#to the point where only Good Art/Media/Writing/Whatever involves sex

[babycharmander]

people will write the most aphobic or amatonormative essays on creativity or media in general and other folks will link it around like it's the most Beautiful and True thing that has Ever been Written and it's just something like

"more children's media needs to show characters having sex"

or "art is only good if it involves fetishes and is written by intensely sexual people because liking sex is normal and not being interested in sex is not and makes your writing Extremely Boring and Bad"

or "media that shows muscular or thin people is so sad because it will make other people want to be muscular or thin and then that will lower their libido and they will not be able to enjoy sex which is more important than health"

like are people... actually reading what these essays are saying or

[blacksunscorpio]

The Planets, Elevated

Sun

As the Most Elevated indicates a drive to express one’s creative essence and core ego values before the world. This individual will shine amongst their circle of peers. This person’s 15 minutes of fame can extend to a lifetime of fame in one area of life or another. The world is a stage they play on. They were put here on earth to display their creative gifts and talents. They tend to be leaders. Tend to be worshipped. Popular. If the elevated planet is conjunct the Midheaven, this is a strong indicator of celebrity. Martin Luther King had his Sun in Capricorn as the Zenith of his chart. Albert Einstein’s Sun was his most elevated as well.

Moon

As the Most Elevated is more inverted than the Sun. Whereas those born with the Sun highest in the chart can feel an urge toward leadership or expressing their egoic and creative impulses in a public way, those with the Moon highest are more often drawn to project their personality or their emotions into the spotlight. Many actors and musicians have this placement. Individuals with the Moon at the Zenith of their chart can become well-known for their nurturing talents. Their emotions. Their moods and the creativity surrounding them. Their temperament and what they create with them/ expressing their emotions to the public can gain them notoriety. The late John Lennon of Beatles fame had his Moon as his most elevated. Academy Award winner, Meryl Streep’s most elevated planet is the moon as well.

Mercury

As the Most Elevated indicates a native with an urge to project one’s ideas or verbal skills before the world. They will find many ways to get their voices out there or “broadcasted to the public”. The sign the Planet is in indicates how this will be done. This individual will be renowned for their linguistic, mental, and/or intellectual talents. Could become well known for their teaching abilities, writing abilities, communications abilities, or public relation abilities. Writer Sylvia Plath had Mercury in intense Scorpio as the highest planet in her chart.  

Venus

As the most elevated indicates a desire to project beauty and/or harmony in some way before the public. Widely desired/admired.  Marilyn Monroe was born with Venus as her highest planet, and she became virtually synonymous with mainstream ideals of beauty. They will be the Models, the creatives, The fashionistas, the person with a “nice girl or nice guy” persona.  This placement often leads to occupations directly or indirectly involved with aesthetics and design. Tom Hanks, widely considered as Hollywood’s nicest leading man [A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, anyone?] has Venus as his most elevated. Marilyn Monroe and David Bowie both did as well.

Mars

As the most elevated Indicates a drive to project energy and strength before the world. Muhammed Ali had Mars as his most elevated planet. Ruthless ambition. Renowned undefeated heavyweight champion in boxing. Martial arts ruled his life and where he received the most notoriety. Definitely a feisty placement as well as one that will make the native hard to ignore. This placement indicates a leader. The types to set shit off. The type to be the “boss” in whatever field of work they choose. Spearhead some sort of militant movement. The ‘Gangster” placement. Very often seen in the charts of those who take part in sports. Franklin D. Roosevelt had Mars as his most elevated planet and he was the driving for behind America’s decision to partake in WWII. Founding father of the Mafia Lucky Luciano also had Mars at the zenith of his chart.

Jupiter

As the most elevated Indicates there is confidence about matters of career or dealings with the public. As a result, this is one of the leading chart indicators of popularity and success, as well as general “good luck,”. Global awareness, travel, teaching, and philosophical/spiritual matters will be their forte. The “prophet” or “guru” aspect. Someone who’s calling in life may involve lots of travel or they can be a “citizen of the world”. Angelina Jolie has Jupiter at the highest point in her chart and not only was her film career a huge success, but she also became a bit of a 2nd Mother Teresa, traveling internationally to adopt children, and doing humanitarian work worldwide. There is also an interest in different spiritual teachings [i.e the Cambodian prayer tattoo on her left shoulder blade.]  This is one of the hardest-hitting horoscopic indicators of popularity and success, as well as general “fortune/luck” in life. Basketball heavyweight Michael Jordan has Jupiter at the Zenith of his chart as does Kim Kardashian. This is also an indicator of one who can become famous or well known for their ideas/thoughts on spirituality. If Jupiter is in Virgo, the native can become renowned for their writings on esoteric or spiritual matters.

Saturn

As the most elevated Like Jupiter, Saturn near the top of one’s chart can show considerable success and prominence in one’s life. But unlike Jupiter, this usually involves far more work and a few tough building blocks along the way. There’s a “late bloomer” quality to the lives of these natives. Many instances, they can experience great struggle in building their career and reputation — that constant ‘between a rock and a hard place”. Yet these people often live to see great rewards and prestige as a result of said hard work. The types to be in inevitable positions of authority in whatever they do but also the types to hold themselves to impossible standards. They must be the best. They will often become well known/ be in positions that involve structure. For example, Queen Elizabeth has this placement, I don’t know a life more structured than the life of a monarch. Spanish artist Picasso was born with Saturn in Taurus as his highest planet; he was subject to enormous criticism regarding his art early on, but eventually found prosperity and fame as a result of his discipline and productivity. Bill Clinton has Saturn at his Zenith and became the leader of the free world. Jazz musician Louis Armstrong rose from an intensely difficult childhood in Louisiana to become a pioneering artist admired by audiences all over the world.

Uranus

As the most elevated indicates a native who possesses a fiercely independent streak and a desire to pursue uniquely personal or unconventional life paths. The weirdo who becomes famous for being.. well, a weirdo. Needless to say, this generally makes it difficult for these people to adapt to rigid routines and structured environments, and in terms of career, they like to have/need as long a leash as possible. They think outside the box and as a result, can gain prestige for doing just that. The “fuck it I do what I want” aspect. This attitude may make them famous and even admired. Geniuses. Actor Steve McQueen had Uranus in Aries as his highest planet, and virtually became Hollywood’s poster boy for the ‘Rebel’ archetype. He also spent time in reform school as an adolescent. The late great Nipsey Hussle had Uranus at the Zenith of his chart and he lived his life in unapologetic opposition to the law being part of the Rolling 60′s Crip gang. You can see this rebel spirit in many of his songs that went platinum. Many Astronauts including Edgar Mitchell have this placement. Those with Uranus as their most elevated see “beyond”. This also indicates the maverick spirit of innovation. This placement is often connected to technology or the media [remember, Uranus has an ‘electric’ energy to it]. A prime example is Apple computer founder Steve Jobs who had Jupiter and Uranus in conjunction as his highest point.

Neptune

As the most elevated indicates a spirit of “reaching for the stars”. I see this planet most elevated in the charts of those renowned for their artistic talents. ESPECIALLY in music and the arts. Many actors have this placement, which is fitting considering Neptune is the planet of dreams/fantasy, and actors are paid to pretend to be someone else. Famous for the mask they wear. Powerful spiritual impulses. An inspiring individual. Can become famous/well known for their idealism or the spiritual messages they send out to the world. When well aspected or unafflicted it can indicate an individual who can become revered for their fantastical ideas. Walt Disney’s most elevated planet was Neptune and I feel many of us can agree that his classic works of fantasy shaped our childhoods. His billion-dollar empire still stands today decades after his death. Elevated Neptunian Bruce Lee not only brought martial arts to the attention of thousands but also expounded on its spiritual philosophy in writings and interviews. He even created Jeet Kune Do, a martial art deeply rooted in spirituality, wrote a book about it, too. 44th President Barack Obama has Neptune as his most elevated planet and his campaign slogan “hope” gave many just that during the 2008 election. An affliction to this most elevated planet can still make one very well known but not necessarily for the best reasons.  When afflicted it can be a dangerous placement and one can suffer or make others suffer from fanatical or delusional teachings. Cult leader Jim Jones had Neptune has his most elevated and his spiritual teachings resulted in the death of hundreds of naive and innocent people due to drugged [Neptune] kool-aid.

Pluto

As the most elevated indicates that an individual’s career or sense of “calling” will be involved with any or all 8th house dealings. Sexuality, death, transformation, secrets, the occult. Megan Fox has Pluto at the highest degree in her chart, though she is a Taurus, her MC is in Scorpio and conjunct her Pluto which is the most elevated. She comes off an undeniable Sex [Plutonic/8th house] symbol. Same for the late great musician Prince, who was very public about sexuality. Vladimir Putin, President of Russia has his Pluto closest to his MC and he was a KGB spy. This is definitely a placement of someone with considerable power. Not one to be underestimated. Capable of covert manipulation and may/can become famous for it. They may also become well known for dealing with dark matters. Jack Kerouac, who celebrated the bohemian “underworld” had his Pluto elevated. Mary Shelly, author of Frankenstein became renowned for a book that had to do with a monster made of dead bodies transformed through supernatural means. It is now one of the first books parents will read to their children on Halloween.

Honorable Mentions

There’s been an ongoing discourse about Asteroids/Hypothetical Points being considered “elevated.” It’s a topic of debate within the astrological community. However, if we are to entertain them, this is what they can mean:

Chiron

As the most elevated indicates a calling in life dealing with healing. Dealing with the pain of others and making things better for them. A teacher that is known for helping others find their way.

Lilith

As the most elevated indicates an individual feared and admired for their rebellious sexual spirit. The seductress/seducer. The individual can become loved or hated for their ability to put their wily charms on both men and women. Audrey Hepburn had Lilith at the zenith of her chart, quite close to Saturn near the MC.

Juno

As the most elevated planet may become famous for their marriages or whom they are married to.

Vesta

Famous for their devotion or well known for becoming homemakers.

Pallas

As the most elevated can indicate someone known for their wisdom. How they temper their instincts with discretion.

[galacticlamps]

Tagged by @the--highlanders​ ! Thanks!

How many works do you have on AO3?

13

What’s your total AO3 word count?

76,200

(oh what a nice even number - I should try to mess that up as soon as possible, shouldn’t I?)

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

Aw man is this intentionally worded to be really hard to answer? I get that it says ‘written’ and not ‘posted’ but then what constitutes a ‘fandom?’ I definitely wrote fics for stuff I was interested in long before I even knew the word ‘fic’ - I did it throughout my childhood, and then in high school, and while I didn’t do it as much in college, it still happened from time to time. So a lot of the books/movies/tv shows/plays/musicals I wrote things for aren’t really fandoms, and frankly, I had to check my old folder just now to even remember some of them existed. I’ll just list the ones that I know for sure had fandoms, since that’s more fun (and embarrassing), right?

Obviously Doctor Who, classic and modern, Torchwood, Sherlock Holmes (ironically more of these seem to be about the books, but yes, I will admit, some for that tv show too), Les Mis, a couple different Marvel comics & movies, Good Omens, hell, I even found a Night Vale fic in there just now.

And I know there are other older things not even in that folder, some of which never made it to a computer at all, so if I had to ballpark a number I’d probably say around 25ish but really, who knows?

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Across the Gap

On the Spot

Expectations

Shards of Memories & Fragments of Glass

Itemized

(this was fun, I’d never noticed Ao3 even had a stats page until now lol)

Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I try to! Sometimes I take a long time to do so but for the most part, I usually get around to it. The rare exception would be if I first saw the comment when I was super busy/distracted and then felt like way too much time passed before I noticed it again, that it might be awkward if I said something at that point.

I do genuinely enjoy hearing what people think, but I’m also weirdly terrified of making anyone feel like they have to reply to my comments. I know that’s probably a little strange, but it’s actually a large part of why I made this Ao3 account in the first place - my original one, from high school, is followed by some long-time friends of mine who aren’t interested in this fandom, some of whom are involved in art & writing professionally. The thought of anyone like that reading something I wrote out of friendliness or even just curiosity and potentially having to pretend they liked it for the same reasons stressed me tf out, so I like having this virtually anonymous one because I can relax knowing that anyone who reads or interacts with something I wrote has probably done so only because they wanted to, rather than feeling obligated, and there’s no pressure on them to be nice to me about it if anything I write or post annoys them - so I really hope nobody who does just know me as an anonymous blog has ever worried about offending me by not replying to something, trust me, I’m perfectly happy with it!

What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

I don’t think I’ve really written any angsty endings? I guess the answer would have to be Reckless just because it involves the characters arguing about sad/weighty things and there isn’t really any solution to those issues - but even then I think I ended it with a kind of acceptance that stops it from really qualifying as angst? I also set it in the the same universe as other fics, so maybe that doesn’t even count as an ending? Am I that bad at ending things on angst? Lol

Do you write crossovers? If so what’s the craziest one you’ve written?

Obviously none of the fics I’ve posted are crossovers but I’m trying to think now if any of my WIP’s are - I’ve definitely poached setting/premise ideas from other media, but in terms of actual crossovers . . . I’ve got a few cross-era or cross-Doctor, a few involving Torchwood, but that’s already the same universe, so the only thing that’d qualify as a true crossover would be some vague pieces of a fic where Jamie, Zoe, and Two end up on the Enterprise, since I think the 60s series of Star Trek and Dr Who feel kind of compatible, don’t they? In fact, aren’t there like officially licensed crossover comics or something? Or did I make that up? Idk, and the ideas are very loose, so it’s not much of a WIP either

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Nope, never

Do you write smut? If so what kind?

I’ve never written smut, but I’m wondering if it’s possible that could change soon. There’s a longish multi-chapter fic I’ve been working on for a frankly embarrassing amount of time, and the plot does call for a sex scene at one point towards the end, but I can’t seem to make up my mind on how - uh, I guess the word is explicit? - it should get. I know I could easily do a fade to black/implication thing, but it’s kind of a source of contention and anxiety for the characters, so to skip over writing the actual scene and just revisit them afterwards rings of “and they slept together and now everything’s fine!” which feels kinda cheap to me - in this context, anyway - and not the right payoff for a long fic that’s otherwise more of an interpersonal drama/slightly a period piece, if I had to place it in a genre. I feel like my aversion to actually writing the scene might just be prudishness I should get over, or maybe just self-doubt, because I know I’d rather have a well-written, funny, character-development-supporting sex scene than nothing at all, but since I’ve never had any interest in writing a scene like that before, I don’t know if I can do it well, and I also don’t want to ruin a fic I’m otherwise proud of by doing it badly... ugh I have to figure this out

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I seriously doubt it

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope

What’s your all time favorite ship?

I mean, it’s gotta be Two & Jamie. I’ve shipped things before with varying levels of investment, but I’ve never been able to use the term ‘otp’ in a literal sense until I came across them, and now it’s already basically gone out of fashion, go figure!

What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

I’m not sure if I have one? My WIP doc is huge, but I don’t actually intend to get around to finishing everything in it, so I’d like to think that anything I’ve currently singled out to complete can actually get done.

That said, I do have a few AU’s that I don’t really plan to finish, but it might be cool if I could. Two of them are for all the main + some supporting characters of the Second Doctor’s era - one’s a modern day school teachers AU, and the other is a typical fantasy/fairy tale AU. Another is just Two/Jamie, based on Doctor Faustus (specifically the Marlowe play version) but right now there are two different versions of the ending coexisting in my head. I’ve written parts of scenes & some gen. backstory for all of those ideas, but I don’t know if I’ll ever try to finish them, or what form a finished product would even take - a series of one-shots set in the same universe? one long multi-chapter fic with some kind of overarching plot? And the amount of context/worldbuilding a big AU like these would require might not make them very appealing fics for people to read, so maybe it is better if I just keep them to myself, since in my head I already know what’s going on in those worlds lol.

What are your writing strengths?

I honestly don’t know. I haven’t had a creative writing class since middle school, and since then I’ve only ever shown creative writing to others in a fandom context, so it’s been a while since I’ve discussed it or gotten critical feedback. I suppose when I work in other arts or even academic writing contexts, people usually say I’m kind of insightful or at least detail oriented, which might just be another way of saying I overthink things, but I like to imagine I’m decent at finding little points of interest to expand upon.

What are your writing weaknesses?

If you’ve read this far I feel like you must know what I’m about to say: I do not know how to be concise.

Usually when I’m writing a fic, I put down the dialogue first on its own, leaving out the action of the scene and whatever plot/context led there, even if I’ve already figured all of that out. But then when I go to add those things in, they’re always longer than I wanted them to be. I don’t mind writing something long, but I don’t want my fics to be a slog to get through either, and there can be a point at which the stuff I’ve added for context overwhelms the stuff that I wanted the fic to be about in the first place, so it becomes a structural/proportion issue too. I haven’t completely given up on any fics because of this yet, but there’s one I’ve been struggling with for a couple months now - probably because I’m even second-guessing myself on which scenes need to be written out and which can just be referenced like a recap. Hopefully I figure that one out soon.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

((this is karma isn’t it? i posted a fic last week with two words of gaelic in it and was worried about that and now this is karma))

In general, I don’t want to do it. I feel like you’ve gotta have a really good grasp of a language to write dialogue & speech patterns for someone who’s a native speaker, and since I’m far from fluent in any language the characters I write for are, I wouldn’t feel confident writing any significant amount of dialogue in, say, Gaelic.

As a sidenote, though, I kinda love it when other people do it, particularly for Jamie. Irish (Gaeilge) and Scottish (Gàidhlig) are both languages I’ve wanted to learn for a long time, because my family’s fresh out of living speakers of either & I think that’s a shame, but I started with Irish and at the moment I’m still very much learning it. As different as they are, it still helps me understand parts of lyrics or texts that I come across in Gàidhlig fairly frequently, so when it comes up in a fic I get to feel like I’m being responsible and practicing, and it’s great when I can actually understand what’s being said.

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

I’m gonna go with Harry Potter even though that’s probably not a perfectly accurate answer - it’s almost certainly the first thing that has a fandom that I ever wrote for, but it was in a notebook when I was a kid and never something that I even typed on a computer, much less posted online or shared with other members of a fandom. But even then, I’m sure it wasn’t the first pre-existing fictional universe I ever set an original story in, because I did that a lot when I was a kid, it’s just hard to remember those clearly or on any kind of timeline.

What’s your favorite fic that you’ve written?

I’m very partial to Across the Gap, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that ranked first on the kudos thing above - but I’ve also got a soft spot for So Merrily We’ll Sing. It’s so self-indulgent it feels silly saying ‘it was so easy to write!’ but I guess having a fic that’s already just 100% headcaonons and fluff tied together by a song you really love does prevent it from being much of a labor (I also managed to refrain from making that one unnecessarily long, so that’s another win there)

tagging @terryfphanatics and anyone else who wants to do it - sorry I’m bad at remembering whose tumblr goes with whose Ao3 account, but I really would be interested to read this if anyone else feels like answering them!

[strongxsurvivors]

MLM SHIPS, FETIZATION, AND MISOGYNY IN THE RPC.

This is a small, or not-so-small, rant about a problem ( in my opinion ) I see more and more often in both the rp community and the art community. As a member of both, I just can’t escape this issue and need to put out some food for thought for everyone to read.

Not all of you are going to agree with me. Maybe, some will want to add in their two cents. Maybe, it’ll go over someone’s head completely. I simply appreciate you putting the time into reading this and giving it, like, two seconds of thought. It may not be an issue for you or be completely unrelated to you, but this is an issue I’m sure others will be able to relate to.

I will preface this by saying that I am a twenty-five year old transman. I am bisexual. I have a degree in psychology and excelled in gender and sexuality psychology. THIS DOES NOT, BY ANY MEANS, MEAN I AM THE END ALL BE ALL OF INFO IN THESE SUBJECTS. My experience is my own and I will not gatekeep or instruct people how to think in concerns of these subjects. I am only saying these things simply to assure you that I am valid in my perspective because I am in these communities. Please, don’t think that I want to invalidate anyone or say that I am better than you because I am these things.

Alright, let’s get the ball rolling because I have a lot of feelings and thoughts on a lot of points.

The number one thing that finally set me off to make this post is the absolute WORSHIP of mlm ( male loving male ) ships in the rpc ( and art comm., but this ain’t about them rn ). I have seen, countless times, entire blogs dedicated to shipping male characters to male characters.

Now, initially, this isn’t a problem. Having a male homosexual ship or homosexual male characters is absolutely fine. Peep my blog, I obviously have some. But, it’s the act of taking a character that was originally female, cisbend them to be male, and shipping them with another male character that's the problem. What was wrong with the female character? You kept her personality but made her male? Why? Is it necessary? It’s the same character. If you are uncomfortable writing female-related smut, fade to black. Smut is not necessary if you are truly focused on the essence of this character.

