#technically this is fandom wank

[ivyodessa]

I am begging, BEGGING tumblr users to please use the hellcheer tag! We've been exclusively using hellcheer on other platforms since like August. If you wanna continue to use eddissy/edissy that's fine but please, please PLEASE use hellcheer too!

[buckera]

calling people you hate ugly to demonstrate that they are worth less actually falls into the category of bodyshaming and it's a mentality that originally stems from misogyny and especially from hatred towards masc/gnc women... ngl seeing more and more people and for some reason, especially lesbians thinking it's fun and quirky and saying it's "their right" is incredibly baffling and disappointing to me

[jamiethebee]

You know what irks me the most about the mha ending. (Sorry I'm still on it.)

Like the early parts of the manga, there were so many grown up hero AUs in fandom (like storylines that took place when they're adults and heroes) and they're fun! A little silly!

And then we had the war arc and cities are being destroyed and everything's torn up and for over a hundred chapters, it's been oh huh I guess every AU like that will just be canon divergence lmao

And then Horikoshi basically wipes the slate clean so I guess all those AUs could technically canon compliant. There's not even much in the way of lasting physical damage! Because it's dealt with???? Immediately???? Within months?????

Which is fine! Nothing wrong with it! The AUs are fun! But, it just irks me that you could throw out half the manga because it didn't matter. Nothing majorly changed. Silly adult hero AUs for everyone I guess because the League may as well have been 2 bit villains for all the effect they had at large was. Idk. Maybe I'm bitter? Maybe my brain still trying to process the ending and the change in how AUs relate to canon? I guess - what was all the constant sprinkling in of "society has let people down" that we see from chapter 1? It meant nothing? I guess????? I mean A WAR HAPPENED. But whatever I guess heehee wasn't that soooooo silly???? That people's take on early story can be the same as post story?????

[insomniac-ships]

Look. If you're into fucking Homestuck, I'm going to assume you're at least okay with some pretty fucked up shit being depicted in fiction.

[prettyboybillyhargrove]

I just realized S2 Billy's(17) first scene is high school girls checking him out and catcalling and S3 Billy's ("freshly" 18 like some of y'all like to call) first scene is grown ass women checking him out and catcalling.

Seriously I know Duffers are piece of shits and everything but how could they get away with so much creepy shit? Why no one is confrontating them about sexualizing teens/kids (i talk about this before but Mike/El kissing a billion times is totally them sexualizing the kids i don't accept criticism about this) why not even one person comes out and says you guys are fuckin grown ass men in your 30s why the fuck you're shooting a show with this much kids where you sexualize them? Like? They're doing this for some type of people ig? I'm not even saying the part where they force Sadie and Caleb to kiss when it was not in the script and their excuse was "you looked so nervous we had to do it ahahahahaha" again these are 35+ men the kids were 12-14 at the time.

[hypodermicfroggy]

The one reason I will and always will encourage gatekeeping in fandoms/nerd culture is because without gatekeeping we get the stupidest ass opinions from people on all sides of ideology spectrum.

like the one I saw today:

"Women ruined Mad Max!" Women have always been an integral part of Mad Max and you're a fake fan, does Tina Turner as the smooth jazz queen of the apocalypse Auntie Em mean NOTHING to you

[rogueddie]

I've been seeing a lot of my favorite people taking a break from tumblr, and I want to ask you if I could get your discord to make a big discord group of all my and your mutuals. Or ask if you have discord in general.

I do technically have a discord, though, forewarning, I never use it because I suck at talking to people. It's the same name; rogueddie. It sounds like a real good idea though!

And I hope you don't mind me using this ask to now complain about the state of things but also... fucking hell. It's something I've thought was just a me problem. It's kind of upsetting to see that others are feeling just as pushed away or finding the fandom lacking.

I recently tried to find a post mentioning me and I couldn't remember if it was my current @ or my old 'babyboymunson' one and even that was such a horrible contrast. This fandom space used to be so fun and friendly and creative. And now it sounds like people are being pressured out with hate anons.

Hopefully the amount of events that I've seen popping up already will help revive the love this fandom deserves. Hopefully more things like this, or group chat things in general, start happening a lot more too. Hopefully addressing the issues now will help people figure out ways to navigate the fandom in happier and healthier ways.

