#this is my problematic ship and I will not be taking any criticism at this time

[sydsixxftm]

Older hypermasculine stealth transsexual man x young feminine early transition they/he

[bucksboobs]

i was told to come ask you, and i will repeat this part, please treat this ask with kindness because i feel so dumb, i don't really understand why people are saying not liking tommy is homophobic. i'm only on tumblr, and i follow a very select few ppl, but every criticism i've seen of tommy has been bc of his past actions (which does feel like a major overreaction bc clearly the characters moved past it) the writing and acting choices, or a combo based fully on the fact that he's not who they wanted to be with buck. i just haven't seen anything that says they are hating him specifically for being a gay man, and i was wondering if i was missing something. sorry if this wasn't a good place to ask this!

So it’s never as blatant as “we hate him for being a gay man” it’s the language used. Calling him creepy, or gross, or a predator, or a groomer, or poisonous, or insisting that he’s sexually harassing Buck when he’s literally just flirting. The way they misinterpret every scene to say that Tommy doesn’t ACTUALLY have feelings for Buck and that he’s just a pervert in it for the sex. The way they gleefully imagine killing him in the most violent ways possible for the sole reason that he is dating Buck. Saying any gay man that is like Tommy sucks. It all adds up to this overwhelming feeling for myself and other gay men that we are not welcome in this space.

And the idea that we as mlm aren’t welcome is bad, but what hurts the most? The fact that we are so quickly swept aside by the people doing it as irrelevant to the conversation. “It’s just a joke, lighten up!” “It’s no different than what Taylor Kelly went through but suddenly you care because he’s a man?” There was a person in my notes just the other day telling me fandom “isn’t primarily about men” so my experiences don’t matter.

What hurts even more is the passivity that many people in the fandom seem to have towards the rising tide of ridiculous nonsense leveled at Tommy as just “fandom shipping tradition” people I used to follow and admire as Buddie shippers turned out to not fucking care about how they and their friends were harming the gay men in their fandom, when it’s based on a m/m ship. I’ve said this many different ways but the fact that gay men are only relevant when we’re fictional (and only if the fictional ones behave correctly and do nothing remotely problematic) feels a lot like fetishization… but you can’t say that because these people take that as an attack on fandom as a whole and they close ranks and accuse you of being a spoilsport.

So the homophobia is in the reckless use of language that evokes homophobic tropes, yes, but it’s also in the way its allow to fester and it’s more unacceptable to many people to call it out than it is to do it in the first place. And THAT creates a hostile environment for gay men, which is homophobia.

[theotterpenguin]

the performative accusation that shipping zutara (and occasionally this criticism is levied at jinko/zukka) is colonialist apologism has been addressed in some excellent posts, explaining the inaccuracies and problematic implications of this logic far better than i ever could - like this post and this one and this one and this one and this one.

and i know this topic has been talked about to death, but if you could indulge my contribution for a moment, i just find it interesting how this sentiment results from the cognitive dissonance of atla fans being unable to reconcile with the idea of their favorite show's political beliefs not lining up with their own.

atla is a largely philosophical children's show that at its core deals with themes of love, redemption, and destiny vs. free-will. atla examines these themes through an anti-colonalist, anti-imperalist lens that deconstructs the idea of racial divisiveness and the idea that people of different ethnicities are inherently different. this is message is pretty explicitly stated by guru pathik:

Guru Pathik: "The greatest illusion of this world is the illusion of separation. Things you think are separate and different are actually one and the same." Aang: "Like the four nations?" Guru Pathik: "Yes. We are all one people. But we live as if divided."

and also by uncle iroh:

"It is important to draw wisdom from many different places. If you take it from only one place, it becomes rigid and stale. Understanding others, the other elements and the other nations will help you become whole."

this theme is developed across three full seasons, with the crux of this message culminating in zuko's friendships with the gaang - despite coming from different nationalities and different backgrounds, they have all had their own experiences being hurt by the fire nation and work together to take down the oppressive fire nation government. the question of destiny vs. free will is also explored through zuko's character - despite starting off as an antagonist, he develops into a symbolic representation of how the fire nation's oppression hurts its own citizens. he unlearns the fire nation's imperialist propaganda while simultaneously unlearning his father's abuse. rather than following misguided beliefs of what he thought his destiny was as the heir to the throne, instead he forges his own path.

thus, to claim that zuko can never form a deep and meaningful relationship with any of the gaang because of his nationality goes unequivocally against the themes of the show. and a major part of this is because these are fictional characters being used to analyze different theoretical questions within the show and in some cases, are used as symbolic representations of different philosophical ideas - their friendships and their character arcs serve a purpose within the text that cannot be easily transcribed onto real-life dynamics between people.

it's illogical to criticize fans who are choosing to understand atla at the level of the themes that are presented by the text - who are interested in exploring similar philosophical questions brought up by the show through the context of relationships.

if you don't like the themes of forgiveness and redemption that atla explores, your criticism should be aimed at the writing of the show itself rather than other fans. because you are giving far more thought to the "implications" of a close friendship or romantic relationship between someone from an imperalist nation and someone from an oppressed nation than the writers ever did. (and if you fall in this camp of people, i would hope you wouldn't be reblogging fanart of zuko and the gaang together while simultaneously claiming zuko could can never escape the sins of his ancestors and can never form a deep relationship based on trust and intimacy with katara or sokka or jin - because that would just be hypocritical).

and as a side note, people seem to apply this flawed logic to zutara far more than other ships solely because the show spends the most time exploring the complicated nature of fire nation imperalism in the interactions between zuko and katara in the latter half of b3. this is because they've been juxtapositioned against each other and paralleled with aang since the beginning of the show in ways that toph, sokka, and suki are not, who have mostly been used to examine different themes. there simply isn't enough time to explore these complicated themes with all the other characters, even if they theoretically exist in zuko’s dynamics with these characters, so the writers focus the most on zuko's relationships with katara and aang, and these relationships are given far more narrative weight, so have more content to criticize. but zuko and katara also canonically become friends by the end of the show. if you want to discount the existence of their friendship, claiming that it will always be tainted by the fire nation's oppression regardless of what is shown in the text, then you also have to discount zuko's friendships with aang, suki, toph, and sokka - because even if this isn't shown as a permanent barrier to their friendships in the show, it’s also not shown as a permanent barrier to his friendship with katara. if your logic is solely based on the idea that a person's identity in a relationship as a colonizer or a victim is fixed and unchanging regardless of character development, this would apply to zuko's friendships with everyone else as well.

[blitzwhore]

I just saw Blitzø get called Stolas stockholm victim I can't with this fandom anymore😭

😂 As outrageously incorrect and stupid as that take is, I'm going to go on a tangent here. I hope you don't mind.

I think every fandom has annoying people with awfully terrible takes in it. People with zero media literacy. People who hatewatch. People who think they're entitled to the exact show they would've wanted, which has nothing to do with the actual, existing show.

This is especially true for queer media, and especially true for queer cartoons. (Hi, yes. I was active in the Adventure Time, Steven Universe, Voltron, and She-Ra fandoms when those shows were airing, respectively. I've seen some stuff). Some people just can't handle queer cartoons, period. If the queer characters/ships are soft and wholesome, they're infantilising and boring, and if they're complex and nuanced and actually have conflict, they're abusive and problematic. You'll hear the same recycled arguments over and over again. Like, the shit some people are saying about Blitz and Stolas after The Full Moon? Is literally almost word-for-word what they said about Catra and Adora post-season 3 of She-Ra (and even at the end of the show).