By making this character male, you are essentially saying that the only problem was that she was female. That’s it. That is misogyny. If you are focusing on her as a character, her body shouldn’t matter. As if females equate to their body when sex and gender are two separate things. But, you are bringing females down by getting rid of this one thing. You are telling them they are not good enough. That, maybe, you would like them better if they were the same but male. Am I being extreme about this? Yes. But, I’m trying to drive home my point here.

Another point to make about fetishizing mlm ships is that, even if you state your character is bisexual, pansexual, etc., that does not give you a pass. If your whole blog has characters who want only male partners even if some are stated to be something other than homosexual, you’re fetishizing them. If you put no effort in exploring relationships with females — platonic, romantic, or otherwise — you may as well call them homosexual and call it a day. I’m not here to dictate how you should play your character, but it’s easy to see where your loyalties lie when there is no evidence of female characters on your blog that you’ve interacted with. Actions speak louder than words. Rpc may be made up of words, but make your words take action. Plenty of people complain about their females being ignored. Go help them. Make your characters be friends, enemies, a crime-fighting duo idk. Females exist, don’t act like they don’t.

Oh, and changing a canon mlm ship to a wlw ship by cisbending them doesn’t change things. You’re still saying that those male characters were better than the pre-existing female characters. I would recommend you focus on the actual females of whatever medium you’ve taken these characters from, or create ocs that are genuinely wlw. This is mostly a thing I see in the art community, but I have seen it in the rpc.

We’re going to move on now to some transphobic and trans fetishization, which is fewer and far between. I say a few because I barely see trans characters out there in the community. But, when I do, OH BOY.

Simply stating a character is trans and doing nothing to upkeep what you said does not make your character trans. I’m sorry. Taking a pre-existing character and changing their gender and calling them trans is a sticky situation. I will probably get hate for this, but what are you going to do? It’s Tumblr. I would just prefer to see more original trans characters out there, as if actual thought and development went into their creation. 

What I mean by a sticky situation is this, and it goes back to a point I made earlier about cisbending characters to fit mlm ships: if you’re only making a character a transman to make him gay, that's fetishizing both mlm ships and trans people. I’m not saying a transperson can’t be gay and I’m not here to limit diverse characters — this is why I say this is a sticky situation. But, what I am saying is that if you only have muses that are involved in mlm ships and then you add a transmale character to also have an mlm ship based on faceclaims, it’s kinda sus.

Another thing I want to point out is if you are playing a trans character, refer to them by their chosen name and pronouns. You would think this is a no brainer, but you would be surprised. Even if your trans character is closeted, it is your job as the writer to write the correct name and pronouns. Other character interacting with your trans character could use their dead name and wrong pronouns — it makes sense, they don’t know your character is trans if they are closeted and non-passing. But, as you write your character, you and the reader are aware of your character’s true self. Neglecting to reflect your character’s true self through their chosen and name and pronouns is transphobic and harmful. Seeing things like this sends me into a whirlwind of dysphoria.

Changing a pre-existing character to nonbinary rather than cisbending them would be a recommendation from me and some others ( nonbinary individuals ) I’ve talked to. First off, there are very few nonbinary characters in general — media or otherwise. So, taking a pre-existing character and making them nonbinary is a nice thing to see. And, since the character is nonbinary, if they’re in a relationship with a male - the fetishization is redundant.

Now, who do I see making these wacky characters? Mostly cis females and trans men. I think it mostly stems from internalized misogyny as, when growing up, we’ve lived in societies where we are taught men are better than women. It can get to the point where cis females will glorify men so much that they have to have mlm ships. The same can be said for trans men. I’m not saying — as is often used against trans men — that this internalized misogyny / glorification of men has caused them to be trans. Obviously not. But, the internalized misogyny is still there enough to where they may either fear interacting with female characters. It might make them uncomfortable, dysphoric, or they just may think men are better. Women do not deserve to be the catalyst for someone’s discomfort. They are people. They are everywhere. They deserve to be loved. If they make you uncomfortable, if you think you are better than them, if you think men are better, I want you to sit down with yourself and think about this.

When I first realized that I was trans, I had some serious internalized misogyny going on. I would be uncomfortable writing female characters. I would be uncomfortable interacting with them. There was this discomfort that started to manifest in my behaviors and thoughts. Luckily, I had the best person in my life who told me that I was acting misogynistic and I needed to change. Pushing away females was me trying to come to terms with my transness. You don’t need to expel females away from you to imbed in yourself that you are trans. You don’t need to raise yourself above them as men have done for centuries. Do not become part of the problem. Accept the feminine parts of yourself, accept females, and I promise that the fear or resentment you may have with females and female characters will fade away.

Now, with all that being said, my last few words:

Being trans does not give you a pass to do the things I’ve mentioned. Being cis does not give you a pass. Being straight, gay, bi, etc does not give you a pass. If you are a gay man, I understand why you would only have male mlm ships. That doesn’t mean you can’t platonically interact with female characters. We all have made dumb mistakes and judgments in the past. I know for sure I’ve written some pretty cringe stuff in the past. It happens. The best we can do? Learn and take action on what we claim to have learned. Again, actions speak louder than words. Don’t piggy-back on posts that call out people for behavior like this when you participate in some of these behaviors yourself. Just because one person got called out and the spotlight is on them doesn’t mean you’re better than them or that you’ve been given a pass. If you read something like this, reflect on yourself and wonder — objectively — do you do some of these things? You may without realizing it or meaning to. In the end, I’m just a small blog that’s been around for seven years. I think we can get better as a community, but only if we help each other out. This is not a call out post. Call out and cancel culture is gross and counterproductive. I ain’t here for it. Call me out if you want, but what’ll that do? Nothing accept invalidate my opinion.

If you made it this far, I’m sorry. I took up a lot of your time probably. But, I want to thank you so much for reading this. As I said, you may agree, disagree, and not really get what I’m saying. I don’t know what I’m saying half the time either. But, I appreciate you regardless. Please, stay safe and healthy. I hope you have a wonderful year ahead of you.

[t100ficrecsblog]

an interview with @queenemori (she/hers)

what are you working on right now? I recently started posting We Don’t Need To Say It, which is a multi-chap Memori actor AU. It’s a slow burn, don’t ask me how I looked at Murphy and Emori and decided to write a slow burn, but it’s what’s happening. I really do mean slow, the chapter I just finished writing is only the beginning of the angst, you’ve been warned. My beta tells me she hates me at least once a chapter if you want an idea of how angsty this is gonna get. I started out writing for Bellarke in this fandom, and I’ll be going back to that later this summer. Anyone who follows me knows I’m obsessed with Emma, and I have an Emma Bellarke AU that’s in the outlining stages currently. I’m hoping to work on it more once I get further into this Memori fic.

what’s something you’d like to write one day? The fic I’m working on now is actually the thing that I was like, “I want to write that one day”. I love actor AUs and I wanted to write one for some fandom at some point, and in January I got this idea, but I was working on other stuff, so I was like, well maybe I’ll write it this summer. And now I am! Though I would like to write something featuring dad!Murphy in the near future.

what is the fanwork you’re most proud of? It’s actually one I haven’t published yet! I participated in Bellarke Big Bang this year, and I wrote a soulmates rom-com fic. I’m excited to share it soon once we get the go-ahead, and the artist I got to work with @clarkeindra has made some amazing art to go with it! For ones that you can actually go physically read, I will say You’re Already Breaking My Heart. It was my first fic I wrote for t100 fandom, and also the first thing I wrote after a really long time of just not writing anything, so I’m proud of it for getting me back into something I love and I’m glad that other people seemed to enjoy it. It’s what got me more into this fandom in the first place and how I made some of my first friends.

why did you first start writing fic? I got more into writing around the time I started college, though I always used to write little stories. There were a few times I almost wrote fanfic before then, like the time I almost wrote a Glee fic in ninth grade, or the time my junior year of high school where I almost wrote a Downton Abbey fic where Sybil and Branson were pen pals while Sybil was on her nurses course in season 2. But the summer before college, I wanted to write, and didn’t have any ideas for characters, but I had just read a really amazing next-gen Harry Potter fic called “Potters, Weasleys, and Misguided Snogging” which made me ship Scorpius Malfoy and Lily Luna Potter, or Scorily. So I started writing a couple stories specifically for that ship, back when I still used FF.net. It was just a one-shot and a multi-chap I never finished, but it was fun to interact with people and get to hear what they liked about the story and that they hoped I continued it, so I guess I caught the fic writing bug then.

what frustrates you most about fic writing? I wish people would leave more kudos. I’ve had this discussion with some friends before where they’re like, “What makes you leave kudos on a fic?” and I leave kudos on most fics I read, so it’s very interesting to hear people say they don’t do that as liberally as I do. If I made it to the end of the story, I’m probably going to leave kudos. The writer kept me engaged long enough to get to the end, which I think is worthy of showing some sort of support, even if I don’t leave a comment. Though I am trying to get better about leaving comments more often. Kudos are a very low stakes way to show you like a story that someone put out. Afraid to comment, but want to show the author you enjoyed reading? Leave kudos. A couple of stories I have out have gotten a fair amount of hits, but the amount of kudos in comparison to the amount of people who have probably opened it is a little disheartening. I’ve also heard people say they don’t want to leave kudos on stories that have been out for a while, but I love to get kudos on my old work! It’s fun to see that people are still reading things I put out in like 2017 or even just last year. Kudos brighten my day just as much as comments do sometimes, especially when I know not everyone feels comfortable leaving a comment!

what are your top five songs right now? The answer to this is 98% always related to what I’m listening to when I’m working on a certain writing project lol.

Sweet by Cigarettes After Sex Heartbreak Weather by Niall Horan I Will Follow You into the Dark by Death Cab for Cutie Bye-Bye Darling by Borns Fire for You by Cannons

what are your inspirations? Red, White & Royal Blue, since I read that recently. It honestly just made me want to write a movie, and I kind of hope that whatever TV or movie adaptation it ends up getting in the future I’m able to work on. I want to be a screenwriter, so I tend to get inspired by TV a lot. The Mindy Project, Insecure, and even Never Have I Ever are big inspirations for me. Or more like, anything that Issa Rae or Mindy Kaling are involved in, to be honest. I write a lot of modern AUs, so just anything that shows good relationship progression or has fun with mundane, everyday situations.

what first attracted you to Memori? what attracts you now? So fun fact, I stopped watching the show for a bit. I binged basically two seasons in a weekend while visiting a friend in like 2017, and I enjoyed it, but I wasn’t obsessed? Then I started s3 and a bunch of characters were getting on my nerves so I put it down for a while. Then I was on Tumblr at the beginning of 2019 and saw a gifset from 3x05 of Murphy and Emori kissing and I was kind of like, “That guy’s still alive? And he has a girlfriend?” So I started watching again, legit only because I was shook Murphy had survived lol. So the thing that first attracted me to them was just the fact that they were a couple at all, I guess. I’d say now that I’ve rewatched the show and seen their relationship develop, I love that these are two people who have always had to fend for themselves and kind of had that “me against the world” mentality. And then they find this other person that cares about them and wants to take care of them, and life becomes a lot less lonely. Also now we get to see their relationship after years together, so they’re very domestic, which adds this lovely sense of normalcy on this post-apocalyptic sci-fi show that I absolutely adore. Their interactions especially in s7 just read as a married couple who are very comfortable with each other, but still incredibly devoted to one another and in love.

Besides Memori, what character or pairing do you like best on t100? For ships, I also really like Bellarke. When I was more casually watching the first time around, I didn’t have much of an opinion on them/didn’t really ship it until season 4, but ever since then I’ve been on board. It’s very clear I’m a huge Memori person, but I do ship Murven, though mainly in AU settings. And Memoraven are my OT3!! My other fave character is Bellamy. And I feel like Gabriel has also quickly become a favorite for me. It’s definitely a mixture of his confused, but obsessed with science vibe on the show and the fact that he has been very fun to write in my actor AU when he makes appearances every so often.

why did you decide to start writing for bellarkefic-for-blm? Ever since I’ve been home due to the pandemic, writing has kind of been my escape. Weirdly enough, I’ve written so much (both fic and some real life stuff), even though I’m still working and everything like that. And when the BLM movement was getting a lot of traction specifically in our fandom spaces, I was immediately skeptical of people’s intentions because as a Black person in America specifically I’ve seen this happen before where all the attention is on this issue for a couple weeks and then everyone goes back to posting what they normally post about. And I guess this time things are a bit different, but the thing that began to frustrate me was seeing people shame others for saying they were going to watch the next episode of the show or for working on their fanfic. Fandom spaces have been my biggest escape from the news since March and while I was glad people were focusing on this sort of thing, I kind of hated the way people were making it out to be like this was a new issue when in reality it’s just my life. When I close my laptop and go out into the world, I’m still Black. I had considered opening my ask box up for prompts in exchange for someone donating to a bail fund or something like that, especially since I had just reached a follower milestone, but when I saw that Sam was organizing this and it was going to be an ongoing thing rather than just for a certain period of time, it was heartening to see someone realizing that this isn’t something we can just stop talking about even when the media moves on. The structure of these prompts makes it so that a person has to do a bit of research on BLM and educate themselves or confront the issue in a way they might not have had to before. And it gives me a chance to write things like my fluffy Memori wedding fic ! It’s a way to have my little fandom escape and also stay aware of what’s going on in the real world.

what’s your writing process like (esp for prompts, chopped!, etc)? I LOVE outlines! The Virgo in me loves to talk about my fic outlining process lol. With some short one-shots, I tend to just go in with a sentence or concept that I write at the top of the document and just write and see where that takes me. I also put at the top of the document all the things I want to tag it as when I go to post to AO3, so I don’t have to spend too much time thinking of those when it’s time to post. With multi-chap fics, I first make an ideas dump document which is just me typing out a bunch of thoughts, things like who’s in it, the premise, stuff like that. My actor AU has three preliminary documents: My ideas dump, the actual outline, and then the outline for what happens on each season of the TV show the characters are all on, since I reference those plot points a lot. For things like Chopped or prompts I receive, I do a mixture of the outline/ideas dump in one document. I put at the top all the information I received (so with prompts I tend to just copy/paste the ask from my inbox, and for Chopped the different tropes and theme), then think about what characters I want to use if it wasn’t specified, then kind of do bullet points on what happens in the story. These have all been really helpful in terms of keeping me on track, but I make sure to remind myself that things can change as I write and take a different direction than I expected. So my outlines are constantly changing, but the general idea is already written somewhere so I don’t get too stuck.

what are your thoughts on dad!murphy? The concept of dad!Murphy has really been living rent-free in my brain since before the beginning of season 7. I just kind of love the idea of Murphy (who is a character at first glance I feel like people don’t picture as much of a father figure) kind of falling into being a dad in an unexpected way, and then realizing how much he loves it. It’s just such a sweet thought, and I talked about it so much with some of my friends, that we started a Dad!Murphy Enthusiast Club server on discord (we’re always accepting members so DM me if you’d like to join us!). We just kind of talk about our dad!Murphy headcanons, share fics featuring dad!Murphy, and then get excited when people make new dad!Murphy content. It’s a fun time and though I am a very large Memori, I’m a multi-shipper at heart, and Murphy is one of those characters that I find easy to ship with a lot of people, so we love dad!Murphy in all forms!

what are some things you’d like to recommend?  This is a mix of Bellarke and Memori stuff, since that’s what I mainly read.

Literally everything @mobi-on-a-mission writes, but if I must get specific, then Revive and The Cockroach. 

Almost Paradise (We’re Knocking On Heaven’s Door)  by @nakey-cats-take-bathsss , 13 hours by Kats_watermelon, feat. by Debate, and of course, my comfort fic so i sing a song of love  by twilightstargazer.

The best place to find @queenemori is here on Tumblr. You can find her ao3 here. Request a fic written by her via @bellarkefic-for-blm.

[pure-bakusass]

My adult kiribaku headcanons! 💥💪

Warning, this is a long ass post where I decided to write some of my favourite headcanons down. Mostly Bakugou but Kirishima is involved more or less. I love my adult pro hero husbands. I hope you enjoy!

1. The hero agency!

The formidable duo of Pro Heroes Ground Zero and Red Riot is known by public to be happily married and leading their own hero agency together. Their agency has quite a reputation and is one of the best in Japan. Being offered an internship there is considered quite a big deal. Your career as a future hero might really blossom there, if only you can handle the well known explosive temper of Ground Zero. But despite Ground Zero's lack of any actual patience for work with kids and often ending up scaring them, Red Riot does his best calming Bakugou down if needed and being the most warm and understanding teacher you could possibly have. Red Riot is just great with kids and with his husband. I'd say with people in general. His gentle approach softens the impact of Bakugou's behavior to the point people often end up forgiving and forgetting Bakugou's flaws.

2. Bakugou's tattoos!

Bakugou has some piercings and tattoo sleeves, not only because they look dope and he has always wanted them, but also to make a clear stand against the harmful cultural taboo there is in Japan. Tattoos, being strongly associated with criminal underworld, especially the gangsters, are now all over a pro hero's skin whether the public likes it or not. Bakugou himself takes pride in inspiring people not to give a single fuck about the opinion of others and encouraging them to do whatever makes them feel happy.

Ground Zero's tattoos were actually a very controvertial issue for some time on the media around the whole country, practically resulting in a revolution in that matter and causing a lot of discussions, mostly about whether it is appropriate for a pro hero to have tattoos or not. Specifically tattoos holding a vulgar or violent meaning like "shit happens", "sex bomb", "die", "fuck you" and so on. Ground Zero himself refused to take interviews and cut himself off the whole issue with making a public statement that he "doesn't give a fuck".

Without any interest from the subject of the issue himself, it wasn't long till the topic was worn off and the controversy faded away eventually. Still, it is pretty common for comments of strong disagreement to occur, for example:

"He looks more like a villain than a hero."

"Tattoos are not heroic, he should be ashamed of himself."

"He's clearly doing it for the controversy around himself so that he's in the spotlight. What a shallow attention seeker."

"Pro heroes should set a good example for our children, and so called Ground Zero is the exact opposite of what a pro hero should represent."

"Someone who wants to look like a criminal shouldn't be given a hero license because there is clearly something wrong going on inside his mind."

Bakugou, however, snaps back at those comments with more or less the same words.

"You want to know what's heroic? Minding your own fucking business."

Kirishima tried to persuade Bakugou into being a little more subtle with the public, however Bakugou said that "he didn't carry the bitch out of the collapsing building with those fucking hands so that she could disrecpect him like this" and he stands by it with every fiber of his tattooed being.

3. Bakugou and kids!

Despite Bakugou claiming he strongly dislikes children and can't handle them, Ground Zero is voted the most popular pro hero among teenagers. It's probably because of his rebellious, fierce attitude and his will to say and do anything he wants no matter what might others think, which is by teens considered very cool and brave, but by the parents of those teens - rude and inappropriate. A lot of adults don't think that Ground Zero is the best role model for their children, however nobody can deny his dedication, courage, skills and all the good he does for the society in general.

Once when a group of teens heard Bakugou throwing a sharp, savage comeback at someone who got on his nerves nearby, they high fived and yelled "Fucking roasted! Nobody messes with Ground Zero! He's the best!" Bakugou snapped at them to mind their fucking businesses. He wouldn't ever admit it but he was flattered and happy to hear them say it.

Despite saying it's useless and stupid over and over again, Bakugou never refuses to give autographs to any kid that asks. He knows what it feels like to admire someone to an extreme level, after all.

Once when he was asked for an autograph by this visibly shy and intimidated boy, he asked him what the fuck would he even need it for and got an answer: 

"You see, I'm being bullied in my school, so I thought maybe if I let them know I met someone as awesome as Ground Zero, like, in person, they'd leave me alone. But without an autograph nobody will believe me."

Bakugou smirked in response.

"You think that's gonna work? Pathetic. Like anyone would pay any respect to a piece of shitty paper. Tell you what, I'll pay a little visit to your school myself and make the bastards shit their pants, how about that?"

Needless to say the kid wouldn't belive what he had just heard and looked at Bakugou in pure bliss. Long story short, Bakugou stormed the school and yelled at everyone. Not just the bullies but the teachers who ignored the case too, calling them out as "fucking idiots doing shitty job" and threatening the whole school community in general. The media basically ate him alive because of that incident but it's not like he cares anyway. Ground Zero the chaotic good hero regrets nothing.

I think he may be willing to go this extra in the matter of bullying as a pro hero because of what he used to do in the past himself (to Izuku) and feeling ashamed of this whenether it gets back to him.

4. Kirishima's looks! (aka krbk being adorably domestic)

At some point of their adult life together Kirishima decided to grow a beard. Bakugou said that he didn't think anything could look more shitty on Kirishima than his dumb hair, and yet there goes his husband proving him wrong. Despite having a new topic for many mean jokes Bakugou doesn't really mind the beard, just like he doesn't really mind Kirishima's unbreakable crocs he wears around the house (and occasionally not only the house) pretty much all the time. He just can't really do anything about that and it's not like he cares enough to try.

