#this whole mindset of things you like in fiction reflect on who you are personally set us back horrendously

[hertwood]

hotd is rly not made for the moral justification era of fandom. idk if this is a problem on tumblr as much but the way kids on tiktok will bend over backwards to justify liking an morally grey characters its like. hey. hes a bad person. and you can still like him as a character. kill the cop in your brain youre fucking allowed

[cozymochi]

It's just strange when you want YOUR boundaries respected, but when people set their own boundaries, you mock them and call them silly. Hypocritical of you. As long as nobody is hurt, what is the problem.

…Huh? …Ok, fine. I’ll bite.

My single serious boundary is just cut and dry to not ask me for nsfw and pornographic art when I say repeatedly to not ask me for it.

I am not mocking somebody for saying I find an entirely separate concept (the “non-share yume” ) that, that on paper, sounds a little silly. At least to me, who doesn’t personally do that for one reason or another. But that is solely just on me? I’m not blaming anyone else for that. I’m sure somebody out there finds my boundary un-relatable. I do not think it’s fair to say that I’m being hypocritical for… not fully getting into somebody elses mindset.

And trust me, I think I’m hypocritical enough on a lot of completely unrelated things already.

Is it because I used the word “silly?” Was that being interpreted as mockery rather than just me going “ah, okay. i guess??” I never even said there was any problem either, nor that I hated anybody for it. I guess to be fair upon reflection, I could have just straight said “ah, okay. i guess” rather than “oh that’s silly.” Or not have answered at all. Even if my intent was more so just a passing shrug, I should have been more cautious that somebody could have read that as full dismissal/mockery/finger pointing.

I just personally just don’t get that level of attachment to fictional characters for one reason or another. I just have a disconnect. But if somebody else treats these things on a bit more of a personal level, they can do that, it’s fine? I’m not offended. I’m not sure how else to even articulate this via text that won’t come across as cold (as is that nature of text and no vocalizing).

I do not care nor mind what any of these users do or how they engage with stuff, it’s not my business. I literally didn’t even want to engage on this discussion I had no business talking about further, I was just recounting something that happened to me, like, months ago and having a goof.

I mean, If I think about lot of what I do on paper, it sounds silly if I remove myself for a moment. But, I don’t really mean that in a pejorative way… if that makes sense. Although my way of typing doesn’t always register how I’d like.

ALSO to the prev anon, assuming it’s a different person (tho if not, this still stands), whom I did not answer directly/nor publicly, sorry that I got a little slighted by your sudden long message. Sometimes if I’m done speaking about something, I just want to move on at my own discretion rather than dwell. But I get your intent was to be informative, empathetic and positive rather than talking down to me as my initial gut reaction assumed. This is a me thing, I just tend to get miffed. That’s really it, it’s not personal at all.

It’s out of my control ultimately how I’m perceived. If what I said registered as mockery towards a whole subset of fans’ way of engaging with media, then I’m sorry.

I don’t really plan on speaking nor reflecting about any of this again though, so maybe there’s some solace in that.

[samasmith23]

Why do some people think that stories portraying darker subject matter is always an inherently bad thing?

I’ve recently encountered this weird mindset in regards to certain online fandom spaces, wherein people will argue that fictional characters experiencing intense trauma and pain is somehow inherently problematic and negatively reflects on the creator’s skills or ethics. This feels like such a narrow-minded and shallow understanding of a piece of media, since characters undergoing hardships is often a necessary element for them to grow and develop as the narrative progresses. Plus, while some stories can indeed be more intense and graphic in what types of trauma is depicted, it’s mere inclusion doesn’t automatically make the story or it’s author inherently bad. For instance, even though I personally haven’t read the manga series Berserk by the late Kentaro Miura (May he Rest In Peace…), based on what I’ve heard from others while the series does include graphic depictions of sexual assault which the main protagonist Guts suffered from in his past, said-assaults are NOT framed in a gross or exploitative way, but are instead utilized to analyze and discuss the character’s feelings of physical and psychological trauma derived from said-horrible events, and heavily factors into Guts' overall backstory and development as a character as he tries to heal from the violent trauma of his past and discover some sense of happiness in a bleak world.

And yet despite this I’ve encountered a few people accuse Berserk of being “pro-rape” or even outright stating that Miura “deserved to die” (which is an absolutely disrespectful and disgusting thing to say!) simply because he included these darker elements in his manga. Like... that's as stupid as someone claiming that Quentin Tarantino is automatically "pro-murder" simply because his movies include lots of scenes of characters killing each other.

I’ve also encountered far less overtly toxic examples of this kind bad faith media criticism in comic circles. Awhile I was incredibly confused when I saw some people on Twitter arguing that Saladin Ahmed was “ill-suited to writing teenage characters” simply because of two scenes in his Miles Morales: Spider-Man & Magnificent Ms. Marvel runs respectively, which involved Miles being tortured by the new supervillain, The Assessor (who would later make clones of Miles as a result), as well as the final battle between Ms. Marvel and her evil robot-duplicate Stormranger getting quite brutal at times (you could see blood from the impact Stormranger’s punch).

In regards to the Miles’ torture scene, I've seen a small number of people argue that the scene's existence was inherently inappropriate due to Miles' status as a Black minor, going as far as to label it as "dehumanizing" and "really insensitive to the real trauma of black boys." I'm not sure how I feel about this as those labels feel a tad extreme due to the fantastical nature of Miles' stories. Like, as brutal as the scene with the Assessor is, it’s at least given a more ficitional sci-fi vibe due to the high-tech laboratory, the Frankenstein operating table, and the fact that this whole ordeal leads directly into Miles' own version of Spider-Man: Clone Saga after The Assessor acquires Miles’ DNA in the process. So it feels less grounded and not as reflective of those real-life traumatic experiences Black men and boys unfortunately go through in the U.S. like I saw a few critics of Ahmed’s run claiming. Plus, Ahmed had Miles be rescued by both his father Jefferson Morales and Uncle Aaron Davis teaming-up together. So the narrative frames the Assessor’s torture of Miles as a bad thing whilst depicting two older Black men actively putting aside their personal differences in order to save their son/nephew as a major narrative focus as well. How exactly is it "dehumanizing" or "inappropriate" then?

And it seems like this bizarre criticism isn’t just limited to Twitter comic fandoms, since a certain Lily Orchard recently made an AWFUL video which outright accused animation fandoms and creators of “fetishizing the torture and abuse of POC women” in cartoons like The Legend of Korra, The Owl House, and She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. As soon as I saw the thumbnail for that video I knew it was going to be an absolute dumpster fire.

In it, not only does Lily engage in those similar types of arguments like the ones I mentioned earlier about Saladin Ahmed’s portrayal of Miles & Kamala, but Lily went multiple steps further by outright accusing various scenes from The Legend of Korra, The Owl House & She-Ra of being “literal torture p*rn” and “fetishized abuse against POC women.” With Korra, Lily accused the scenes of Korra brutally poisoned with the Red Lotus’ liquid metalic venom, Korra still being significantly weakened by the poison during her final battle with Zaheer (causing her to fall and tumble down cliff-sides) and Zaheer trying to use his air-bending to suck the oxygen right out of Korra’s lungs (the same technique he previously used to assassinate the Earth Queen), plus the Unalaq fight from the Season 2 finale where extracts the Avatar spirit from Korra and kills all her past lives one by one with a water-whip as “white centrist writers being turned on by the trauma and torture of a woman of color.”