Here's the thing, though! Those people and their bad takes are not what I want to think about what I think about a fandom. Those aren't the people I want to call the fans. They don't deserve that title. Not when so many other people are out there dedicating their time to making gifs and art and meta posts, and writing fic, and commenting/reblogging to show support, and sliding into people's DMs to scream and squee together about a thing they love.

At the end of the day, "fandom" is just a lot of people each doing their own thing. Which people you engage with and allow to stay within your line of sight will determine your fandom experience. Fandom can be a huge, convoluted, online space full of people who are constantly arguing with one another and whose takes make you unfathomably angry... Or it can be you and your 5 friends and mutuals who scream gleefully at one another in 2-note posts. You can't control what others post online, but you can control your engagement with it.

How? Well, here's what I personally do to avoid getting upset by people's stupid opinions online:

Filter 'critical' and 'anti' tags (eg. #anti stolitz #anti vivziepop #Helluva Boss critical #HB critical #vivziepop critical). Many people actually do tag their critical posts because they know it's the respectful thing to do!

If I come across a post that has one or more of those tags, obviously, I don't click through to see it under any circumstances.

If I stumble across a stranger's untagged post with hate/criticism that upsets me: I stop reading and BLOCK. Immediately. I don't look back. I don't finish reading. I don't engage. I just block block block. I <3 the block button, seriously.

If I feel my mind reeling from a bad take I just came across: I take a step back, close my phone, breathe, remember life is beautiful sometimes. Go back and watch an episode I really like. Clean my living space a little. Vent about it to a friend (but only if I really need to, because if not, I'd rather not dwell on it).

If I'm starting to feel the need to reply to someone's bad take (directly or via my own post), I instead make the decision to channel that energy into making fandom posts out of love. (I don't do this just with fandom. If I see something transphobic online, I usually react by reblogging a bunch of trans art or trans positivity posts on my main, for example). I like to think of it as putting some positivity out into the world to compensate for the negativity I just saw. So, for example, if I see someone shitting on my blorbo, I may make a silly post just saying how much I love blorbo. Or I'll make (or draft) a post about how interesting I find some of blorbo's actions. Or reblog another person's positive/interesting post about blorbo.

And finally, I stay the hell away from Twitter. Or at least, if I go on Twitter, I try my best to avoid any tweet that has text in it instead of just art. Even the people who have good opinions spend too much time arguing with the people who have bad opinions on there. I don't want to see people's bad takes! No, not even while reading founded and perfectly articulated criticism of those bad takes! So I just limit my time on Twitter. And again, if someone is putting bad takes on my TL (even if it is to counter them), I unfollow and block as needed.

All this to say, yes, it really fucking sucks to read the opinions of people who don't understand and who hate the characters and ships and worlds you love. Gosh it's the worst. But you can curate your fandom experience. You can focus on the things you can control. You have the power to decide if your fandom experience is draining or fun!

And because I don't know how to finish this, here, have a Stolitz kiss to heal you:

We will keep winning and there's nothing the haters can do about it. 😌

[utdrmv-confession-box]

Pinned Introduction post!

Welcome to the Undertale Deltarune Multiverse confession box! Here you can submit your opinions, criticisms, hot takes, theories, headcanons, etc! =)

Active hours are usually 5:00pm-8:30pm on weekdays! weekends are all day (if i’m feeling up to it).

Confessions are to be submitted via the askbox. If you find that the askbox is closed, please do NOT try to submit your confession by any other means. It will not be posted.

Let’s go over some rules first!

Keep it related to Undertale, Deltarune, the blog itself, or the multiple AUs the fandom has provided us!

Please submit them in english, mod (me) is a dumb American =( (If you can provide a translation however then it will be accepted!)

Please do not post NSFW confessions. It doesn’t matter how vague you are about it, I will know what you’re talking about and I will delete it.

Reblogs and confessions condoning problematic ships will be rejected immediately and will result in a block from this blog.

Reblogs and confessions that contain slurs will result in an immediate rejection and/or block.

Confessions that directly misgender the canon/vanilla/UTDR humans (as well as other trans characters) (not including discussions about WHY misgendering is bad or discussions regarding different identities being used in AUs) will be either rejected if done maliciously, or corrected if done on accident.

And a few more things to note

As this is inspired by @ Splatoon-Confession-Box, I will be posting confessions in a very similar way! (putting the text in an image and not answering the ask directly) so worry not if you forget to post off anon! (I will provide a transcript at the bottom for those who might not be able to see the images either because of bad wifi or disabilities!)

My mental health and energy levels tend to fluctuate so some days may be more inactive than others!

Posts that mention proship/comship/darkshipping in anyway, shape or form will be labeled with the tags #tw proship, #proship tw, #cw proship and #proship cw. (Remember that confessions endorsing/encouraging proshipping will still be rejected, but not confessions asking clarifying questions or complaining about it. Either way, proshipping in itself is considered a sensitive topic, and therefore will be treated as such by tagging it properly so people with filters can avoid posts about it.)

Posts regarding filtering tags

[Character/AU] Negativity tags

Ship + Ship negative tags (Can’t find the post??? Summary: Ship posts will be tagged with #Ship and the tags for whatever ship it has, any post criticizing a ship will be tagged with #Ship Neg)

#Fanon Negative

#The Drama Tag

[olderthannetfic]

I'm not really contributing to any of the ongoing discussions here. Just relaying a recent experience I had.

I was perusing ao3 (as you do at 1AM) and came across a fic with a promising premise. The summary read like it was centralized around one of my favorite characters, and the tags were all tags I liked, especially so with said character.

So, I got that initial reader's high, tapped the title link like "let's gooooooo," only to get a few paragraphs in and realize that this was not a "favorite character" positive fic. Very quickly, it became apparent that this author did not like this character. The narrative was written from others' POVs with a focus on said character's less endearing traits. Traits that were not all that significant in canon. It was kind of like they took a behavior, exaggerated it to the max until it consumed and rewrote the character's personality, and then had others (that, in canon, actually like the character) bash them for it. Which is kind of weird-funny to me cause, 100%, the character is controversial. There are a lot of reasons to be critical about them. I've seen fics where the basis is 'everything is canon, but the character is completely written out.' You like them, you don't, or at the very least they're tagged character bashing.

But okay. Whatever. The tags and description were misleading. The story was disappointing. It happens. I'm the one who decided to keep reading anyway because it was actually quite well written despite the characterizations making me sad. It's all good. It's the expected hazards that come with the perusing. But then, I had let my curiosity get the better of me.

I read the comments.

Four down, I found a deleted comment. I don't how bad it must have been. But the responses to it were certainly... yeah. Someone, not the author, responded with quite the vitriol. They shared the user's pseud 'in case they deleted their comment,' said they went through the user's bookmarks, aired out the "problematic" pairings the user had read, said 'of course they like this character, they already have the leanings,' and then concluded by calling them an incest loving pedophile.

The author also responded with a remark along the lines of, "while I appreciate you taking the time to read my work, I hope you never do so again as I don't want 'your sort' here." And ended it with a 😊 ❤️.

