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chiisana-sukima · 8 months ago

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@blue-chimera- I want to reply to your reblog, but the post chain is so long now and my autism goblin can't stand to have another long, long post on my dash again for dumb esthetic reasons. So I'm just pasting the relevant part into a new chain from the original first post. I hope that's okay with everyone involved.

To explain Sam's statement about his flashbacks from a Doylist perspective: the writers had Sam say what he did to ensure that the extent of his suffering was clear to us as viewers despite the show not having the time/budget to show a whole lot in the way of actual torture. (They didn't want us to see a brief seizure and think, "Oh, but that wasn't so bad!") They weren't trying to send people down some complicated rabbit hole. They expected us to interpret Sam's statement as an assertion about the subjective experience of the flashback, not as an objective claim of time dilation.²

To explain Sam's statement from a Watsonian perspective: Sam is trying to wrap his head around what's happening in the real world vs. what he's feeling, which is a break with reality that's both highly painful & highly disorienting. The torture aspect makes it painful. The time skew makes it disorienting. That's what's motivating his observation: an attempt to grapple with this dissonance.

¹On a similar note, it also makes sense that souls attached to bodies do not feel the effects of Hell's time dilation, either. Mrswhozeewhatsis offers a reasonable theory here, and one that would be consistent with what we saw.

² If this was an attempt at an objective claim, it would be one inconsistent with earlier statements about the rate of time's passage in Hell, in any case. And if we're just going to argue that the show was broadly inconsistent, there's no point in analyzing any of it. Once you agree that nothing needs logically coherence with the rest of the show to be a valid interpretation, then anything goes. You could just as easily argue that the rate of passage of time in Hell changed depending on the phase of the Moon — we'd have no more or less evidence for that than anything else.

To get where we agree and where we disagree out of the way because I want to talk primarily about something else:

I agree Dean and Alastair were making claims of fact about how fast time actually passes in Hell, whereas Sam was talking about how much of his time in the Cage he was subjectively remembering during the 2-3 minute seizure those memories caused.

I disagree the narrative purpose of that dialogue was to show the extent of his current suffering; I think the narrative purpose was to show that remembering the Cage was dangerous to the point it could be easily fatal, and therefore he shouldn't be "scratching the wall". If remembering a week of the Cage causes a seizure of near fatal length, then remembering *more* (i.e. a longer period of) the Cage would probably kill him. This isn't, on the Watsonian level, a fact claim by Sam that X amount of time on earth = Y amount of time in Hell, but on a Doylist level, it does serve the purpose of showing the viewer that these aren't normal "flashbacks"; there is some kind of weird, dangerous, extra-horrible, supernatural thing going on in relation to perceived Hell Time vs real earth time. Which we already know is the case because of Dean and Alastair's earlier statements about Hell Time.

I also agree that as fanwank goes (I apologize if I explain terms you already know; I had never heard the term "fanwank" until my old school fandom friends used it, so: fanwank is the old school term for filling in inconsistency holes in canon in ways that make as much sense as possible, when there's been no meaningful attempt to do so in canon. It doesn't have a negative connotation like "wank" as Discourse does) as fanwank goes, I love @mrswhozeewhatsis's (which is also some of my friends') "the body grounds you in Hell and that's why time passes 'normally' in Hell if you are embodied" explanation. On a purely logical level it still doesn't entirely work, because if that was the case, how would embodied people interact in Hell with souls? Their time would be running at grossly different speeds. Conversation or fighting would be impossible. And we see alive!Sam interacting with dead souls in Taxi Driver, and dead!Crowley and Rowena interacting with alive!TFW in Hell when presumably by necessity they must interact with dead souls on the regular as well. However, vibes-wise it works really well and I am incorporating it into my spn headcanons as we speak.

And if we're just going to argue that the show was broadly inconsistent, there's no point in analyzing any of it.

So this is the part I mostly want to discuss if you're up for it. A friend and I were discussing 'what are people's motivations for arguing about fandom-related topics?' because it seems like often what ends up happening is people get more entrenched in their original positions, so why engage with it in the first place?

I think for me, I can't deny part of it is sometimes I see a position that I view very differently and if it's on a touchy topic, sometimes I get reactive, and then my reactivity comes out in the classic autistic 'if I explain enough, the other person will see I'm right and stop believing the thing that makes me reactive'. This is ofc not necessarily true in the slightest lol but it's a hard tendency to break out of.

But my best self also likes to argue, and for my best self, it's mostly about seeing and being seen. For my best self convincing the other party is secondary, or sometimes not a goal at all; what I'm on about is just wanting to know the other person and I have engaged with each other honestly and compassionately and that we have learned more about one another and life through that engagement.

So in that spirit, I want to say that to me the show does seem broadly inconsistent on a near constant basis and that part of what makes analysis fun for me is exactly that inconsistency. That's why so many of my arguments are structured as "but why did they do it X way in episode A and Y way in episode B" rather than "X is on screen, so how do we square that with Y, which is also on screen". To me, for example, it would feel pointless to try to square s4 with Dean's later assertion in First Blood that Hell was not as bad as 2 months in solitary confinement in a black ops supermax. To me, the later assertion is patently ridiculous (and also wildly personally offensive for reactivity reasons having to do with my own life), and what interests me about it isn't so much 'how do I explain this in universe', as 'why did dabb choose to write it that way'. I do have friends who are bugged mostly by the inconsistency and I appreciate their efforts to fanwank something plausible about it up, but it's not the main draw of discussion for me.

But the fanwank way of engaging is equally valid as the "lets look at this as a sociological phenomenon" way. That's why there are multiple schools of literary/media analysis. It's just not my way. It just, because of how my brain is structured or whatever, doesn't intuitively make sense as a method of analysis to me.

To me, spn doesn't do a very good job as a single coherent story in terms of overall plot beats. It's the 'I shot Hitler and beat up God after he ate his evil sister' show. I can't even take it seriously. Where the quality and consistency comes in is mostly, for me, thematic/vibes-based--i.e 'wow is this show stupid but also damn does it ever do a great job making me feel specific things over and over again for 15 years worth of episodes'.

So, for me, the important part of discussing Dean's vs Sam's time in Hell is thematic/vibes-based--where by 'vibes' I mean 'how did the creators probably intend the audience to feel about Scene A or Scene B and do I and other people actually feel that way or did they fuck it up'.

To me, Sam's symptomology in s6-7 is his body's testimony. He's not making claims of specific, concrete facts, but vibes-wise his seizures and his initial comatose state and later hallucinations are symbolic recreations of the actual facts of his stay in Hell.

So, I'll go first. I'm not expecting reciprocation in oversharing; I'm sharing for the sake of being heard, because being heard is a valuable end goal of discussion to me on its own (although reciprocation and/or engagement with the topic are very welcome).

I just can't buy--on a vibes based level, not on a logical level--that Sam is reduced to psychosis and inevitable death without emergency supernatural psychiatric intervention by a year and a half in Lucifer's power.

I started out as a Dean girl (gn) and Dean's story is in many ways more like my own than Sam's is. My id only flipped to Sam in s6-7 purely because Sam's PTSD symptomology happens to be more like my own than Dean's is, and Jared's portrayal is the best, most respectful portrayal of severe dissociative PTSD I've ever seen.

Dean's Hell storyline is by far my favorite arc of his. Like many spn fans, my childhood was not ideal, and in my case, my scumbag father is in some ways a lot like Alastair. And even though on a plot level, the 40 year timeline gives me secondhand embarrassment because it's so excessive and stupid; on a vibes level, I think it's necessary and effective. Dean should be stronger than me. He should be the epic me I would've been if I was in a heroic adventure show instead of real life. He's a container for all those larger-than-life feelings people--but in this case, me--have about their own much smaller but still horrible experiences.

And Sam is this too. When I come right down to it--when I am as honest with myself as I'm capable of being--my emotional response to the idea of Sam in Lucifer's care for a year destroying him to the extent it does is anger and disgust. Because my Hell was longer.

Obviously, I know my rl childhood was in no way comparable to even a fraction of a particle of what Sam went through in the Cage, so my response makes no sense logically. But emotionally it makes very good sense. He's supposed to be larger than life. He's supposed to be larger than my life.

And it especially makes sense given the context that I had already internalized earlier in spn's run that Dean's Hell was a magnified version of my own, and he came out, I would say, approximately as damaged by it as I have been. Which is to say, on the grand scale, not that much. He has very apparent PTSD symptoms in s4, and it does fuck him up forever in ways you can see right through to the end of the show, but fundamentally he can still function. He has flashbacks but no psychosis. He has trouble sleeping, but not to the extent it will kill him. He self-medicates, but he doesn't down random pills he got off a stranger and then crash a car and end up in involuntary inpatient custody. I just can't imagine Lucifer with the power to mold reality being qualitatively so much worse than Alastair with the power to mold reality that anything but more time would explain Sam's hugely worse subsequent body's score card.