And in regards to She-Ra, Lily accused Catradora shippers of being an example of fandom going “full mask-off” simply because she found 2 or 3 random comments defending Catra’s abusive behavior prior to her gradual redemption arc in the final season simply because they found the Adora & Catra fights “hot” (which I know for a fact does NOT represent the entirety or even majority of the She-Ra fandom & Catradora shippers).

It’s just… I honestly don’t understand why Lily is describing these scenes as “torture p*rn” or “abuse fetishizing.” Like, it’s not unexpected for characters to undergo traumatic crap during their story arcs, and most often it’s for the purposes of raising the dramatic stakes of the conflict or to have said-characters eventually undergo some sort of positive change arc (which is what happens in both Korra and She-Ra btw). While the abuse Korra suffers at Zander’s hands is indeed violent, it’s intentionally disturbing and off-putting in order to increase the viewer’s suspense and fear over whether or not the main character will get out of this alive. Personally, when I first watched the Season finale of “Book 3,” I was on the edge of my seat and constantly worried for Korra’s survival, and while she is left physically and psychologically scarred by the whole ordeal I’ve heard that the entirety of “Book 4” (which I still haven’t seen BTW) focuses on Korra healing from her trauma and becoming more spiritually enlightened in the process. YouTuber and MarySue author, Princess Weekes, though had some interesting analyses about Korra’s portrayal of overcoming trauma and how its heavily rooted  in East Asian philosophy, despite Weekes' overall mixed feelings about the series in general:

And while I can’t comment on The Owl House (again, haven’t watched any of it), I can say that Lily’s characterization of Catradora as “torture p*rn/abuse fetishization” is 100% wrong since the show frames Catra’s behavior towards Adora and others throughout Seasons 1-4 as toxic and unhealthy, and Season 5 is all about her fixing herself on her own volition after realizing the harm she’s caused, and it’s only AFTER all of that when Adora & Catra become lovers. But the way Lily describes the scenes in Korra & She-Ra (which are honestly pretty PG in their levels of brutality despite being fairly dark for family-friendly animation) you’d think she was talking about some over-the-top violently explicit tentacle hentai or something, as she even goes as far as to compare the Korra & Zaheer fight to FREAKING The Passion of the Christ (seriously… Lily actually compared Korra to Mel Gibson's antisemitic guilt-tripping exploitation film which unnecessarily stretches out Jesus' torture and crucifixion; which in the Bible occurred in just a few brief passages instead of 2-and-a-half hours like in the movie).

Geez… given how Lily so inaccurately mischaracterizes these scenes from Korra and She-Ra, I’d honestly hate to see she’d react to Neon Genesis Evangelion, which is heavily centered around the characters suffering from intense depressive episodes and experiencing emotional breakdowns, whilst also including lots of psychoanalytical and disturbing imagery. Knowing Lily, she’d probably ignore the fact that NGE’s director Hideaki Anno was suffering from severe depression while creating the series (which heavily influenced the show’s overall production and themes), and instead accuse all the depictions of depression and trauma in EVA of being “unrealistic” and “inaccurate” since according to her all fictional depictions of trauma are inherently inaccurate since there’s no one universal depiction of trauma (Lily actually said that in her terrible video), and accuse all of the series’ violent and sexual imagery of being “torture p*rn” whilst calling Anno a “perverted abuse-fetishizing creep who is turned on by torture” (which feels incredibly SWERFy on Lily’s part, as well as needlessly hostile towards people who are into BDSM or sado-masachism and practice it safely and consensually) just like she did to the creators of Korra, Owl House, and She-Ra (even though NGE and especially the movie The End of Evangelion is highly critical of exactly that kind of gross and toxic behavior within Japanese Otaku subcultures).

So my overall question is this: why do Lily and some other people think that including intense trauma or brutal torture scenes in comics or animation, even when said-scenes they're framed in the story as bad things are inherently “problematic,” “dehumanizing,” “fetishistic,” or “torture/trauma p*rn”? It's like... I can understand not wanting to stomach intensely violent or depressing scenes if they can't handle them, or being critical if they feel unnecessarily mean-spirited or exploitative, but often times having darker elements is an unavoidable aspect of giving a story a sense of conflict. Conflict is necessary in order to have a plot or to develop characters, except it feels like a lot of people on social media believe that the mere inclusion of any type of darker conflict or subject matter is inherently ethically dubious regardless of how its framed within the overall narrative.

I just don't get this kind of mentality and why it's become so prevalent online these days... I really don't...

[t470n]

One thing that's becoming increasingly obvious is the running theme of Old vs New and how Team New is definitely winning. The whole thing about Jonathan and Mina being very young, like early twenties or something, and their youth being clearly reflected in their behaviour and this clashing with how immensely old Dracula is from his withering body to his ancient castle to the implied centuries of history he has lived through and personally participated in.

Dracula holds onto old ideas about useless peasants being nothing more than an endless supply of cannon fodder that he used to use as meat to throw at his enemies and now uses as food for himself (and his roomies) and there is also his thing about wistfully looking back on the history of his great house. He's happy that the house Jonathan found is old because a new one would have been impossible for him to live in. He has a grossly inflated sense of his own entitlement due to his noble status despite the fact that he is considered a dead man from an extinct lineage. He still considers himself as noble and respectable as he would have been hundreds of years ago, hence why he is so concerned about not being respected/revered in England, his predatory feasting on the local peasants as well as his treatment of Jonathan. Jonathan is a working man who is there in service of Dracula and therefore beneath him. Dracula can barge into his room whenever he wants, destroy his property, force him to acclimate to nocturnal life for Dracula's comfort and use him as a means to an end that will eventually die, in a way using him up just like he does with the local peasants. The way I see their relationship is that Dracula is possessive of Jonathan, not protective. To him, Jonathan is an object for his use that he has taken a fancy to, little more than an entertaining puppy or jester who means nothing in the grand scheme of things because he is hardly his own person, he is Dracula's. It's the same "I am noble therefore I matter and if you aren't noble you are here to be used" mindset that would have been acceptable in the ancient past he comes from but not in the modern day.