Like... I don't know what the original user said, but did it really warrant that? The problematic ships listed weren't even problematic. The only ship they could even be referring to as 'incest' among the ones listed was a ship I know is between between two people, not related, never canonically thought themselves to be so, three years apart, mostly just really good chaotic friends, that the fandom had decided blanketedly were brother and sister. Plus, the controversial character I said was one of my favorites, canonically, has only loved one person their whole life, who is the same age as them. So I don't even know what they mean by 'leanings.'

Which, subsequently, made me wonder if the original comment had even been genuinely deserving of such harsh responses. I guess it also just bothered me a lot cause, like I said above, the pseud is still there despite the deleted comment. Anyone can go and harass them if they wanted.

I don't really have a point.

It was just a lot. I'm still thinking about it a day later, and I don't really know how to feel about it all.

--

I know how to feel about it:

This author does not deserve comments.

[to-be-a-dreamer]

you sound like a right winger. cancel culture?

This is legitimately the funniest insult I’ve ever received thank you Anon. Like, you can’t think of any better way to discredit my post about how I wish people would just let a character be Not Racist and acknowledge that sometimes people can learn they were wrong and become better people so you call me (a queer woman of color who is college-educated and an immigrant, btw, just so we’re all on the same page) a “right winger” for using easily-recognizable terminology to ensure everyone reading understands what I think is the core issue. Incredible, insane, I wish you weren’t a coward who posted anonymously so I could scroll through your blog because I’m sure you’ve got jokes.

But anyways, since we’re all here I’ll take the opportunity to explain what I mean and my thoughts on cancel culture.

Original post that Anon is talking about for reference

People on the internet are obsessed with this idea of perfection. They think that a person has to do the right thing, always, every time. They think that a person who does or has ever done something shitty is just a shitty person who doesn’t deserve a platform. And they think that a person who was a shitty person in the past should always be viewed in that way. They can never accept that someone could have toxic or harmful views, realize they were wrong, and then become a better person, especially if they went through that journey offline or a long time ago. They don’t care if the person they see before them is clearly an open-minded, good person who doesn’t possess those views anymore. In their eyes, that person is still that same bigoted asshole from three, five, ten, twenty years ago and they have to acknowledge that past and be publicly shamed for it every single day in order to be “forgiven”. (They will never truly forgive)

And it’s just. I don’t understand it because what is the point of activism and education if we’re not going to allow people to learn what we’re trying to teach? How is our movement supposed to grow if we don’t accept the people who have been touched and reformed by it? How does any of this get better if we don’t allow people to be better?

Here’s my biggest problem with ���cancel culture” (the mass ostracism and shaming of someone who has behaved or spoken in a socially unacceptable way). I think that this kind of mindset has led to an entire generation of internet users who are terrified of ever doing “the wrong thing” on the internet. We’re so afraid of making mistakes because we know how hard it is to come back from that and how unforgivable the rest of the internet is. And it’s turned us into overly defensive people who struggle to admit when we’ve done something wrong. We’re terrified to consider the possibility that we’re the "bad guy" in any situation because we've convinced ourselves that doing something shitty makes you a shitty person. We think our individual actions are lifetime sentences. I've seen so many people on the internet make small mistakes but double down and take things way too far when they're called out for it because they don't want to see themselves as a person who does problematic things. Because we've convinced ourselves that making a mistake makes you a bad person on a fundamental level. We've tied the amount of criticism we receive to our self-worth.

I also notice that it prevents people who actually need to learn and be better from realizing that. Because the amount of hate someone receives is so disproportionate to any mistake they actually made, it's so easy for a person to think "okay there's no way I deserve to be harassed this much, this is probably just the internet overreacting again, I haven't done anything wrong" and instead of learning the small lesson they needed to learn they just brush off the hate and dismiss it as cancel culture.

And so to bring this back to 9-1-1, I do think that some of the hate towards Tommy is due to shipping wars, but on a deeper level I think people just can't handle the truth that Tommy is actually a good person now. Maybe it stems from people hating the idea that someone who made their own lives miserable could learn and grow and become a better person later in life like Tommy did. Maybe people have some unresolved trauma about bigots that they're projecting onto these characters. Maybe they want to feel morally superior and just don't like the idea that someone who was shitty in the past could go on to have the same views and ideals as them. It's hard to tell for sure and it probably varies from person to person but I think the idea that a person has to be defined by their past is a big part of it on all levels.

Anyways, those are my thoughts on cancel culture as a whole and why I think the current generation of internet users has a really tough time taking accountability and why we all have rejection sensitivity (not RSD, the actual real medical condition, just a general sensitivity to being told you're in the wrong). We don't like to confront our own flaws because, according to the internet, those flaws make you a terrible person always and forever and you will never be able to overcome them or move past them. I hope this all makes sense I've been thinking about this a lot since 2020 but I've never tried to explain it in words. I don't think there's anything wrong with holding people accountable for past actions, I think there's something wrong with the disproportionate hate those people receive and the amount of shaming and shunning they have to go through before they're allowed to move on with their lives.

[lady-menrva]

PJO Meta (2 of ??)

DISCLAIMER: This post reflects a subjective opinion and should be treated as such. If you don't wish to hear criticism regarding Rick's "diverse representation", please scroll away.

Hot Take: I don't think Nico was good queer representation, and here are my reasons for the same.

Internalized Homophobia

Let me start by saying that his internalized homophobia was well-handled in House of Hades and early Blood of Olympus.

The part of his Pov, where he recounts a tale from Plato about romantic soulmates and wonders where that leaves him, is a moving, poignant, critique of heteronormativity.

Nonetheless, it becomes hard to take his internalized homophobia seriously after it simply sublimates affer meeting Will Solace - He develops an infatuation for the latter and the rest is history.

I am not saying that he should struggle with self-acceptance for the rest of his life. I am simply suggesting that he should receive proper closure for the same. i.e, won't it be much better if he learns that homoromantic attraction is completely normal, natural and healthy? Instead, the narrative never even mentions his struggles with self-acceptance after his meeting with Will, let alone give him proper closure.

His Feelings for Percy

On a similar tangent as the aforementioned argument, Nico having feelings for percy started out as a good thing. It gave Nico's character and actions an extra layer of depth.

However, his love (yes, love) for Percy - simply disappeared to make room for Solangelo (which, with all due respect, is a subpar ship). The OoC confession did not help anything either. Nor did the fact that he got over his years-long love in a moment, somehow.

Coming Out:

I do not think this requires a great deal of explanation. Most readers unanimously agree that it's not okay to drag a severely traumatized teenager through another incredibly traumatizing event, esp. when other alternatives were present.

For eg- he chooses to come out to Hazel because he can't take the weight of his feelings any more. This could have also been an important moment for their relationship.

Lastly, outing your queer character (by forcible outing) in such a way is obviously very problematic.

Ostracization

Nico was clearly set-up to be the outcast all the way from the Son of Neptune to the House of Hades . The "He pushed everyone way" plot point did not make a concrete, tangible appearance until Blood of Olympus.

His ostracization arc is important as it is directly tied to his internalized homophobia and is significant to his presence as queer representation. Yet, by having this poorly retconned to "it was all in your head"(unsurprisingly, for solangelo), Rick did a dis-service Nico as a character and as queer rep. (The pushing everyone away schtick could have worked. Just not the way it was in canon.)

Conclusion

Since so many indispensable aspects of Nico's identity as a gay character are poorly handled, it becomes very hard to lake him seriously as good LGBTQ+ rep.