I really hate how trauma has become weaponized in fandom, and I hate that the (honestly pretty understandable) counter-weapon is "pfft, you're projecting" as a reason why someone's meta isn't valid. Of course I'm projecting--that's spn's brand--what are you doing at the devil's sacrament. Anyway, I want to specify that the above isn't about saying my way of interacting with this topic is the best one or the most right one or that people shouldn't still argue with me about it or anything of that nature. Rather it's an attempt to share why (because 'why' is my favorite question) my approach to the topic is what it is.

Does the show ever actual say how long Sam’s soul was in Lucifer’s cage in relative time? Because I know they specifically said for Dean that it was like 40 years, but at no other time do any of the characters that go to Hell experience time dilation/distortion so it seems just as likely that Dean’s time was messed with to hasten him breaking to jump start the apocalypse. But I’m wondering if I’ve just forgotten a reference or if we’ve all just assumed that Sam’s time down there was longer than the year or so that his soul wasn’t in his body.

#long post #ptsd #oversharing #turn back now if you don't want that in your life #cw csa #<-- very vaguely implied but still obvious enough it probably requires a trigger warning

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shihalyfie · 3 years ago

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Hi :) If it's not too much trouble, could you please share your take on why they'd continue the Adventure brand after tri. was such a flop? (and a tangent: what does "dark history" even mean?). We got Kizuna, the reboot, and a 02 movie. Logically, it doesn't really make sense they'd keep investing in it.

This is a thorny topic, and I'd like to reiterate that although I've ended up making more posts related to this series and the discourse surrounding it recently (probably because it's even more on the mind now that another movie is on the horizon and a lot of people are apprehensive for various reasons), I do not want this blog to be making a brand out of being critical of this series. I’m writing this here and in public because I figured that there is a certain degree I need to clarify what I mean about audience reception/climate and how it might impact current or future works, and I’m admittedly also more than a little upset that I occasionally see Western fanbase criticisms of the series getting dismissed by people claiming that the only people mad about it are dramamongering or ignorant Westerners (which could not be further from the truth). However, this is mainly to address this and to answer your question, and is not intended to try and change anyone's existing opinion or impression of the series as much as it's me trying to explain (from my own personal reading of the situation) what practically went down with critical reception in real life; no more, no less.

The short summary of the matter is:

The series was a moderate financial success (albeit with some caveats; see the long version for details) and definitely outstripped a lot of prior attempts to revive the franchise;

However, the overall Japanese fanbase-side critical backlash from tri. was extremely and viciously negative to the point where even acknowledging the series too much could easily result in controversy;

Kizuna’s production and the PR surrounding it very obviously have this in mind with a lot of apparent “damage control” elements.

The long version is below.

Note that while I try to be diligent about citing my sources so people understand that I’m not just making things up wholesale, I’m deliberately refraining from linking certain things here this time, both because some of the things mentioned have some pretty crude things written there -- it’s not something I feel comfortable directing people to regardless of what language it’s in -- and because I don’t want to recklessly link things on social media and cause anyone to go after or harass the people involved. For the links that have been provided, please still be warned that some of them don’t really link to particularly pleasant things.

I am not writing the following information to suggest that anyone should agree or disagree with the sentiments being described. I know people tend to take "a lot of people like/hate this" as a signal of implication "it is correct to like/hate this" when it's not (and I especially dislike the idea of implying that Japanese fanbase opinions are the only correct ones). There's a reason I focus on "critical reception being this way" (because it influences marketing decisions and future direction) rather than how much this should impact one's personal feelings; this is coming from myself as someone who is shamelessly proud of liking many things that had bad critical reception, were financial failures, or are disliked by many. As I point out near the end, the situation also does seem to be changing for the better in more recent years as well.

Also, to be clear, I'm a single person who's observing everything best I can from my end, I have no affiliations with staff nor do I claim to, and as much as I'm capable of reading Japanese and thus reading a lot of people's impressions, I'm ultimately still another “outsider” looking in. These are my impressions from my observation of fan communal spaces, following artists and reading comments on social media and art posting websites, and results from social media searches. In the end, I know as much as anyone else about what happened, so this is just my two cents based on all of my personal observations.

A fanbase is a fanbase regardless of what part of the world you're from. There are people who love it and are shameless about saying so. There are people who have mixed feelings or at least aren't on extreme ends of the spectrum (as always, the loudest ones are always the most visible, but it's not always easy to claim they're the predominant percentage of the fanbase). That happens everywhere, and I still find that on every end I've seen. However, if I'm talking about my impressions and everything I’ve encountered, I will say that the overall Japanese reaction to tri. comes off as significantly more violently negative on average than the Western one, which is unusual because often it's the other way around. (I personally feel less so because the opinions are that fundamentally different and more so because we're honestly kind of loud and in-your-face people; otherwise, humans are mostly the same everywhere, and more often than not people feel roughly the same about everything if they’re given the same information to work with.)

This is not something I can say lightly, and thus would not say if I didn’t really get this impression, but...we're talking "casually looking up movie reviews for Kizuna have an overwhelming amount of people casually citing any acknowledgment of tri. elements as a negative element", or the fact that even communal wikis for "general" fandoms like Pixiv and Aniwota don't tend to hold back in being vicious about it (as of this writing, Pixiv's wiki refuses to consider it in the same timeline as Adventure, accusing it of being "a series that claims to be a sequel set three years after 02 but is in fact something different"). Again, there are people who openly enjoy it and actively advocate for it (and Pixiv even warns people to not lord over others about it condescendingly because of the fact that such people do exist), and this is also more of a reflection of “the hardcore fanbase on the Internet” and not necessarily the mainstream (after all, there are quite a few other Digimon works where the critical reception varies very heavily between the two). Nevertheless, the take-home is that the reputation is overall negative among the Internet fanbase to the point that this is the kind of sentiment you run into without trying all that hard.

I think, generally speaking, if we're just talking about why a lot of people resent the series, the reasons aren't that different from those on the Western side. However, that issue of "dark history" (黒歴史): there's a certain degree of demand from the more violently negative side of the fanbase that's, in a sense, asking official to treat it as a disgrace and never acknowledge it ever again, hence why Kizuna doing so much as borrowing things from it rather than rejecting it outright is still sometimes treated like it’s committing a sin. So it's somewhat close in spirit to a retcon movement, which is unusual because no other Digimon series gets this (not even 02; that was definitely a thing on the Western end, but while I'm sure there are people who hate it that much on their end too, I've never really seen it gain enough momentum for anyone to take it seriously). If anyone ever tells you that Japanese fanbases are nice to everything, either they don't know Japanese, are being willfully ignorant, or are lying to you, because there is such thing as drama in those areas, and in my experience, I've seen things get really nasty when things are sufficiently pushed over the edge, and if a fanbase wants to have drama, it will have drama. This happens to be one of those times.

(If you think this is extreme, please know that I also think so too, so I hope you really understand that me describing this sentiment does not mean I am personally endorsing it. Also, let me reiterate that the loudest section of the fanbase is not necessarily the predominant one; after all, as someone who’s been watching reactions to 02 over the years, I myself can attest that its hatedom has historically made it sound more despised than it actually is in practice.)

My impression is that the primary core sentiment behind why the series so much as existing and being validated is considered such an offense (rather than, say, just saying "wow, that writing was bad" and moving on) is heavily tied to the release circumstances the series came out in during 2015-2018, and the idea that "this series disrespected Adventure, and also disrespected the fanbase.” (I mean, really, regardless of what part of the world you’re from, sequels and adaptations tend to be held to a higher bar of expectation than standalone works, because they’re expected to do them justice.) A list of complaints I’ve come across a lot while reading through the above:

The Japanese fanbase is pretty good at recordkeeping when it comes to Adventure universe lore, partially because they got a lot of extra materials that weren’t localized, but also partially because adherence to it seems to generally be more Serious Business to them than it is elsewhere. For instance, “according to Adventure episode 45, ‘the one who wishes for stability’ (Homeostasis) only started choosing children in 1995, and therefore there can be no Chosen Children before 1995” is taken with such gravity that this, not anything to do with evolutions or timeline issues, is the main reason Hurricane Touchdown’s canonicity was disputed in that arena (because Wallace implies that he met his partners before 1995). It’s a huge reason the question of Kizuna also potentially not complying to lore came to the forefront, because tri. so flagrantly contradicts it so much that this issue became very high on the evaluation checklist. In practice, Kizuna actually goes against Adventure/02 very little, so the reason tri. in particular comes under fire for this is that it does it so blatantly there were theories as early as Part 1 that this series must take place in a parallel universe or something, and as soon as it became clear it didn’t, the resulting sentiment was “wow, you seriously thought nobody would notice?” (thus “disrespecting the audience”).