This drama has been going on for so long now- it completely ruined 2023 for me- and I'm so sick of it. We're all just trying to have fun and enjoy a shared interest. Some people in this fandom so desperately need to learn to curate their space instead of turning into hate blogs.

And I'm sorry that this has rambled into a weird place lmao.

[barrencelenny]

Actually I’m curious, what’s everyone’s most wtf inducing AU? The more niche the better.

For me, it’s wingfic. I have a friend who constantly tells me how the best fic she’s ever read is a dan and phil wingfic and I simply cannot emphasise to her enough that I have no interest in ever reading rpf about two British men I don’t know sprouting wings.

[qprstobin]

Just saw someone say that a) b/yler was a "slowburn" and b) that "modern gay media" doesn't do slowburns anymore. Begging people to please engage in actual queer media that isn't Stranger Things.

[banyanas]

Man idk if ur feeling bad and angry about other people enjoying their aus because they’re writing out a plot point in it or criticizing the episode the au is Alternate Of then that’s a you problem.

[amplexadversary]

People are too quick to kneejerk react to money=bad as a concept and I think Vex immediately dropping a bunch of it into spell materials for Laudna is one of many examples of how the concept is one hell of a lot more complex than that.

Vex appears to have a worldview along the lines of “money is for saving people” and to be honest I kind of agree to an extent. It’s a resource, and god damn some resources that are really important and really damn good to have can be misused as hell, and just because some choose to do so, doesn’t make them bad.

I feel the same way about it that I do about social media or charisma and persuasive ability. Getting rid of it would lead to the loss of some crucial positives it provides, and the (more complex and not-shitty) solution is to set things in such a way that misuse of it goes against the best interests of someone who would choose to do so.

Frankly, anything can be used in a way that harms, and turning to puritanism and shunning things left and right is really just throwing away the tools you could use to protect yourself and others from particularly fucking creative assholes. It’s a cowardly solution, and people who condemn so easily without room for nuance are cowards.

[olderthannetfic]

I'm trying to understand AO3's tag synning, but I'm honestly lost. Bratting is a canonical tag. Brat Taming isn't marked as common and can't be filtered on, and it's linked to nothing else. But (slight) Brat Taming is not only marked as common, but it's also synned with Bratting?

I don't think I'll ever understand.

--

What's not to understand?

Tag wrangling is done by specific humans on specific dates. So is the tagging of works.

No doubt, someone used the synned tag a long time ago when wranglers were allowed to go mess with those tags. Later, there was a freeze on wrangling the pan-fandom trope stuff because 1. it was slowing down the archive for technical reasons and 2. there were a bajillion internal wanks about trying to standardize rules and make actual guidelines. Some of this was dumb fandom drama. Some of it was trying to get clueless but well-meaning people to stop repeatedly synning shit like 'asexuality' to shit like 'sexless'.

The other tag must have come in later when nobody was allowed to touch it.

--

That said, nothing can be both marked as common and a syn. It's one or the other.

[kobitoshiningneedle]

For the fandom hot take thing I have two:

Kazuma is not part of the found family and neither is Barok. The only members of that group are Ryunosuke, Susato, Iris, and Herlock. I fully admit I'm biased as a Kazuma and Barok hater but neither Kazuma nor Barok have a positive relationship with Iris and Herlock the way that Ryunosuke and Susato do. At best Kazuma has a separate found family dynamic with Ryunosuke and Susato but that doesn't make him a member of the found family as a whole.

As for my second hot take? People say Ryunosuke and Susato have a sibling relationship, but honestly I don't see it. I'll admit I'm biased since I ship them together but these two do not talk about each other the way siblings do. Their final conversation is as close to a love confession as it can get without them outright saying they're in love and the game having them kiss. As someone with siblings I'd never talk about or to my siblings the way these two do in the final scene of Resolve and even outside of it I feel like a lot of their scenes are framed/treated romantically. People just don't want to see it because of the age gap and, like, it's fine if people don't like the age gap but they don't need to make up reasons why they're siblings instead of lovers. If anything, reading their relationship as siblinglike just makes it feel incesty when you consider the romantic framing and while I'm not necessarily against incest ships myself I know a lot of people are nowadays. I for one, will never see those two as anything but lovers. Maybe not at the start of the duology, but definitely by the end.