On the contrary, Jonathan and Mina are aggressively modern to the point where Jonathan explicitly mentions this when he's afraid ("19th century up to date with a vengeance"). They are young, they write in shorthand and (*SPOILERS FOR LATER ON IN THE BOOK*) there is one point in the story where Good Guy Squad needs to do a lot of blood transfusions which, at the time, was the Hot New Science and extremely modern, hence the complete disregard for blood types which weren't really a thing back then. Jonathan mentions that writing in shorthand would have confused the Count and therefore allowed him to send messages or keep writing that Dracula wouldn't have been able to decipher and being able to keep his shorthand diary does help keep Jonathan sane. Mina also mentions in her letter practising shorthand so she can keep diligent notes on the conversations she hears and oh boy I sure do wonder if that's going to be useful when someone needs to take notes on what happens in the rest of the book. The relationships between the heroes are also very, for lack of a better word, modern. Dracula and his roommates have a clear hierarchy that is very traditional but doesn't exist with the heroes. There is no one person in a position of power over everyone else in the group, including in the individual marriages. Neither Mina nor Jonathan have any more power over the other than the other has over them. They are equals, both mutually in love and mutually intelligent and productive. At the same time, it's fairly non-traditional for three suitors of the same woman to become very good friends. In most traditional narratives of gothic fiction you'd probably find a dual for the Lady's hand, a secret love, some kind of tragic heartbreak or something like that but these are "19th century up to date with a vengeance" young men who will not be so silly. Not to mention the fact that the group mostly comes together because of the relationship between two women which is refreshingly modern. The technology, attitudes, and relationships of the heroes are what set them apart from the Count as well as what lets them succeed.

I just love the dichotomy between the withered villain trying to relive the glory of the ancient past while desperately holding onto expired ideals of bygone days vs the modern and up-to-date heroes making full use of modern technology and stereotype-breaking to defeat him. In a way it almost spits in the face of the very common romanticisation of the past that is especially common in gothic fiction where the pretty old castles and cathedrals make people forget about the endless supply of downsides to those time periods and how horrifically nightmarish it would have been to live in those times if you weren't part of an extremely tiny group of extremely powerful people

[ca-suffit]

Virginia's black anon has to be anon because we all know the only accounts who associate with her already and it's only 3 at most 😂 I guess nobody can make fake accounts when it's supposed to be for a black fan they don't hate.

There have been some racists comments floating around, but I never saw that from your blog.

Get your reading glasses then girl.

Your opinions have been a reflection of Louis as a character and not about Jacob as a black man.

This is where this nonny comment reads white as hell because what the fuck does this even mean? These are not separate things, baby. Louis is still a black man too! That's your whole fucking problem.

You can defend Jacob all day and say you love black people all day and still say the most antiblack shit ever in the next breath. You've been being told this and instead of listening, you and others keep targeting black fans as some kind of ignorant, illiterate mob out to get you. Idek why you started doing this but THAT is the antiblack part. It's not all just about claiming you "accept" this or that. You also have to actually DO THAT PART. Now it's clear why you think black fans gently teasing Jacob's hair is the real racism while you call Louis, Claudia, and Armand liars and manipulators solely to protect the character of Lestat (the REAL victim to you) and don't see a problem with it. This is why the white fandom mindset is dumb and dangerous af because it leads to stripping race from everything and defaulting to whiteness. This is why your insistence on "the books!!!" is bullshit and nobody cares, because the books are about white people and you're acting like that's still what this is when it's not! And when anyone says otherwise you make a big dramatic show of how you're being unfairly attacked.

IWTV fandom needs a scapegoat and that will be me so here’s my controversial takes..

And here's Neil's stupid ass once again missing the point of anything and still going on about fictional shit instead of reflecting on her antiblackness as well (why does everyone talk like a cartoon villain too lol). You love being the victim and changing topics instead of directly addressing anything. You all are the ones always saying you're such big critical thinkers, yet someone comes and spells it out real slow for you over and over and you still miss the point. This is why nobody is afraid of you or even takes you seriously, you're so fucking constantly stupid.

-way WAYYYY before the show I had a theory for the book that Louis killed Paul but now I’m afraid to talk about it even though it would make so much sense to him refusing to be labeled as a “killer”

Why are you so afraid to talk about it? Afraid the big, mean black fans might call you racist? If you have things to say, why don't you say them? Stop being such a baby about it. It's always the loudest mouths who want to say "I'm so scared u guys" over things that anyone else could just talk about. You're afraid to be called a racist because you only think about yourself and have nothing to really say after all.

You're the only ones who constantly move goalposts when it comes to talking about Louis. You make up this intentionally manipulative shit to say it's others (really just black fans tbh) who strip away Louis as a full character by not wanting him labeled as a liar or "bad person" but then you go around slinging this horseshit. If you think he killed Paul then write your big essay why. Why are you holding back now because they're black, you giant ass coward? Say it if you're gonna say it. This half assed ready-to-go-victim shit is ugly. I thought you were a tough book reader who could handle big topics. Pick a side already, asshole.

[dimiclaudeblaigan]

honestly the whole double standard between Dimtiri and Jeritza in the fandom is such bullshit. Jeritza is looked at this poor guy suffering from mental illness, making him aggressive and violent, and Dimitri is just seen as a murderer who did all these bad things.

like... no? they're both suffering from mental illness and are both dealing with struggling with the fact that they have aggressive and violent reactions. it's something they reflect on when they're not in that mindset. the cause of their illnesses are different, but you can't say Jeritza is aw poor boy and then demonize Dimitri. if Jeritza is aw poor boy, they both are.

I don't agree with IS treating mental illness - especially multiple personality disorder and schizophrenia - as mental illness = violence. I don't agree with the fact that both of these illnesses are two that are extremely commonly associated with violence and that IS perpetuated that stereotype not once, but twice with two different characters by having each of them have one of the two that are associated as such.

however, in the situation we were given, they both have these impulses and they both feel guilt over it. they suffer a similar outward reaction as a trauma response.

I'm not looking for a discussion about this (i.e. "but Dimitri did xyz so he's BaD"). you don't look at one person and go "oh they're so evil for how they react to their trauma" and then go "aw poor person suffering from trauma doing the exact same shit the other oh so evil guy is doing". if you think one is evil, you think both are evil (which is not something you should be thinking at all because trauma response is not evil). if you feel bad for one of them because of how they deal with their trauma being something they regret and despise about themselves, you feel that way for both of them. also, neither character uses mental illness as an excuse and they still feel guilt for what they do, so the whole "trauma = excuse" argument falls flat on its face here.

you don't get a free pass to hate one of them and so use their mental illness nor their reactions because of their mental illness against them while not doing so to the other. you don't get a free pass period to demonize them for their mental illness. if you have to use such a low blow to hate on a character, you're a disgusting ablest and I hope you are deeply hated with all the vitriol in the mentally ill world.

if you demonize either one of them for their violent reactions that stem from their trauma (or both, which I almost never see and it's almost always Dimitri at the receiving end of it), then I sincerely hope that one day something happens to you that makes you understand how awful it is to be demonized for being mentally ill.

people may say "I would never wish that on my worst enemy", but I do. if people shit on others (fictional or not, because if you shit on fictional characters for their illnesses then it says a whole fucking lot about you as a person in general and sets the standard for how you would and do treat real people) for how they respond to their illness(es), I do hope you experience something that forces you into a situation where you can realize what a piece of shit you've been. suddenly it's not so fun to insult mental illness and/or trauma response when you have it. in the event that that's what it takes to get someone to understand how horrific it is to use someone's illness to score your low blow against them, then that's what I would wish on you.

it's one thing to dislike a character; it's another to try to grab onto any possible thing you can to justify your dislike/hate/whatever and it be mental illness you grab onto as some bullshit excuse to justify your pathetic argument. if that's what you do, that's who you are as a person. you are someone who uses mental illness to determine someone's worth, character, etc. that shit doesn't just stop at fictional universes. if it's something you've said regarding a fictional character, it's something you absolutely think irl about real people or it wouldn't have crossed your mind.

this also goes for using mental illness to make a character sound less than another character you're trying to say is better than them. if insulting a character and saying they're less than another because of their mental illness is something you do, you are, plain and simple, a disgusting piece of shit and that is quite honestly not strong enough wording to express what you really are.

if you've read this post and are offended by it, consider that you're probably part of the problem and are someone who has done this. you wouldn't feel bothered by it if you weren't someone who has done that.