[fabuloustrash05]

Some of My TMNT Hot Takes (PART 2) 🔥

Warning: More Opinions

Part 1 Here

I don’t like that in Mutant Mayhem Donnie is not a “science guy” but instead is more of an anime and pop culture geek. I’m not against him being an anime fan (I love anime too) but I wish we saw more of his science and being a tech genius side instead of him just liking stereotypical “nerdy stuff”. If that makes sense.

I don’t like the Punk Frogs (any version).

The 87 crossover episodes in the 2012 series (as much as I did enjoy them & are great episodes) should not have happened. They leave no real impact or development to 2012’s overarching story and just waste time. These episodes could’ve covered more important things that 202 was desperately lacking like like character exploration and character dynamic development. It was just nostalgic fanservice. The arc in S5 specifically would’ve work better as a movie instead of a 3-4 episode arc in the (most likely non canon) final season.

Shinigami being Mikey’s second love interests ruins her character a bit (for me personally). That was a pointless decision that did NOT need to happen. She would’ve been our first recurring female character to not be a love interest, but nope!

People are allowed to like/ship Donnie x April in ROTTMNT (this is coming from someone who’s not crazy about April being shipped with the Turtles).

I ship Yuichi with 2012 Leo more than Rise Leo (still ship Rise Leoichi, but I just think 2012 Leoichi is way more interesting, plus 2012 Leo deserves a good love interest).

The humans in Mutant Mayhem look ugly af (I know that was probably an intentional design choice but still. It looks bad.)

I hate Raph x Casey (any ver). I’ve stated in part one that I don’t like Raph (any version) being in a romantic relationship with human characters and yes, that meant him with Casey. Not only that but Raph and Casey being a couple ruins their whole dynamic and iconic friendship I love so much. I’m all for friends to lovers but they are a line that should not be crossed. Not every friendship needs to turn romantic.

2012 Karai’s hair looks bad.

Fans often over exaggerate Rise Donnie’s character and badly mischaracterize him in fanfics and fan comics to the point it makes him feel like he’s an entirely different character.

Shinigami should have been revealed to be a villain.

Rise Donnie was just as mean to his brother as fans claim 2012 Raph was to his. Yes, they both do love their families and I’m NOT saying either of them are abus!ce (they’re not), but fans praising Rise Donnie for doing similar things fans criticize/hate 2012 Raph for doing just makes them hypocrites.

Venus does NOT need to be in every iteration of TMNT. It gets kind of annoying when fans keep on saying that she should be in all the other iterations when in truth her presence would not make sense based on the already established canon story. The only (recent) version of TMNT where I think her being included would’ve fit the best and deserved to make her comeback in is ROTTMNT.

The side plot of 2012 Karai being mutated and later getting brainwashed by Shredder was a waste of time and the most boring arc in the series.

2012 April, Donnie and Casey being in a poly relationship does not fix anything with their problematic dynamic and massive flaws with one another. I'm not saying you can't ship all three of them together, you do you! Idc But in reality their relationship would be a train wreck, that's why I personally don't ship 2012 Capriltello.

Renet is probably one of the most powerful allies the Turtles have in the 2012 series.

Rise Donnie would NOT hate 2012 April. He’d go crazy over her psychic powers and want to study them to help her explore them more.

From what I've seen so far, Leo x Usagi seems like the only GOOD ship in the 2003 series (this hot take might change tho).

Raph had the best character arc and development in the 2012 series and changed the most out of the four brothers. Next would be Leo. With Mikey and Donnie have little development (or none at all sadly).

[tlonista]

I wish the conversation over Problematic Relationships In Fiction weren't so heavily framed around individual stories. Because I don't care about some random fucked-up novel, but I do feel like current romance media trends toward a recommendation-fueled monoculture with some frustratingly rigid gender norms, and a lot of "does fiction affect reality" discourse offers no way of talking about it.

Every time I dip my toe outside AO3 (Wattpad, Kindle Unlimited, Reddit, my BookTok experience is limited but that's the vibe I get there) I'm dismayed by how hard it is to find M/F romance that's not implicitly or explicitly about eroticized male-dominated power imbalance. Not just "he's a serial unaliver" dark romance, but the huge focus on hypermasculine heroes taking care of heroines and possessive alpha-male fated mates and nigh-inescapable trends like "good girl" praise-kink stuff.

Obviously this was always common in romance publishing, but a) the internet was supposed to support niches and b) I find significantly more diversity on AO3, so I think it can. It's just that no other platform or online community seems structured to do it. Instead a combination of recommendation feeds, word-of-mouth virality, and fast-fashion self-publishing surfaces infinite variations on a handful of the most broadly appealing industry blockbusters and buries everything else.

So instead of offering an alternative to old monolithic print publishing, online platforms seem even better at elevating male-domination kinks from "a fairly popular dynamic" to an inescapable default of What Romance Is. Even if you're fully aware it's a sexual fantasy, it gets downright hard to articulate desire in any other way, especially if you don't have a fully-formed picture of what you like. Unless you think sexuality simply isn't a "real" component of people's lives, I think this is a reasonable example of fiction in aggregate affecting reality in a negative way.

(It's also obviously not unique to romance lit. I just can't speak to stuff like video porn firsthand, and I don't see a ton of pushback on people criticizing the gender dynamics of Pornhub.)

But if the only available question is "is X book corrupting impressionable young women," then... no, that's silly. If anything, the aggregate system makes individual books feel bad in ways the authors probably didn't intend. Like, in Popular Kink Land, "your feminism says no but your body says yes" tropes are appealing for some women working through a particular kind of purity culture. In Inescapable Dynamic Land they take on this Gorean overtone where all women secretly want a man to take charge of them. The former is not my thing but fine; the latter feels like some kind of weird accidental gaslighting.

To the extent AO3 escapes this, I think it's for four reasons.

A focus on tags and chronological sorting, which helps surface non-popular stuff and gives readers more control

It's strictly non-commercial so there's less incentive to write for the broadest audience or fill the site with boilerplate sludge

It doesn't segregate categories like "romance for men", so there's less gerrymandering of cross-gender niches like femdom

The fourth reason, which is most interesting to me, is that fanfic ships (specifically not X-reader ships) create easily discoverable literary microgenres drawn from a huge range of media outside the tropey echo chamber of Romancelandia Proper.

In my experience it takes hours of scouring Reddit and Goodreads to find non-normative original romance, but one AO3 search and a few clicks to get from "I played Resident Evil and liked Ada and Leon's vibe" to a substantial microgenre about a badass woman making a cute guy stutter, or "I loved Kaz and Inej in Six of Crows" to a bunch of takes on a not-conventionally-masculine hero and a powerful but vulnerable heroine pining for each other. Since a decent number of fanfic authors also write non-fanfic, there's even a chance you'll find somebody who does original characters with a sensibility you like. I have no idea how you'd bring this system outside shipfic, but I'd love to see someone try.

[twstcallouts]

Look I’m french. When I was a kid my school made me read Greek mythology books with graphic rape and incest galore and I turned out fine ?? It’s fake, no one is being harmed and if people can simp for fictional murderers they can as well do so for weird sex kink (expecially since anime boys don’t look like children at all, you could tell me they are actually 30 and I’ll believe it easily). Also if you’re in a fandom built around a work made by someone whose into problematic stuff I feel it’s very hypocritical to criticize those people.