You listed two takes I have very strong feeling about, beware! I will be rambling a lot!

So about Barok and Kazuma...

Strongly agree | Agree | Neutral | Disagree | Strongly disagree

I want to say that Kazuma is one of my faves of all times, but I'm really critical about him, because he's an interesting mess (in an ugly way that's different from the typical twinkboy way), and because the fandom isn't normal about him and wanks him too much, and I'm mama's contrarian. So first of all, Kazuma was never a type of a character to be in a "found family" dynamic - too strong his dedication to Asogi's legacy. I'm sure he loves and respects Ryunosuke and Susato, and I hope he will befriend Iris, but he will never have the same sentiment as Ryunosuke about having "the best family in the world". Besides, my optimistic prospects of him adapting in London aside, the actual game showed us that his care for another people, especially Susato was really lukewarm and thus pretty condemnable if you ask me. So Kazuma, even after the truth he was seeking for 10 years is laid bare, is too much of a mess to be able to form meaningful connections. At least at this point

Now about Barok... He's technically a family to Iris, but it's a whole another thing to found family Iris found herself in with Sholmes et al. However, the uncle and niece started to have slow attempts to become closer. As much as broody Barok is, he probably won't miss a chance to suppoty Klint's daughter. Besides, there's this interesting begrudging friendship with Sholmes himself. Aaand respect for Ryunosuke. Still, neither of this isn't quite a found family make, and just like Kazuma, Barok doesn't have this type of commitment to consider 221B crew as such. So he's more like this brooding uncle everyone invies once a year or something

What I also believe is that Kazuma and Barok would be able to create a some sort of suppost network between each other and their closes colleagues like Gina or Maria Gorey (although Gina is 221B family member too). I won't be a family, and I'm not sure the two prosecutors need that, but they would do just fine not associating with 221B member as close as possible

The second take... *inhales*

Super-puper double mega agree | Strongly agree | Agree | Neutral | Disagree | Strongly disagree

I think even without shipping Ryususa (which I do) the sibling dynamic doesn't make much sense. The only argument in favor of it I can think of is Iris calling them her siblings. Which doesn't mean anything in terms of their own dynamic, since

They did this partly to support and encourage poor orphan girl

They chose to be called Iris' siblings, not each other's. It's like saying a married couple suddenly become incest since one of the party's parents is another's parent-in-law

It's historical fiction, where familial terms don't define strictly platonic relationship. In older books you will see someone saying "You're like a brother to me" and this will mean "I want to lala you forever". So at some point maaaybe Ryunosuke will say to Susato "You're like a sister to me, Susato-san!" and mean exactly this, because this is how people in ye olde times articulated their feelings. They weren't familiar with twitter fandom discourse

And honestly? Even without shipping goggles there's hardly some sort of fraternal bond between them like with, say, Phoenix and Maya or Apollo and Trucy, or Franziska and Miles (of course it's subjective and one might not see their dynamics as siblingey either, so this is all my opinion). They feel like comrades, coworkers with their formalities and respect.

And of course we all know that people who insist that Ryu and Susato are like siblings don't actually genuinely appreciate their dynamic from this perspective, they just looking for reasons to invalidate a ship that rivals their OTP

[reliand]

Ironically, drarry is so insulated by other drama that its just peaceful. No one is arguing. There was some dummy on Twitter complaining about bottom!Harry but it gained 0 traction on tumblr. We're just vibing.

it's so nice after seeing the rise of antis and puritanical mindsets over the past few years in fandom. It feels like we've definitely been blessed over here, and I don't want to jinx it, bc we're all just writing our fics and making our art and we're all getting along.

I think I saw that post and immediately was like, "hmm. boring. are we still fighting about this in 2024?" and no, we're not.

maybe it helps that the fandom is old? I remember the actual wank that was happening in HP fandom 20-25 years ago, but maybe bc we are all in our separate ship fandoms and not technically HP anymore, the wank fizzled out. We're not fighting with other ships, bc our fic isn't allowed on a website/server/etc and we're just doing our own thing *shrugs*

whatever it, it's lovely and peaceful and I'm so glad to be here

[skaruresonic]

"I won't forget the time another games fan admitted on my old Twitter account that the current fannish climate was such that they were going to limit their Sonic discussion to private channels."

