat (and throughout this entire post) sure is an interesting choice. Like. Why was this the word you chose to use? Because, I don't actually know a whole lot of people who actually primarily identify as "female." I mean, you could use 'women,' but then you probably realized you’d be catching transwomen in that particular net. You could just say 'ciswomen,' but you probably realized that on some level that would sound… pretty misogynistic?

Does reinforcing the illusion of binary sex by directing your complaints at "females" make you feel like your complaints sound more objective and valid? Or did you feel like you needed to make this an 'us vs. them' scenario, with 'them' being ‘people whose tastes don’t align with yours’, so you just picked a word you felt couldn’t possibly apply to you or to people you consider similar enough to you?

I don't really care, you still sound wildly misogynistic and like you've been drinking the radfem gender essentialist koolaid either way.

We're gonna circle back around to the fact that you equate "neutrality" to 'they/them' pronouns, as well as the assumption that you have the right to tell anyone what or how to write in a bit.

There could be males, non-binaries, etc. reading a fic that says "gender neutral/gn" but then she/her is used. There could be trans men reading that and they have body dysphoria. That's a problem, especially when the author themselves meant no harm.

Speaking by experience, I use he/him pronouns. But I am not trans. It just makes me uncomfortable. I'm not saying to give hate or anything.

As a fic reader, you are responsible for your own well-being. If your dysphoria can be triggered by the language of something you’re reading, it’s your responsibility to check for that instead of relying solely on how an author labels their work—tags/warnings are a courtesy, they are not actually mandatory, and even authors that put active effort into tagging/warning for others’ needs are still likely to slip up and make mistakes or miss things.

It is not that hard to hit Ctrl+F to check for language you know you don’t want to encounter. Modern technology has a myriad of ways to avoid the exact discomfort you are complaining about, you just have to take some basic responsibility for your own online experience and use the tools available to you like a fucking adult.

Yeah, sure, you’re not here to “give hate,” but what ARE you actually here to do then? To saddle everyone else online with the responsibility of making sure YOUR preferences are catered to? Even if you aren't here to “give hate”, if you’re just here to be entitled and demanding, that's not actually any better.

If you use she/her it's automatically a female reader. Not gender neutral or anything. Gender neutral means it's welcomed for any gender even if it uses they/them. The reader is supposed to replace the pronouns.

This is super gross. It’s so incredibly fucking gross, I’m gonna borrow your over-the-top formatting to say

NOT ALL PEOPLE WHO USE “SHE/HER” PRONOUNS ARE FEMALE!!

I would like you to please, sit the fuck down and consider the irony in making a post whining about how fandom isn't inclusive enough for you specifically, while also making blanket statements that erase/ignore the identities of other people.

Moving on from you in your shame corner, what does "neutrality" actually look like? Why do you think that you, someone with as many biases as anyone else, have the right to decide what that is?

The idea that 'they/them' is an inherently neutral set of pronouns is just not true. The use of 'they/them' as neutral pronouns is specifically for when one had to refer to an individual whose pronouns they didn’t already know or when they were referring to a nebulous hypothetical person of indeterminate (like the hypothetical 'they' I am using in this sentence).

For many individuals, the use of 'they/them' is a deliberately gendered choice they make for themselves/the characters they write. For many other individuals, being referred to with 'they/them' pronouns is an uncomfortable and misgendering experience. When used for specific individuals, 'they/them' are no more inherently "neutral" than any other pronouns. Besides that, chasing some "neutral" ideal that works for everyone in reader fic is an unachievable goal because people will always have differing (sometimes even conflicting) needs and desires. Even fic that uses 'they/them' isn't actually for "any gender"—your misguided and useless idea of inclusivity excludes anyone who is uncomfortable with being referred to with 'they/them' pronouns.