What Bakugou likes especially about Kirishima's new pro hero look is his hair he decided to grow to quite an impressive lenght. It somehow resembles a lion's mane and looks intimidating and very manly, but still being soft and nice to touch and run fingers through.

Bakugou's morning routine includes helping Kirishima with brushing his hair. He complains about it every time but there wasn’t a single day he didn’t do it. He still stubbornly calls the hair shitty and will rather die than say he adores it out loud. Kirishima knows.

Bonus:

Kirishima buys all kinds of Ground Zero merchandise there is because he thinks it's cute. Bakugou gets mad at him for spending money on that useless bullshit when he has the original Ground Zero in his presence pretty much whenether he wants. Kirishima likes to remind Bakugou every single day that he's his biggest fan and he loves him very much. He usually gets an irritated but equally adorable “I love you too you damn nerd” back.

***

For those of you who were determined enough to reach the very end, thank you sincerely for spending your time reading this. I was meaning to include an art piece for each one of the headcanons but I was too lazy to do art AND the post is already long enough I guess. You can expect my adult krbk artwork to appear in other posts though! They most certainly will appear.

[dgcatanisiri]

I had the thought recently about how the idea of “canonical character interaction is antagonistic which leads to them being shipped” is DEFINITELY representative of heteronormative attitudes - We have, for good and for ill, been brought up to believe that “pulling pigtails” is a sure sign of attraction between little boys and little girls, and this is then transferred over into a same-sex pairing. As a trope, this goes back AT LEAST to Shakespeare and The Taming of the Shrew.

Problem is, that’s NOT the same-sex attraction experience. The same-sex attraction experience is that someone of the same-sex shows us the smallest ounce of decency and kindness, we will spend years following in their shadow and building an image in our head of them being our perfect example of love. 

*ahem* What, why are you looking at me like that?

Anyway, there are two particular examples in my mind that kinda emphasize just how this plays out when it comes to media and the fans reactions of same-sex pairings, at least on the M/M end. And they make a case for certain problems within fan communities, with the respective media they’re for reacting in different ways, and, in my personal opinion, show how the people running the shows and the fan responses don’t get the differences.

(Even though, yes, I realize, both of my examples are helmed by gay men - it’s not like their staffs were gay and the studios were not, so that is less of a thing for the purposes of what I’m trying to say here.)

So, example one: Glee. Glee is, rightfully, a dark period of time we are truly better off pretending never existed, but it’s useful for my point, so please bear with me. IN CANON, Kurt spent much of the first season hopelessly head over heels for Finn. This was an actual, ongoing subplot through the first season, up to the point it culminated in the mess it that it did we’re not here to go into that god I really could rant on Glee if I were going to...

Right. My point. Sorry. Glee does that to me.

Anyway, Kurt’s canonical attraction in season one was towards Finn, and, while we all knew it would never happen, that the intent was always going to be towards the heterosexual breeding pair of Finn and Rachel... At this point in time, when I was in the Glee fandom, the main pairing was Kurt and Puck. 

Puck, the guy whose INTRODUCTION was leading a pack of bullies in tossing Kurt in a dumpster. THAT was where the majority of the fanfics I came across at the time were looking towards. 

Fandom saw “bully and victim” and took it to “Puck is expressing his repressed feelings for Kurt by bullying him.” 

And stick a pin in the concept of “fandom” in general, I’m going to come back to it after the second example.

Now, and brace yourself, because I’m about to say something positive in regards to Glee, the response on the show was to turn around and, the following season, not only introduce a new bully for Kurt who WAS doing what fanon!Puck had been doing, which lead to Kurt actively refusing a relationship with him, while also getting a canonical boyfriend. Yes, I call that a positive.

Because while I was closeted throughout my time in public school, I was still bullied and mistreated by other students, if not due directly to my sexuality. It did not lead to crushes on those guys. Hell, there were a couple of guys who spent a good amount of time pretending to be my friends, and if it had been a few years later, that might have become a crush. Instead, though, they revealed themselves before that happened and I completely cut them out of my life when they revealed themselves. And I’ve never felt bad about that.

The gay experience is not crushing on your bullies. It’s crushing on your friends, on the people who you know will be there for you. You don’t see the bully as “disguising their feelings.” No, that you’re gonna take at face value, because the alternative may well be dangerous to you. At least if someone’s been kind to you, they’re more likely to keep up that behavior. But why would you EVER put your heart - and your LIFE - on the line by telling someone who has shown you nothing but disdain “I’m attracted to you”?

Now, for the second example. If Glee was the good one (because the law of averages say it had to happen), then Teen Wolf is the bad one.

See, we all know that Stiles and Derek (no I am NOT going to refer to it by the ship name, I do NOT need that drama showing up in my feed) were considered the fandom darling. 

BUT... They were the above “bully/victim” ship. Their interactions in season one were very distinctly antagonistic. Meanwhile, in terms of positive pairings that could be teased, there were a few - Scott/Stiles (bromantic best friends), Scott/Danny (Scott canonically cuts in between Danny and his Prom date so that he can hide the fact that he’s not supposed to be there by making Coach look homophobic), Scott/Derek (Derek talking about how they had a bond as pack), Stiles/Danny (”Am I attractive to gay guys?”). 

But no. It was Stiles and Derek that became the runaway darling in the fandom. To the point that, eventually, the show engaged actively in queerbaiting, throwing them together more and more often, but ultimately never doing more than teasing before throwing female characters at the both of them. 

(Granted, I also don’t think that any discussion of that particular ship is valid unless you also acknowledge the racism involved, considering that the ship itself features two white guys, while the other two characters I mentioned are, respectively, Latino and Hawaiian, very clearly not white - you will note that Scott and Jackson had a similar antagonistic relationship, and THAT pairing didn’t get much attention at all, despite not having any competition with the “main” ship. In particular, I think that it was entirely valid for Tyler Posey to have seen this reaction and condemned the ship, because it was basically people diminishing him and his character to focus on white guys, especially when you consider how often Scott’s traits ended up being transposed onto Stiles... Okay, this is starting to move beyond the scope I wanted for this.)

Now. back to the issue of “fandom.” Because you know... I don’t think the “fandom” of either of these pairings, Kurt and Puck and Stiles and Derek consisted heavily of actually gay fans - not that they weren’t out there, but I don’t think they were the bulk of the initial fans of the first season, only really coming on board after season two and the active queerbaiting. I think they were, at the time of the first season, heavily made up of teenage girls.

And I’m not saying this as part of the general habit that there is in media critique to just dismiss teenage girls as a demographic as cringey don’t-pay-attention-to-THAT-crowd. It’s just my observation that, for teenage girls, all the things we say about women in fandom exploring their sexualities are magnified - what’s the common observation, that women in fandom use M/M pairings to explore a “safe” dynamic that they can observe and play out harmlessly for themselves, something to that effect?

So that’s the awareness I’m coming into this with - those teenage girls (and I’m emphasizing teenage girls because we have high school dramas, where I’m fairly sure these are the primary audience) use the awareness that they had of “how relationships work” when it comes to heterosexual relationships and were simply applying it to their perceptions of the gay pairings they were looking at. That “pulling pigtails” is the trope this audience associated with attraction, and so it’s how they applied.

THIS IS NOT CONDEMNATION. I really feel I have to hammer this point - I am observing a trend, in the name of awareness and understanding, I am not trying to say that anyone who was doing this or is still doing this has done ANYTHING wrong here. I want that to be very clear. This is me having spotting this trend and wanting to give it some attention, because look at the age of the examples I’m offering - both these shows lasted for six seasons and have concluded their runs, I’m only looking at their first seasons here as is, we are not talking about recent stuff, just history of fandom. I could have looked at more and seen if there was a universal trend or just a trend of the times or what. While this certainly could be grounds for one, this is not me having done some massive research project consisting of multi-media examinations of fandom and queerness, I’m just connecting dots and trends that I have seen to look at this thing that, going forward, I would like to see us pay attention to and be aware of.

Because my point is (for the TL;DR summary) that same-sex attraction manifests DIFFERENTLY. To express attraction to the person who is mistreating you is to invite harm being inflicted. The gay experience is to pine from afar because they were nice to you. And, obviously, a straight person is not going to know this inherently - this is part of an experience that they don’t have. 

I’d just like to see this recognized in the future when it comes to how people respond to and react to the popular same-sex ships in fandom - are they being shipped by actual queer people, or is it prominently the straight fandom using their view of things and latching on to a ship, rather than being actual queer fans expressing themselves.

Like, that’s one of my big things - I often don’t feel very... I’m going to hedge this as “noticed,” rather than any other term, within fandom a lot of them time, as a queer man and queer creator. The big names in fandom, writing for the popular ships, still tend to be female creators, which... I’m not discounting the queer women who are writing and making art and all that featuring M/M pairings, but I do feel like they get elevated to a point where the queer men doing the same creation do not, which can seem like a problem, even if I recognize that it’s as much an issue of who even picks up the pen or opens the word processor or whatever as it is a matter of promotion - I do recognize that it may be as much that queer men aren’t creating as much as it is anything else, there is a complex ball of interconnected issues pushing and pulling on one another.. 

It’s just a frustrating feeling of not seeing your experiences being given your voice - it means you have to depend on others to speak your story. Which, surprise, surprise, is not exactly encouraging to gay people, who’dve thunk?

[hunterguyveriv]

An Old Voltron Fan’s rant

A Voltron-Old Timer’s unapologetic rant on certain factions of fans:

So it has been a week since Season-7 dropped and as a fan of the original Voltron since that fateful day in September, I have grown to love anything Voltron that is made and grow sad to see it’s inevitable end looming on the horizon. That being said some factions new fandom members have gotten really tiresome and annoying to the point that they need to grow up. Somethings you all may not agree with, but this is my view of the fandom.

I normally don't do anything like this but seeing nasty posts, posted to voice actors *referencing a particular Klance fan*, and to @bext-k and anyone else associated with Voltron: Legendary Defender who may be on Tumblr, I want to apologize for that part of the fanbase, you should not be hassled or have to write a letter apologizing for “apparent queerbaiting.” but I have to speak my mind, on the whole, the issue. As an old-time Voltron Fan, that person and his friends/supporters DO NOT speak for me! And if you are one of those who does happen to be in the LGBT Community and still loved everything about the season or disliked it but didn’t go to such extremes like some have, then this need not apply to and for that, sorry you have to see such ugliness from this post.

Over the seasons I have heard of the nastiness fans have had about certain things “needing to appear in “Voltron: Legendary Defender,” but then I saw it after Season first hand from a fan who proudly posted his nasty posts to a Voice Actress of the show. To that person and people like him, who the hell do you think you are? I understand that you are “UPSET” about many things reading through your childish “look at me” posts.

First let us take a look at the definition of “Queerbaiting:”

Queerbaiting, according to a definition I found is: “the practice to hint at, but then to not actually depict, a same-sex romantic relationship between characters in a work of fiction, mainly in film or television. The potential romance may be ignored, explicitly rejected or made fun of.”

Besides Shiro's flashbacks where else are these hints in the series? Can you list each and every instance which hinted to 2 male characters or 2 female characters hooking up? So a male character hugs a male character repeatedly so what? So male characters smile at one another, or hug, or cradle an injured person in their arms. We as humans do that in general because we are an affectionate race. That has nothing to do with "queerbaiting." Some may source “well Keith and Lance are always paired together on missions.” Yes, it’s to get them to quit getting at each other’s throats an congeal as team members both in and out of combat. Those are instances and occurrences that does not certain characters are or will be gay.

So you didn't get what you and so many others wanted, that doesn't mean you have to be a little child about it and be nasty about it! I wanted Keith to be Native American, even civilly requested it, because my people need more representation in the media, but you know what? It would be nice, even though it doesn't seem like it will happen, I still enjoy the series. Which by the way, speaking representation, did the LGBT community request or demand representation for the Native American community? How about the mentally handicapped, Jewish, Muslim, or countless others? When is too much representation too much that it damages the show?!

If you want all the representation or headcanons you want in the world start writing your own fan fiction and post it on websites like Archive of Our Own, Fanfiction.net, or even DeviantArt. Just don't act like a pathetic little child and throw a hissy fit because you didn't get what you want. It’s called life, you don't get what you always want.

I admit I was a bit perturbed that they, the showrunners, first revealed that they made Shiro gay. Mainly because it seemed like the LGBT representation was being forced down everyone's throats just to appease those who “ship” him with male characters. But you know what I for one am glad we got what we got from Shiro & Adam. And I know some of you are going to and have said before “But we deserved to see Shiro and Adam reunite!” NO WE DON’T!

1, Shiro and Adam were broken up, because Shiro went on a mission that he needed to prove to himself that he can do. Adam even said so himself!

2, Adam dying is something that happens in war, especially war where a less prepared race goes up against a more advanced civilization. And if you take issue because him dying because he was involved with a primary character then you might as well stop watching a bunch of series, because it happens ALL THE TIME!

3. It showed that Shiro even though they were broken up was regretful and still had to focus on liberating Earth from the Galra. He had no true time to mourn yes, but in times of War, you generally don't have that luxury to do so. You have to continue the fight until it is over.

4. As some have even suggested, his death helped focus Shiro during a time he himself wasn't sure about himself.

Another thing, yes representation of Native Americans would be nice, but what would it have to do with the story before and after the reveal of a Native American character? NOTHING! What does Shiro/Adam or even Zethrid/Ezor have to do with the story from the 6 previous seasons and anything made after Season 7? NOTHING! What would having a Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, mentally handicapped character have to do with the story before and after the reveal? Once again NOTHING!

The whole drive of the show is “War is Hell.” Hell on those oppressed, hell on those fighting it, and hell for those left behind, and hell for those who survive. Sure some budding romances will result from it which I am about to go into, but this, in a cartoon about a giant robot beating the shit out of monsters, other robots, and evil alien ships, should be the ONLY representation that should be focused on. Not ones to make you feel all hunky dory on the inside or accepted. The showrunners know what they are doing, but if you think you can do better then please, by all means, purchase the rights to Voltron and make your own version. War is not a sugar coated thing where everyone lives happily ever after if you want to continue believing that then go back to watching your anime shows made for kids like Pokemon, Dragon Ball/Z/Super and leave the more thoughtful series to the adults. ANd if there are some fellow old timers here with me, they are more than likely to agree.

And if you think I am being homophobic I’m not. I have been questioned my own sexuality since 1992 but had to keep under-wraps because of family or where I live. I am happy they - the LGBT community, got their representation for what it was, but I am just fed up with the whole issue being forced down our throats.

Now onto the couples thing… pairings/couples/ships WHATEVER!

Now this whole “ship/shipping” thing... it's nice/new/bizarre/and downright stupid to me. Back in my time, we didn't call potential couples “ships” or went batshit crazy over something that looked like a character was crushing on another when there is nothing there. The fan fiction and fan art is spectacular and in most cases breathtaking, but in recent seasons it has really gotten out of hand with Voltron. The whole Sheith issue, only “shipping Keith with other male characters, praising pairings while condemning others.

Speaking of which, why is it okay to “ship” Lotor and Allura together even though he used her, but it's not okay to ship Keith and Acxa together or Keith and Romelle together? And don’t you dare say its because “Keith is clearly gay/bi” or that “shipping him with anyone else besides Character X is toxic” excuse - because those excuses have gotten stupid, old, and annoying. But I’ll wait for you to give me one nice solid instance...

So he smiled at Lance after they captured Sendak and Lance said: “We make a good team” that doesn't mean anything, so he smiled at Rolo that could very well be a reference to The Walking Dead because both VAs at the time were from TWD, so he hugs Shiro... So what! Speaking from experience Brother-Friends do this. He and James looked at each other when he returned to Garrison Base - and your point is? They never really liked each other to begin with. “He hasn’t shown much interest in the opposite sex,” um excuse me have you watched Season 1 episode 3? He was always smiling towards Allura. Plus have you ever took into consideration that maybe because he was secretly struggling with inner demons, demons Shiro only knew about, that maybe he just didn't want to get involved with anyone until he feels ready too or that maybe those he knows just doesn't interest him?

For all, we know Acxa maybe that one character that interests him over Allura, Romelle, Pidge, Nyma, Olia, or any other character with the exclusion of Krolia for obvious reasons. Let's state the obvious, she is the first person he meets face to face (eventually) who is a Galra-Hybrid, someone like him who he has the potential to connect with better than his Galra Mother, the Blade, or even the Paladins. And believe me, being a mixed blood myself sometimes it is a lot easier for us in this situation to connect more, we know things that those who aren't in the situation feel. They seem to be looking out for each other, regardless of whether it goes against their current allegiances at the time. And I for one support the idea of him hooking up with Acxa or even Romelle for the sake of argument over the Paladins for my own reasons. And yes that is coming from an old-timer who used to believe “If it is ANYTHING Voltron then it has to be Keith and Allura. That is the way of it, the way it has been, and should always be” up until Season 2.

Now really address the whole claim “Keith isn't interested in women, so he is gay" or “when confronted by the former general taunts he says ‘Can’t we just fight!’ means he is gay” posts when taunted: Have you ever considered that during an intergalactic war, that maybe if he were interested in someone like Acxa, he wouldn't want the enemy to know? Best way to cripple your foe is to target and exploit his or her weakness, and there is no greater weakness to someone than those who hold their heart. Whether it is lovers, parents, siblings, and so forth. Season 6 is a great example of Haggar exploiting it because Keith loved Shiro as a brother. Zethrid and Ezor knew Acxa had a thing for the flippity hair paladin and tried to exploit it and nearly succeeded.

Exposing your enemy’s one true weakness is one thing that is a constant in shows like this, you all should know this and shouldn't have someone point it out. Guyver-I and Mizuki Segawa, Batou and Motoko Kusanagi - since he clearly has a thing for her, Raphael and Mona Lisa of 2012 TMNT series, Superman and Lois Lane, Shiro Amada and Aina Sahalin, Krolia and both her mate & baby Keith, Swamp Thing and Abby Arcane, and so many others! Even Sonic the Hedgehog’s weakness prior to all the Sonic Adventure tie-in comics was Sally Acorn. Each of their enemies has tried to and have exploited this weakness in an attempt to achieve victory. So just because someone doesn't react to taunts like “Oh it must be true love” the way others may have, DOES NOT mean they are gay. Especially if they are part of a warrior class, they may exhibit some feelings for one another out in public or with friends but when they are alone they are free to be themselves.

Now I am not saying you can't “ship” characters with who you want, but if you see things you don't like just don't post things against it. Dial it back a bit for crying out loud. I don't like the idea of Sheith, Klance, or LoKei, Huneith but you don't see me bashing it or saying “Keith is obviously Heterosexual” or some shit like that. I scroll past it. To my understanding from scrolling through Tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook - before admins started to crack down on them, making a post like that is just as bad as posting hateful comments on posts supporting a particular pairing.

And to say things like “Well if Ship-X or Ship-Y becomes canon I am done with the series!” Well, you know what I say to that or those who think they are entitled to something? There’s the Voltron Door, don’t let it hit you on your way out! The series has lasted 30 plus years and will continue to do so without your entitled ass. Sure there are things that were done that I didn't like, but it is not worth sending blackmail/death threats to those involved or being nasty to those involved that it prompts the showrunners to issue an apology letter just to make you feel good about your nastiness.

In my opinion they, the showrunners, should never have apologized in the first place for all your hurt little feelings. The one thing THEY SHOULD apologize for, in my own opinion is ending the series (WHICH WE ARE LUCKY TO HAVE AFTER EVERYTHING NEGATIVE THAT HAS HAPPENED) so soon if indeed Season 8 turns out to be the final one! I’d have like to see it go for another 5 more seasons while bringing in the Vehicle Voltron now that Earth has literally become part of the “Galaxy Alliance,” and is now a prime target with Voltron there. Yes, I say Galaxy Alliance because Earth and the Galaxy Garrison are now part of the Voltron Alliance/Coalition.

Anyway, sure I had my frustrations and joys with Legendary Defender as an Old-Time Voltron fan but I still enjoyed it immensely. And regardless of what happens in the next season (whether it continues or not) and after I look forward to anything Voltron. And for those who keep in mind: there is ALWAYS the next series! 2011’s Voltron-Force was well received for a time but faded into the distance for Voltron: Legendary Defender. But with the nastiness of certain fans, we ALL must prove we deserve any more seasons, a newer series 5 to 10 years down the line, or an animated or live-action movie.

Well this is the end of my rant, like don’t like, applaud or get offended by it I don't care, this is how I see the actions of a certain few of this fandom effecting the rest of us who enjoy the series for what it is and not what we want it to be.

[littlesystems]

What are we even arguing about? A guide to controversial content.

So as the pedophilia-in-fandom battle rages on, I wanted to put together a scale of what the hell people are actually talking about. Because sometimes when people say “we need to protect children” they mean prevent CP, and sometimes they mean any sexual content at all.