A lot of the characterization incongruity is extremely obvious when you’re following only the Japanese version, partially because it didn’t have certain localization-induced characterization changes (you are significantly less likely to notice a disparity with Mimi if you’re working off the American English dub where they actually did make her likely to step on others’ toes and be condescending, whereas in Japanese the disparity is jarring and hard to miss) and partially due to some things lost in translation (Mimi improperly using rough language on elders is much easier to spot as incongruity if you’re familiar with the language). Because it’s so difficult to miss, and honestly feels like a lot of strange writing decisions you’d make only if you really had no concept of what on earth happened in the original series, it only contributes to the idea that they were handling Adventure carelessly and disrespectfully without paying attention to what the series was even about (that, or worse, they didn’t care).

02 is generally well-liked there! It’s controversial no matter where you go, but as I said earlier, there was no way a retcon movement would have ever been taken seriously, and the predominant sentiment is that, even if you’re not a huge fan of it, its place in canon (even the epilogue) should be respected. So not only flagrantly going against 02-introduced lore but also doing that to a certain quartet is seen as malicious, and you don’t have as much of the converse discourse celebrating murdering the 02 quartet (yeah, that’s a thing that happened here) or accusing people with complaints of “just being salty because they like 02″ as nearly as much of a factor; I did see it happen, or at least dismissals akin to “well it’s Adventure targeted anyway,” but they were much less frequent. The issue with the 02 quartet is usually the first major one brought up, and there’s a lot of complaints even among those who don’t care for 02 as much that the way they went about it was inhumane and hypocritical, especially when killing Imperialdramon is fine but killing Meicoomon is a sin. Also, again, “you seriously think nobody will see a problem with how this doesn’t make sense?”

I think even those who are fans of the series generally agree with this, but part of the reason the actual real-life time this series went on is an important factor is that the PR campaign for this series was godawful. Nine months of clicking on an egg on a website pretending like audience participation meant something when in actuality it was blatantly obvious it was just a smokescreen to reveal info whenever they were ready? This resulted in a chain effect where even more innocuous/defensible things were viewed in a suspicious or negative light (for instance, "the scam of selling the fake Kaiser's goggles knowing Ken fans would buy it only to reveal that it's not him anyway"), and a bunch of progressively out-of-touch-with-the-fanbase statements and poor choices led to more sentiment “yeah, you’re just insulting the fanbase at this point,” and a general erosion of trust in official overall.

On top of that, the choice of release format to have it spread out as six movies over three years seems to have exacerbated the backlash to get much worse than it would have been otherwise, especially since one of the major grievances with the series is that how it basically strung people along, building up more and more unanswered questions before it became apparent it was never going to answer them anyway. So when you’re getting that frustrated feeling over three whole years, it feels like three years of prolonged torture, and it becomes much harder to forgive for the fallout than if you’d just marathoned the entire thing at once.

For those who are really into the Digimon (i.e. species) lore and null canon, while I’m not particularly well-versed in that side of the fanbase, it seems tri. fell afoul of them too for having inaccurately portrayed (at one point, mislabeled) special attacks and poorly done battle choreography, along with the treatment of Digimon in general (infantilized Digimon characterization, general lack of Digimon characters in general, very flippant treatment of the Digital World in Parts 3-5). If you say you’re going to “reboot” the Digital World and not address the entire can of worms that comes with basically damaging an entire civilization of Digimon, as you can imagine, a lot of people who actually really care about that are going to be pissed, and the emerging sentiment is “you’re billing this as a Digimon work, but you don’t even care about the monsters that make up this franchise.”

The director does not have a very positive reputation among those who know his work (beyond just Digimon), and in general there was a lot of suspicion around the fact they decided to get a guy whose career has primarily been built on harem and fanservice anime to direct a sequel to a children’s series. Add to that a ton of increasingly unnerving statements about how he intended to make the series “mature” in comparison to its predecessor (basically, an implication that Adventure and 02 were happy happy joy series where nothing bad ever happened) and descriptions of Adventure that implied a very, very poor grasp of anything that happened in it: inaccurate descriptions of their characters, poor awareness of 02′s place in the narrative, outright saying in Febri that he saw the Digimon as like perpetual kindergartners even after evolving, and generally such a flippant attitude that it drove home the idea that the director of an Adventure sequel had no respect for Adventure, made this series just to maliciously dunk on it for supposedly being immature, and has such a poor grasp of what it even was that it’s possible he may not have seen it in the first place (or if he did, clearly skimmed it to the extent he understood it poorly to pretty disturbing levels). As of this writing, Aniwota Wiki directly cites him as a major reason for the backlash.

In general, consensus seems to be that the most positively received aspect of the series (story-wise) was Part 3 (mostly its ending, but some are more amenable to the Takeru and Patamon drama), and the worst vitriol goes towards Parts 2 (for the blatantly contradictory portrayal of Mimi and Jou and the hypocritical killing of Imperialdramon) and 4 (basically the “point of no return” where even more optimistic people started getting really turned off). This is also what I suspect is behind the numbers on the infamous DigiPoll (although the percentage difference is admittedly low enough to fall within margin of error). However, there was suspicion about the series even from Part 1, with one prominent fanartist openly stating that it felt more like meeting a ton of new people than it did reuniting with anyone they knew.

So with all of that on the table: how did this affect official? The thing is that when I say “violently negative”, I mean that also entailed spamming official with said violently negative social media comments. While this is speculation, I am fairly certain that official must have realized how bad this was getting as early as between Parts 4 and 5, because that’s where a lot of really suspicious things started happening behind the scenes; while I imagine the anime series itself was now too far in to really do anything about it, one of the most visible producers suddenly vanished from the producer lineup and was replaced by Kinoshita Yousuke, who ended up being the only member of tri. staff shared with Kizuna (and, in general, the fact that not a single member of staff otherwise was retained kind of says a lot). Once the series ended in 2018 and the franchise slowly moved into Kizuna-related things, you might notice that tri.-branded merch production almost entirely screeched to a halt and official has been very touchy about acknowledging it too deeply; it’s not that they don’t, but it’s kind of an awfully low amount for what you’d think would be warranted for a series that’s supposed to be a full entry in the big-name Adventure brand.

The reason is, simply, that if they do acknowledge it too much, people will get pissed at them. That’s presumably why the tri. stage play (made during that interim period between Parts 4 and 5 and even branded with the title itself) and Kizuna are really hesitant to be too aggressive about tri. references; it’s not necessarily that official wants to blot it out of history like the most extreme opinions would like them to, but even being too enthusiastic about affirming it will also get them backlash, especially if the things they affirm are contradictory to Adventure or 02. And considering even the small references they did put in still got them criticism for “affirming” tri. too much, you can easily see that the backlash would have been much harder if they’d attempted more than that; staying as close as possible to Adventure and 02 and trying to deal with tri. elements only when they’re comparatively inoffensive was pretty much the “safe” thing to do in this scenario (especially since fully denying tri. would most certainly upset the people who did like the series, and if you have to ask me, I personally think this would have been a pretty crude thing to have done right after the series had just finished). Even interviews taken after the fact often involve quickly disclaiming involvement with the series, or, if they have to bring up something about it, discussing the less controversial aspects like the art (while the character designs were still controversial, it’s at least at the point where some fanartists will still be willing to make use of them even if they dislike the series, albeit often with prominent disclaimers) or the more well-received parts of Part 3; Kizuna was very conspicuously marketed as a standalone movie, even if it shared the point of “the Adventure kids, but older” that tri. had.

(Incidentally, the tri. stage play has generally been met with a good reputation and was received well even among people who were upset with the anime, so it was well-understood that they had no relation. In fact, said stage play is probably even better received than Kizuna, although that’s not too surprising given the controversial territory Kizuna goes into, making the stage play feel very play-it-safe in comparison.)

So, if we’re going to talk about Kizuna in particular: tri. was, to some degree, a moderate financial success, in the sense that it made quite a bit of money and did a lot to raise awareness of the Digimon brand still continuing...however, if you actually look at the sales figures for tri., they go down every movie; part of it was probably because of the progressively higher “hurdle” to get into a series midway, but consider that Gundam Unicorn (a movie series which tri.’s format was often compared to) had its sales go up per movie thanks to word of mouth and hype. So while tri. does seem to have gotten enough money to help sustain the franchise at first, the trade-off was an extremely livid fanbase that had shattered faith in the brand and in official, and so while continuing the Adventure brand might still be profitable, there was no way they were going to get away with continuing to do this lest everything eventually crash and burn.