[studentofetherium]

My answer of a mundane thing i like in fiction: Breakfast

I love breakfast scenes because they tell you a lot about a character, from how they prepare their meal, to what they eat, to whom they eat with, to if and how they talk while eating. It is able to pass so much and help stablish a character personality with all of that and it all can be done very quickly and subtle ways.

For example, is a character very extrovert and chatty? Well make a breakfast scene where they eat quietly alone in the table, stablishing that their home life isn't very good. Thats a very simple and obvious example, but there you can change and adapt as much you like during the breakfast scenes. Is such a mundane topic that most people don't even pass a thought about but could be so useful in a writing scenario

food is a great insight into a character's mindset because it's such a central human experience. everyone eats and everyone has their own experiences with eating. as you say, it can reflect one's home life, or their personal taste, or be a sign of what the rest of their life is like

Fate/stay night is something that really gets this specifically, imo, because of how much time is dedicated to characters sitting around and eating, and really that can be a whole ethos of characterization. showing characters at a table eating breakfast together can flesh out new dynamics that you wouldn't really see together. how doe they eat, does anyone go out of their way to help out, who eats what, etc. there's a ton of potential to this even if, as you say, it's something that a lot of people overlook

[imsailorpluto]

The Eighth Sense; a tiny post-finale ink spilling session (spoilers included)

Hello, first boy love kdrama I've ever watched. I started watching this with zero expectations and a huge dark cloud above my head. Cloud being this worry whether or not the ending would give me a major heartache. Well, even if it had, I wouldn't mind at all.

Finale made us all feel safe and calm, I'm pretty sure of that. But! If you haven't watched this one already, then get ready for a wild ride. The series is heartbreaking, the entire fandom was not well, not until the very end. Every single person who truly enjoyed this drama and saw their own reflection in one of the two main characters - I'm so sorry (⁠╥⁠﹏⁠╥⁠)

T8S is about student life, new cities, friendships, relationships, emotional complexity, inner battles, depression, bravery, justice, moral, love, survival mode, desperation, devotion, guilt, overcoming mental obstacles, acceptance...

Just like linear algebra. It isn't just a cute romantic drama, even though our main hero Jihyun is incredibly cute, romantic character. He's one of those you'd wish to meet irl. Or one of those who make you want to become fictional, whatever works better.

Jihyun is a lovely ray of sunshine and the filming crew makes it clear to all the viewers throughout the entire show. He's introduced as an important piece which lights up the whole space and whose lack of presence gives you withdrawal symptoms. And no, that's not an overexaggeration.

Then we have Jaewon. It might seem like Jaewon is the one who pulls people in his orbit, but if you watch carefully enough, soon it becomes very clear that's actually not the case. People surrounding him are extremely vain and value him for his family's social status, nothing more, nothing less. The only time we see him shine is when he's reflecting lovely rays of sunshine and then we get this dim, mellow, soft illumination. A lot like moonlight, right? And for it's very nature, all that's required to turn its light off are a few dense night clouds.

So many lines this character delivers are in fact extremely realistic. However, behind their simplicity there are hidden many complex thoughts. Obviously, having a big heart also means carrying an excessive amount of burden too. I find his fight with depression faithfully depicted. His mental state after a loss or seemingly irreversible damage such deep trauma does to a human psyche can't just disappear, even with the passage of time.

Superficial relationships (as in general relationships with other people, not only intimate/romantic kind) don't help at all, on the contrary. They can't cure one's solitude or feelings of isolation and in fact might even lead to acts of desperation. One does start thinking like something is very wrong with them, which, again, leads to accepting whatever life throws at them, good or bad, without taking any action. Pushing oneself towards being numb. Because numbness and indifference, even if it's only "fake it till you make it" , oftentimes seems like the only effective way of self-perseverance.

What caught my attention is that mindset, that shadow which keeps lurking and following Jaewon the entire time. It keeps him convinced that he's not allowed to feel any true happiness and heartfelt joy, and if he does he has to pay a huge price for it. But it gets even better. Not only does he pay the price, but those involved have to pay, as well, now tenfold.

I can't keep wondering if it's universal experience. It certainly seems so. Sure, it all depends on the point of view; it takes all sorts to make a world. But it's interesting how severe accidents always happen and if you've ever lost a dear person before, you can't help but take the blame for all the bad things happening afterwards. As someone who has chosen the path of self-destruction once, it's interesting watching Jaewon coming back to his senses, choosing a person he cares for in the end and not allowing his fears to rule his life. It's very brave, getting back with Jihyun. I think it's the bravest thing he did.

That's why this is fiction and why it's right and well done in so many ways. Let's be honest, there's not many people who've led tragedy-free, accidents-free, loss-free lives. Especially if they're Jaewon's age (or older).

I believe that people who go through severely traumatic events, events which alter their psyche for 180°, won't really go through their recovery journey all the way. We see it with Jaewon as well. The dread of that shadow I've described above doesn't really go away easily, even after a conversation/therapy sessions with a person you deeply trust/professional. It's a paralyzing feeling which can stuck to a person for years. Thing that is not addressed (at least not directly), which I believe exists even in this work of fiction, is Jaewon's dread towards surfing and the ocean, since that's where the accident took place. Is there any therapist who could've helped him with that and make him go surfing just like before? I think not. There's always this distinctive reverence towards places which made a person lose their mind.

“And when you're ready, think about what to do next. I really want to protect him. But for now, I think this is for the best.”

For some, this is just a 10 episodes long bl story, cute, packed with angst, followed by an idyllic happy end. For some it's a blah, "really nothing to see here", shallow story of some college kids. For some this is an exploration journey of their own insecurities, challenges, smaller internal battles which seem like the worst thing in the entire world at the moment. For some, it's staring at a mirror which tells a story of what would have happened if they actually went to therapy, had a supportive partner and let go of unhealthy coping mechanisms. And for some it's just their journey right there on screen. Oh, and the group I must not leave out, since they are the most important ones here: the artists - the backbone of The Eighth Sense fandom. I can't say how they look at this piece because their analyses leave me completely speechless. There's plenty of their wonderful texts all around this platform, and they're fairly easy to find as well.

Still, how certain content finds its audience, and not the other way around is beyond me. Thank you🌻 to the one who recommended this piece, even if they don't like hearing thank yous and compliments of any kind. This kdrama piece was much needed in my little universe.