So! I’m going to give it my best shot with giving a numerical scale to reference, rather than ~pedophilia versus ~censorship because I feel like this conversation is 80% miscommunication and 20% just plain mean-spiritedness on both sides of the table. I am using “fandom” to include fan fiction, fan art, and discussions/headcanons/RP/whatever else.

These are the various angles and desired outcomes that people are arguing, as I’ve seen:

1. Fandom ceases to exist beyond conventions and more socially appropriate “fans” - i.e. your typical dude who likes Star Wars. Fanart is sometimes acceptable outside of shipping, and any fic that exists should be Gen. 

2. All fandom should be a safe space for children of all ages, regardless of the rating of the source material. Children of any age might be on Tumblr or AO3, and some of those children may have lied about their age, disabled safe search, and may even seek out adult content. Therefore, all fandom participation needs to be rated G and safe for any children, as that’s the only way to ensure children don’t see adult content. Anything less than this is abuse.

3. Fanworks can have some sexual content, but only that which portrays healthy relationships, practices safe sex, has adult characters within 3 years of each others’ ages, and can be held up as a role model for teens. Characters cannot be “aged up” if they were originally minors. Minors should not seek out any adult material, but because adults cannot prevent that entirely, the next best thing is to only have content available that teaches good life lessons.

4. Dark content is allowed, but only when it is non-graphic and not romanticized. For example, if a character is raped: the act happens off screen, from an unambiguously evil character, and the victim behaves in an acceptable “model victim” way. Subjects such as mental illness, eating disorders, abusive relationship, etc. are all given proper gravitas and everyone involved clearly fits the paradigm of either victim or perpetrator. Characters with sexual content must be over 18, and there cannot be an age gap larger than 3 years between sexual partners. Additionally, everything must be age-appropriate for the media’s intended audience, e.g. adult content cannot be made of adult characters on a children’s TV show.

5. Dark subjects are allowed to be shown, so long as the situation is unambiguously depicted as bad. A rape scene can be written, but only if it’s not titillating and the perpetrator is clearly evil. Sex scenes can be slightly kinky but should still be healthy; one night stands, breakdowns in communication, and dubious consent like sex pollen should be used sparingly, and also portrayed as bad/damaging.  Teenage characters 16+ can be written about sexually, but only if done tastefully and following consent laws where the story takes place (e.g. if the characters live in California then the story follows statutory rape laws for that state), all teenage sex must be healthy and unproblematic, and all teenage sex must be created by teenagers themselves (i.e. a 25 year old cannot create teenage content). The only time dark content can be titillating is if a victim writes about the subject, in which case the creator can be expected to divulge that they were really raped/abused, and the work is stated to be for therapeutic purposes.

6. Dark content is accepted (grudgingly) because trying to determine who is enough of a victim to write something will often do more harm than good, and the desire to not hurt real people outweighs the desire to keep fandom pure. Sexual content of teen (16+) characters can’t be “gross”; age differences between characters can be greater than 5 years as long as it’s not a teenager with an adult; consensual adult incest is allowed (grudgingly), like in GoT, but only within the same generation/characters of similar ages; sexual content of adult characters in children’s media can’t be “gross,” shouldn’t be searchable by children, and may be banned on a case-by-case basis.

7. Most content is allowed, without condemning or condoning. Any graphic sexual content of characters 15 or under is banned with no exceptions.

8. Anything that is not actively illegal is permitted - currently AO3’s rules, and maybe also Tumblr to a lesser extent - provided that certain content warnings are included (AO3 has Archive Warnings, Tumblr has flagged NSFW). As these sites are hosted in the USA they are subject to American law, and content creators from other countries will also have to abide by the laws of their country regarding written or illustrated content.

______(floor of common decency)______

9. Anything goes, any time, anywhere. Tagging/warnings are unnecessary, and if minors don’t want to come across disturbing content then they can get off the internet. It’s fine to talk about sex/RP with very young people on the internet, and anyone who disagrees is a prude.

10. People who have actual photos/videos of real CP; actual child molesters.

These are obviously loose boundaries and I tried to group like-minded ideas together, but these are all angles I have seen people arguing from in the past few months (except for #10, though they definitely exist).

I am happy to engage with anyone who wants to argue any point of this list (except for #10, please go die), but I am Tired of people saying “bad content is bad and if you disagree then you’re a pedophile!” when I legitimately don’t know where they’re arguing from. Someone can say “I want to make fandom safe for children” and they could mean #2 or #7. Sometimes people argue in bad faith (if you disagree with my #4 then you’re a #10! If you disagree with my #9 then you’re a #1!!) but as a community we have got to stop talking past each other and start talking with each other.

I doubt this will get enough widespread dissemination to be generally used, but literally anyone having these discussions are welcome to link to this list as a reference point.

[othercat2]

Hi! So let me start by saying I'm loving your fic! I hope you're still doing request and prompts for it, so, could you write about David's opinion about Karkat before vs his opinion on him after the talk they had over pesterchum about Dave's future? If you someday also write the discussion David had with Dave right before that conversation I would owe you my life.

(Oh sheet I forgot to say WHICH fic I was talking abt in my last ask, sorry about that! I was talking about two for mirth)     

TotallyValid Concern

Dave is an okay kid. (Okay he’s in his twenties, butstill. He’s a goddamn kid.) You aren’t at all sure what you expected when you startedtalking to him, and later, met him at the airport for his visit. You’d seen himon TV and online, but TV takes off a few pounds and most of your actualpersonality. (You wish you’d reached out to him sooner.) Dave is smart,apparently shares the family sense of humor and is really, really good at aswordsmanship style that seems vaguely European. (No katanas shitty orotherwise here.)

You were maybe worried the kid would be some kind ofbasket case outside of TV appearances and comments on social media. You’d metrepatriate activists, and while they never went into too much detail, it was alwaysenough to make you uneasy and angry that anyone had gone through the shit theyhad. (It was also pretty shitty they were still going through shit.) But heseems okay, if also really nervous.  

It is pretty much not Striderly to take notice of such things,so you spend a lot of time distracting him until he relaxes. He’s impressed byyour penthouse and immediately feels the need to text about it to the Emissary.He laughs about whatever the Emissary texts back and tucks his phone away.

You…really don’t know how you feel about that. It becomespretty clear that Dave likes the Emissary, and frequently texts him, or sendshim pictures. Framing it as some kind of survival thing or something didn’treally work. Dave acted exactly like someone in a relationship, not someonepretending to be in one for their own survival.

There’s a lot of discussion over dinner, the three of youfeeling Dave out, Dave trying to figure you out. He doesn’t talk about Bro,which you aren’t really surprised about. You wouldn’t want to talk about Broeither. He does talk about having been a gladiator, and a little about havingbeen sold to the Grand Highblood. He also gives Hali a little lecture abouttrying to get him in trouble. “It’s not just rude, it can get someone killed,”Dave says. “You don’t set people up like that. If you get caught, everyone’sgoing to be against you, when you could have had allies instead.”

Hali taps his chair leg with his heel. “It’s not like hewould have done anything to you,” he says.

“Yeah but you didn’t know that, did you?” Dave pointsout. “It’s the principle. Karkat’s an Emancipationist so I wasn’t in any dangerbut if I had been, it would have been your fault.”

The conversation goes on to other things, but you can’thelp but thinking about the Emissary. About what the guy was actually like.Dave seemed pretty fond of him, but you weren’t sure you could trust that. DidDave have the frame of reference to know whether someone was “dating material”?Was the Emissary actually as much of an “Emancipationist” as he talked upbeing? (Did it even mean the same thing?)

So you worry. You have completely valid concerns.

Dave talks up how the Emisssary, “Karkat” didn’t want aconcubine. He also talks about “trying to get his seduction on” and some of thetraining he went through. “I really liked the dance lessons. The other classeswere kinda dumb though,” he says, dismissing them. “I ended up meeting a bunch offacilitators and sex workers online, and they liked my dancing, so that waspretty great. I got reblogged a couple times by actinicFlame who’s a well-knowncourtesan who blogs about dancing, mostly.

Mona wants to see the dancing, because she’s a traitor.(Mona: “David, it’s obviously something he’s proud of, and enjoys doing.” You:“It’s some kind of sex thing. I do not want to see my nephew doing some kind ofsex thing.” Mona: “David, it’s clear the dancing is an art thing, not just a‘sex thing’ let him show off.”) You do not want to see the dancing, but areover-ruled by the boys, who are also traitors.

The kid takes it out to the roof. Under Mona’s directionyou and the kids have dragged up a few of the chairs that usually live out bythe pool. Dave performs a dance with a lot of leaps and spins with his sword, asecond slow dance with a lot of posing, and then something he refers to as his“victory dance,” which involves a lot of strutting around and posing andswinging his sword.

You can’t help but be impressed. You think he couldprobably do the dancing professionally, in the UPT. You think he could probablygo to school for it, and make your suggestion for it a few nights later. Hecould probably get into one of the modern dancing troupes, or maybe start atroupe of his own. The kid gives you a skeptical look.

“I didn’t really get an early enough start, Uncle David,”the kid says.

“I don’t necessarily buy that,” you say. “I think youhave the chops to go on and have a really successful career at dancing. I didsome research about schools you could go to, with good dance programs.”

“Karkat already has me enrolled in classes,” Dave says.“Mostly a bunch of literature classes. At school feeding institutes in theEmpire.”

“The ones you talked about him signing you up for out ofthe blue?” You ask. “That you complain about?”

“Like the dance programs you want me to sign up for?”Dave shoots back. “Which are in the UPT, not the Empire, where I actually live.With my master.”  

“Is the story about you being rescued by the GrandHighblood and put in the custody of the Emissary not true?” you ask. “I mean,that the concubine thing was completely fake, like the fake married trope?”

“It was a joke, which is different from being fake,” Davesays. “At least as far as I can tell from what the Grand Highblood thinks. Andwhat he thinks is what matters, and what he thinks is that I belong to Karkat.”

“So you belong to Karkat, but you also belong to theGrand Highblood, and you have to put up with what they want,” you say. “Wheredoes what you might want come into play?”

“Well, I want tobe able to fight in the ring, but that’s not going to happen,” Dave says withconsiderable amusement. “And you can’t exactly offer me that.”

“Hey, fencing is a thing,” You say. “Hell, there are allkinds of sword competitions out there. I’m sure we could find you something.The sky’s the limit, kid.”

“I still belong to Karkat,” Dave points out. “Who doesnot live in the UPT.”

“But you don’t have to,” you say. “Even with this GrandHighblood hanging over your head telling you where you have to be, if Karkatcared about you, he’d let you stay here, right?”

“There’s no ‘if,’” the kid says, a little angry, but alsostrangely amused. “I know he cares about me. He’s so careful it’s almost alittle annoying sometimes.”

“Well okay,” you say. “So say I buy you from the GrandHighblood.”

“No,” the kid says.

“What, you don’t think I got the money? I bet I could buyhim out a couple times.”

“Yeah, but then I’d owe you,” the kid says, glaring atme. “And I don’t know what you want.”

“You’re family,kid,” you say, feeling a little frustrated at this point. “I want to know you’resafe. I want to make up for not being around to call CPS on that asshole. Jesuskid, you got raised by my asshole brother and sword and sandal epics I have aconcern!”

The kid flushes red at that. “I’d still owe you, UncleDavid. You can’t just–argh!” His hands go up in the air, form a gesture, adiamond with the first two fingers of either hand. You know that symbol is theone for moirallegiance and “pale” feelings in general. “It’s appreciated UncleDavid, really. Don’t offer to buy me, don’t make an offer to the GrandHighblood for me. It will not go well.”

“Kid–” you start to ask if he is actually in danger buthe shakes his head.

“Nope, look,” he says, lowering his hands. “I can’t giveyou a reassurance you’d actually believe,” he says. “You don’t have anythingthe Highblood would want that would be more than making his moirail happy. Hethinks I can make his moirail happy, and I really care about his moirail. But Ican’t give you a reassurance you’d believe, because you don’t know any of the signs and I keep forgetting.”

“Signs, huh.”

“Codewords and handsigns,” Dave says. “Which I shouldn’tbe telling you about. There’s ones for ‘yes I really am safe,’ and ones for ‘noI am not safe’ and ‘can I trust you’ and things like that.” He gives you asour, irritated look. “And I can’t reassure you, so you need to talk to Karkatyourself.”

“Okay,” you say. “Kid, I really am sorry about Bro. If I’dknown the asshole had somehow reproduced…”

“You cut off contact, right?” Dave says. “How would youhave known?”  

“Maybe I shouldn’t have,” you say. Maybe Bro had cared about you in his own way.After all he named his kid after you.

“No, fuck that,” Dave says. “Don’t even think of feelingguilty about it. I would have cut him off eventually if he hadn’t died. I won’tsay it didn’t mess me up as a kid, but as an adult I can say he was a shittycustodian, and the cutting off contact was the only thing you could have done,okay?”

You want to argue that, and you do, a little. But the kidis pretty definite about what he thinks about your guilt. There’s some morearguing about the Grand Highblood, going to school in the UPT and the like, butthe kid eventually argues you into talking to Karkat.  

[sparxwrites]

I would be incredibly interested to read what you were talking about in the tags of that ask/post~

#there’s a lot more i could write abouthow this is an emerging pattern in fan culture #and how what wasinitially meant to be a community free from content creators #is nowincreasingly becoming a community beholden to them and their approval#a community that operates within their oversight #and how people whouse fandom for what it was traditionally used for - as a sociallysubversive medium outside of mainstream control #are being penalisedfor refusing to sanitise their content and fall in line

Ihope you wanted an 8k essay about fan-creator interactions and whythey frequently end up being toxic for fans, creators, and also aboutfandom as an increasingly monetized and manipulated community, anon,because that’s what you’ve got.

Asa disclaimer, before we start: I am a linguist by training, not aneconomist, sociologist, or psychologist (though my discipline doescross over with the latter two in several places). This is written inan academic-ish style, but it’s largely based on my personalexperiences in fandom over the past ten years, the personalexperiences of the hundreds of friends and strangers that I’vetalked to or read essays by during that time, and a lot of personalresearch and reading. It’s not Word Of God, and I’m entirely opento people critiquing it, arguing with it, or elaborating on it –stuff like this is, I feel, something we need more dialogue about infandom spaces. With all that said…

Thesisstatement: Historically,fandom has very much operated on a “keep creators as far fromfandom as possible” basis, for some very excellent reasons. Withthe rise of social media contact, the gradual mainstreaming offandom, and increasingly fandom-aware creators and corporations, itis no longer possible to keep creators away from fandom. However, inthe rush to embrace creators into fandom, many of the hard-learnedlessons of fandoms past (and present) have been forgotten andignored. This, in combination with the increased monetization offandom and the exploitation of free fan labour by capitaliststructures, is a dangerous and potentially toxic combination. Whilstit’s not possible – and not desirable – to turn back the clock,fandom needs to carefully consider exactly whywe’re inviting creators into fandom space, how that should behandled, and how to mitigate the potential consequences of that.

Firstoff, there are a few pieces of terminology uses I want to make clear,and a few starting assumptions I want to detail, just so we’re allgoing into this from somewhat the same starting point:

When I say fandom here, I mean creative fandom – ie. writers, artists, graphics makers, cosplayers, and various others, along with the people who support them and interact with them in a variety of ways. There are other kinds of fandom, of course; notably casual fandom where someone simply enjoys a book / show / movie, or collative fandom, focused on collecting facts / statistics / comic editions / props. These types of fandom are not the ones I have experience with, however, and are also not entirely relevant given this discussion is specifically about creators in creative fandom.

I’m assuming that fandom is a space where people should be allowed to create whatever the hell they want, within the bounds of legality. That means if people want to write rape fic, draw art of extreme kinks, cosplay “problematic” characters, or ship unhealthy / abusive ships, they should be able to – without people going “think of the children!” or “you’re a Bad Person”. Debating whether this attitude is the right one is another conversation entirely; you can read more about why I take this stance in an essay I wrote a while back about ‘heavy’ kinks, and also in the purity politics tag on my personal blog – but if you fundamentally disagree with this stance, you’re probably going to disagree with this essay in general.

When I use “creator(s)” here, I’m talking about the people making the canon content – whether that’s an actor, a voice actor, a writer, a director / producer, a comic artist, a game development studio, a youtuber, whatever. When I use “fan(s)”, I’m primarily talking about individuals within creative fandom (ie. those who create fan content, and those who support them). Yes, some (if not most) fans are absolutely creators too, given fan content is just as valid and creative as ‘official’ content – but it is, linguistically, easier for me to use “creator” and “fan” rather than having to tie myself up in descriptive knots. Yes, there are areas of fandom that are primarily about curation rather than creation, and there are fans who simply enjoy the source material and don’t involve themselves in what they would consider “fandom” at all, and those are valid ways of interaction with the source material – but, as I mentioned above, that’s not the aspect of fan-creator interaction and fandom I’m talking about.

So,now we’ve got that out the way…

1.Fandom History, “Purity Politics”, and Censorship

Historically,mainstream media has not been kind to fandom – nor have mainstreamwebsites, or even primarily fandom-oriented websites for that matter.Fanfiction.net is notorious for having done a mass-deletionof “adult” works(though theirongoing policing of this is spotty at best and nonexistent at worst),and I remember them also having a list of authors who’d contactedthem and “asked” them not to host fic from their books / serieson the website. Livejournal also had severalmass deletions thatpartially targeted fan communities, especially communities producing“unacceptable” fanworks. Slash communities and the like wereoften specifically targeted, because the people pushing for thedeletions had homophobic agendas and considered queer fiction more“inappropriate” than heterosexual / gen fiction.

Thiswas, in some ways, the beginning of our current purity politicsepidemic – people campaigning against certain types of fanfic thatthey personally disliked or disagreed with under the banner of“protecting the children” – except, in these instances, it waspressure coming from outside fandoms rather than within them. AO3(and the Organization for Transformative Works’ associated effortstowards fandom archiving, fannish academia, and legal advocacy) wasfounded partiallyas a response to these deletionsand to the concept of “acceptable” versus “unacceptable”fanworks.

I’mnot gonna do a huge history lesson here, but if you want to read moreabout this, a little bit of googling will get you a long way (as willfollowing the links above). These events have been talked aboutextensively by people who were more involved in them than I was, andif you haven’t heard about them before, they’re worth readingabout. Fandom history is important, y’all.

WhatI’m getting at here is there’s a reason older fans / peoplewho’ve been in fandom a while have a good reason to be faintlyparanoid about creators coming into fan spaces, or being too aware ofthem. Specifically,fans who write “inappropriate” or “bad” fanworks –including adult or nsfw content, Real Person Fiction (rpf ) / RealPerson Slash (rps), slash or femslash, anything involving dark ormature themes such as sexual abuse, child abuse, incest, rape,domestic violence, etc. – have the most reason to be concerned.Backlash to the same degree as has happened in the past is a littlemore unusual, due to the mainstreaming of fandom and increased fansolidarity, but it still happens.

(Assomeone who’s both been in fandom for A While now and remembers theaftermath of the deletions (even though I didn’t have an LJ accountor write mature fanfic at the time) and writes “bad” fanworks, Ihave doubly good reason to be paranoid. Hence why I talk about this alot, and have Strong Opinions on it. Most of the other people I’vetalked to who have Strong Opinions on this tend to fall into thosetwo categories, too. If you’re not from these groups, then… maybeconsider, if you’re sitting there going, “yes, but Idon’t feel threatened by anyof this,” whyyou don’t feel threatened. Try to see it from our perspective.)

Inaddition to corporate / website efforts to stamp out fandom spaces ingeneral, and “undesirable”, non-mainstream, or subversive fanspaces specifically (including, again, gay / queer spaces, becausethat was considered “undesirable”), various authors and showsmade their own efforts. Anne Rice is notorious for her veryaggressive stance against fanfiction. Even JK Rowling, one of thefirst authors to publicly say she was okay with fanfic, has gone onrecord saying she objects to adult work involving HarryPotter characters – although“innocent” fics by “genuine fans” are okay, apparently.

Theshow Supernaturalhas had several entire episodesdedicated to taking the piss out of fandom in general – andfangirls specifically, caricaturing them as ditzy, obsessive, creepy,lonely, unlikeable, sex-obsessed – despite the fact that theirfandom is the only reason they’re still running. It’s all thesame usual, unpleasant stereotypes that get pulled up every timewomen, and especially teenage girls, become invested in or excited bya piece of media. A previous fandom of mine, the Yogscast, had ahistory of begging and / or outright stealing fanart from artists formerch, video use, or general promo stuff – but also decided to reada fairly ‘innocent’, fluffy fic on stream in order to mock boththe author and the fic (and in the process drove the author off theface of fandom internet, basically).