Finally I think callouts post are always evil, probably because I hang out with enough queer people who go false accusations of serious crimes because of petty shit and were harassed into nervous breakdowns and depression 🤷‍♂️

degenerate, filthy and disgusting used in the context you do is always a giant red flag btw

(Also my cat is the cutest ever and I will gladly die for her)

Look, my main take away from this is that you think everyone has the same experiences as you and that you feel everyone should cater to your thoughts and feelings. I'm not here to do that, not to you or anyone. Plain and simple.

I want you to THINK about this. Don't skim it, don't read it and think immediately of what to say back, just take your time to digest this.

Do the creators you follow and defend TRULY care about whether you defend them or not? Are they sending you out to fight for them? What do you GAIN, from defending them? Does the content you consume help you in becoming the best version you can be, or does it provide you with a fraction of a moments' satisfaction? Do you surround yourself with people that care about your actual happiness and uplift you when you need it, but give you advice and sometimes even call YOU out on behavior that is harmful to you or others? The call may be coming from inside the house.

My call outs don't discriminate, they target anyone who fits into the criteria.

"Also if you’re in a fandom built around a work made by someone whose into problematic stuff I feel it’s very hypocritical to criticize those people."

I'll be frank with you, since you blog says 21+. Do you know the innermost thoughts and feelings of Yana Toboso? Are you sure she doesn't include some content because a higher up told her to, or because some people are willing to pay more for said content? I don't know the answers to these questions, and I sincerely do not care to know. You may not know the meaning of hypocrisy. Google defines it as :"the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform; pretense". My behavior is not hypocritical, since I don't cheer on Toboso's past actions, or even present ones. I play Twisted Wonderland because it's cute and entertaining, not because I want to make "ships" or "headcanons" on characters. Whatever the reason people play for, is not my business, only when they cross a line is when I get involved.

You keep making assumptions about me, and I don't think it is fair. I don't make any about you, I only go by what you tell me. Please try to do the same. Thank you.

[remusawoooo]

anon here, excited to read the essay! i asked you because i really like your takes and i see people in the more canon-adjacent parts of the marauders fanbase to complain about the extremes of the fanon one, though personally ive never really seen anything Too extreme, tho thats probably just tantamount to how well i curate my spaces i suppose (ive seen people say that fanon makes remus really “alpha” or makes sirius “bimbofied” and while ive seen hints of those extremes here and there, mostly it looks like it varies from person to person. ive just seen remus be more assertive than he probably is in canon, or sirius being more dramatic and “fem” than he probably is in canon). from what i know people like exaggerating events (the prank, etc.) or shifting some personality traits, but i dont really think thats a bad thing - i personally enjoy it. as long as they dont completely turn characters into stereotypes (though its a pitfall of every fandom, i fear), then whatever its just camp.

people are allowed to criticize stuff like that though, not taking that away from anyone, i personally just dont really care enough to be totally accurate esp since this hyperfix is kind of the bottom of the barrel for me LMAO. but i ask mostly bc im just curious to see what other peoples opinions are, and bc i think - especially in a fanbase like this - that its incredibly important to be at least a little critical with your media experience and reflect on it. saying “oh fuck canon we’re just having fun” is fine and all, i dont think anyone is stopping you, i think the personalities people have made up for characters that have zero screen time are super fun and the little ships are not everyones tea but like its fine. but even still, people should be way more aware of what characters theyre dealing with and from what franchise, and like reflect on any biases you may have. if youre making shit up for a random DE character, or retconning some sutff, okay, whatever, but be sure to not defend or like suddenly turn to really weird rhetoric. idk i think its the bare minimum in a fanbase like this

i definitely rambled way too much here, super sorry op! i hope this doesnt bother you, feel free to reply or feel free to not. i just really like hearing peoples thoughts on things, and i like your takes and your blog so i hope i didnt catch you by surprise. i really am just an outsider trying to look in LOL

hello anon, I'm sorry I lost your ask. I was writing on my laptop and saved the draft (but apparently had to press on alt, and didn't do it) so I basically lost your question and half of my initial response. Ty for sending in another ask!! Not a bother at all, i find this very lovely :D 

I was mortified to find that someone who isn't really a part of the fandom was perceiving me while I was complaining about fictional characters ahahaha. still, thank you for validating me and asking my thoughts on the mischaracterization of marauders!! I do talk about it daily, unfortunately, and without any prompt too. I'll try to gather all my thoughts here. I don't necessarily come across fanon as much as I did when I reentered the fandom and honestly, I can not be more with you about curating your space !! at the end of the day, I am just here to have fun, and really, pointing out these issues is not a good time at all! But I do post a lot about these, I can't be bothered to bottle up any thoughts lol.

I think the major issue I have with current interpretations is the underlying bigotry that comes along with it. There is a lot of unchecked problematic content that doesn't sit right with me.

Flanderizing characters in fandom interpretations is not limited to marauders fandom obviously. any popular media will face this because so many of us want to interact with one character so their traits are simplified for easier consumption and to find a common ground. this is also not limited to new marauders fandom. even in the older era, leather jacket-wearing, motorbike-driving quintessential bad boy siruis was a thing. so I won't nitpick on silly simplifications.

I just want to say that this isn't about me wanting everyone to have the same interpretations as I do about the canon. I follow so many lovely people and I don't agree with all of their posts. But, we all just simply share the love for these characters in the text and form an imaginary community. So, if we were to remove all the issues I will mention, it is still very well possible to have different personal takes.

Here are some of my issues:

Queerness, Gender roles, and misogyny:

My biggest problem is the representations of queer relationships. the fandom packages these couples in a strange and obvious heteronormative mold where the individuals fit into male and female gender roles. mlm and wlw are now an “f/m”* stereotype and characterization gets affected by the ships. Heterosexual relationships shouldn't have these limitations either, anyway. There is no one way to be a woman or a man. With queer relationships in particular, we have reclaimed the word queer now but it was used to describe the unconventional weirdness in the relationship. We didn't fit into the normal portrayal of a loving relationship. So, it really bothers me, even in fiction, that queer ships are popularly consumed in a way that represents a traditional template. (*this is not about gender itself but the gender roles! f/m can very well be queer!). 

Let's take the biggest victim in this fandom: sirius.

Sirius’ portrayal concerning his gender and sexuality has heavily changed his characterization in the fanon. We have a character who is popularly headcanonned as trans and is it a coincidence that all their traits have changed from the og material? Sirius is suddenly vain, whiny, and dumb. Canon doesn't suggest this interpretation, it has to have stemmed from somewhere. It's the implicit bias. Sirius becomes a caricature of what a woman “should be”. When we focus on sexuality, there is the suddenly short twink sirius who has the same new traits- proving the point of fulfilling gender roles. These characteristics are a stand-in for the “female” role of the traditional relationship and it becomes more clear in the example of new age wolfstar. Remus is now the big alpha stoic manly man- the obvious stand-in for the “male” role. I could go on, it is apparent in the way you can see remus becomes a caretaker and sirius is taken care of.

The point I am trying to make is not to discourage gender/sexuality hc. I love them, keep them coming. But, why is female sirius not tall suddenly? It is not inherently bad at all to have a feminine and masculine pairing! But why do we need to change the constitutions of these characters to consume their relationship?

I'll keep dropping disclaimers because I hate being misinterpreted: I don't obviously mean every single person is doing this or that doing one of the things means doing the other too. 