Getting personal—as someone who writes fic and uses both 'they' and 'she' as personal pronouns, when I write using either set of pronouns (or any other pronouns), I am making a deliberate and gendered choice based on how I feel about what I am writing. Because—unless I am writing a commission or a gift for a friend—the fanfic that I write is for myself before it's for anyone else. As someone who reads fic and who identifies as agender/nonbinary, as someone who has a deeply uncomfortable and weird relationship to gender, I actually do not need or want gender to be scrubbed out of all writing. I will take a good story that doesn't align perfectly with my personal lived experience over a story that's had all it's specificity sanded down to utterly nondescript blandness any fucking day. Not every story is for everybody and that is fucking fine.

Assuming someone else’s fic is or should be for you is disgustingly entitled, and going on to make judgmental posts decreeing what people can or cannot write based on that assumption is incredibly self-absorbed and immature. You're not accomplishing anything worthwhile with your sad attempts at public shaming, no one is learning from or inspired by your insipid little temper tantrum.

An additional point: if the idea behind 'they/them' is to be able to replace the pronouns with the pronouns of your choice, then why does it even matter what pronouns a writer uses? Text replacement extensions don’t have a HARDER time replacing 'she/her' than 'they/them', WordReplace isn't going to get as mad about which pronouns a writer uses as you apparently will.

Stop putting "gender neutral/gn reader" and use she/her. Sometimes it makes me feel like that fanfiction is only for females and not for any other gender, and I know I'm not alone on this one.

“only for females and not for any other gender” I'm sorry, AGAIN, who the fuck is using “female” as a gender identity?

Also, hey!! Fun fact for you!! Fandom HAS historically been a space dominated by women, because women (along with queer people and people of color) have spent a very long time having their tastes ignored or derided by mainstream culture, so a not inconsiderable amount of fandom was fucking BUILT by people who (at some point in time at least) identified as women. Because women wanted to make/see creative works that catered to their interests and desires, so they rolled up their fuckin sleeves and made those works for themselves. BUT that doesn't mean that there's no room for people who aren't women—in fact, fandom has ALSO been a space where a lot of people who identified as women came to realize that they weren't women, it's been a place where people come to explore their sexual and gender identities in weird and wonderful and varied and often very specific ways—and the fact that in your call for "neutrality," you're flattening out the diversity of fandom into "females" and people-who-aren't-females?? just to pin your issues with fandom specifically on "females" seems extremely fucking telling to me, and again, really makes it sound like you've been subscribed to Gender Essentialist Weekly.

You know who fandom actually isn't for? People who don't know how to contribute. Fandom is not a restaurant, it's a potluck. You don't get to show up empty-handed and get mad when no one's interested in taking your order.

I notice that this post is the only post you have on your blog, OP. You know what would get you more of the kind of fic you want? Actually making the kind of fanworks you want to see, and showing people with tastes like yours that there’s space for it and interest in it.

Y’know, like everyone else who’s participated in fandom has.

Sometimes people just put it there just for it to get popular, and if you asked me I'd say that's messed up. Fortunately, not all gn readers are like this.

And if you say that there's barely any female reader fics out there's a ton. This whole post is about not using she/her for gn. So respectfully shut the fuck up. Search up a person for an x reader and there will be a ton of fem readers. So stop spouting bull shit.

I've seen more posts complaining about the state of "gender neutral" fic than I've seen posts/comments/messages complaining about "barely any female reader fics", which is zero(0). Maybe I've just been exceptionally fortunate, re: what comes across my screens, but considering I had to put my eyeballs on this post today, I don't think that's the case. I think this is bullshit.

Also, if there's a male reader and they say DNI for she/her and she/they and you still interact, what the fuck is wrong with you? Male readers BARELY get any fics with he/him, NON-BINARIES TOO! I'm jealous that you actually get some fics that use correct pronouns.

This is only tangential to the original point of your post, but—DNIs are not a replacement for taking responsibility for and enforcing your own personal boundaries, and expecting people to check every DNI of every blog they even so much as brush up against is just unrealistic, especially on a site where content spiderwebs out through tags and reblogs like it does on tumblr. Yes, people who deliberately cross other people's cross boundaries are assholes, but not everyone can be expected to immediately be aware of or care about your boundaries on the internet. Also, framing this as 'respect this specific group's boundaries because they don't get enough fic for themselves' is a weird fucking take, and your jealousy is irrelevant to the subject of whose boundaries should be respected.