Again,we see fandom and fanworks being split into “acceptable” and“unacceptable” by content creators – people not actuallyinvolved in fandom, but feeling as though they have a kind ofownership over it, or say in it – based on mainstream mediastandards and their personal morals (and what they can monetizeversus what they can’t, though more on that later). And the reasonthey feel like they have any kind of ownership over fandom is veryoften that they are a creator, and they see fanworks as, in someways, “belonging” to them rather than just being a derivative oftheir work.

Creatorshave always struggled to understand that fandom is, primarily, forthe fans– not there as an expression of the fans’ heart-eyed adorationfor the creators, but as an expression of the fans’ creativity, oftheir ideas and enthusiasm for the work itself, and often of theirdissatisfactionwith the source material. Fandom is a space for the fans, butcreators often feel as though they should have some kind of say init, merely by merit of having created the source material.

Historically,this entitlement – valid or not, though I’m inclined towards not– has manifested itself as creators aggressively(and generally unsuccessfully) trying to stop the creation of fancontent based ontheir material. Which is a pretty terrible option, given it destroysfandoms and often leads to harassment and legal issues for fans.

Somewherebetween that and where we are now, we had creators realising therewas fuck-all they could do about fannish activities, given the sizeof the web and the determination of fans, and instead just did theirbest to ignore it all. This was, in my opinion, a pretty good courseof action. This was what tended to happen with fandom when I firstentered it – creators were aware of it, it occasionally got broughtup in interviews if a particularly dedicated reporter had discoveredit existed, and the creator usually laughed nervously and saidsomething to the effect of, “I know it’s out there but I tend toavoid it for legal / personal reasons”.

2.The Monetization of Fandom, and the Exploitation of Fan Labour

So,what changed between then and now? A lot, I think – including theemergence of a generation of new, fandom-savvy and tech-savvycreators, many of whom grew up in fandom (think Rebecca Sugar, AlexHirsch, the cast of Critical Role to a degree… others, probably,but those are the ones I’m aware of) knowing where to go to findfandom. Also, the rise of social media, and the increasing ease ofinteracting with fandom on a variety of platforms.

Asa creator, when you’ve got a bunch of people who love the thing youcreated, and are producing a bunch of derivative works from it, thatcan be very flattering! And people tend to react positively to theopportunity to interact one-on-one with a creator, which social mediaallows them to do, and again this positive feedback is veryflattering. Being in a fandom space for a creator is, at its mostshallow and cynical, an ego boost – you have a huge base of peoplewho all (usually) like a thing you’ve made, like you and thinkyou’ve very clever for having made it, and are (usually) eager tocreate things either based off of the thing you did, or even as adirect present for you.

There’salso the fact that fandom is now big enough to very successfullymonetize, and creators (and big businesses) are increasingly workingout how to do this successfully. This takes a lot of different forms:ever-growing conventions with ever-more dealer tables, more merch,subscription-based services (such as Geek & Sundry and Nerdist’sAlphaor Roosterteeth’s First,or even Twitch subscriptions), Youtube in general, Patreon /Kickstarter… and also, more insidiously, theuse of fandom as free labour.

Fandomhas alwaysbeen partially about labour,as anyone who’s ever made fanart or fanfic or manips or a podcastor… well, really anything, can attest to. Even being actively partof a community is, in some ways, labour. However, there’s adifference between free (and freely given) labour – writing a ficis hard work, true, but often it’s funtoo, and is done as a labour of love, as a form of play or relaxation– and exploited free labour.

Freelabour is the creation of fanart and fanfic and other art and objectsby fans, for fans. Free labour is labour done under the heading of“play” or “relaxation” or “a hobby”, something thecreator enjoys doing. Free labour is even fan-run websites, or fanscampaigning to get a show back on air, or doing other things thattraditionally PR and advertising managers would do except for free,of their own free will just because they love the source material.

Exploitedfree labour is Anime Expo, a 10,000 attendee strong for-profitconvention callingfor volunteer translators to do skilled labour for free.Exploited free labour is the Yogscast, a major Youtube network,askingfor free art from skilled fanartists, and repeatedly failing tocredit fanartists who’ve done commissions for them.Exploited free labour is Amanda Palmer raising $1.2 million onKickstarter, but solicitingfans of hers who were professional musicians to work for her for freebecause she “couldn’t afford to pay them”.Exploited free labour is Universal Studios solicitingFireflyfans to help market and promote the movie for free, and then sendingthem a cease-and-desist letter once the movie had been released.Exploited free labour is E.L. James getting FiftyShades of Grey published offthe back of reviewsand collaborative idea generation from hundreds of fellow fandommembers, butcompletely failing to acknowledge this. Exploited free labour isLiveJournal’s(thankfully failed) attempt to make a for-profit fanfiction sitewhere writers had to surrender copyright to the creators of canon.The examples go on, and on, and on.

Fandomhas gone from something small and rather community based – wherepeople didprovide skilled labour for free, because cons and such were organisedby the community for the community, because there wasn’t a lot ofmoney going round, because it was about fandom rather than profit,because they were recompensed for that free labour in non-monetaryways (including reputation and other social currencies) – tosomething monetized. Cons are run by businesses now, primarily, andorganised fan events are professional affairs where a lotof money changes hands. Corporations that try and equate the two arebeing deliberately manipulative.

Basically,fundamentally capitalist constructions like the kind we see incorporate-ized fandom deliberately invoke fandom’s history of giftculture in an attempt to scam fans out of free labour. The wholepoint of gift culture is that it is reciprocal– I create something for a friend or someone I like, and in returnthey create something for me (even if that creation is a review ofwhatever I created, or something more abstract than a tangiblereward). The whole point of capitalism is that it isn’treciprocal, or at least not in the same way – I provide a servicefor someone who is likely to be a complete stranger, and in returnthey give me money. When capitalism tries to wriggle out of the“giving me money” bit of their equation by appealing to the factthat, in a gift culture, I do things for “free”, it’s blatantbullshit quite frankly.

It’sblatant, deliberatebullshit, because the companies know exactly what they’re doing,and what they’re doing is devaluing and exploiting fan labour offthe back of fandom’s cultural traditions.

(Andbefore someone says, “but it is reciprocal! Creators make a thingfor us, and we make a thing for them,” I’m going to point outthat often fans have alreadyengaged with the capitalist modelto access the Creator Thing in the first place. Fans have paid forthe movie, book, TV show, or they’ve subscribed to the Twitchchannel, or the Patreon, or donated to the Kickstarter. The creatorsare already getting monetarily compensated for their work, becausemainstream creators work in the context of the capitalist model, notthe gift culture model. Therefore, the things the creators are makingcannotbe the reciprocal part of the gift culture, since that has alreadybeen bought.)

It’sone thing for me and a friend to organise a fanmeet for a fandomwe’re in, for free, where the meet is about meeting friends fromthe fandom and socialising. It’s another thing for, say, a companyrunning a convention that will be making tens of thousands, if nothundreds of thousands, of dollars of profit, to ask if I’llorganise thatfor free. That’s a dramatic (and somewhat unrealistic, though seethe translator thing above) example, but the point stands.

Capitalismtakes advantage of fandom’s innate gift culture, and itstraditional free exchange of ideas and fan collaboration, in moreinsidious ways, too. As thispaper (which youmay not be able to read in full if you don’t have institutionalaccess, but I can provide if you message me) notes, regarding a viralseries of videos on Youtube called Lonelygirl15that was one of the first new media fandoms:

[…] the team consciously used to theiradvantage the myth of the do-it-yourself (DIY) celebrity inherent toYouTube. […] YouTube’s ability to freely distribute content tomillions with little investment holds the promise to broadcastoneself to fame and fortune. As a result, hundreds of fans, with thehopes of becoming legitimate storytellers, created videos around theLG15world. Most hoped that mere mention of their work in the franchiseproper would open doors for them. In the process, the fans werewillingly generating value for the franchise. The team, on the otherhand, heavily regulated the boundaries of the LG15canon by actively marking fan fiction as ancillary and used copyrightclaims as ways to carefully manage community initiatives. Keeping thefans at arm’s length ran counter to their initial rhetoric ofcommunity-led collaborative storytelling and subsequently estrangedthe very community that had initially given them exposure.

[…] I argue that it is a form ofexploitation because the creative team mislead the fans into thinkingthat their participation would have a more meaningful impact on theshow proper. This intentional misleading was primarily to garner theattention of the mainstream media and grow the show into a robustfranchise. The team claimed to be experimenting with a new type ofstorytelling, a community-based narrative that embodied the generalspirit of co-authorship. They sold their show to fans as anunprecedented initiative that would blur the actor/producer and fandivide, a promise that did not actualize for many fans and wasfrequently curtailed by the creative team’s eagerness to protectthe artistic integrity of their show. Ultimately, the team’s goalof proving LG15 to be a financially viable initiative led them toconfine fan engagement within strictly defined parameters thatultimately undermined their initial rhetoric of community-ledstorytelling.

- “Exposingconvergence: YouTube, fan labour, and anxiety of cultural productionin Lonelygirl15” by Burcu S.Bakioğlu

This“business model” – in which fandom-savvy creators with a closeconnection to their fandom and a marketing-based knowledge of howfandom works string their fans along with ultimately empty dreams,whilst simultaneously holding them at a distasteful arm’s length –can be seen as echoes through somany new media fandoms, and avariety of traditional ones too. It’s the typical push-pull ofcreators who are hungry for the free advertising and labour fans canprovide, but who find fandom in all its queer, subversive,traditionally-female glory to be fundamentally distasteful.

(Fanartistsare, I think, the most vulnerable to this kind of exploitation.Fanfiction is often seen as undesirable (sometimes even within fandomspaces, but that’s another essay), but fanart? Provided it’s the“right” kind of fanart – ie. sfw, fairly canon-compliant,well-drawn, no implications of gay/trans stuff – then it’s verydesirable. Fanart contests,t-shirt or merch design contests, gif contests, are all fairlycommonplace. I’ve never heard of a fanfic equivalent.)

It’sa far more subtle form of monetization, but all the more dangerousfor it, especially because it lures fans into a false sense ofsecurity with the creator. They feel that the creator is on theirside, is “one of them”, is going to reciprocate the unpaid labourthey put in, actually “gets” fandom or is supportive of itsnon-mainstream and subversive endeavours… only to then bedisappointed, because inevitably the creator isn’t interested inanything other than maximising profit by manipulating their fanbase,and may actually find the fans they’re toying with activelydistasteful.

Youcan find a hugeamount of writing and research on these concepts via googling “freelabour fandom” or “fandom labour exploitation”, by the way, ifyou’re interested. This isn’t a concept I’ve just come up with– it’s something academics and business-people have been aware offor a long time, but hasn’t quite filtered down into general fandomconsciousness yet. The companies know about it, and are activelyusing it to their advantage, but fandom as a whole hasn’t quitesavvied up yet.

Whichis, I think, a large part of what I take issue with. Some people,after reading the above few paragraphs, will respond with, “So? Ilove [thing], I don’t mind my labour being used to support it andits creators.” However,some people will be going, “Holy shit,I didn’t realise that was a thing? That’s awful, even though I dothings for [thing], I don’t want to support the parent company / Ididn’t consent for my labour to be used like this.” Some of bothgroups, given the fact that the average age of people in fandom isskewing increasingly younger, will be twelve, or thirteen.

Thisis what I object to. Not necessarily that the labour is being used,but that there’s no informed consent to it (and also that it’soften used by the same people who mock fandom, or find it‘disgusting’, or have rather poor views of their fans). That it’smanipulative,very deliberately so. That it’s often couched in terms of it beinga moral obligation, a “labour of love”, a “volunteer position”,as “helping the community”, even when that’s evidently bullshitbecause the group trying to feed you that line is a business that isonly interested in fandom as a profit-making machine. That, often,it’s vulnerable fans – younger fans, poor fans, fans fromminority groups – being taken advantage of, deliberately andmanipulatively, by creators.

Fansare inherentlyvulnerable, for a variety of reasons (more on that later) due to thepower difference between them and content creators, and thatvulnerability is being exploited, often using the language of fandomto disguise the exploitation.

Howoften do creators run a “design a t-shirt / poster for us!”competition, where the artist gets paltry recompense (or none atall!) and often no credit for their work? How often do competitionTerms of Service end up having loopholes where the creators nowlegally own your work, in its entirety, forever, and you can’t doshit about it? Professionalfreelancers are aware of these kinds of things, and look for them incontracts – youraverage fan is not,however, and yet they are being used as (easily exploited, preciselybecausethey don’t have the experience professionals have) freelancers bycreators.

Asthisarticle regardingthe Amanda Palmer debacle above rather neatly puts it:

Ideally, you don’t even know you areworking at all. You think you are keeping up with friends, ornetworking, or saving the world, or jamming with the band. And youare. But you are also laboring for someone else’s benefit withoutgetting paid.

3.The Fan-Creator Power Imbalance and Fan Vulnerability

Let’sbe honest here: all of this manipulation is possible because fans,and fandom, are incrediblyvulnerable, on severaldifferent fronts – legally and financially, emotionally, and oftenin terms of age and experience. Though not allcreators take advantage of these vulnerabilities, it’sunfortunately not unusual.

Fansare primarily vulnerable legally. In general, the legalityof fanfiction and fanworksis super iffy,to the point Wikipedia has an entire article on it, and creatorsaren’t always happy that it’s being written (again, covered inthe Wiki article, and mentioned above as well). Fans also don’thave a great deal of legal protections– one of the reasons why AO3has a legal teamthat fights for fans and fandom – and what they do have has oftenbeen won by other fans who’ve fallen foul of copyright laws orcease-and-desist demands and fought back. Often though (but notalways), fans are young, and have neither the money nor the legalknowledge to fight back should a large corporation or dedicatedindividual creator with a beefy legal team decide to start legalproceedings against them.

Fansare also vulnerable because of their age and life experience.Increasingly, fandom is skewing younger and younger, which means manyfans (perhaps now even the majority) are underage. It issignificantly easier for creators to manipulate and use younger fansthan it is to do so with older fans. Even older fans, though, whohave more life experience, may not have relevantlife experience. A lot of fan writers and artists are hobbyists, notprofessional freelancers. “Tricks” by corporations such as dodgyterms of service or questionable phrasing in competition terms may beless noticeable to fans than they would be to professionals providingsimilar services. Fans may also not have the same tools asprofessionals when it comes to knowing how to deal with being takenadvantage of. Professional artists may have a standard procedure theyfollow when they discover their art has been plagiarised, or haveother professional artists they know as part of the community who canadvise them – fanartists are lucky if they have any such resource.

Fansare alsouniquely vulnerable with regards to interacting with contentcreators. There’s a power imbalance. This isn’t exactly the placefor discussions regarding (usually sexual) harassment / abuse of fansby creators, and I don’t want it to turn into one entirely, but…it happens. It happens a lot.A quick google search found me thisarticle listing anumber of scandals and allegations of sexual abuse or abuse of power,just regarding Youtubers,in the past year or so alone. Here’sa post from my personal blogsummarizing the multipleallegations of harassment levelled against the Yogscast, includingsome really rather serious ones, and the… frankly appallingresponse from the Yogs. That’s without even touching on theaccusations against more mainstream / Hollywood personalities thatcrop up every five seconds.

Thiskind of stuff happens a lot more than fandom would like toacknowledge. Creators hold power over fans, and sometimes – a lotof the time – they don’t use that power entirely for good.

Ofcourse, fans often enjoy having creators in fandom spaces – or,more accurately, enjoy having creators accessible. Fans want to benoticed by creators, have a personal relationship with them, meetthem, talk with them, share things with them. They often also wanttheir fandom pursuits, whatever those may be, to be validated. Theseare all perfectly normal things to want, especially from people youadmire and look up to. Hell, I would be a huge hypocrite if I triedto pretend I’ve never wanted to be friends with the creator of afandom I was in. I’m not here to rag on people for havingfantasies, or for looking up to creators – I’m here to point outthat people should be exercising caution along with those.

Becausethe issue is, a lotof people don’t feel safe with creators too far into the fandom.And some other people don’t see that as a reasonable boundary forthose people to have, or are too caught up in their “senpai noticeme” heart-eyes to care.

Beingon twitter is good, it makes creators approachable, you can tweet atthem and they might even respond – and sometimes it’s even a bitfunny if they admit they’ve gone looking for fanfic. But a creatordemonstrating a huge deal of internet savvy, having a tumblr blog,going on AO3? That’s enough to make a lot of people feel unsafecreating and sharing fanworks.

(Ifmonetization and exploitation is a particularly big issue forfanartists, then feeling unsafe is a particularly big issue forfanwriters. Not that fanartists never feel unsafe, especially if theyproduce “undesirable” content – but, for almost every creatorI’ve ever come across, whilst somefanart is acceptable, perhaps even desirable, fanfiction isunanimously “othered” in terms of fan crafts. Perhaps because,due to inherently needing a plot and the use of headcanons and havinga non-canon focus, it’s more threatening to the creator? I’m notsure and, again, that’s another issue. But for fic writers, eventhe most “harmless”, innocent, fluffy, G-rated gen fic risksscorn, humiliation, disapproval, or accusations of being “weird”or “creepy”. Those who write darker or more mature stuff, likemyself and many of my friends, have to deal with being aware thateven creators who take a “live and let live” approach to fanficwould likely be disgusted if they ever found our work. As I saidbefore: if you’re sitting here thinking “but I’mnot worried”, consider why.)

And,again, fandom is primarily forthe fans. We should beprotecting fans above and before creators.

Areally good way of doing that, whether protecting them from legalthreats, from having their labour exploited, or from creatorharassment, is to keep fandom separated from creators. Not entirelyseparate, not “buried in the depths of the web where no one canever find it” separate, but just… an acknowledgement that fandomis for fans, not creators. That fans deserve spaces they can putthings up for other fans to see, without being worried about theirwork being stumbled upon by creators or ‘upsetting creators’ –or, more unpleasantly, being mocked by creators, broadcast outside offandom spaces without their consent, or being judged according to anarbitrary, mainstream moral code.

Fundamentally,fans deserve a safe space. And when I use that word, I don’t mean“somewhere where no one will ever be triggered” or “somewherethat has been entirely morally sanitised” or “somewhere whereroving mobs of thirteen year olds get to dictate who is problematicor not”. A fandom safe space should be a space where people canpost what they want (within some reason) without fear of Big BrotherCreator watching, without fear of being mocked, without fear of beingtold they’re gross or disgusting or Wrong – and a space wherepeople can reasonably be expected to take ownership of their owncontent consumption, helped by stuff like content warnings orblacklists or AO3 tags.

Havingcreators there complicates that. It makes people worried, for a wholevariety of reasons. Something I said on a post a while back that isrelevant here: “Creative fandom, in terms of art and fic, issupposed to be an area of fandom without creator oversight – orwith very limited creator oversight. Feeling like you’re beingwatched, worrying that you might unintentionally offend, killscreativity.” Even if canon creators don’t intend to have anegative impact on fan spaces, or even want to join fan spaces inorder to interact with and please fans, they have an adverse effecton the safety and fandom-ness of the space.

Or,as out-there-on-the-maroon’sresponse to thatpost put it, probably better than I did:

This is something I’ve seen happen inreal time on the various official G&S [Geek and Sundry] discords.Initially fan-only spaces, they quickly started to welcome andexplicitly invite the cast and crew onto the discords. Which has itsbenefits and cool aspects, but also turns a fan-only private spaceinto a space watched by the creators, where the creators havepowerful voices of authority.

Suddenly any criticism or “I didn’tlike this part of this episode” comments became awkward orself-censored. Fanfic talk got dialed way back, hidden in privateDMs, or moved to separate private discords. Then there were clasheswith mods and other fans who were debating what was appropriate talknow that the cast were becoming members. It’s one thing to yell“omg I HATE [writer X]!” during a livestream of a tense episodewhen in a private discord, it’s another to do so in a channel wherethat writer frequently reads the chatlogs. Among fellow fans it’sunderstood that such talk is hyperbolic, but when the creators areright there chatting with you in a friendly way, it becomes risky.

[…] A large chunk of the “drama”that happens in these new media fandoms can be traced to there beingpoor separation of personal and private, be that a creator venting ontwitter and getting into fights with fans, fans sending explicitfanfic to a creator, or those “dramatic readings” at conventionswhere a room full of adults is invited to mock the un-edited writingsof a 15 year old. I’ve seen a lot of issues arise when someone, saya youtube star, rises to fame very quickly and is ill-prepared forputting up boundaries between themselves and their fans. (Mostyounger celebrities are actively discouraged from doing this,encouraged instead to be always available, always friendly, alwaysopen and personal with fans.)

Havingcreators engaging with fandom is not necessarily bad in and of itself– fans are excited to be noticed by their heroes, creators areexcited to hear from people who love them and the stuff they produce.It can be good, or at the very least not-bad. The issue is, though,that creative fandom is for fans, by fans, and there’s no intrinsicplace for creators in it, but creators are increasingly trying tomakespace for themselves in it anyways without understanding the effectthat has. That’s where the problem lies.