Funnily enough, something similar happened to me on Twitter. Someone contacted me in private because they wanted to talk about CV with me, but "I didn't want to message you so publicly because there are some people who don't like you that follow me"

And my reaction was... cool? Thanks for telling me? I'm not even super active on Twitter and I can count on one hand the amount of times I complained and attracted discussions. I just felt sad that this person treated me like a clandestine. It reminded me back when I was in high school and my friend back then was like "don't help these people, they talk shit about you" - what am I supposed to think, other than "oh :("?

And the CV fandom is all but dead, even the NFCV fandom is certainly more active but currently resting. The Sonic fandom, especially on Twitter, is an absolute nightmare. People really do pounce you for any reason they deem justified, and all sorts of petty discourse is pushed in front of your face for the sole reason of making you angry.

Anyway, I say already what I said: for a fandom who will call you all sorts of names if you don't have the right wholesome opinions on minor characters, they sure have zero mercy for real life minors whose crime is complaining in their corner of the internet. Silly you, daring to have an opinion!

Funnily enough, something similar happened to me on Twitter. Someone contacted me in private because they wanted to talk about CV with me, but "I didn't want to message you so publicly because there are some people who don't like you that follow me"

It reminded me back when I was in high school and my friend back then was like "don't help these people, they talk shit about you" - what am I supposed to think, other than "oh :("?

Might be missing some context here, but honestly, that sounds a little backhanded. Best case scenario, they're worried about inadvertently shining a spotlight on you, which just raises questions of why they're hanging around folks who'd dogpile people to begin with.

Like bruh, this is video games fandom, not an illegal gambling ring lmao. Saying "I can't reblog from you because you have cooties" would be more emotionally honest.

To some extent, though, I do have to wonder how much of this is a modern-day fandom culture thing and isn't confined to just Sonic, because patterns seem to repeat across fandoms. Half-Life has settled down AFAIK, but that was after virulent tourists literally called the cops on fic writers for shipping a ship and caused the old guard to disperse. The Silent Hill Reddit, likewise, refuses to hear any criticism of the SH2 remake because you're harshing their buzz. And hey, anything Konami offers us must surely be better than nothing. "Technical limitations" is similar misinformation that gets passed around via games of telephone a la Shadow mandates. I don't need to tell you how Sonic fandom treats unpopular opinions. Don't know what to call it. Toxic positivity? Consumerism? Anti mindset? Clout chasing? Social media-fuelled outrage? All of the above? Whatever it is, it's becoming more prevalent in fannish spaces. Maybe it's because I'm more invested in Sonic fandom than the others, but there I've noticed that there's definitely this added layer of superciliousness to Sonic that just makes the usual fandom wank even more obnoxious. Yes, the HLVRAI stans might lie and say your ship is pedophilia, which is incredibly unfortunate, but nobody was giving them the microphone and saying they ought to be taken as an authority on all things Half-Life. In fact, the old guard pushed for AO3 to separate HLVRAI and Half-Life in the tags for years for this very reason. We weren't all suddenly like "hmm yes, maybe Gordon really was a ~secret pedo~ who thinks of grown-ass Alyx as a child when she flirts with him in-game" because we knew that was fucking ridiculous. But for some reason, we're all supposed to think "IDW!Sonic is Games!Sonic" lest we bu run out of town with torches and pitchforks, I guess.

The worst part is it's hard to tell what people want anymore. You can't say things they don't want to hear even in your own space. You can't say it politely, you can't say it rudely, you can't say it to your friends or to people you're arguing with, you just cannot say it at all without risking a ton of fans going "well you said it, therefore you deserve what you get." And, frankly, fuck that lol.

[ladyloveandjustice]

It can't be avoided that several of these were from the Harry Potter fandom. Please remember that none of these dramas caused such widespread harm as the author now has and support trans rights. While I don't truck with supporting HP monetarily anymore, I believe we cannot forget the fandom's wanky history, lest we be doomed to repeat it.

If you're not a timeless being like me and don't know what fandom wank is, here's the lowdown on fanlore: https://fanlore.org/wiki/Fandom_Wank

Some of these, mostly Thanfiction's complete story, cover some pretty rough topics- cw for sexual assault, abuse, and misgendering in that one. I wrote about it in full here. Usagi Kou is/was also very transphobic so please tread carefully.