There's still so much to say about this drama, but maybe it's best not to go overboard. It would be a delight to see how life is going for our protagonists after some time. Who knows, maybe fans talk screenwriters into preparing another season. (no matter how unlikely it seems right now). Well ... That's all from me for now. Have a lovely day, it's finally spring so I hope you get to enjoy some sun. For me, I'm super excited may is right around the corner (⁠✿⁠ ⁠♡⁠‿⁠♡⁠)

Till next time,

Pluto

xo

[sparrowmoss]

as it continues to be a very popular thing to refer to male characters as babygirl/girlfriend/wife/mother/etc, i would just like to ask again that if and when you do this, you take a moment to think about your reasons why. why you feel like you need to use a feminine term instead of a masculine or neutral one. are you feminizing them to infantilize them, degrade them, or something else in a similar vein? are you unable to see these traits in a person without associating them with femininity and womanhood? i think any time you misgender or feminize a character, you should be thinking about why you feel the need to do so in that instance. and i know that a lot of it is just trying to fit in and get a good grade in fandom social circles, but i think every new trend that comes around should be thought about thoroughly rather than thoughtlessly adopted, even if you think it’s coming from other “good” people.

i think there are a lot of layers to how this is part of a bigger issue of people trying to make the gender binary and established gender roles cool again, which we truly should not be circling back to. i’m not saying every instance of this is driven by sexism, internalized or otherwise, but i think an uncomfortably large amount of it is, even if unintentional.

for an example, people churning out “happy mothers day” posts for various male characters on said day every year, usually because their male character of choice has traits that are traditionally associated with women and mothers. are you starting to see why this is not good to adopt into your mindset? it is not a woman-exclusive trait to care about your children by any measure besides society’s patriarchal values. there is also some gender binary being intrinsic to biology bullshit in here but for now i’m focusing on sexism.

every parent should be caring for their child, expressing love for them, feeding and clothing them, protecting them, and comforting them. if you see these traits in a person, real or fictional, and your knee-jerk reaction is to make a joke out of it and call them a woman, i think you should reflect on that. i truly don’t see how this is much different than right-wing people who see a real man taking care of his child and say “what are you, a woman?” “no real men do this” or the like, and guess what! they quite often take to the internet to say the same things about fictional men on their screens, too! and when your thoughts and sentiments are aligning with people in the right wing, even if you adopt a different tone when saying it, it’s worth some consideration.

all of this is especially worth some deep introspection if you have zero interest in, or even feel negatively toward, your subject character that you feminize actually being genderweird in some way, ESPECIALLY in a transfeminine way. because unfortunately, a lot of queer people do this to characters, and even a lot of nonbinary and/or trans(masc) people do this to characters, and actively dislike the idea of exploring that character’s actual relationship with gender expression, identity, and roles. so many people who babygirl any male character at the drop of a hat are not open to the idea of that character being transfeminine in any way, and that is a problem, full stop. if you’re a cis woman or a transmasculine person and are very attached to the habit of babygirl-ing male characters, but you either 1. only ever headcanon these male characters as transmasculine, or 2. only ever headcanon these male characters as cis men, really, really give that some thought. this is not an encouragement to take the characters you infantilize and demean via emasculation and turn them into transfeminine characters that you then continue to infantilize and degrade/be sexist to, what i mean is that you need to start looking at this mental system as a whole.

just, think about the times you feel the need to feminize a male character when you refer to them. because despite any insistence that fiction has no effect on reality, this can eventually bleed into how you treat real people. and more often than not, the way you are referring to fictional men as babygirls or mothers is only happening in the first place because you hold already established ideas about femininity, and certain traits and their ties to gender, that are harmful and not true.

[junemary]

I actually like how Tumblr can be a safe space for people to be weird and socially awkward in a way that's genuine and just an honest effort to talk about the things you like without casting judgement to yourself which is inevitable in certain spaces where you're dealing with actual people who have pre-conceived notions abt how others should act and even think... Just a complete freedom to have a different mindset, a different world view maybe hindered by circumstances outside your control since childhood and that affect your behaviour. I often cast judgement upon people that I see as weird, but that's often just a reflection of how I treat myself in social situations, always watching the way I speak, what I say and how I say it, always making a conscious effort to filter everything that could be my actual personality. It's tiring and having a place to just be a weeb and obsess over a fictional guy and over a story that is so dumb but surprisingly so important to me, that's like taking a breath after a long run and I cherish it despite the bittersweetness of the whole situation, that I need this to begin with. Idk thoughts

[cryptid-intraining]

People who discredit fanon interpretations of characters can suck my dick. just because something is fanon doesn't make it bad, say you don't like fandom and fanfic culture and move on.

I know of people who've only ever read Batfam fanfiction and fanon content and never once touched a comic, but then gone in to write their own Batfam fics purely from their understanding of them from fanon and I think that's incredible. good for them, honestly. the fact that fandoms and writers and artists can create a whole separate world that you can consume and explore without ever getting into the canon material is so cool and such a unique element of fandom that I could honestly talk about for hours and shouldn't be discredited.

If people are talking about why they think Jason is redeemable and why they think he's misunderstood and you bring up how he's actually really unrepentant and violent in the comics, fine, that's a great argument if we're talking canon, but if they're talking about fanon and their own headcanons? that doesn't make what they're saying any less valid and shouldn't be dismissed as unimportant.

Saying "oh but pit madness isn't canon" in response to people bringing it up in discussion of what Jason did to Tim and why they think the characters could reconcile if the work was put in and they actually address their issues when they're talking about fanon and headcanons is asinine.

We know. We're not talking about canon. Not everyone values characters based on their canon representations.

Most of my favourite characters wouldn't be my favourite if it weren't for fanon. They're just more interesting through the lense of fandom. The fans always have better ideas, more interesting theories, and far more complex interpretations.

Plus they're fucking good writers. Far better than the ones that write the canon. The same goes for the artists.

And while we're on the topic, just because people like Jason as a character in canon doesn't mean they're saying he's a good person. we can like bad people in fiction and also acknowledge that they're bad people.

But then we go to fanon and fanfic to explore the idea of them being better and changing. Because the canon material leaves us wanting, we see these characters with such interesting potential and want to develop it.

Bad person =/= likable character. Saying we shouldn't like a character because they've done bad things is genuinely ridiculous.

I've seen so many people say that Jason is being fucked up by DC writers (I agree) but then have an issue with fanon without acknowledging that people go to fanon and fanmade content to get better portrayals of their favourite characters. just because you don't like how fanon views a character or that fans write them to be redeemable where you don't see redemption doesn't mean it's wrong or bad or stupid.

You just don't like it.

I don't understand this mindset that fanfic needs to reflect canon. obviously you can do whatever you want with fanfiction, that's the glory of it and I would never want to take that away, but why write what is already found in canon? Jason doesn't need to be written like a violent, unrepentant guy in fanfic just because that's how he's written in canon.

If you don't like a character, cool. We all have characters we don't like but you don't have to list reasons why you're right and why the character is actually shit. Just because you dislike a character doesn't mean fans of that character are wrong or misguided or misinterpreting the character. You just don't like them. That's it.