Hence, if you look at the way Kizuna was produced and advertised, you can see a lot of it is blatantly geared at addressing a lot of the woes aimed at tri.: instead of the staff that had virtually no affiliation with Toei, the main members of staff announced were either from the original series (Seki and Yamatoya) or openly childhood fans, the 02 quartet was made into a huge advertising point as a dramatic DigiFes reveal (and character profies that tie into the 02 epilogue careers prominently part of the advertising from day one), and they even seemed to acknowledge the burnout on the original Adventure group by advertising it so heavily as “the last adventure of Taichi and his friends”, so you can see that there’s a huge sentiment of “damage control” with it. How successful that was...is debatable, since opinions have been all over the board; quite a few people were naturally so livid at what happened with tri. that Kizuna was just opening more of the wound, but there were also people who liked it much better and were willing to acknowledge it (with varying levels of enthusiasm, some simply saying “it was thankfully okay,” and some outright loving it), and there was a general sentiment even among those who disliked both that they at least understood what Kizuna was going for and that it didn’t feel as inherently disrespectful. (Of course, there are people who loved tri. and hated Kizuna, and there are people who loved both, too.)

Moreover, Kizuna actually has a slightly different target audience from tri.; there’s a pretty big difference between an OVA and a theatrical movie, and, quite simply, Kizuna was made under the assumption that a lot of people watching it may not have even seen tri. in the first place. An average of 11% of the country watched Adventure and 02, but the number of people who watched tri. is much smaller, in part due to the fact that its “theater” screenings were only very limited screenings compared to Kizuna being shown in theaters in Japan and worldwide, and in part due to the fact that watching six parts over three years is a pretty huge commitment for someone who may barely remember Digimon as anything beyond a show they watched as a kid, and may be liable to just fall off partway through because they simply just forgot. (Which also probably wasn’t helped by the infamously negative reputation, something that definitely wouldn’t encourage someone already on the fence.) And that’s yet another reason Kizuna couldn’t make too many concrete tri. references; being a theatrical movie, it needs to have as wide appeal as possible, and couldn’t risk locking out an audience that had a very high likelihood of not having seen it, much less to the end -- it may have somewhat been informed by tri.’s moderate financial success and precedent, but it ultimately was made for the original Adventure and 02 audience more than anything else.

I would say that, generally, while Kizuna is “controversial” for sure, reception towards the movie seems to be more positive than negative, it won over a large chunk of people who were burned out by tri., and it clearly seems to have been received well enough that it’s still being cashed in on a year after its release. The sheer existence of the upcoming 02-based movie is also probably a sign of Kizuna’s financial and critical success; Kinoshita confirmed at DigiFes 2020 that nothing was in production at the time, and stated shortly after the movie’s announcement that work on it had just started. So the decision to make it seems to have been made after eyeing Kizuna’s reception, and, moreover, the movie was initially advertised from the get-go with Kizuna’s director and writer (Taguchi and Yamatoya), meaning those two have curried enough goodwill from the fanbase that this can be used to promote the movie. (If not, you would think that having and advertising Seki would be the bigger priority.) While this is my own sentiment, I am personally doubtful official would have even considered 02 something remotely profitable enough on its own to cash in on if it weren’t for this entire sequence of events of 02′s snubbing in tri. revealing how much of a fanbase it had (especially with the sheer degree of “suspicious overcompensation” Kizuna had with its copious use of the 02 quartet and it tagging a remix of the first 02 ED on the Hanareteitemo single, followed by the drama CD and character songs), followed by Kizuna having success in advertising with them so heavily. Given all of the events between 2015 and now, it’s a bit ironic to see that 02 has now become basically the last resort to be able to continue anything in the original Adventure universe without getting too many people upset at them about it.

The bright side coming out of all of this is that, while it’s still a bit early to tell, now that we’re three years out from tri. finishing up and with Kizuna in the game, it seems there’s a possibility for things improving around tri.’s reception as well. Since a lot of the worst heated points of backlash against it have a very “you had to have been there” element (related to the PR, release schedule, and staff comments), those coming in “late” don’t have as much reason to be as pissed at it; I’ve seen at least one case of a fanartist getting back into the franchise because of Kizuna hype, watching tri. to catch up, casually criticizing it on Twitter, and moving on with their life, presumably because marathoning the whole thing being generally aware of what’ll happen in it and knowing Kizuna is coming after anyway gives you a lot less reason to be angry to the point of holding an outright grudge. Basically, even if you don’t like it, it’s much easier to actually go “yeah, didn’t like that,” not worry too much about it, and move on. Likewise, I personally get the impression that official has been starting to get a little more confident about digging up elements related to it. Unfortunately, a fairly recent tweet promoting the series getting put on streaming services still got quite a few angry comments implying that they should be deleting the scourge from the Internet instead, so there’s still a long way to go, but hopefully the following years will see things improve further...

In regards to the reboot, I -- and I think a lot of people will agree with me -- have a bit of a hard time reading what exact audience it’s trying to appeal to; we have a few hints from official that they want parents to watch it with their children, and that it may have been a necessary ploy in order to secure their original timeslot. So basically, the Adventure branding gets parents who grew up with the original series to be interested in it and to show it to their kids, and convinces Fuji TV that it might be profitable. But as most people have figured by now, the series has a completely different philosophy and writing style -- I mean, the interview itself functionally admits it’s here to be more action-oriented and to have its own identity -- and the target audience is more the kids than anything else. As for the Internet fanbase of veterans, most people have been critical of its character writing and pacing, but other than a few stragglers who are still really pissed, it hasn’t attracted all that much vitriol, probably because in the end it’s an alternate universe, it doesn’t have any obligation to adhere to anything from the original even if it uses the branding, and it’s clearly still doing its job of being a kids’ show for kids who never saw the original series nor 02, so an attempt to call it “disrespectful” to the original doesn’t have much to stand on. A good number of people who are bored of it decided it wasn’t interesting to them and dropped it without incident, while other people are generally just enjoying it for being fun, and the huge amount of Digimon franchise fanservice with underrepresented Digimon and high fidelity to null canon lore is really pleasing the side of the fanbase that’s into that (I mean, Digimon World Golemon is really deep in), so at the very least, there’s not a lot to be super-upset about.

#tri negativity #shiha's ask box #springcrafter

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crowtrobotx · 3 years ago

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What up! My name’s Crow, a 34 year old chronically ill bisexual woman+. Use whatever pronouns and gender terms are funniest in the moment. I’m used to she/her and generally just refer to myself as such but go crazy.

I like video games, fiber arts, drawing, writing (fiction & poetry), cryptids, and (regrettably) American college football. Offline, I work full time managing an art school/charity, so I’m generally interested in anything related to the joy of creation and expression.

I can’t stop anyone from following me but minors should know this is a very sex positive blog and I post a lot of horny shit. TERFs and radfems can get fucked. Any kind of bigotry is going to get you blocked - I am old and tired.

My crochet pieces are tagged with #my crochet nonsense or more recently #crowchet

🦋🦋🦋🦋

Fandom FYIs: I don’t know what a pro ship or anti is and at this point I’m too afraid to ask. I do not care about discourse and drama (beyond watching from afar like a shady bitch) and am generally of the opinion that you gotta just let people vibe and block liberally. I am a massive OC x canon fan. This includes second person reader fics. I tend to avoid canon x canon like the plague due to truly deranged behavior I’ve been on the receiving end of over the years, and I’m over it. That doesn’t mean I hate you and your ship, it means I’m giving you the thumbs up from across the room while asking that you respect my non-participation!

Here you will mostly find video game content (particularly RE8, RDR 1/2, and Mass Effect) and the occasional unhinged ramblings related to Black Sails, LotR, and (of course) MST3K.

🦋🦋🦋🦋

My current fanfic: Chrysalis (Resident Evil Village, Karl Heisenberg x Original Character and Heisendad!) This is all about our favorite trashy old man being a Papa to a feral gremlin child while being angst-ridden over his not quite dead girlfriend, what more could you want?

**Updated 11/19/24!**

Check Engine (Resident Evil Village, Karl Heisenberg x GN!Reader, Mechanic AU) Cute little fluffy small town moments sprinkled with shameless, raunchy smut.

**FINISHED! 11/30/2023**

viridescent (Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Emmrich Volkarin x GN!Reader) One shot implied smut but mostly fluff cuddle sesh with everyone’s favorite Vincent Price lookalike.

**FINISHED! 11/11/2024**

-> Fan Art of Chrysalis/Karl & Lottie that I carry around in my wallet every day and show off like a proud dad.

