#the fandom is not a monolith

[galadrielette]

the tomfoolery of being like 'if you don't like then block and move on' only to then go one many a rant complaining about being blocked by the very people who you don't want interacting with your posts. like. what the fuck is going on?

[thegoldencontracts]

Canon Azul: Avid capitalist, willing to cheat others into servitude, and quite competent. Takes amusement in toying with his prey. Despite this, he does have his own pride and is ultimately a teenage boy.

Fanon Azul: Literally the biggest woobie boy ever. Will cry if you don't tell him you love him every five seconds.

Canon Jade: Rather similar to Azul in mindset. He too is willing to mess with others for his own gain. However, unlike Azul, he doesn't usually have the motive of gaining anything, he simply desires amusement. Despite his ordinarily composed demeanor, he is also a teenage boy at the end of things, and does have occasional moments of vulnerability like in his tsum event.

Fanon Jade: Literally Satan himself. The actual incarnate of malice. He eats people. He ate your grandmother. Now he's abusing you.

Just- how are the fanon perceptions of these two fairly similar characters so different? How is it that when Azul ordered Jade to wring Floyd out, it was "typical capitalist octopus behavior", but when Jade complied, it was "super messed up, it's unbelievable he'd do something like that". I swear, Jade could breathe and there'd be someone out there calling him an evil bastard for doing it, meanwhile Azul literally could commit war crimes and that same person would say "awww little capitalist tako bbg"

[douwatahima]

as someone who's been doing fandom stuff for over twenty years, i think one of the most important lessons you can learn is not everything is for you. we're all nerds on the internet, banding together because we feel at least a little unhinged about our favourite shows/movies/ect. there's going to strong opinions any way you slice it, and other people's opinions won't always align with yours. maybe someone is obsessed with a character you don't like or a pairing that makes no sense to you, but that person still has as much of a right to be in the space as you do. that doesn't mean you have to interact with those ideas, i'm a big proponent of blocking whoever or whatever you need to, but you don't get to tell them to stop just because you personally don't like it.

obviously, there are cases where this doesn't apply. if a take is super racist/homophobic/transphobic or someone is using their personal headcanon to harrass others, then absolutely that's something that should be addressed. but if it's just something harmless that irks you personally, you need to understand that that is a you problem and not a them problem. and, quite frankly, if you can't come to terms with that, maybe fandom isn't for you.

[soullessjack]

lord knows I do not have the capacity to explain it right now but I have so much disdain for how heteronormative and nuclear this fandom is hellbent on making destiel and lord knows I have an even bigger hatred for how jack is used to fuel it.

[eukoi]

I love my sharksona so much.. HI MONOLITH

[normalbrothers]

i'm a fandom person through and through but i wish more shows would give less of a shit what fandom wants

[stuckasmain]

An interesting note about the movie is the way it approaches violence, there’s a bunch of interpretations already and I’m by no means the first. However, what I’ve noticed in my last few rewatches was how the film seems to take violence as a learned thing rather than an inherent human trait. (A much more common interpretation broadly).

In the book it’s much more clearly laid out but the group of man apes we follow are on the brink of dying out. They’re starved and a bit behind, the land they rely on to forage is bleak and picked through. They’re weak from starvation and overall very passive as even herbivores seem to knock them about and do better. There’s no memory, no thought really— they can’t go far even if the thought occurred to them. It is only through the monoliths influence that they begin to pick up tools, to hunt and fight and truly live instead of barely surviving. Now, violence was not introduced by the monolith - we see clearly the world around them is full of it— nor would tools be never used if not for its influence. It merely sped along the process, utilizing the time these man apes did not have. As the natural evolutionary time it would take them to realize this wouldn’t be met this group would starve before hand.

On the discovery we see a similar case of passivity, this time in the modern evolved man. This time the world surrounding them is not nearly as harsh and dangerous— in fact it’s coddling! While the nature of space travel is a incredible risk we see their world is comfortable and abundant. They have all the food, water, air, shelter they would need— in fact this world could operate very well on its own without them at all. Their position, unknown to them- or perhaps known deep down- is arbitrary. Hal is sort of like an all encompassing mother- their provider and world. They have no need for violence, though they know of it and are capable of it. In this case it is not the monolith’s influence but own instinct. This time man has the proper drive for survival and the tools to ensure that it lives.

On the discovery violence is influenced by circumstance- self preservation. Both from Hal (with additional influence of illness) and Frank and Dave. Interesting both the human and computer sides have the same goal: preservation of the mission and preservation of the self.