(Not all females are like this and they've earned my respect. Go go females! Also, let's go, lesbians!)

The fact that you’re talking about “not all females” and “females” who have “earned [your] respect” reeks of misogyny. Putting a little rainbow fedora on it and following it up with a meme doesn't make it less obvious or less repulsive.

I'm so petty about those types of people that I want to write a fem reader and use all sorts of different pronouns throughout the fic but not she/her but I'm not.

DO THAT.

It would be miles more productive than making this post was, and I'd have some actual respect for you writing that, as opposed to this trite, performative excuse for a PSA that’s already been made a thousand times before and contributes absolutely nothing to fandom.

Please stop doing this. If you say gender neutral use they/them. Not, and never EVER use she/her instead.

Thank you.

You do not have the right to tell people how to write/tag their fic, and you do not have the right to make demands of people who are making and posting creative works as a hobby, for free. If you want a specific type of fic to exist in fandom, get off your high horse and start writing it yourself.

There's an issue with x readers when I read it. When it says, "gender neutral" some people use she/her pronouns instead. When writing a gender neutral fic you use they/them. It's an issue, why?

NOT ALL READERS ARE FEMALE!!

There could be males, non-binaries, etc. reading a fic that says "gender neutral/gn" but then she/her is used. There could be trans men reading that and they have body dysphoria. That's a problem, especially when the author themselves meant no harm.

Speaking by experience, I use he/him pronouns. But I am not trans. It just makes me uncomfortable. I'm not saying to give hate or anything.

If you use she/her it's automatically a female reader. Not gender neutral or anything. Gender neutral means it's welcomed for any gender even if it uses they/them. The reader is supposed to replace the pronouns.

Stop putting "gender neutral/gn reader" and use she/her. Sometimes it makes me feel like that fanfiction is only for females and not for any other gender, and I know I'm not alone on this one.

Sometimes people just put it there just for it to get popular, and if you asked me I'd say that's messed up. Fortunately, not all gn readers are like this.

And if you say that there's barely any female reader fics out there's a ton. This whole post is about not using she/her for gn. So respectfully shut the fuck up. Search up a person for an x reader and there will be a ton of fem readers. So stop spouting bull shit.

Also, if there's a male reader and they say DNI for she/her and she/they and you still interact, what the fuck is wrong with you? Male readers BARELY get any fics with he/him, NON-BINARIES TOO! I'm jealous that you actually get some fics that use correct pronouns.

(Not all females are like this and they've earned my respect. Go go females! Also, let's go, lesbians!)

I'm so petty about those types of people that I want to write a fem reader and use all sorts of different pronouns throughout the fic but not she/her but I'm not.

Please stop doing this. If you say gender neutral use they/them. Not, and never EVER use she/her instead.

Thank you.

[bangchanswolfpelt]

honestly, i can see distancing yourself/denying any relationship seeming like a practical move depending on how fans react—i’ve seen stuff like that get ugly with people who don’t have nearly as big a fanbase as BTOB 😅 i definitely haven’t been a melody long enough to have a well-rounded opinion, so i trust your judgment, haha. for me, it’s not really based on anything in particular, it’s more just the overall vibe i‘ve gotten from Minhyuk? and i haven't seen that interview! if you wanna drop a link, i'd love that, but i'll probably come across it eventually if you don't have the time

and i can definitely see things being different when you don’t really see yourself as a celebrity!! i’ve also gotten the impression that things used to be more relaxed for earlier gen idols, just from watching early BTS, Seventeen, and now BTOB videos? stuff like admitting to Namjoon getting viruses on the shared computer from downloading porn to Hyunsik and Minhyuk looking at adult manga probably wouldn’t go over as well now, which is honestly too bad 😤

ahhhh, i was fresh off people being annoyed at twitter fandom, so i assumed worst-case-scenario and was worried he was getting flack for like. acknowledging younger fans exist or something equally dumb 😅 thank you for the clarification!!