I’mnot suggesting we never ever let creators talk to their fans everagain. I’m just saying that we have sites like twitter for that –they don’t need to be coming onto tumblr, or browsing AO3, to haveconversations with fans. It should be up to fans to make the firstmove regarding contact, nine times out of ten, not the creators.

Creatorsdeserve spaces where they’re safe from being exposed to contentabout their characters that they don’t want to see or finddistasteful. Fans deserve spaces where they don’t have to worryabout the creator deciding they’ve seen stuff they don’t want toor stuff they find distasteful. The easiest and best way of doingthis is to make sure there are separate spaces for creators and fans– and that each side acknowledges, when they go into the other’sspace, they play by the rules of that space and don’t try toenforce their own. End of.

4.“Not MyCreators!”

Ifyour response to this has been, “Yes, okay, but mycreators are nice, though,” then consider: you’re probably notgoing to be in that fandom (or at least, not solely in that fandom)forever. You are eventually, inevitably, going to encounter a creatorwho isn’t nice. Your creator may also not be nice forever – it’snot unusual for creators to seem lovely and friendly and reallyinvolved in fandom, and then turn out to be a massive douchebag (seealso, Ridgedog and Sjin from the Yogscast).

Eventhe nicest creators can cause drama and conflict, too.  If they’reseen to endorse a particular headcanon that people start trying toimpose as canon, if they state “preferences” for fanworks thatpeople feel compelled to (or are forced by other fans to) obey, ifpeople think they’re playing favourites… it gets messy. And thelonger someone is seen as “the nicecreator”, the longer they’re up on that pedestal, the harder theyfall when they do the slightestthing wrong.

It’snot just fans that can suffer when creators get too close. In myprevious fandom, a fan that was jealous of the attention a creatorwas showing to another fan (ie. notto them) decided to start asmear campaign over it. They tried doxxing the creator in question,got several other people to threaten doxxing, started attacking otherfans (myself included) and sending death threats, and generallymanaged to really badly fuck up a whole number of involved parties’mental health. A similar thing happened with another creator in thesame fandom, where said fan is stillrunning a smear campaign against them. These are not isolatedincidents.

AsI mentioned in replyto a content creator I’m personally acquainted with, on one of my initial posts on this topic:

I think… regardless of how hard theytry to integrate, canon creators are Apart and Above fans. They can’tbe part of their own fandom in the way that fans are - howinsufferably arrogant they’d be if they were! - and they have anatural, inescapable power over the fans in the sense that their fansare inevitably going to look up to them and idolise them / put themon a pedestal. It makes things a little sticky for creators in thesense that they’re stuck as almost a god-figure, but also thattheir fans want to be friends with the Real Them - and, of course,either the creator keeps up the god-figure persona, stays on theirpedestal, and disappoints the fans who feel held at arm’s length;or they drop the god-figure persona, get off (or fall off) thepedestal, and disappoint the fans who feel angry and betrayed andupset that their idol is actually fallible and human (and hasopinions the fan disagrees with / is boring / is bigoted / isn’tfunny when they’re not performing / isn’t a role model ordesirable when they’re not pretended to be a god-figure). Damned ifyou do, damned if you don’t.

Fandom,especially younger fandom, has an idolatry issue when it comes tocreators – and it hurts people on both sides of the god-worshipperequation that that behaviour creates.

5.Conclusion…?

Isuppose, actually, that despite the thesis statement there are a fairfew different questions actually being asked in this essay: How okayare we – as a community of fans, regardless of the particularfandoms we call home – with censorship? How okay are we, or shouldwe be, with the commodification and monetisation of fandom by bothbig business and / or fans themselves? How okay are we withnon-fandom people and groups, whose aims and morals may not alignwith fandom’s, attempting to manipulate / change fandom and use itfor their own ends? How do we plan to protect our own?

Theseweren’t the questions  I expected to end up asking at the end ofthis essay but, here we are.

Iwould hope I’d made my personal positions on them clear. First andforemost, we should nottolerate censorship. Not fromwithin fandom, and not from without. We should alsonot tolerate manipulative attempts at monetisation by corporations –and should fight hard within our communities to preserve gift cultureand the fandom-as-play mentality that fandom is built on, despite therise of commissions-based fan interactions and Patreon / Kickstarterculture. We should fight hard, not to prevent fandom from changingper se, but to make sure we don’t lose our roots and principles.

Creators,by merit of being the people who create the media we love and engagewith so much, have power. A hugeamount of power. Maybe that’s legal power, maybe that’s the powerof a savvy and manipulative marketing department behind them. Maybethat’s the power conferred by being adored and idolised by a largenumber of fans, maybe that’s the power of having a twitter mob attheir control that will harass anyone they disagree with. Maybe thatpower is just older fans knowing how creators can turn on fans andfandoms, and being afraid to create things because “big brother iswatching”, regardless how benevolent that all-seeing eye is. Maybethat power is just having people feel it’s “polite” to “respectthe creator’s wishes” regarding what sort of fanwork can / shouldbe produced in that fandom.

Asthe old fandom term “Word of God” implies, creators are… well,the gods of their fandoms. That’s not necessarily a title theyearned (some creators are supershitty people, let’s be honest here), it might not even be a titlethey wanted(see also: Undertale, Homestuck, and other fandoms that suddenlyexploded), but it’s a title they have nonetheless.

Inthe end, this issue ties together a lot of things, I think – notjust creator involvement in fandom, not just censorship, not justmonetization, but purity politics, and the legality of fanworks, andhow to manage communities both online, and irl and the habit ofpeople to put creators they admire on a pedestal.

Howdo we, as a community, plan to self-organise, disseminate importantinformation, make decisions, and work as a united front in thefuture? Is that even possible – is fandom a fundamentallyanarchistic entity, unable to survive attempts to formalise it in anyform still recognisable as “fandom”; or, conversely, is fandomdoomed to dying and being subsumed by corporate manipulations if itdoes notformalise and organise, and work to protect its roots and the uniqueculture that has sprung from them?

I’mafraid I don’t really have the answers to those particularquestions, but… food for thought. I know I certainly think aboutthem a fair amount, and perhaps it’s time fandom in general starteddoing so too.

6. Fandom: The Next Generation

Whatdo we doabout all this, though?

Well,for starters, we educate both fandom and creators. There’s somegrassroots efforts to do this within fandom – professionalfreelancers making pushes to ensure people who offer commissionsprice their work correctly, and also checking through various contestterms of service and spreading the word if something’s dodgy, therecent pushback against censorship and purity politics within fandomspaces. Various fandoms on tumblr who know their creators often usetumblr, or check specific tags within it, have developed “private”tags for nsfw or shippy content, or fanfiction, to keep them awayfrom creators – either at the creators’ request, or of their ownvolition.

That’snot enough, though. We also need to educate creators.Even for those that grew up “geeky” or “nerdy” or “infandom”, they’re often talking primarily about the curative sideof fandom activities, not the creative. That side of fandom has verydifferent rules, social mores, and opinions to the creative side offandom. Creative fandom, essentially, needs to set out its stall forcreators – this is who we are, this is what we do, this is how youengage with us politely. We’re happy for you to come look at ourthings, if you want, but if you’re coming into ourspaces (ie. livejournal, tumblr, ao3) then don’t try to tell uswhat we can and can’t do, because we’renot doing this for you.Remember, when you interact with us in our spaces, you’re in ourterritory, and you should behave as such. Remember, we are acommunity, and if you try to take advantage of us or our vulnerablemembers, we will not tolerateit – even if you didn’treally realise that you were trying to take advantage.

Andhonestly? Some creators just need to remember to have basic goddamnmanners. Going on twitter to go “ewww I just read the creepiestfanfic about my book” and linking to it, or reading something outon stream without author permission, or telling part of your fanbasethey’re bad people because of how they choose to engage with yourmaterial… that’s just plain rude. We shouldn’t have to teachcreators how to be decent human beings. A remarkable number ofcreators fall short of this standard, honestly, and we need to stoptolerating it.

Ifthe creators aren’t dicks, then they’ll want to learn how to dobetter, both for themselves and also for their fandom. If they aren’tdicks, they won’t want to take advantage of their fandom, or farmthem for exploited labour. And, well, if they are dicks… that’s alittle harder, but it requires fandom as a community to stop keepingcreators on pedestals, to separate fandom from the creator of thesource material, and to be willing to occasionally kick someone’sass if need be. We’ve got to protect one another, is what I’mgetting at here.

Isuppose, if I have to end this essay with anything, it’s this:educate yourself.

Knowyour history – there are plenty of older fans on tumblr talkingabout their experiences, and plenty of blogs dedicated to it. OTW hasa huge number of resources for this, including their open-accessjournal for fan matters (TransformativeWorks and Cultures), theFanlorewiki, and the summaries of the legal activism they’ve done in agiven month for fandom in general and also specific fans. Livejournalis practically a treasure trove, with huge communities that gatheredand collated drama, wank, and general history and informationregarding fandom. Wikipedia, and the wider internet, also hasincreasing amounts of information on fandom history as fandom getspushed into the mainstream media spotlight.

Educateyourselves, educate others, and listen to people who’ve been infandom longer than you have been – though “listen” doesn’tmean “automatically agree with”. And, most importantly of all,look out for other fans. Help them, support them, protect them.Fandom’s something pretty special, after all. We’ve got to lookafter it for those that come after us.

[syrupwit]

Letter for Trick or Treat Exchange 2021

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Hello there, and welcome to my letter for Trick or Treat Exchange 2021! I appreciate that you’ve taken the time to read this letter. I hope that it will provide you with clarification, inspiration, or whatever else you may happen to be seeking from it.

Although I’ve written more for some sections and less for others, rest assured I would be thrilled to receive a gift for any of the requested fandoms, characters, or fanwork types. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out through the mods.

I have requested Fic Only, Tricks and Treats for all canons.

Please see the table of contents below:

Likes

Do Not Want (DNW)

Fandom - Dishonored

Fandom - Fallout: New Vegas

Fandom - The Magnus Archives

Fandom - Stellar Firma

Fandom - What We Do In The Shadows (TV)

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LIKES

I have a very long list of likes here.

For Treats, some general things I like are:

Absurd, silly, or situation-based humor

Surreality, weirdness, crack treated seriously

Lore and worldbuilding

Unusual team-ups

Dramatic rescues

Get togethers and first times

Halloween tropes and trappings that tend more towards the fun or cheesy (pumpkins, candy, trick-or-treating, costume parties, bad horror movies, haunted houses, autumn weather, friendly supernatural creatures, black cats having a good time)

For Tricks, some general things I like are:

Dark comedy, gallows humor, horror-comedy

Psychological, paranormal, gothic, and cosmic horror

Creepy lore and worldbuilding

Unreliable narrators

Corruption

Hurt no comfort (esp. emotionally)

Supernatural creatures and goings-on of all kinds

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DO NOT WANT (DNW)

Characters depicted as under age 18 involved in sexual situations

Characters having sex without mutual sexual attraction

Hate speech or hate crimes (discussions/mentions of bigotry are fine)

Harm to pet animals (the existence of ghost pets is OK, and it’s fine to mention pet animals that have canonically died, but I don’t want to hear about injury, abuse, or noncanonical death of pet animals)

Bestiality

Scat

Necrophilia (sexual activity involving ghosts or sentient skeletons/undead is OK, just not inanimate corpses or remains)

Sexual activity involving worms / spiders / insects

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FANDOM - DISHONORED

Ivan Jacobi's Grandfather

This character is so inconsequential that he only shows up for a few sentences in an in-universe memoir in Death of the Outsider, but the little glimpse we get is fascinating. Tell me more about this stubborn old man who moved into the family crypt and let his impressionable grandson sleep over among the skeletons. I want to hear his ancestor stories, the creepier the better.

Kirin Jindosh

My favorite antagonist from DH2! I'd love to hear more about his abominable creations, his alliance with Delilah, and what he got up in his brief studies at the Academy of Natural Philosophy. I ship him pretty hard with Emily, but I'm open to any pairing. (Note: I'm fine with mentioning or exploring his canon nonlethal fate, though I'd prefer it not be played for comedy.)

Billie Lurk

Of the Dishonored protagonists, Billie is my favorite. Someone, I can't find the source, once described her character arc as "atonement without redemption" -- I really like that. Death of the Outsider highlighted a intriguingly cocky streak of hers I hadn't noticed before, also (the things she says about the bank job!!).

I'd love to hear more about her years as a ship captain, the connections she built across the isles; her early years with Daud and the Whalers, how those relationships changed; and anything post-canon. Gen-wise, I really enjoy her interactions with Daud, Sokolov, and the Outsider, and I'd like to see how she didn't get along with Galia Fleet.

Ship-wise, I like her with Daud or any female character. Seriously -- Billie/Teresia Cienfuegos! Billie/Thalia Timsh! Billie/the surviving witch in the basement jail in that one mission of Death of the Outsider! Ooh, what about Billie/ghost!Deirdre? I am, as they say, just spitballing here. I also like Emily/Billie, Delilah/Billie, and Billie/Lizzy, for some less rare pairings. :-)

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FANDOM - FALLOUT: NEW VEGAS

Dean Domino

Vengeful petty bastard. He was my favorite of the three companions in Dead Money, and the reveal at the end blindsided me. I really liked the atmosphere and story in Dead Money -- I'd love more about Dean Domino's pre-ghoul days, how he survived, and what it takes to sustain a grudge for centuries.

Mr. House

Everything about Mr. House and the Lucky 38 is fascinating to me. I'd love something about the years he spent waiting and planning, or the dynamic between him and a more evil or chaotic Courier.

Doctor Mobius

Old World Blues is my favorite DLC for this game, and I loved the showdown/reveal with Doctor Mobius! More roboscorpions, more ridiculous schemes, or interactions with the Courier and the other Big MT scientists and denizens would be great.

Stealth Suit Mk II

Why is the suit cute, and why won't she/it stop trying to give me Med-X? I'd love to hear more about this adorable sneaky suit and her/its relationship to her/its wearer. If you want to go to a shippy place there, please feel more than free.

Ulysses

So dramatic, so tragic, so vague at times. I really, really like his relationship with the Courier and the way it develops in Lonesome Road -- I ship them romantically, one-sided on Ulysses's part and reciprocated, but I also like their many possible dynamics as gen. (I have no preference on gender or alignment for the Courier -- feel free to write the character however you prefer.)

Ulysses strikes me as very lonely, and he seems to be finally feeling grief that he suppressed. I'd love something where the Courier rescues or comforts him, or where the possibility of being rescued/comforted occurs to him but is never actualized (PAIN). Alternately, interactions between Ulysses and any random character, the more unexpected the better, would be great, as would Ulysses solo gen about what he gets up to post-DLC.

Yes Man

My favorite amoral AI! His passive-aggression is hilarious, but I love that he's also genuinely scary. I'd enjoy hearing more about his origins and development, his dynamic with Benny, and his relationship with the Courier and anyone else he might encounter.

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FANDOM - THE MAGNUS ARCHIVES

Adelard Dekker

Dekker is cool! I like that he's pragmatic and competent, not without a sense of humor, and somehow genuinely religious even in the world of TMA. I ship him with Gertrude, but I also enjoy them as friends. I'd love anything about his pre-canon adventures, origins, relationship with the Web, or interactions with unexpected characters.

Harriet Fairchild

An incredibly minor character (she shows up for a few lines in MAG 21, "Freefall"), but I'm so curious about her. What is her relationship to Simon Fairchild, and how did she become associated with the Vast?

Neil Lagorio

In-universe fictional media is one of my very favorite things, and I loved the episodes with Neil Lagorio. I'd enjoy hearing more about his filmography, strange experiences on his sets, criticism of his films, popular reception, or anything along those lines.

Peter Lukas

An unrepentant monster, and a terrible boss, but awkward and petty in enjoyably human ways. I would love to see how he interacts in a fish-out-of-water scenario, a meeting with other avatars, or a situation where he feels threatened. Seeing him interact with Gertrude would be fantastic. I ship him romantically with Martin, one-sided on Peter's part or grudgingly reciprocated, but I also really enjoy their gen interactions.

Original Statement Giver(s)

I'm always down for original statement fic, whether it's about an encounter with a specific entity or something more ambiguous. <3

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FANDOM - STELLAR FIRMA

Bathin

We've heard so much about Bathin, but what is he really like, outside that one recording? I ship him with David and/or Trexel, but I'd also like to just hear about him.

Enola

Post-canon, what do they get up to aboard The Terpsichore's Vaunt? Vent gremlin to captain of a Star Puncher Class vessel must be a bit of a leap.

David 7

Poor David has been through so much. I'd love something about them post-canon, figuring out the wider universe beyond Stellar Firma, or a canon divergence AU from any point. Additionally, I think it could be fun to explore common fic tropes with them -- coffeeshop AU part 2, fake dating (which is also their first time doing anything dating-like?), arranged marriage because *handwave*, time travel or time loops.

I ship David with Bathin and/or Trexel, and with Trexel and Hartro in a triad, although I'm open to other pairings. Platonically, I like them with I.M.O.G.E.N., or meeting anyone outside the station.

With regard to David's gender and pronouns, I don't have a strong preference or headcanon -- please feel free to go with your favored interpretation.

Trexel Geistman

Trexel is my favorite. I enjoy the childish, silly side of his terrible self, but I also love it when canon decides to take his issues seriously. Please let him bumble around like a jackass making poor decisions, projecting onto those around him, and occasionally providing his own brand of "help" or insight.

I ship Trexel with just about everyone, but particularly David 7, Hartro, and/or Bathin. I really enjoy him as the pining party in a ship, whether his pining is one-sided or reciprocated. In general, though, I just really like Trexel.

For Halloween-related prompts, I'd love something with him as a horror host a la the Cryptkeeper, or maybe something with him encountering the ghosts of the Board or one of his more illustrious ancestors. Less Halloween-related, a Groundhog Day time loop AU with Trexel as the POV character could also be fun.

Hartro Piltz

Hartro is also my favorite. She's... god, she's ridiculous. I love her interest in the arts and her taste for Drama. I was really pleased with her transition from antagonist, to semi-frenemy, to antagonist again, and finally to tentative ally.

Ship-wise: I ship her super hard with Trexel and David as a triad and Trexel as a pairing, although I also love the three of them as a gen group. We haven't seen Hartro interact with a lot of other characters in canon; there are no other canon dynamics that ping me as particularly shippy, that "yum" from IMOGEN and the bit of flirting with Sigmund Shankeray notwithstanding. However, I am open to any pairing or gen interaction for her, including OCs. Seriously, please go for it! I just really like Hartro.

Promptwise: The last bit of bonus content, "No Love For Spies," involved impromptu scripted roleplay with Hartro, David, and Trexel. I'd love a scenario like that, but maybe shippy or awkwardly sexy (well, more awkwardly sexy than it already is, with evening-gown!Hartro lounging around on tables). I'd also enjoy something set pre-canon, something about her life outside of work during canon, or post-canon exploring how she gets along in a post-Stellar Firma universe.

Also, I realized I forgot to say so, but I opt into the foot thing. Lol.

-

FANDOM - WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS (TV)

Guillermo de la Cruz

I recently watched this series for the first time, and Guillermo is far and away my favorite. The way he compartmentalizes what he's been doing for the vampires, the repression, the hints of manipulativeness, and then the fact that he's just really cute -- he's great. I'm enjoying the slayer!Guillermo storyline and the sort of power reversal, or power redistribution, that's come about because of it.

I ship Guillermo/Nandor pretty hard, one-sided and reciprocated, but I'd also love Guillermo solo gen, friendship fic, or ensemble fic. For a Treat, canon-typical slice of life would be great, or something about what he gets up to on Halloween. For a Trick, perhaps he encounters a hostile vampire or other creature, defends or rescues the others, or himself needs to be rescued? Guillermo gets yanked around and disappointed so much in canon; I'd love something where, no matter what trials he is subjected to, the vampires come through for him in the end.

[truthbeetoldmedia]

The Bold Type 2x09 "Trippin'" Review

Can you believe we’re already nine episodes into the second season of The Bold Type? The only episode that remains is the season finale, perfectly set up by this week's episode. I mentioned before that if this show does anything well, it’s wrapping up the season, and this one is no exception.

In this episode, Jane spends almost the whole thing drunk and/or high, which was super entertaining to watch. (She also does a great rendition of “Torn” while drunk at a bar. Damn, Katie Stevens!)

However, things don’t start out so carefree for Jane — the episode begins with Ben handing her a binder full of information about her possible fertility choices moving forward. Ben is still being weird, I see. Here, have a binder full of terrifying life choices! Brought to you by none other than your boyfriend! I mean, there’s close up photos of cells and people in MRI scans… not the most comforting thing to look at.

I know Ben is only trying to help, but it’s very obvious that this isn’t the kind of help that Jane wants. She already has a doctor she can consult with on these issues, she doesn’t need another one. The purpose of a boyfriend and the purpose of a doctor are two very different things, and Ben seems to only be fulfilling one of those. I’m not  alone in thinking this, either. Later on in the episode Jane calls the binder “fertility preservation for dummies” and laments to Kat and Sutton that he’s acting like he knows what’s best for her without asking her how she feels.

