#still fucking wild that the showrunner follows me on twitter

[cakesexuality]

huh-

Omg okay so--

In The Flesh (ITF for short) is/was a TV show about a world where there was a zombie apocalypse but the thing that makes them zombies is viewed as a chronic illness so now the zombies have to take medication every day and society is rebuilding itself

And "partially deceased syndrome" only affects people who died in 2009, so most of the zombies were given funerals and buried by their loved ones and thus have the outfit they wore while wandering around and eating people

So in one episode, some of the zombies decide to throw a party where everyone comes dressed in the clothes they were buried in (most of them are wearing a suit or a nice dress but the main character is wearing a denim jacket, iconic)

And how partially deceased syndrome works is that brains are the only thing they can eat without getting sick, but they don't even need to eat brains if they're taking medication... so the brains and medication mix in a way that causes them to get high and they're passing around a Tupperware container of sheep's brains at this party

Also when the main character goes to that party, he goes outside to sit by a bonfire, and another zombie dude starts hitting on him

ALSO the main character is pan and both of his love interests are male, and the showrunner said that if they got to have a season 3, the main character's sister would've been in a relationship with someone named Alex who "can be a boy or a girl, use your imagination"

And I'm STILL salty like a decade later that the BBC canceled it on a cliffhanger in favour of gambling on a new IP

[thesharondefenseleague]

I think fandom homophobia isn't talked about enough. I swear people in fandom love acting like its a non issue because gay ships seem so popular on tumblr. But we are in a bubble here. Fandom has more gay ships because fandom explored what canon doesn't pretty often. And even then often gay ships are specifically more popular on tumblr and not necessarily in fandom at large.

We are here getting salty at fans for shipping the two "white male favs" instead of a ship with a woman and act as if m/m is somehow commonplace everywhere now and the real minority is people who ship m/f. And you know they don't give a shit about racism. I have almost never seen this argument used in cases where there is a large poc cast like BP. Only ever in stories when the majority of the cast is white and even then half the time they aren't even defending a minority ship. They say oh you just like your white male favs when defending a white m/f ship like the fucking audacity. The attempt to score fake woke points here is nauseating. Just say you want your ship to be popular and go. That is literally the only issue here. Don't pretend you care about racism in fandom.

Like honestly the entitlement . And I say entitlement because whenever I see the salt online it's because there's a m/f ship thats less popular than the m/m one. There were articles about how impressive it is Reylo was popular on tumblr. Like the complete ridiculousness of this. M/F is more popular everywhere and everything except for certain websites like tumblr and Ao3. And people here acting like its revolutionary when there is a popular M/F ship on those sites because heaves forbid M/F ships be less popular anywhere. And I emphasize M/M and not F/F because there are so few popular fandoms with a large and fleshed out enough cast of women that F/F has less opportunity to get as popular. But if that ever became true I bet you the argument would be F/F is only popular with straight guys who wanna jerk off and the argument would ignore that a huge chunk of fanfic writers especially on Ao3 are LGBT women.

[[Before I answer, can I just say I’m baffled but impressed at how this was delivered as one who ask and not, like, seven separate parts with a weird delivered order. I hope this is a new feature and not a fluke.]]

I think it’s a problem with tumblr users in general that they invent their own realities and accept it as commonplace everywhere. I might believe no one ships Reylo, but that’s far from true. I just don’t follow blogs that ship it (sort of - my friend ships them, so I only see it if she posts it).

There’s definitely a strong level of misogyny and racism in fandom. I’m not putting myself above it - I’ve written stories and found myself asking if it’s racist or misogynistic, then looked into how I could fix it. It’s 2021, we know how to check ourselves for this.

I will say, again, that straight women are just as straight as straight men. A good example is the QaF fans being straight women who loved there being a show with gay men having explicit/graphic sex in every episode, to the point where as the show continued, there was less and less lesbian sex, even with a consistent lesbian couple in the show from start to finish. Yes, there’s a sizeable queer and trans female group of fanfiction writers, but we know who’s writing the fetishy graphic stuff most of the time, and who’s very defensive about how they come off (because they can’t be homophobic if they have gay ships!).

It’s this same kind of straight audience who were pushing that bi Steve narrative back in 2016/2017, but didn’t like it when you told them that a bi Steve could still be with a woman, because that exposed that they really just wanted Steve to kiss a man, but not Sam, and then they were mad that they were called out for being racist on top of being biphobic and fetishistic of gay men.

I mean, I ship popular, non-canon (and never will be canon) M/M ships. I don’t think the movies ever pushed this ship to having potential to exist in canon. (I ship one specifically because a cosplay couple I followed cosplayed about them, and I’ve never seen their potential in canon. I was only introduced through this way. Hence why I never openly post them here, just read and write a couple fics.)

M/F ships aren’t revolutionary either. They’re just so uncommon in this one setting where gay is more common than straight (and both more common than lesbian and proper bi/pan and trans representation that isn’t used for fetish shit).

TBH, the politics of shipping culture are so wild now that it makes me tired. Almost wanna say fuck it, I ship nothing. No one gets love or sex. But the solution that suits me best is stepping back from shipping culture, because it’s gonna be crazy on here. The only benefit of tumblr over Twitter is that here, no one can harass creators for ships. I fucking hate when people attack creators/actors on Twitter for ships. I hate that producers and showrunners won’t protect the actors/actresses who are harassed for this shit and leave them to fend for themselves (I won’t forget how Emily VanCamp was left to defend herself and tried to keep it lighthearted as if certain demons weren’t being true assholes over her kiss). Just ship your shit, stop pretending you have a justified narrative, and move on. No need for harassment in shipping culture.

~Mod R