and that WAS the live i was thinking of!! i remember the bit about him still being a baby, it made me so 🥰 Minhyuk’s one of the few idols i’m into that’s actually older than me (though not by much, haha), but that moment made me really wanna baby HIM 🥰🥰🥰 his lives are my favorite now along with Bang Chan's, he's just so comfortable and warm during them, and he always genuinely seems like he's enjoying himself<3

now for

~Daddy Chan Discourse~

(under a cut because this is already a Long Post and in summarizing what people have said vs. what's happened i basically ended up writing an actual essay; please nobody feel obligated to read this, not even you, s💙, i just needed to get this out of me apparently? 😳)

there’s been people calling Chan problematic or even straight-up predatory because they’re saying that he refers to himself as ‘daddy’ and his fans as 'baby girls', and that it’s creepy for him to do that when he has underage fans. i'm not sure when these 'callouts' started, i think it was a couple years ago, but since then it seems like one of those controversies that just comes around again whenever people want to talk shit about a specific idol/group. i’ve seen it come around at least once, and have seen tweets recently that look like they’re following the same trend, though i don’t know how much traction it’s gotten either time.

the criticism directed towards Chan assumes:

the daddy/babygirl nicknames between him and fans are something that Chan started and encourages

the daddy/babygirl nicknames between him and fans are inherently sexual

the daddy/babygirl nicknames give Chan a foothold re: preying on younger fans whom he already has an unhealthy amount of power/influence over

the first assumption is flat-out untrue; the second and third are true, but not as straightforward as people want to act like they are. we're gonna go over them point-by-point, thank you for coming to my ted talk, good luck leaving, we've barred the doors.

(1) the daddy/babygirl nicknames between him and fans are something that Chan started and encourages

i was not in the fandom to watch this all go down in real time, but i’d seen enough references to it in passing to track down old vlives and see what was up, so i feel like i have a fairly accurate idea of how we got to the current state of events, re: Daddy Chan.

my understanding of how things have actually went: Chan showed himself scrolling through his selfies during a live, fans zeroed in on one specific image in his photo album, and eventually figured out that it looked ~suspiciously~ like a pink wallpaper that said ‘baby girl’ on it. from that, fans extrapolated that Chan has a daddy kink and a lot of people started referring to him as ‘daddy’, with some fans even requesting that he call them/the fandom ‘baby girls.’ Chan proceeded to roll with it in a way that was awkward, but good-humored and pretty indulgent.

Chan did not just start calling himself 'daddy' and Stays 'baby girls'; this is something that started with the fandom.

(2) the daddy/babygirl nicknames between him and fans are inherently sexual

when it comes to fans who call him 'daddy' and asked to be called 'baby girl/boy', yes, it absolutely is. this literally started with jokes and theories about Chan having a daddy kink; any fan who tries to pretend it's not is likely being obtuse. however, i do think Chan himself has made an effort to downplay the sexual aspect of it when it comes up.

regardless of what Chan is personally into or comfortable with, he's definitely aware that he has younger fans and tries to be considerate of that, especially when it comes to keeping Chan’s Room (his weekly vlive) welcoming and safe for them. when the 'daddy'/'baby girl/boy' nicknames come up while he’s live, he’s definitely gone out of his way to downplay the sexual implications of being called ‘daddy’—in one stream, he said that some fans at an event wanted him to refer to them as ‘baby boys’, so he'd be switching to ‘baby girls’ AND ‘baby boys’ in his sign-off to be more inclusive, then said that he was sure they meant that he was a ‘father of eight’ when they called him 'daddy.' he’s also since transitioned from calling stays ‘baby girls’/‘baby boys’ to ‘baby stays,’ he said because it's less clunky to say, but i think it's also definitely meant to make the nickname less suggestive and more comfortable for everyone.