Fandom is such an important space and there is genuinely so much to be gained from having conversations that take into account both sides of a character (like there are so many issues with how some people talk about Jason that go beyond personal taste and just become super problematic but that would be a whole other post) but it is just so hard to hold a civil discourse about these things, irl or online, and especially on this hellsite.

If you want to discuss in the replies and reblogs, fine by me, but don't be assholes and just respect other people's likes and views.

[goddamnit-minyard]

Hey! no i'm not done defending the aftg series from slander, so here i am <3 back to work

if it's had your brain on a chokehold for longer than most things in your life have (which i know it has and if you're new here, it will), then it means it had an impact on you of some VERY relevant sort, which means it wasn't poorly done, and pretending like your standards are way too high or your literary judgement way too fancy to accept that fact is fucking hypocritical.

if you can't stop talking about it and having your heart rate go crazy at some stranger's 5-paragraph analysis of a character's behavior and why they would, therefore, find themselves in a specific situation, (especially if you haven't stopped after having finished the books far too long ago) then the books are GOOD and it's as simple as that.

yes maybe the storyline itself wasn't astronomically rich (or whatever it is your complains are cause i personally don't know) but also maybe you should've stopped and thought for a second that the whole journey these books take you in aren't necessarily related to heart-wrenching adventures or complex metaphors or many many other possible plot structures or mindblowing character building techinques. maybe by doing a bit of reflecting you'll realize the books teach a lesson in the most simple truths in life that are, in my opinion, overlooked in these types of books most of the time, or not represented in their rawest nature.

these books don't tell the story of a main character with a bunch of flaws but the steel-hard determination to achieve a honorary goal no matter the obstacles that are put in their way. they tell the story of a kid who all he wanted his whole life was to survive, and how growing up with such a mindset fucked his perception of basically everything about the world that surrounds him, the way he consequently interacts with said world and how those ways are just as fucked as they should be and they're not pretty or there for the sake of making his "eventual recovery" all the more satisfactory to the reader, but rather to simply BE what they ARE regardless of how anyone feels about them.

it's about a kid whose healing process is everything but linear and much less constant in its progress. sometimes you can't even see him ever getting anywhere "good enough" mentally. sometimes you can. sometimes his standards of "good enough" will differ from your own and sometimes they aren't good enough at all and in some cases they will never be. that's how it is from start to finish to post-canon to forever. he'll forever keep learning how to cope with sequels from his trauma and heal from it and sometimes he won't know how to do it. he'll learn how to live with it and let it be instead. whether you'd do it differently or not is irrelevant. (this very much applies to the "i love you situation" or marriage and etc.) because that's the whole point.

and that's how it is for most of its characters, but that's just the way real life is, more to some than to others, because we're all different, and Learning this last thing is essential for human interaction and so many of you are failing at it. or even more, failing at realizing that's the lesson you should be learning from these books.

some of the shit in the books are uglier than you would've preferred but none of it is unrealistic in its core purpose, and i feel like when that's not precisely the thing bothering you this much about the series, it's all the other, irrelevant things about it. because this "ugly shit" is the TRUTH for some people. and i don't know why putting every fictional world inside a pink bubble where everyone is constantly headed towards a painless future is superior storywriting to some, because sure, i get you may be trying to escape your own reality, feel hope and see all the loose ends tied somewhere, but representing the ugly, permanent and hopeless sides of trauma is just as important. and come on, neil josten and his whole family won the life lottery if you compare what they got vs. what they were much more likely to get.

so just because you personally failed to give credit to the things about these books making you unable to move on from them it doesn't mean they aren't, in fact, what's making you unable to move on from them.

just because you're trying to determine the books' worth based on all the things that actually don't establish the books' purpose doesn't mean those things, in fact, don't establish the books' purpose.

maybe the books aren't bad, you're just bad at reading them.

and the fact that we're constantly bringing new analysis of different aspects of the books to the table so often despite the fact that they've been out of so long, as if we're still not done understanding all its contents, says a lot about how "bad" they are.

[ladyloveandjustice]

The TV Tropes page for Lipstick Lesbian is kind of…wrong? It’s icky. Idk how else to describe it. But it’s the way they talk about lipstick lesbians as if we only exist in fiction for the male gaze, like we’re an identity men constructed because they’d rather watch pretty girls who are conventionally feminine make out than “ugly” or masculine girls. Or like we only exist to either subvert the butch stereotype and to play it straight. The playing with section is even worse, it’s all about the

Yeah a lot of TV Tropes is fucked, and some of it is just 'the people who create or write stuff about certain tropes are bigots' but some of it was inevitable because of the fact they make identities and types of people that exist in real life into like. tropes. A femme lesbian isn't a trope, it's an identity that exists. It can be applied to fiction in a way that intersects with tropes- like you know, a femme lesbian character used solely as sex joke for men to ogle at with nothing else to her is indeed a trope that reoccurs- but just 'femme lesbian exists?" It's. an identity. not a trope. It's the same logic behind how they categorized literally every character that happens to have two marginalized aspects as 'twofer token minority' regardless of whether the work they're in is diverse or if they're treated like a token. It loses all meaning and value and instead it just seems the userbase can't handle a character having more than one marginalized identity, despite that being incredibly common in reality.

TVtropes can be a really good resource-the lipstick lesbian trope is probably at least useful as a list of all the femme lesbians in fiction that the people who use it can think of-but it's made by flawed people with tons of biases, and if you get too deep into the mindset of seeing everything as a trope, it'll fuck with you and leave you with both a very limited view of fiction and how it interacts with and reflects and transforms real life, because while they say "tropes are not bad" they definitely treat certain tropes as bad, and things that aren't tropes (like: person who is two whole things exists!) as tropes. I like to use it to collect information, but I've given up on the userbase not being myopic.

[teaandcrowns]

If I had to wager a guess on how it's related to purity culture (which I agree with you on that), I would point at two things: one, the ascribing of liking the "unproblematic" ship/part of media to one's personal morality; and two, not stepping "out of line" from the guardrails of canon.

For the first point, this goes toward something we see a lot in how, for example, certain ships or types of tropes or types of fanfiction are demonized as being "bad" or "problematic," particularly when they explore darker themes (even mildly dark themes) or when they simply seem darker, even if they're not (see: zutara). Because a person find something about a fictional ship, trope, or story interesting or enjoyable in any way, that must mean they enjoy it—or want to enjoy it—in real life, therefore they must be an immoral or amoral person. In short, a bad person. But if you ship the canon ship, the one endorsed by canon, the one treated by canon as correct and thereby "good,"(1) (even if, upon analysis, it is not a morally good or unproblematic relationship), then by extension, that is also a reflection of what you want in real life, and makes you a moral person. A good person.

I feel like most people who are regular denizens of fandom have come across plenty of examples of relationships and tropes that fit this first aspect, but the second is where my own conjecture based off observation, reading the thoughts of others, and logical extension come in.