Race:

It is related to the point above. I was personally so excited to see the popular desi james hc. Even in fanon, I have never seen such a prevalent and encouraged brown rep, it was quite sweet to come back to that. But the problem is the change of characteristics that comes with race hc. Desi james is also a manly dude who is big and buff as opposed to the white petite and delicate regulus within jegulus ship. The melanin is directly proportional to the manliness here. 

This is a propagation of race stereotypes. Maybe jegulus was a bad example because usually there are seen as blank templates. I will raise the argument that this can't be all we can come up with for blank canvases then. Either way, my point about race still stands when you repeatedly design interracial queer relationships so they fall into heteronormative roles. Anyway, same issue with wolfstar when there is a brown remus.

Canon, JKR, and hypocrisy:

Refusing to engage with source material is funny when we are picking characters out of it. the interpretations of the characters will be from their book. otherwise, they are just original characters with the same name. you can add onto the traits and a lot of the time fandom comes to a consensus regarding a few things! This is common in every fandom but I don't think I have seen such reluctance to not only critically engage with media but also shame others who do. We are surely in special circumstances with this fandom but I really do think jkr and how we navigate the fanon should be two different things.

Most of us don't condone jkr or even remotely agree with any nonsense she spews on the daily. Most of us can see the problematic nature of even consuming this media and staying in this fandom. It is one of the reasons I even left the fandom. Most of us are simply doing our best to engage carefully while distancing ourselves from her. So, it is quite laughable when some love to take the moral high ground for rejecting canon while still engaging with the same characters. (the rejection of canon in question being sirius’ height, lol)

(Sirius' height is quite a polarising fact apparently. Unfortunately, the point about height is also discussed so disingenuously. When I talk about sirius’ height, it is not really about him being 6 or 7 feet. It will not really impact my life. It is about what it represents. He is bimbofied as he becomes short. It's an issue of "WHY" again.)

Of course, this isn't an accusation of intentional bigotry from everyone here. The problem with this fandom is that the people in it tell themselves that it is progressive and to run away from the problematic creator as much as possible. We are not progressive if all we do is co-opt queer and racially diverse identities on such a superficial level. The bias manifests in subtle forms. I just wish we check ourselves from time to time, that's all. 

There is a lot of hostility when we try to discuss issues in the fanon. Things are interpreted in the most misguided way to just win the argument. Like I said in the beginning, we all just want to have a good time. That also means creating a welcoming space for vulnerable groups (especially when the same identities are used to pat yourselves on the backs for inclusivity points). I didn't even cover everything btw, I just wrote about the issues that concern me. queer and poc also partake in biased representations, I also probably have some biases that I didn't identify yet. I just think it would be super neat if everyone tried to make an effort to unlearn and engage with media without hurting anyone. 

I have other issues but they are all just super subjective opinions and smth I can ignore when others do. ex: I really don't like giving tragic backstories to bigots in the story. Not every supremacist loser has a trauma that forced them into oppressing people! There is also "tropeyfication" of all major ships. Just an overall issue in the reading world I think, though.

Anon, I didn't mean to make it preachy in any way btw. You probably asked for a silly little rant and I went full lecture mode, so I apologize for the tone shift!! I mentioned these because every other issue can be brought down to these imo. Like you said, I also don't have any fixation on everything being canon-compliant. I only complain by asking about the thought process behind certain kinds of changes, if that makes sense! I hope this wasn't a drag really and you can see where I am coming from. If I misspoke anywhere, pls lmk. Thanks for sharing your opinions too!!

This is a long long rant, anyone who read everything, you are wonderful and patient. Thank you for taking the time. This huge post and the content can make you think, “who cares this much?” or “it's not that serious” and yaa it really isn't that serious. The characters aren't real but we all are. the identities projected are real. so, it does matter to talk about this.

Everything said this is a fun place to be once you find your own corner in the playground.

[ravi-is-my-beloved]

I will genuinely never get over 'Buddies hacked Lou' drama. This wasn't a little niche belief of some people on Twitter; I'm not a big blog by any means, and I lost so many people I've followed for YEARS because they insisted he must have been hacked...

People who seemed totally sane otherwise! They just came on Tumblr one day posting that 'it was so sad people would violate Lou's safety' or that they 'were waiting for more information to come out'. I think some people were really expecting him to make a statement about it, but he ignored it. BECAUSE HE WASN'T HACKED. And then everyone just kept insisting he was hacked or started being racist too. Oh, to be an average white guy in hollywood...

Tommy fans always are like "Oh, people bring up the stuff that Lou posted a decade ago but are so quick to excuse and not even talk about the transphobic stuff Ryan said last week." And like yes, we shouldn't be ignoring all of the problematic stuff Ryan is doing and saying but also, you're forgetting that Lou tweeted a problematic meme in 2024.

And it's because they wholeheartedly think Lou was hacked for reasons that fall flat when you look at those reasons with a critical eye.

"Oh, Buddie fans were the only ones who were awake and there to see Lou post that!" Have y'all heard of different timezones and how it's normal for a huge chunk of people to be awake at the same time?? Also, I don't believe for a single second that not a single Tommy fan was awake around that time too, they're just ignorantly believing that Lou was hacked.

"Lou would never have posted that, he changed!" He's a celebrity, you're never going to know him truly like you would a friend or family member. You don't know that he wouldn't have posted that in 2024, because you don't know him. You don't know that he's changed, he might've stopped posting problematic memes because he knew it would get him canceled in this day and age.

They were so quick to defend their favorite white actor that they truly fell down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories. All because they want to paint all of Tommy Haters and Buddie fans as unhinged and vile.

Last week, I saw a BT fan on here say that Buddie fans have taken to creating fake posts of BT fans saying wild takes and screenshooting them to make BT fans seem bad and their reasoning for that was "I've never seen a BT fan actually say anything BoBs say we do." And so many people were reblogging and saying "Yeah, I follow so many BT blogs and I've never seen anything like what BoBs are saying."

I've said it before and I'll say it again, this fandom regularly takes stuff that is being said on Twitter and putting it on here to be like "Oh, look at what Buddie/BT fans are saying." And it's not entirely representative of what people are saying here on Tumblr. They do it all the time themselves, but apparently Buddie fans are the ones making shit up.

And these people are the same ones who are like "People who hate Tommy don't have critical thinking skills." (Something that I've actually seen someone on here say in one form or the other.)

Like I'm not the one who went through mental hoops to start a conspiracy theory that Buddie fans hacked Lou. I'm not the one who thinks that just because I haven't seen someone on my side of the ship war say something outlandish that it means no one on my side of the ship war had actually said that outlandish thing.

I admit that there are things that I struggle to understand/am slow to understand, but at least I'm not out here thinking that anyone who disagrees with me lacks critical thinking skills. And yes, I know my previous paragraph might seem like that's what I'm saying, but it's truly not. I'm just saying that you can't say that the haters are all unhinged/lack brain cells when you have believed something so readily without much thought/proof.

I'm going to end this response with this:

Not putting celebrities on a pedestal is truly something that this fandom struggles with. Anyone who puts any of the cast members on pedestals have forgotten that we will never truly know celebrities' true personalities.

[vladdyissues]

just a little reminder to always check accounts!! don't interact with anti-proship bc pompep is a proship!! i know you are probably careful and don't but as a fellow pompep shipper i just wanted to remind you ^_^

Thank you, anon. I typically do glance at accounts before interacting, and so far I've had only one or two instances where I've been mistaken about someone.