-> Commissioned work of Kris n Karl that waters my crops and clears my skin

-> Commissioned ~suggestive~ Kris n Karl art that makes me feral like a gas station raccoon

-> Disgustingly cute Lottie art that I am pinning to the fridge and then possibly eating

-> Fucking adorable and hilarious fan art of Lottie & Kris being BFFs with my beloved Hazel & Toast!! And Karl is there too.

-> Beautiful Lottie fan art COMPLETE WITH RAT SOLDAT!

-> Fan art of Karl bein’ a cute dilf while grocery shopping from Check Engine!

-> VârcoKris fan art for when you are in the mood for beautiful werewolf time (which should be always)

-> Lottie. On. Karl’s. Shoulders.

Enjoy your stay 💖💜💙

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thestaredown · 3 years ago

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Some thoughts on the current discourse about consequences, friendships and fallout in Riverdale.

I decided that what I had to say on it would be long enough to warrant its own post so here we are.

Something to acknowledge as fans is the fact that this show has often and especially this last season expected the viewers to do the character work for them. This season has had a deluge of crazy theories and off the wall extrapolations based on nothing but the thinnest of lines, looks, and writer trolling.

Why? Because we have only been given crumbs as to our main characters state of minds. We have a seven-year gap that we are filling ourselves because after half a season we know next to nothing about our main characters as they are now. They don't interact about anything significant; story lines are rarely meaningful, and the show is trying to sell them as simultaneously being team players with each other while making it clear that they are not friends (despite wanting us to think they are).

We start with the dreaded kiss. It was handled poorly full stop. Not just in a teenagers make mistakes way, but narratively. The drama was achieved but it broke something they are still scrambling to repair.

The fallout was not equal. In fandom Betty got dragged and, in the show, she was clearly devastated and suddenly very alone. Jughead went back to season 1 shut down and isolated. Veronica heartbroken but able to pick up and go. Then Archie who is apparently not allowed lasting conflict, gets full core four support as he leaves, and a dismissal from Jughead cause ‘army’.(The trend continues in this fashion season 5 with some extras)

For something that was supposed to blow things up it went out with a whimper because despite what the writers may think, they don’t like taking risks, and truly splintering all these relationships would have resulted in extra effort to build them back up.

Also note that it seems that any true confrontation between Archie and Jughead is always nipped in the bud. This should not have been one such situation, but something tells me Archie and Jughead have fundamentally different views on their friendship. At this point they seem to owe each other one, rather than have a genuine friendship.

This clutch for drama just created the current situation. Nothing is resolved and there are no stakes because no one is anything to each other and the built-in tension is being ignored rather than used most of the time.

They are all in Riverdale because their lives sucked and it was the best option, not because Captain Save a Town asked them to ( especially since they initially came back for Pops). If any of them had a good life to go back to I’m convinced they would have told him to fuck off, no one would go back to the town that traumatized them if they had a better offer.

We also don’t know much about the characters as people and must guess based on inconsistent actions what’s going on with them because part of this season’s mystery is apparently the characters. So, we can’t know plot, and we can’t know character, therefore we can’t get motivation.

But we sure as hell can get a lot of largely unrelated filler episodes and mini arcs.

In short, we don’t know where anyone stands which has been frustrating. What we do know is, these characters are not friends, and were all traumatized after years of being traumatized.

( More on that in another more character and time jump related post. This somehow became more about shitty story telling)

#riverdale negativity #relationships and friendships or lack there of #anti archie andrews #just in case but this is more objective #my brain as it tries to make sense of the nonsensical

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teenageukulelescreamo · 4 years ago

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Yo this is WondersOfLife here. I saw you reply on the MSA post about SquigglyDigg and I wanted to know if you could explain to me what happened? I stopped looking at anything said about her after the Lilo and Stitch thing because I dodged that take entirely and didn't want to get dragged into any drama revolving it but now I see this is more than just that. I saw her new name on Tumblr and thought that it was odd that she changed it but I wasn't expecting all of this. I just want honest answers

Alright. Cracks knuckles. Ask and ye shall receive. Squ1gglyD1gg’s opinions become popular because of Lilo and Stitch, but if anything, the Lilo and Stitch stuff was possibly the most tame of all of her thoughts. While I did not witness anything firsthand, I have seen screenshot after screenshot of things she has said. Ben put it very well- views that are simply irresponsible and dangerous. I’d like to say right now that, after reading this post, if any of my followers still support Squ1gglyD1gg, you are not welcome on this blog. I ask that you block me and never interact with one of my posts. Please also do not tag this post with her name, and do not @ her. I do not want to participate in any discourse or drama whatsoever, I very intentionally keep this blog to fandom related things for that reason- this just... very much happens to be relevant to my current fandom, and I would like to speak up about what’s going on. I would also like to warn everybody that you should proceed with caution, as there is racist, abusive, child-harming, trump supporting, and generally upsetting views ahead. With that in mind, let’s dig in.

Many know her for the thoughts on Lilo and Stitch, and while that is important to pay attention to, things go much deeper. Within the past three days, she has left Twitter for ‘getting to weird’ and made an account on Parler. If you don’t know what Parler is, it is a social media heavily associated with the alt-right and Qanon, and is filled with Trump supporters. Here is some proof of this (source is @shovedoffacliffbyhisbff (sorry for the tag I hope that’s alright), who also made a very informational post about squ1gglyd1gg right here)

Which as you can see, she was recently active on (time of posting this is 1/11/21). She either reblogged or created a post talking about how children should be put in cages, and also made a comment about there being no government when British colonists invaders arrived to America, despite there being native people that VERY CLEARLY ALREADY LIVED HERE. (credits to @benedict_rs on Twitter)

And also, her opinions on anything regarding children (if the Lilo and Stitch opinions didn’t already concern you immensely) are just... fucking awful? (credits to @/starlitsonata on Twitter)

If you haven’t already gotten the picture by now, here’s a last little bit to really seal the deal. (credit to @Matrim42 on twitter for the next six screenshots in this post)

Now sure. Some people follow alt-right/republicans to keep up with what’s happening. That does happen. But...

Her likes tell a very different story. In addition to her having a Parler, and her horrid Tumblr post/reblog up above, the message she wishes to send is abundantly clear. To top this all off? The following is a post she made TODAY on her new blog, ha1lo-c (without the 1, I just don’t wanna appear in searches for reasons mentioned above. The goal of this post is to inform, not to start shit.)

She shows zero remorse. None. I have really nothing to say because this speaks volumes on its own. So there you have it. I have no wishes to ever interact with Sq1uggly D1gg or any of her supporters ever again. Again, please do not clown on this post, don’t tag it with her name, I do not want discourse I just aim to inform. And again, a massive shoutout to Ben and his team for taking action. If you want someone to support, please please please, go support them!!! Go! Do it! Run! They just released super adorable enamel pins on their store! EDIT: Anyone who would like to add more to what she’s done that is Not Good is more than welcome to!!!! And if I got anything incorrect or need to add different sources on any of these screencaps, please let me know!

#moontalk #msa #discourse #ish #racism #trump #abuse #child abuse #tw racism #tw trump #tw abuse #tw child abuse #long post

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khizuo · 4 years ago

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Heya! This isn’t a sideblog, though it is mostly dedicated to mcyt — particularly a mix of Dream SMP and Hermitcraft, so don’t follow if you only want to see one or the other. I also post non-mcyt stuff though because, again, not a sideblog. My current PFP is the Are You Alright cat, drawn by Sad-ist :)

Read before following!!!: I am for the decolonization of Amerikkkanada (which absolutely includes consequences for me, a non-indigenous person of color), the end of global racial capitalism through violent revolution, the dismantling of whiteness, and radical queer and trans liberation. I absolutely can not stand reformists and liberals. Beware the crit and the negativity, because I’m straightforward. If you want me to tag a trigger, shoot me a DM or an ask and I will do it. I am willing to admit when I am wrong, with good evidence. While this blog is a place where I engage in fandom, I don’t hold back with the politics here, so don’t follow me if you can’t stand that. I recognize that basically all of the cc’s I follow are liberals and while I enjoy their content I do not agree with their politics, and I make that very clear on my page. I also recognize the inherently problematic nature of the mcyt community’s overwhelming whiteness, and if you don’t, unfollow me.

Favorite DSMP characters: c!Wilbur, c!Tubbo, c!Tommy, c!Quackity

Hermits I’m watching for S9: Scar, Impulse, Grian, Mumbo, Pearl, Bdubs, Etho, Tango, Gem, Stress and Cleo if I have the time

Other stuff I post about sometimes: Figure skating (my hated), The Owl House, She-ra, Vocaloid, my general adventures in Minecraft.