After a rough morning of dealing with this, Jane runs into Pinstripe in the elevator. Jane needs the comfort that a distraction can bring, and she chooses Pinstripe over Ben. They go to a bar for lunch and have a contest about who can fit the most olives in their mouth — super cute, right? And exactly what Jane needs.

We also see a new dilemma beginning for Jane in this episode: what to do about Pinstripe? Last season they were friends with benefits, and Jane broke it off because it was too casual. She wanted more, and she knew that Pinstripe wasn’t that kind of guy. But, in this episode, we see some growth on that front. Pinstripe is taking life (and Jane) more seriously; he can see that something is stressing her out and he asks her about it, something that Season 1 Pinstripe never would have done.

Later on in the episode he tells her that he hopes he can be more than just her “beer o'clock” guy, and credits her for encouraging him to pursue writing his book. I’m sensing a set up for Jane in the finale: Ben, the guy who is basically her doctor that she occasionally has sex with, or Pinstripe, the guy who (in Jane’s words, people) “gets her” more.

Kat has a dilemma of her own this episode, but it’s more professional than personal (although there are some developments there, so stay tuned). Scarlet is launching a new and improved website, and during one of the pre-launch meetings Jacqueline drops a bombshell on Kat and co: the new website will no longer allow people to comment on any articles, videos, etc. Kat disagrees with this venture immediately; when they do get offensive or hostile comments they’re very quickly deleted, and disabling comments will take away the reader discussions that make the site and the magazine so vibrant.

I have to agree here — maybe if one particular article is sparking some vitriol then disable the comments on that one, but not the whole site. The whole point of Scarlet is to both start important conversations and have fun ones, and without comments the magazine is simply shouting into the void. Not to mention that people can and will still comment, but they’ll do it via Twitter and social media rather than directly on the website itself, which would take away a significant portion of web traffic.

In a panic, Kat decides to talk to Richard about the issue. Richard and Jacqueline have a great relationship that’s based in mutual respect, so she figures Richard would be the best person to get the point across to Jacqueline. This idea backfires, and Jacqueline instead takes issue with Kat trying to go around her rather than take her answer on the subject.

Now, this is a little uncharacteristically cold for Jacqueline, but it makes sense given the circumstances. On the day of the new website launch there was an article published, accusing Jacqueline of fading from relevance and importance at Scarlet. So, it’s not a surprise that Jacqueline feels the need to defend her judgement.  

Kat’s worries are confirmed later on when the launch results in almost no web traffic increase and the response to the disabled comments was universally lambasted. Jacqueline calls Kat, asking her for advice, which results in Jacqueline enabling comments and publishing a piece about the importance of community discussion and involvement.

While quickly resolved, the issue with the Scarlet website sparked a realization for Kat. During this really stressful and confusing time she only wanted to seek out Adena’s company, not anyone else. In this episode the three girls take a small road trip to Sutton’s hometown in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and while there Kat develops a connection with a local bartender. She’s hesitant to go home with her, though, and Jane is confused: isn’t sex with a hot stranger the perfect thing to distract from the drama going on at work? Well, not for Kat.

In the past few episodes we’ve seen Kat and Adena make their relationship an open one, so Kat can explore her sexuality while still being emotionally attached to Adena. At first it was awkward for Kat, but now her issue isn’t getting past having sex with strangers: she realizes that she wants to be with Adena and only Adena, and that she doesn’t find comfort in their open relationship anymore.

For a relationship that’s been rocky the whole season, this is great news, right? They do end up getting back together, but there’s still some tension: Kat asks Adena to go to breakfast, but she turns her down in order to work on her art some more. It’s obvious this makes Kat uneasy and a little upset.

This is where my issue starts: I am not a fan of how Kat has treated Adena this season. She hasn't been mean or rude to Adena, but she has been a little selfish, and this episode is no exception. Why, you ask? Didn’t Kat just opt out of an open relationship to spend more time with Adena? Yes, but when you look at the season as a whole, there is a clear divide of give and take, with Kat doing almost all of the taking.

Early in the season we saw Kat become jealous of Adena, constantly questioning her relationships with women and being paranoid that they would run into one of Adena’s exes wherever they went. In the very next episode, Kat kisses a strange girl at a club. She tells Adena right away, but she’s obviously upset. Adena offers the option of an open relationship so Kat can explore her sexuality, so Kat starts casually seeing other women. She also tells Adena about this, when Adena specifically told her that they should keep Kat’s adventures separate from their relationship.

Now, in this episode, we see Kat run back to Adena when she needs something from her (in this case, comfort). I don’t think this is malicious or manipulative, but the truth is clear: Kat is doing whatever she wants while Adena just takes it.

This is especially one sided when you think of how much Adena has sacrificed to be with Kat: she’s in a country that doesn’t want her, away from family, struggling to look for work. While Adena CHOSE to stay with Kat, I still can’t help but wonder when Adena’s needs will take precedent.

Now to Sutton, who has finally gotten a great story that doesn’t involve her job or a relationship. As we learned last episode, Sutton is going to Paris (!!!), so naturally, she needs her birth certificate for the passport application. This is where that road trip to Pennsylvania comes in: the only way Sutton can get her original birth certificate fast enough for the application is to pick it up herself.

We finally get to meet the infamous Babs Brady, Sutton’s unstable, hard-drinking mother. Sutton is on edge almost immediately after setting out on the road trip, bracing Kat and Jane for the trainwreck that is her mother. Sutton even tries to go directly to her old home and find the document herself, wanting to avoid seeing her mother at all. Unfortunately for Sutton the spare key is missing, so her and the girls head over to the local dive bar, Dicey Riley’s, to wait for her mother to show up. When Babs does show up, Jane and Kat are confused: she’s put together, clean, and not drunk.

Despite this obvious positive change, Sutton is still pretty hostile and outright rude to her mother. She’s still living in the past, unwilling to listen to her mother talk about her new job at Dicey Riley’s (she even quips that it’s only for the free drinks), her seven months of being sober, and her intention to go to nursing school. Sutton maintains that her mother is a wreck and that she’s still living in a rat infested house, neither of which are true anymore.

This isn’t as simple as Sutton simply being rude and in a hurry to get her birth certificate. Anyone who has an addict in their life, especially a parent, is familiar with what I’ve just outlined. It’s not that Sutton doesn’t care that her mother has been sober and has a job: it’s that she’s heard it before, a million times, and each time she gets her hopes up everything just comes crashing down.

A big shoutout to Meghann Fahy for acting her ass off this episode; it’s rare that we get such a genuine portrayal of the child of an addict coming to terms with a parent’s sobriety. That’s mostly because most people would think that’s a good thing, and it is, but it’s not that simple. Sutton is trying so hard to keep her mother as she was because it’s easier; it’s familiar, and almost safe. She KNOWS her mother is an addict, she KNOWS nothing she says or does will change that, so she cut all ties to her mother and her hometown and committed herself fully to her new life in New York. If her mother is sober, she has to revisit this familiar place again, and brace herself for the very real possibility that it won’t last forever. The happiness of a parent being sober is also accompanied by the 24/7 dread of waiting for them to fall off the wagon once again.

Sutton isn’t easily convinced — what’s to say that this time is different? Kat tells her that they have each other. Sutton has a great support system in Jane and Kat, and she’s no longer alone in dealing with any of her problems. If her mother stays sober, that’s fantastic (and to Jane’s point, at least she has a mother). If she doesn’t, she has two fantastic friends to support her.

So — What’s going to happen in Paris? Who will Jane choose (if anyone)? What will happen to Jacqueline? What about Kat and Adena? Finale episode, bring it on.

The Season 2 finale of The Bold Type airs August 7 at 8/7c on Freeform.

Alyssa’s episode rating: 🐝🐝🐝🐝  

[sundaynightbombers-blog]

ON BENEFITS OF FANFICTION; OR, VETERAN OF THE FLAME WARS

            I was flipping through some old writings of mine a while ago, all while re-watching the French animated series Code Lyoko in an attempt to recapture my childhood or something, with the looming deadline of this week’s post over my head. Oh, and an unfinished album review for a metal CD that came out last week. Good times.

            Anyways, I was looking through some of my older stuff when I stumbled upon that cringe-inducing aspect of my childhood that made me not only regret undertaking this bit of literary skullduggery, but also made me remember way too many things all at once. This was, of course, all of my old fanfiction stories from when I used to kill time on deviantART.

            Oh yeah. We’re talking about this.

            Alright, firstly, let’s get the obvious out of the way: fanfiction has an immensely controversial reputation, one it’ll probably always have. Fan labour will always be around, fan art will always be popular, and fans will always remake their favourite films, either by their lonesome or through mass collaboration, and fanfiction will always be written and read. Fan labour and its many facets are, honestly, some of the most impressive, sincere, and genuinely cool enactments of creativity that’s readily available, but where there’s fandom, there is unease. Ever since the internet became a viable meeting ground for fans of, well, anything, it’s also become a battleground-cum-farmer’s market of fan-made goods and loving tributes to anything and everything that has a copyright slapped on it and has existed at some point. For every twenty pieces of fan art, there’ll be forty arguments being carried out across countless forum posts on the very same subject.

            Fanfiction’s place amongst all of this is one of distinction and notoriety. The art of using established characters and settings and telling your own stories with them reaches all the way back to the death of Sherlock Holmes, where fans resurrected the character for their own stories after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle killed the character off. Since then, fans crafting their own adventures for their favourite characters have long become a popular way of not only displaying their affection, but also showing off their own writing and storytelling skills. It should also be noted that the idea of having two male characters enter a non-canonical relationship started not with the anime boom, but with Star Trek fans. In fact, the seminal novel Killing Time had heavy undertones of a Kirk/Spock relationship in its original manuscript, something that’d been well-established and practiced among female fans of the show since the original run. Fanfiction has a seminal place in the development of modern fan culture, and there just isn’t no denying it.

            But as I was reading back through these old fanfics of mine, I realized something. Fanfiction, especially nowadays, has this uncanny ability to see where a person was at the time of writing a fanfic. A lot of general queasiness about fanfiction comes from not only the sometimes subpar writing on display, or the admittedly cringe-inducing sex scenes that sometimes play out in an unsurprising amount of these stories, but also the large amount of times when the story starts to play out like someone’s diary rather than a cohesive narrative. I’m certainly guilty of this myself, and while it can certainly be uncomfortable to read for the uninitiated, other times it shows just how deeply connected someone is to what they’re writing. Sometimes, it takes someone else’s creation to get your deepest thoughts and feelings out, which is something that’s not so easily accepted.

            So why am I talking about fanfiction? Well, I think it’s because I believe that, like fan art or fan games or fan music or whatever, it has value to those who partake in it. It’s hard to sit here and really speak ill of something I’ve been involved with since I was young, but that doesn’t mean I understand why it usually elicits shocked laughter and uncomfortable side-glances from those who’ve seen some of the more questionable sides of the subject. The numerous ironic reading videos of people trying to stifle their laughter as they slog through a poorly-written overly-edgy My Little Pony fanfic can be hilarious, just as the idea of an erotic story involving Tracer from Overwatch getting gangbanged by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles can confuse and horrify anyone who’s not the reader. It’s no secret that fans sometime use these forms of fan labour as conduits for their own oddly-specific fetishes and fantasies. It’s a way for teenagers to get out a lot of their angsty, underdeveloped emotions, all without resorting to real-world actions. It’s a weird, strangely personal world.

            But is it bad? Like, should we believe the horror stories we’ve heard and just shun anyone partakes in fanfiction?

            The reason looking through these old stories compelled me to write this is to highlight the good that comes from writing fanfiction and letting people do their thing when they write it. As someone who considers writing their natural talent, I can honestly confess that if I hadn’t started writing dumb human-girl-meets-alien-boy fanfics way way back in grade 7, I would’ve never planted the seed that made me realize that I actually have a way with the written word. Other people might think otherwise, and that’s fair, absolutely. But fanfiction is not only a way of expressing one’s love for a piece of media, or getting out of your head all those weird unrealistic self-insert fantasies, but I also see it as a genuine way of honing one’s abilities to write and tell stories.

            Hear me out: imagine having an idea where you think of a story, but instead of characters or setting or anything, you think of a scenario or a new way of telling a story, or an experimental way of structuring a multi-chapter story. Fanfiction gives writers a place to experiment without having to create characters or settings. Pick something you know by heart, and throw your ideas at it, see what happens. It can also allow creators to tap into that childlike sense of make-believe, when kids ran around their suburban backyards throwing imaginary Hadoukens at each other. You have your favourite characters, now go on new adventures!

            It’s really hard to summarize my feelings about fanfiction. I see why some don’t like it, I see why others, myself included, love it. As I come to the exhausted end of this, I sit here and try to think of why fanfiction still matters in a day and age where fan artists can make money off of their work, fan remakes warrant documentaries about their productions some decade or two later, and where fan games are more popular than ever. Hell, the Japanese have essentially chiseled their own economy out of fan works, just look up Dōjin on google, the numbers are STAGGERING. But, why do these niche, sometimes awkwardly constructed stories still matter?

            Well, I think it’s the freedom that comes with it. It’s far from popular, and remains only a minor niche format these days, but the freedom of the written word is a beautiful thing. And fanfiction, in manners both fantastic and horrifying, may just be one of the ultimate exercises in creative freedom. At the top of the pile are works like Fallout Equestria and Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality¸ while at the bottom you have the eternally-infamous My Immortal. And everything between, and below. It’s a strange world, definitely not for all. But I can’t stay mad at it. In a way, I owe my creative life to it.

            Still, Tracer getting spitroasted by Donatello and Leonardo does bother me. And I don’t even like Overwatch.

 ~M.C.

[booklust]

Futurelit Vol 5: Grace Byron

This time around, I had the absolute pleasure of chatting with Grace Byron, the Brooklyn-based columnist, writer and filmmaker and all-around brilliant, benevolent creative spirit whose recent book release party for NB Carrie Bradshaw (read it here via Epigraph Mag!) at Babycastles solidified my love for her and her work. 

This interview was the first time I had the opportunity to conduct a classic interview over the phone instead of over text chat, or as I like to call it for reasons I’d gladly explain to you over a glass of wine, “The Tony Hawk Method.”

This resulted in a truly gorgeous conversation that flows synaptically and always takes surprising directions (Twin Peaks, the afterlife, and a tender moment involving Coldplay that occurs towards the end---when you see it then you’ll understand!). It also brought me right back to the days at my editorial internship where I would transcribe hours of interviews, but in a good way this time. I took great pains to not only get the content and diction right, but to convey the undertones of our exchange that made it so vibrant. Which, interestingly enough, makes it take on the visual form of a text chat.

Check out our conversation at the jump, with gorgeous illustrations by Becky Ebben:

You do a column called “Trans Monogamist” for the Bushwick Daily (I binged that…it’s really dope) and your latest project is NB Carrie Bradshaw (which is out now!). So I’m curious, what sort of came first: your interest in the format of an advice columnist/relationship columnist,  or your love of Carrie Bradshaw?

Actually--I didn’t start watching Sex and the City until January 2017, which everyone is sort of super surprised by, and honestly? Me fucking too. Not that it’s a perfect show, but the aesthetic signals that it’s something that I should have seen a long time ago. It took me a long time to get to it. I had heard a lot of the negative stuff, which there is a lot of, and rightfully so. There’s this one terrible bisexual episode where Carrie’s just like, “I just don’t know….he’s bi .” And I’m just like… “Girl, so what.” The point is, the column writing came sort of naturally. I had a column a few years ago at my paper called Queer Art Vibes before I had even seen Sex and the City. And I was mostly writing about art, and capitalism, artists, and things I was finding interesting aesthetically. The last column that I wrote was after I had a break-up, and it was called “How To Date an Anarchist.”

Oh my God

And it got like, no comments. Because most of the columns that I was writing were about trans identity and stuff. I got all these comments like, “Why can’t people just make up their minds about gender?” And I’m just like, that’s completely irrelevant to what I’m talking about. So this column got no comments at all. There’s this huge anarchist population at Indiana University. It just closed down this month, but we had this huge anarchist bookstore that was this huge draw for the punk scene.

It was a column that didn’t make sense for where I was writing. But then as I was watching Sex and the City, and as I was doing a lot more dating my last year in college, I was thinking “yeah, this is really important to talk about.” And I started thinking of dating as a political and aesthetic and emotional practice. It’s more using this pop culture phenomenon to let people understand something about what it’s like to be trans and dating. It’s not like it’s me and my three friends that are all going through the same things. Or it’s not like me and my straight girlfriends talking about how our experiences are different. Or me and someone who is nonbinary even talking about how it’s different for both of us. But I do like that element of friendship in it, that element of comradery.  But I think it’s interesting now that shows act like there’s this group of 4 friends and they’re all the same. And that was never my experience? You know, there’s always a nonbinary person, a lesbian person, and...maybe a straight man.

LOL the token straight

Right. At least that’s my college experience, where I’ve never had a group of friends that were all the same. There were always at least one other gay or queer person. It’s a helpful lens to think about dating, and think about dating how much it’s changed since the early 2000s. A column is a dispatch from the front lines, like “this is what happened this month! How’s it going with you?” The book [NB Carrie Bradshaw] has a little bit of a more narrative arc to it. But in the columns, there’s no resolution. -----keep reading below------

Right, and that’s what I like about it. There’s endless thinkpieces about dating apps, queer dating, etc, and it’s so frustratingly depersonalized. It’s very strange how the discourse tries to force dystopia instead of actually having a comprehensive view of how people feel. There’s a lot more truth in the way that you present dating than how someone tries to dissect it in a thinkpiece.

Yeah, thinkpieces are weird. I love to read them, but I also don’t know how helpful they are a lot of the time. Especially when they try to draw a definitive statement. In some things, sure, that makes sense.

Like in a college thesis, where you’re forced to come to a resolution for your life, pretty much.

What was your experience working at a college newspaper?

Basically, I came to college, and I was on the media floor--and basically what I thought that meant was cross-genre. But in reality, what it meant was journalism. And then I thought, you know, okay, it’s fine. I thought it was interesting. And so I almost went to join the newspaper as a writer and interviewer, I did a few articles. But a rule was that if you were a writer for them, you couldn’t be interviewed. And that was my biggest problem with it--I knew I wanted to do art. I knew that I wanted to get press. I didn’t want to prevent that from happening.

Right after I came out my freshman year, this guy on my floor was like, “do you want to talk about being gay at IU?” And I was like uh….sure! It was weird because it was my first time being interviewed for something real, and I was talking about being gay. But I was also trying to sneak a pitch for my website while doing it, I was like...go watch it! They promptly cut that out of the interview, though.

Good effort, tho.

I didn’t love that environment. I wasn’t taken with it. I started volunteering at a local radio station where I did stories about lots of things. That was much more interesting and fulfilling than the college newspaper. And my friend was like, “do you want to be columnist--we need one.” Not because I was special or anything, because they really needed one. And I was like, “sure.” So I started writing these extremely leftist columns, like “capitalism is the devil, and here’s why : )”

And I wrote one that was like, “nudity in art isn’t porn,” which isn’t even an extreme opinion. But I started getting all of these comments like, “Counterpoint: nudity in art isn’t not porn.” I was just like wow, I can tell that you really read this column….

People just read titles a lot of times.

Yeah for sure. Our campus was filled with a lot of views of all extremes, and not just anarchists. We also had a militant white supremacist population on campus. There were a bunch of protests from that group over the course of years--it wasn’t just one year, or just this year, which was definitely the worse than the years before. I also got tons of hateful comments from white supremacist groups on my articles. So I was just one of the people on the receiving end of those comments.

But as far as my involvement in the newspaper group itself, I think I only attended one meeting. I didn’t really feel a sense of community at IU that a lot of people there felt. I think a lot of people looked down on what I did because it was so personal. It wasn’t like I was talking about music, or like I was talking about hard-hitting stories. So I wasn’t really a part of the “IU JOURNALISM COMMUNITY.” But it wasn’t like I really wanted to be. I would still sometimes get people who appreciated my work, that came up to me and said “I love this, I love what you’re doing,” but they were usually queer people.

Which is definitely the desired reaction, which is awesome. Talking about your webseries “Idle Cosmopolitan” -- what was your favorite audience, or your favorite venue that you showed it to? And what was that sort of reaction and vibe like?

I wasn’t at all of the screenings. It showed at Bloomington at Planet Nine--which is this small VHS rental/DVD rental video place that kind of reminds me of Ghost World or something. I wasn’t there, but a lot of my friends were there, since it was my home for so many years. I assume it went well. From the pictures, I saw that it went well, at least.