(3) the daddy/babygirl nicknames give Chan a foothold re: preying on younger fans whom he already has an unhealthy amount of power/influence over

i have no idea what Chan's doing in private, but if he's fostering unhealthy relationships with individual fans, i don't think you can use fans calling him 'daddy' as evidence of that. it's something that was started and perpetuated by fans, and although he acknowledges it and plays along to some extent, it's pretty clear that he's not encouraging it, and might not even be entirely comfortable with it.

while idols absolutely can exert an unhealthy amount of influence over individual fans, to the point of forming predatory and abusive relationships, i think it's also important to acknowledge that a fanbase as a whole can exert control over an idol as well. idols (probably especially younger, less-established ones) depend on a group of people that could turn on them for doing something as normal and human as going out in public with a friend, and depending on the situation we're looking at, i think that's important factor to keep in mind. a lot of people (who seem to be coming from a very Western/American viewpoint) want to attribute the same amount of power that old, established, rich white men in hollywood have to idols, and that's simply not the case for most (if any) idols in kpop.

could and should Chan have nipped the 'daddy'/'babygirl' situation in the bud? he probably could have and absolutely should have. but he's also a young man in his early/mid-twenties navigating an industry where he has a fairly limited amount of power, and on top of that, a lot of these incidents have occurred during in-person events or livestreams where he's put on the spot and trying to balance behaving appropriately with keeping his fans happy. i'm not going to blame him for not having a perfect reaction when it's clear he's doing his best to keep this contained while still maintaining a fun, comfortable relationship with his fanbase.

it's also not entirely on him. i personally love the daddy dom fantasy and talking about daddy!Chan in spaces where it's just friends/other fans, but dragging it into situations where Chan himself has to acknowledge it is inappropriate, and the people responsible for that are the fans who cross that boundary, not Chan. the obligation to refrain from sexually inappropriate behavior is not a one-way street between idols and fans, fans don't get a free pass to start dragging their daddy dom roleplay into public no matter how hard JYPE tries to sell us the fantasy of a perfect dateable boy. seeing fans display that kind of behavior, then turning around and blaming Chan for not having the perfect response to shut it down is just abhorrent.

~

i’m not normally someone who goes to bat for celebrities, but the spread of purity culture throughout fandoms and the shades of xenophobia i've seen in kpop fandom specifically have been increasingly irritating. i've seen some truly nightmarish takes about parasocial relationships, and an increasing unwillingness to allow anyone with a platform (in this case idols) to be anything less than perfect. this is a fucked up way to treat any human being, but i think it's especially egregious when we're engaging in an industry that everyone acknowledges grinds people up for consumption.

on top of that, as someone new to kpop (but not new to Asian entertainment industries), i'm seeing other people who are also new coming in with a lot of very obviously Western-/American-centered views and criticism. a lot of these people don't seem to understand that Asian entertainment industries are not the same, don't even understand how their own local industries work, and aren't interested in learning because their sense of superiority has them convinced that there's nothing they need to learn.

i'm also just very tired of people taking things that they don't like or are mildly uncomfortable with and blowing them up as if an actual crime has been committed. if taken far enough, it can ruin an innocent person's career, but even if that doesn't happen, it still desensitizes people to the language used to describe actual harm. it's already been done by people making callout posts that equate erotic fanart to real-life child abuse, and it's only getting worse the longer this goes on.

@tinysmuttythoughts yooooooooo that is wild 😳 i was NOT expecting this to be an accidental called-shot, but like. this dude has so much impulsive, bad-decision energy, and hitting up your ex is such a classic move 😂 the fact that her current bf messaged him, tho??? why do i feel like this broke bad for everyone involved???? 😂😂😂

also, i think i watched that live?? did he get in trouble for that???? 'cause if it's the one i'm thinking of, there was like. nothing sketch happening at all!! he was just talking about how fans don't need to speak formally / use age-based titles/honorifics when they talk to him in the chat because he knows they don't when they talk about him with each other, and seeing younger fans do that was just an example. there's nothing weird of inappropriate about idols looking themselves up (especially when they've been tagged!!), and he even invited people to block him if they were uncomfortable because the chat started panicking about what he'd see on twitter 😤

(the daddy Chan discourse is flaring up on twitter again, so i'm already Big Mad about people projecting bullshit onto idols who are just. literally doing their jobs and interacting with fans 😤😤😤)