Tags that it might be helpful to know:

my text — basically any of my original posts

my answers — where I answer my asks! Please feel free to send them, I absolutely love responding to the stuff in my inbox

my analysis — meta and analysis posts that I’ve made, mostly relating to the Dream SMP at the moment

my art — my art tag for both fanart and original art! Check out my art please, I love drawing

about me — where I talk about anything somewhat personal

dream smp critical — I’m not afraid to be critical of the DSMP, but I understand that not everybody’s into that. Feel free to block this tag if you don’t want to see it

c!___ critical — applies when I’m making original posts critical of a dream smp character! Feel free to block this for any and all dream smp characters.

discourse — for whenever there’s mcyt discourse. I don’t regard my political opinions as “discourse”. as I said, if you can’t take those, don’t follow me.

mutual aid boost — when I reblog mutual aid posts. I urge my followers who have access to wealth to constantly check this tag and donate!!!

khizuo vents — for personal vents. may include triggering topics (especially when my ocd gets involved) so block if you don’t want to see them. these posts will usually also be tagged with “don’t reblog”, so they’re not okay to reblog unless I specify with the tag “okay to reblog”.

So yeah! I’m extremely introverted and socially anxious, but feel free to reach out to me in a DM or ask — just keep in mind that it make take me a while to reply to things :)

Please do not reblog this post.

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skimblyshanks · 4 years ago

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Negativity and me rambling about discoursey topics below the cut. feel free to keep scrolling. Actually, I encourage it ilaushdfhasd Have a great day!

I want to talk bluntly here.

I know I probably come off like a jackass nowadays, and I don’t want to, but at the end of the day there’s a group of ppl who are going to continue spreading lies about people based on what they ship, how they read characters, or literally anything that they disagree on, and they don’t listen when you try and explain anything.

so I’m kinda tired and grumpy and I genuinely try not to address it because I know no one who i want to get through to will listen, but also I feel like if I don’t just make a big old post whining about it there will probably be more of those small, whinier posts that I delete after an hour or so. But anyway. People are going to call me and my friemds horrible things, and they’re not going to listen if we try and defend ourselves. Which. Old news. Already found that out last July-August.

Guess what? I was here last year. I missed most of the first drama of the year, that being Kittencourse 1.0, but I was dragged along for the ride every other time. And it was anti-shippers starting those dramas, every time. I probably wouldn’t have lebelled myself as anything if not for the fact that for half a year bullies were throwing around their weight and justifying it by being antis, even when their opponents were doing nothing wrong.

I was here when someone was harassed for months over a fanfiction. this person wasn’t some huge presence in the fandom; the fanfic wasn’t some bastion of the fandom. I don’t think most of us knew either person or fic until antis decided it would be fun to fuck with the account for months on end.

I began identifying as pro ship because at least the pro shippers didn’t seem to be going out of their way to be nasty.

You know the funny thing? For a long while the most problematic thing I shipped was Tugger shanks. Even now, the most problematic thing I ship is Munku pounce, which I will not hesitate to tell you is a comfort ship, as pounce is one of my comfort characters. Any other ship is between kittens and those in the nebulous young adult range, which doesn’t seem to match the Anti Council’s definition of problematic, given many of them had no issue following a blog openly labelling itself as pro ship when the spiciest ship was Pounce/Plato.

And that’s the other thing. I’ve been very open on this blog about being pro ship.

Every time I got a wave of followers who seemed v likely to be anti-shippers, I reblogged posts explaining my stance and hopefully making it clear that I was pro ship. Regardless, I ended up having these followers for months; I didn’t block them bc many of them didn’t make it clear either way what they felt, so I dared to assume they were alright following a pro shipper. Then of course a few months later: a pro ship DNI, maybe some soapboxing, and more than once this has been while they are still following me.

And the fact is, it doesn’t matter what I try to explain.

It doesn’t matter how many posts I reblog trying to explain what it means when I use the term pro ship.

It doesn’t matter if I say that incest ships aren’t really it for me.

It doesn’t matter if I say the kittens are not young children to me.

It wouldn’t matter if I compiled every instance of kitten characters being provocative or taking part in sexually charged numbers.

It doesn’t matter that what we’re talking about here are fictional anthro cats played by adults.

It doesn’t matter because antis have already made up their mind and don’t want to hear otherwise.

It wouldn’t help if I changed labels because the label isn’t the issue, it’s the opposition to antis and their mentality. If I changed labels, they’d simply transfer the baggage they’ve given pro ship onto whatever I had chosen instead.

And I don’t think there’s going to be a middle ground reached because both sides are coming at media differently.

Yes, Pro shippers are alright with people having ships between characters who are related, ships with large age gaps, and, yes, even ships between adult characters and child characters. Because this is fiction we’re talking about. No one real is being harmed by this ship existing. The threat of grooming with these ships exists for all ships, all fandoms, all pieces of media, and all things that can be used to gain a victim’s trust.

Also, you don’t know why anyone ships what they do. You don’t know why anyone has the headcanons they do. I think it’s well-documented by now that there are survivors on all sides of this discourse, so that much should be clear. Telling those who do use these more controversial ships or headcanons to cope that they ought to be doing it in private is not only callous but disingenuine, as antis have, multiple times, gone into private spaces and leaked all content thereof so they could call out those within the group.

As it applies to this fandom, I don’t believe I’ve seen any potentially triggering ship in the main tags. Most of us who do ship controversial ships are aware people don’t like them. We provide tags to block, and of course users can be blocked as well.

Speaking of which.

I know who blocks me back. It shows a specific icon when a block is mutual. I assure you very few antis block me, even when they say they do.

Listen.

The truth is, at the end of the day, this is a blog for a musical about cats. I’ve shifted away from interacting with most users, partly so i don’t end up with more followers who end up antis, and partly so other, neutral users don’t end up catching flack for interacting with me.

And yeah, it is true that the current fandom climate is hilariously hostile to several ships that were popular for decades beforehand. It is true that antis have double standards. That their hypocrisy is easy to point out. That’s true of antis and fandoms in general.

But also. No one outside this fandom gives a shit what any of us are shipping, really. We’re all weirdos to them. The block button is right there; the filtering option is right there, Xkit and its blacklisting tool are right there. Yet there are still these dumb as shit outbursts and fearmongering and soapboxing.

And I’m Tired.

I’m tired moreso by general antidom.

There are multiple compilations of anti shippers being horrible people over ships and fiction, and sometimes even just because they think someone is a pro shipper, even if they aren’t. I’ve had many urges to link them, to share them, but often I think about the trigger warnings it would require and I lose steam; I don’t want to share that stuff with my followers.

And I’m Tired.

I’m tired that the same stupid points of drama are probably going to get resurrected again. At least this time I have most of them blocked.

But, yeah.

I’m Tired.

#fandom discourse--#discourse--#fandom drama--

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olivieblake · 4 years ago

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I’m so sorry to hear about epub sharing of your book, I really hope it gets quashed and wish there were better avenues for protecting IP! My heart goes out to you. On a related note, I thought what you said about separating the art from the artist was very true. Generally I would say that aligns with my beliefs but I realise now that I have been a little short sighted when it comes to the HP fandom. My question is this: do you no longer wish to engage with fandom at all? I know you are wonderful about replying to asks about your fanfic work, but does that, or the fandom itself, cause discomfort? No pressure to answer of course, I’m just curious to hear your thoughts, as I love your fanfic but entirely respect your decision to not write more and your reasoning for it is starting to resonate more and more with me. Sending love and good vibes this Pisces season.

addressing these things backwards: do I no longer wish to engage with fandom at all? no, that’s not remotely how I feel! fandom to me is the community of creators, artists, and readers who built a safe space here, rather than anything the author intentionally created; this is the community I’ve considered myself part of for the last 5ish years and the one I do not have plans to exempt myself from or leave. the JKR of it all is, for me, is a question of artistic integrity. as a fandom creator, I am conscientiously engaging with another creator’s work; there is no way to divorce the author from what she’s written, or why would we ever discuss what’s “in character” or “true to the books” if not to suggest they are born from somewhere? how can I write something with characters and settings predicated on the mind of someone I know without doubt to be prejudiced and, more importantly, unapologetic, harmful, and battering with her privilege? in my opinion, there is no escaping the fact that how I engage with my source material is a choice, and while I hold myself accountable for my choices, I truly, truly don’t hold it against anyone else if they feel differently. I think there is a fair argument for those who disagree with me. I just personally don’t want to make art with Joanne’s art right now. it’s a matter of how to move forward knowing what I know, which I can’t currently do with a clear conscience

as for epubs... as hurtful as it was at the time to discover this was happening, I really don’t want to center the conversation around me or my book. it does bother me that the “right” to piracy is the hill some people are willing to die on; it begs the larger question of who owns art, and while I think there is an intellectual argument to be made about access, it does feel unfair to center displeasure about an industry on the creator of the work. is it a valid argument that books should be available even for those who lack the privilege of financial or regional accessibility? yes. I do believe that. but is it fair to punish the author for that, or to remove the author from the equation entirely? to me that’s the aspect that is bothersome, more so than what people do with any individual epub. I just think there is an element of empathy missing from the discourse about piracy as a whole... but I would rather not be the subject of the discussion, even if I do happen to be a not-very-impartial observer

thank you very much for thinking of me, and I appreciate the vibes!