It showed at Sarah Lawrence, which I know very little about how that went. I wanted to be there, but I was scheduled at work. Which is a whole thing about how I’m not a full-time artist. I say that I’m a freelance artist, which means that I make MAYBE 50 bucks a month off of my art. If it’s a good month! So I can’t always go to everything that’s happening. It’s an interesting part about being an artist in this landscape. People expect you to be global, and there’s only so global you can be if you’re working class. Which I think is important to be transparent about. It’s not always fun to be transparent about that, but it’s important.

Exactly, you want to be honest about it, but you want to portray yourself as larger-than-life-to get attention, and at least the semblance of clout (whatever that fcking means). But being an artist, you’re a part of a community, and you want to treat that community well. You don’t want to stunt and act like you’re making a living off of your art when you’re not.

It’s not cool to lie one way or the other. It’s not cool to portray yourself as a poor person if you’re not, and I’m not super poor or anything, but I’m not living off of my artwork, and I make a decent living off of my work as a childcare worker. But yeah, you shouldn’t lie because you’re fooling yourself and making art seem elitist.

There’s the lie by omission, in a way. A lot of people are internet famous, or have a certain persona that makes people say “Oh, I want to be like this person, who so clearly lives off of their artwork.” When in reality, it’s probably a side hustle at best.

Or they live with their parents. Or they have rich parents.

It distorts people’s dreams and plans--it’s important to be responsible about that.

Totally. One show I was at physically was at Secret Project Robot, at this festival of poets, and my videos were showing between poets that were reading their work. So that was interesting---I was the only video artist at the show. And as many things as I have tried--I have written poems, but I’ve never called myself a “poet.” So I thought that was kind of cool to have that multimedia experience, to see my videos projected really large in front of a big crowd of 20 or 30 people. Which doesn’t seem like a lot, but it’s actually a lot. I remember thinking wow, the crowds are gonna be so big in New York. And they are! But 20 or 30 people is a lot for DIY art. Even if you’re successful, or internet famous--it’s hard to gather a crowd wherever you are.

And it was really cool because people who were actually in the video got to see it, which was cool! Chariot is in it, and he was there, so that’s cool.

There was one livestream and q&a in the UK, which was really cool. And that was my favorite, because the moderator was super smart and always asked good question about the fantasy genre, and its intersections with queerness. It was refreshing instead of questions like-- “Why are you gay? Why is this here?” It was a good convo to have beyond the surface level.

It’s awesome that I saw so many showings of your series was in Indianapolis, in Indiana. You may not see a big crowd--DIY art isn’t an Ariana Grande concert--but What you do see is how it sort of transforms the room, and creates a living space, a community. 20 people is a community. Especially in Indiana.

Right, there’s very established artists and documentarians where the only place they have more than 20 people show up is in their hometowns. Even world-renowned documentarians may struggle to get an audience. Which is awful. But I think that one thing that is happening in the real world is that there are plenty of people I look up to, who are famous, whose twitter gets pretty very few likes! And they may have a huge amount of followers! And I’m like--why am I getting more likes than world-renowned feminist scholars? I think that’s happening in real life too. These people are having talks and showings of their work and sometimes DIY work is a different experience and maybe draws more people than these professional pieces, and there’s a community of people who can see themselves in that as artists.

I agree, it definitely changes the dynamic for people are used to when it comes to art, you think there’s the artist and this huge invisible wall and then there’s the observer, and it breaks down that dynamic.

Right, it changes the power dynamic. The artist isn’t a preacher.  What we’ve seen in DIY venues is, everybody is sitting in chairs. The artist is in the front, but everyone is on the same level. There isn’t a stage to walk down from.

I think people are only starting to observe this change, and aren’t sure what to call it yet. Some people see changes like this as the death of something, like the death of some kind of empire of how art works. But especially with this project, I think I’ve not only been an optimist, but a realist in the sense that it’s for the better. So many people are screaming “death to media! Death to print!” and I’m just over here like, “You’re a Baby Boomer, please don’t talk to me.”

Ha! Right. These media aren’t dead, but they’re definitely dying. But I think they’re going to be dying for a while to come. People broadcasting the death of all of these things---like, they’re not dead yet. The Met is gonna be in trouble, but the Met is gonna be around for the next 100 years. The Met’s not just gonna crumble.

Going back to “Idle Cosmopolitan”--I love how it’s a series of very short films. And by short, I mean like, slightly longer than a Vine length. And some people may come across that and immediately compare the series to Vine culture, but my immediate thought was comparing it to poetry, with a lot of tightly-wound content being fit into a small space. So I was wondering how poetry influences your visual work, or how visual work influences your poetry, etc.

That’s interesting. I actually originally applied to go to college for poetry. I never called myself a poet, but I did think about it for a while. When I do write poetry, it’s usually about nature, and viewing nature through the lens of divinity and power dynamics. Which I think is definitely a big part of my video work. The “Queer World” in my piece is a forest. Somebody was talking to me recently, and said that “I think it’s interesting that the queer world is a forest. Do you think of urban spaces as, like, not-as-queer spaces?” I hadn’t really thought about that. But whenever I think of that sort of the afterlife, I don’t think of cities. And what’s our other option, really? Nature. An ocean would be a terrifying destination for the afterlife. I think that poetry is super important, I think when I’m writing anything, I tend towards a lyrical, poetic style. I love hard facts, but I was never super into Hemingway. I always loved the Great Gatsby. Not that I like showy, hyper-stylized stuff; I hated the Great Gatsby movie. But the suggestion of artifice, the suggestion of things like that, I think is really interesting.

There’s ton of talk about heaven and nature and sin in “Idle Cosmopolitan.” I’m sure it comes from a long line of being raised in Christianity, and having read all of the Christian classics. And as a kid, I was obsessed with the apocalypse. Once, I was between 6-9 I remember looking at clocks in restaurants and thinking, “Could this be the hour of the end?” I remember being super into Revelations, and the ghost stories that my friends and I would tell each other, and often confusing them as the same thing.

I think that’s a form of poetry true, a strange, mental form of poetry. I think the afterlife is poetic, because there’s no concrete that you can provide.

I think in terms of modality, I think I’m always writing in the form of the poetic, even if I’m not writing a poem. Even my column--it’s not a how-to column, it’s not a safari.

It’s not MTV Cribs!

Right! Definitely more reflections.

I always thought of videos sort of in musician terms, like “this is my new album---Idle Cosmopolitan.” This is the tracklist, and each has a poetic name, etc. And each year, there’s a self-image overhaul….well, there’s no image overhaul for me this year, but especially in college I was into that idea, where I wanted to amp myself up every year.

But this iteration, for me, was trying to marry these poetic ideals with my own lived experiences, to make it sort of autobiographical, but still have a flourish. I mean, I was watching Twin Peaks when I was working on it.

Yeah, I can definitely see that influence in there. Where there’s that magic-realism, but it’s so mundane. The suspension of disbelief is so well-dissolved into it.

Right as I was starting to write this, I just finished the season of Veronica Mars---I’m not sure if it directly influenced it…

But it was there

Yeah, and watching Twin Peaks: the Return. What I thought was interesting about it was its formal elements. There was this sort of suspension of disbelief present for both the characters and the audience. So then you’re just like, “Yeah, queer spirits! That makes sense!” So, it’s that magic realism that is super appealing. And also the fact that it’s episodic. One of the things about David Lynch that I’m really into is the episodic nature of his work. There’s this loose play with time and narrative, and it’s an experience.

I think what Lynch talks a lot about, especially in later seasons, is agency. But in Sex and the City, for example--Carrie isn’t a bad person, but she’s not necessarily a good person either. She has affairs, runs around doing whatever she wants, she tries to take a break from dating and has a guilt complex where she feels bad about her actions, and also places guilt on other people--it’s complex, which I think is interesting.

Like chaotic neutral, but a little more complex than that?

Yeah, definitely. I’m obsessed with people who are chaotic neutral. I don’t think I’m chaotic neutral, but I’m fascinated by that those people exists.

I’m a super-intense Virgo, Type A, Blair Waldorf type. I definitely pride myself on hard work--which could be problematic--but I have that crawl-my-way-to-the-top sort of vibe.

This character in the webseries, they’re sort of neutral. They’re a relationship writer, but it doesn’t seem like a main part of their personhood. The only thing that they seem mad about is when their boyfriend breaks up with them, which is fair. But they don’t seem to be making many choices, and there’s something very sidekick about that.

I was in this space in my life where I was having to make all these intense decisions--deciding to move to New York, having to make all of these choices about who I wanted to be as a person. The character is the exact opposite, where there’s no movement. There’s a movement in narrative, a movement in place, but it kind of happens to them.

They get a letter, a pep talk from Fate--and they’re just like, “Sure, whatever, I don’t care.” Then they enter the queer world, and they’re like “Alright.” And then the Blue Spirit is the one who was like, “No, this wasn’t actually a good choice.” And they’re like, “Okay, sure.” They never really doubt people’s motives.

There’s a sort of guilt about making choices that Type A people have. Inevitably, if you’re a type A perosn, you’re going to hurt people. Even if you’re not actually hurting them, you’re going to make choices, and choices affect people. There’s winners and losers. So what does it mean for the sort of stoner archetype, this chaotic neutral archetype, when they don’t make choices?

I’ve never been a chill person, so I gravitate towards writing characters that are like that. Because I’m always wondering….what does that feel like?

Right! I feel like it takes a lot of effort to be chill, which isn’t chill. It’s kind of a self-consuming concept. I’m not gonna say it’s the only real binary, but…

Haha, right! Ok back to influences. Actually, as far as the soundtrack goes, I’ve gotten a lot of feedback where people say it reminds them of Sex and the City, and that it’s derivative. Actually, one person said that the soundtrack reminds them of Rugrats….

Stop!!!

Right!? Well, it’s jazz, but it’s sort of this chaotic jazz.

It’s a typical theme song in a lot of ways, but it’s disarming. Which I like.

Some people said it makes them anxious.

It offsets the perceived chill in the series, which signals you to look harder.

Watching it back, I was like...something is wrong. Narratively, there’s something up. But I’m not sure if that thing ever gets hashed out or resolved, it just sort of hangs like a dark cloud.

Which is what’s so great about poetry. There’s always that lack of resolution. People always get angry at that, where they want to feel satisfied...where’s the sequel at??

Do they get the girl or not??

Yeah! It’s how we’re taught to view life. But especially with creative people, it’s paradoxical--they only thing that makes them (us) feel satisfied is poetry, that sort of form that leaves things unresolved.

Totally.

How has the internet shaped your writing?

The internet is definitely fucked up. It was created by the military, and is now owned by billionaires. That’s already strike one. But let’s assume that the internet is also provides a space that provides more access for more people. But it doesn’t provide equal access for everybody. It provides equal access for a relatively small amount of people. You have to afford a computer, internet access--and even if you go to the library, you have to afford to be there.

But let’s say it does level the playing field in that way---even still, people don’t have more of a chance of getting their art noticed because of it. It does mean more people can put their stuff out there, but it doesn’t guarantee more viewers, or more fans, or some utopia.

The internet has become this neoliberal promise of equality. This reveals itself in every aspect---who dominates media, who dominates internet celebrity, etc. This doesn’t discount the fact that there’s fantastic DIY spaces based on the internet, but there’s a lot being overlooked.

The internet as a structure is racist, sexist, homophobic, and transphobic. Even if we go back to technology like photography, for example, it was a technology developed to best depict white faces. It’s so great that the internet creates a platform for people, but that includes creating platforms for neo-nazis on 4chan, for alt-righters to doxx people. The web is pretty fucked up, and it amplifies our greatest strengths, like community. Especially the trans community, which is so important. But it also amplifies our problems, and reveals where we need to grow.

I don’t think the internet is the devil, but I think it makes it harder for people to feel like human beings. It mirrors capitalism, and degrades human beings in so many ways where we’re expected to become a brand, which is always tied to capitalism. We’re forced to reduce ourselves to something bite-sized, which is troubling me as a person and as an artist.

When did u start writing and being creative?

I was always drawing. I was super into Pokemon and all the Nintendo games. I was into anything cute and well-designed, like Zelda, and anything involving world-building. I was super into maps, and at a young age, I thought, “I wanted to do that.”

At a young age, I wanted to be a pop star. And I made the boys in the neighborhood be my band. Now I’m thinking that was sort of a strong signal of me being gay, haha. Boys---you’re gonna be in this band, and I’m gonna sing Breakout by Miley Cyrus.

I started getting really into bands. I was really into Coldplay, and I wanted to be Chris Martin.

STOP, ME TOO

I really liked “Clocks.”

ME TOO, when I first heard that, I was like, Now….that’s what I call music.

I also really liked “Lovesong” by Sara Bareilles, which is entirely different, but I was also like...that’s what I call music. Also Paramore and Deathcab, and I was like…..this is also Music. I still love all this stuff

I still listen to all this stuff pretty much on the regular, even though I laugh about it Yeah! And at the time, all of these things were coded as feminine. Even Coldplay, which was, not a boyband, but kind of more healing.

Right, like ~emotional boys~, ~soft boys~, this sort of soft masculinity before it was talked about and memed.

I went from wanting to be a popstar, to wanting to be in bands, to wanting to do comics, and then I was like...I want to be painter! I did a lot of paintings, and then I wanted to be an actor. I was fixated on stardom, on theater. I was in all the plays of my freshman year.

Then I moved schools, and this guy who didn’t even like me and stopped talking to me, but I liked him---I wrote this psycho-opera about him. It was all songs about him, and it was super awkward. I recorded an album about him. He started being nice to me, and then I was just like…...here’s an album…

I was like, that was fun, but then I started to getting into Wes Anderson. And Woody Allen, but #WORST. And then Godard, which was better. Then I started making movies. And I saw 30 Rock, and it confirmed what I wanted to do.

I love how you go from Godard to 30 Rock

I know!! I was very all over the map. Then I started watching more experimental films and wild stuff, so it’s been a journey to where I’m at now.

The wrapping up portion, something I ask at the end of every interview...this is actually the first interview I’ve done that’s over the phone, an actual physical conversation. And the form of how I’ve conducted each interview has really affected it.

How would you describe the future of literature in a tweet-length? Or a sort of verbal tweet length, also tweets are longer now so….yeah….

Smaller.

[tenorsauruswes]

“Trust your intuition.”

Most of us have downloaded some type of star-chat app or follow a social media account that provides monthly (sometimes weekly) guidance based on our astrological sign. There is certainly nothing new about humans wanting a deeper connection to the greater power that we believe guides us (or in some cases, designs for us) as we travel around our sun.

I’m a Leo with my rising in Virgo and my moon in Aries. To be perfectly honest, I haven’t a clue what this means on a deep level except that I like attention and overthink things…a lot.

So often the advice I receive from virtual horoscope sites is the simple statement to “trust my intuition.” I have to say, nothing scares me more than trusting my intuition when my intuition often behaves like Peter Parker’s Spidey sense – a constant bell that things around me aren’t quite what they seem.

And yet, it is my intuition I must thank for the story I’m about to tell.

Without going into every minute detail, the summation of the end of my summer was this: after carrying around for a decade the weight of having a college professor and mentor proposition me for sex while I was still his student, I finally came forward with my story. If you’re looking for more specific information, I encourage you to read the Boston Globe article here. What people don’t know is how that story almost didn’t come out.

In September 2019, I was a local opera singer working for multiple companies in Boston as both as regular chorister and a soloist for smaller companies. I cantored for Catholic churches and had a steady 9-to-5 – what I lovingly refer to as my “muggle job.” It was in the midst of the high holidays at a temple in Needham, MA when I discovered an article on schmopera.com by editor and co-creator Jenna Simeonov that chronicled the story of a fairly-well-known American bass’ experience of sexual abuse by a guest director while the bass was a student.

I was astounded at two things: the first being that someone whose expanding career I followed on social media had a #MeToo story to tell, and second was the bravery of this man and the writer of the article in boldly exposing the truth of that moment in his life. For years I’d carried around my burden and while I did share my story with friends and colleagues throughout the ten years after my own experience of sexual misconduct by a college professor, my assumption was that I would continue to live in a world where the man who violated my trust saw no penalty for his actions. Keep in mind, this man who was my private voice teacher in Florida now worked as the President and CEO of a large arts organization in Boston. I’d been contracted multiple times throughout my years in Boston in productions where either the show either performed or rehearsed in the space that this man now controlled. My fear with telling my story wasn’t simply that I wouldn’t be believed, but that by exposing the truth, all these years later, I would become a pariah in the Boston arts community and never work on the same level again.

After a day or two of considering my options I was left with one feeling: my intuition. And it told me to write my story and share it with Jenna. I assumed one of two things would happen: 1) she would read my article and decide that my story wasn’t on the same level of behavior as other stories she’d received (I recognize how fortunate I am that my story doesn’t involve physical confrontation or violence) or 2) she would never respond.

I was completely wrong. In just over a week Schmopera published my account and people were sharing it on social media. That’s when I knew my story wasn’t finished being written.

Next is the part you don’t know.

After much debate with myself I contacted the Boston Globe. My fear was that the same actions he’d taken toward myself and others at the small school in Florida continued in his tenure in Boston – and now he was the highest-ranking person in the organization. I knew how helpless I’d felt in those moments after I received his initial anonymous email, writing, “I know I am your fantasy.” I could only imagine what the possibilities could be in Boston with him surrounded by more impressionable young men. My mind told me to count myself lucky that I’d been edified by friends and colleagues after the Schmopera article went live and not push my luck. My intuition told me to keep pushing forward.

That is when I sent the article to the Globe. And you can guess what happened next: no response. So I penned a lengthier explanation, again sharing the article to the Globe’s email hotline, and, again, no response. I figured I’d gotten too “big for my britches” as my parents would say. They were this goliath of a newspaper so they got to decide what made news and what didn’t.

It wasn’t until a discussion I’d had with a colleague who shared a Boston Globe news article regarding the same person, but this article wasn’t about inappropriate behavior. It detailed a new, controversial program he was promoting that caused uproar among people concerned that many artists would be displaced once it was implemented. While not related, it was a lead to putting my story in front of the eyes of someone already reporting on both the person and the organization.

My brain pleaded with me to slow down and not get myself deeply involved in what could potentially be a very painful, not to mention reputation-destroying, path. But my gut told me to keep going. So, I did.

I emailed the reporter Brian, and, for the first time, I felt heard. I suspect many of you won’t be surprised to read about the amount of back-and-forth there was between myself and the reporter. He was so patient and encouraging every step of the way. Yet, even with my completely open (and perhaps often naïve) cooperation to publish the entire story using mine and my offender’s name so publicly, it took multiple phone calls with Brian and another staff member at the Globe before I was able to sit down for the interview. Every step along the way I thought of people like Christine Blasey Ford and every other survivor of sexual assault we’ve heard from since the #MeToo movement began. Not that I would ever compare their experiences with my own, but I appreciate so much more now their courage. Every step Brian and I took toward publicly sharing my story I asked myself three questions:

“What are the facts?”

“Why am I doing this now?”

“What result am I searching for?”

Looking back, I think of those questions as my armor. They were what would protect me from a libel lawsuit and/or community backlash. After all, someone doesn’t become the head of such a high-ranking organization without convincing a few people you’re the best person for the job. And part of that is convincing people you are the good guy.

So, the question I ask now is, “What kept me going?” At any point I recognized that I could take my foot off the gas…or even turn the car around. No one was forcing me to expose the awful truth of what happened ten years prior. I often thought about a sign my mother had in her Sunday school room when I was a child that read, “I do not have to attend every argument I am invited into.”

Now, anyone who knows me knows this is not my talent…avoiding unnecessary arguments. If you want proof, check out my Facebook profile feed from approximately 2015-2016 (i.e. the previous contentious presidential election cycle). But while this was a moment I could walk away from, I had to ask myself if I should walk away. After all, he was more powerful, had a bigger profile, and was cunning enough to weasel his way out of retribution once before (read the Boston Globe article to understand how many times he’d showed this behavior prior to my incident).

Maybe it was the stars telling me to trust my intuition. Maybe it was the profound sense of right and wrong my parents raised me to believe in. Whatever it was, I am thankful every day for the patience and care Brian took with me to ensure that we got it right. And for my fiancé and every friend and colleague who was with me as I traversed the frightening path to coming out with my story.

Why am I sharing this experience now? Because my intuition is telling me to.

Part two of this story involves you. What story are you afraid to tell? What truth are you afraid to live? If there is any result I hope comes from these articles it is this: that one more person isn’t afraid to live in their truth.

In the Bible, John 17 reads, “Sanctify them through your truth…” The sheer number of people who reached out in person or online to express their appreciation to me would astound you. People I would have never considered would be victim to inappropriate behavior told me, some in detail, of their own experiences and trauma. Others thanked me, not alluding to any shared experience except in their eyes.

You don’t have to be ready to risk it all or to shout the truth from the highest mountaintop. But you can. And you will be believed. And you will be supported.

The most important thing: believe your horoscope and listen to your intuition.