However evolved it shows there’s still a sense of primitive nature to the species as when a problem arises violence quickly becomes the only solution. Like with the ape men Dave and Frank must quickly abandon passivity when the land around them begins to fail (Hal, their world malfunctions. Just as the land around the apes is dead). They can no longer be a dependent. You can’t leave mother so you must kill her in this case.

To tie this back to- something- I was going somewhere initially. I think it shows a part of both the monolith’s plan but also a general lesson. To evolve past violence you must first know it.

There’s nuance to this, especially when comparing these examples of violence for survival vs. the more irrational type (war, countries fighting) examples we see later on. However I want to keep this brief so I can remain writing something coherent but the eventual idea is that humanity will evolve even past necessary violence into something like Dave becomes (again book has a whole thing on the alien theory. Strictly 2001 speaking)

[jasontoddsno1simp]

Uh...

Where is all this Black Jason Todd discourse coming from?! Because, last time I checked, headcanoning Jason as Black is not exactly all that popular. Unless I'm missing a huge subset of his fandom; I've yet to come across the mob of He Did Nothing Wrong girlies who are deadass that Jason anti's swear run Butstan Twitter/Tumblr.

[rookflower]

btw for reference whenever I talk about "the warrior cats fandom" as a whole, I am usually not talking specifically about here on tumblr but rather all the different fandom spaces I have exposure to (twitter, YouTube, and friend circles/discord being ones I participate in and reddit and the wcrpforums as ones i avoid)

[mxchidreams]

Yahoo! Everyone loves a shark girl! I was lucky to be allowed to draw Monolith, a very lovely lady owned by @eukoi (also an epic artist, go check em out!)

[prodogg]

Why are some TB individuals on twitter always loosing their shit and behave like rabid monkeys under artwork that uses a dany quote or other Targ/Valyrian related stuff which has the green Targs pictured. Like these quotes are so inflationary used but y’all loose your shit when it’s under a green artwork. It’s not that deep and y’all playing 🤓☝️ just shows the insecurity you have. Like just scroll past it instead of throwing a tantrum like a child.

[thefudge]

hi so I just watched Bridgerton for the first time (not done w/ season 3 tho) and you're one of my fav ao3 authors, so I was thrilled to see you've written some fic! I also looked thru your bridgerton tag bc I like your takes on media, and I saw that you considered an Anthony/Edwina fic at one point. No pressure but if you ever wanted to return to that idea I'd love to read it, I love Kanthony but I think there's potential for some interesting stuff with Anthwina (?) Anyway thanks for reading!

hah, yes, i do have a terrible widower AU fic in the drafts, and it might some day get finished and see the light of day! the bridgerton fandom is kind of crazy tho, and apparently incredibly intolerant of multishippers, but at least i know a few of you guys will appreciate it.

[ryssabrin]

incredibly cold take but i really do not understand how bl*od/weave became the most popular origin/origin ship, both for each character or like. just in general. like they both make way more sense in a romance with wyll than with each other and more compelling cases could also def be made for gale/shadowheart (both having a crisis of faith and struggling to define their identity outside of said faith) and astarion/karlach (touch-averse vs touch-starved and jaded pessimism vs boundless optimism). hell i'd even see gale/lae'zel before i'd see gale with astarion. they simply do not like or respect each other. it's literally anders/fenris all over again tbh.

[chaotic-history]

thought of this bc of the last post but I hate when people say a certain historical figure was ahead of their time just bc they had progressive views or whatnot. And I'm looking at many things written about Roger Williams here just as an example, because yes, his ideas were hugely progressive, but they were also firmly rooted in 17thC nonconformism (and those things don't have to be contradictory!). To act as though he was just.. ahead of his time ignores the reality and nuance of his beliefs.

And, to say his progressive beliefs automatically make him ahead of his time, a product of the distant future rather than his present, is also to say that people in the 1600s weren't progressive; that progressivism simply didn't exist. Which clearly it did, and it always has. Roger's progressive ideas are inescapably a product of his time, just as much as the ideas of the Massachusetts Bay leaders who banished him are a product of the same time. The past is just as capable of producing opposing ideas as the present is.

There have always been people pushing and fighting for progressive ideals, and to act like everybody pre-2000 or pre-1950s or whatever all held totally regressive beliefs is to the deny the history and the existence of the people who were fighting for our rights and for the same things we're still fighting for now, and that's a disservice to them and to us.

[thatswhatsushesaid]

something i would like for other corners of the mdzs fandom to consider—and i genuinely mean this in good faith, i am not trying to start anything—is that they are not the only ones who interact with members of the cn side of the fandom, or ask questions about cultural and historical context that don’t translate well into english. and those conversations have informed our interpretation of the text, and key characters.