#gratuitous personal information #unpopular opinions #Anonymous

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tog-resources-archive · 4 years ago

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Thank you fan!anon for sending me such a long, detailed message! Never apologize for writing me an essay since I always seem to be writing essays for other people in return lol. Also sorry it took a while to get to! This required a bit of preparation. You’ve given me a lot to respond to. I’m going to be putting the entirety of the ask under the cut and the tl;dr because this one is very, verrrryyyy long.

Tl;dr- fan!anon talks about the history of top/bottom discourse in TOG and the issues of racism in our fandom. My response: my own feelings on the history of the top/bottom discourse in TOG and the current state of it. General issues I’ve observed in this fandom and the current discourse. Also, we shouldn’t ignore fandom racism, but I don’t think we should be looking at it through the lens of top/bottom, AND I think we should be focusing on misogyny, homophobia, etc. in addition to racism. Not ignore one for the other.

Bottom line though, don’t harrass people, block people if you need to, focus on what you love, support fan creation and let’s try to be a better fandom.

Okay, time to dig in!

Hello fellow fan who has been here since the beginning! I come from the “other side” I suppose, in that I do think the top/bottom discourse is worth talking about. It has to do with the elephant in the room which I haven’t seen anyone touch on – self-identified top!joe fans (in contrast to simply fans who enjoy or prefer content where joe tops). I remember the original top/bottom discourse coming out of a more general conversation about trends in fic (1) wherein Joe was more violent, less empathetic, often not religious, more aggressive in sexual scenarios, and also most often topping. People asked the fandom in general to simply consider, if that is how they perceive Joe, to reflect for themselves about implicit biases that could be colouring that interpretation. The self-identified top!joes used that conversation as a starting point to argue that the above interpretation of Joe, (2) and writing/drawing Nicky as smaller, almost twink-like, demure, more feminine (or writing fic where he was de-aged) was justified by canon (if you recall the multi-day argument about the approximately 1 inch height difference between Marwan and Luca) and connecting those ideas to top!joe just “making more sense” to them. In the hands of a good writer (of which we are blessed to have many in this fandom!), which character tops in an explicit fic is of no consequence to me. (3) But the concept of top!joe has, in my mind, become so closely tied with those fans who, a) interpret these characters and actions in a way that seems influenced by racial stereotypes and tropes and b) use that characterization as “justification” for top!joe. All this when I thought we all agreed that position preference has nothing to do with personality? (4) If someone sees Joe as a very masculine, aggressive, dom-type character (which is a bit of a one-note characterization to start, but I digress), that shouldn’t be related to him being a “top”, correct? Yet that is the interpretation and connection that the top!joes themselves make. So that’s why to me, the top/bottom framework continues to have some value, eve though in an ideal world it wouldn’t: (5) because some fans connect what should be a neutral sexual position preference to an interpretation of Joe’s character, an interpretation which I think doesn’t do him justice. I understand if you don’t want to publish this but I’m hesitant to talk off anon due to how heated this whole conversation is. I also don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings or make them feel bad about how they are participating in the fandom, but I do think self-reflection in terms of how we engage is valuable. (6) And just to fully reiterate in case it wasn’t clear, my above points are specifically referring to who I think of as “top!joe only” fans as opposed to fans who enjoy or prefer content in which joe tops – only the former of which I am wary of. Anyways, sorry for this long message, and I hope I've been able to explain my reasoning. If we continue to disagree, thanks for reading this anyways and continuing the dialogue. Thank you also for promoting femslash events and content! (7)

So....I did say in a previous post that I’m not a big fan of hearsay, and I’m sorry but… that’s kind of what you’ve given me. A lot of “this is what Top!Joe Only people have said” and “this is what the rest of the fandom has said back.” I have to ask, who are these “Top!Joe Only” people that are on the other side of this fandom war? Who are the people representing the “rest of the fandom”? The only names I could really come up with myself are the Top!Joe Server mods as top!Joe only fans, and they haven’t exactly been active recently. Not to mention the Top!Joe server mod @karanoidandroid was the focus of the Art Theft and Bullying debacle a while back (here) which even if you disagree with her… that’s not the way you treat people. Full stop.

But anyway, to break this down, you’ve said that top!joe only fans wanted to interpret Joe in a way that was “more violent, less empathetic, less religious, more sexually aggressive, and topping (most of the time)” and that Nicky is “smaller, more twink-like, more demure and feminine” and that the hardcore top!joe stans are using this interpretation as a reasoning for liking top!joe explicit fics (and for underage fic?)

Er, honestly, I’ll have to disregard the “less religious” comment in this one. Lucyclairedelune has talked about it very eloquently here. As for the rest, let’s say these opinions were expressed on tumblr in July, just when the fandom was getting started. However, after personally going through all the Explicit July fics, I gotta say, the overwhelming majority of writers are focused on romantic Malta sex vacations lol.

From my personal observations (I started reading fic on ao3 in August), I’ve seen some stories that cater to very… specific tastes (mostly kinkmeme fics so I’m not going to touch that) and some that have…. been written in poor taste perhaps. But, honestly, the majority of fics (aka G, T, M rated) that I’ve seen? I would say that they were written with care and concern for the character’s portrayal.

Now, some fans (usually older fans) are very focused on “your kink is not my kink” and other fans feel this is an inappropriate way to view “racist, homophobic, islamophobic, etc” fics. And I agree with that. If people are using kink to excuse racism, homophobia, islamophobia, transphobia, antisemitism, misogyny, etc, in fics: Fuck that. But I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding flying around when people react to ‘ykinmk”. This fandom likes to assume the worst of their fellow fans imo, and I honestly don’t think that when a person defends kink that they’re trying to defend racism. They’re trying to defend their kink community which, historically, has been attacked and misunderstood by the purity police. Look into the Livejournal, ffnet, and even the Tumblr purges if you don’t believe me.

For the record, I don’t know anyone on tumblr personally. We’re all effectively strangers talking to each other on the internet, so I’m not going to make assumptions about people from stories they’ve posted on AO3 or the kinkmeme. If you want to talk about the issues those fics represent, that’s cool, but don’t harass people whose life stories you don’t know (and don’t vagueblog about them). (This is just a general statement, not saying this about you anon! I feel really strongly about this.)

Now you say, “some fans connect what should be a neutral sexual position preference to an interpretation of Joe’s character” and I hate to say it, but there are ALWAYS going to be some people who have awful opinions. Ones that are either truly terrible, or kind of in poor taste, or maybe you just don’t vibe with them. Personally, I don’t have enough time in the day to address every weird thing that a person spews on the internet. I won’t judge if you want to take them on, but, personally, I haven’t seen any recent militant top!joe only posts that are calling for racist portrayals. I see people referring to past conversations, for sure, but again, I can’t do anything with hearsay.

And honestly, we keep bringing up the top/bottom discourse of early TOG fandom, and we’re just not the same fandom we were then. SO MANY people have left the fandom in that time-- a lot of big name (or simply well known) fans and a lot of MENA fans. Regardless of what “side” you’re on in this, we all lose by focusing on the positions, by dividing everyone by “top” or “bottom” or “switch” fans, and by bringing up what people said in July, or August, or September. It’s exhausting, especially because I think a lot of people have done exactly what you said. Many authors HAVE self-reflected, they’ve thought about trends, the implications, and are contributing/interacting with the fandom as best as they can. Do I think we should stop focusing on self-reflection? That we should stop being careful about writing potentially damaging portrayals of our favorite characters? NO. Let’s keep at it! Let’s encourage others to do the same… but not with top/bottom discourse.