One point I feel necessary to mention: I don't actually label myself as "proship", even though I agree with everything that word stands for (i.e., ship and let ship, don't like/don't read, your kink is not my kink and that's okay, don't harass people over fiction, censorship is bad, and various other forms of "don't be a feelings yakuza"). Back in my day, this was called being a normal fan. The only people who had a label were the antis.

Quote via korrasera:

Specifically, there aren’t anti-antis. There’s just antis, who are authoritarians, and the people who disagree with them.

Also—and please don't think any of this is criticizing you personally, anon; I'm strictly addressing the current fandom climate and my personal stance in it—I would never label any ship as "proship" because doing so insinuates that there are "safe/good" ships and "dangerous/bad" ships*. It plays into anti rhetoric, where antis are trying to redefine "proship" as being short for "problematic ship". That's a lie. Reject it.

*Any ship can be "problematic". Romeo/Juliet is "problematic" because Juliet is purported to be 13 or 14. Han Solo and Leia Organa have a 13-year age gap. Lots of phans think Sam/Danny is problematic because Sam is "toxic". It's all wank.

Same goes for the more recent "comship" label. I agree with the attitude, but I'm not getting it tattooed on me. I'm a fan. I enjoy my ships. I let others enjoy their ships, and if I hate those ships, I keep my mouth shut and move along. I have as much right to be here as any other fan. I will use the main fandom tag. I will tag all relevant characters. I am doing my due diligence. If anyone has a problem with that, it's their responsibility to block me, block the ship tag, and take charge of their own online experience.

[masochist-marmot]

In defence of "problematic" ships

CW: references to abusive relationships

There seems to be a growing mindset in fandom spaces that a ship is not valid if it's somehow problematic. Interestingly, the criticism towards a ship is rarely formed as "I don't like it"/"it makes me uncomfortable". Instead, they often attack the shipper with a "you must enjoy being abused and will end up being killed by your partner" or whatever.

Can we not?

First of all, and I'm so sorry to break it to you, but these characters are not real people. They have been constructed to serve a narrative. And seeing an interesting dynamic on the screen/page/whatever and thinking it's worth exploring does not mean you want to be inserted into that situation, nor does it mean that you endorse it in real life. It makes me wonder if these people even understand what fiction is for. I've had my share of toxic relationships, and I'd rather not get into another one. So it's a good thing that I can explore these dynamics safely without putting myself in danger.

And before you bring up the danger of romanticising abuse, I get it. There's plenty of media out there that depicts abuse and toxicity as somehow desirable qualities, and I understand that media can reflect and influence the audience's worldview. This is where you pause for a second, put on your media literacy goggles, and try to see what's actually being said. Depiction does not equal endorsement. Also, shippers are usually just existing in their own spaces and not affecting the wider public in any way.

Secondly, I see a lot of variations of "these characters are not in love because they are not good to each other". Hello? Are we seriously going to claim that romantic feelings only exist in their most pure, uncomplicated, healthy form? Interestingly enough, these sentiments are usually applied to queer ships. When Honkai: Star Rail dropped an animated short containing a prolonged and incredibly sapphic dance scene that ended in Black Swan being mentally (though unintentionally?) violated by Acheron, I saw so many comments along the lines of "I thought it was pretty gay until the mental flaying happened". I mean, it's still pretty gay. Just because you don't think it's healthy, doesn't mean it stops being queer. Are we just that afraid of showing problematic queer representation? We are people, and our relationships will be messy, and I think it's okay to show that. Though once again, I'm aware that for a long time it was all that could be shown, and that wasn't great either. I just feel like the pendulum has swung a bit too much towards the other end.

I've also seen a lot of comments to the effect of "he said he hated him so your ship is invalid". I will excuse these comments if you're on the autism spectrum and have difficulty reading past the literal meaning of words, otherwise, let's dig up those media literacy goggles again. In the next paragraph I'm going to vehemently defend my beloved akeshu, so massive spoilers for Persona 5 Royal.

In his confidant rank 8, Akechi says to the protagonist, in no uncertain terms: "I hate you." And the next time you see him alone, he shoots you in the head (it's complicated, okay?). So you could take this and run with it and go bash akeshu shippers over the head with it. Or you could try to analyse his actions and motivations over the course of the entire game and come to the conclusion that his hatred is a shorthand for a bundle of complicated emotions. Morgana even picks up on it after you fight him later in the game: "You don't really hate Joker, do you?" What Akechi actually feels is admiration and jealousy, since he feels that the protagonist has been handed everything he himself had to work so hard for. It's companionship for his first ever friend and respect for a worthy rival who will rise up to all of his challenges. It's regret that he couldn't have met Joker earlier in life when his master plan wasn't already in motion and his only driving force in life. All of this bundles up in something the emotionally stunted teenager can't and probably doesn't want to unpack, and he settles on what's both very simple and familiar to him: hatred. Which he probably latches onto so that he's capable of putting a bullet in the head of the only friend he's ever had. I could (and honestly, probably will) rant about Akechi on other occasions, but I'll leave it here for now. The point is: If the best you can muster for invalidating a ship is this, I honestly don't feel like I have to listen to your opinion.

Just to be clear, I don't think you need to go find the justifications for your ships in the actual text. In this rant I've mostly brought up ships that stem from how the characters interact in canon. (Though oddly enough, queer ships tend to be subjected to this kind of scrutiny way more than straight ones.) But sometimes it's fun to explore the most unlikely relationship dynamics by shipping characters who barely even interact. They're not what I find personally interesting, but go off. You will never find me gatekeeping ships. Even if it's Hisoka/Gon, in which case you're free to do your thing but I hope I'll never see it.

TLDR; I'm sick of people attacking each other over problematic ships. The characters aren't real, you can't hurt their feelings. But I am, as hard as that may be to grasp sometimes.

[olderthannetfic]

https://www.tumblr.com/olderthannetfic/749333039047442432/httpsolderthannetfictumblrcompost74884185043?source=share

Sorry, long rant incoming.

Someone in the replies said it, but I think it needs to be said again where everyone can see it: I think a lot of the attitude that anon is somehow secretly pro-censorship because they think certain preferences are skeevy, and strenuously insisting that bad attitudes can NEVER be media's fault.... idk, maybe take it out of the context of debates about sexually explicit/pornographic media for a moment?

There are works of media that had pretty direct effects on activist and political movements, good and bad. Uncle Tom's Cabin inspired a lot of people to fight against slavery. The movie Birth of a Nation, which showed a history of the U.S. with the KKK as heroic, is considered by most historians to be a major contributor to the revival of the KKK in the 1920s. The Nazis used films, books, music, art, and so on in their propaganda, knowing it would help their ideas go down more easily. The Soviets did too. Every dictatorship did. Even democratic countries have done it as well, usually but not always in more subtle ways.

Do none of those count, because "oh, people who were going to be convinced by Birth of a Nation would be racist anyway"? "Good, non-racist people wouldn't be convinced by it"? I mean, the latter is true: there were plenty of people, especially black Americans but plenty of white allies too, who boycotted the film at the time. The NAACP led a boycott. But do you really think NO ONE was convinced? (What about people who previously didn't feel any way about it one way or the other? Were they just innately more evil, even if it might've just been that they weren't aware? Do supposedly progressive people in fandom realize how much this sounds like Christian original sin rhetoric...) And does it matter purely about media fully changing minds, or also how it galvanizes people who already think one way? If it gives them new talking points, new ways of thinking about it and convincing others? If it helps them believe their cause is more important and worth fighting for?