It seems to me that, while there have always been some people like this in fandom, I feel like there has been a rise in purity culture more in younger folks in fandom. There was a great post I saw some time ago that I desperately tried to find again to link here, but failed(2), but in it, the user discussed how a lot of younger people who would describe themselves as progressive and try to be progressive still end up falling into authoritarian and conservative mindsets about what are considered progressive topics. The user postulate this was because not a small amount of them recently had frees themselves of very conservative and typically authoritarian parents/households, thus those way of seeing the world and approaching the world were the only tools in their toolbox. Applied to the issue of only shipping canon ships and/or only seeing canon ships as the good/valid/worthwhile ships, I would propose that it is a reflection of being told by a given narrative that the canon ships are the correct ones, and since the limited tools in their worldview toolbox are still coming out of that conservative/authoritarian mindset, a lot of people just accept it as How It Should Be, or take Word of God as the one and only way.

I'm not trying to demonize younger folks (or even older ones) for having that mindset mostly because while they may have broken free of that home life (working off that referenced post's postulation), they still haven't learned new ways of approaching the world, and need to both unlearn that approach while discovering new ones through experiencing different perspectives. The trickiest part, I would think, is allowing themselves to set outside those guardrails of what a person of authority (to their perception) has said is "correct," or even the only thing, and explore other avenues and options.

I feel like I might not have made the connection I'm potentially seeing strong or clear enough, but I hope this all makes some kind of sense, or something in the neighborhood of sense.

___

(1) this does not typically apply to ships that do not conform to social norms, such as incest or age gap relationships, but it does typically apply to toxic relationships that do conform to social norms, such as a jealous and controlling male character over a submissive female partner in a heterosexual relationship

(2) please if anyone knows the post I'm talking about and can provide me a link, I would greatly greatly appreciate it!

(Edited because somehow a whole line of my first footnote got eaten during formatting)

I feel like I've been seeing a lot more posts about how both the Kat//ng and Zutara fandoms should stop fighting and tolerate each other more, and while I understand, and to an extent, agree with the sentiment, it bothers me a little because these posts tend to make it out like both fandoms are equally as toxic, when in my experience, that simply isn't true.

I am a multishipper, and even though I mostly just participate in the fandoms for my absolute favorites, I still enjoy lots of different ships, including ships that "contradict" each other.

In AtLA, even though Zutara is my favorite now, I also used to ship Kat//ng. Kat//ng used to be my favorite, and only ship for the series that I actively engaged with. I saw the appeal of Zutara (and others), but for a long time my opinion on it was "it's not canon, so why bother?" and I mostly just ignored it.

But one of the biggest reason I stopped enjoying interacting with the KA side of the fandom was because I saw a vastly disproportionate amount of other KA shippers going out of their way to harass Zutara shippers. And I don't mean simply talking badly about the ship itself, or the characters involved, but personal attacks against the real life people who ship Zutara.

Have I seen Zutara shippers harass Kat//ngers? Yes, of course. But not nearly as much as the other way around. Literally not even half as much. And not just here on Tumblr, but Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Deviantart. All across the internet, I saw KA shippers constantly badmouthing Zutara and Zutara shippers, even in the comments of Kat//ng art and fics, completely unprompted.

It bummed me out, and while it isn't the reason I stopped liking the ship itself, it did make me feel uncomfortable interacting with it's fandom. Kat//ng shippers are, ironically, a big part of the reason I started actively shipping Zutara. Because after seeing the way they went on about it and it's fandom, I thought "Surely, Zutara and the people who like it can't be that bad." So I took a deeper look at the ship and it's fandom, and.... I was right. They weren't as bad as other Kat//ngers had told me they were. Not even close.

[qqueenofhades]

Hi. I’m curious. What did you mean by “women who read fiction might get Bad Ideas!!!” has just reached its latest and stupidest form via tumblr purity culture.? I haven’t seen any of this but I’m new to tumblr.

Oh man. You really want to get me into trouble on, like, my first day back, don’t you?

Pretty much all of this has been explained elsewhere by people much smarter than me, so this isn’t necessarily going to say anything new, but I’ll do my best to synthesize and summarize it. As ever, it comes with the caveat that it is my personal interpretation, and is not intended as the be-all, end-all. You’ll definitely run across it if you spend any time on Tumblr (or social media in general, including Twitter, and any other fandom-related spaces). This will get long.

In short: in the nineteenth century, when Gothic/romantic literature became popular and women were increasingly able to read these kinds of novels for fun, there was an attendant moral panic over whether they, with their weak female brains, would be able to distinguish fiction from reality, and that they might start making immoral or inappropriate choices in their real life as a result. Obviously, there was a huge sexist and misogynistic component to this, and it would be nice to write it off entirely as just hysterical Victorian pearl-clutching, but that feeds into the “lol people in the past were all much stupider than we are today” kind of historical fallacy that I often and vigorously shut down. (Honestly, I’m not sure how anyone can ever write the “omg medieval people believed such weird things about medicine!” nonsense again after what we’ve gone through with COVID, but that is a whole other rant.) The thinking ran that women shouldn’t read novels for fear of corrupting their impressionable brains, or if they had to read novels at all, they should only be the Right Ones: i.e., those that came with a side of heavy-handed and explicit moralizing so that they wouldn’t be tempted to transgress. Of course, books trying to hammer their readers over the head with their Moral Point aren’t often much fun to read, and that’s not the point of fiction anyway. Or at least, it shouldn’t be.

Fast-forward to today, and the entire generation of young, otherwise well-meaning people who have come to believe that being a moral person involves only consuming the “right” kind of fictional content, and being outrageously mean to strangers on the internet who do not agree with that choice. There are a lot of factors contributing to this. First, the advent of social media and being subject to the judgment of people across the world at all times has made it imperative that you demonstrate the “right” opinions to fit in with your peer-group, and on fandom websites, that often falls into a twisted, hyper-critical, so-called “progressivism” that diligently knows all the social justice buzzwords, but has trouble applying them in nuance, context, and complicated real life. To some extent, this obviously is not a bad thing. People need to be critical of the media they engage with, to know what narratives the creator(s) are promoting, the tropes they are using, the conclusions that they are supporting, and to be able to recognize and push back against genuinely harmful content when it is produced – and this distinction is critical – by professional mainstream creators. Amateur, individual fan content is another kettle of fish. There is a difference between critiquing a professional creator (though social media has also made it incredibly easy to atrociously abuse them) and attacking your fellow fan and peer, who is on the exact same footing as you as a consumer of that content.

Obviously, again, this doesn’t mean that you can’t call out people who are engaging in actually toxic or abusive behavior, fans or otherwise. But certain segments of Tumblr culture have drained both those words (along with “gaslighting”) of almost all critical meaning, until they’re applied indiscriminately to “any fictional content that I don’t like, don’t agree with, or which doesn’t seem to model healthy behavior in real life” and “anyone who likes or engages with this content.” Somewhere along the line, a reactionary mindset has been formed in which the only fictional narratives or relationships are those which would be “acceptable” in real life, to which I say…. what? If I only wanted real life, I would watch the news and only read non-fiction. Once again, the underlying fear, even if it’s framed in different terms, is that the people (often women) enjoying this content can’t be trusted to tell the difference between fiction and reality, and if they like “problematic” fictional content, they will proceed to seek it out in their real life and personal relationships. And this is just… not true.