Let it be known that I don’t think racism is a topic we should disregard to focus on other things. Honestly, I would be happy if people gave some of the energy they have for “top/bottom” discourse to talk about the portrayal of Nile Freeman or Lykon or Copley or Quynh… the other POC representation in TOG that usually gets ignored. You may interpret this as me going “but what about??” and that’s fair. I just think that we talk about Joe ALL THE TIME in this fandom. There is an avalanche of conversation and content for this man (who I love, don’t get me wrong) and it just feels really disingenuous (to me) to talk ad nauseum about racist portrayals of Joe, but then to ignore Nile Freeman and wlw fics when Nile is the rare Black Female Action Protagonist and Andy/Quynh is an extremely rare interracial canon lesbian couple. And I’ve been trying to use my blog here to bring attention to this, think of me what you will because of that. (Again just a general statement anon! Not directed to you XD)

And from what I’ve seen in this fandom (and many others to be fair) is that we care about racism SO MUCH…but only when talking about how a man has sex. It speaks of a lack of intersectional understanding of these topics, disregarding the misogyny that IS ALSO inherent in fandom, and disregarding the homophobia of overfocusing on the top/bottom dynamics. BUT I’m not asking you to ignore racism; all I’m asking is for you to focus on the other issues too.

Bottom line though… the discourse is not what it once was. A lot of people, on whatever side, have left the fandom, or have taken a break, or are vocally tired of “top/bottom” discourse. Personally, I think we should talk about racism… but not through the lens of explicit mlm fic sex positions. Let’s talk more about race, gender, sex and sexual orientation, but not in a way that divides the fandom, in a way that makes people sick of being here, in a way that kills our content creator’s passion. Honestly, I think it can be done! But only if we work toward that goal together.

I would like to focus on encouraging events in our community, such as the ongoing Old Guard Big Bang 2021 event and the upcoming Femslash Fortnight Spring Solstice Edition event. If anyone is organizing other events, let me know and I’ll hype you up! But as for the rest, I’m tired, you’re tired, we’re all tired. Let’s try and work harder to be a kinder, more inclusive fandom in the future, for everyone’s sake.

#tumblr is a nightmare #the formatting issues i had with this one...#the old guard #my post #my ask #reply #loooooonnnnng ask and loooooong reply #sorry guys #this will be the last one for a while i think #the old guard discourse #old guard discourse #tog discourse

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bellatrixobsessed1 · 5 years ago

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Okay so tumblr did something super weird with the formatting and I couldn’t fix it; for some reason it had the page cut under the ask itself (as if the ask itself had the page cut in it) so I literally couldn’t edit it out and re-format it right. So I just took a screencap of the ask and I’ll respond via a standard textpost.

Gonna give a little warning because I’m gonna be talking about child abuse a bit.

Glad to hear it, anon. :) I try to keep an open mind with these discussions.

Tbh, I kinda get uncomfortable with some of the stuff I've seen in her tag regarding Zuko especially. I've seen a handful of people kind of dismissing him as being whiny or sensitive, and I just don't really vibe with that. I don't have anything against any of the people I've seen posting it, but I just don't vibe with.

I'm also gonna take the opportunity to try to break some of the misconceptions about the Azula fandom by saying that I don't feel afraid or intimidated to kinda go against a good portion of the fandom in a sense. And that's because, fellow Azula fans have never really outcast me or tried to fight me for saying that I think that Azula's a bit of an abuser. The Azula fandom imo, isn't full of bullies and hateful people; everyone I have talked to has been very open to a nice discussion. I think that it just depends how you approach them with your arguments.

All of that said, Imma get back on topic here; It’s a little tough to talk about Azula's flaws sometimes because I feel like (though, thankfully this hasn’t happened on tumblr to me yet) that some people take pointing out flaws in your faves as bashing them or posting hate.

But honestly this is really cool to hear because back when I first opened up this blog I used to do that thing where I’d justify everything that my faves did, which was a bit of a problem because my faves are all antagonists! xD So there has been a lot of progress made.

I think that there are three main reasons that people have a hard time admitting that she’s an abuser too.

I think that the biggest one is that a lot of Azula fans lately have been massively on the defensive. There has been quite a bit of hate in her tag, there have been things said by the writers (taken the wrong way or not), there have been a lot of generalizations, and so on. And all of it kind of puts fans on the defensive. I see so many posts about how Azula is irredeemable and just the worst, most evil character in the show and so people kind of swing hardcore the other way (Azula did nothing wrong) to make up for all of the demonizing she gets. One extreme usually leads to another. Seeing Azula get so much shit, like being called a killer and a sadist, provokes the Azula is a cinnamon roll reaction. Basically when a fandom gets put on blast for being 'the crazy' or 'mean' side of the fandom, I feel like it creates a cycle where that part of the fandom starts to actually act meaner because they feel backed into a corner. The more they are called 'delusional' for seeing good in Azula the more radically they will start to defend that belief until the shades of grey start disappearing, if that makes sense.

But this is just a theory of course.

The second reason I think that people tend to dismiss the things she does do wrong is that there's this association with criticism and hate. And this goes beyond the Avatar fandom. In general I feel like people find it hard to say bad things about their favorite characters because they feel like they're bashing their character and/or they don't want people to think that they are being negative. Plus it's just kinda hard to say bad things about something you like/love. Speaking as someone who used to do this; I always felt really weird about or like I was being negative when admitting that things I like have flaws. I'm not exactly sure why I used to feel like this because it wasn't an, 'I seem myself in this character, so insulting them is like insulting me' thing because I usually have almost nothing in common with my faves. Idk, it's just always been way easier for me to find things I like in a character I hate than it is for me to find things I don't like in a character that I do. On a personal level, it might just be because I'd rather focus on liking things that I like than hating things that I hate?

I guess that I think that it's just easy to forget that 'I don't like xyz aspect of Azula' is not the same as 'I don't like Azula at all'. I think that it's possible to love a character but not love everything about them, just like real people; you can love your mom to death but there will always be those things about her that drive you nuts.

And really, imo, I think that fans who are able to see flaws with their faves are the ones who understand them the best. I'm definitely not saying that the people who don't see/acknowledge their fave's flaws don't understand their fave. But I think that they are missing out on very crucial aspects of their favorite character. If you like a character you should like them for what they are in canon, not what you want them to be or what they could be.

I see a lot of potential for growth in Azula. I see potential for a redemption arc and I do love what her character can be. But I also love her character as is. Currently in canon, she's manipulative and goal driven to the point where she has a disregard for people. Currently she's an antagonist and I love her for that. Because antagonist, unredeemed Azula is the character I liked in the beginning. I don't condone her being manipulative and I don't like that as a personality trait. But I do love it as far as, she is a fantastically written antagonist. And those cold, manipulative, abusive traits add to her complexity when juxtaposed against her own abuse, insecurities, and need to be loved.

And that's kind of what I mean when I say that, if you like Azula, you should like her despite the flaws. If that makes sense. I feel like people who say that she isn't an abuser (at least to some degree) kind of have a misunderstanding of her character. I think that one of the points of her character is to show that some abused kids don't come out okay. It's a tragic reality.

But with Azula I think that there's still room for her to change and start to break that cycle. I feel like she'd have a much harder time doing it than Zuko, because she has been subjected to his mental abuse in close range for much longer than he has. And I think that it would be something she'd struggle with her whole life, but I see good in her.

That said, I think that the third reason people have trouble seeing her as an abuse is because it is just really hard to see abuse victims become the abuser. I've mentioned before, but I come from a family where the chain ended with one of my parents. Said parent has told me many times how hard it was to fight that kind of upbringing. That's the real tragedy of abuse, it just goes on and on until you're mentally strong enough to fight yourself and break that chain. And the sad thing is, that some people just can't seem to do that. And I think that when discussing Azula, this comes into play a bit; it's just hard to look at even a fictional abuse victim and knowledge that they've become the abuser because it is all that they have known.

It's just a really hard topic and that's why it's so easy for discourse like this to get heated; a lot of people have an Azula in their lives or relate to her in some way.

Thanks for the ask, sorry it took so long to reply! I wanted to make it thoughtful and word everything the best that I can.

As always, everyone is welcomed to chime in and give their own opinions.

EDIT: There are a few things that I don’t think I was clear enough on with the initial post lol. First and foremost, I’m definitely not saying that these three reasons are the only reasons people don’t talk about Azula’s flaws. @wingsfreedom made a good point about differing ways of interpreting scenes. That’s another biggy.

The other thing I want to clarify is that I don’t think that Azula is a full on abuser. I think that she displays tendencies and does some abusive things. But I also don’t put her on the same level as Ozai. I feel like she’s a bit more merciful than him. Like Ozai is pretty much too far gone; he’s an abuser and his mind is set there. Azula, I think still has the capacity to break the chain. She’s not a lost cause. I also feel like she can be reasoned with more than Ozai. Ozai is all about power; Azula is motivated more by desperation (be it for her father’s love, to keep the last bit of control she has, and to keep her friends). It still leads to that harmful behavior, but I don’t think that she’s a lost cause like Ozai. Like, she has some abusive tendencies now, but I can also see her being able to break the chain under the right conditions. If that makes sense.

#Avatar The Last Airbender #Azula #Azula Discourse #Discourse #Zuko #Fandom Discourse

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