So why does this all suddenly change when we're talking about sex? Is porn really this special class of media where somehow all the rules about how we can both like things and also be critical of how media (fiction, news media, whatever) influences us - "be critical of the media you love," as a tote bag sold by Feminist Frequency said - just stop applying for some reason? Or maybe if something is bypassing your rational brain entirely and going directly for the pleasure centers, there's all the more reason to think critically about what it's saying? Propaganda is designed to bypass all that, too.

Also, if media really has NOTHING to do with it, that just wouldn't explain why it's disproportionately anime that feature these specific elements that seem to attract more people arguing for why it's wrong to be upset by rape or child exploitation in real life. I don't believe that everyone who watches slavery isekai or lolicon approves of those things irl - I think for the vast majority of people, it IS a fantasy and that's the point - but I have noticed that in places like the Anime News Network or Crunchyroll forums, the comments become a cesspool of creepy people arguing for why ages of consent should be lowered and mean feminists who don't like watching media with rape in it just need to get over themselves, in a way they just don't when you're talking about Attack on Titan or My Hero Academia or Shoujo Romance #4891 or whatever.

As another person in the notes said, abusers ARE opportunistic. They'll use something like Twilight as easily as they'll use the most uwu, soft, "non problematic" ship to argue for why they're allowed to abuse you. But I don't think that means we can't be critical (not calling for censorship, of course! but like, writing op-eds and stuff) of media that makes their arguments a little easier, maybe even directly makes their arguments for them.

You can believe both that everyone has the opportunity to read, watch, listen to, play what they want and make up their own minds about it, and that it's wrong for the government to ever decide what media is and isn't "acceptable," and also believe that media often is saying things that aren't apparent on the surface and that you should be critical of those messages, *especially* with the stuff you like.

The point is just that porn isn't like, fundamentally different from other fictional media in this way. (Or, hell, I would argue that fictional media isn't functionally different from other mass media in this way. If anything, fiction's politics are often more insidious in a way that makes it easier for them to reach people who might not otherwise be open to those messages in the form of, say, blatantly right-wing news media.)

It's particularly strange to me when people jump all over someone for expressing how something can be insidiously creepy in a more mundane way. The line people are upset about that used the word "unpack" was just making the point that even if we can agree lolicon isn't outright advocating pedophilia, even if we agree the point is that it's a fantasy and they're not like real children at all and that's what people like, it's still working within an idealization/fetishization of helplessness, innocence, and dependence, and that still has a lot that you can critique from a feminist perspective. It's still a thing that plays into some crappy societal ideas about who women are supposed to be, and is selling that to men as a romantic ideal. There's still a lot we can talk about there! And it's still totally fair for women to be wary of men where that seems to be all they're into - because for some (and I believe this was what anon was initially trying to say was their experience), it does impact how they treat real women. It doesn't have to be everyone for it to have an impact.

There's a lot of anime that presents women that way, even way outside of lolicon. A lot of it's anime I like! I'm still critical of that aspect of it. I still wish that particular part of it were different.

I still don't see how this makes me "pro censorship" unless I believe some kind of institution should mandate that that not be included. And whether that's the government, or the industry itself (people do kind of narrowly focus on "the government" in a way that would make a lot of industry-run censorship that was still very harmful, e.g. the Hollywood Hays Code, not "count"), or anyone, I very much disagree with that. Creators should be able to create what they want. A lot of what creators are doing with this is unconscious, is reflecting societal biases they learned but haven't thought deeply about.... which is precisely the point of critiquing how those show up in a work.

People love to talk about "secretly 'anti' attitudes" but at the end of the day, support or opposition to censorship is pretty straightforward. You believe someone should be stopped from making a particular kind of media, or you don't. If you don't, you're not pro-censorship, no matter how much you personally may not like that that media or a particular aspect of it exists. Most people who care about media have some media they wish didn't exist. It's about what they do about it that makes them pro or anti censorship. Talk to people who donate to or even work for the ACLU or other anti censorship groups; most of them don't like racist or sexist stuff, but they also don't believe it should be banned and that's the point.

Bringing it back to the discussion at hand, I think the point was just that you can't be blind to how power dynamics influence this stuff. I wouldn't even say specifically cishet men are at fault here, since some people who read this blog seem to think that anyone saying that is automatically talking about bioessentialism as opposed to like, societal stuff (don't ask me why, this has been explained on here enough times in enough different discourses over the years, I think). I'd just say anyone with power in that particular context. There's a reason why it's specifically mainstream media, aimed at groups in power, that tends to draw in creeps excusing the real thing... in a way that just similarly is not true of people in fanfiction fandom, who are usually a member of one or more oppressed categories, exploring that in their own marginal work. Fans of rape fanfiction just don't act the way that fans of slavery rape isekai do. It's because there is fundamentally a difference both when you're someone whom society tells you are entitled to everything you want in this particular arena, and also when a work is mainstream, broadening its reach, and speaking a particular message from the lens of people with economic and social power (who are making these mainstream works) and given approval by publishers/media studios/etc. in a way that is not the case with amateur work with tiny audiences. And, frankly, there's a difference between something that eroticizes rape from the point of view of the perpetrator vs. the victim.

Not a difference in terms of how legal it should be. Not a difference in whether every single person who watches it or likes it is bad. But a difference in terms of what it's saying, how it's saying that, and often the effects they have as a result. That, too, is true with every topic, not just sex.

I feel like a lot of people getting mad at these do fundamentally agree with this, but just have a weird blind spot when it's put in any sort of terminology that reminds them of certain bad arguments they've seen in fandom, uses any words that can be dismissed as "radfem" or "anti" or whatever, and so just refuse to engage with the actual meat of what is being said.

If you do actually believe though that it's wrong to EVER think media can have a negative effect on what people believe about irl issues, because there was always something "already there" that was going to "come out anyway" if it affects you that way (again, people: this is "original sin" rhetoric), and if you ever privately judge people for the media they like you're secretly pro-censorship. You do have to recognzie that both you personally come up short and also most peopel doing real concrete real world things to fight censorship would also come up short!

I think sometimes of an editorial that said "if you love Return of the Jedi but hated the Ewoks you understand feminist criticism" in terms of how you can be bothered by the sexism of a piece of media in a way you'd be bothered by any one individual element of it, and still overall like the whole. And also, you can be offended by something, even wish it didn't exist (don't we as nerds all have entries in some franchise we like or another that we wish didn't exist for fannish reasons?), without believing that it should be officially made to stop existing or have never existed in the first place. That last part does actaully matter as like, its own thing. It is in fact separable from just being able to have personal judgey feelings about media and about the people who liked it.

And opposing it does not mean in any way that we have to just stop thinking critically about the media we love, or that we have to act like media can never have any influence on people. We on the left tend to talk about sexism, racism, homophoia and so on as being influenced by culture and society. Well, guess what is part of society and culture? Fictional (and other kinds of) media. That's part of that societal programming we get. It's why you'll see some of it even from people whose parents very much tried to resist teaching them certain things, because they get it from media anyway. I was raised by strenuously feminist parents: it was the media that taught me what gender roles were and how I was expected to adhere to them.

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Look, I realize it's a bit rich of me to say this, but people are not going to engage with your actual points if you cannot be more succinct.