As I said above, critical media studies and thoughtful consumption of entertainment are both great things! There have been some great metas written on, say, the Marvel Cinematic Universe and how it is increasingly relying on villains who have outwardly admirable motives (see: the Flag Smashers in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) who are then stigmatized by their anti-social, violent behavior and attacks on innocent people, which is bad even as the heroes also rely on violence to achieve their ends. This is a clever way to acknowledge social anxieties – to say that people who identify with the Flag Smashers are right, to an extent, but then the instant they cross the line into violence, they’re upsetting the status quo and need to be put down by the heroes. I watched TFATWS and obviously enjoyed it. I have gone on a Marvel re-watching binge recently as well. I like the MCU! I like the characters and the madcap sci-fi adventures! But I can also recognize it as a flawed piece of media that I don’t have to accept whole-cloth, and to be able to criticize some of the ancillary messages that come with it. It doesn’t have to be black and white.

When it comes to shipping, moreover, the toxic culture of “my ship is better than your ship because it’s Better in Real Life” ™ is both well-known and in my opinion, exhausting and pointless. As also noted, the whole point of fiction is that it allows us to create and experience realities that we don’t always want in real life. I certainly enjoy plenty of things in fiction that I would definitely not want in reality: apocalyptic space operas, violent adventures, and yes, garbage men. A large number of my ships over the years have been labeled “unhealthy” for one reason or another, presumably because they don’t adhere to the stereotype of the coffee-shop AU where there’s no tension and nobody ever makes mistakes or is allowed to have serious flaws. And I’m not even bagging on coffee-shop AUs! Some people want to remove characters from a violent situation and give them that fluff and release from the nonstop trauma that TV writers merrily inflict on them without ever thinking about the consequences. Fanfiction often focuses on the psychology and healing of characters who have been through too much, and since that’s something we can all relate to right now, it’s a very powerful exercise. As a transformative and interpretive tool, fanfic is pretty awesome.

The problem, again, comes when people think that fic/fandom can only be used in this way, and that going the other direction, and exploring darker or complicated or messy dynamics and relationships, is morally bad. As has been said before: shipping is not activism. You don’t get brownie points for only having “healthy” ships (and just my personal opinion as a queer person, these often tend to be heterosexual white ships engaging in notably heteronormative behavior) and only supporting behavior in fiction that you think is acceptable in real life. As we’ve said, there is a systematic problem in identifying what that is. Ironically, for people worried about Women Getting Ideas by confusing fiction and reality, they’re doing the same thing, and treating fiction like reality. Fiction is fiction. Nobody actually dies. Nobody actually gets hurt. These people are not real. We need to normalize the idea of characters as figments of a creator’s imagination, not actual people with their own agency. They exist as they are written, and by the choice of people whose motives can be scrutinized and questioned, but they themselves are not real. Nor do characters reflect the author’s personal views. Period.

This feeds into the fact that the internet, and fandom culture, is not intended as a “safe space” in the sense that no questionable or triggering content can ever be posted. Archive of Our Own, with its reams of scrupulous tagging and requests for you to explicitly click and confirm that you are of age to see M or E-rated content, is a constant target of the purity cultists for hosting fictional material that they see as “immoral.” But it repeatedly, unmistakably, directly asks you for your consent to see this material, and if you then act unfairly victimized, well… that’s on you. You agreed to look at this, and there are very few cases where you didn’t know what it entailed. Fandom involves adults creating contents for adults, and while teenagers and younger people can and do participate, they need to understand this fact, rather than expecting everything to be a PG Disney movie.

When I do write my “dark” ships with garbage men, moreover, they always involve a lot of the man being an idiot, being bluntly called out for an idiot, and learning healthier patterns of behavior, which is one of the fundamental patterns of romance novels. But they also involve an element of the woman realizing that societal standards are, in fact, bullshit, and she can go feral every so often, as a treat. But even if I wrote them another way, that would still be okay! There are plenty of ships and dynamics that I don’t care for and don’t express in my fic and fandom writing, but that doesn’t mean I seek out the people who do like them and reprimand them for it. I know plenty of people who use fiction, including dark fiction, in a cathartic way to process real-life trauma, and that’s exactly the role – one of them, at least – that fiction needs to be able to fulfill. It would be terribly boring and limited if we were only ever allowed to write about Real Life and nothing else. It needs to be complicated, dark, escapist, unreal, twisted, and whatever else. This means absolutely zilch about what the consumers of this fiction believe, act, or do in their real lives.

Once more, I do note the misogyny underlying this. Nobody, after all, seems to care what kind of books or fictional narratives men read, and there’s no reflection on whether this is teaching them unhealthy patterns of behavior, or whether it predicts how they’ll act in real life. (There was some of that with the “do video games cause mass shootings?”, but it was a straw man to distract from the actual issues of toxic masculinity and gun culture.) Certain kinds of fiction, especially historical fiction, romance novels, and fanfic, are intensely gendered and viewed as being “women’s fiction” and therefore hyper-criticized, while nobody’s asking if all the macho-man potboiler military-intrigue tough-guy stereotypical “men’s fiction” is teaching them bad things. So the panic about whether your average woman on the internet is reading dark fanfic with an Unhealthy Ship (zomgz) is, in my opinion, misguided at best, and actively destructive at worst.

[delioncourtes]

Thoughts about Nandermo after the most recent episode?

i mean 💀

atm i'm mainly focused on them separately, because 1) nandor needs to genuinely reflect on, acknowledge and face the consequences of his actions in order to actively work on himself, and 2) guillermo needs to once and for all realize that he does deserve better than nandor's past and current treatment of him.

i said it to a friend just a few minutes ago, i think this is seriously the lowest of lows for them; for nandor as a character, with all his selfishness and general cunt behavior, and for his relationship with memo. things have to change from here on out because i highly doubt their relationship can ever truly be the same again after what nandor pulled. and i'm pretty sure (and certainly hope) that's why the writers made this choice, that's the whole point of it. we're supposed to hate it because it just hammers home that - as we can all probably agree on - their dynamic so far, despite some of the progress they’ve made on the surface, is no foundation for anything actually good. they'd fall apart sooner rather than later and it'd only cause more pain. so i guess i'm looking at it with the mindset that sometimes things have to be broken first before they can be put together again in a different way. it's never gonna be the same, but that doesn't have to be a bad thing. once you work on fixing the cracks, it can be stronger and better than before.

so yeah, basically i think there's a good reason for what happened, plus we've got at least two more seasons left, so right now i'm really not worried. tbh to me setbacks are unavoidable anyway, shit is rarely ever that simply and straightforward and you don't get from point a to point b smoothly without hiccups. and this is fiction about vampires aka mass murderers and morally not very good people, and a guy who spent almost his entire life wanting to be just like them and over a decade helping them with all the mass murdering, so said hiccups are on a hightened level of fucked up lol. looking at it with the assumption that nandermo is a slowburn, yeah, it makes sense to me personally.